Sheryl Sandberg, formerly chief operating officer at Meta (formerly Facebook) and author of the motivational leadership book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, has some thoughts on the hypermasculine corporate culture sweeping Silicon Valley: It’s “one of the worst” she’s ever seen.
Sandberg, who served for more than 14 years as Meta’s COO before stepping down in 2022, told CNBC corporate America has undergone a cultural shift, explaining, “Rhetoric matters. Who says what matters.”
“Yes, the environment is terrible, really—I think one of the worst you and I have seen in our careers—but we’ve seen this backsliding before, and that is not an excuse for companies not to do the right thing by all of their employees,” Sandberg told CNBC correspondent Julia Boorstin in December.
Sandberg’s comments stand out because her former boss, Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has been one of the leaders of Silicon Valley’s creep toward hypermasculinity. In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan last year, Zuckerberg said while he encouraged fostering welcoming environments, he saw corporate America as “culturally neutered” and said it could use more “aggression” and masculine energy.
