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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

#491

Post by erikpukinskis »

tomxor wrote: post #452
bane wrote: post #290

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 h…

>Pao's story is important to tell, but she lacks the personal credibility for people to care ^This, because it matters, reverse the scenario if you like, and make it a man... It's very difficult to care about any type of discrimination when the person discriminated against is unpleasant to say the least. This is not hate, stop the mad flagging and form an argument!

It's not OK to harass unpleasant people.

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

#492

Post by [deleted] »

tomxor wrote: post #452
bane wrote: post #290

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 h…

>Pao's story is important to tell, but she lacks the personal credibility for people to care ^This, because it matters, reverse the scenario if you like, and make it a man... It's very difficult to care about any type of discrimination when the person discriminated against is unpleasant to say the least. This is not hate, stop the mad flagging and form an argument!

[deleted]

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

#493

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

smsm42 wrote: post #480
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.

> There's no reason that a bright student with a biology background couldn't be a perfect fit There's no reason that a bright student with Chinese poetry background couldn't be a perfect fit. But I think there's reasons why we still have CS degrees even though there's no reason why any bright person can't teach oneself coding. OTOH, if you go this route and say CS degree doesn't matter at all, just drop any connectio…

I'm not saying that it doesn't matter - clearly someone with a CS degree is more _likely_ to be a better fit, but I see no reason to limit targeting of job postings for junior developer positions to just recently graduated CS undergrads when there are plenty of other people with other degree backgrounds that might be a good fit as well.

I wouldn't link it specifically to a biology degree, but my initial response was to someone who asked about it specifically.

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

#494

Post by yuhong »

I just noticed that software patents and employment anti-discrimination laws have some very similar problems. With the performance of manual labor jobs and physical patents the tests tends to be relatively objective, and that was probably what both laws was designed for. With many other jobs and with software patents this is often not the case, making the laws much easier to abuse for example. As a side note, this is also why anti-discrimination laws still make sense for things like public places and voting, because the test for whether someone is able to vote for example tends to be objective.

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

#496

Post by mcguire »

sdenton4 wrote: post #294
SBCRec wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide a source please? Interested to read about it! Thanks in Advance!

Here's a piece in response to the damore memo, written up by an evolutionary biologist. https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot... It spends a while at the beginning on credentials and the importance of using citations (something damore failed at), and starts getting into the science at 'universal across all cultures, are we sure?'

Very good article, by the way.

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

#497

Post by Manager »

Ellen Pao 'resigned' because she displeased too many people. Her style was a little too autocratic for the Reddit culture. For instance and if I recall correctly, telling the 'Ask Me Anything' moderator to move to video interviews and then firing her when she refused. Pao instructing the entire Reddit team to upsticks and move to the one city.

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

#498

Post by xxSparkleSxx »

kazagistar wrote: post #371
cuckcuckspruce wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought that biology was struggling with not having enough quantitative students with an aptitude for complex statistics and simulation, even though those directions have the highest research potential. Hardly seems like fertile ground to find software development in large numbers.

Bioinformatics scientist here.

1) There are lots of brilliant people in the field, but it is also the degree that dumb people who want a science degree or are "pre-med" get. It tremendously lowers the value of my undergrad degree. If you look at high-paying jobs (finance, investing, etc), you'll often find people who say they occasionally hire in a bright scientist who wants to switch industries. They typically hire physics and chemistry majors and are much less likely to hire someone with a biology degree.

2)The computational biologists/bioinformaticians/etc in this field are pretty variable in their CS skills and a good deal of the top performers leave the field because pay is really, really terrible. (ie my compensationv is 65K, high COL area, MS required, 1 year of direct experience under my belt, plus an additional 4 years of experience in the wider biotech industry - trust me I think my life is a joke too).

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

#499

Post by concede_pluto »

grabcocque wrote: post #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 sc…

> the tech scene was supposed to be progressive and enlightened

Why? Tech was a haven for nerdy outcasts who want a world that makes sense because the smartest minds are in charge. If anything it was libertarian since the cypherpunk days. Now we have censorious normies playing at identity politics who lack the obsession yet want the paychecks.

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

#500

Post by lilactown »

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…

I don't think most people care about successful people partaking in drunken S&M orgies at 3 AM - at least, I don't. What I care about are the people who use their success, status, and position in a company to make other people feel like they also need to be a part of their drunken 3 AM debauchery. Or else face consequences.

I didn't get the impression from Ellen's account that the major problem was the fact that Ajit was cheating on his wife or lying to Ellen about it (although that in itself is not morally OK); the major problem was after she rebuffed him, the backlash that she faced due to his position of power within the company and community at large.

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