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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

#281

Post by justadeveloper2 »

Joeri wrote: post #233
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's not about "in tech" though, as another commenter pointed out, this is a completely different world of private jets and deciding where to spend the hundreds of millions these people have on, betting on their 10 million investment becoming a billion. This is the "snorting coke off a model's ass for lunch" world, not tech.

Does the distinction matter? Are you saying this sort of behavior does not reach the level of concern inside of the world of tech, regardless of how that is defined?

I don't think it matters in the sense that people with that kind of money can never be reined in--they just spend more money to route around anyone who wants to regulate their behavior.

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

#282

Post by ZeroGravitas »

yorwba wrote: post #246
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In his tl;dr he said hiring more women would be bad for business. For those about to jump in and suggest that he only mean the current way of hiring women is bad for business, he later suggests affirmative action to hire more conservatives would be good for business because they are more 'diligent'. Note that men are more conservative then women, so this is a double whammy.

> he later suggests affirmative action to hire more conservatives would be good for business because they are more 'diligent'. "Stop alienating conservatives" is a far cry from affirmative action. Personally, I think quota-based affirmative action targeted at conservatives would have similar downsides as quota-based affirmative action targeted at women. (Essentially, when you are optimizing for something other than p…

Affirmative action does not necessarily imply quotas. What you suggest ("stop alienating conservatives" or "selecting for high-conscientiousness" with the intent of hiring more conservatives) is affirmative action too.

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

#283

Post by atom-morgan »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #155
new299 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a more explicit example of how the job Ad should look? I don't quite understand.

(These are generalizations as happens with marketing personas [1] - individual targetting with ads would be better, also for real I would spend more than 5 min to create those personas) Many women are more self-critical than many men. So if you have a huge list of needed skills, women might apply less often. Do write only the really relevant skills, don't copy and past from previous apps. Do not require what can easi…

This seems like a step towards the diversity and inclusion Damore suggested in his memo.

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

#284

Post by _Codemonkeyism »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #155
new299 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a more explicit example of how the job Ad should look? I don't quite understand.

(These are generalizations as happens with marketing personas [1] - individual targetting with ads would be better, also for real I would spend more than 5 min to create those personas) Many women are more self-critical than many men. So if you have a huge list of needed skills, women might apply less often. Do write only the really relevant skills, don't copy and past from previous apps. Do not require what can easi…

[Edit] You should A/B test.

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

#285

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ptaipale wrote: post #207
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In his tl;dr he said hiring more women would be bad for business. For those about to jump in and suggest that he only mean the current way of hiring women is bad for business, he later suggests affirmative action to hire more conservatives would be good for business because they are more 'diligent'. Note that men are more conservative then women, so this is a double whammy.

> In his tl;dr he said hiring more women would be bad for business. He did not. The TL;DR said: ● Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

As I said in my message that anticipated your reply, he calls for discrimination to reach higher representation of conservatives in the same memo. Presumably he wouldn't be doing so if he thought that was unfair or divisive, and he explicitly claims it would be good for business. The only factor that changes is "conservative" to "women" one of which he thinks is good for business and one of which he thinks is bad for business.

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

#287

Post by bobcostas55 »

>and downplays the impact of obvious and unobjectionable steps like [..] "give expectant mothers maternity leave"

This is a bit off-topic, but maternity leave is neither obvious nor unobjectionable. There is significant empirical evidence that shows that policies such as long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression.

Have a look at:

* The impact of Nordic countries’ family friendly policies on employment, wages, and children https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-007-9023-0

* Is there a glass ceiling over Europe? Exploring the gender pay gap across the wages distribution https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/92046/1/2005-25.pdf

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

#289

Post by Spivak »

4c2383f5c88e911 wrote: post #176
maehwasu wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In tech people get away with wildly unprofessional behavior as long as "they get stuff done", and personally I never felt that was acceptable. As a decent software developer, if my less talented co-workers, or, god forbid, some HR-type, started telling me constantly about how I needed to be more "professional", I would hand in my resignation the next day and go somewhere that didn't absolutely suck to work.

If I understand your reply correctly, you mean to say that it's acceptable to be a total douchebag as long as you are "talented"?

Ignore the air quotes and you've got a clear picture of reality. The more people need you the more you're able to leverage that need for financial or social capital.

For better or worse at the forefront of your field and at the top of the social ladder the rules are different.

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

#290

Post by bane »

I think it's very important to parse Pao from the reprehensible behavior she describes in her workplace. Being polite, Pao does not come off well in her own personal story. But she was also swimming in a garbage pit.

I have no doubt that what she writes about is true, and probably even holds back on much of the frat house nonsense. There can be entire semesters spent at school exploring other avenues that she might have pursued, and in most cases she truly really was a victim of a truly terrible environment nobody should have to work in.

But for those of us who remember the case well while she was at Reddit, she also isn't only an innocent victim and had made some really bankrupt decisions all on her own. I don't get the impression from this article that she's really done any soul searching since then and she even tries to soft-peddle her affair with a co-worker as just a little bit of a school girl crush and doesn't mention various other questionable behaviors that became public as a result of her lawsuit.

There's a lot of thought that equality in the workplace should not mean "start slotting women into the existing power structures and processes", but should instead take into account differences in style and ideas that women might naturally bring. But it goes both ways, terrible behavior also can manifest itself in different ways. As innocent as Pao seems to think she is in her own bad behaviors (which she either ignores here or downplays), her former co-workers also don't think there was any particular harm -- they're both wrong. To truly respect Pao, you have to also respect that she was capable of making bad decisions and that she needs to own them. In my mind, her behavior is not as bad as her former colleagues, but she could probably throw a softball and hit them.

Pao's story is important to tell, but she lacks the personal credibility for people to care. I really feel like if she were a bit more open about where she also messed up, and her motivations, she would come across as a much more empathetic story teller that would get more people's attention and give her better credibility than her former colleagues. But her general unwillingness to publicly confront, and get out in front of, her own behavior leaves her story vulnerable to various naysayers and that's a shame.

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