Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Citing a friend who took a job at Facebook that was technically a demotion, Sandberg argues that we need to revise our ideas about what constitutes a career path. Since it's increasingly common for employees to move from one company to another (or even from one field to another), it's unhelpful to think of careers as ladders to the top. Instead, Sandberg suggests using Pattie Sellers' metaphor of a jungle gym, which "offer[s] more creative exploration" and may be especially useful to women juggling additional challenges like discrimination and pregnancy (53).

Sandberg offers her own career as an example of the importance of flexibility. In school, Sandberg lacked not only a definite interest in technology, but also a definite interest in anything beyond "chang[ing] the world" (55).This non-specific "long-term dream," however, carried Sandberg to her first job as an assistant to Larry Summers at the World Bank (55). From there, she decided to go to business school, before eventually ending up back with Summers—this time at the Treasury Department. After seeing the tech industry begin to boom, Sandberg decided to gamble on moving to Silicon Valley, where she eventually accepted a job at Google despite the fact that other offers looked better on paper.