She was the executive editor of Teen Vogue. Now Samhita Mukhopadhyay gives some frank advice on how the office really works.

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The Myth of Making It

I’m a daughter of feminists. My parents raised me to believe I could be anything I wanted. They pushed me to achieve in college and encouraged me to be ambitious in my career. I really did believe that work was a meritocracy.

I could do anything I put my mind to.

When I landed junior writing jobs at BusinessWeek and then Fortune, I thought I was coming in at the very best of times. There were still people on staff who remembered a time when women weren’t allowed to be writers. They had to be researchers, fact-checkers. Five years before I was born, a group of women sued Fortune’s parent company demanding change, and now here I was writing features.

I don’t know when things began to seem more complicated, but it was probably in my early 30s. That’s when I looked up and noticed that many of my female peers had moved on to different types of roles. As I grew more and more senior and joined Wired, I became the only senior woman magazine writer. I often felt that my male colleagues didn’t share my story sensibilities. I had to get more comfortable with rejection, and to fight more for my ideas. I found myself asking, is it me? Am I just not good at this?

And as I thought about where I might go in my career, I remember thinking: oh, work was never a meritocracy. In the most senior ranks, everyone still looks pretty similar to the way they did decades ago. Maybe the system is rigged. 

I’ve come to believe that getting to this point in one’s career, not just intellectually but experientially, is a critical moment in our development. It’s when we gain the tools to define success on our own terms. That's what today's episode is about.

Today’s guest is the journalist Samhita Mukhopadhyay. Early in her career, she was the executive editor of a website called Feministing. Her work has appeared in a ton of publications, including New York Magazine and Vanity Fair. She arrived at Conde Nast just after I left, where she spent three years as the executive editor of Teen Vogue. It was her dream job, and it became a wild ride. She’s just out with a book called “The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning.” 

On this episode, Samhita and I will dig in to some of the promises the modern working world makes to those of us who aren’t rich white men. And we’ll highlight some ways we could be doing all this differently. You can listen to the episode here, or below:

Transcripts available upon request

☕ Office Hours: What does it mean to "make it"?

This week on Office Hours, we'll get into success. What does it mean for you? How should we think about it as a community? As usual, we'll go live at 3pm EST on Wednesday. You can rsvp by clicking on the link below and you can even get a calendar invite now, or you can always find us on the LinkedIn News Page.

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Hello Monday is LinkedIn News’ weekly podcast about the changing nature of work—and how we must change to keep up. It's hosted by me, Jessi Hempel. Subscribe to the show's newsletter.

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