9 ms·

Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

172 points by soundsop 13y ago

askimto 13y ago
Greenplum's mean-spiritedness makes this more a review of himself than the book, which is too bad because he manages a few golden nuggets here and there among all the brown ones.
- harichinnan 13y ago
  You should be evaluating data warehouse software. You got the name wrong.
tyang 13y ago
Mean but juicy. Kudos on stirring the pot. Sheryl's book - and the important topics it addresses - were at risk of being a bit forgotten. Your review could help change that.
zurn 13y ago
People should read (if they must) this in context of Greenspun's rather fanatical political ideology. His blog has plenty of samples, I don't want to link to it.
- macspoofing 13y ago
  I've never read anything of Greenspun, other than this review. I don't know, or particularly care, what his "fanatical political ideology" is. As far as I'm concerned this essay is perfectly capable of being judged on its own merits. I am however greatly annoyed whenever someone thinks they are doing everyone else a favour by trying to dissuade others from reading an opinion (especially through vague ad hominem attacks). I don't think you need to protect anyone here from uncomfortable opinions.
  - tks2103 13y ago
    "I didn't want to say anything, but, I heard this Greenspun guy is a maaaaaaaaaaaajor douche."
  - corin_ 13y ago
    I'm in the same boat as you with regards not not having read anything else he's written (I glanced at a few of his political essays this morning but didn't read any thoroughly), so this comment is a general thought not specific to Greenspun. Surely every article/essay has the potential to be read differently in the context of who wrote it. If it was on the subject of, for example, Israel/Palestine, would you not want to know that it was a Palestinian campaigner who wrote about their suffering, or a Zionist who wrote about their acts of terrorism? Whether you agree or disagree with one side or the other, context is often relevant.
    - macspoofing 13y ago
      >Whether you agree or disagree with one side or the other, context is often relevant. Is it really, in this case? If Greenspun was a Neo-Nazi who was serving time for killing 12 people, would it really have changed the content of this review? I understand it would probably colour your perception of him, and certainly that's what the OP was going for, but I still think that this review stands on its own.
      - corin_ 13y ago
        I haven't actually read this review, it's not something that interested me, but I do find that (for better or for worse) I judge content on its author. Yes, if he was a Neo-Nazi who had killed 12 people, it would make me lose respect for his opinions.
        macspoofing 13y ago
        Alright. Do you want to go and research Philip Greenspun before you decide whether or not you agree with his review?
- shmulkey18 13y ago
  And exactly what "fanatical political ideology" is that? Must be pretty horrible mind-poisoning stuff if you feel compelled to warn people off of his blog ("if they must"), eh?
  - cma 13y ago
    ayn rand inanity
    - thatswrong0 13y ago
      Are you seriously (and erroneously) conflating libertarianism with Ayn Rand's Objectivism? And do you honestly think that, should someone have libertarian political views, we should disregard their opinion?
      - cma 13y ago
        I just answered your question; I didn't endorse disregarding his opinion.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- onemorepassword 13y ago
  I've never read Greenspun, and I've stopped reading half way through. And I should have already stopped after "Silicon Valley Socialism", but I was hoping he was just joking. He wasn't. Only in America can this kind of crap not be considered extremist ideology.
  - wyclif 13y ago
    Greenspun appears to be a moderate Republican. Sorry, but that hardly qualifies as "extremist ideology" anywhere in the world, let alone here in the USA.
- WildUtah 13y ago
  Fanatical political ideology? Greenspun's a moderate New England Republican. That's getting to be a pretty rare thing these days, but it's hardly fanatical.
  - nullymcnull 13y ago
    I realize that the US is bizarro world when it comes to the political spectrum, but in most places we definitely hear alarm bells going off when an author cannot help but trot out the dead horse of 'Socialism!' in response to something as mild as the suggestion that the US could improve upon its depressingly shitty standards for mat leave. I'm no fan of Sandberg, but this review is so overburdened by the author's ideological baggage that it is nearly unreadable.
therealarmen 13y ago
Those who enjoy this review will also enjoy Philip's review [1] of "Straight from the Gut" by Jack Welch (former CEO of GE): If you want to learn the names of every person who ever worked at GE during Jack Welch's 40 years there, you'll find this book invaluable. If you want to learn something about what made GE successful, however, good luck picking out the few saplings of wisdom from the thick forest of names. Golf and tennis fans will also find the book fascinating for its endless catalog of golf and tennis resorts nationwide. Apparently being anywhere near the top at GE requires moving to Fairfield, Connecticut and aping the Lifestyles of the Bland and WASPy. One interesting thing I learned is that GE went from 0 percent employee ownership to 31 percent during Jack Welch's tenure as CEO, primarily through granting of stock options to top managers such as Jack himself. Jack doesn't talk about this except to say that he's proud of the number. He doesn't get into the question of whether the investors from 1980 are happy now that they own less than 70 percent of the company. Nor does he talk about what would have happened to GE's earnings if they'd accounted for all of these stock options at time of issue. The useful and interesting content in this book could have been presented in 75 pages if the editors and ghostwriter had been doing their jobs. But they weren't doing their jobs. So the readers all have to "give 110 percent" or "give 1000 percent". Maybe this is what Jack Welch wanted because he uses these expressions numerous times throughout Straight from the Gut. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Straight-Gut-Welch/dp/0446690686 http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Straight-Gut-Welch/dp/0446690686
