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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

#431

Post by fav_collector »

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…

> recruit junior devs from the ranks of biology grad

Targeting specific groups just because of the racial or gender makeup of the group seems inherently wrong to me.

A biology major doesn't give people many relevant skills for programming. If it was a math intensive subject like Physics, Stats or Math, I could see it being more fair and valid.

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

#432

Post by dlwdlw »

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 think an interesting issue is that the higher you are in a hierarchy the more rules don't apply. It's impossible to govern with rules because they are the source of rules themselves.

Some rules transcend companies and are socially tethered like ethic, morals, maturity, responsibility, etc... But disregard for social judgement is actually a strength in achieving power.

This may be why grassroots true change takes so long. The upper levels needs to pass away because they can't be convinced because they aren't bound by anything.

Most people think they can handle power, but the "true" freedom it provides will corrupt almost anyone because most people are unaware of just how much they delegate thoughts and outlooks to outside frameworks. ("Culture")

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

#433

Post by chvrn »

cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #341
jadeklerk wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, what is 'hiring junior devs from the ranks of biology grads' intended to help with?

There's a meme (in the literal sense, not image macro sense) going around that because enrollment rates of women in computer science is dropping that companies should considering hiring junior developers from other programs with a higher rate of women enrolled - typically social science or biology.

Thanks for clearing that up. I thought it was a Damore reference.

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

#434

Post by Bartweiss »

sqldba wrote: post #226
yorwba wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about your current behavior makes you think people will feel the need to constantly tell you to be more professional? I'm assuming you don't intend to defend mistreating coworkers, so you must think that there is unprofessional behavior that is nonetheless acceptable in the workplace.

For me probably: Because I avoid meetings that exist solely to stroke manager egos. If it's not related to what I'm doing I don't go no matter how mandatory it is. Because I avoid war rooms (getting people from every team into a room for days on end to troubleshoot some issue; but where it's not your problem and everyone just does normal work because it's not their problem either - again it's another management ego s…

> Because I don't attend team building sessions especially if they involve sports or touching other people or being touched.

I had never put together quite how awful your average "team building seminar" could be for someone with autism or other physical-touch issues. I've never been in a position to call one, so I've always just left it at "those are annoying". But on reflection, "a room full of people openly pressuring you to let people touch you without warning" sounds like hell on earth for several people I know. And yet it's quite common to make them mandatory and expect everyone to act like they had fun...

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

#435

Post by jazzyk »

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.

Like it or not, we have nation-states, not a global labor market.

The government of EVERY country in the world is elected to take care of their citizens. Why should the US government worry about wages of Chinese citizens - Chinese people have their own government, no?

BTW, the US is already very open (close to 15% of population is foreign born, the highest in a century). In an economic crisis, it is not unreasonable to slow down immigration a bit.

Also, it is ironic that you use the example of China, perhaps the most protectionist major country in the world.

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

#436

Post by wott »

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…

That's not the point. But it might tell something about the mentality and the psychology of a category of people, if they are more prone to such 'hobbies' than other categories.

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

#437

Post by ikeyany »

fav_collector wrote: post #431
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…

> recruit junior devs from the ranks of biology grad Targeting specific groups just because of the racial or gender makeup of the group seems inherently wrong to me. A biology major doesn't give people many relevant skills for programming. If it was a math intensive subject like Physics, Stats or Math, I could see it being more fair and valid.

It's a bit cynical to say that's done simply in the name of gender. There are certainly many talented people who move away from tech because they look at it from the outside and observe that tech "isn't for them". There is nothing "inherently wrong" in correcting some of that unless you willfully ignore how our society came to be.

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

#438

Post by 0xbear »

bitexploder wrote: post #350
justadeveloper2 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a bit confused when she ticked off her resume--how does anyone get that much experience at all top flight companies in just a compressed amount of time? Despite the obvious issues she has faced, my career is a completely dead, non-starter compared to hers so how can she complain? Also, I think places like Kleiner don't need to exist and the world would likely be a better place without them. But that's just my t…

It is all relative right? She did do those things and she probably had to work harder than her male peers to get to Kleiner in the first place. I think dismissing her "complaints" is just not fair. Discrimination can happen anywhere at any professional level, the teeny top .00001% and the bottom percentage of wage earners making minimum wage. Just because it she is arguably very successful does not mean her claims ha…

>> she probably had to work harder than her male peers >> to get to Kleiner in the first place

Probably not. The article mentions (to Ellen's credit, BTW) that Doerr was specifically looking for Asian women to hire. That's ironically probably also one of the reasons why she wasn't treated seriously: diversity hiring casts a permanent shadow over even the candidates with abundant qualifications.

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

#439

Post by JamesBarney »

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…

I read stories like this and I wonder how representative they are. I'm from the different world of enterprise software and I couldn't imagine any of these things happening.

The only conversation that I've ever heard in mixed company that was even remotely similar to the ones she mentions is one time a female co-worker mentioned at lunch that her roommate was an erotic dancer at a men's club so there was a brief conversation about where she worked/how much she made/weirdest story/etc.

I'm curious if the difference between my experience and the stories I'm constantly reading is a result of selection bias or if startup technology really is a very different beast than enterprise tech from a sexism point of view.(I suspect a little of both)

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

#440

Post by jpao79 »

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…

Agree - I think many of the recent examples of Silicon Valley issues in the media seem more related to Silicon Valley VCs who inherit more traits from NYC finance, sales and hedge fund/investment banking than the hacker in the garage inventing next generation networking, programming language, search engine, machine learning or open source project.

In fact many men (and women) who chose engineering/computer science were explicitly trying to escape these questionable finance/business 'cool kid' types by specifically going into the technology field. [1]

Additionally, I think as technology becomes more ubiquitous in mainstream industries like fashion, real estate, retail, lifestyle manufacturing, tech will be taking on those industries historical problems with lack of diversity.

Many of Binary Capital's investments overall read more like applying smartphone/Uber type apps to a specific industry vertical. They seem a little light on tech, heavy on social/consumer aspects.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/binary-capital#/enti...

And a big concern is that the proposed fixes will be focused on increasing diversity training for engineering and computer science (while for sure a good thing speaking as a father with a daughter!) should really be focused on increasing diversity training for finance, investment banking, sales, marketing in all sectors.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

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