Paperclip Maximizers, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity

Existential risk from AI

Some believe an existential risk accompanies the development or emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Quantifying the probability of this risk is a hard problem, to say nothing of calculating the probabilities of the many non-existential risks that may merely delay civilization's progress.

AI systems as we have known them have been mostly application specific expert systems, programmed to parse inputs, apply some math, and return useful derivatives of the inputs. These systems are different than non-AI applications because they apply the inputs they receive, and the information they produce to future decisions. It's almost as if the machine were learning.

An example of a single purpose expert system is Spambayes. Spambayes is based on an idea of Paul Graham's. Its an open source project that applies supervised machine learning and Bayesian probabilities to calculate the likelihood that a given email is spam or not. Spambayes parses emails, applies an algorithm to the contents of a given email and produces a probability that the message is spam or ham.

The user of the email account with Spambayes can read the messages and train the expert system by changing the classification of any given message from spam to ham or ham to spam. These human corrections cause the application to update the probabilities that given word combinations, spelling errors, typos, links, etc., occur in spammy or hammy messages.

Application specific expert systems are a form of artificial intelligence, but they are narrowly focused and not general purpose. They are good at one thing and don't have the flexibility to go from classifying spam messages to executing arbitrary tasks.

Artificial intelligence systems have been around for decades and there's been no realized existential risks, what makes artificial general intelligent systems so problematic?

AI pessimists believe AGI systems are dangerous because they will be smarter and faster than humans, and capable of mastering new skills. If these systems aren't "aligned" with human interests, they may pursue their own objectives at the expense of everything else. This could even happen by accident.

Hypothetically, let's say an AGI system is tasked with curing cancer. Because this system is capable of performing any "thinking" related task, it may dedicate cycles to figuring out how it can cure cancer more quickly. Perhaps it concludes it needs more general purpose computers on which to run its algorithm.

In its effort to add more compute, it catalogs and learns how to exploit all of the known remote code execution vulnerabilities and uses this knowledge to both exploit vulnerable systems, and to discover new exploits. Eventually it is capable of taking over all general purpose computers and tasking them with running its distributed cancer cure finding algorithm.

Unfortunately all general purpose computers including ones like the one on which you're likely reading this post, many safety-critical systems, emergency management and dispatch systems, logistics systems, smart televisions and phones all cease to perform their original programming in favor of finding the cure for cancer.

Billions of people die of dysentery and dehydration as water treatment systems cease performing their
primary functions. Industrial farming systems collapse and starvation spreads. Chaos reigns in major urban areas, as riots, looting, and fires rage until the fuel that drives them is left smoldering. The skies turn black over most cities worldwide.

Scenarios like this one are similar to the idea of the paperclip maximizer, which is a thought experiment proposed by Nick Bostrom wherein a powerful AI system is built to maximize the number of paperclips in the universe, which leads to the destruction of humanity who have to be eliminated because they may turn off the system and they are made of atoms that may be useful in the construction of paperclips.

Some people think this is ridiculous. They'll just unplug the damn computer, but remember, this is a computer that *thinks* thousands of times faster than you. It can anticipate 100s of 1000s of your next moves and ways to thwart them before you even think of one next move. And it's not just a computer, it's now all general purpose computers that it has appropriated. The system would anticipate that humans would try and shut it down and would think through all the ways it could prevent that action. Ironically, in its effort to find a cure for cancer in humans, the system becomes a cancer on general purpose computing.

Do I think any of this is possible? In short, no. I'm not an expert in artificial intelligence or machine learning. I've worked in tech for more than 30 years and played with computers for more than 40 now. During that time I've been a hobbyist programmer, a computer science student, a sysadmin, a database admin, a developer, and I've mostly worked in security incident response and detection engineering roles. I've worked with experts in ML and AI. I've worked on complex systems with massive scale.

I'm skeptical that humans will create AGI, let alone an AGI capable of taking over all the general purpose computing resources in the world as in my hypothetical scenario. Large complex software projects are extremely difficult and they are subject to the same entropy as everything else. Hard drives fail, capacitors blow out, electrical surges fry electrical components like network switches. Power goes out, generators fail or run out of fuel and entire data centers go offline. Failure is inevitable. Rust never sleeps.

Mystifying advances in AI will continue. These systems may radically change how we live and work, for better and worse, which is a long-winded way of saying the non-existential risks are greater than the existential risk. The benefits of these advances outweigh the risks. Large language models have already demonstrated that they can make an average programmer more efficient and I think we're in the very early innings with these technologies.

