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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

#411

Post by PopsiclePete »

noir_lord wrote: post #118
Joeri wrote: post #106

It's easy to get hung up on the particulars of Pao's story and get sidetracked into defending or judging her, but I feel that is besides the point. I am more interested in the wider notion of why she wrote this article: to point out that sexism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. I'm wondering though: is this just about sexism, or is it about professionalism and maturity? Getting hit on by someone higher up…

I've thought since the 90's that programmers need a professional body with teeth. Doctors have them, lawyers have them, civil engineers have them. Lots of software written is at least as critical as what the above professionals do. But software is a young field compared to all the above so I think it'll take time (or several really serious disasters...which is how the civil engineers got theirs).

It sounds like a good idea, but considering how quickly the field moves, it'll become stagnant and irrelevant within a year.

"You must be an ACXXXYA-accredited Node JS 0.12-p125 developer who's earned his NPM 1.01-a B-level cert and can use Visual Studio 2008 SP3 (no other version has been approved by the body) to write the codes at this job".

After watching committees by the "best and brightest" of us come up with amazing ideas like SOAP, WSDL, and Annex K of the latest C11 spec, I shudder at the thought of giving someone like that authority over my work.

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

#412

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #403
direfungasaur wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

obvious and unobjectionable steps like "recruit junior devs from the ranks of biology grads I don't follow how this is an obvious decision. Would you please elaborate? If the target software isn't dealing with the biology domain, why would I prefer biology grads over computer science grads? It seems like the lack of formal knowledge around CS fundamentals could prove a hindrance, while the biology knowledge wouldn't…

The vast majority of jobs now are not 'low-level hardware, highly algorithmic or heavy in the domain modeling space'. They're corporate CRUD-style apps, existing software maintenance, and other such things. There's no reason that a bright student with a biology background couldn't be a perfect fit for these sorts of things if they have some contact with a computer science class or two.

Seems like a waste of a bright biology student.

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

#413

Post by crdoconnor »

aianus wrote: post #402
jazzyk wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So importing cheap labor is ethical, opposing that practice - is not ethical?

Yes? Paying someone with American citizenship more than someone with Chinese citizenship for the same work should be regarded as unethical as paying a man more than a woman or a white person more than a black person.

Is your contention that it is racist for the American government to prioritize the needs of citizens who vote for it and live under its laws over the citizens who don't?

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

#414

Post by abhi3 »

PopsiclePete wrote: post #407
abhi3 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> affairs with a creepy married co-worker in Germany, machismo-driven muscling for VC connections, dominance games over which chair an exec sits in, PR firms hired to smear uppity former partners... it's like a movie. I wonder how prevalent such behavior is amongst the truly exceptional people vs the imposters who just happened to be successful due to luck and in many cases sheer force of personality (seems to still…

Why do we still give a shit how someone chooses to spend their free time? Why can't you be successful and partake in drunken S&M orgies at 3 am? As long as it's between consenting adults, I don't see why it should somehow tarnish your character. I despise this "soccer-mom-approved" bullshit where the only acceptable free time activity is attending a little league baseball game or organizing a church picnic. Would Ein…

Uhmm you make a reasonable argument but I am not sure why it's a reply to my comment. I was commenting on peoples behavior in the workplace and not how they spend their free time. Did you just inadvertently create a strawman so you could attack it?

You see I like many people here aspire to be successful but neither do I have the personality to for example play dominance games nor the desire to develop such a personality and hence I wonder if that's something that might truly handicap one or just something that imposters do.

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

#415

Post by Natsu »

pervycreeper wrote: post #101
camus2 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "paid army of trolls" Unless she has proof, it's a conspiracy theory, "trolls" don't need to be paid to be trolls. People are naturally mean on the internet. Especially on reddit. So trolls paid by whom to do what? she didn't lose her lawsuit because of people on the internet. She lost because she didn't have a case.

