I recently finished 15 Lies Women Are Told at Work . . . and the Truth We Need to Succeed. I don’t recall where I read about the book, but the back cover includes endorsements from Hoda Kotb and Chelsea Clinton. Despite its high-powered endorsements, I really struggled with reading it.

The author, Bonnie Hammer, is an over 70-year old executive at NBCUniversal who’s had an unquestionably storied career. She says she decided to write this book after thinking about many cliches women are told about their careers, and how those cliches ultimately hold us back. She describes her book as the “honest and unfiltered truth.” p.4.

I found that her truth suffered from a few fundamental problems. First, I often wondered why, beyond the obvious (i.e., she’s a woman herself), Hammer directed this book at women. Very little of the book offers advice that is specific to women; indeed, most of the examples she gives of career success come from men. For example, in a chapter on finding “challenging mentors,” nearly every example she gives of such a mentor is a man. When she acknowledges that none of her examples include women, she attributes that absence to a deficieny within women. In a chapter on learning to fail before you succeed, Hammer opens by giving examples of three men who were “all losers before they were winners” - Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Michael Jordan, and Jerry Seinfeld. She then notes that “high-profile female failures-into-successes are a lot less common” because women don’t take risks and take failure more personally. p.238

Second, Hammer seems to believe that her life experience is common to all women. If it worked for her, it will work for you. Although this is an attribute of many self-help books, in Hammer’s case, her understandable pride in her own success caused her to have some significant blind spots about the relevance of her experience to others. While Hammer mentions MeToo and other aspects of the cultural revolution the workplace has experienced during her lifetime, I didn’t see much evidence that she recognizes institutional barriers for women—particularly women who don’t look like her.

I’m not suggesting that every book with career advice directed at women needs to rail against the patriarchy. But we need to ask questions when an author cautions against the “lies” told to professional women, without meaningfully asking about the people and systems who told those lies and why they told them.

That’s not how I wanted to conclude this issue, however. Instead, in light of the recent Comes Now issue I wrote about generational differences, I wanted to explore her advice with a bit more of a compassionate lens.

Let’s see what you think after I tell you about the book.

The Book

Hammer divides her book into three parts: the lies we hear when we’re starting out at the beginning of our careers, the lies we hear when we’re in the middle of our careers (“standing out”), and the lies we hear about leadership (“stepping up”).

Much of the advice she gives is decent. She tells women to follow opportunities rather than dreams that may be limited by own personal experiences, to face our fears rather than faking it until we make it, to change things if they can be made better, that success has many directions (not just vertical), and that the only constant in life is change.

But there are many chapters—many of which appear in the early chapters directed at young women—that I found much more difficult to read. In her chapter where she advocates that women should “work on” our worth, she starts out the section on that “truth” with the statement: “When we’re young, most of us are worthless. And we should expect to be treated that way.” p.27. While she makes clear that she means “worthless” in a professional sense, recall that Hammer purports to have written the book to advise women. How many books have you read that are directed to men that say they should expect to be treated as worthless early in their careers?

In addition, while I will admit to being taken aback by what I perceived as entitlement by lawyers far younger and less experienced than I was, I was disturbed by Hammer’s hackneyed stereotypes about “the younger generation.” She thinks there is a “generational problem” where young people feel entitled to “rapidly ascend to more money, responsibility, and power” which she attributes to a culture of “participation trophies, courtesy deferrals, and safe spaces.” p.28.

Hammer doubles—and triples—down on her “get used to being treated like trash” recommendation too. She says that while she’s not directing women to “sacrifice your social life,” the easiest way to differentiate yourself is to be the first one to the office in the morning and the last one to leave in the evening. Then she says that, while remote work is great and all, “you’ll never be worthy of being in the ‘room where it happens’ if you’re never in the actual room.” p.35. She says she looks for a good attitude above all else in hiring employees, and “[a] genuine smile and can-do demeanor can make all the difference when you’re being assessed for a role.” p.37. Does anyone else feel like they’re in the 1950s?

Hammer also has a chapter where she encourages women to eschew finding “supportive mentors” in favor of finding “challenging mentors”—or people who challenge us and call out our bullshit.

Hammer says that such people are unlikely to be found in formal mentorship programs—in part because such people can be difficult and unlikely to give HR-approved advice. While she includes a chart that attempts to distinguish between someone who is toxic and someone who gives you the tough-love she thinks women need, the fact that she needs to address this distinction—which she admits is “a little subjective”—suggests something problematic about the advice in the first place. Some of the examples of the “great mentors” she had are not people I would want young professional women to find.

