Book Blog #218: Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg

Title:
Author: Sheryl Sandberg
# of Pages: 173 (hardcover)
Genre: Nonfiction, Self-help, Feminism
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: In Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg – Facebook COO and one of Fortune magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business – draws on her own experience of working in some of the world's most successful businesses and looks at what women can do to help themselves, and make the small changes in their life that can effect change on a more universal scale.
Review: A Google search for “Facebook’s male CEO” returns this message: “No results found.”

This was a lie, and I knew it.  Searching Facebook’s male CEO returned this:

…which is far different from returning “No results found,” a phrase that only comes up when people use obscure and/or overly detailed search queries. What would have been a more interesting scenario is if she compared this search result with “Facebook’s female CEO”:


….which is clearly able to identify Sheryl Kara Sandberg, who is not even a Facebook CEO. She could have pointed out how Google’s search algorithm is able to infer the user wants results on Sheryl Sandberg from “female CEO,” but is unable to identify that the user wants Mark Zuckerberg from “male CEO” (of course, simply searching for Facebook’s CEO will get the user results for Mark Zuckerberg).

I agree; this is a small detail. I’m sure what Sheryl Sandberg wanted to focus on was the discrepancy between using “male” and “female” before a title in Google’s search results., which there is. However, unless Google drastically changed their algorithm since 2013, the difference between these search results is not a great as Sandberg makes it seem in Lean In. While technology is always changing, I doubt Google would have only half fixed this problem; they would have changed their algorithm so Mark Zuckerberg appeared as Sheryl Sandberg does in her search.

This bit of exaggeration makes me wonder how many of other scenarios in her book are ever-so-slightly exaggerated. Of course, many of her points would still be valid even without the amplification of certain aspects. Her exaggeration(s) might be her way of calling women to action; although the conditions may not be as bad as she is describing, women need to be unsatisfied with the current conditions and work toward greater gender equality. However, as someone who already is skeptical of self-help books, this tactic makes the author lose credibility in my eyes.

Don’t get the wrong idea; I still believe Sandberg wrote a good book. Unlike other self-help books, Sandberg’s is short (a relatively quick read) and is more interesting than many others. Although I have never met nor watched interviews of Sandberg, I hear a (her) distinct voice throughout the book. In the same chapter, Sandberg discusses how it seems find if there are no special programs for women in the workplace because it’s a sign women are fitting in, but gender differences are still apparent in the workplace “lurking below the surface” (Lean In, Chapter 10). This rings true to me, not just for the tech industry but in ALL industries, even those that do not have apparent gender equality issues.

There are many programs that celebrate women and encourage them to be part of certain industries. However, although Sandberg mentions her personal experience of her achievements being attributed to her gender, I would have liked her to address how women could handle such a situation, especially if the achievement is associated with a women's only program, where her gender appears to play a key factor.

Overall, I would recommend giving this book a read. It was more interesting than I expected, and Sandberg brought up many valid concerns.