Worker Realizes She Was A Glass Cliff Hire Purposely Set Up To Fail
Andrii Iemelianenko | Shutterstock A worker admitted that she completely changed the trajectory of her career after learning she had been a victim of the glass cliff and had been hired to take the fall when things at the company went wrong.
In a video, Jess shared that since learning what the "glass cliff hire" is, she's quickly realized that she completely fits the bill with a lot of the past companies she's been hired to work for. Defined as a phenomenon in which women, or any other minority group, are elevated to leadership positions in times of crisis rather than during prosperous times, Jess put the pieces together when it came to her own career.
Jess realized she was a 'glass cliff hire' purposely set up to fail.
"So I just learned what the glass cliff means, and it basically describes my entire career," Jess shared in her video. "It's when a company hires a woman or a minority, anyone other than a white man. I've completely stopped applying for corporate jobs since after the pandemic as a graphic designer, because I realize I have been the scapegoat."
Jess recalled that she'd been hired into impossible roles with impossible clients with no hope for success. The companies would then put immense pressure on Jess to perform. Now looking back, Jess admitted that she's angry at the fact that she spent so much of her time and energy putting in the work when these companies didn't even care at all, really.
There is a relationship between 'glass ceiling' and 'glass cliff.'
While a glass ceiling refers to a barrier keeping women and minorities from being able to advance in their professional careers, a glass cliff almost means the same thing. In both phrases, the glass is a metaphor for the structural barriers that underrepresented groups face in the workforce.
This also just speaks to the fact that there is still no equity for women in the professional landscape. A study by McKinsey & Company found that only 26% of C-suite roles were held by women in 2022, and only 5% by women of color.
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Sophie Williams, author of the book "The Glass Cliff," told the NYT that the term "speaks again to that invisible danger of being up high and potentially falling down." Research also shows that businesses that appoint women to leadership roles for the first time tend to have been in crisis for five months or more.
"I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when there is this big public mess, when there’s a possibility of someone’s reputation being tied up with this problem, we suddenly default to women in a way that we haven’t historically," Williams said. Considering women and people of color already have so much stacked against them in the workplace, the "glass cliff" is just another aspect of that.
But that's what more representation can hopefully fix. It's about making sure women and people of color are in leadership positions from the get-go. That means being aware of what you are walking into before taking on a role that seems too good to be true, making sure you aren't being set up to fail before even starting.
Nia Tipton is a staff writer with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and journalism who covers news and lifestyle topics that focus on psychology, relationships, and the human experience.
