Sheryl Sandberg and Technology's Female Leaders 181
AlistairCharlton writes "While the rest of the world continues to see men dominating, the technology industry seems set to change that. I investigate how Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Meg Whitman and Joanna Shields are paving the way for the rest of the business community. From the article: 'A glance at the male/female split of world leaders (178/17), Fortune 500 CEOs (96 percent/four percent) and FTSE 100 board seats (85 percent/15 percent) reveals there is a huge imbalance between the sexes, but in technology change is underway - and Sandberg is at the very forefront of it. Along with Meg Whitman, Marissa Mayer and Joanna Shields of HP, Yahoo and London's Tech City respectively, Sandberg represents a shift in what was not so long ago an all-male industry.'"
When women can be despised... (Score:5, Funny)
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That is the dumbest thing I've heard all day, how'd confronting those women in your life go for you?
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I ask because my experience with senior female management has been that they're very egotistic and go out of their way to try and be reverse-dominant. Typically, not very pleasant people to work with. I'm sure there's some good ones and I work with one right now, but at what point is throwing logic out the window and going on an emotional tantrum not good for the business? Somehow, most of the males I've worked with seem to have an easy time avoiding this non-aspect of business.
I'm not trying to stereoty
never been married? (Score:2)
So... you've never been married, then?
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You must be new here. :)
Re:When women can be despised... (Score:5, Insightful)
They already are? Who is more hated than Nancy Pelosi? Who is more dangerous than Janet Napolitano? Who has fucked up more than Carly Fiorina?
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More hated than Pelosi: Obama and Bush Jr.
More dangerous than Napolitano: Obama.
Fucked up more than Fiorina; Jason Elop
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Who's got a more annoying laugh than Marissa Mayer?
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We also need a few good sexual harassment scandals.
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I have to be honest with you though Sandberg hits those categories with flying colours. Not that I can gauge what type of person she really is but she is a:
- Greedy "CFO" (one of the biggest insiders that Facebook has);
- Sociopath (works for Facebook?); and
- Loves to bullshit shareholders (Facebook is not worth $60B).
So she ticks all the boxes in my book!
Totally misleading statistics and premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Statistics like. "85% of board seats are held by men, so clearly there's a long way to go" are highly misleading.
The underlying premise is that all things being equal, the seats should be 50% female. But that premise is silly.
If 75% of women elect to raise families and focus less on their careers (not a real statistic, just an example) then it would stand to reason that 25% would not hold equally senior positions to their male colleagues who pursued only career. And if women more frequently choose majors like psychiatry, French language, Art History and women's studies, then their lack of representation on boards of tech companies would also be justified.
This is the general problem with numerical male:female ratios: They discount the other options which draw women of their own free will, and misrepresent the existing ratio as "repression" of some kind.
The goal is NOT equal representation. It is equal OPPORTUNITY. If board seats were 50% women, that would likely represent male oppression as there are typically more men pursuing careers applicable to those seats than women. When women complain about unequal ratios they are demanding their cake while wanting to eat it too. They are actually demanding unequal favorable treatment for themselves at the expense of men.
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I would like to state that this is right as I also believe feminists in general should mind their own business.
As an example my mom who is a hard working, highly driven person has her priorities in life.
She is from back in the day when the man brought home the wage and the woman stayed at home and looked after the home / kids. Her beliefs are that as a wife and woman she had a very important role to play within the family unit which served to keep the family strong and functioning.
She dreaded the day men we
Carly (Score:4, Funny)
Don't forget Carly Fiorina and her contributions to making HP and Compaq the successful companies they are today.
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There's no reason to extrapolate one woman to all women. But yes, Carly was bad.
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Why not? Women do that to men all the time.
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Why not? Women do that to men all the time.
Yep, and those women are wrong to do so.
