June 3, 2022

"[Sheryl] Sandberg has been telling people that she feels burned out and that she has become a punching bag for the [Facebook's] problems..."

"'She sees herself as someone who has been targeted, been tarred as a woman executive in a way that would not happen to a man. Gendered or not, she’s sick of it,' said one person who worked alongside Ms. Sandberg for many years.... [P]olitical consulting firm Cambridge Analytica... improperly accessed the data of [87] million Facebook users. That data was then used to target voters...to get them to support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign.... After the fallout of Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Zuckerberg told Ms. Sandberg that he blamed her and her teams for the scandal.... Ms. Sandberg confided in friends that the exchange with Mr. Zuckerberg had rattled her and she wondered if she should be worried about her job... Ms. Sandberg also has been anxious about how coming film and television projects on Facebook will depict her tenure as one of the top women in tech. 'There’s no scenario in which a successful businesswoman is not portrayed as a raging bitch,' she told one adviser...."

From "Why Sheryl Sandberg Quit Facebook’s Meta/One of the world’s most powerful executives became increasingly burned out and disconnected from the mega-business she was instrumental in building. That dovetailed with a company investigation into her activities" (Wall Street Journal).

73 comments:

farmgirl said...

"'She sees herself as someone who has been targeted, been tarred as a woman executive in a way that would not happen to a man…”

Unreal.
Either you can hack it- or you can’t.
Women are not men- and bullshit gets old for us after a fashion.

She should have left the field gracefully. Instead, she cries foul.
Victimhood.
Boo hoo.

R C Belaire said...

Suck it up, buttercup. If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.

rrsafety said...

... has been targeted, been tarred as a woman executive in a way that would not happen to a man..."
Yep, just ask Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, nobody EVER targets them for criticism.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

She sees herself as someone who has been targeted, been tarred as a woman executive in a way that would not happen to a man. Gendered or not, she’s sick of it,

So the bigoted and hateful censorious bully is upset that the people she's attacking are fighting back?

Poor baby.

She didn't have to be a morally wretched scum bag censor, she chose that. If the result of the choice is to make her miserable?

THAT is justice.

pious agnostic said...

"There’s no scenario in which a successful businesswoman is not portrayed as a raging bitch,' she told one adviser...."

She's such a narcissist, she wants script approval on the movie of her life.

Christopher B said...

[P]olitical consulting firm Cambridge Analytica... improperly accessed the data of [87] million Facebook users. That data was then used to target voters...to get them to support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign.

A more accurate description would be that after Facebook opened the wormhole which allowed apps to harvest data from a user's Facebook contacts without their knowledge for the Obama campaign in 2012, they were delighted to see how much revenue that generated, never thinking that the Republicans, who are usually one cycle behind the Democrats in campaign tactics, would use the same resource.

Jason said...

Sheryl Sandberg of all people bitching about her career = lulz.

Real American said...

they never make movies portraying male CEOs as raging assholes...

TreeJoe said...

So one of the most iconic female executives of our time and one of the richest women in the world felt beat up after she oversaw her platform being used to collect information far beyond a users consented purpose resulting in scandals across the U.S., EU/Brexit, and more.

This article may be representing her supposed voice, but man does it make her look mentally weak and whiny.

Gahrie said...

There’s no scenario in which a successful businesswoman is not portrayed as a raging bitch,' she told one adviser...."

To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever called Gwen Shotwell a flaming bitch.

tommyesq said...

According to Salary.com, Ms. Sandberg made $24.7 million in 2020 alone, and according to Forbes, she has a net worth of about $1.6 billion. Did she think earning this kind of money came without consequences?

YoungHegelian said...

P]olitical consulting firm Cambridge Analytica... improperly accessed the data of [87] million Facebook users. That data was then used to target voters...to get them to support Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign..

The data was not "improperly accessed". Cambridge Analytica did not hack FB servers, nor did they "screen-scrape" 87 million FB users. They bought the data from FB, because, ya know, selling data on its users to advertisers & marketers is how FB makes its money.

FB had previously sold data on users for use by the Obama & Clinton campaigns. What was "improper" was that the campaign of An Evil Republican had bought the user data, and that ---Oh My God! --- they won the election. Scapegoats had to be found. Rather than have the cowardly Zuckerberg say the truth which was "Guys, we sell user data to anyone whom can pay for it", he looked for someone to blame and that was Sandberg's job.

Humperdink said...

