Report – Reasons My Male Clients Left Corporate America

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Since Trump was elected, there has definitely been an uptick in the number of meetings I have had where people want to create their own business and leave Corporate America.

As has been during my career, these new clients run the gamut of gender, race socioeconomic background and educational backgrounds.

First, some background on me in case this memo is your first exposure to me.  I am a CPA with my own practice and specialize in income taxes and consulting for business owners and high net worth individuals. I have been in business since 1987. I have served thousands of businesses in my career.

Over the past three decades more and more women have come to me to start their own business. The percentage of women has been increasing over time. Back in 1990 when I passed the CPA exam, I might have had 15 to 20% of my new client business meetings with women and the rest men. This is risen to at least 40% today on average.

But, even before Trump was elected, I began to notice slightly more men than average coming in to leave the corporate world and start their own enterprises.

This has continued now for approximately 3 or 4 years, and I really wanted to get to the bottom of it. So, I endeavored on a scientific and statistical analysis to find the root cause(s) of this.

What I discovered was very interesting and it is a statement on how corporate cultures have changed the past 5 to 10 years. I wanted to choose a population from former employees of large companies, so I settled on at least 500 employees at their former companies.

I went back four years into my client base, and I interviewed all of my new male clients that fit this criteria, and asked them to list the reasons that drove them to start their own company and leave the corporate world behind them.

My population here was 93 men. I excluded those that had been fired as I wanted to focus on voluntary terminations.

There were 5 reasons that kept coming up, and they are listed below. In only a few of these cases was there evidence that I was given to justify their decisions, but my clients all discussed their employment history at length, and said that their decisions were extremely hard to make, but there employment was untenable.

Here are The Top Five Reasons Why Men Left Corporate America To Start Their Own Business

Not in any order.

1. Passed Over For Promotion Even Though Best Qualified
2. Marginalized Due To Race / Gender
3. Could Earn More and Be More Flexible Working For Themselves
4. No Clear Rules For Interacting With Women
5. Corporations In Future Will Discriminate Against Men

Before I give my analysis, here is the graph of my findings:

Passed Over For Promotion Even Though Best Qualified

23 of the 93 population of my study said they were passed over for promotion, sometimes multiple times, for someone less qualified. Some of them mentioned their former employer’s push for gender and racial equality, which was sometimes proudly broadcast to the media. Of course, there is no way to know if these men were more qualified, but this was their feeling.

Marginalized Due To Race / Gender

This category was mentioned by 5 of the population. They didn’t experience promotion problems per se, but were made to feel uncomfortable being a man working with women. Many of them mentioned corporate memos and pronouncements related to educating men about how they should be acting, etc. They heard words like Toxic Masculinity openly discussed. Caucasian men, 3 out of this 5 in this category, felt attacked, maligned, mocked and shunned, and they had no support from their direct superiors or Human Resources. Most mentioned open hostility towards men bringing zero punishment.

Could earn more and be more flexible working for themselves

This was the largest group with 37. This is usually the reason that men and women come to see me to learn about starting their own company. This group mentioned no negative at all at their former employers, and simply knew they could earn more on their own.

No Clear Rules For Interacting With Women

This was a slight surprise to me with 17. The crux of this category is that there is no presumption of innocence and no guarantee of due process if an allegation of harassment is leveled against men. Also, there is no corporate punishment if a woman makes a public charge against a man. These men found it impossible to work alongside women comfortably, knowing even a false allegation could ruin their careers, and their lives.

Corporations In Future Will Discriminate Against Men

This last group came out to 11. And, again this was incredibly interesting to me. 8 of the men in this group cited news reports of corporations being pressured to have gender equality on their boards. They also saw females being hired without the proper qualifications to satisfy this same gender-equality agenda within their departments and others. These men had not been passed over for promotion, but it was very clear to them that merit was no longer the driving force for hiring and also would not be for promotions.

All of these clients are brilliant, and I see this as a brain drain that will cause these large corporations to lose profits in the long run if this trend continues.

Questions? Concerns? Call me on (732) 673-0510.