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  Wow, I'm flabbergasted that Greenspun has authored over 250 reviews on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1TNG2A1GAG14B/ref=cm_cr_dp_nh_pdp http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1TNG2A1GAG14B/ref=cm_c...
  - philwelch 13y ago
    What else are you going to do when you retire early? (cf http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/)
dmvaldman 13y ago
This is so embarrassingly bad...it starts bad, and then gets worse... examples: He discredits one of Sandberg's scientifically verified claims that women take criticism worse than men, by referencing "as John Ioannidis notes, “Most Published Research Findings are False.” Yet he begins his review with a US News report: "This US News article describes research that found that, among college graduates, left-handed men earned 20 percent more than right-handed men." Talk about a bayesian paradox here. It's easy to prove people wrong (and right) when you believe A and ~A. I could go on, it gets much worse. Does he really think Harvard uses the same internet bandwidth for their particle physics dept and the dorms? Ugh...
- macspoofing 13y ago
  >He discredits one of Sandberg's scientifically verified claims that women take criticism worse than men, I don't know about the "scientifically verified claim". In general, scientific claims made in scientific journals are nuanced, and context sensitive. I would be wary of a lay person with a particular position weaving attributions to journal papers indiscriminately in their essays. Furthermore, Humanities research is notoriously error-prone and lacking in rigor. In this respect, I'd say Greenspun is probably close to the truth.
  - dmvaldman 13y ago
    that's not the point. saying left-handed people make 20% more than right-handed people is equally (if not much more) dubious. you can't argue that someone's references are possibly fabricated, and then support your own point with your own "scientific" reference. really it comes down to: if you ever find yourself arguing that someone's references are likely wrong because they are in the humanities... well...that's a conversation ender. and i have a phd in math. believe me sometimes humanities people rub me the wrong way. but i would never make a general statement like that, and especially not to "prove a point." it's the refuge of a scoundrel.
    - furyofantares 13y ago
      > that's not the point. saying left-handed people make 20% more than right-handed people is equally (if not much more) dubious. The sentence before that is "Hardly anybody knows anything about why some workers succeed more than others." His citation of the US News report is meant as an example that there is a lot of confusion on the subject. He is using it specifically to illustrate that dubious claims are flying around.
jbapple 13y ago
Can someone explain this to me: > When government cannot impose right-thinking via new regulations it must be imposed by our social and intellectual superiors bullying us: “Everyone needs to get more comfortable with female leaders” I'm having a lot of trouble finding the implication of Greenspun's summary in the quote he uses from Sandberg's book.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
  That's because you don't know what bullying is.
softbuilder 13y ago
Could someone explain this paragraph? I've read it several times and I don't understand what his point is: "Sandberg’s personal experience, however, contradicts this. She says that she has never worked for a woman. All of the mentors and sponsors she describes are men. When she was 27 years old, a man hired her to be Chief of Staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. Would a woman have been willing to hire her for the same job at age 17?"
- natrius 13y ago
  My rephrasing of that is, "If the working world is systematically biased against women, was it biased against Sandberg? Why did her male bosses and mentors choose her to be the exception? Would female bosses and mentors have made Sandberg's success easier to achieve?"
  - softbuilder 13y ago
    Hmm. I guess I got the gist that you've expressed. That makes me feel a little better, thanks. That last sentence was the puzzler.
    - jdminhbg 13y ago
      Here's the point of the last sentence, which I had to read a few times as well: When she was 27 years old, a man hired her to be Chief of Staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. What, if women were in charge, she'd have not been biased against and gotten that job when she was 17 instead?
      - softbuilder 13y ago
        AHA! Thank you. It finally clicked.
philwelch 13y ago
I don't know why people are so critical of Greenspun. Maybe I'm the only one who finds cynical curmudgeons amusing.
- Vivtek 13y ago
  No, no! He's always a pleasure to read. But then I come from a long line of cynical curmudgeons and this stuff always reminds me of my (now deceased) uncles.
temphn 13y ago
This is utterly devastating and long overdue. Sandberg makes $845 million in a year (at a company she didn't found), lives a charmed life, and is promoted aggressively by men...yet has managed to convince herself that the world is/was biased against women. But even Greenspan is prevented by polite convention from making the obvious point: women and men have different chromosomal structures, lifespans, organs, and hormone levels. There's also substantial evidence[1,2] that they differ in average levels of spatial, verbal, and mathematical reasoning ability (with women generally having an advantage in verbal and men in visuospatial/mathematical). We should not expect them to have the same outcomes on average. Women also can only have at most 10-20 children over their lifespan, whereas men like Genghis Khan[3] can have a virtually unbounded number. This is why males have a greater evolutionary payoff for high-risk, high-reward behavior: intrinsically higher reproductive variance. But hey. That's evolution, and even though it provides a consilient explanation for a variety of allied phenomena, everyone knows that doesn't and couldn't apply to human beings (we all well know what happens to people who propose that a behavior has genetic influences). It is instead easier to pretend that humans aren't biological creatures with hard biological constraints. Yet if your premises are wrong, one is simply practicing fashionable creationism. And that is where we are today, presented with the spectacle of a privileged billionairess who lashes out at phantasms rather than wrestling with the realities of molecular biology. Why not lean in to a publication on behavioral neuroendocrinology, for a change? [1]: http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/sexdif1.htm http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/sexdif1.htm [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767920104 http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767... [3]: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_... [4]: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201101/which-sex-is-playing-higher-stakes-reproductive-game http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-diff...