Oh that poor pronoun. The highly contagious microbe that causes racism and has leapt to sexism. Why it's everywhere. Cry me a river.

Breezy said...

She's worth about $1.5 billion, so I think she can handle any bad press. People like her should just be quiet about these aspects of their lives. Its quite unbecoming for someone of her ilk.

Owen said...

She's got her Poor Me Narrative all worked out, color-coordinated, right hem length, freshly pressed.

Should be fun to watch her perform exactly the routine that the feminists claim they have overcome.

Also guessing that the more serious the FB investigation of her deeds or misdeeds, the louder her counter-narrative will become.

Oh Yea said...

"Why Sheryl Sandberg Quit...with a company investigation into her activities"

You can't fire me, I quit.


It has been noted here departure was quite abrupt for a position such as hers. Transitions of executives at such a high level are usually planned well in advance.

Dave Begley said...

She's preparing the media narrative for her installation in DiFi's Senate seat. Narrative: SS was treated unfairly by that mean male robot Mark Zuckerberg. When she gets into the Senate, she'll fight for you women. And she's not burdened, like Hillary was, with a rapist husband.

Now that I think about it, why bother with the Senate. Run for President! It's not as if the Dems have any impressive candidates in the wings now. The leap from business to President sure worked for Trump. The best thing is she doesn't have a record of failure like all the elected and appointed Dems have right now. She's a tabula rasa.

Remember Begley's prediction on the Althouse blog when 2023 rolls around.

Curious George said...

"There’s no scenario in which a successful businesswoman is not portrayed as a raging bitch,"

Wouldn't hurt to lose your resting bitch face

n.n said...

Leaning in assumes someone will catch you.

Tom T. said...

It's not like "The Social Network" made Zuckerberg out to be a hero.

Jim at said...

OK. Admittedly, I'd never heard of this person so I looked her up.

Her net worth is 1.2 billion with a B.

STFU already.

Biotrekker said...

This is so ridiculous. She thinks she is a bigger target than Zuckerberg? There are dozens of Zuckerberg memes, usually suggesting he is a robot or alien, whereas I can think of zero Sandberg memes. Zuckerberg has been yelled at, called on the carpet, and pilloried, not Sandberg.

rhhardin said...

Another Facebook female executive Frances Haugen new podcast interview, claims that maximizing engagement means maximizing hate, which they therefore do unintentionally.

I was going to comment independently that she uses "fry voice" on phrase ends which makes her very hard to understand. Women executives use fry voice to sound more like men, i.e., serious. It's a good thing she's not German, with the verb at the end.

Rockeye said...

I wonder who stands to gain what by leaking these salacious internal details to the credulous/malicious media lapdogs? None of this is, of course, random or unplanned.

Rusty said...

Well, Sheryl. Now you know why you were promoted. The owner needed somebody to shit on and blame his failings on. That was you. You worked for a cowardly, snivilling little sh*t.

Geoff Matthews said...

Didn't Obama's team utilize Facebook data to pump up turnout?

Her reasoning about men not facing this type of criticism doesn't hold water either.
When someone is rude to me, I assume they're a jerk. When someone is rude to Sheryl, she assumes that they're sexist.

Leslie Graves said...

Was Zuckerberg wrong to hold her responsible for the Cambridge Analytica mess? I don't think so.

Was she upset because she felt like it wasn't really her responsibility, or was she upset because he (correctly) pointed out that that was on her?

Kevin said...

She’s also worth $1.6 billion.

The drive to remain in the inner circle and be privy to the highest-level conversations must have been strong for her to stay around this long.

Or was her “F You” money several billion more?

Maybe the collapsing stock market and oncoming recession had something to do with her timing?

Buckwheathikes said...

Isn't she currently under investigation for stealing from the company by using company resources to plan her upcoming wedding?

Yeah, maybe that has something to do with it.

But yeah, Trump's fault ... somehow. Got it.

Michael K said...

Another whining woman with millions.

Another old lawyer said...

The executive suite in Big Business ain't beanbag.

Temujin said...

I think most CEOs are portrayed by Hollywood and other media as assholes. But only the 'strong' women whine about it. It comes with the territory. When you are at the top, the arrows are pointed at you, not some schlub behind a laptop. Plus- no one in the world got more of a cushy, propped up, standing 'O' when she was named to that position. Remember all of the Sheryl Sandburg articles, appearances, quotes, TED Talks just for being her? Remember all of the lauding over the triteness of 'Lean in'? I do.

