Sheryl Sandberg Keynote for #GHC15

So congratulations, Mikkel and Daniela. We've been lucky to hear from some truly exceptional speakers over the past day. All of them are wonderful examples of why it is our time to lead and Mikkel and Daniela have been no exception. There are few people who can capture the full spectrum of what it means to be a great leader. Our next speaker is one of those rare people and we're excited to have her return to GHC. As a chief operating officer of Facebook, she has participated in taking it from the largest social network to a global phenomenon with over a billion users internationally. In all of her roles, whether at Facebook, at Google, at the U.S. Treasury, Cheryl has been a world class leader. But what she has also made clear is her commitment to women around the world. She has elevated the conversation surrounding women in technology and business, helping to drive much of the much needed change. I've watched her personally make time for many women, including me, and support and honor how important it is to have women at the table for leadership. I admire her courage, her commitment to shedding light on so many of the challenges that we face. I also thank her for her continuing support for the Nina Borg Institute and its mission. Two and a half years ago, Cheryl launched the LeanIn.org and started a movement to encourage women to come together in support of each other's career goals. ABA has been a proud partner of LeanIn since the beginning, creating circles for women technologists. This year, we announced a partnership with LeanIn, with Facebook and LinkedIn to create LeanIn circles for computer science and engineering chapters, academic chapters at 2,000 different places. We are excited to launch our ABI content and curriculum through LeanIn. The first module that will be available is on technical interviews. If you want to learn more about that, you should attend one of the LeanIn sessions tomorrow. I can tell you, they will be great. It has been an inspiring journey to work with the LeanIn team. To tell you more about it, we have a LeanIn video. Here, stay tuned. One year ago for my mother for Christmas, and I totally fell in love with all of the topics Cheryl mentioned in that book. And so I started to lean in, and within one year, everything changed in my life. I went abroad to Colombia. I live in New York right now, and I got an awesome internship at Facebook. So having a support network for me makes a world of difference. It's so much better to know that I'm not going at something alone, but instead have folks surrounding me, supporting me, and frankly providing great guidance and feedback. Because that's how I grow. I grow through partnership. I grow with my peers and because of my peers, as opposed to simply trying to function like an island. And every stage of my life had challenges, whether I was going to college, whether it was that first job, or whether it was like in mid-career. Every step of the way, I needed someone to talk to and someone to share those challenges with and push me forward. Being a part of LeanIn Circle is very special to me because it allows me to interact with a small group of individuals. Before that, I have been a part of women's organizations that were very supportive and helpful in the development of my career, but were always larger. Having a smaller group really allows me to share my goals and fears and know that the people around me share my goals and fears as well, but are there to hold me accountable to what I promise that I'll do and really help me push myself out of that comfort zone. I'm really excited that we at Facebook have partnered up with our friends at LinkedIn, LeanIn, and of course the Anita Borg Institute, because we realized that we can't solve this problem of increasing the representation of women in computer science and engineering fields alone. It's about partnership and we are creating our own circle, if you will, to help resolve this issue because collectively we can definitely change things. I think it's fantastic that large companies like LeanIn, Facebook, LinkedIn, and ABI are coming together on a cause. It really takes critical mass in order to make a difference of getting more women in tech and staying in tech. So we are thrilled to welcome Cheryl back to the Grace Hopper celebration, and I'm also delighted to welcome Nora Denzel, who's the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Anita Borg Institute. She's a computer scientist by background and is also an independent board director for Ericsson, AMD, and Outerwall. She's also no stranger to the GAC stage. She gave a great keynote in 2012. We're very fortunate to hear from Cheryl and Nora as they have a candid conversation about what it means to be an effective leader and why it is so important to have women at the table creating technology. Please welcome to the stage my dear friends Cheryl Sandberg and Nora Denzel. Thank you. What an audience. It's kind of like work every day, right, everyone? And not to be outdone, I gave a keynote in 2013. Now the first math question and only math question, this is the only quiz we're going to have, is one of our keynotes, and I'm not going to say which one, got 5.6 million hits, and the other one got 5.6 thousand hits. So we're not going to, there's no comparison here, there's no, one is 5 point, one is 5k, one is 5 meg. So I see my friend Alan Eustace sitting in the front row. Can I share the story of that first keynote quickly? It's a good story. So I was asked to keynote Grace Hopper for many years, several years, and I kept saying no because I'm not technical, I don't code, and I felt like I didn't belong on the stage. And then I realized that one of the people who continually asked me to keynote was Alan Eustace, my dear friend from Google, and I realized he's not even a woman. So this is a conference for women in tech, he's got half covered, I've got half covered, he had no problem keynoting, and then I came. Thank you Alan for that invitation. We all thank Alan Eustace. I think there's a thousand women in this room that thank Alan Eustace, he's such an ally and such a mentor to so many of us. But I want to start back in 2010 was the first talk that I saw, the TED talk, the