Back in April, we threw a question out to female readers: Are you a Sheryl or a Marissa? This was three months before Marissa Mayer was named CEO of Yahoo, proudly proclaiming her new employer’s “evolved” attitude towards to her pregnancy (she gave birth this week) even as she vowed to work through her maternity leave–already shortened to just a few weeks.
That kind of work-first decision was hardly a surprise to anyone familiar with the perky Type A executive, who “doesn’t believe in burnout.” But we’ve always been relieved there was another role model for a woman in tech–or any field, really–who wanted to ascend to leadership positions. That’s why we jumped on Sheryl Sandberg’s confession (that she leaves the office at 5.30 to have dinner with her kids) like it was a life raft, especially coming from the Facebook COO responsible for slowly transforming “Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture,” as chronicled by The New Yorker‘s Ken Auletta last year.
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