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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

#551

Post by wiz21c »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #399
wiz21c wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a (happy) dad, I'm very surprised by this : >>> Do we, as a society, treat the privilege to raise a child as adequate replacement of the lost salary/promotions etc? I'm very surprised of the opposition you make here. I'd prefer : Do we, as a society, treat the choice to raise a child as one that doesn't imply the loss of salary/promotions etc? (but in my case, my employer has never spent tons of money on me; "cons…

My point is this: There is a business cost associated with people who choose to be parents: They may be absent for an extended period of time (which in some fields is a big problem), they are often less flexible with hours/week, which hours on a given day, when they want holidays. They choose a more healthy work-life balance, which for the employer means "more life, less work". It's also opportunity cost for you: Whi…

>>> One could say, yes, ok, I took that trade-off, but now I got to be a dad, and that's worth more to me.

That's it ! More precisely : I've chosen to be dad for reasons which are absolutely not rational. Therefore, the question of the trade off is not that important.

>>> You should not lose that much

yep, that's what I'm aiming for.

Thing is, the way you put it, I understood that "business suffers from those people who choose to be parents". For me parents are like taxes : as a business, that is as a member of the society, you abide to respect the rules : you pay your taxes because the society decided it's positive for everybody, ditto for parents.

But I think we agree :-)

>>> I think you might underestimate the amount your employer has invested in you.

>>> How much would it cost him to replace you

Not much : maybe waiting a year to find an ideal candidate (so I'd say a month of work), and then a year to train the guy (say, 6 months). So basically 7 months of salary. not much. Hint : I don't work in hyper hitech stuff, I just run very big, long lived applications; nothing fancy.

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

#552

Post by crdoconnor »

smsm42 wrote: post #486
crdoconnor wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I do feel that it's wrong to restrict the supply of foreign programmers so that an engineer in Silicon Valley can earn $200k instead of 'only' $150k. Do you feel that Yelp paying $200k rather than $150k is a greater injustice than poorer countries footing the bill for educating their best and brightest only to see their best and brightest flee to San Francisco because domestic companies cannot compete with 'only…

> poorer countries footing the bill for educating their best and brightest only to see their best and brightest flee to San Francisco Do you imply that "poorer countries" somehow own their people and those people owe them indentured servitude until they "return" the "investment" made into them to their "country"? And until then they are not free to move wherever they please and seek as large salary as they can find?…

Nope. That's a massive Straw man you just lit on fire.

Honestly, I don't even really like the Singaporean approach of educating your citizens and then slapping a bond on them either. I think education should be free.

I think the US owes the poorer country if it takes their citizens though, and in a just world, corporation taxes on the companies that employ these people would foot the bill of the education they are are using.

We live in a world where poor subsidize rich though and the USSR being both very poor and having a great education system was one example of that.

I think it's weird that you used scare quotes around the word "investment". Do you consider the idea that there should be a societal gain for educating ones' citizens controversial?

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

#553

Post by idrios »

adekok wrote: post #547
sangnoir wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter devils advocate - let me remap what you're saying to race: >> racism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. >To play devils advocate, racism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why blacks and whites are treated differently, e.g. basketball (mostly blacks) versus swimming (mostly whites ) If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.

> Counter devils advocate - let me remap what you're saying to race: That makes about as much sense as saying "let me remap what you're saying to hair color" > If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you. It does sound insane, because it is insane. But it's your text. Not mine. The problem is that you're making the following insinuation: there are no more differences between men and women…

The jump from sexism to racism made perfect sense to me, they're pretty analogous; an entire group of people has significant and pervasive adverse experiences over a part of their identity. ..We don't have a systematic cultural problem over people born with red hair, but if we did there would be a word for that too. Your analogy sounds insane and his doesn't because his stays within the domain of cultural issues.

More importantly, your original point dodges the issue of sexism altogether. Obviously there are biological differences between men and women, but sexism is not an issue over who is able to bear children and who has more estrogen in their body. Sexism is about an unfair social power dynamic. Nobody is denying that there is a biological reality to it; the conversation is over how to work with that knowledge to give both men and women an even playing field.

Take one example that men will sometimes fall in love with women they work with, or vice versa. Without any rules or precedence you can end up with seriously messed up power dynamics, like a man in a more senior position pressuring women into unwanted sexual situations in which rejection puts them at fear for their jobs. Sexual harassment laws exist to try to protect against this, and inter-office relationships are generally forbidden as a preventative measure.

Sexism is a really difficult and nuanced issue, and to say "yeah but this will always be an issue because men and women are biologically different" trivializes it and takes away from the discussion.

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

#554

Post by imaginenore »

dang wrote: post #507
imaginenore wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She couldn't prove sexism in court. Twice now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pao_v._Kleiner_Perkins Why would you defend false allegations by Pao? They hurt women that actually do experience it. They also give more evidence to the fact that women do use the system to get rich quick by suing in hopes of getting a massive settlement. She should be condemned and her claims should not be used to demonstrate sexism, whi…

This crosses into personal attack. You don't have anything like the basis you would need to credibly post such inflammatory claims, so this comment breaks the HN guidelines. We ban accounts that do this, and I'm sorry to say you've done it repeatedly in the past. Please fix this if you want to continue commenting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What exactly is a "personal attack" here? I posted widely published information. There's even a link.