Re:Carly (Score:5, Insightful)
Carly wasn't bad because she's a woman, or because she's a self-absorbed sociopath who only saw HP as a big money pot from which she could extract a personal fortune (regardless of the costs to the company or its employees), she was actively incompetent at running a technology company due to a lack of experience with, or any interest in, high technology. Her education was in liberal arts, and then several extended business degrees. That's pretty much a formula for failure in almost any industry, but particularly so in the tech industry. She was just a female version of John Scully's disastrous run at Apple without Scully's good luck at joining at the right time.
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Carly wasn't bad because she's a woman, or because she's a self-absorbed sociopath who only saw HP as a big money pot from which she could extract a personal fortune (regardless of the costs to the company or its employees), ...
I thought that was part of the typical CEO job-description. Perhaps just typical on Wall Street then...
Bow to the King...errr I mean Queen... (Score:2)
Bow to the King...errr I mean the Queen...
Sounds like perfect leadership training to me. Have them swear fealty or off with their heads/careers.
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flimsy article thrown together (Score:5, Insightful)
Also Xerox (Score:5, Interesting)
... which has had all female CEOs since 2001.
Xerox is not as exciting as HP, but its CEOs have not done large, showy reorganizations that destroyed once-proud solid engineering traditions, so there's that.
Re:Also Xerox (Score:4, Informative)
... which has had all female CEOs since 2001.
Xerox is not as exciting as HP, but its CEOs have not done large, showy reorganizations that destroyed once-proud solid engineering traditions, so there's that.
Um, what? You really don't know what you're talking about do you... Ursula Burns took over Xerox and then took a wreaking ball straight to engineering.
Ursula Burns sold off large portions of engineering based in the USA to HCL [theoutsourceblog.com], an Indian outsourcing company, then proceeded to dismantle or outsource everything related to product engineering.
But hey, at least she's hiring call center employees [13wham.com] to replace the engineering positions that have been moved to India.
Ursula Burns is the number one most hated CEO [businessinsider.com] in the tech industry. I wonder why?
Oh *&^%$#@! (Score:2)
Gentlemen, you're right - I haven't looked closely at Xerox in a year or two. Ms. Burns had the right promoted-from-within credentials to run Xerox without grossly screwing it up, but it appears she did so anyway.
This just solidifies my plan to sell the Xerox stock I've had since 1988.
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http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228947/Xerox_s_outsourcing_one_year_later_layoffs [computerworld.com]
And that move definitely destroyed the once-proud solid engineering traditions of the Phaser printer org that Xerox acquired from Tektronix. Used to be an amazing group of innovative engineers there, and now just a burnt out husk remains.
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Add Ursula Burns [wikipedia.org] (CEO of Xerox) who comes from a disadvantaged background and has two science degrees.
Re:flimsy article thrown together (Score:5, Insightful)
completely omits Ginni Rometty the current CEO of IBM who has worked everywhere within the company over 30 years and has CS and EE degrees.
Maybe because she spends her time running the company, instead of grandstanding about herself in the media . . . ?
Carol Barth (Score:3)
Carol Barth did well running Autodesk. Not so well at Yahoo, but that was Yahoo's problem. Nobody else has been able to turn around Yahoo either.
Re:flimsy article thrown together (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are two types of CEO and it's not really about gender.
One of them knows a lot about the business because they worked their way up in the company and will follow an evolutionary path. Maybe their skills are a bit out of date by the time they get to the top, but at least they had skills once.
The other is someone who has worked in management jobs in a lot of companies doing a lot of different stuff, getting to be CEO via a series of jumped ships - each one higher than the last but each one was in a completely different business area. They'll follow a completely unpredictable and revolutionary path with a high chance of failure because they don't really know anything about the concrete business area - they've only really worked in it as CEO and if you're CEO you're right axiomatically when you say anything. They do however know a lot about business in the abstract - megatrends like outsourcing vs insourcing for example. They are probably very, very intelligent and persuasive too - you need to be if you can talk people into giving you the keys to their billion dollar company.
I think there's a need for both types of people in an organisation but you're kidding yourself if you think hiring someone who knows nothing about the business as CEO means they will beat the odds - i.e. outperform the evolutionary alternative.