bellwether TED talk. 2010, you talked about gender diversity. Since then you've been to ABI twice now, you've written a best-selling book, you sparked a global conversation. I'm serious, everywhere around the world this has put the elephant front and center and in the room. So everything is wonderful except for one thing, the numbers haven't moved. And so how optimistic are you about the progress of gender diversity in light of the numbers not moving since your seminal speech in 2010? So the numbers aren't moving. Now you look at an audience like this, 12,000 women in technology and you feel very optimistic, right? Applause for you guys. But the numbers for women in leadership aren't moving and the numbers for women in tech aren't moving, and if they're moving they're moving in the wrong direction. A couple years ago we had an intern class at Facebook and I asked one of the young men, I kind of said, where are all the women? And he looked at me and he said, not joking, there are more Daves than girls in the CS department at my school. And he said it with a straight face, I said, you must be joking. He said, no, no, no, I'm not joking. But so here's the problem. These are great jobs. These are important jobs. These are the highest impact jobs I think exist. These are the jobs that are creating productivity. These are the jobs that are creating economic growth. They're also well paid and incredibly flexible. These are great jobs. And women are getting 18% of the CS degrees down from in the mid 30% in 1980. Black women are getting three and Hispanic women are getting 1.5. Now, no problem has ever been solved by thinking we can't solve the problem. So of course we can solve the problem. We can solve the problem because we know women are excelling in school. So we know women can get into these careers. We know that we can change the stereotypes. And we know that the women here are going to lead not just for themselves, but for the women who come behind you. Great. All right. Well, you hit on pay. So let's talk about pay. Nationally with all jobs, I think we make, the government says we make 77 cents to a man's dollar. Now you said computer science and engineering, it's a little bit better. We're 88 cents to a dollar. So we got that going for us, which is nice. And we've seen progress. It's gone up a penny and a half. A penny and a half since 2011. So on that rate, you and I will be what, 256 when we get to parity, which will be super. But I did the math. Can you tell? But on that pay gap, so some people, first of all, some people call the pay gap a big myth. And it's being propagated by people like us. What do you say to that? Well, it's a great day to ask the question because today, October 15th, is Latina Equal Pay Day. And what that means, it's kind of an applause line, but kind of not, right? So what that means is that for a white man who has worked till the end of the year in 2014, a Latina, Hispanic woman will have to have worked until today to make equal pay because it's 54 cents on the dollar. So you're exactly right. A lot of people say the pay gap's a myth. So let's break it down. If you compare average women to average men, it's 78 cents right now. Women make 78 percent, 78 cents on the dollar. If you equalize for hours worked, you get to 81 cents. I could argue that given that women have unequal responsibilities at home, there's a lot of sexism in hours worked, but let's give the critics that. Now we're at 81 cents. You're there. The next equalization you would do is you would do equalization for industry pay gaps. That gets you to 91 cents. The problem with that is that when women go into a field, pay goes down, and when men go into a field, pay goes up. So there is inherently a lot of gender discrimination in those industry differences. But even if you want to do the most conservative math you could do, you're still at 91 cents, and that's not okay. And so the pay gap is real. I think a lot of companies are taking steps. We've done this at Facebook for a long time. We look at our own data every year, every cycle, by level, by performance. We are looking to make sure that women are getting paid fairly to men. We're looking at our ratings. We're looking at our promotion rating. Every company should be doing this, and they are. And women need to negotiate. We have a lot of educational materials up at leanin.org, but we have heavy traffic to our negotiating stuff because we actually don't get what we're not and what we don't ask for. And there's a right way to negotiate, and there's a successful way to negotiate, and you all can do it. And you should. Wow. You know, that reminds me of a question. If you feel you're underpaid and you feel you need a raise, how would you ask your boss if you were a young female engineer, hypothetically? So in order to answer that question well, you have to actually go to one of the really big problems women have, which is the competence versus likability problem. So stereotypes are deeply self-reinforcing because as human beings, we process very implicitly. By the time we saw a lion coming at us and we processed deductively, okay, four legs, tail, that's a lion. You would be dead. So can't do that. So whatever we believe, whatever our stereotypes are, they hold because it influences our behavior because we're processing so quickly. So that means we like people that adhere to their stereotypes. All over the world, there are these huge cultural differences. Think about within our own country, different industries, go to Asia, go to China, go to Europe, except on gender, where our cultural biases and stereotypes are actually the same. Everywhere in the world, we believe men should lead, should be powerful, should be technical, should have answers to problems, and we believe women should be supportive of others' communal followers. That's what we believe. So that means that when men get more successful, they are better liked because they're adhering to our stereotypes, and when women get more successful, they are less liked. Similar to negotiation, when men advocate on their own behalf, everyone's fine. He should be. When women advocate on their own behalf, you're going against the stereotype, and even if you win that negotiation, it can be negative. And