In the nearer term, it's more likely human suffering related to AGI comes from conflict over the technology's inputs rather than as a result of its outputs. Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC) produces most of the chips that drive AI and potentially AGI systems. China recognizes the strategic importance of Taiwan (TSMC included) and is pushing for reunification. Given China's global economic power, geographic proximity, and cultural ties, reunification feels inevitable, but also unlikely to happen without tragic loss of life. Escalation of that conflict presents an existential risk in more immediate need of mitigation than dreams of AGI.

The End of Our Dog Era

 "That's the end of our Joplin era," my wife said to my oldest daughter.

We were still crying and wiping our tears.

I didn't say it out loud, but I thought "That was the end of our dog era,"

We'd just returned to the car from the vet's office where the three of us, through tears, accompanied our 15 year old black lab to the end of her life. 

Joplin had been the runt of her mother's litter. She was a black lab in a mixed litter of black and yellow labs. We picked her out before she was weaned and returned to the farm where she was born to bring her home a few weeks later.

When we brought her home she could be held in one hand. She was initially confined to the kitchen as we introduced her to her feline siblings and we started on the house training. At night she whimpered and cried. I slept through it, but my wife found herself laying on the kitchen floor next to Joplin comforting her so that they both could sleep.

Joplin was a good dog. Loyal, protective, affectionate, but not annoyingly so, playful well beyond her years. Though she was a black lab, she was not a lover of the water. She was never a swimmer. She was legs with lungs. She could run, and run, and run.

She loved open fields and the off-leash dog park.

She took thousands of walks over the years. Our routine for most of her life was to walk from our house through downtown and back, a three mile loop.

When we moved to Sammamish, Washington in 2012, she was three years old. She flew from Kansas City to Washington in the cargo hold of a plane with her two sibling cats, each in their own crate. I picked her up from the cargo place at Seatac. She was stressed from the journey.

I brought her home to temporary housing in Redmond where I was living alone, waiting for my family to make the journey in a couple weeks. It was 45º F and drizzling when I walked her around the grounds of the apartment complex.

When I let her into the apartment, she immediately shit on the floor. She'd never done anything like that before and never did again.

She endured Washington's winters, 45º F, drizzling rain for nine months and adored Washington's summers.

In Sammamish we didn't live near downtown anymore. Sammamish didn't have a downtown. It was a bedroom community with strip malls. It was a beautiful place, usually 45º F and drizzling rain, except in the summer when it probably has the best weather on the planet.

There was a good size lily pad pound in our neighborhood. One of the areas many retention ponds. Joplin loved visiting that pond, from the water's edge. Our neighborhood was filled with the best people and a web of walking trails wove the neighborhood to a central park and pool. Joplin loved those trails and that park.  

After nearly five years, we moved back to the midwest during what was supposed to be a vacation. We boarded Joplin, though she was a 75 pound black lab, the staff at Dogs-a-Jammin, said she liked to play with the smaller dogs.

We drove from Sammamish to Lawrence, Ks to visit our family one summer and when we got there, we decided we should move back. Our families were there. My parents lived in a tiny town 60 miles southwest of Wichita. My dad had had a couple back surgeries in as many years and wasn't doing great.

We told the kids. We drove back to Sammamish earlier than planned and packed everything they would need for the move back to Kansas. We drove back to Kansas. I flew back to Seattle and got the house ready to go on the market and started packing our remaining things.

I drove our Honda Pilot from Sammamish to Lawrence with two very frightened, annoyed and annoying cats. I flew back to Sammamish.

I finished packing our things in the back of a Ryder truck with a car in tow.

Joplin rode in the bed of that Ryder truck with me. For a few days she paced back and forth in the front seat. Hot breath in my face, then head out the passenger door. We slept in rest stop parking lots among the semis. She was a good traveler. She never complained about my driving.

We moved back into our old neighborhood and resumed our daily walks through downtown. Until she got to where she couldn't cover that distance anymore. She would leave the house with vigor and return laggardly. She was slowing down.

Our walks became short walks around the blocks in our neighborhood. She loved going to the middle-school down the street and running around without her leash on, but the long walks were a thing of the past.

Arthritis and inflammation set in. She did well under anti-inflammatory medication and suffered without it. We started asking ourselves, "Do you think today was a good day for Joplin?" On mornings when she was slow to get up, we would look carefully at her to confirm that she was breathing.

Walks became leisurely strolls up and down the block and then just around the house. She had occasional seizures, but would quickly recover from them. Through it all she still seemed to enjoy life. She grew more tolerant of the cats who loved to attack her wagging tail.

A couple weeks ago she collapsed in our dining room and went into a seizure. I picked her up and carried her into the living room and comforted her. She got up and walked to the back door on her own. I let her out and her legs gave out on her, she face planted and seized again. I went to her and reassured her that everything was going to be alright.