Hammer also has a chapter stating that, while you might think appearances and presence don’t matter, they do. And, of course, the onus is on you to make your appearance appropriate.

She advocates having a personal brand—in clothing, hairstyle, et cetera. Right down to what cocktail you drink. She tells the story of a male boss who told her, with regard to her “natural, wild curls”—that she should “get your damn hair out of the f*ing camera!” She then chose a hairstyle that was “less distracting.” p.71. Imagine that advice given to a woman of color.

The end of the chapter contains specific advice on maintaining your outward image, including to “put a smile on” and “cover up.”

And, while no woman alive today who is self-aware would continue to contend that women can have it “all”—whatever “all” is—Hammer then has a chapter purporting to take on that “lie.”

But she debunks it by the simple assertion that women now have choices. According to her, we can “choose”: to focus on our careers and delay motherhood until we’re “established” at work, not to get married, to put our pursuit of family first, and to have careers.

Hammer says that she herself made three key such choices: (1) to get divorced at age 30 and not getting remarried for another decade; (2) to marry a man at age 40 who was willing to put her career above his; and (3) to have only one biological kid. (Hammer does admit this last one was not really a choice, because she had her son at 43 after struggling with infertility.)

But even while talking about these choices, she also talks about things that happened to her that were decidedly not choices: like missing out on social connection at work when her son was born because she had to work without breaks during the workday and then go home to her son at night, or like not having local female friends who understood what it was like to be a working mom.

And yet, despite her personal story, she advocates that women can simply choose which aspects of their lives to focus on.

Hammer then has a chapter where she admonishes her readers that the workplace is only a man’s world if you allow it to be. She says that, contrary to popular wisdom, women can enjoy an advantage in the workplace, “if we play the game right.” p.119.

According to Hammer, women who’ve failed have tried too much to act like men, when in reality “[t]he way to succeed in a man’s world is to stand out as a woman.” p.120. To support this recommendation, she engages in all types of gender-based stereotypes—such as that women are more empathetic, like to collaborate and be more cooperative, and are better at multi-tasking. She says our “ancient orientation as caregivers” “helps us comfort, nurture, and inspired the best in people.” p.122. (Similarly, in the next chapter, she encourages women to have “compassionate” conversations, and provides an example of a conversation where a woman expresses sympathy, flatters, adds personal touches and adds a sob story.)

While she concedes that “corporate America is designed for and controlled by men,” she describes the patriarchy as a “catchphrase” that we believe only because we keep saying it. p.123. To illustrate this point, she describes a time when, in response to her complaint about her boss’ toxic behavior, her boss’ boss told her that “[i]n this business, if your boss tells you to suck dick, you suck dick.” Even though she was devastated by the response, Hammer decided to stay—because she loved her job and her team.

Concluding Thoughts

As you can tell, I struggled with this book. I found many of Hammer’s recommendations to be arrogant and tone-deaf. What bothered me most was her nearly wholesale refusal to acknowledge institutional barriers that hold women back. In her introduction Hammer acknowledges—quite briefly—that she doesn’t intend to discount the existence of sexism that pervades most industries, but it’s as if she set out to write a book only to talk about factors other than sexism that hold women back.

Throughout the book it became clear that many of the issues I had with the book emanated from a similar place—one of internalized misogyny. Even though Hammer is twenty years older than I am, I can imagine a time when I might have written a similar book. Like her, I’d been mentored by men throughout my career. Like her, although certainly not in the same way, I achieved many things. I thought I’d “made it” because I hadn’t listened to conventional beliefs about success. I preferred working with men. I thought women could advance as I had, if only they’d keep their heads down and worked as hard as I had.

I’ve learned otherwise. That learning has at times been painful—because I’ve seen things I think I chose not to see before. I don’t know anything about Bonnie Hammer, but I don’t know how you can write about a career spanning a half century in a male-dominated industry without once acknowledging that you were held back by something other than the lack of your own will or personality.

So, while I could just trash this book, I’m going to ask you to look at it in a different way. See it as evidence of the incredible power of internalized misogyny and use it to do your own work about how you think about yourself.

Take my word for it: the lies you’re told about work don’t come from your personal defects or deficiencies.

Scheduling Note

Due to the Memorial Day weekend and my daughter’s graduation from high school, there will not be a Comes Now issue next week. The next issue will be out on Tuesday, June 4th.

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