- mtowle 13y ago
  After I'm a billionaire, for my second startup, I think I'll hire exclusively women, save myself 30% on human capital, and run everyone out of business. "Take that margins! Pow! Kablam!" Somebody give me a Nobel for thinking of this. Obviously, since no one's doing it, I am a genius.
whiddershins 13y ago
Yeah, for me, this review points to a bigger picture issue. Why is the tech / startup scene so easily lured in by establishment values? Of course there are exceptions, Fog Creek's articles about their compensation policy comes to mind, but very little of the egalitarian ethos that made hacking so cool survives in the way people talk and write about working in tech. Corporate long-hours and ladder climbing ambition? Where every dating site [or other product] presumes fixed gender, sexual preferences, and monogamous behavior. Happily pouring your earnings in to high rents and overpriced 401ks, quibbling over the .02% equity versus the extra $5k a year at the next job while recreating the hierarchy and wage slavery which characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. To the point where even the feminism seems regressive. And the "art" is airbrushed illustrations and all the music is power pop. Did I wander too far? Well it is one lens to view it through.
- jeremy6d 13y ago
  Thank you for saying all of this.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  As below, thanks for saying all this. I often wonder what the bloody hell happened to the hacker-ethic and hacker-aesthetic that had drawn me towards tech in the first place. It's getting very close to flipping my switch for, "Burn it all down and start over."
  - qu4z-2 13y ago
    I think the hacker ethic alive and well, and living outside the startup scene/Hacker News.
salimmadjd 13y ago
We all know "Lean In" is a ploy to get her into the national election psyche. She is probably a better candidate than most of the other jokers. However, we really can't take the book that seriously nor it's pseudo science. I listened to a NPR event by her and was so surprised how she used stereotypes about men to dispel stereotypes about women and no one once called her on it! It's very simple. She now has "business" background, she is using Lean In to recruit activist women who she needs as volunteers. Her Facebook credentials will endear her to younger voters as well. So she will get some of independents who might like her business background. She will get the female and youth vote. So on paper she is a good candidate and the book is her gateway.
- mr_spothawk 13y ago
  Sandberg Schmidt 2016. You heard it here first. They're in the middle of PR marathon saturated with juicy election tidbits: North Korea, Facebook, etc.
  - salimmadjd 13y ago
    Sandberg wont run with another technology person. She would need a policy person to give her credibility and help her win 1-2 states. She will get Florida based on the Jewish vote probably. So she needs to get a VP to win Pennsylvania and Ohio.
podperson 13y ago
This is an interesting piecemeal critique of Sandberg's book but doesn't seem to look for or address any overall theme or thrust of the book. If there is no such theme, this itself is worthy of comment. Yes, the bolts of which the bridge is assembled are rusted, but where, if anywhere, does it lead?
vrodic 13y ago
The Last Psychiatrist also covered Sandberg as a female role model, you might find it interesting: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because_shes_suc.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...
- girvo 13y ago
  That was so deliciously brutal.
  - salemh 13y ago
    TheLastPsychiatrist is an excellent and polarizing writer. Heres a punch in the gut on Steubenville. Much like her (I think her, its a matter of debate on gender, but mostly accepted via the comments page as "she") other posts, the storytelling and long-form leads to meta "aha!" points. http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_wo...
- astrange 13y ago
  The author of that article writes like a remarkably lucid schizophrenic.
mountaingirl 13y ago
I couldn't read this entire thread because it made me so incredibly angry. As a woman in tech I have done plenty of reading about the genders and their capabilities. I've read that while women tend to be stronger in English comprehension and men tend to be stronger in Math, this is lately due to how we are socialized, not genetic factors. I am saddened by how this thread degenerates from reviewing Sandberg's book in a horribly irresponsible way to discussing the incompetence of women in general. This entire thread is so discouraging and I am disappointed there hasn't been a more rational discussion of this book and the topics it raises.
fringedgentian 13y ago
Seeing how quickly this entirely negative, picky-pants review got voted to the front page of hacker news has inspired me to purchase and start reading Lean In immediately. It makes me think there must be something to this book.
michaelochurch 13y ago