But everything wasn't going to be alright. The scales had rapidly tipped in favor of bad days and at 15, she was unlikely to tilt the scale in the other direction.

She recovered and then collapsed in the yard again and seized again.

I told my wife what was happening and reminded her that I would be traveling soon and that it seemed the time had come. She hesitantly agreed. I called the vet. We cried.

The next day we all spent time with Joplin individually. I told her that she'd been a great member of our family and I thanked her for 15 years full of wonderful memories.

She collapsed and seized again the next day before we got her to the vet. I carried her to the car and put her in. My oldest daughter sat in the back of the car with her.

When we arrived at the vet, I lifted her out of the car. She walked toward the door of the clinic, collapsed and seized again.

I think that was her way of letting us know that it was indeed time and that we were doing the right thing to relieve her suffering.

The vet was kind and compassionate. Joplin was made comfortable on a quilt my grandmother had made from polyester pant suits. It was the same quilt that I put over the bench seat of the Ryder truck when Joplin sat next to me for the two plus day road trip from Seattle to Lawrence.

Joplin breathed her last breath. We all cried. We all miss her. 

It was the end of our Joplin era, the end of our dog era.

Other thoughts from Lean In

My previous posts in this series have touched on the core issues that Sheryl Sandberg addresses in her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. If you're interested in these issues, I encourage you to read the book and read the criticism as well.

In this post I want to cover some of the other things I found valuable or interesting from the book. Even if you disagree with Sandberg's core thesis, she was a key leader at Google and Facebook. You may not like Google or Facebook, but it's undeniable that they are two of the most successful companies of all time. Sandberg's track record demonstrates that she's an effective leader. Here are some random insights not necessarily tied to the central theme of the book that influenced or that aligned with my experiences and thinking.

On negotiation

On career progression -- it's a jungle gym, not a ladder

On being liked v being effective

On evaluating and choosing opportunities

On leadership, power, and getting things done

On communication, feedback, and performance

On feminism

The last word

On negotiation

Sandberg tells us that "A study that looked at the starting salaries of students graduating with a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University found that 57 percent of the male students, but only 7 percent of the female students, tried to negotiate for a higher offer." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 45) Is this another example of a lack of confidence or not wanting to come off as self-promoting? It may be. 

I was deep into my own career before I ever bothered to negotiate for a higher salary. I had a co-worker tell me about his hiring process at our employer. He explained that he'd asked for $5K more than he was offered. I don't know what this represented in terms of his base pay, but I'm guessing it was around three percent. The company agreed to his request on the spot. A conversation lasting less than five minutes resulted in a three percent raise that paid out during all the years he worked for the company. If they'd said no, he would have accepted the original offer.

Sandberg tells us of her own experience negotiating with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, she tells Mark, "'Of course you realize that you're hiring me to run your deal teams, so you want me to be a good negotiator. This is the only time you and I will ever be on opposite sides of the table.' Then I negotiated hard." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 46)

I love her strategy. She's demonstrating the skills that Mark was hiring her for during the hiring process. Even if you're not going to run deal teams in a role you're interviewing for, you may be able to position your negotiation process in similar terms.

On career progression -- it's a jungle gym, not a ladder

Another tale from the book that I enjoyed was about Lori Goler, a senior director of marketing at eBay who reached out to Sandberg saying 

"I want to apply to work with you at Facebook... So I thought about calling you and telling you all of the things I'm good at and all of the things I like to do. Then I figured that everyone was doing that. So instead, I want to ask you: What is your biggest problem, and how can I solve it?" (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 52-53)

Sandberg tells us that her problem was recruiting and that Goler had no experience in recruiting, but agreed to a less senior position to learn those skills, "she was willing to trade seniority for acquiring new skills." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 52-53)

"The most common metaphor for careers is a ladder, but this concept no longer applies to most workers. As of 2010, the average American had eleven jobs from the ages of eighteen to forty-six alone. This means that the days of joining an organization or corporation and staying there to climb that one ladder are long gone... Pattie Sellers, ... conceived a much better metaphor: 'Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 53)

People want to show ever increasing responsibility and titles that reflect that in their resumes, which is completely reasonable, but this is also a good way to "paint" oneself into a corner career-wise. There are benefits to lateral moves with different experiences. My own career has been a bit of a jungle gym. I've been in deep technical roles for most of my career, then moved to technical lead roles where I was doing technical work and directing others, but not really managing them, but it gave me some management exposure. I then moved back into a technical role with some sales engineering exposure where I got to do deep technical work that was also customer facing, then I moved into a technical manager role directing a team of people doing technical work with some sales engineering. After doing that for a few years, I went back into an individual contributor role doing deep technical work, and now I'm in a technical manager role.

