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Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

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Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#51

Nobody I know in the SV founder/investor scene talks openly about their sex worker preferences, their porn habits or desperately tries to trick their coworkers into surprise romantic weekends together. However, I'm clearly not exposed to the demographic that is all about that, and I'd love to know more about it. What is it about that group of people that makes them behave that way? Do they feel they're too powerful t…

> What is it about that group of people that makes them behave that way? Your question overgeneralizes. You're attributing to the group, the qualities of a small number of individuals.

In a word, power.

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#52
post #17

./.

It was really interesting to hear about the potential of a troll brigade being dispatched against her during her trial. I'm not saying I buy it and have re-evaluated everything I've ever heard about her; but it raises an interesting awareness of how often carefully placed comments and bits of information can forever color your opinion on something.

[deleted]

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#53
It often seems like the whole Valley scene is just a hotbed of reactionary techbros doing their darnedest to keep tech White and Male. The thing is, I thought the tech scene was supposed to be progressive and enlightened, but increasingly frequently it is not.

It feels to me like this sort of Valley is increasingly looking like a dinosaur, a worldview and mindset we should be striving to move away from if the tech scene is to become what it aspires to be, egalitarian and enabling.

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#54
post #16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users flagged it. This is obviously a substantive article by HN standards so I've turned off flags.

Seems like that may have happened with this very substantive Bloomberg article today as well, worth reading, "How Women Got Crowded Out of the Computing Revolution": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15058338 It was on the front page then disappeared quickly, then flagged and unflagged. I fear however that by the time it was unflagged it lost momentum and never had a chance to make it back. Here's a thought: Would…

+1. Beautiful irony isnt it? We have flag post feature... but if some HN God (admin) decides its still worth commenting, they turn the flag off. Its just another form of censorship at HN disposal right after list of blacklisted sites that automatically gets stories deleted. I say either have the feature and use it all the time, or dont have it at all. Otherwise Im not ready what HN comminity posted/wants to talk about. Im ready cherrypicked handful of articles/comments that some HN admin-God was willing to approve. Frankly, truly sickening!

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#55
post #20

This article goes all over the place. Can anyone make a good summary of what point she's trying to make? It reads like an unfiltered stream of consciousness. I think she's trying to be convincing and using her writing style to do that - but for me bullet points are more convincing. From what I read, her account is 99% about her personal experience and not he industry at large. How does this equate to "sexism in the v…

My understanding of what she wrote is that there are not that many people who control most of the money in the valley. These people are all connected. She seems to feel (again, my understanding of her writing) that the people she was working with represented a fairly large percentage of the movers and shakers.

From that perspective, I can understand how she might feel that her personal experience was a good representation of sexism at the top levels of business in SV. I admit to having absolutely no idea if this is correct.

The more interesting question, from my point of view, is whether or not this is really a "sexism in the valley" issue, or if it's a sexism in the halls of power issue. I get the impression that she feels that there are a few powerful people in SV who are perpetuating the problem, but I actually think the problem is much deeper than that.

While I've seen problems with sexism (and racism) in my career as a programmer, it's been pretty rare. On the contrary, when I've been privy to the goings on higher up the ladder (or over in sales) it has shocked me. When I talk to people in other industries it's been similar. My friends who worked their way up in large hotels have had some incredible stories.

So, focusing on SV is doing a bit of a disservice, I think. I can fully appreciate that she can't talk about things for which she has not experience, so SV is what she feels is in her vision. But I don't think it will do any good unless we realise that people in power often feel that they can take whatever they want. And often they are unfortunately correct.

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#56

> One day, I was part of a small group flying from San Francisco to New York on the private jet I am sure life is very difficult for women in Sillicon Valley, but could we start talking about other issues? 99.999% people are less privileged.

Do we not spend a lot of time talking about other issues?

And are not harassment an issue that also affects less privileged people?

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're setting up a strawman. No one is trying to prohibit dating at work. What's prohibited is retaliatory actions (or threats of retaliation) when someone is turned down.

That was not my point. My point is that the issue "I don't want to be sexually harassed at work" becomes "I don't want to be sexually harassed at work by unattractive men", but the parties in question are not willing to articulate it fully.

You've posted four comments to this thread based on an elementary misinterpretation of the author. Doing that, especially in a bilious way, is a violation of the site guidelines. Please (re)-read them and follow them when commenting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're setting up a strawman. No one is trying to prohibit dating at work. What's prohibited is retaliatory actions (or threats of retaliation) when someone is turned down.

That was not my point. My point is that the issue "I don't want to be sexually harassed at work" becomes "I don't want to be sexually harassed at work by unattractive men", but the parties in question are not willing to articulate it fully.

The harassment part was him retaliating against her professionally, by excluding her from meetings and deals. It would have been harassment even if she found him wildly attractive, but he proceeded to retaliate after they broke up or for whatever relationship-related reason.

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#59

Interesting read. I wonder if the "paid army of trolls" she mentions followed her to Reddit. That would definitely explain the campaign against her.

> "paid army of trolls" would definitely explain the campaign against her. She banned a number of subreddits, including /r/fatpeoplehate and revengeporn. A move that strikes pretty deep at what people consider to be an open platform where votes define everything. Subsequently she fired Victoria Taylor, an incredibly popular moderator at /r/ama. This combined with the perceived idea that threads discussing these issue…

>Subsequently she fired Victoria Taylor, an incredibly popular moderator at /r/ama.

She didn't. Alexis Ohanian did: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/details-emerge-abo...

She actually did very few of the things the Reddit witchhunt accused her of. The whole Pao affair was just another dark period that showed how insane online communities can really be.

Re: Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

#60
post #41

I think that it's really interesting that conversations about venture capital and conversations about engineering both get to be lumped into a more general conversation about sexism in Silicon Valley. A lot of engineers have a good bit to say against the existence of widespread sexism in engineering, myself included. Engineering in computer science has long been represented by a nearly nonexistent barrier to entry ou…

I don't find it remotely hard to believe that Ellen Pao's recounting of her experience in the world of venture capital is far from the truth Can you clarify this? I'm confused because it seems at odds with the rest of your post.

I read it as "our biases are subconscious". A lot of the white men being jerks to their female and ethnic minority colleagues aren't aware they're doing it, or if they are it's justified because it's a "meritocracy" and the techbros ascribe significantly more merit to whiteness and especially maleness.
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