Comment by dgudkov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dgudkov | Hacker News Reader

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It's striking how many women in this article mention bad relationship with bosses as the main reason to leave. No question, this is a very legitimate reason. I'm just surprised that it looks like it happened quite often through their careers. I did have terrible bosses maybe couple times through my almost 20-year work experience, but it never was so much a problem -- low pay, or boring job were the main reasons I switched employers. I would assume from this article that women are more sensitive to relationships with their bosses than men. Which might require special training for the both parties to overcome. I'm pretty much sure that if several men were asked what made them leave, bosses would not be such a major issue.

Anecdotal, my impression is that women tend to have much lower tolerance for people they dislike. Seem to remember reading the theory that for men it was important to work well in random groups (like war or hunting parties), whereas the sphere of the women was usually more tightly knit, so perhaps it was more important to weed out unpleasant individuals in the tightly knit sphere.

Might have read that in the infamous "Is there anything good about men" essay, but not sure.

As an example for my experience: in the student hall, there were sometimes people who smelled bad or didn't integrate. The men would usually just ignore them (after all, most people only live in student halls for a limited time, so the problem would resolve itself), whereas the women would start banding together and mobbing against them. They would become more and more preoccupied with plans to get rid of the unwanted person.

To a lesser degree, I saw this kind of thing play out at companies or shared housing situations, too.

Might be a selection bias issue- the type of women that would participate in this might also be the type to cite relationships a causal factor.

i'm pretty sure i read a study a few years ago that said bad bosses were the #1 reason for people leaving jobs, across all demographics.

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