who's got your back?

People ask me over and over again, "So, why did you quit architecture?" I've never really been satisfied with my answers - they always left something missing. I think I may have finally hit on one that seems to capture the truth: Nobody ever had my back.

Over all those years, with all those projects and all those working relationships and connections and interdependencies and you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yourses, only one manager ever had my back. But he wasn't there long, and after that, I never had a similar relationship. They were all looking out for number one, ready to drop me like a hot rock the instant they saw a better option. They were fickle, unreliable, unpredictable, undependable. Huh, reminds me a lot of my parents...

He was the very first one (manager, that is), and even he tried to torpedo me initially, until I stood up to him. I never let his first salvo get past me, though it took everything I had to do it. I've always wondered if he even realized he was testing me, or if it's just an unconscious thing guys do to anybody new. (Just read somewhere, in some random Google search, a line something like, "As soon as he knows you'll accept that first lie, he knows he has you. You're his forevermore." Are men really that simple-minded??????

Never mind - please don't answer that question. I don't really want to know.
***

A woman in a male-dominated world finds there is no safe place to stand - there are piranhas everywhere, every potential ally will turn and gobble you up if it looks to be to his advantage. Women are no better, and in fact are often worse: There's so little support, and so much competition to get even a token spot in this world of good ol' boys, that most women will gladly throw another woman under the bus to climb even a fraction of an inch higher on the ladder.

Argh, this isn't where I really wanted to go with this.

I wanted to link the 'no one having your back' idea with having that same feeling in my family.

And also realizing that you can never climb very high on the ladder of power if the desire for power itself isn't a big motivator.