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

#555

Post by ptaipale »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #383
ptaipale wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find that call for discrimination in the text. Are we reading the same document? When I read it, he mentions conservatives only in the section "Suggestions / Stop alienating conservatives" where he says: In highly progressive environments, conservatives are a minority that feel like they need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility. We should empower those with different ideologies to be able to express…

I'm not sure why the defenders of this memo always devolve into word games. "Stop alienating X" is a call for action, and if that call to action is heeded X will feel less alienated and there will be more of them. Because it's targetted at X it is "discrimination" by the dictionary definition of the term and by the general usage. This is true whether X is "women" or "conservatives". In this kind of context it is some…

I disagree who is playing a word game here.

When I read "stop alienating conservatives" with the explanation that they should not "need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility", I read that as saying that people shouldn't be openly hostile to other people even if they disagree.

In my opinion, that is not discrimination or "positive discrimination". In my opinion, it's simply being civil to other people.

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

#556

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ptaipale wrote: post #555
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why the defenders of this memo always devolve into word games. "Stop alienating X" is a call for action, and if that call to action is heeded X will feel less alienated and there will be more of them. Because it's targetted at X it is "discrimination" by the dictionary definition of the term and by the general usage. This is true whether X is "women" or "conservatives". In this kind of context it is some…

I disagree who is playing a word game here. When I read "stop alienating conservatives" with the explanation that they should not "need to stay in the closet to avoid open hostility", I read that as saying that people shouldn't be openly hostile to other people even if they disagree. In my opinion, that is not discrimination or "positive discrimination". In my opinion, it's simply being civil to other people.

Okay, well I'll just redefine everything he argues against in the memo, which he regards as discrimination, as "being civil to other people" and then we're at an impasse I guess.

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

#557

Post by tomxor »

abritinthebay wrote: post #366
marmaduke wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pao's story is important to tell, but she lacks the personal credibility for people to care. Was a clear way to say the story is relevant but unfortunate choice of storyteller

Yes, but it was also clear that this view is unsupported and irrelevant to the point of the story.

> Yes, but it was also clear that this view is unsupported and irrelevant to the point of the story.

Why is it irrelevant? I think it's entirely relevant, Pao showed she was pretty deceitful in her suit... how is such an individuals personal case of discrimination not tainted by that?

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

#558

Post by forgottenpass »

smsm42 wrote: post #482
wott wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have a feeling we by now have way too much "tell something about the mentality" things. People seek most minute and irrelevant details about somebody's life and blow them up into the whole narrative about how it reveals the darkest depths of somebody's psychology, all while ignoring the open history of behavior, speech, accomplishments and so on. The idea that all the observable behavior is just a facade and only t…

It's projection. Not the "I'm ascribing my attitudes to the other" flavor of projection that most people think of. It's the kind that makes someone go "Oh, of course this other has this set of attributes that make them exactly the kind of person I already have a stereotype for and opinion of."

Secondly, there are people that spend a great deal of mental effort concealing what they consider to be their "true personality." Whether or not that is in reality who they are is tangential to the point that concealment becomes a big part of their life, and they start assuming others do it to. Or if someone was burned by a person that practices concealment, they'll be on guard for it. And that is again tangential to either's _ability_ to read a concealed aspect of another, which are often no closer than the projection described above.

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

#559

Post by aianus »

crdoconnor wrote: post #552
smsm42 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poorer countries footing the bill for educating their best and brightest only to see their best and brightest flee to San Francisco Do you imply that "poorer countries" somehow own their people and those people owe them indentured servitude until they "return" the "investment" made into them to their "country"? And until then they are not free to move wherever they please and seek as large salary as they can find?…

Nope. That's a massive Straw man you just lit on fire. Honestly, I don't even really like the Singaporean approach of educating your citizens and then slapping a bond on them either. I think education should be free. I think the US owes the poorer country if it takes their citizens though, and in a just world, corporation taxes on the companies that employ these people would foot the bill of the education they are ar…

You obviously don't think it should be free because you think it should come with the obligation to stay in your poor country of birth after graduation. That obligation is worth $100,000s in opportunity cost or more.

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

#560

Post by thehardsphere »

Powerofmene wrote: post #450
thehardsphere wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the "person who is harassed" is actually a "person on a power trip", they will find "unwanted or unwelcome statements" in any behavior that you do. Because they can set the definition for "unwanted or unwelcome statements" and will abuse that to satisfy whatever their agenda is. You can definitely tell in cases where the target of this is a particular individual in a group setting; the double standard in treatment…

I am not saying that abuse never happens by someone who is looking to get rid of someone they simply don't like or a boss that gave them a bad review. It has happened and no doubt it will happen again. However, rest assured that it does not take long for the person who is complaining of unwanted or unwelcome statements to see that, historically at least, they are viewed as the problem. In general, businesses, regardl…

> However, rest assured that it does not take long for the person who is complaining of unwanted or unwelcome statements to see that, historically at least, they are viewed as the problem.

The amount of actual time that "long" takes can vary wildly, and assumes that businesses are generally competent at identifying and eliminating "threats." "Long" can sometimes be years of the behavior. Many businesses, even successful ones, are not fully aware of what goes on inside the company.

Even with those issues aside, none of these things you mention will stop you from being the first victim of someone who manipulatively uses complaints about objectionable comments to screw you over. Most places need a pattern of behavior established before they're willing to assign blame to the complaintant, especially if the complaintant is difficult to fire for other reasons (e.g. is a member of a legally protected class or is connected to someone up the corporate food chain).

And yes, I know you're talking about comments and other things that are subjective like that. Those are the ones most likely to be abused, because they can be interpreted in multiple ways.

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