"People talk about Mad Men (I’ve never seen it) as reflecting some kind of corporate golden age where at least high-ranking men enjoyed their jobs. If so, did it change because of harassment law?"
I saw that change happen in real time at my last job. Out in the far reaches of the Mojave desert, in the Land that Woke Forgot, we had a workplace culture where pretty much everyone seemed to enjoy their jobs. With rather less sex than the TV version, because A: real life rather than Hollywood and B: nerds rather than Advertising Bros. But where there was mutual desire, it happened, and where there wasn't, nobody really pushed.
Until one woman filed a sexual harassment complaint(*), which everyone recognized was utterly baseless, and revenge for a social slight. But management decided they had to pretend to take it seriously, money quote, "I'm sorry, [redacted], I have to take her side - she's the girl". In a matter of months. Policies were changed, management became much more intrusive, and the job ceased being fun for anyone not long after that.
I should have quit immediately; by the time I eventually left, my colleagues were only half joking when they suggested I could offer my next employer an entire spacecraft-propulsion R&D team, cheap.
* Really, a series of escalating complaints of increasing bogosity when she wasn't satisfied with the social response to the earlier ones. By the end, management was officially 100% on her side, and she had no friends whatsoever of either gender.
I retired a couple years ago and there weren't that many women in the engineering departments where I worked so I must have missed a lot of this. The only time I ever saw a women raise an issue was a meeting where some guy answered her question about a data type with 'it's a fucking integer'. It was pretty lame. She had a foul mouth in her own way too., Issue raised - Issue dropped
I'd kind of like to see this phenomenon live and in person. I live within an easy bike ride of the University of Minnesota. Alum 65 and older can take courses for credit at $10 per or audit for free. I would expect a lot of justified resentment if I were to pop into a class there though. Hi, I'm old, my health care is subsidized and I'm only paying 50 bucks to take this course. How you doing today my young friend?
BTW you are probably too young to fully appreciate Mad Men. My youngest brother didn't understand what i saw in it. If you don't remember the Manson murders or at least their aftermath you won't flip out when the show reaches 1969 and Don Draper's love interest is in California and picks up her green phone. Oh gawd. Sharon Tate had a green phone!
I am happy to be reminded that bogosity is a word.
Also it seems odd to me that moving was an option for you. Spacecraft propulsion seems adequately expensive and government-entwined that I find it difficult to think that any company could preserve a healthy culture for long.
I feel it's worth mentioning (since nobody else seems to have made this point) that Mad Men is a cautionary tale -- Don Draper is not intended to be an aspirational character, he's an essentially broken person. Much of the subtext of the show is how this era produced powerful men who were philanderers, alcoholics, bullies, and egoists. The juxtaposition between that reality and the superficial trappings of the era ("when men could be men", great fitting suits, etc) is what makes the show so interesting.
"People talk about Mad Men (I’ve never seen it) as reflecting some kind of corporate golden age where at least high-ranking men enjoyed their jobs. If so, did it change because of harassment law?"
I saw that change happen in real time at my last job. Out in the far reaches of the Mojave desert, in the Land that Woke Forgot, we had a workplace culture where pretty much everyone seemed to enjoy their jobs. With rather less sex than the TV version, because A: real life rather than Hollywood and B: nerds rather than Advertising Bros. But where there was mutual desire, it happened, and where there wasn't, nobody really pushed.
Until one woman filed a sexual harassment complaint(*), which everyone recognized was utterly baseless, and revenge for a social slight. But management decided they had to pretend to take it seriously, money quote, "I'm sorry, [redacted], I have to take her side - she's the girl". In a matter of months. Policies were changed, management became much more intrusive, and the job ceased being fun for anyone not long after that.
I should have quit immediately; by the time I eventually left, my colleagues were only half joking when they suggested I could offer my next employer an entire spacecraft-propulsion R&D team, cheap.
* Really, a series of escalating complaints of increasing bogosity when she wasn't satisfied with the social response to the earlier ones. By the end, management was officially 100% on her side, and she had no friends whatsoever of either gender.
I retired a couple years ago and there weren't that many women in the engineering departments where I worked so I must have missed a lot of this. The only time I ever saw a women raise an issue was a meeting where some guy answered her question about a data type with 'it's a fucking integer'. It was pretty lame. She had a foul mouth in her own way too., Issue raised - Issue dropped
I'd kind of like to see this phenomenon live and in person. I live within an easy bike ride of the University of Minnesota. Alum 65 and older can take courses for credit at $10 per or audit for free. I would expect a lot of justified resentment if I were to pop into a class there though. Hi, I'm old, my health care is subsidized and I'm only paying 50 bucks to take this course. How you doing today my young friend?
BTW you are probably too young to fully appreciate Mad Men. My youngest brother didn't understand what i saw in it. If you don't remember the Manson murders or at least their aftermath you won't flip out when the show reaches 1969 and Don Draper's love interest is in California and picks up her green phone. Oh gawd. Sharon Tate had a green phone!
I am happy to be reminded that bogosity is a word.
Also it seems odd to me that moving was an option for you. Spacecraft propulsion seems adequately expensive and government-entwined that I find it difficult to think that any company could preserve a healthy culture for long.
I feel it's worth mentioning (since nobody else seems to have made this point) that Mad Men is a cautionary tale -- Don Draper is not intended to be an aspirational character, he's an essentially broken person. Much of the subtext of the show is how this era produced powerful men who were philanderers, alcoholics, bullies, and egoists. The juxtaposition between that reality and the superficial trappings of the era ("when men could be men", great fitting suits, etc) is what makes the show so interesting.