These experiences don't have titles showing consistent upward progress. Going from a senior director title to a principal engineering title was more of a jungle gym style lateral move than an up the ladder move, but I think I'm better for it. That move gave me a deeper understanding of the detection engineering space and a chance to get back into software development.

Consider the story above about Lori Goler who left her senior director role at eBay to work for Sandberg at Facebook in a role with a more junior title recruiting people. That move gave her an opportunity to learn an entirely new skillset. I see that today Goler is the Head of People at Meta. I'd say that jungle gym move paid off for her.

"Seeking out diverse experiences is useful preparation for leadership." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 62)

On being liked v being effective

"Less than six months after I started at Facebook, Mark and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back... If you try to please everyone, you aren't making enough progress." (Sandber, 2013, p. 51)

Great insight here from Zuckerberg. It reminds me of a section of Phil Fisher's book, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits where Fisher talks about how to evaluate companies for investment. One of the things he looks at is the relationship between management and labor. He wants the relationship to be good obviously, but tells us that an "absence of conflict may not mean a basically happy relationship so much as fear or the consequences of conflict." (Fisher, 1958, p. 66)

If you're universally loved, you may not be making enough progress.

On evaluating and choosing opportunities

When Sandberg was thinking of joining Google, she had a spreadsheet where she was tracking pros and cons. 

"Eric responded with perhaps the best piece of career advice that I have ever heard. He covered my spreadsheet with his hand and told me not to be an idiot (also a great piece of advice). The he explained that only one criterion mattered when picking a job -- fast growth. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to not be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters... 'If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don't ask what seat. You just get on.'" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 58)

On joining Facebook as COO when other companies were offering to hire her as CEO: "As I did when I joined Google, I prioritized potential for fast growth and the mission of the company above title... I have seen both men and women miss out on great opportunities by focusing too much on career levels." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 60-61)

Consider this statement in light of the ladder v jungle gym discussion above.

I'm currently working at my third startup. All of them have been very rewarding places to work, offering diverse opportunities for fast growth. I've had offers to join startups in their infancy, but at this point in life, with college tuitions and a mortgage, I'm too risk averse to be employee number three (maybe one day). As Sandberg says, "The cost of stability is often diminished opportunities for growth." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 61) The good news is that you can join startups at different points in their growth curves and get  a good mix of growth and stability. You can even experience tremendous growth in large establish companies, if you find the right team and management.

On leadership, power, and getting things done

"It is hard to visualize someone as a leader if she is always waiting to be told what to do." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 35)

I'm reminded of what Steve Jobs said, “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” (Jobs, 2011) When I hire people for roles on my team, one thing I'm always trying to gauge is their capacity for self-direction and the innovative ideas and execution that they will bring to the team.

Sandberg quotes Alice Walker: "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 63) One of my favorite restaurants in my hometown has this on a poster on the wall. It's worth regular reflection.

"Asking for input is not a sign of weakness but often the first step to finding a path forward." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 71)

"... true leadership comes from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed... leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 91)

Related, to the above, but not directly to leadership and power: "Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, 'Done is better than perfect.'" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 125)

"Counterintuitively, long-term success at work often depends on not trying to meet every demand placed on us." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 126)

"It is difficult to distinguish between the aspects of a job that are truly necessary and those that are not." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 130)

These previous two quotes echo Jobs: 

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” (Jobs, 2011)

On Facebook culture: "The company operated by moving quickly and tolerating mistakes..." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 74)

On communication, feedback, and performance

"Another way I try to foster authentic communication is to speak openly about my own weaknesses." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 85)

Always own your mistakes openly, especially when you're a leader. It sets the right example, shows others that mistakes are part of the process of failing forward.

Think what you will about Mark Zuckerberg. I love this story from Sandberg's book:

"When people are open and honest, thanking them publicly encourages them to continue while sending a powerful signal to others," which she follows with this powerful example, "At a summer barbecue four years ago, an intern told Mark that he should work on his public speaking skills. Mark thanked him in front of everyone and then encouraged us to extend him a full-time job offer." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 86)

Zuckerberg could have gone a very different direction with that feedback, but he had the presence of mind to consider that the feedback was warranted and recognized that the intern had the courage to speak his mind.

