I think women are also awful to one another. I have seen it myself. Granted. Men are terrible. Women are often far nastier and more indirect which can wreak complete havoc in a workplace or remote work environment.

I know many women who have a very weird instinct to compete against the other women in their environment which is not exactly the same as how men compete. And the WAY women compete is NASTY.

I have met a lot of women who have said they greatly prefer to work with men over women and that some women have extremely aggressive instincts towards other women.

It’s something evolutionary along the lines of: “If there are few women and many men (typical in most tech environments), you are competing not only for male attention and prestige but it is also a zero sum game based on appearance so another woman is threatening across multiple attack vectors … if she is more attractive, the men will give her more resources. If she is more talented, she will get more attention etc.

I think it reminds me of Chinese dynasty politics where an emperor who has many wives - They all understand that it is a zero sum game and the children of the woman who gets the most attention will have the most resources. Go read about how Chinese imperial concubines handled one another. It was very, very, very bad.

It is incredibly sexist to talk about. But the effect is real. Humans have hormones. They don’t go away because we have been in an office for 50 years out of the last million years.

I personally think that the chemistry between men and women can be magical for work and create super productivity. I prefer to work with and for women. It’s because if I work with men everything becomes a sort of dominance contest and I personally don’t care for it.