It has happened of course, but I think people overestimate the probability of it. But then again most share holders are terrible gamblers who always think they can beat the odds. So it's not that surprising that boards made up of shareholders hire type II CEOs and screw the company. Then again maybe they knew that the evolutionary approach wasn't good enough to keep the company going too. That's probably true of most household name companies - an evolutionary approach means they will fade away in a couple of decades.
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more important:
being CEO of a successful company. The number of CEOs that have engineered proper turn arounds of a failing company are very few. You could make me CEO of apple tomorrow and even if I did nothing for several years, things would be great. Look at how Even easier: make me CEO of a company whose success has more to do with the macro economy (think Exxon and oil prices, or banks and increased loan demand) and you will look very smart.
Ken Lewis worked his way up from loan officer to CEO of Bank
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You make it sound like becoming CEO has anything to do with talent and ability. If you take a look at the people who have managed to get the job, often times it's a matter of whom they know rather than what they know.
And the cajoling is working, when I was getting my degree in the Natural sciences my classes were roughly 2/3 women in all cases.
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I sincerely hope this is sarcasm. I'll assume it is, but these points deserve feedback.
1. No they are not better at multitasking.. In fact, both genders suck at it.
2. If by 'social skills' you mean passive aggressive group dynamics where feelings matter more than facts, productivity, and efficiency, then yes, they are better. However, these dynamics are not what bring about productive workgroups.
3. If by 'educated' you mean more easily indoctrinated with socialist rhetoric, then, yes, they are better. Wom
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Empathy from your doctor might feel nice, but it doesn't mean she'll be the best at diagnosing your illness and deriving a solution.
News at 11: Rest of us "Don't Give a Fuck" (Score:3)
The rest of us just don't care about the gender of who successfully runs a company.
Only when they unsuccessfully run it does someone get their panties in a knot by playing some imaginary gender card.
The majority "Don't give a fuck." I don't see too many men (or women) complaining that only women can give birth.
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I don't see too many men (or women) complaining that only women can give birth.
Oh yes they do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c [youtube.com]
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Re:News at 11: Rest of us "Don't Give a Fuck" (Score:4, Informative)
So yes, I do consider hiring more women to be a worthy cause because right now there are systemic problems that result in fairly poor representation of women in tech.
Yes, I agree that the goal should be to treat men and women equally, but we are a long way from that and it makes a rather poor argument for why we should not be trying to improve things.
And unfortunately, the 'innate' argument is just complete and utter bunk, yet it keeps getting trotted out as a rationalization for discrimination.
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No, the worthy cause is to get more qualified people in place.. not women specifically, people. Fighting systemic discrimination by layering more systemic bias on top of it does not solve anything.. It just creates more discrimination.
Equal opportunity != equal outcome. Assuming men and women are interchangeable drones with the later systemically oppressed is far too simplistic a model to be accurate. This is something else feminists have trouble with. If anything, today women have MORE opportunities tha
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Nor have they ever had?
Sorry, programmers and CS grads used to be 40% women in the 70s.
If you want to say that women were smart enough to get out of the industry before it turned to shit, go ahead, but Grace Hopper would rip you a new asshole.
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You have to (in that case) address the social issues.
What if the social issue is that there aren't enough female role models in tech jobs? Then hiring more woman would fix the problem.
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"imaginary gender card"? You need to build up the nerve for the first time in your life to talk to a woman in IT and see what she thinks about that.
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and white knights like you need to move beyond shaming language and ad hominem when others (rightly) the hypocrisy of using gender discrimination to fight gender discrimination.
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I'm a bit tired of everything having to be celebrated when it's "the first time . . . . for a woman" to do something. I suppose it still even being remotely worth commenting on when it happens is sort of the point, though.
At any rate, I've had the fortune to work with some fucking amazing women in my career. Not as a CEO or anything, yet, but as managers and colleagues and they have earned everything they've achieved and then some. If anything, stories about successful women just sort of tire me, because I'
Have rich parents, marry well, hire maids. (Score:1)
You go girl. Best known for her groundbreaking leadership on which project again? Don't be afraid to be bossy. Buy my book.