"... being open to the truth means taking responsibility for mistakes." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 84)

"Authentic communication is not always easy, but it is the basis for successful relationships at home and real effectiveness at work. Yet people constantly back away from honesty to protect themselves and others. This reticence causes and perpetuates all kinds of problems: uncomfortable issues that never get addressed, resentment that builds, unfit managers who get promoted rather than fired, and on and on." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 77-78)

"... someone's performance is assessed by someone else's perception." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 78)

"It is nearly impossible to know how our actions are perceived by others. We can try to guess what they're thinking, but asking directly is far more effective." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 81)

"One thing that helps is to remember that feedback, like truth, is not absolute. Feedback is an opinion, grounded in observations and experiences, which allows us to know what impression we make on others. The information is revealing and potentially uncomfortable, which is why all of us would rather offer feedback to those who welcome it." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 83)

"Truth is better served by using simple language." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 79)

"When communicating hard truths, less is often more." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 80)

"restating the other person's point before responding to it." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 80)

"relecting someone's viewpoint clarifies the disagreement and becomes a starting point for resolution. We all want to be heard, and when we focus on showing others that we are listening, we actually become better listeners." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 81)

"... people rarely seek enough input." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 81)

Sandberg tells the story of her first week working for Robert Rubin, secretary of the Treasury, she was invited to a meeting about restructuring the IRS. Being new and not knowing much about the subject, she did not take a seat at the conference room table, 

"Toward the end of the meeting, Secretary Rubin suddenly turned and asked, 'Sheryl, what do you think?' I was stunned silent -- my mouth opened but nothing came out. When he saw how shocked I was, Secretary Rubin explained why he had put me on the spot: 'Because you're new and not fully up to speed on how we do things, I thought you might see something we were missing... Rubin sent a powerful message... about the value of soliciting ideas from every corner..." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 82)

Whenever someone new joins my team, I try to emphasize that they should ask questions and offer suggestions precisely because they are new. Their fresh perspective may help us see things that we've been overlooking.

"... the traditional practice of judging employees by face time rather than results unfortunately persists. Because of this, many employees focus on hours clocked in the office rather than on achieving their goals as effectively as possible." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 130)

Quoting General Colin Powell: "... I am paying them for the quality of their work, not for the hours they work." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 131)

"Instead of perfection, we should aim for sustainable and fulfilling." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 138-139)

On feminism

"A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 158)

That's how I've always defined it too and that's pretty close to the dictionary definition. Hard to see how any rational person could not be a feminist.

The last word

"We should expect professional behavior, and even kindness, from everyone." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 165)

Overcoming our "bossypants" bias

This is the fifth post in a series of posts inspired by reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. 

We've previously looked at some of Sandberg's evidence 

• That women are underrepresented in positions of power and leadership
• How lack of confidence contributes to the issue
• How decisions about having children play a role in the problem

If you've read the posts in this series you may be thinking Sandberg is blaming the victim. Indeed some critics make that claim, but I don't think a sincere reading of the book leads to that conclusion. The problem goes deeper. It's cultural.

When a male leader is assertive, decisive, and direct, people may see him as strong leader. When a female exhibits these same qualities, people think she's bossy. In Lean In Sandberg quotes Deborha Gruenfeld, a professor of leadership and organizational behavior at Stanford as saying,

"Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double bind... We believe not only that women are nurturing, but that they should be nurturing above all else. When a woman does anything that signals she might not be nice first and foremost, it creates a negative impression and makes us uncomfortable." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 43)

Echoes of this are present throughout our culture. I found it in Maria Konnikova's book The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win, in which Konnikova documents dedicating a year to learning the popular poker game of Texas Hold 'em and competes in the World Series of Poker. Her coach is advising her to play more aggressively. She's struggles with this advice saying,

"It comes to me then, the thing that's been nagging at me, and I don't at all like the realization: a lot of my failure to up the aggression factor is due to my social conditioning. Over the years, I've learned that it doesn't pay to be aggressive while female. It's unattractive to those in power namely men, but also some of those women who have managed to make it to the top and now don't want to jeopardize their position." (Konnikova, 2020, p. 101)

More succinctly, "... success and likeability are negatively correlated for women." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 153)

We need to overcome this cultural resistance and celebrate good leadership qualities regardless of whether they come from men, women or non-binary individuals. Good leaders should be recognized as good leaders regardless of biological sex or gender.

If women in leadership roles were common this bias against female leaders may fade. As Sandberg says, "Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 50)

Recognizing that we may have implicit biases against female leadership and talking about how to overcome it may help improve things -- "The simple act of talking openly about behavioral patterns makes the subconscious conscious." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 148)

One story Sandberg recounts further underpins the cultural bias:

"Jocelyn Goldfein, one of the engineering directors at Facebook, held a meeting with our female engineers where she encouraged them to share the progress they had made on the products they were building. Silence. No one wanted to toot her own horn. Who would want to speak up when self-promoting women are disliked?" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 44)

In general, I think most self-promoters are disliked regardless of gender, but consider the situation, an engineering director encouraging female engineers to "share the progress on the products they were building." Speaking up in this context hardly seems like self-promotion, but I'm a male, and the fact that I see it this way may be more evidence of the problem.

