Sheryl Sandberg’s departure from Meta/Facebook as explained by NYT and New York Post

“What Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ Has Meant to Women” (NYT):

On Wednesday, Ms. Sandberg announced that she was leaving her position as chief operating officer of Facebook’s parent company, Meta — the perch that made her one of the highest-profile women in American business. She had been in the job for five years when she published “Lean In,” and her singular role and success in Silicon Valley helped amplify the book’s message.

For many women “Lean In” has been a bible, a road map to corporate life. Many others have come to understand its limits, or to view it as a symbol of what is wrong with applying individual-focused solutions to the systemic issues holding back women in the workplace, especially women of color and low-income women.

But it was also eminently clear to many readers of “Lean In” that what had allowed Ms. Sandberg to ascend the corporate world’s ladder went far beyond sheer will. She was a white, Harvard-educated woman, months away from becoming one of the world’s youngest-ever billionaires.

“It’s hard for Black women to lean in when you’re not even in the room,” said Minda Harts, 40, a consultant and the author of “The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table.”

Last month, when a draft ruling revealed the Supreme Court’s intent to overturn Roe v. Wade, Ms. Sandberg put out a statement mourning the loss of women’s abortion access.

“This is a scary day for women all across our country,” Ms. Sandberg wrote on Facebook. “Every woman, no matter where she lives, must be free to choose whether and when she becomes a mother.”

In short, it’s all about skin color and abortion, according to the New York Times. What do the journalists at the New York Post have to say? “Meta investigated Sheryl Sandberg for using corporate resources to plan wedding: report”:

Departing Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg announced her resignation from the tech giant during an ongoing probe into her alleged use of corporate resources to plan her wedding, according to a report Thursday.

21 thoughts on “Sheryl Sandberg’s departure from Meta/Facebook as explained by NYT and New York Post

  1. The article is complaining at a very high level, I’m sure divorced women readers living across Central Park will be deeply shocked by the injustices they are experiencing.

    Meanwhile, “leaning in” apparently has damaged teenage girls:

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-aware-instagram-harmful-effect-teenage-girls-leak-reveals

    For some reason the demand of women is always getting more power and titles. They are not actually doing anything, unlike Grace Hopper or Emmy Noether in the horrible old days.

  2. Figured she left because it was time for the divorce & living off of Mr. Perfect. Next, Greenspun is going to reveal Santa Clause drives an R-44 instead of a sleigh.

  3. all this talk of “inflation”, doesn’t apply to Meta stock which is experiencing deflation. In the Metaverse, Meta stock is still experiencing price inflation and everyone “Likes” that.

  4. As someone who once worked for a very demanding female boss in a relatively exclusive and powerful echelon, I would have been very glad if she had stolen some money from the institution to fund her marriage. I would have personally helped move the money. It might have helped save her life.

  5. Imagine being not only white, but also sharing the -berg suffix with your boss.

    • Means mountain in German. Those are double-noun names, not suffixed nouns. Most likely originated in Austro-Hungarian Empire

  6. Good riddance, Ms. Turn The Social Network into Totalitarian Surveillance and Brainwashing Machine.

  7. The New York Times should rebrand itself as a “Collaborative Metafiction Content Provider” like Comedy Central but quite a bit more élite. Otherwise Manhattanites wouldn’t have anything to talk about!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcgVfy2bfoU

    @averros: Women who rise to positions of power are, of course, ultimately women. They want to know everything about everyone, all the time. And I’ve BTDT for one gigantic micromanager in my lifetime. It’s a combination of paranoia and ambition that’s quite different from men.

    • @averros: I should amend that. They want to know everything about everyone all the time, but their own privacy is sacrosanct. Violate that and you’re going to the bottom of Lake Michigan in Concrete Shoes.

    • @Alex – I have been blessed with women in my life who aren’t anything like that:) Discreet and very good at socializing without spreading gossip.

    • Alex: Yes, and they form cliques like 14-year old high school alpha girls to get rid of (and silence) people they don’t like. Hence the cancel culture.

    • @Anonymous: I’m sure nobody wants to get me started on a long exposition here regarding my estimation of the maturity level of most people who work for the Overlord Tech companies. I read Sandberg’s “goodbye cruel world” on Facebook and while it’s admirably long – so that she can better explain herself – it also reads very much like the work of a semi-precocious 14 year old. This “New Banality” as I call it is a hallmark of tech. companies in general, who message themselves to the public in the voice of a genderless, eager adolescent child. They’re like aquanauts or astronauts or cosmonauts from some Special Place who dive deep into our world to search for treasure. To paraphrase Peggy Noonan, by: “sifting billions of dollars through their fingers and magically making more appear.” They also have their Signs and Symbols by which to identify themselves to each other, like the secret Fraternity semaphores I once learned.

      But yeah, they all read like smart 14-and-unders.

    • And by the way, until very recently I’ve counted Elon Musk (who is a self-described High Functioning Asperger if I’m not mistaken) among this group. The real fear he struck into the hearts of the Overlord Children was that he’d expose the Deep Thoughts at the heart of their algorithms. And he is in the process of being Cast into the Pit for that heretical thought.

    • @averros, do you attend parties depicted in old Arnold Schwarzenegger’ flick True Lies? That’s the only place I can think of I had seen such couples.

  8. “When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.” quote from Lean In. Absolutely garbage advice for women….

    • A large social graph is more valuable to Facebook though. Keep dating so we can sell more accurate profiles.

    • Our old neighborhood in Maskachusetts was packed with me who thought women should work and be ambitious. Instead of cheerful 22-year-old aerobics instructors they chose wives who were in their 30s and fully qualified as MDs, lawyers, MBAs, etc. These women nearly all quit their careers shortly after the ring went on.

  9. I am confused. I would say that at least 75% of executives that have access to an assistant have them do a bunch of personal shit on company time. At least in the U.S. (outside of government), I thought this was the norm.
    The corollary being that someone must have decided it was time for her to go for this “investigation” to even have gotten started.

  10. Also in the article, as a distraction:
    “…health-related issues involving family members who contracted COVID-19 in recent months”
    This long covid stuff is a hidden pandemic and it’s screwing up countless lives

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