She was like Obama for a bit. People all around marveling at how she did everything- from landing her position, to running the company, to blowing her nose. She was truly leaning into it all.

But time passes. People get tired of lauding and soon begin to get annoyed at it all. Then you become a target.

She got more than most handed to her because of her vagina. Whatever else she gets now is just like a bit of indigestion after a long, hearty meal.

Either that or she's a great woman, a great leader, and is being terribly mistreated. Somehow I cannot buy that.

JAORE said...

Don't know how much blame SHOULD fall on her. But when a major, very public, very damaging screw up is pinned on you by the owner you ought to be nervous..... And it might NOT be because you are a woman.

'There’s no scenario in which a successful businesswoman is not portrayed as a raging bitch,'

Sure, sure. Rage away.

Jupiter said...

Just "Lean In". Honey.

Bob Boyd said...

Dat muttafuggin' Zukabug. He don't give a shit...

Narayanan said...

Gwynne Shotwell === She is the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX.

WisRich said...

DM saying she was using company resources to plan her wedding?

Real (mini Dennis Kozlowski problem) or excuse?

Jim at said...

Her net worth is 1.2 billion with a B.

Correction. 1.6

Point still stands.

Leland said...

The article reads like a hit piece on Sandberg. It is supposedly 2nd hand quotes from unnamed sources that make her seem weak and petty. Call me skeptical that the article is associated with reality.

"Ms. Sandberg confided in friends that the exchange with Mr. Zuckerberg had rattled her and she wondered if she should be worried about her job."

She's worried about something 6 years ago, and the company is still investigating it? I'm not buying it.

tim in vermont said...

Didn’t Google brag about doing stuff like this for Obama?

Godot said...

Fuck her. Man up baby.
I say this because I still have free speech.

Jupiter said...

Maybe she could spend more time with her family. Does she have one?

Maybe get some cats?

PB said...

If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

But play the gender card anyway.

Dude1394 said...

Poor whiney millionaire.

chuck said...

What was improper about Cambridge Analytica accessing the data? I only recall that they were under attack because Trump won the election, not that they did anything wrong that others couldn't do. Can someone clarify?

Dude1394 said...

I assume she is black, gay or tran as well. Might as well hit the trifecta.

Lurker21 said...

"There’s no scenario in which a successful businesswoman is not portrayed as a raging bitch,' she told one adviser...."

Is that really about what businesswomen are like or about what a lot of successful businesspeople are like? Male execs get similar treatment and don't have an easy excuse to fall back on.

When someone is rude to me, I assume they're a jerk. When someone is rude to Sheryl, she assumes that they're sexist.

Rudeness because of sexism is a subset of rudeness because of jerkiness or jerkishness, but I guess for courts and for the media there is big difference between sexists and jerks.

Jay Vogt said...

The last corporate woman I worked for told me that I could quit or she'd come up with a way to fire me. Didn't seem a like a winnable situation to me and it's no fun listening to the clock tick, so I left. That's corporate America. There's always weird drama you have to figure out what to do with.

Ya win some, ya lose some - but ya gotta roll on . . . . . .nobody else really cares.

Nooyawka said...

Give Sheryl some credit. She's worth well over a billion dollars. He's worth only 8 million. That's marrying down.

The Vault Dweller said...

While I'm not saying it's impossible for a woman leader or executive to face unfair criticisms because that person is a woman. I think far too many are too quick to claim this unfair treatment when it probably has nothing to do with sexism. The Sword of Damocles is real. If you are in charge you get a disproportionate amount of benefits and a disproportionate amount of negatives.

Joe Smith said...

When you're as wealthy as she is, it's in really bad taste to complain, valid or not.

Take your billions and do something else.

Nobody is feeling sorry for you...

Achilles said...

If they go at her too hard she can always just tell everyone how much personal information Facebook gave to the Democrats.

That makes what Cambridge Analytica did with "metadata" look like nothing.

Ampersand said...

The successful women executives I've known have seemed to me to have no fear of being, or being seen as, raging bitches. In fact, the main fear I've sensed from them is the concern that they will be, or be seen as, too soft. You don't have a basis to realistically fear being seen as a raging bitch unless you know you've acted in ways that you are not proud of.

But let's not hold a pity party for dear Sheryl. How many hundreds of millions is her net worth?

Michael said...

