Inside Silicon Valley, Many Have Long Known Sheryl Sandberg Isn’t a Saint

Reads like a personal vendetta. It's basically throwing shade at someone with no backing at all, openly referring to overheard stories and people wishing ill on someone else.

If you find-and-replace "Sheryl Sandberg" with any other name, the article just reads like a vile piece.

Ugh. I don’t know Sandburg but this article was awful.

It took one incident — she said hi to Obama when there were cameras around - and then went on for paragraphs about how conniving she supposedly is.

The article just goes on and on without any content.

Anyone with enough money can invent whatever public persona they want about themselves. You hire a ghost writer to pen a book for you, then you hire PR agents to get you written up in the NYT and on various news and talk programs to shill your book. This was Sandberg, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, and countless other people. The key thing is to have a lot of money and some reason to do this. Even if you never did anything important, maybe you just start giving money away and write a manifesto. I’ve watched this happen with people I’ve known professionally on a more regional scale.

Also, you don’t need to write a book to do this, but it’s a sophisticated and high-brow way. For example, business people and even actors usually get long form interviews on NPR only when they write a book, and with that as the catalyst the conversation covers the other aspects of their lives.

The headline and tone of the article implies that they have evidence of some underhand or nasty behaviour by Sandberg. But there is none - having the political intelligence to make the most of a photocall does not make you a bad person.

No one gets to that level in the corporate world by being nice...is this really that surprising?

Would Facebook actually behave differently with another executive in charge? Focusing on Sandberg just seems like another deflection from the effect Facebook's business model has on public discourse.

I worked at the FB London for a brief bit; Zuck didn't visit the office, but Sharyl visited once. It was a big deal and quite the spectacle. She seemed to have an entourage of several people, and even inside the office there were bodyguards with her, the ex-secret service looking ones. She did an internal QA session, and after it a lot of employees went up to get selfies, it took her like 5-10 mins just to get out of the room. She looked very politician professional, incredibly well groomed, neutral blue dress, straight lines; like a corporate, improved version of Hillary. Exactly what she looks like on the pictures. She was incredibly professional at answering questions, like a politician. I had no positive or negative takeaway, I just thought, this is what a powerful person looks like up close. Btw. Zuck to me doesn't give off this "powerful" vibe.

I read the article, it seems like a cheap shot / character assassination attempt, and not a good one. Essentially it says she knows how to handle herself in PR ("Sandberg waited for the exact moment that the photographers started taking pictures to reach across the table and greet the president."), she can play politics ("Sandberg was a political animal, and a brilliant one at that"), she's calculating ("In news interviews on television, Sandberg dictates every last detail, including the kinds of questions that can be asked, and those that cannot."), professional, good at what she does. Well, duh, that's her job, that's why she's the COO of Facebook.

Other cheap shots: "In contrast, Sandberg tends to lay blame on others." The "evidence" is a _leak_ about a supposed _internal meeting_ where she gave somebody a hard time.

This one is just wtf: "Sandberg’s potential political career seems toast." So Trump got elected after the Access Hollywood tapes, but Sandberg's political career is toast because she worked at a company that got hacked/misused.

Utterly fanciful speculation here, but my impression was many of the current scandals facing Facebook are to determine whether Zuck can be marginalized into a non-operational Bill Gates-like role, making room for Sandberg to become Internet Queen. I only half joke, but it's an immensely powerful global role, but senior geeks within FB are still a bit idealistic and principled and will defer to Zuck on any of her ambitions to operate FB like the institutions she cut her teeth at, e.g. as a private state department, or a para-governmental agency, like something with the power of the Fed but for global politics.

This caps her ability to wield FB's political power to its fullest extent, and for someone of her calibre, she's only going to see it as a constraint in the way of her full potential.

If Zuck manages to weather the scandals, it means she needs to be thinking about what's next, as she's not going to be content as #2. The most obvious "next," given her background and record was the democratic nomination to make a cakewalk run for president in 2020. 2016 made it obvious it's anyone's to lose, but the firmness of the ceiling at FB needed to be proven out first. E.g. ruling out internet queen before giving up one of the most powerful private sector jobs on earth on a presidential run. That's why we saw Zuck pushed to the fore earlier this year, because if he was vulnerable to being politically isolated (and sent out to philanthropic pasture), that opportunity would mean growth within FB for Sandberg.

Turns out, dude is made of teflon, and then something else happened.

The mid-terms mediocre showing (e.g. no blue landslide) means the competition for the 2020 nomination is suddenly less urgent because the president still has a reasonable chance of re-election. Democrats will field good candidates, but nobody is going to give up a global power role to take the chance while the president's base is holding. Certainly not the sort of chances you'd give up being internet queen for.

So, by this view, expect the FB scandals to fall off because Sandberg has always been capable of single handedly containing them, and only while she made her decision about 2020 was it briefly useful to expose Zuck to the elements and see if he survived. Now that the mid-terms have taken 2020 off the table, she can use her role to build a juggernaut base of operations for a 2024 run.

I'm not involved at all, to the point where this borders on weird fanfic, but reading the tea leaves, in her position, what else would you do?