Wow — I guess we all pick up on different tones, but I didn’t see this part of Maren’s writing as either a cheap shot, or as a gender-focused / sexist thing.

Meanwhile, I’ve had plenty of experience in my career with insecure alphas (I think often the two are causally related, insecurities being the driving factor behind quite a few individuals’ ambitions). Maybe it’s due to being an engineer (in a workplace that was until recently predominantly male), but most of the insecure alphas I’ve run across have been men. In my experience, insecure women in the workplace seem to manifest their issues differently than via putdowns and other dominance displays.