Sheryl Sandberg and Technology's Female Leaders

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.'"

Comments

flimsy article thrown together

[EjectButton]

Surprising that this article praises the disaster that is Meg Whitman, and 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.

Re:flimsy article thrown together

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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 . . . ?

Re:flimsy article thrown together

[Hal_Porter]

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 Maybe their skills are a bit out of date by the time they get to the top, but at least they had skills once.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.