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Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#81

Post by mr_spothawk »

salimmadjd wrote: post #44

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"…

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.

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#82

Post by salimmadjd »

mr_spothawk wrote: post #81
salimmadjd wrote: post #44

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"…

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.

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.

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#83

Post by theorique »

michaelochurch wrote: post #75
theorique wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [citation needed] No doubt this is true in an abstract sense, but is there any recorded data on this (reports of scandals, etc) or is thi…

What you need to do is come to New York, meet some very rich people, learn how they think and operate, and observe what they do to keep and grow their levels of power. It's not as hard as it sounds. It is expensive, but it's not difficult. There are apartments selling for $100 million. Who lives in those? How did they get there? What are their stories? The answers are not what middle-class Americans think (hard work!…

That makes a lot of sense. I'm not in NY but I do see this among the very wealthiest people I know.

In a lot of ways, frats and university clubs do similar things, formally and informally. When people do embarrassing, dangerous, illegal, or immature things together, it bonds them in interesting and tight ways.

One can imagine that if it was 1999 and you had been one of GWB's close Yale or MBA buddies who had blown a snowstorm of cocaine together, and you called him up for a little favor or consideration, that such a thing might come through rather quickly and discreetly.

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#84

Post by areeve »

michaelochurch wrote: post #60

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…

I got to the 3rd paragraph and thought: "Christ, this sounds almost as pessimistic as a Michael O. Church comment!"

Then I looked at the comment author.

Despite this pessimism I think you make some great points, but I do feel that your persistent negative bias towards corporations (and people in general) can detract from what are often great insights within your comments.

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#85

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

ucee054 wrote: post #67
EliRivers wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yet has managed to convince herself that the world is/was biased against women. Wait, are you saying it isn't/wasn't?

I'll say it. It isn't and wasn't and if anything is biased against men . Details here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA http://owningyourshit.blogspot.co.uk/

I've never been tempted to downvote something solely on the basis of my disagreeing with it, until now.

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#86

Post by enneff »

michaelochurch wrote: post #73
jbattle wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So do you really believe that workplace bullies are so universally powerful that it is quite nearly impossible to prevent them from ruinin…

There are different kinds of assholes and bullies. Also, they aren't the same thing. The boss who loses his temper a lot but doesn't engage in prolonged campaigns of harassment is the archetypical "asshole" boss, but not a bully. People realize he's a "Volcano" (see here: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/gervais-macle... ) and his credibility drops, so he is really only a danger to himself after a while…

> I worked for one of these at Google.

I just want to remind anyone reading this that there are many sides to any story. I am truly impressed by how much mileage the parent poster has gotten from his negative experience at Google, but I think it would be a grave mistake to take his claims at face value.

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#87

Post by gwern »

dmvaldman wrote: post #7

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 e…

This is why I unsubscribed from Greenspun's blog a long time ago (that and him deleting my comments); he makes some good points (Sandberg is indeed extremely exceptional and much of her views are ludicrous), but he buries them in a sea of bias and partisanship.

Easy exercise for readers: go through this post and a few previous posts, and count every use of 'meta' points like Ioannidis's paper against a claim. Notice any patterns?

And then there are the gratuitous digs...

> Sandberg identifies the same tendencies for underlings in a bureaucracy to hold their tongues that Max Weber noticed 100+ years ago (p85; no reference to Weber).

And why should there be any reference at all, Phil? Most people never read a page of Weber, and it's not an observation which requires uniquely keen insight or experience...

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#88

Post by sinnerswing »

paganel wrote: post #39
sinnerswing wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His reviews would've been a lot funnier if Arsdigita didn't crash and burn years ago. >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. They should be happy considering GE's value rose 4000% during Jack Welch's tenure at GE.[1] When Jack Welch became General Electric’s CEO in 1981, the company was worth about $14 billion. When he reti…

GE does build lots of cool engineering things, but those alone couldn't have made it the most valuable company in the world at one point. It also involved a lot of, well, financial engineering, which this guy started to describe better than I could ever have: https://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/immelt-ge-capital... I also remember than in the hot days of early October 2008 there were talks of GE the entire com…

GE Capital was founded in 1932. Jack Welch left GE in 2001 (GE's market cap was $500 billion), 7-8 years prior to the financial crisis. If you're going to blame someone for GE's problems blame Jeff Immelt, don't blame Jack Welch.

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#89

Post by jerrya »

michaelochurch wrote: post #78
ims wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon. In the real world, it's so much more likely to be "he's a cool guy, we went to the same prep school, why not?" Which renders the same result, but in less of a movie-script dramatic way.

While not impossible (it's possible for almost anyone, no?), this type of blackmail is probably extremely uncommon. Wrong. It's extremely common, but it's also subtle . It's best if the target doesn't know what you have on him. That's the beauty of business school. You were out drinking with him 25 times and he doesn't remember half of them, so you don't have to mention "the dirt". (Also: you shouldn't. Explicit exto…

Sigh. I clearly went to the wrong business school, and I bet being married and having a kid didn't help me either on this score. :(

(I was there in that capstone project where you had a bug in the excel spreadsheet and we just pasted value over it!)

Re: Philip Greenspun Reviews “Lean In”

#90

Post by jerrya »

CurtHagenlocher wrote: post #85
ucee054 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll say it. It isn't and wasn't and if anything is biased against men . Details here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vp8tToFv-bA http://owningyourshit.blogspot.co.uk/

I've never been tempted to downvote something solely on the basis of my disagreeing with it, until now.

My suggestion is that instead of reaching for the downvote, that you click the link and read what "Girl Writes What" has to say.

Though admittedly a little long-winded, she raises some very interesting points.

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