so let's start by saying, I don't want to give any of this advice to any women. I want the world to be different, I want the stereotypes to change, and I want you all to be able to negotiate the same way a man can. Until we get there, you might as well negotiate well. And the way to do that is make it a communal ask. So, I know the data. Women get paid less than men. I'd like to know in getting this offer if I'm getting paid fairly to my male colleagues at the same level. I have talked to someone else, and that someone else has suggested anything that ties your pay into other people's. The funniest part for me is that, you know, I wrote Lean In, and I gave this advice in Lean In, and one of the things that our data shows is that all over the world, people actually use the book. They say, I read this book. I need to negotiate. I brought it with me. But what's interesting about that is that's actually being communal, because when you're asking, you're not just saying, I need this for me. You're saying, I need this because it's fair, and it's not just for me, it's for all women. A lot of specific advice on our site, if anyone wants to look. Awesome. So, you're saying go right in, bring in communal advice, ask straight in. And ask. And ask. And ask. Super. Awesome. All right. So, I want to talk about the word feminist. Now, not a day goes by lately that you don't read the news, and by the news, I mean Us Magazine, where there's a Hollywood celebrity. Maybe you read, I know you probably read something else, but Hollywood celebrities are coming out and saying, I'm a feminist, and others that were saying they were feminists are now saying they're not a feminist, and some that were not feminists are now saying they are feminists. In fact, again, in the news the other day, I'm sure you read it, but it was in Elle Magazine, and they had a, I don't know, you probably didn't see it. I think you were in it. There was a Venn diagram. I didn't see this. You can see the difference between someone with a day job and someone without one, but there was a Venn diagram. You didn't see it, but there's a Venn diagram, and it segments people of interest, Hollywood actresses mostly, although you're included, I think, and your hair was longer, and you have like Meryl Streep, Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and they're saying if they're feminists or not. So, I know you talked a little bit about that in Lean In. I'm wondering, do you use the word feminist? Do you consider yourself a feminist? I do. I'm a feminist, but I felt like I came out. So, it's a little bit of a biased crowd, but show of hands. Be honest. Who would consider themselves a feminist? So, interesting. If you look out half, what do you get? Yeah, yeah. I think at least, well, we can't see well, but... So, here's the data. Here's the data. American women, 35% will say they're a feminist. If you add a definition, which is feminism means you believe in equality for gender, you get to 70%. The word has had a hard time. I actually think words matter. I think we need to bring back the word feminism and get rid of the word bossy, but I think the concept is real, and what everyone has to understand is that equality is good for all of us. One of the things we've thought about a lot at Lean In is how we bring men into the conversation, and one of the ways we do that is we make the case not just that it's the right and fair thing to do, although it is, but that it's better for you as a man. So, at the workplace, if you can work better with half the population, you're going to outperform. I mean, I am sitting here, again, looking at my friend Alan Eustace, who ran engineering at Google for a really long time and was one of my favorite people to ever work with, and looking at my friend Mike Schrepper, who's the Facebook CTO, one of my closest friends. We work together. We sit next to each other. We work together every day. These are men who work unbelievably well with everyone, and look where their careers are. They become the head of engineering at Google. They become the CTO at Facebook. That doesn't happen when you can only work with half the population, and so whether you're the most entry-level employee or whether you're the most senior-level employee, actually understanding the issues women face and being able to work with them makes you outperform. In your personal life, I know there are some college students here. Women ask me all the time who to date. I say men that come to these events. Wow. Really? This is a target-rich environment. All right. There was a young guy. We had an event like this at Facebook for people from different companies and colleges. This young guy was beaming. He came up to me. He's like, this was the best day of my life. He doesn't get out much, Cheryl. No, but it's true. He had 200 women turn around and be like, you're here. But if you have an equal marriage and equal relationship and equal partnership, now, same-sex couples have that very naturally. It's a safe place to be if that's your choice. But if it's not, if you have an equal one, then you will have a happier marriage, more sex. There's data behind this. And for children, for children, better outcomes. Children with active fathers are better in school. They're healthier. They're happier. They're more successful professionally. And so we make the case to include men, not because it's good for women, but because it's good for men. My favorite is when I go to the park and I see a man I know and he's with his children. I say, hey, what are you doing? He says, my wife has a dentist appointment, so I'm babysitting. Oh, no, not the B word. I'm babysitting. Did you have those children? Are they your own? Are you getting paid? He says, no, I'm not getting paid. I'm just babysitting for her. I said, I think you're, wait a second, what's the word? Parenting. So don't marry one of those. I asked them the question, if you're watching the children in the park while I'm at the dentist, are you A, parenting, B, babysitting, C, going to get more tonight? Okay. I think what you said is if they do laundry, you have a better relationship. That's right. That's right. I say, if you want to do something for your wife or girlfriend tonight, don't buy flowers, do laundry. All