The problem that I see has little to do with the fact that Sandberg is a woman. It's that the Corporate System (yes, there is such a thing) deliberately promotes people who are smart enough to run operations but don't have what it takes (which is more of an out-of-band creativity than raw IQ) to figure out how people and organizations really work. Then its pre-selected leaders go on to peddle Success Crack that tells us how we can be successful, and how it's just so easy. The title alone is enough to give me pause. "Lean In" refers to the antiquated idea that the reason why so few women succeed in the workplace is because they "lean back" instead of "in" during meetings. Right, because all you need to do to wring a few more dollars out of a stingy, psychopathic billionaire institution that would throw you out on the street if it saw profit in it, is a little more work on your posturing. Keep an acute angle between your spine and your pelvis and everything else will follow. Reality: most people who are successful have no insight into how they got there, and the system's supposed to work that way; the elevator up is made of glass, but the people allowed into it were deliberately picked not to look anywhere but at the digital red numbers that say what floor they are on. Of course, most people who fail (and that's most people) have little insight either, which is why these books sell so well. Also, let's talk about Small Data, the realm not of normal distributions but of Poisson distributions on discrete events. Reputations are a Small Data problem. So are introductions, resumes, and all of the other mechanical rat-traps that make up the career game. You can control serendipity to some degree. If you know a disgusting secret on a Harvard MBA alumnus (which is not that hard, because as unethical people become increasingly arrogant, they get worse at hiding it) you can use it to get a powerful recommendation, get in to Harvard Business School, and make influential friends. Sure, there are things like that that you can control. Then there are things that you can't. Filthy secret: the workplace is full of extortionist thugs, bullies, and generally horrible people. I'd estimate that horrid people are 1-in-10 in the general population (but you rarely see them in daily life, because there isn't money involved) but they are 1-in-5 co-workers at the most competitive companies, and 1-in-3 bosses. Okay. Let's just get that on the table. Unless you have extreme luck that makes you independent in your first 5 years, you will meet horrible people who will fuck up your career, damage your reputation, gaslight you until you embarrass yourself in a major way, steal credit that you needed to get out of corporate hell, possibly even give you PTSD (that's rare, but if you have the condition pre-existing, it can flare up again). One such encounter takes you out of the running for those COO/Facebook jobs that require a flawless career history, but you can still be modestly successful. Two hits and you will never raise VC. You're too damaged for that. Three and you're barely holding on to the upper-middle-class. Four, and you're lucky to stay in the middle class. Now, some people manage to get hit zero times. Look up Poisson distributions if you don't believe me. It's not many of them, but it happens. Good for them. Why do so few women succeed in the workplace? This "they stop leaning in!!!111" bullshit is useless, because it glosses over the real problem. It's because bullies (including workplace bullies) prey on the people they consider to be weakest, and those are disproportionately going to be women. It's not that they're sexist. Not all bad people are everything bad (i.e. not all psychopaths are sexist or racist). They're just opportunists. They hit women disproportionately because they presume them to be weak. You can really tell what kind of career (in a corporate context, and VC-istan is corporate because of the king-making around funding) someone will have based on one integer number: how many times that person has been attacked by a workplace thug. You will never be a Sheryl Sandberg if you've dealt with a true workplace bully, and at least 90% of people get hit at least once in the first 10 years. Your reputation and career history are too damaged, and you really can't "start over" because every achievement is age-graded. It's great that some people like Sandberg are able to enjoy legitimate careers, but the fact of never having been bullied or attacked (they might have been laid off once or twice, but never robbed or extorted) makes them extreme statistical anomalies. They end up with these rosy-eyed half-picture views of the workplace, and they're able to sell it in business books and TED talks, because most of the proles want to believe there's something different out there, and that they're just missing one easy insight (i.e. just "lean in" during meetings!) Success Crack presents a view of the workplace that is so non-repeatable and often self-serving as to be indistinguishable from a fantasy novel-- but with a less inspiring setting and worse writing.
Uncompetative 13y ago
$845,000,000 salary... Doesn't this strike anyone else as rather a lot?
wcgortel 13y ago
The value of lean in is almost unrelated to anything except for it's author's gender. Most of this stuff has been said before. There are tons of career books, and she cites a lot of existing research. It's valuable because it shows a career track to women in technology, which is undoubtedly a male-dominated field. It also repackages a lot of existing knowledge into a format that is accessible to ambitious young women. It's valuable because it allows me to talk to my sister about how she perceives gender issues. She is a mechanical engineer, and without having a common language it would be difficult for me to relate my career to hers. It's valuable because my girlfriend can pick it up and use it to develop an understanding of how she fits in the workplace. Having a reference text allows her to interface with peers and build a dialogue. When I first started editing inside investing, I realized something about two days into the job: we commonly conceive writing as the pursuit of truth through argumentation. In many cases, that is patently wrong. Most writing serves to stoke conversation. All of this discussion--whether it suggests males are intrinsically different or that there is more to women's pay and achievement gap in terms of social dynamics--is the point of the book. All of this criticism is valid, but guess what--did the book get you to think about women in the workplace? Have you considered how you behave in relation to your female colleagues and employees as a result of reading this book? If so, it's done its job.

