121–130 of 882 posts
How is it that the old money industries of Wall Street and Hollywood, no vanguards of gender egalitarianism themselves, seem to have less flagrant sexual harassment issues? Do they keep them under wraps or are they just more mature by now?
This entire article is a smorgasbord of cringe: > During the recruiting process, Mr. McClure, a founder of 500 Startups and an investor, sent her a Facebook message that read in part, “I was getting confused figuring out whether to hire you or hit on you.” One would think having the phrases "hire you" and "hit on you" in the same sentence when communicating with someone undergoing recruitment at your company would be…
I am white and male and the misogyny I've observed in tech has annoyed me . If it annoys me it must be intolerable to women. I believe every word of it and I could tell a few stories of things I've seen. I've seen a lot of other kinds of assholery too. Tech has an underbelly just like any other major industry. FWIW I've heard Hollywood and Wall St. are worse.
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> This is people being assholes because they know they can get away with it. Nope. These people are being assholes because they ARE assholes. Never attribute to rational decision making what can be attributed to rotten character.
Then why does their behavior disproportionately affect women, who have less power to complain about their behavior? If this were entirely an aspect of their character or personality they'd be an asshole to everyone equally, not opportunistically take advantage of people who have less ability to stop them.
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The tech industry, for all it's faults and transgressions, is still a relatively progressive industry (emphasis on RELATIVE). "Old money industries" have been getting away with this type of behavior for decades, if not centuries. Women in those jobs probably see no point in reporting it or coming forward. Why would they? It's not going to make headlines that the secretary at Goldman Sachs gets propositioned for sex b…
See Wolf of Wall St for most vivid example. I'll also add it's extremely common in sales all over the country. Especially telemarketing, phone sales, boiler rooms, and so on. A large number of women I've talked to over the years in those positions say it's crazy. That movie even brought flashbacks for at least one I talked to who told me of huge parties with barbeque, pools, drugs, and tabs for employees for beer and…
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I expect less VCs to take meetings with women, sadly. Not because they are likely to be problems, quite the opposite I'd wager. That's going to be the rather depressing and sad reality of the shakeout of this.
> I expect less VCs to take meetings with women, sadly. Why? There's a really simple procedure that can solve these problems: Don't hit on, feel-up, or try to have sex with people you're in a professional business relationship with . That goes double for people you hold power over (managers to employees, VCs to Founders, etc). If you're really truly worried about false accusations then here's another fix you can have…
Well, there are two problems with that.
1 - It puts the burden of proof on the accused. I.E. it totally throws out of the window what has become a de facto human right and an universally established legal one in every democracy: "Innocent until proven guilty", into a: "Guilty until you can shows us some footage that proves you are not guilty" (which let's face it, it's basically impossible if the accuser is lying on purpose and knows how to do things).
2 - In America I think you are free to record other people interacting with you or in your office/home (perhaps some American can clarify this), but in many other countries, specially in most of EU, that's a crime. You can't go around recording people unless they are of public interest and in a public situation or they expressly consent to it.
Good that they came out, many admitted to it, and some are gone. That's the good news. Still, one was extra weird and messed up that I had to at least look at both of them in how they presented themselves: Marc Cantor vs Wendy Dent. It was one of few where little info and no picture was available for the woman. It already presented his background plus him admitting he sent sexual and weird messages to her in response…
Wow. Is this satirical? This is disgusting - you are part and parcel of the rampant sexism the women in the article are speaking out against. > That she might use sex appeal to her advantage is believable since many hard-working artists do. Just use every natural or acquired gift you have. You're evaluating whether or not you think somebody's claim of harassment is true based on whether or not you think they are attr…
So, let's say there was a trial where someone complained about an advance. Then, that person said they were flirted with first. One is a woman. You have data on how the guy presents himself to other people to compare to the claims of the woman. You give the woman the win automatically without looking into how she presents herself to compare to the guys claims and assess her credibility? If accuser = female and target = male, then female-claims = true. I'm not like that. I've seen so many females do exactly what he said in businesses, including business owners, that I at least wanted to test it out of curiousity. As I said, though, there's no hard data supporting his claim where in this case he admitted what data she had was true. Open and shut just on evidence.