right. The head of the FTD heard me say this publicly, so he sent a huge bouquet to the office with a note, can't you tell people to buy flowers and do laundry? Well, now they have that new tide bouquet. I've adjusted, and now I try to say flowers and laundry. Okay, so flowers and laundry. Okay, so don't give up on the flowers. So I'll put the flowers in the tide box and then give it. That's right. We'll see how we do. We'll see how we do. All right, so we saw a great video, and I noticed a lot of your alma mater, it looks like your Facebook page, because half of them were from Harvard University, the other half are Facebook, which is awesome, on the Lean In Circle. So I remember in 2013, mid-year, around May, you came out with the book, and I thought you were pretty, first of all, courageous to write the book, and then courageous to put a stake in the ground. I'm hoping to get 1,000 Lean In Circles by the end of the year, so by, in a calendar year, May 2014. So how are you doing on the goal? So Lean In Circles are small groups of peers who meet together in person to support each other's goals. And we launched Lean In Circles with the book because I really wanted the book, if anyone read it, which I didn't know at the time, to be something that got women to help in their own lives and reach for their own dreams. And we did a lot of research, and there's tremendous evidence that peer mentorship is super important and can actually be more important than the traditional mentors and sponsors. It's also something you can do yourself. Traditional mentors and sponsors, which are great, but you have to get someone else to do that. This, you can do all by yourself. So we launched Lean In Circles. Our goal was 1,000 in a year. It's been two years and a little bit. We have 25,000 in 132 countries. That's fantastic. And they continue to grow. Actually, we grow a lot every week. And the most important thing that's happening is that they're changing people's lives. So we've done a bunch of surveying work and data work, and 80% of the women who join a circle in the first six months, six months will take on a new opportunity. And so we believe this really works. And the reason it works is that our society, going back to the stereotypes, has a lot of messages for women from when we're a very young girl to put our hands down and be quiet, to not be bossy, to not be aggressive in the workplace, to not advocate for ourselves. And so ambition, which is so embraced and accepted in men and is part of what you talk about as a man, is much harder as a woman. And this gives people a place to be ambitious and to reach for their goals. Right before I came on the stage, I met a young woman who's here named Siona. She goes to McGill University. She started a circle. There were five other women in it. That circle, part of our CS&E chapter, that circle, they decided to help each other encourage to apply for their dream internship. They made each other apply. They practiced their interviews, and every single one of them got their top choice interview, got their top choice internship. And what she said was that on their own, not all of them would have applied. On their own, maybe those interviews went upon well because they wouldn't have each other to support. Now they're running a network of nine circles and trying to help spread the word. And so this works because it gives you a place to get help, support, and really be clear and honest about what your goals are. Reach a little higher. Fantastic. And so we talked about, let's see, the relationship between Lean In, LinkedIn, and also ABI, starting the Computer Science and Engineering, CS&E circles. Why was it important to have a special CS&E circle? So the data on tech is, you know, our industry comes out right at the bottom with a couple other industries. We know we're really struggling, and we know people are struggling in computer science. And again, it goes back to more days than women in the class. And so where we see real progress is where women don't feel alone, and they feel that they have support. And that support includes other people that look like them. So last year with Facebook, LinkedIn, Lean In, the foundation, and ABI, we launched the CS&E community. We launched the CS&E student chapter. And again, our goal was 100 circles. We have 225, 2,500 women who are in CS&E circles. And today, Lean In and ABI are really proud to announce we're launching the professional chapter. So any woman in here who's in a company, I know majority of people here are out of school in companies, can start or join a circle and affiliate with the chapter. So why does this matter? It matters because we need more women in computer science and engineering, and it matters because women need to feel that they're in a network. It's interesting. With most of our professional circles, the feedback we get is meeting once a week is pretty good. That's about the right, once a month, sorry. We recommend once a month. Our CS&E circles are the only circles we've ever had that continually, not all of them, but a bunch of them tell us we need more material, we meet once a week. I think that's because there's a real hunger and thirst to feel that there's somewhere you belong. And so I really encourage everyone here, we're having two sessions tomorrow. At 1030, there's a session on the student chapter. At noon, there's a session on the professional chapter. You can go to our site, it's leanin.org. We also have a booth tomorrow. Join, start a circle, join a circle, join a chapter. You know, as much time as you have to participate, but affiliate because it will make a world of difference. That's what we're already seeing. That's fantastic. So if I want to join one, I can join the professional one because I'm... Correct. Although if I go back to school, can I be in the... We'd love to have you. Thank you. You're hysterical. We'll totally take you in any chapter you'd like to be in. Thank you. Thank you, Cheryl. So I just go to the website and I can just sign up? You don't need a credit card or anything? My parents... No, it's free. It's free. The thing that's really interesting that it's worth thinking about is you'll go on the website, go to CS&E, there may or may not be a chapter at your