172 points by soundsop 13y ago

Greenplum's mean-spiritedness makes this more a review of himself than the book, which is too bad because he manages a few golden nuggets here and there among all the brown ones.

harichinnan 13y ago
You should be evaluating data warehouse software. You got the name wrong.

tyang 13y ago

Mean but juicy. Kudos on stirring the pot. Sheryl's book - and the important topics it addresses - were at risk of being a bit forgotten. Your review could help change that.

zurn 13y ago

People should read (if they must) this in context of Greenspun's rather fanatical political ideology. His blog has plenty of samples, I don't want to link to it.

macspoofing 13y ago
I've never read anything of Greenspun, other than this review. I don't know, or particularly care, what his "fanatical political ideology" is. As far as I'm concerned this essay is perfectly capable of being judged on its own merits. I am however greatly annoyed whenever someone thinks they are doing everyone else a favour by trying to dissuade others from reading an opinion (especially through vague ad hominem attacks). I don't think you need to protect anyone here from uncomfortable opinions.
- tks2103 13y ago
  "I didn't want to say anything, but, I heard this Greenspun guy is a maaaaaaaaaaaajor douche."
- corin_ 13y ago
  I'm in the same boat as you with regards not not having read anything else he's written (I glanced at a few of his political essays this morning but didn't read any thoroughly), so this comment is a general thought not specific to Greenspun. Surely every article/essay has the potential to be read differently in the context of who wrote it. If it was on the subject of, for example, Israel/Palestine, would you not want to know that it was a Palestinian campaigner who wrote about their suffering, or a Zionist who wrote about their acts of terrorism? Whether you agree or disagree with one side or the other, context is often relevant.
  - macspoofing 13y ago
    >Whether you agree or disagree with one side or the other, context is often relevant. Is it really, in this case? If Greenspun was a Neo-Nazi who was serving time for killing 12 people, would it really have changed the content of this review? I understand it would probably colour your perception of him, and certainly that's what the OP was going for, but I still think that this review stands on its own.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      I haven't actually read this review, it's not something that interested me, but I do find that (for better or for worse) I judge content on its author. Yes, if he was a Neo-Nazi who had killed 12 people, it would make me lose respect for his opinions.
      - macspoofing 13y ago
        Alright. Do you want to go and research Philip Greenspun before you decide whether or not you agree with his review?
shmulkey18 13y ago
And exactly what "fanatical political ideology" is that? Must be pretty horrible mind-poisoning stuff if you feel compelled to warn people off of his blog ("if they must"), eh?
- cma 13y ago
  ayn rand inanity
  - thatswrong0 13y ago
    Are you seriously (and erroneously) conflating libertarianism with Ayn Rand's Objectivism? And do you honestly think that, should someone have libertarian political views, we should disregard their opinion?
    - cma 13y ago
      I just answered your question; I didn't endorse disregarding his opinion.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
onemorepassword 13y ago
I've never read Greenspun, and I've stopped reading half way through. And I should have already stopped after "Silicon Valley Socialism", but I was hoping he was just joking. He wasn't. Only in America can this kind of crap not be considered extremist ideology.
- wyclif 13y ago
  Greenspun appears to be a moderate Republican. Sorry, but that hardly qualifies as "extremist ideology" anywhere in the world, let alone here in the USA.
WildUtah 13y ago
Fanatical political ideology? Greenspun's a moderate New England Republican. That's getting to be a pretty rare thing these days, but it's hardly fanatical.
- nullymcnull 13y ago
  I realize that the US is bizarro world when it comes to the political spectrum, but in most places we definitely hear alarm bells going off when an author cannot help but trot out the dead horse of 'Socialism!' in response to something as mild as the suggestion that the US could improve upon its depressingly shitty standards for mat leave. I'm no fan of Sandberg, but this review is so overburdened by the author's ideological baggage that it is nearly unreadable.

therealarmen 13y ago

Those who enjoy this review will also enjoy Philip's review [1] of "Straight from the Gut" by Jack Welch (former CEO of GE): If you want to learn the names of every person who ever worked at GE during Jack Welch's 40 years there, you'll find this book invaluable. If you want to learn something about what made GE successful, however, good luck picking out the few saplings of wisdom from the thick forest of names. Golf and tennis fans will also find the book fascinating for its endless catalog of golf and tennis resorts nationwide. Apparently being anywhere near the top at GE requires moving to Fairfield, Connecticut and aping the Lifestyles of the Bland and WASPy. One interesting thing I learned is that GE went from 0 percent employee ownership to 31 percent during Jack Welch's tenure as CEO, primarily through granting of stock options to top managers such as Jack himself. Jack doesn't talk about this except to say that he's proud of the number. He doesn't get into the question of whether the investors from 1980 are happy now that they own less than 70 percent of the company. Nor does he talk about what would have happened to GE's earnings if they'd accounted for all of these stock options at time of issue. The useful and interesting content in this book could have been presented in 75 pages if the editors and ghostwriter had been doing their jobs. But they weren't doing their jobs. So the readers all have to "give 110 percent" or "give 1000 percent". Maybe this is what Jack Welch wanted because he uses these expressions numerous times throughout Straight from the Gut. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Straight-Gut-Welch/dp/0446690686 http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Straight-Gut-Welch/dp/0446690686

