Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t

thecut.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 577 posts

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

#301

Post by b4ux1t3 »

ramblerman wrote: post #44
probably_wrong wrote: post #27

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…

/r/fatpeoplehate and /r/revengeoporn specifically broke Reddit rules re: real-life stalking and harassment. I didn't and still don't particularly care for Ellen Pao, but enforcing rules was one of the better parts of her tenure at Reddit.

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

#302

Post by interstitial »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #287

>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…

Stop posting evidence, you can see by your downvotes, that when HN asks for "substantive" comments it surely doesn't mean evidence-based.

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

#303

Post by b4ux1t3 »

lagadu wrote: post #250
jmkni wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way she was treated, though, was disgusting. I have zero doubt that her gender/ethnicity was a major motivating factor for the majority of people involved in this backlash and that a white male in the same position would have pretty much gotten a pass from the same people. /r/fatpeoplehate and /r/revengeporn where two incredibly toxic subreddits, and I was personally happy to see them go.

I disagree, particularly in regards to r/fatpeoplehate (I didn't know r/revengeporn existed but I know revenge porn is illegal in my country at least). Fatpeoplehate was one of the strictest subs when it came to enforcing the rediquette rules of "not touching the poo": members were very quickly banned if they got caught using the content in the sub to harass anyone outside it. Once that boundary is set it all becomes…

> members were very quickly banned if they got caught using the content in the sub to harass anyone outside it.

Er, not from what I remember. And even still, if a subreddit, even without meaning to, encourages real-life harassment, that's toxic. The fact that they had to keep banning people for being toxic leads me to the conclusion that it just drew toxic pieces of garbage.

There are plenty of ways to encourage someone to lose weight that don't involve typing the word "hate" when you want to get to a community discussing weight loss. Or you could recognize that people have the right to eat and be however they like, even if you don't like it. You have the right to be an asshole and point at them and tell them they're fat and going to die early, but Reddit has the right to prevent you from using their platform for doing that.

There was an interesting idea that I heard last week regarding the whole Charlottesville Nazi incident. It was something along the lines of the Paradox of Tolerance. Essentially, being tolerant of intolerance leads to intolerance. So, in order to keep tolerance alive, you have to snuff out intolerance, before it becomes systemic. You have to become intolerant of intolerance.

Ellen Pao is (ostensibly) intolerant of intolerance, and that, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. I don't particularly like her, but enforcing Reddit's own rules was one of the better parts of her tenure at Reddit.

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

#304

Post by bgarbiak »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #287

>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…

But you want humans to have children, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think fathers in Norway are forced to take a maternity leave, which are equally long as mothers' leaves. That's seems like a fair solution.

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

#305

Post by redm »

Many of the issues raised by Ellen seem to be bad traits of VC's when dealing with people in general. I didn't have any "good" experiences with VC's for many of the same reasons. They look down at you; they are casually dismissive; they are manipulative; they lie as necessary, etc. They seem to be only as friendly as needed in case they suddenly decide they want to invest.

I'm curious how similar or different my experience would have been pitching Ellen Pao.

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

#307

Post by minipci1321 »

Something doesn't add up.... when my co-worker or manager makes sexist or racial jokes, my experience tells me that a) the immediate issue to be solved is not the sexism or racial discrimination in my line of business, but this specific person. The only solution -- this person needs to be replaced, not taught to behave (let alone persuaded to change views), and that b) his/hers personal issues very probably don't stop at women and minorities.

But I understand that we have this whole lot of discussions recently simply because, there are too many of such types kind of accumulated in one place, which makes replacing them all even less probable.

So how the industry believes this can be successfully addressed at this scale? I'd think the behaviour of people on the plane she described is simply about basic human decency? So, everything now needs to be codified by HR? "Don't speak of pornstars when on the plane with other people", "Don't bring into conversation how you tortured small animals when a kid"?

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

#308

Post by pnutjam »

js8 wrote: post #126
grey-area wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't necessarily be exposed to that if you're a man or not challenging your perceived place in the hierarchy. The talking about porn etc may just have been a clumsy attempt to put the woman in her place by making her feel uncomfortable, didn't work so he switched to talking about sex workers. It's just a tactic for asserting power and dominance. If she wasn't there taking a place he sees as for a man, it woul…

> It's just a tactic for asserting power and dominance. I think you're right. I haven't read through the article yet but my opinion is that for the most part, social hierarchy is a cultural mechanism to select alpha males. So women who think they should participate in that are seriously misguided, like a deer doe who wants to participate in deer dueling. In other words, they (rightfully) reject a biological urge for…

I think that's a good synopsis. She wants equality because she's clearly one of the elites. She has a point, but it's hard to hear her complaining.

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

#309

Post by spennant »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #300
bobcostas55 wrote: post #287

>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…

> long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression Of course it does. What it benefits is the actual human beings in question (child, mother, father). Most humans think that significantly increasing the well-being of your family, and in particular your infant, is a whole fucking lot more important than wages and career progression. Like all things in life it's a trade off, but an unobjectionally g…

> if a woman (or man) spent 8 hours every day of every vacation secretly working, they would definitely get better wages and career progression

In a meritocracy, sure...

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

#310

Post by dmix »

redm wrote: post #305

Many of the issues raised by Ellen seem to be bad traits of VC's when dealing with people in general. I didn't have any "good" experiences with VC's for many of the same reasons. They look down at you; they are casually dismissive; they are manipulative; they lie as necessary, etc. They seem to be only as friendly as needed in case they suddenly decide they want to invest. I'm curious how similar or different my expe…

Any type of job with even the least amount of authority - however insignificant it ultimately is as long as they can assert it without recourse - attracts the worst type of people. I call it the 'nightclub bouncer syndrome'.

Then again VC is a 'retail' style job and any job where you are continually put into forced social situations can make you cynical and impatient with people. So there's also that side of the equation.

Thirdly, it's also a type of job where you're surrounded by 'yes men' trying to suck up to you. You never get the type of negative feedback loops about your behaviour that you normally would/should. American bigco CEOs and celebrities are notorious for having this problem.

Post reply on HN