school or company. Okay. Starting a circle is a great leadership opportunity. So we heard this from MetLife and other companies. MetLife is one of our early partners. They have a lot of circles. They had 70 or 80 circles. And one of the senior people told me, he said, it's so amazing what's happening. Not only have gender issues come to the forefront and we're solving them, but there are these young women that you don't really see as leaders because they're right out of school and they're the ones starting these circles. And when I looked at them, a bunch of those are also the ones getting promoted because it's a leadership opportunity. Same thing. There's a woman here named Maria who was a Facebook intern this past summer. She started what she called and named the Lean Intern Program. And she now has a network of 130 campuses and 150 companies that are in this Lean Intern Program. That's a leadership opportunity. And so start a circle. It's a great opportunity to lead or find another way to lead because at least I find in my own life, the best advice I often need for myself is the advice I give other people. I wrote a whole book telling women to be more confident. I share the stories of when I'm not confident enough. And it is in those moments where I'm helping someone else do it that I'm thinking to myself, oh my God, this applies to me too. Wow. All right. So leanin.org. Leanin.org. C-S-E. And they don't check your license to see you. Nothing. All right. I got it. Super. All right. I wanted to talk about unconscious bias. I know we're moving quickly, there were so many questions for you. But unconscious bias, you talked a lot about confidence issues as well as I was once, I mean, you're going to find this hard to believe, my boss said to me, and sometimes you're just a bossy boots. He said bossy boots. And I was wearing flats at the time. So I was just- Outrageous. I was like, at least call me by the right footwear. But when women are aggressive in the workplace, we're kind of told you're a little too aggressive or a little too, but he's confident and he's secure. That's right. So all this unconscious bias, for your time at Facebook, how have you been able to deal with that? Have you overcome it as a company? At your level, have you overcome that? The biases are real and there are several biases. At Facebook, we've rolled out an unconscious bias training and we actually made ours publicly available. I know it's out there. I know Satya and the Microsoft team have done a good job on this. They've gotten 70,000 people through theirs. Wow. But here's the thing, we have to understand the biases to fix them. So here's some of the things we cover in ours. The first is there's a performance bias. So all of us, all of us believe just naturally, because we're raised this way, that males perform better than females. This starts with babies crawling. Mothers will systematically overestimate their sons crawling and underestimate their daughters crawling. Race has the same bias. If you do blind studies with a white sounding resume name with a resume and a black sounding resume, the white sounding resume will get 50% more callbacks. That white sounding resume is worth eight years of experience. So we have to understand that there is a performance bias for women and minorities and then we have to correct. We have to understand that performance has to be really carefully measured with the metrics set out in advance. That's really important. There was a study of police chiefs and they gave out resumes and they were asking a group of people to sort for what makes a good police chief. And half the resumes were very experience heavy and half the resumes were very school and education heavy and they mixed up the genders. So without setting the metrics in advance, it turned out that the group of people, men and women, who got the resumes where the men had a lot of experience, they decided that experience was the most important criteria for hiring a police chief. And the group of people that got the resumes where it was more academic success for men, they decided that academic success was most important for police chiefs. And so metrics work as long as you lay them out in advance before gender comes in. Another bias, the competence and likability bias I was talking about, because this is really deep. All right, let's do a poll. How many people here, men only, men only, have been told you are too aggressive at work? Raise your hands. I see one. I don't even. Two. Where is it? Okay. Women. There's one. Okay. Women. I saw two. Maybe three. Women, too aggressive at work. And that is real. Now, the word bossy is my favorite example of this and it's a very deep example. We don't really call little boys bossy because they're expected to lead. We call little girls bossy because that offends. But we can fix this right here right now, this weekend, go to a playground. You will see a little girl. Someone will call her bossy, almost always her parents. You walk right up to them. You give a big smile and you say, that little girl's not bossy. That little girl has executive leadership skills. I'm going to pause and double click on that moment. Because I have said that, I'm actually serious. I have said that in audiences all over the world and everyone roars with laughter. Now, I'm going to try the sentence the other way. That little boy has executive leadership skills. There's no laughter. And the reason for that is that laughter goes against our expectations. And right there, right now, in this audience of women in technology, you can see how deep the biases are and how hard we're going to have to work to change them. Wow. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. It was amazing. The whole room erupted and then it was silent. Amazing. I want to turn to a study that LeanIn.org partnered with McKinsey to put out. It was a huge write-up in the Wall Street Journal if you didn't see it in September. Women in the Workplace. And it was very comprehensive. Tens of thousands of people in the workplace interviewed over 100 companies. What did that study find and what were you trying to achieve by putting it out there? LeanIn did a study with McKinsey. We surveyed over 113 companies participated, 30,000 people. And our finding, and sit down for this, is that at the current rate, it's going to take over 100 years to get to equality in the C-suite. So for our technical crowd, you can go from here to Pluto and back and forth and back and forth 10 times. 