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> "In January of 1991, Summers became the chief economist at the World Bank, and that spring he recruited Sandberg as a research assistant." I don't care how smart or good you are, without certain connections you're not going to get a research associateship at the world bank.

TIL The current FB COO worked as a research assistant at the World Bank.

Sometimes I want to blame my parents for being just a pair of middle-aged farmers in an Eastern-European country, when they could have had guys like Summers as their friend and a mansion in Hamptons if they had worked hard enough.</sarcasm>

I guess it depends in how you measure those things. A quote I like is: "What one faces in his/her life is destiny. How he/she faces it is personal choice". We are what we make ourselves into. With our last breath we stop fighting for our goals. She is not more or less successful than one fighting to make her monthly wage. She was in a different playground, that's all. If she fought well to get where she is, good for her. If not, well there is not much there for a hacker to admire, is there?

His point is that even if you face your destiny in the best possible way (to put it in your terms), if your destiny does not include Harvard professors that move to the World Bank, there won't be any articles in the New Yorker about you.

Her connection with Summers was an academic/professional one that she formed herself. She earned the respect of the right person, and reaped the rewards for doing so.

If it were some sort of nepotism then you might have a point, but since it's not it really just shows the opposite of what you suggest. It shows that women are able to improve their own station in exactly the same way men do. And had it been nepotism, it would show nothing more than women can do it the other way men do it as well.

Can most women do this to the degree she has? No. Just like most men can't.

Ok let's get back to the basics of this discussion. I said that I didn't like Sandberg saying that the glass ceiling doesn't exist because she wouldn't know much about it since she got to side step it. You came along and started talking about how I was downplaying her hard work. Not so, she's a hardworking person who is also exceptionally smart. I'm not sure if you're just trying to disagree with me for the sake of disagreement, but you are seeing things in my comments that aren't there, at least not intentionally.

I'm trying the best I can to explain why calling what she did "sidestepping" is nonsensical. Apparently I'm not doing it well enough.

"Nonsensical?" There's no need to be rude. We're both allowed to have an opinion. And for the record, it's not "nonsensical" to say that she sidestepped the traditional corporate experience most women have because she did just that. She was able to do that based on her exceptional talent/intelligence and the connections she had/made.

I intended no rudeness. It merely seems to me that saying that someone who failed to be stopped by the glass ceiling "sidestepped" something is like saying Chuck Yeager "sidestepped" the sound barrier. They didn't sidestep it, they played by the rules and broke it.

Anyway, let me attempt to convey my general point again: The way I see it there are exactly 2 basic ways advancing. Nepotism, and combinations of luck/hardwork/getting noticed.

I don't know anyone who suggests that there is a glass ceiling preventing women from taking advantage of nepotism. Rather, every explanation of the glass ceiling theory that I have had presented to me boils down to in some way: luck/hardwork/getting noticed doesn't work for women.

Sandberg worked hard, got noticed, and arguably got a little lucky. Bypassing the glass ceiling would be to utilize nepotism but she went clear through it.

Perhaps it does exist, but Sandberg shows it's certainly not impermeable.

edit: s/wall/ceiling/

I don't know anyone who suggests that there is a glass ceiling preventing women from taking advantage of nepotism.

As I think about it a bit more, I disagree. Luck/hard work/getting noticed by definition really isn't about anything other than merit and luck, so if a glass ceiling exists it has to be related to nepotism.

What about family businesses being taken over more often by sons than daughters? Parents using connections to find their son a job, and find their daughter a husband?

Women who have to choose between giving their all to their career and having children because unlike Sandberg they don't have nannies or a 50/50 relationship where they can expect their husband to co-parent.

How is this a gendered issue at all?

Men are also forced to choose between non-career activities and giving their all to their career. Men who choose non-career activities rarely become COO of a $50B company.

Women who aren't mentored by the best of the best and don't have parents who are PhD (dropouts) and Ophthalmologists.

The number of women who have parents who are PhD (dropouts) and Ophthalmologists is equal (within some statistical margin of error) to the number of men who have similarly situated parents.

How is it not a gendered issue? Women are generally expected to be the primary childcare providers, and if you can't afford a nanny, the wife is going to be the one who does most of the childcare.

Any woman who chooses to spend the majority of her waking hours engaging in non-work activities did so knowing full well it will probably harm her career.

If she didn't want to do this, she could have freely chosen to a) not have children or b) have children with an unambitious man willing to become a full time parent.

If you want to argue that women are somehow "defective" because they prefer children to careers, be my guest. But it is dishonest to call it a glass ceiling - that phrase usually implies it's something inflicted on her by other people.

She could also have children with a man whose ambition is to raise children. (Don't make the mistake of thinking stay-at-home parents lack ambition! It's just directed at kids rather than money, power, or fame.)

This is a fair point - I should have said a man without career ambitions.