These are not Women In Tech (Score:5, Insightful)
Female executives for a company that just happens to be in tech, doesn't count to women in tech, just women in business.
Re:These are not Women In Tech (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not really true, and it shows the dangers of lumping people together. An example of the difference:
- Marissa Mayer has a B.S. and M.S., with honors, from Stanford specializing in artificial intelligence. That's where she met Larry and Sergei, and became Google employee #20 as an engineer. It's safe to say that if you put her down in front of a bash prompt with some broken code she'd show you that she is in fact quite capable technically. So I'd consider her a woman in tech, and a highly successful one at that.
- Meg Whitman has no technical skills whatsoever, and is the exemplar of the myth that it's possible to run an organization well when you have no clue what your people are doing. Her career start was as a brand manager for Proctor & Gamble, then management consulting, and as far as I can tell she's never held a job where her primary responsibility was to actually make a product or sell a product. To give you an idea, at the beginning of her time at eBay, the website crashed, so Whitman's first goal was to create a new executive team.
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data geek =! can make profit (Score:2)
Marissa Mayer is a data dork who was hot and in the right place at the right time. Yes, her degrees are difficult to attain (with honors), but a degree doesn't mean **jack shit** to the profit margin.
Here's the problem with this article:
1. Superficial examination of women CEO's, omitted many examples (as stated above IBM's CEO and others)
2. Takes mainstream understanding of what a 'successful tech company' looks like. Business must have a sustainable profit model or they are nothing.
3. These women drive the
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Is it Larry or Sergei that calls his dick 'bash prompt'?
shift.... (Score:2)
Re:shift.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would agree that an unequal ratio is sufficient reason to ask the question if there is actually equal opportunity but it doesn't mean there isn't equal opportunity.
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NEVER accept anything produced by a sociologist at face value.
They just don't get the whole 'scientific method' thing.
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With proven differences in brain chemestry and development is it unbelivable that females would respond to the stimuli of gaining power in a way that makes them less likeable, or that the females who were driven and/or wanted to gain power would have personalitys making them less likeable once they gained power?
Yes. When you speak of "females" as a collective group, yes it is and you are being crazy sexist.
Want to change society? (Score:2)
Work bottom-up, don't approach it top-down.
But are they more responsible? (Score:3)
Just having female leaders is worthless if those leaders aren't any more responsible than the male leaders who preceded them. It's about responsible leadership not male to female ratios.
Women bring a different dynamic to the workplace (Score:2)
Really not trying to be sexist here which is the first problem. It's really difficult to address the difficulties pertaining to male vs. female co-workers/bosses when the core issues are so deeply ingrained in the differences which make it sexist.
I think I just gave myself a migrain.
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I got a migrain just trying to figure out what you were not trying to say while simultaneously trying to say something.
Marissa Mayer (Score:3)
Of "you can work 200 hour weeks if you sleep under your desk" (while at google) and more recently "no more telecommute" (at yahoo) fame?
Is that someone to be praised, regardless of gender?
I think she belongs on the "stay away form wherever she works" list.
Re:Marissa Mayer (Score:4, Insightful)
Waaah, MM took away work-at-home so now she's the new evil IT emperor?
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Don't disagree, but If you're put in charge of a large disfunctional organization that clearly couldn't manage remote workers effectively, what are you going to do?
I'd fire all the people that weren't being productive at home. They won't be any more productive in the office.
Bringing them all in, isn't an insane approach. It tells me she doesn't trust the existing metrics. Otherwise she would let those who are effective, continue working from home.
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Oh, the hypocrisy. [nbcnews.com]
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Mmm that I didn't know. I thought she was still sleeping under her desk and doing 200 hour weeks while pregnant...
female slashdotters? (Score:2)
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right, because there's no reason the "females" on slashdot might choose to skip reading the comments on this article.
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Don't be a jerk, and don't "protect" people who don't want your "protection"? Soon you'll be saying that we should just treat people like people!
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Tell that to the feminist lobby groups in washington who claim to speak for you..