hkmurakami 13y ago
Wow, I'm flabbergasted that Greenspun has authored over 250 reviews on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1TNG2A1GAG14B/ref=cm_cr_dp_nh_pdp http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1TNG2A1GAG14B/ref=cm_c...
- philwelch 13y ago
  What else are you going to do when you retire early? (cf http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/ http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/)

dmvaldman 13y ago

This is so embarrassingly bad...it starts bad, and then gets worse... examples: He discredits one of Sandberg's scientifically verified claims that women take criticism worse than men, by referencing "as John Ioannidis notes, “Most Published Research Findings are False.” Yet he begins his review with a US News report: "This US News article describes research that found that, among college graduates, left-handed men earned 20 percent more than right-handed men." Talk about a bayesian paradox here. It's easy to prove people wrong (and right) when you believe A and ~A. I could go on, it gets much worse. Does he really think Harvard uses the same internet bandwidth for their particle physics dept and the dorms? Ugh...

macspoofing 13y ago
>He discredits one of Sandberg's scientifically verified claims that women take criticism worse than men, I don't know about the "scientifically verified claim". In general, scientific claims made in scientific journals are nuanced, and context sensitive. I would be wary of a lay person with a particular position weaving attributions to journal papers indiscriminately in their essays. Furthermore, Humanities research is notoriously error-prone and lacking in rigor. In this respect, I'd say Greenspun is probably close to the truth.
- dmvaldman 13y ago
  that's not the point. saying left-handed people make 20% more than right-handed people is equally (if not much more) dubious. you can't argue that someone's references are possibly fabricated, and then support your own point with your own "scientific" reference. really it comes down to: if you ever find yourself arguing that someone's references are likely wrong because they are in the humanities... well...that's a conversation ender. and i have a phd in math. believe me sometimes humanities people rub me the wrong way. but i would never make a general statement like that, and especially not to "prove a point." it's the refuge of a scoundrel.
  - furyofantares 13y ago
    > that's not the point. saying left-handed people make 20% more than right-handed people is equally (if not much more) dubious. The sentence before that is "Hardly anybody knows anything about why some workers succeed more than others." His citation of the US News report is meant as an example that there is a lot of confusion on the subject. He is using it specifically to illustrate that dubious claims are flying around.

jbapple 13y ago

Can someone explain this to me: > When government cannot impose right-thinking via new regulations it must be imposed by our social and intellectual superiors bullying us: “Everyone needs to get more comfortable with female leaders” I'm having a lot of trouble finding the implication of Greenspun's summary in the quote he uses from Sandberg's book.

Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
That's because you don't know what bullying is.

softbuilder 13y ago

Could someone explain this paragraph? I've read it several times and I don't understand what his point is: "Sandberg’s personal experience, however, contradicts this. She says that she has never worked for a woman. All of the mentors and sponsors she describes are men. When she was 27 years old, a man hired her to be Chief of Staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. Would a woman have been willing to hire her for the same job at age 17?"

natrius 13y ago
My rephrasing of that is, "If the working world is systematically biased against women, was it biased against Sandberg? Why did her male bosses and mentors choose her to be the exception? Would female bosses and mentors have made Sandberg's success easier to achieve?"
- softbuilder 13y ago
  Hmm. I guess I got the gist that you've expressed. That makes me feel a little better, thanks. That last sentence was the puzzler.
  - jdminhbg 13y ago
    Here's the point of the last sentence, which I had to read a few times as well: When she was 27 years old, a man hired her to be Chief of Staff for the United States Secretary of the Treasury. What, if women were in charge, she'd have not been biased against and gotten that job when she was 17 instead?
    - softbuilder 13y ago
      AHA! Thank you. It finally clicked.

philwelch 13y ago

I don't know why people are so critical of Greenspun. Maybe I'm the only one who finds cynical curmudgeons amusing.

Vivtek 13y ago
No, no! He's always a pleasure to read. But then I come from a long line of cynical curmudgeons and this stuff always reminds me of my (now deceased) uncles.

temphn 13y ago

This is utterly devastating and long overdue. Sandberg makes $845 million in a year (at a company she didn't found), lives a charmed life, and is promoted aggressively by men...yet has managed to convince herself that the world is/was biased against women. But even Greenspan is prevented by polite convention from making the obvious point: women and men have different chromosomal structures, lifespans, organs, and hormone levels. There's also substantial evidence[1,2] that they differ in average levels of spatial, verbal, and mathematical reasoning ability (with women generally having an advantage in verbal and men in visuospatial/mathematical). We should not expect them to have the same outcomes on average. Women also can only have at most 10-20 children over their lifespan, whereas men like Genghis Khan[3] can have a virtually unbounded number. This is why males have a greater evolutionary payoff for high-risk, high-reward behavior: intrinsically higher reproductive variance. But hey. That's evolution, and even though it provides a consilient explanation for a variety of allied phenomena, everyone knows that doesn't and couldn't apply to human beings (we all well know what happens to people who propose that a behavior has genetic influences). It is instead easier to pretend that humans aren't biological creatures with hard biological constraints. Yet if your premises are wrong, one is simply practicing fashionable creationism. And that is where we are today, presented with the spectacle of a privileged billionairess who lashes out at phantasms rather than wrestling with the realities of molecular biology. Why not lean in to a publication on behavioral neuroendocrinology, for a change? [1]: http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/sexdif1.htm http://www2.nau.edu/~bio372-c/class/behavior/sexdif1.htm [2]: http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767920104 http://www.amazon.com/Female-Brain-Louann-Brizendine/dp/0767... [3]: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_genghis.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/02/0214_030214_... [4]: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-differences/201101/which-sex-is-playing-higher-stakes-reproductive-game http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-how-and-why-sex-diff...