10 times. And we're still not going to be at equality in the C-suite. And I think one of our problems is that we suffer from low expectations. So I remember in 2012, women got 20% of the seats in the U.S. Senate. 20%. And all the headlines screamed out, women take over the Senate. Women take over the Senate. Now, it's America. We're not that great at math, except this crowd. But 50% of the population with 20% of the seats, that's not a takeover. That's a gap. It's a really big gap. And so we need to change our expectations. I'm really grateful to all the companies that participated, because what those companies are getting is they're able to benchmark themselves to the rest of their industry. And they're going to get that report every year. And we'll never fix what we don't measure. So for anyone who's representing a company here, we're going to do the survey again next year. Jump on board. It's free. We want to make sure every company is benchmarking, not just its progress, but also its attitudes. Because the survey had two parts. We surveyed, how are women doing at every level? And we surveyed employee attitudes, so that you can see how you match up relative to your industry and relative to the overall corporate America. Super. So it's on lenin.org, and you can just download. I'm going to not be rude. I'm just grabbing my device. I'm not a millennial. I'm not just going to go on it. If you want to ask Cheryl a question, you go to the Grace Hopper app. I'm going there right now as we speak. And the hag tag, I just made up a new word, but it's not right. The hashtag is Ask Cheryl, and it's Cheryl with an S. I know you knew that, but it's Ask Cheryl, not Ask Cheryl with an S. It's just Ask Cheryl, but Cheryl has an S on it. All right. I thought you knew that. So we're waiting for that. We had solicited questions through the old-fashioned way, through the web. And so I have some here, and I will go through them. All right. Here's the first one from someone in the audience here. How do you fight the mommy perception at work that people have of you? She said, and this is what she said, I hide the pictures of my three little children. I don't mention if I'm going to a PTA meeting, but I still feel as if I'm being penalized because I have children. You have children, so how do you do it? The mommy penalty is real. In fact, of all the biases in the data, the motherhood penalty is actually the strongest, and it makes sense. Because think about that likability bias. Now you're a mother. We really want you to be thinking about other people, and we really want you to be thinking about your kids. But if you're thinking about your kids, you're not dedicated at work. And if you're not thinking about your kids, you're not nice. And so that motherhood bias is really real. It happens not only to people who have kids, but people who want to have kids. There are people who will say, I won't even mention that I want to have kids. So what do we do? The first thing is surfacing the bias. Once you tell people that, you can really change things. The other thing we have to do is make it safe for people to talk about their children in their personal lives. I mean, I remember I gave an interview to a web thing I thought no one would see, and I was at Facebook, and I said I left work at 530. And as my friend Ken told me, he said I couldn't have gotten more headlines if I murdered someone with an ax. But it was interesting. I'd been at Facebook just a little bit, and I was nervous. I thought to myself, oh my god, I just admitted publicly I leave at 530. Looking around, I'm like, is someone going to fire me? You're not allowed to say publicly you leave at 530, but I did. And you know what happened? I had been leaving at 530 since I had kids, but I used to do it surreptitiously. You know, I'd put my extra jackets, different ones on the desk. I'd keep the light on. I used to have my assistant make sure my last meeting of the day was booked in different places. And I was doing this at Google, which was about as friendly of an environment as you could get. And I realized this was me. This was me. No one ever told me to do that. I think if I had told, you know, Eric, Larry, or Sergey, or Alan, like I have five different colored jackets, and I put them on my desk, they would have been like, are you an idiot? But you felt it. I felt it. And then at Facebook, you know, I hadn't been in the job that long, but I kind of outed myself as a 530 girl. And you know what? I got flowers from a team at Yahoo. Flowers. They were like, we all started leaving at 530. Thank you. Wow. My job performance didn't change one bit. I was being honest about what I had already done, and I made it safe for people at Facebook. And the thing I'll say is that it's not can't just be for mothers and fathers. There's a woman I was talking to, and she said, I'm so tired of everyone talking about work-life balance for women, for mothers, that I need to go to a bar tonight to preserve the option that I'll ever meet anyone and have children and become a mother. And I thought to myself, that is equally legitimate. Hey, there's nothing wrong. Any hour could be happy hour. The right company. That's right. The right company, the right team. Work isn't always easy. I still work a lot of hours, but I work them flexibly, and I expect others to work those flexibly. And the right companies and the right team make that a priority. And since we're recruiting here, Facebook is a great place to work. The COO, she leaves at 530. And at Yahoo, too. I'm just kidding. That was only one, too. Oh, that was only one. All right. So in Portland, you mentioned on stage that you had imposter syndrome, the feeling of self-confidence, lacking self-confidence. Since then, you've written a global bestseller. You've started an organization, a movement, actually. Do you still suffer now, after all those achievements on top of Portland, from confidence issues? And if so, this person wants to know, what do you do when that voice says, you know, the success