Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

Post by apr » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 5:19 AM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #14

argonaut wrote: post #7

I'm extra-suspicious of this lawsuit because of the opportunistic timing. He was fired in January 2015, more than 1.5 years ago. And yet the lawsuit is only filed now during Verizon's process of closing its acquisition of Yahoo. Whether or not he has a case, his motives now have an antagonistic taint because he no doubt timed this to maximize the PR damage and his chances of getting a quick settlement.

If the article is a good preview of the case, it does seem to be bullshit... The mechanism by which this discrimination supposedly happen was the stack ranking feedback system. Now I believe stack ranking is stupid and somewhat cruel. But I don't see how it allows more discrimination than other grading systems. The lawsuit also doesn't claim intent and it'd be quite a stretch to assign liability to the CEO for hard-t…

Post by zajd » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 5:23 AM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #17

melindajb wrote: post #11

Anyone who was unkind to Ellen Pao should really be rethinking themselves about now. Edit: Hn thread: why is diversity so important? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12576806 Me: if diversity is not important than this lawsuit is a joke and HN should be laughing at this lawsuit.

Funny you should mention her. I'm 100% sure that it can't be coincidence that the only "really bad CEOs" I keep hearing about on social media are Pao, Meyers and Elizabeth Holmes. But people really don't react kindly to accusations of sexism without proof. I wonder how unlikely it is that the 90% of male CEOs in high tech are all exemplary.

Post by DiabloD3 » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

sytse wrote: post #9

meddlepal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what end? Yahoo is dead and being purchased by Verizon already for an agreed upon price. I guess they could back out, but that seems unlikely.

Not totally unlikely https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/06/report-verizon-wants-1-bil...

Post by joeax » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

matt4077 wrote: post #14

argonaut wrote: post #7

I'm extra-suspicious of this lawsuit because of the opportunistic timing. He was fired in January 2015, more than 1.5 years ago. And yet the lawsuit is only filed now during Verizon's process of closing its acquisition of Yahoo. Whether or not he has a case, his motives now have an antagonistic taint because he no doubt timed this to maximize the PR damage and his chances of getting a quick settlement.

If the article is a good preview of the case, it does seem to be bullshit... The mechanism by which this discrimination supposedly happen was the stack ranking feedback system. Now I believe stack ranking is stupid and somewhat cruel. But I don't see how it allows more discrimination than other grading systems. The lawsuit also doesn't claim intent and it'd be quite a stretch to assign liability to the CEO for hard-t…

Post by joeax » Fri, Oct 07, 2016, 5:40 AM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #36

joeax wrote: post #34

I was once a fan of Mayer when she first took over Yahoo, until she led a crusade against remote workers. As a remote worker myself I can tell you this crusade sent ripples throughout the industry. A lot of tech companies (especially outside the bay area) want to emulate the cool kids like Yahoo, Google, and Apple, and even the company I work for started questioning its WFH policies. So no, I don't feel sorry for her…

Dude, Yahoo stopped being a "cool kid" a decade ago. That's really messed up if your company actually thinks it should emulate Yahoo because it's a cool company.