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and why would their positions be any less biased? Humans, male or female, will act/defend their own interests.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
NPR Morning Edition - Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (Score:4, Informative)
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This morning on Morning Edition [npr.org] NPR broadcast a talk with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. (Probably because Sandberg has a new book out on the subject.) I thought it was quite interesting.
On the other hand this book also got Gloria Allred on the warpath to bash the book. Ms Allred's claim is that 'Lean In' (the title of Ms Sandberg's book) is a thinly veiled attempt to blame women for their own predicament. The basic premise of the book (I haven't read it yet), appears to be that women are not self-confident enough and that career choices for women are often about compromise, some of which are compromises that male colleagues do not have to make.
Instead, Ms Allred (in numerous radio interv
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she sounded arrogant on 60 Minutes (Score:2)
Women are evil bosses... (Score:2)
... as shown in the Showtime documentary "House of lies".
Ex-CFO has interesting point for men & women (Score:1)
This was in the Sunday NYTimes Magazine. As I get older (not old...older) it surprises me how our society automatically makes assumptions about what it means to be successfull and how those assumptions always seem to glorify to work. Work, work, work, work. For beings with limited lifespans it seems like such a waste of time and energy.
"Is There Life After Work?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/is-there-life-after-work.html?_r=0
Erin Callan is the former chief financial officer of
Erin Callan (Score:2)
Former CFO of Lehman Brothers is now crying over the loss of her marriage and lack of a family. Oh, boo hoo. Psychotic, the lot of them.
For no reason, I recall this scene from Mad Men (Score:1)
Please help me to understand (Score:2)
I try to protect my friends, my family, and even my clients from the burden of undue stress and tedious work.
As much as I enjoy the work that I do, the requirement of doing it in order to survive is a burden.
I'm quite certain that one day the world will discover that working for a living results in a lesser life -- for some real value of lesser.
So, in short, I'm all for women working. But I'm not at all interested in equality. I want to stay home barefoot in the kitchen with life's great rewards -- i.e. f
Re:I don't consider the HP example a good one. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm betting Carly can't make a good sandwich ether.
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Teaching is female dominated because male teachers are automatically assumed to be pedophiles.
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Re:Feminism (Score:4)
because of feminists stereotyping them..
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Job such as teaching is female dominated = women's brains have evolved to be better at certain things.
Negative role such as being in prison is male dominated = men's brains are different.
Positive role such as winning sole custody of one's children is female dominated = women will always be better are certain things.
Job is male dominated = men and women are equals.
It's femilogical, and you're being sexist if you don't agree.
Exactly. What this article seems to be preaching is "equal outcome", as opposed to "equal opportunity". In the U.S. and other western countries, women have the same *opportunity* as men to dominate in these fields. Opportunity is different than outcome. We don't "need" to have a perfect 50% men/women split in industries. We "need" to have the same opportunity available for both sexes.
Each gender is typically going to trend towards certain professions, and that is perfectly fine. The genders may be equ
Re:Feminism (Score:4, Insightful)
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Your one of rhyder's sock puppets! Why else would someone come along to reinforce his concluding line?
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"Misogynist"
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:Feminism (Score:5, Insightful)
Criticism of feminism, or rather, accusing it of hypocrisy is not hatred of women. You are categorically and definitionally incorrect.
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I thought that was Sean White. My bad....
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because:
1. men are required to thanks to feminist 'equality' legislation. Unfortunately it does little but encourage another layer of systemic discrimination to form on top of claimed systemic discrimination.
2. men are instinctively inclined to place women on pedestals anyway..
3. today's 20 and 30 something men were brought up into neo-chivalry, which basically demands they give women 'equal' rewards while, at the same time, prop them up when they don't measure up, often to the point of taking the fall for
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2. Resist the urge to be a dumbass. Unless it is my wife, every woman in my life gets treated exactly the same as the men, especially at work. Men tend to put things on pedastals that they are trying to have sex with. Women at work should be out of bounds for any professional.
3. Speak for yourself. Equal