## Metadata - Author: [[ross-mccammon|Ross Mccammon]] - Full Title:: It’s Time to Talk About Male Mediocrity at Work - Category:: #🗞️Articles - Document Tags:: [[Sin machirulos hay paraiso. una charla heterofriendly sobre management|Sin Machirulos Hay Paraiso]] - URL:: https://fortune.com/2023/01/30/male-mediocrity-at-work-strategic-incompetence/ - Finished date:: [[2023-01-31]] ## Highlights > Other, lesser minds should have been sweating the small stuff. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr21wmrmwnq2g7w4m8bhvdtw)) > the demographic I happen to belong to: straight, white, male ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr21y94frht78ybz7x007b57)) > years, I started to realize that those particular “people skills” weren’t working for me the way they used to ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr21ydvsxhvtsf0k63gqh52h)) > performing competence. It’s kind of easy, actually. You don’t talk a lot in meetings, and when you do you ask questions of the people who made assertions, or repeat and praise good points others made ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr21zenr47hvm8erxzh35mec)) > Lise Vesterlund, who along with three coauthors wrote [*The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work*](https://www.thenoclub.com/) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr220gfqy56jj7qv48qk68hb)) > strategic incompetence” (sometimes called “skilled incompetence” or “weaponized incompetence”). Strategic incompetence is the colleague who claims to be terrible at math, so that you handle all the spreadsheets ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr226n7441hgbwvehwrssrrg)) > it’s a reluctance to do the lower-value jobs that Vesterlund and coauthors Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, and Laurie Weingart call “non-promotable. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr221dnx1d5wc1jan143ta6a)) > - Note: [[Being glue talk|Being Glue Talk]] > In a series of experiments, Vesterlund and her coauthors found that women are 44% more likely than men to be asked by male managers to perform non-promotable tasks such as taking meeting notes, and 50% more likely to say yes ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr225wmg03hqkqr3pc9qxdmk)) > This is an impossible standard, so the obvious strategy is to fake it, and to avoid any situation where your inadequacy will be visible ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01gr227r8978yaq5ehfbaqjv6s))