Sheryl Sandberg says Silicon Valley’s hyper-masculine rhetoric is “terrible” and contributes to “one of the worst” corporate climates she’s ever seen.
Sheryl Sandberg, former COO at Meta (formerly Facebook) and author of the book Motivational Leadership Lean overhas some thoughts on Silicon Valley’s hyper-masculine corporate culture: it’s “one of the worst” she’s seen.
Sandberg, who served as Meta’s COO for more than 14 years before stepping down in 2022, said CNBC Corporate America has undergone a cultural shift, explaining that “rhetoric matters, who says what matters.”
“Yes, the environment is really terrible — I think it’s one of the worst that you and I have seen in our careers — but we’ve seen this setback before, and that’s no excuse for companies not to do the right thing by all of their employees,” Sandberg said. CNBC correspondent Julia Boorstin.
Sandberg’s comments stand out because his former boss, Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was one of the leaders of Silicon Valley’s drift toward hyper-masculinity. In a January interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg said that while he encouraged the promotion of welcoming environments, he saw corporate America as “culturally neutralized” and said they could use more “aggression” and masculine energy.
At the same time, President Donald Trump and the White House have also embarked on a crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, both in the public and private sectors. On his first day back at the White House, the president signed an executive order to eliminate all DEI initiatives within the federal government. Beyond the White House, the Trump administration has also ordered all federal agencies to “combat illegal private sector DEI preferences.” Federal agencies have already begun examining the practices of dozens of universities and some companies such as Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, whose DEI policies are under investigation by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
As masculine and anti-DEI rhetoric intensifies, women’s progress in the workplace has stalled, according to the latest Women in the Workplace study administered by LeanIn.org and management consulting firm McKinsey, which surveyed 9,500 employees at 124 companies. Half of the companies surveyed no longer make career development for women a priority. She said 21 percent of respondents consider women’s career advancement a low priority, if at all, and those are companies choosing to participate in the study, she added.
All of this is a wake-up call for gender equality advocates, Sandberg said.
To succeed at work and elevate a team, leaders must be unconditional, she said, but the way to foster that unconditional mentality is through empathetic, caring leadership that brings out the best in workers.
“These things are not contradictory, nor are they particularly masculine or feminine,” Sandberg said. “The best leaders, whether male or female, have both.”