In her words I hear a pre-excuse for what is about to be revealed. The FB empire from the start has been ruthless with flexible ethics. Expect to hear some ugly sh!t.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Ms. Sandberg confided in friends that the exchange with Mr. Zuckerberg had rattled her and she wondered if she should be worried about her job . . .
Worried about paying her $800 month rent, worried about being frozen out of future job prospects . . .
Sandberg is worth 2.1 billion $.

SGT Ted said...

She can cry into all the cash she has.

MadTownGuy said...

In 2012, in a response to the drubbing (D) candidates took in the 2010 midterms, Organizing For America (OFA) hired Cambridge Analytica to harvest data from Facebook with Facebook's tacit approval, and more:

"After the voters returned Obama to office for a second term, his campaign became celebrated for its use of technology—much of it developed by an unusual team of coders and engineers—that redefined how individuals could use the Web, social media, and smartphones to participate in the political process. A mobile app allowed a canvasser to download and return walk sheets without ever entering a campaign office; a Web platform called Dashboard gamified volunteer activity by ranking the most active supporters; and “targeted sharing” protocols mined an Obama backer’s Facebook network in search of friends the campaign wanted to register, mobilize, or persuade.

But underneath all that were scores describing particular voters: a new political currency that predicted the behavior of individual humans. The campaign didn’t just know who you were; it knew exactly how it could turn you into the type of person it wanted you to be.
"

[snip]

"Obama’s campaign began the election year confident it knew the name of every one of the 69,456,897 Americans whose votes had put him in the White House. They may have cast those votes by secret ballot, but Obama’s analysts could look at the Democrats’ vote totals in each precinct and identify the people most likely to have backed him. Pundits talked in the abstract about reassembling Obama’s 2008 coalition. But within the campaign, the goal was literal. They would reassemble the coalition, one by one, through personal contacts.

[snip]

Compare to how the RNC used, er, didn't use, Cambridge Analytica's data:

"Cambridge worked both for the Trump campaign and a Trump-aligned Super PAC. In June 2016, Cambridge sent three staffers, led by chief product officer Matt Oczkowski, to the campaign’s San Antonio office. Oczkowski’s team eventually grew to 13 people, working under Trump digital director Brad Parscale and alongside his staff and outside consultants. According to Parscale, the Cambridge staff provided useful analysis of data about the American electorate. They did not, however, provide the raw data---things like demographic information, contact information, and data about how voters feel about different issues---on which that analysis was done.

That may sound like a small distinction, but it’s a crucial one. Ever since it burst onto the scene of American politics in 2015, Cambridge has trumpeted its massive data trove, boasting 5,000 data points on every American. Cambridge claims to have built extensive personality profiles on every American, which it uses for so-called “psychographic targeting,” based on people’s personality types. It is feared by some, including Hillary Clinton, for conducting a kind of psychological warfare against the American people and dismissed by others as snake oil. Both Parscale and Oczkowski have said repeatedly that the Trump campaign did not use psychographic targeting. Questions also have swirled about how Cambridge accumulated the data. Liberal voters in particular worried that their data had been harvested without their knowledge and used to elect Trump. But according to both Parscale and Oczkowski, the campaign didn’t use Cambridge’s trove of data, opting instead for the RNC’s data file.
"

I care not one whit about Ms. Sandberg's plight; I care very much about the manipulation of the electorate to force a desired outcome, and it goes beyond her role in management at Facebook/Meta. I think it goes all the way to the top of the organization.

MadTownGuy said...

Some additional info from a 2018 article at National Review:

"The level of data sophistication was so intense that Issenberg could describe it this way:

Obama’s campaign began the election year confident it knew the name of every one of the 69,456,897 Americans whose votes had put him in the White House. They may have cast those votes by secret ballot, but Obama’s analysts could look at the Democrats’ vote totals in each precinct and identify the people most likely to have backed him. Pundits talked in the abstract about reassembling Obama’s 2008 coalition. But within the campaign, the goal was literal. They would reassemble the coalition, one by one, through personal contacts.

Today’s Cambridge Analytica scandal causes our tech chin-strokers to worry about “information” you did not consent to share, but the Obama team created social interactions you wouldn’t have had. They didn’t just build a psychological profile of persuadable voters, and algorithmically determine ways of persuading them, but actually encouraged particular friends — ones the campaign had profiled as influencers — to reach out to them personally. In a post-election interview, the campaign’s digital director Teddy Goff explained the strategy: “People don’t trust campaigns. They don’t even trust media organizations,” he told Time’s Michael Sherer, “Who do they trust? Their friends?” This level of manipulation was celebrated in the press.

