"“Blue-collar roles are usually in very authoritative structures. When men move from blue-collar to white-collar roles, they tend to assume that with their new role comes a lot of positional power. But in large organizations, that’s not always true,” she tells MEL. “Men in these situations need to learn to lead with influence, not power. They need to be more collaborative, and they need to understand that to get what they need they might have to leverage other departments or leaders.”"
What is also notable is that the culture companies so desperately contort themselves to create is a naturally occurring phenomenon in blue collar environments. Tech is basically blue collar work for white collar money.
"“The one shift I’ve noticed is most difficult [when men] go from blue-collar work like police officer or firefighter: there is a lot of time spent with colleagues in a ‘brotherly’ way,” she tells MEL. “Eating together, spending long hours together and supporting one another in life and death or dangerous situations. This isn’t the same schedule or interpersonal interaction in the white-collar environment and [it] can be difficult to transition to.”"
White collar work is mainly political, and there is very little actual physical competence involved. The skills are social, and not really skills anyone (men or women) respects or admires. Perhaps that's why they are so well paid. From the outside, the emphasis on flexibility and collaboration, can be understood as being able suspend rules and principles for opportunity.
From the inside, you need a kind of self-superiorization that abstracts you from the work, people, and relationships. This is why an elite education is so valued, because no matter what happens "you still went to Harvard/have a PhD etc." and this is what facilitates your ability to be "dynamic," or deal with outwardly contemptible behaviour because it's not, "you," who is engaged in it, it's something a person of your position "does."
When competent people encounter uncertainty, we fall back on protecting the integrity of that competence, because it defines our self image of who we "are." But risking group survival (that is based on the external perceptions of stakeholders) to maintain the integrity of our competence based self image will get you isolated pretty quick. This is the essence of that blue collar alienation feeling technical people get.
This flexible superiorization can be affected in a number of ways without an elite education, but almost all of them are anathema to a traditional masculine identity, which is based on the very competence, principle, and structure that is the barrier to them in dynamic white collar environments. The thing about an education is it's something nobody can "take away," from you, and this is the key to being able to superiorize yourself to the work. Whereas "blue collar" things like competence and masculinity can be lost, and so the need to protect or maintain them becomes a kind of weakness or vulnerability in the political dynamics of white collar work.
If white collar jobs were just a matter of actualizing the most noble aspects of being good people, and the attributes that make us likeable, they wouldn't be work. White collar work itself is the ability to self superiorize, sustain the necessary cognitive dissonance to maintain and affect strategic perceptions, and to act on the instincts and techniques for identifying and aligning correctly to power.
Some people are naturals at it, and while they usually aren't particularly admirable or likeable, the compensation, status and power that comes with achieving it place those virtues as second prize. Until very recently, having the intellectual ability to criticize these dynamics was exclusive to people who were educated to work in them, and so there wasn't a reason to reflect on them critically. The internet is changing this as well.
Such an important article for people to read.