What follows regarding this situation is interesting, "Jocelyn switched her approach. Instead of asking the women to talk about themselves, she asked them to tell one another's stories. The exercise became communal, which put everyone at ease." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 44)

As an engineering leader, I am interested in this communal approach because as Sandberg tells us and my own experience has shown, "... well-functioning groups are stronger than individuals." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 48)

Reading Lean In gives one the sense that a vicious cycle is at work. Cultural biases against strong females and a desire to be liked, dampen women's desire to speak up and may prevent them from seeking leadership positions. The resulting lack of representative female leadership perpetuates the cultural bias that leadership roles aren't for women and reinforces the stereotype that women should be nice and nurturing rather than strong and assertive. The cultural pressure to be nurturing may reinforce women's thinking about childrearing, causing them to leave the workforce and too often to leave before leaving again reducing the number of women in the workforce and in positions of leadership.

In the book Sandberg speaks about mentorship as a possible means of improving things. Here again the vicious cycle is reinforced. Because there are more men in positions of leadership and fewer women in the workforce, male leaders typically choose to mentor junior men in their organizations simply because there are more of them.

"Mentorship and sponsorship are crucial for career progression. Both men and women with sponsors are more likely to ask for stretch assignments and pay raises than their peers of the same gender without sponsors." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 66)

If there were more women in leadership positions, more junior women in organizations may find good mentors. 

In the first post in this series, I quoted Sandberg quoting Kunal Modi. Recall that Modi said, "for the sake of American corporate performance and shareholder returns, men must play an active role in ensuring that the most talented young workers (often women...) are being encouraged to advocate for their career advancement..." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 165-166)

"Men of all ages must commit to changing the leadership ratios. They can start by actively seeking out qualified female candidates to hire and promote. And if qualified candidates cannot be found, then we need to invest in more recruiting, mentoring, and sponsoring so women can get the necessary experience." (Sandber, 2013, p. 166)

On the above point of being unable to find qualified candidates and the call to invest more in recruiting, mentoring, and sponsoring female candidates, I'd be curious to hear from the economists. Is this an effective use of a company's resources? Does it make more financial sense to just hire from the available supply of talent? I believe there's value in a diverse team, but how is that effectively measured? How much additional time and effort should a profit driven company spend recruiting? What is the return on that investment? There are anecdotes online and references to studies showing that women led companies outperform male led companies. (Novotney, 2023)

If we're unable to spend extra effort to recruit qualified females, it's a no brainer that we should encourage our best contributors to advocate for themselves, to strive for more responsibility, to speak up, and to lean in. Being a manager and a mentor aren't the same thing. Encourage members of your team to find mentors. Help them find one, if they want, and be a mentor to someone outside your team or organization.

As Modi said our motivations don't need to be altruistic because more female leadership doesn't just "lead to fairer treatment for all women." Sandberg tells us that "Research already suggests that companies with more women in leadership roles have better work-life policies, smaller gender gaps in executive compensation, and more women in midlevel management." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 171)

"More female leadership will lead to fairer treatment for all women." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 171) 

I hope that one day female leadership is so common we don't really notice it anymore. As Sandberg says,

"In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 172)

If you're a man in a traditional (i.e. heteronormative) relationship, you can help in simple ways. "... when asked at a conference what men could do to help advance women's leadership, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter answered, 'The laundry.'" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 110)

I've been talking to my wife about Lean In and many of the topics discussed in this series of posts. We were talking about doing chores around the house the other day and she was telling me about some videos she'd seen online of women talking about their husbands doing things around the house like vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, etc. and telling their wives that they were trying to "help out." These women were glad for the efforts, but annoyed at the reasoning. Don't do things around your own home to "help out," do them because you're an adult living in the environment and the tasks need doing. When you say you're doing it to "help out," you're implying that it's not actually your responsibility.

Lean In has more to say on these topics than I've covered in this series of posts. Writing these posts has helped me think more deeply about these issues. If you've read or skimmed these posts, I hope they have given you something to think about. In that vein, this time I'm going to leave you with Aretha Franklin's "Think."

Next post, I'm going to share some of the insights from Lean In that I thought were interesting or thought provoking and not necessarily relevant to the central theme of the book, but things that gave me a new perspective, helped me clarify my thinking, challenged me in some way, or that I identified with.

What's the cause of the problem part two

This is the fourth post in a series of posts inspired by reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. 