mtowle 13y ago
After I'm a billionaire, for my second startup, I think I'll hire exclusively women, save myself 30% on human capital, and run everyone out of business. "Take that margins! Pow! Kablam!" Somebody give me a Nobel for thinking of this. Obviously, since no one's doing it, I am a genius.

whiddershins 13y ago

Yeah, for me, this review points to a bigger picture issue. Why is the tech / startup scene so easily lured in by establishment values? Of course there are exceptions, Fog Creek's articles about their compensation policy comes to mind, but very little of the egalitarian ethos that made hacking so cool survives in the way people talk and write about working in tech. Corporate long-hours and ladder climbing ambition? Where every dating site [or other product] presumes fixed gender, sexual preferences, and monogamous behavior. Happily pouring your earnings in to high rents and overpriced 401ks, quibbling over the .02% equity versus the extra $5k a year at the next job while recreating the hierarchy and wage slavery which characterized the 19th and 20th centuries. To the point where even the feminism seems regressive. And the "art" is airbrushed illustrations and all the music is power pop. Did I wander too far? Well it is one lens to view it through.

jeremy6d 13y ago
Thank you for saying all of this.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
As below, thanks for saying all this. I often wonder what the bloody hell happened to the hacker-ethic and hacker-aesthetic that had drawn me towards tech in the first place. It's getting very close to flipping my switch for, "Burn it all down and start over."
- qu4z-2 13y ago
  I think the hacker ethic alive and well, and living outside the startup scene/Hacker News.

salimmadjd 13y ago

We all know "Lean In" is a ploy to get her into the national election psyche. She is probably a better candidate than most of the other jokers. However, we really can't take the book that seriously nor it's pseudo science. I listened to a NPR event by her and was so surprised how she used stereotypes about men to dispel stereotypes about women and no one once called her on it! It's very simple. She now has "business" background, she is using Lean In to recruit activist women who she needs as volunteers. Her Facebook credentials will endear her to younger voters as well. So she will get some of independents who might like her business background. She will get the female and youth vote. So on paper she is a good candidate and the book is her gateway.

mr_spothawk 13y ago
Sandberg Schmidt 2016. You heard it here first. They're in the middle of PR marathon saturated with juicy election tidbits: North Korea, Facebook, etc.
- salimmadjd 13y ago
  Sandberg wont run with another technology person. She would need a policy person to give her credibility and help her win 1-2 states. She will get Florida based on the Jewish vote probably. So she needs to get a VP to win Pennsylvania and Ohio.

podperson 13y ago

This is an interesting piecemeal critique of Sandberg's book but doesn't seem to look for or address any overall theme or thrust of the book. If there is no such theme, this itself is worthy of comment. Yes, the bolts of which the bridge is assembled are rusted, but where, if anywhere, does it lead?

vrodic 13y ago

The Last Psychiatrist also covered Sandberg as a female role model, you might find it interesting: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because_shes_suc.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because...

girvo 13y ago
That was so deliciously brutal.
- salemh 13y ago
  TheLastPsychiatrist is an excellent and polarizing writer. Heres a punch in the gut on Steubenville. Much like her (I think her, its a matter of debate on gender, but mostly accepted via the comments page as "she") other posts, the storytelling and long-form leads to meta "aha!" points. http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_wo...
astrange 13y ago
The author of that article writes like a remarkably lucid schizophrenic.

mountaingirl 13y ago

I couldn't read this entire thread because it made me so incredibly angry. As a woman in tech I have done plenty of reading about the genders and their capabilities. I've read that while women tend to be stronger in English comprehension and men tend to be stronger in Math, this is lately due to how we are socialized, not genetic factors. I am saddened by how this thread degenerates from reviewing Sandberg's book in a horribly irresponsible way to discussing the incompetence of women in general. This entire thread is so discouraging and I am disappointed there hasn't been a more rational discussion of this book and the topics it raises.

fringedgentian 13y ago

Seeing how quickly this entirely negative, picky-pants review got voted to the front page of hacker news has inspired me to purchase and start reading Lean In immediately. It makes me think there must be something to this book.