>In response to my suit, Kleiner hired a powerful crisis-­management PR firm, Brunswick. On their website, they bragged about having troll farms — “integrated networks of influence,” used in part for “reputation management” — and I believe they enlisted one to defame me online. The "I believe" is the operative phrase in this allegation. It's not implausible, however. Comments everywhere on topics where powerful agent…

Well, I mean, that's kind of the question, isn't it? She's sharing a lot of personal anecdotes after losing on her claims about those in court.

I do not know what happened or what people actually said, but I won't take the illogical step of inferring things about this case from the outcome of other cases or vice versa and I disliked the fact that this is a lot of scandalous, unverifiable anecdotes that she was not able to credibly establish in a court of law.

Harassment is real. I'm a victim of it myself and the guy who put his hands down my pants was fired for that, though I wasn't really working in tech at the time. I managed both to confront him and to prove it. Her claims, however, failed to be proven in court and therefore I do not find her credible, nor can I without new, verifiable evidence.

I know too well how high a bar that is, but I wouldn't see it set any lower, not even in my case.

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

#416

Post by mcguire »

Nursie wrote: post #272
strken wrote: post #183

Articles like this really make me aware that men and women like Ellen Pao and her former partners live in a separate parallel world: three degrees, $10 million golden parachutes, private jet flights to ski resorts, affairs with a creepy married co-worker in Germany, machismo-driven muscling for VC connections, bisexual finance wizards who kickstart an Ivy-League LGBT program, dominance games over which chair an exec…

Yeah, that really struck me as well. I've been in tech for close to 20 years now. I get paid pretty well compared to the national average pay, and globally speaking it's off the charts. But the figures and activities mentioned there are completely alien to me. This is the (a?) world of high finance and I can't relate to it. I've seen a lot of casual and systemic sexism in the tech industry, in the trenches and at the…

"I just don't recognise the business painted here to be "tech"."

Perhaps. But those VCs and CEOs and COOs are your bosses. Just as engineering cannot be divorced from the effects of what is built,"tech" is hard to separate from it's own environment. And it appears that the same antics continue down the stack.

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

#417

Post by OtterCoder »

tbrownaw wrote: post #298
noir_lord wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought since the 90's that programmers need a professional body with teeth. Doctors have them, lawyers have them, civil engineers have them. Lots of software written is at least as critical as what the above professionals do. But software is a young field compared to all the above so I think it'll take time (or several really serious disasters...which is how the civil engineers got theirs).

Wouldn't a professional body for "programmers" be a bit like a professional body for "doctors, masseuses, hairdressers, tailors, and priests"? All of those have something to do with working with humans, the way we all work with computers. And neither group has much else in common.

I'd accept a job title like 'Technical Priest' or 'Code Surgeon'. One of my former bosses half-jokingly changed my title to 'Web Prophet'.

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

#418

Post by notyourloops »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #412
cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of jobs now are not 'low-level hardware, highly algorithmic or heavy in the domain modeling space'. They're corporate CRUD-style apps, existing software maintenance, and other such things. There's no reason that a bright student with a biology background couldn't be a perfect fit for these sorts of things if they have some contact with a computer science class or two.

Seems like a waste of a bright biology student.

Not if that biology student wants a decent life. There's not much money in science. It pays much, much more to be a mediocre dev.

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

#419

Post by pavel_lishin »

sangnoir wrote: post #391
justadeveloper2 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't think it matters in the sense that people with that kind of money can never be reined in They can be reined-in using the same money the value so much. If retirement funds stop putting money into their funds (because of bad PR or any other leverage), then they'll start to behave.

Do these people act like this because the money has completely unhinged them? Or do unhinged people enter careers like this and escalate to these levels because, well, they're unhinged and it's easier to act that way if you've got teh cash?

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

#420

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

vertex-four wrote: post #193
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why anyone should feel offended about someone using a "scientific explanation" in that way. Shouldn't we laugh at and ridicule those people for their outdated beliefs? What's there to be offended about by something that isn't true?

It can be difficult to laugh at an idea when you see widespread evidence of it from multiple sources on a regular basis, unfortunately.

Sure, yes, I agree.

That doesn't mean the correct course of action is to force societies hand to accommodate someone's hurt feelings.

I argue the correct course of action is for people to develop resilience and emotional maturity.

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