How did Facebook react to the much larger data harvesting of the Obama campaign? The New York Times reported it out, in a feature hailing Obama’s digital masterminds:

The campaign’s exhaustive use of Facebook triggered the site’s internal safeguards. “It was more like we blew through an alarm that their engineers hadn’t planned for or knew about,” said [Will] St. Clair, who had been working at a small firm in Chicago and joined the campaign at the suggestion of a friend. “They’d sigh and say, ‘You can do this as long as you stop doing it on Nov. 7.’ ”

In other words, Silicon Valley is just making up the rules as they go along. Some large-scale data harvesting and social manipulation is okay until the election. Some of it becomes not okay in retrospect. They sigh and say okay so long as Obama wins. When Clinton loses, they effectively call a code red.
"

Chris N said...

If you constantly compare yourself against men, then have some honor, take your prize and go home. Some people might think you've done well, others not. So it is.

Or go do something else. The honorable part of men, and the courageous, just part will simply reform elsewhere.

On that note, I remember NPR had a bunch of guys (radio is for tough guys), then a few silverback liberal patriarchs, then mostly just women and gays. This is not appealing to much of what is good and strong in both men and women.

Worse yet, the ideology used to achieve these ends is driven by revolutionary and radical roots, tearing down much of what came before. Liberal idealism has incorrectly mapped much of human nature and reality, especially if these are the roots.

cfkane1701 said...

The successes are due to my hard work and intelligence; the failures are not my fault, and now I'm getting out while you all still believe what I just said.

NYC JournoList said...

She’s right that the treatment she is getting is because she is a woman … can anyone name a male chief operating officer who has her celebrity? If she were a man Althouse would not be blogging her resignation.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Facebook switched to a different ballgame. The meta thing is more like a game, as I understand it. Instead of figuring out how to play the new game, she probably got pushed aside as someone not bringing anything of value to the rebranding.

Mark said...

How utterly tedious and tiresome.

gilbar said...

worth $Billions huh?
You know, she's looking better and better.. She should give me a call, we could go fishing

William said...

I think she lacks Eleanor Holmes sincerity. Eleanor was straight forward and down to earth. You could relate to her. She wasn't pretentious and she had a vision that wasn't all about making money....Sandberg, on the other hand, looks a little dicey. Maybe if she wore brighter clothes and smiled more often, all this bad publicity would go away.

William said...

I think of all the billionaires in America, with the possible exception of Warren Buffet, Oprah has received the least amount of criticism. Martha Stewart has the most cause to complain.

Jupiter said...

Well, since everyone else here has zero sympathy for this admittedly unsympathetic bitch, let me see what I can scrape up ...

She certainly didn't know, when she started down this path, lo those many years ago, that this was where it would lead. Not the billions, not the back-stabbing. Maybe if she hadn't been quite so smug with the "Lean In" bullshit, and the associated implication that women who have not been as successful as she has (there are a few) are just whiny little wifeys ...

Remember her on the cover of Time? Remember Time?

At least she doesn't actually look like a couch, like Hillary.

Jupiter said...

"Sandberg is worth 2.1 billion $."

That will buy a lot of bodyguards. And I assume she needs them, or thinks she does.

Amadeus 48 said...

Smug is a bad look. Self-pity is a bad look. She's got 'em both.

gilbar said...

So, just to recap (correct if i'm wrong)
O'Bama using Cambridge Analytica.. Shows how AWESOME he was! (Glory Be to O'Bama!!)
Trump using Cambridge Analytica... Shows how EVIL he was!!!! (All Boos to Trump!!!)
do i have that right?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

If it wasn’t illegal what was “improper”?

When you get the sense a word is used to coverup something else.

loudogblog said...

It's odd that she didn't think that being the big boss would open her up to greatly increased criticism. (Both fair and unfair.)

MadTownGuy said...

gilbar said...

"So, just to recap (correct if i'm wrong)
O'Bama using Cambridge Analytica.. Shows how AWESOME he was! (Glory Be to O'Bama!!)
Trump using Cambridge Analytica... Shows how EVIL he was!!!! (All Boos to Trump!!!)
do i have that right?
"

Not quite. Obama's campaign used Cambridge Analytica to great effect. Trump and the RNC decided not to use the data. Still adjudged to be evil.