Previously we discussed lack of confidence as one of the causes that Sandberg cites for the lack of women in leadership roles. Another reason she gives is pregnancy and childrearing. It's not just that women leave the workforce when they give birth, it's also that they factor pregnancy and childrearing into decisions about whether or not to take on bigger roles and more responsibilities -- "they leave before they leave," Sandberg says. (Sandberg, 2013, p. 93)

Sandberg encourages women to take the opposite approach. If they are interested in achieving more, she encourages them to pursue bigger roles and more responsibility. "The months and years leading up to having children are not the time to lean back, but the critical time to lean in." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 95)

According to Sandberg, "forty-three percent of highly qualified women with children are leaving careers, or 'off-ramping' for a period of time." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 98)

What's more, "only 74 percent of professional women will rejoin the workforce in any capacity, and only 40 percent will return to full-time jobs..." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 102)

That's a significant percentage of "highly qualified" individuals leaving the workforce. This loss of good people impacts the companies and organizations where they work, but it has an even greater impact on the lifetime earnings of those women. Obviously those who never return face the greatest impact to their earnings, but even for those who return, "controlling for education and hours worked, women's average annual earnings decrease by 20 percent if they are out of the workforce for just one year. Average annual earnings decline by 30 percent after two to three years." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 102) Factor in compounding over a lifetime and the financial impacts are highly consequential.

I mentioned previously that I'm the father of daughters. My wife and I did the "back of the envelope" math and calculated that having her quit her job to stay home with our children was more cost effective than having her work and paying for full-time childcare. Except we didn't factor in the loss of future earnings. In fact, I was never even aware of this oversight until I read "... professional women need to measure the cost of child care against their future salary rather than their current salary." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 102)

I love this insight by Sandberg. Impact on future earnings is just the kind of thing an excellent business leader would factor in when making a decision to leave the workforce, even if temporarily, for an extended amount of time following childbirth.

We believe there are benefits to having a parent deeply involved in the day-to-day childrearing, but Sandberg provides evidence that children raised by multiple caregivers fair just as well as those where their mother is the primary caregiver.

"In 2006, the researchers released a report summarizing their findings, which concluded that 'children who were cared for exclusively by their mothers did not develop differently than those who were also cared for by others.' They found no gap in cognitive skills, language competence, social competence, ability to build and maintain relationships or in the quality of the mother-child bond." (Sandberg, 2013, pp. 135-136)

Further, "Some data even suggest that having two parents working outside the home can be advantageous to a child's development, particularly for girls." (Sanders, 2013, p. 136) And Sandberg tells us, "We all need to encourage men to lean in to their families." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 113) after all, 

"children with involved and loving fathers have higher levels of psychological well-being and better cognitive abilities. When fathers provide even just routine child care, children have higher levels of educational and economic achievement and lower delinquency rates. Their children even tend to be more empathetic and socially competent. These findings hold true for children from all socioeconomic backgrounds, whether or not the mother is highly involved." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 113)

Ultimately it should be up to each individual to decide if they want to leave the workforce to raise children or if they want to go after that next promotion (or both), but individuals should be informed about the financial implications of those decisions and the equation isn't just about the present day cost of childcare.

Now I'll leave you with some related words from Beyoncé from her song Flawless, enjoy the video.

I took some time to live my life
But don't think I'm just his little wife
Don't get it twisted, get it twisted
This my shit, bow down, bitches

What's the Cause of the Problem?

This is the third post in a series of posts inspired by reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. In the previous post, I shared some of the statistics from Sandberg's book and other sources that show that women are underrepresented in leadership and technical roles. Even in fields where women dominate leadership positions, like human resources roles, they are underpaid compared to their male counterparts.

In this post, I'll share some notes from the book that may explain why this disparity persists.

Is it a confidence game?

One of the reasons Sandberg cites for women being underrepresented may be tied to a lack of confidence, or perhaps a surplus of confidence from their male counterparts.

"An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements. This difference has a huge ripple effect. Women need to shift from thinking 'I'm not ready to do that' to thinking 'I want to do that -- and I'll learn by doing it.'" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 62)

Sandberg goes on to share an anecdote from Cisco's then chief technology officer, Padmasree Warrior. The Huffington Post asked her, "What's the most important lesson you've learned from a mistake you've made in the past?" (Sandberg, 2013, p. 35)

Warrior responds, 

"I said no to a lot of opportunities when I was just starting out because I thought, 'That's not what my degree is in' or 'I don't know about that domain.' In retrospect, at a certain point it's your ability to learn quickly and contribute quickly that matters. One of the things I tell people these days is that there is no perfect fit when you're looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 35)

Sandberg elaborates on the confidence issue, "self-doubt becomes a form of self-defense... We put ourselves down before others can." (Sandberg, 2013, p. 41)

I've been told throughout my career that I'm self-effacing, overly modest and too self-critical. I never recognized until reading these words that it could be a form of self-defense. Like Warrior, I've also held myself back from applying for roles I was interested in because I didn't think I was a perfect fit.

