Silicon Valley Women CEOs

Some of the recent buzz in Silicon Valley is that with the firing of Diane Greene from VMWare, there is a complete absence of women CEOs of large high tech companies in Silicon Valley. Meg Whitman stepped down earlier this year, and Carol Bartz left Autodesk a couple of years ago. Of course the most high profile exit in recent years was Carly Fiorina. The issue is that for some time we were seeing the number of high profile women CEO's increasing, and that isn't true right now.

Although I have met all of these women, I had the chance to spend time recently with Diane Greene, because she was the keynote at our 2007 Women of Vision event. I admire her as an entrepreneur, as a leader, and for simply being smart. I left every conversation with new ways to look at my job and the world.

There was an article about Diane Greene's exit in the Mercury News this morning talking about how she was fired. To quote from the article

Silicon Valley saw two prominent CEOs get the boot this month. One was a man, who was gently eased into the boardroom in typical valley fashion. The other was a woman, whose firing was unusually swift and harsh.
I'm speaking of Diane Greene, founder and former chief executive of VMware, and Hector Ruiz, former CEO and now executive chairman of AMD. For me, the stark contrast in their departures raises the issue of what role gender played in the way Greene was unceremoniously dumped.
If she were a man, would she have gotten a softer landing? Would she have been treated more like Ruiz, whose sins were far more egregious? You can judge for yourself, but I think the answer is "Yes."

The recent event with Diane occurred at a time when I was just finishing Carly Fiorina's book. Regardless of what you think of Carly's leadership of HP, what was most striking in her book was the description of the way in which she was let go. It bears a striking similarity to the article's description of Diane and VMWare.

I believe passionately that if the world of technology features 50% women leaders, including CEOs, that being fired comes with the territory. But there is no question in my mind that these two women were treated differently, and while we are making progress against the ultimate glass ceiling of leadership, we still have a long ways to go.