Sheryl Sandberg and the Crackling Hellfire of Corporate America
In publishing, there are some books that are too big to fail. Very early on you get the message that this is a Major and Very Important Book. In 2013, that book was Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which sold more than 1.5 million copies in its first year. She was the chief operating officer of Facebook, back when most of us had no understanding of the platform’s fearsome powers—in the halcyon days when we thought it was just for sharing pictures of the grandkids and ruining marriages. The book was about how women can make it to the top. It was a sort of “work-life balance” category buster, because she was telling women to pretty much forget about the “life” part.
In the weeks before the big rollout, I was contacted by editors at several publications asking if I would write something about it. I knew exactly what they wanted—not the main article, which would be a rapturous announcement of this bold American visionary. They wanted some crank to pump out a “What About the Children?” sidebar, pointing out that to lean into work you have to lean away from your family, to lend a spirit of objectivity to their 21-gun salutes to author and book. Trust me, around 2013 I