police are going to bust you, that you're really not that good? No, I definitely do. I remember, so I spent a year doing the research for Lean In and writing it, and I turned it in. So, you know, an entire year researching and thinking about how I was going to tell women to have more confidence. And then we're having a meeting at Facebook. And there was a project that, for many years, I wanted to do. And one of our senior technical leaders, Jay Parikh, he wanted to do it, too, but no one else did. So, two years into this, we're having this meeting, and we're going to do the project. So, I talk about bringing your whole self to work. So, I start the meeting with, I am so grateful we're all here. I really believed in this for so many years, but no one agreed, and I'm just so grateful. Jay says, I knew Cheryl and I were right, you'd all come around eventually. And I said to him, I said, so, years of no one agreeing with us didn't shake your confidence? He said, no, we were obviously right. So, later that night on Facebook messaging with Jay, hey, Jay, can I use that story on my book tour? He's like, sure. He's the nicest guy. So, I wrote, look, I will make sure I don't make you look bad. You're such a great guy. Do you mind if I use your name in that story on my book tour? He's like, absolutely. I mean, in a million years, I don't have Jay's confidence, even now. And the thing I know to do is adjust. I tell lawyers, build like a boy. I tell women, speak up, take your seat at the table. And I know that sometimes I feel confident, but sometimes I still don't. And I know to make that adjustment. I also think that confidence and leadership, these are muscles. These are muscles. You learn to use them or you learn not to. If you're afraid to speak up in a meeting, every time you force yourself to do it, you get better at it. If you're afraid to take your seat at the table, every time you take your seat at the table and you realize no one tells you to get back to the back of the row, or if they do, they're wrong, you learn to do it. And so, we talk about, we give this advice for girls in high school, but it applies equally well throughout college and through life, small acts of assertiveness. Small things. The other thing, and this is personal, very personal to me, but something I started doing after I, you know, tragically lost my husband almost six months ago, is my friend Adam Grant, who I write articles with and is a great psychologist, told me that I should write down every night three things I did well. You know, this is the hardest part of my life. It was, you know, just complete and utter, you know, awful change. And I didn't feel like anything could ever go well again. But every night, because I told him I would, I had this little notebook and I wrote three things I did well, not three things I was grateful for, not three things someone else did well, not three things I messed up, just three things I did well. And, you know, some days was hard. Made tea, you know. But I realized that even tragedy aside, my entire life, I have gone to bed every night worrying about whatever I didn't do well. And just by actually writing down three things I did well in the privacy of my own home, I thought about those things. And so, all of you, commitment, three things, little notebook, side of your bed, no one ever has to see it, three things you do well every night. Totally do it. That's awesome. That's awesome. Someone asked, when you're asked about work-life balance, it's inherently a gender-biased question, so how do you answer it? It depends how it's asked. If it's a reporter, sometimes I say who was the last male you asked that question to. If it's asked in a genuine way, which is I really want to understand how you're doing it, I answer the question. I think the question's an important one, and it's important for men and women, and so we shouldn't be afraid to talk about it. We just need to make sure we don't only ask women. Okay. All right. Excellent. All right. This one's funny. It's just interesting. What were you like in your late teens and early 20s, and what advice would you give to that person? I just thought it was cute. I was not bossy. Really? I wouldn't have liked the word. No, I mean, what was I like in my late teens and early 20s? I think like a lot of people, I was not always proud of being smart. I went to a big public high school in Miami. Smart was not cool. I went to math contest in the ninth grade. I actually did fairly well. I was the only girl. I went back to my teacher and said, girls don't do this, and he said, you're right. And that was my last math competition in the ninth grade. I'd be better at math if that hadn't happened. I think we fall into the societal pattern of, again, men's success is good, intelligence is good, and I worry that a lot of young girls spend time hiding that, and I think that's something we absolutely need to change. And when I look back on my own young self, I would have told myself to stay in the math contests. I also think, because this is an audience of technical women, I can't tell you enough how much I hope you stay in the tech field and on the tech side of the tech field. I try really hard not to give specific career advice to people, because you don't know them well. I always feel they might over-rotate. There was a group of summer interns at Facebook last summer, and it was like a lunch thing I was doing with them. And one woman across the table said she was going to leave the eng side, and she was going to go leave tech, leave our industry, and leave coding, and go to another industry onto the business side. And I pretty much leapt across the table. Like, no, don't do it. But these are the best jobs. And this industry is an incredible industry, both in terms of impact and in terms of flexibility. Stay in. Stay in for yourselves, because they're better careers. And stay in for the women who follow you. Stay in for my eight-year-old daughter. Excellent. Excellent. That's really great. This one's great. They're all good. So how did you learn to hear, trust, and develop your own inner compass, your own inner guiding voice? How do you trust yourself on what you believe and what you know? I think the first thing I would do is a circle, actually. I