michaelochurch 13y ago

The problem that I see has little to do with the fact that Sandberg is a woman. It's that the Corporate System (yes, there is such a thing) deliberately promotes people who are smart enough to run operations but don't have what it takes (which is more of an out-of-band creativity than raw IQ) to figure out how people and organizations really work. Then its pre-selected leaders go on to peddle Success Crack that tells us how we can be successful, and how it's just so easy. The title alone is enough to give me pause. "Lean In" refers to the antiquated idea that the reason why so few women succeed in the workplace is because they "lean back" instead of "in" during meetings. Right, because all you need to do to wring a few more dollars out of a stingy, psychopathic billionaire institution that would throw you out on the street if it saw profit in it, is a little more work on your posturing. Keep an acute angle between your spine and your pelvis and everything else will follow. Reality: most people who are successful have no insight into how they got there, and the system's supposed to work that way; the elevator up is made of glass, but the people allowed into it were deliberately picked not to look anywhere but at the digital red numbers that say what floor they are on. Of course, most people who fail (and that's most people) have little insight either, which is why these books sell so well. Also, let's talk about Small Data, the realm not of normal distributions but of Poisson distributions on discrete events. Reputations are a Small Data problem. So are introductions, resumes, and all of the other mechanical rat-traps that make up the career game. You can control serendipity to some degree. If you know a disgusting secret on a Harvard MBA alumnus (which is not that hard, because as unethical people become increasingly arrogant, they get worse at hiding it) you can use it to get a powerful recommendation, get in to Harvard Business School, and make influential friends. Sure, there are things like that that you can control. Then there are things that you can't. Filthy secret: the workplace is full of extortionist thugs, bullies, and generally horrible people. I'd estimate that horrid people are 1-in-10 in the general population (but you rarely see them in daily life, because there isn't money involved) but they are 1-in-5 co-workers at the most competitive companies, and 1-in-3 bosses. Okay. Let's just get that on the table. Unless you have extreme luck that makes you independent in your first 5 years, you will meet horrible people who will fuck up your career, damage your reputation, gaslight you until you embarrass yourself in a major way, steal credit that you needed to get out of corporate hell, possibly even give you PTSD (that's rare, but if you have the condition pre-existing, it can flare up again). One such encounter takes you out of the running for those COO/Facebook jobs that require a flawless career history, but you can still be modestly successful. Two hits and you will never raise VC. You're too damaged for that. Three and you're barely holding on to the upper-middle-class. Four, and you're lucky to stay in the middle class. Now, some people manage to get hit zero times. Look up Poisson distributions if you don't believe me. It's not many of them, but it happens. Good for them. Why do so few women succeed in the workplace? This "they stop leaning in!!!111" bullshit is useless, because it glosses over the real problem. It's because bullies (including workplace bullies) prey on the people they consider to be weakest, and those are disproportionately going to be women. It's not that they're sexist. Not all bad people are everything bad (i.e. not all psychopaths are sexist or racist). They're just opportunists. They hit women disproportionately because they presume them to be weak. You can really tell what kind of career (in a corporate context, and VC-istan is corporate because of the king-making around funding) someone will have based on one integer number: how many times that person has been attacked by a workplace thug. You will never be a Sheryl Sandberg if you've dealt with a true workplace bully, and at least 90% of people get hit at least once in the first 10 years. Your reputation and career history are too damaged, and you really can't "start over" because every achievement is age-graded. It's great that some people like Sandberg are able to enjoy legitimate careers, but the fact of never having been bullied or attacked (they might have been laid off once or twice, but never robbed or extorted) makes them extreme statistical anomalies. They end up with these rosy-eyed half-picture views of the workplace, and they're able to sell it in business books and TED talks, because most of the proles want to believe there's something different out there, and that they're just missing one easy insight (i.e. just "lean in" during meetings!) Success Crack presents a view of the workplace that is so non-repeatable and often self-serving as to be indistinguishable from a fantasy novel-- but with a less inspiring setting and worse writing.

Uncompetative 13y ago

$845,000,000 salary... Doesn't this strike anyone else as rather a lot?

wcgortel 13y ago

The value of lean in is almost unrelated to anything except for it's author's gender. Most of this stuff has been said before. There are tons of career books, and she cites a lot of existing research. It's valuable because it shows a career track to women in technology, which is undoubtedly a male-dominated field. It also repackages a lot of existing knowledge into a format that is accessible to ambitious young women. It's valuable because it allows me to talk to my sister about how she perceives gender issues. She is a mechanical engineer, and without having a common language it would be difficult for me to relate my career to hers. It's valuable because my girlfriend can pick it up and use it to develop an understanding of how she fits in the workplace. Having a reference text allows her to interface with peers and build a dialogue. When I first started editing inside investing, I realized something about two days into the job: we commonly conceive writing as the pursuit of truth through argumentation. In many cases, that is patently wrong. Most writing serves to stoke conversation. All of this discussion--whether it suggests males are intrinsically different or that there is more to women's pay and achievement gap in terms of social dynamics--is the point of the book. All of this criticism is valid, but guess what--did the book get you to think about women in the workplace? Have you considered how you behave in relation to your female colleagues and employees as a result of reading this book? If so, it's done its job.