It’s when you’re running a function.
This isn’t burnout. It isn’t isolation in the obvious sense. You’re surrounded by people. Your team, your peers in other functions, your boss, your reports. But the people who actually understand what your specific role looks like, at your specific level, in your specific space? They’re rare. And most senior leaders don’t have access to them.
The support you used to lean on starts to drift
Mentors who were close to your work three roles ago are now several layers removed. They don’t see what your day actually looks like, so their advice gets generic. Useful, but not specific.
Recruiters are calling, but they’re calling because they have a role to fill. Their angle is the role. Your career is incidental to it.
Your network is wide but mostly tangential. People who used to do your job have moved on, retired, or shifted into adjacent functions. The people who knew you when you were earlier in your career don’t necessarily understand what running a function looks like now.
What’s missing is peers
People at your exact level, in your exact space, doing the same job at a different company.
Peers who will tell you what they’re actually getting paid. Not the public salary band. The actual number on their offer letter.
Peers who will tell you what they successfully negotiated. The equity refresh, the bonus structure, the title change, the PTO carve-out. The things you don’t know to ask for unless someone tells you.
Peers who will tell you which companies look good from the outside but aren’t. Which CEO is impossible to work for. Which board chair micromanages. Which “rocketship” is actually three months from a layoff.
Most senior leaders don’t have that. They have a coach, maybe. A mentor or two. But they don’t have a peer group of people running the same kind of function with no political stake in their decisions.
Why it matters
The leaders who have peer support make better decisions, faster.
They negotiate better offers because they know what’s actually possible. They walk away from the wrong roles because someone told them the truth. They take the right risks at the right time because they have a sounding board that isn’t paid to advise them.
The ones without it make decisions in a vacuum. Sometimes those decisions are good. Often, they’re not as good as they could have been.
This is the gap I’m trying to close with Alta, a curated community for senior women in tech across the Phoenix and Scottsdale corridor. If you’ve felt this, you’re not alone. You’re just not in the right room yet.
Want into the room?
Apply at join-alta.com