think your own inner voice as a woman is pretty conflicted. My friend Ariana Huffington talks a lot about what she calls the obnoxious roommate in her head. You know, the one who's like, you know, that was a really stupid thing to say, or going to bed thinking about what you did wrong. But we all have that person in our head. And I think, again, three things you did well. Having conversations with other people about what you really want. Having a safe place where you can articulate. And I think be ambitious. Be ambitious for leadership. We know that by junior high, more boys than girls want to leave. If you survey junior high school students and ask how many boys want to be president of their class, president of a college class, head of the company, run for office, the numbers start low and they drop off immediately. And so we know we are not raising a generation of girls to be as ambitious as boys. But the good news is we can change that. With every single woman that gets into a leadership role, with every circle we form, with every woman who attends Grace Hopper, we change that and we change the numbers. Great. Great. All right. Here's one. I'm changing the topic a bit. Why is it so hard to get into Facebook? I don't know who it's for. If you want to raise your hand, maybe you can see her later. But again, I want to invite everyone here to apply. Oh my goodness gracious. This is not the career fair portion. I know. I know. We are. I can't help myself. We're small. One thing about Facebook is we're small. We have almost 1.5 billion users. So we seem like a bigger company than we are. But we have 11,000 employees. So we're actually just not as big as some of the other tech companies. That said, we review every resume online. So feel free again. But look, you want to think about what jobs you want. You want to make sure you're going after them. And I really believe over time, technical skills are so important. I've said it on this stage before and I'll say it again. You know, I have my job at Facebook as COO. I run the business side. I don't have a technical background. I believe that the people who come after me in jobs like mine will have technical backgrounds. I think I would be better at my job if I learned to code. Put it on the to-do list. Someone can teach me. Last one, another one on Facebook. What's the coolest thing Facebook research is working on? Can you even tell us? At Facebook, I think the coolest thing we're working on is the same thing we've been doing, which is connecting people and the mission. I don't know specifically what the research projects are. But what the company is working on, which goes through everything we do, is voice. And, you know, I believe so deeply in what we do, because if you think about voice, if you think about the ability to publish to the world, the ability to share, I know it's hard for a lot of you to remember, but I remember, and I met an amazing woman who's been working in women's leadership who turned 64 today, and she's here, so she certainly remembers, that it used to be that if you wanted to reach people, you had to be famous, get accepted by a newspaper, get yourself on TV. Ordinary people didn't have voice, and now they do. And you see ordinary people use it in amazing ways. I was in London this past summer, and I met this woman who was trying to support her child, and she started sewing dresses in her apartment. And now she has a company that sells those dresses and eight employees. And I met this woman, Masi, who's amazing, who started what is my favorite Facebook page. It's for women in Iran who are willing to take pictures of themselves outside without their head coverings, which is a punishable offense. And my favorite post on that page is a mother, a grandmother, and a daughter. And the grandmother says, I wanted my granddaughter to feel the wind on her hair before it turned gray. That is awesome. That's great. That is super. So I know you would imagine that. You can't even imagine, and I will never commit for you to answer these questions, but this was a great idea. But let's just say I'm so glad I'm not you, my goodness gracious. I would say, yeah, really to wrap up, you talked about joining circles, you talked about writing three things you were good at. But if you were to give this audience, you know, one of the things I like about lenin.org is they recommend, it's a guideline, that after every circle, that we commit to actually do something before next month's meeting. And so if you were to give us like three suggestions of what we should commit to, not for next Grace Hopper, because that's a year, so like in the next 30 days, what would you wish that the attendees of Grace Hopper would do? One of those three things. I'll give you three, all of which I've said before, but these I think are the three things I think are most important. Be ambitious. Don't ask yourselves why not, don't ask yourselves why ask yourselves why not, ask yourselves what would you do if you weren't afraid. Done is better than perfect. You can do more than you think you can. You need other people to help you, but you can do it. Don't say no before you even start. Ambition. The two is I really believe in circles. If you are not in, join or start a Lean in Circle, join the CS&E chapter. The data is so clear that this is working and it will help you a great deal. It's also a great leadership opportunity. And the third is the one I said before, stay in tech. Stay in tech. Tech needs you. Facebook needs you. Google needs you. Microsoft needs you. TaskRabbit needs you. We all need you. And we need you because we're only going to build the best products if we are using the full talents of the population. So for every single one of you here, ambition, peer support, technology. Awesome. Awesome. That was great. That was really great. You are fantastic. You are unbelievable. It's unbelievable. On behalf of all of you, I really wanted to thank Cheryl for spending so much time with us and for answering as many questions as we did get to. I'd also like to thank the volunteers who make Gray's Hopper conference possible. And we're going to see a video of a lot of those faces. So big round of applause, not only for Cheryl, but for the volunteers. Thank you.