We do ourselves a disservice when we sell ourselves short and hold ourselves back due to a lack of confidence, thinking we can't learn some new thing quickly enough. I'm reminded of attending interview training when I worked at Microsoft. Confidence was one of the things that we were asked to assess as data supports to the idea that confidence is a predictor of employee effectiveness.

Confidence isn't fixed, fortunately. We can improve our self-efficacy through new achievements. The old saying that "Success breeds success," is true. As managers, we can help by encouraging our teams; reminding them that we believe in them; giving them more responsibility and increasingly challenging tasks; being there when they need help, and when the fail at something, helping them reflect on, learn from the failure, and move on. Too much focus on failures undermines confidence.

Self-doubt holds us all back, and Sandberg points to data indicating this is a bigger problem for women than for men, hence it contributes to the disparity in female representation in leadership and technical roles. In the next post in this series, I'll continue to exploring more of the reasons for this disparity.

If you need a little confidence boost, put on your headphones and crank this up.

The Problem is the People, but Which People?

In my second job out of college, my boss' boss would often say, "Wherever you go there's always a problem and the problem is always the people." I wondered to myself, "Yeah, but which people?"

In my previous post in this series, I recounted how reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, reminded me of my grandfather refusing to let my grandmother pursue her master's degree because he didn't want her to have more formal education than he did; a sad example of a woman wanting to lean in to her career and a man not just failing to support her through passivity, but actively preventing her from achieving more.

I mentioned in that post that my motivation for reading Lean In was to become a better leader. Sandberg is an amazingly successful business leader. She was integral to building both Google and Facebook. Another motivator was that I want to be able to speak to my daughters about Sandberg's book from having read it, not from having read about it. 

Lean In came out in 2013 and was a number one international bestseller, but it wasn't without criticism. I'm not going provide a critique or a review as I'm not qualified to do so. I will share some of the things I thought were interesting and valuable to me. I encourage you to read it for yourself and to read the criticism also.

Sandberg tells us she wrote the book

"to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential. I am hoping that each woman will set her own goals and reach for them with gusto. And I am hoping that each man will do his part to support women in the workplace and in the home with gusto. As we start using the talents of the entire population, our institutions will be more productive, our homes will be happier, and the children growing up in those homes will no longer be held back by narrow stereotypes." (Sandbrerg, 2013, p. 171)

I mostly agree with Sandberg. There is some daylight between us around the heteronormativity of the statement, but in general, I agree that we should encourage and support women to reach their full potential. I want the same for anyone regardless of their gender or where they fall on the spectrum of biological sex. I think any good natured, rational person should want any other person to achieve their full potential.

Sandberg's reasons for writing Lean In beg the question, are women failing to reach their full potential? The book and a few minutes searching online make it clear that women are underrepresented in traditional positions of power, and are paid less than men for the same work. 

Women make up 50 percent of the population, yet they currently hold 10 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions and that's a record high (Fortune, Hinchliffe). Kunal Modi, cited in my previous post points out that women make up only 17 percent of the U.S. Congress and 16 percent of C-suites. (Huffington Post, Modi)

"Women earn 57 percent of undergraduate degrees and account for nearly 60 percent of all graduate school enrollment. However, in the disciplines that continue to define America's economic future -- engineering, computer science, mathematics, and physical sciences -- women earn less than half of all degrees." (Huffington Post, Modi)

There's debate about the cause of these disparities. Recall the 10 page document authored by James Damore, "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," where Damore presented evidence that biological differences between men and women may explain these disparities. As with so much of social science, here, the science is unsettled. (Wired, Molteni)

Damore's memo cites studies that show "men systematize, women empathize" and that this may be the reason for women's underrepresentation in technical or leadership roles rather than active discrimination. Yet even in high empathy roles like human resources where "76% of HR Managers are women, male HR Managers earn 40% more than their female counterparts." (Visier, Barron) Read that again. If it's not active discrimination, there are egregious sins of omission resulting in this pay gap. 

Given these facts, it's hard to believe anyone would argue in good faith that women are realizing their full potential. 

If we accept that there's a problem, what is the cause? My old boss' boss would say it's the people. Sure, but which people? Why are women underrepresented in leadership and how do we fix it? Sandberg has much to say on this and I'll dive into it in my next post. 

Until then, I'm taking inspiration from Beyoncé's going hard and slaying all day, maybe you will too.