"The reason to avoid making women seeking funding feel uncomfortable is to avoid making women seeking funding feel uncomfortable. It's not so that you avoid bad PR."
No no no. It's best to always look at principles and pragmatics. There's a huge liability side to this as I illustrated here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14674307
There's also what I'm putting in for what I'm getting. If I'm a VC, there's a clear chance to make more money getting more talent in. That's why I'd be especially hesitant at least thinking in self-interest to flirt with them and probably try to create a good environment for women. I've already done that professionally for years and year. We even recently outed a perv that was ass-smacking who had apparently done it for years. I will also look at the risk posed to my career by real and false claims of sexual harrassment, though, since the cost is staggeringly high. I always look at principles, pragmatic options, risk, and rewards in business. Some of these get under-reported in the liberal media despite a massive number of people (including women) in the U.S. having differing views.
"There should be zero personal or romantic engagement by the part of a VC with an entrepreneur where the first interaction is skewed by the power dynamic. "
"It's possible for men to interact with women in social contexts, not just in professional ones."
Two, arbitrary rules designed to benefit one side. Usually at other side's expense but I consider it probably a gain in VC's for getting more female founders. I'm leaning in favor of it ideologically and default on it in business already since I've seen a lot of damage from going the other route. Then again, there's lots of men and women that like being able to make a yes-no proposal with some getting good results out of it. That's reality as opposed to hypothesis. Dissenting opionion exists. So, I bring it up to raise question to see what poeple say.
"omen do not exist in the world solely for you to date."
They exist to do whatever they want hopefully leading rich, happy lives. One thing many (most?) they like to do is date men. The time and place they'll meet plus window of opportunity might happen in a professional context with narrow possibilities. So, a cost-benefit analysis happens where one or the other might decide if it's worth the risk to approach the other. This is how you get couples or marriages that started with them working together. You're acting like this doesn't happen or never should happen. The amount of dissenting action... by women... means that's worth questioning or people discussing.
"Are you sure that in every instance the women are expressing romantic interest?"
These people are pretty good at recognizing flirting. Especially sexual humor, ignoring work tasks a bit to focus on learning more about the guy, and trying to go out with him. I anticipated that problem. Asked for details like that. Watched many, many women do that with me sometimes having to tell them to knock it off and get shit done. The guys, too, for sure. :)
Saying anything, the women were warned, might lead to ostracism. The problem is that women are already being ostracized. When you can't get hired or you can't get VC money or you can't get business connections because the only time men will talk to you is to hit on you, you are already basically dead in the water as a business person. How do we get out of this dead end?
Have women as your first few customers. Sell to Women initially. Only pitch to women VCs etc... When you get beyond a certain point hire men to deal with men you don't want to deal with.
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Because VCs are all populated by serial harassers who now realize they can't get away with this crap? Or are you saying these will be seen as false accusations and thus it'll scare off VCs who aren't run by mysogynist pieces of sh-t? Because I'm not sure what the alternative is. If a VC is not in the habit of harassing women, they have nothing to fear. In fact, it'll give them an opportunity to court talented entrepr…
"If you're not doing doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear." Ahh--if only this were ever true.
Are you saying they're false accusations?
Some thoughts:
1. Is this more common in silicon valley than elsewhere? (I've never seen any remotely similar male->female sexual harassment in the non-valley places I've worked)
2. Is this more common among high-powered people than low-powered people (seems definitely so)?
3. There's definitely a double standard here. I once worked (in tech) with a good looking former male model. There were many very suggestive comments made to him and about him, and they made him feel obviously uncomfortable. Of course, the women making these comments did so pretty openly and with humor, as female->male is not really considered wrong for sexual harassment.
4. Obviously some of these remarks are worse than others. But many people do end up dating and marrying their coworkers (Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Phil Knight...). I think there is not a black-and-white line for suggestive comments to people you are connected with at work. The line is thick and grey, but wow do some of these guys not have any self-awareness.