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Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

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Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#61

Post by jasode »

throwawayjava wrote: post #24
jasode wrote: post #8

Yes, this practice of models at parties brings back memories. In 2000, a very well-known enterprise software company (Northeast not Silicon Valley) hosted a conference for customers and had a night party for the attendees. The most memorable thing I remember was the group of extremely pretty women on roller skates mingling with the crowd. E.g. they'd skate up and ask random attendees, "Hey where are you from? Are you…

IDK. My logical brain says "it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal." My emotional brain says "This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."

>"it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal."

For that particular party, there definitely wasn't blowback because the next morning, everybody talked about how amazing it was. I think it caught everyone off guard because it was unexpected and it gave attendees happy memories. (Yes, maybe the attendees should have been morally outraged but I can only report how they actually responded and at that time, they thought it was a huge hit.)

It's been 17 years so maybe that company doesn't hire party models anymore.

>"This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."

That's a valid opinion but just to paint the picture better, the women were not dressed up as "Playboy bunnies". They were wearing regular shorts and a themed tshirt showing no cleavage. The interactions with the models would be similar to a kid interacting with Mickey Mouse at Disney. Also, there probably were male models on roller skates as well but I don't remember them for obvious reasons.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#63

Post by meddlepal »

vanadium wrote: post #46

During the dot-com boom in Atlanta back in '99-'00, agencies and, to some extent, startups around the city were known for hitting the strip clubs for client meetings. It was pretty rife out there within the industry. I doubt that would even remotely pass today. Just because some practices were "acceptable" over a prior timeframe doesn't exactly render it acceptable today.

This is still fairly common in B2B and enterprise sales relationship management from what I see and have been told.

Know your customer and their representative(s) tastes.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#64

Post by gbarc888 »

davidu wrote: post #7

Pathetic. The whole point is to celebrate with the employees and their families and recognize the hard work everyone has put in over the year. A stranger not connected to an employee would take away from that value. If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that.

Don't employees usually bring a +1 to these events anyway?

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#65

Post by musage »

matte_black wrote: post #22
bdcravens wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of things have been happening for a long time. That doesn't guarantee it should continue.

I’m commenting more on the article than the practice. It’s clear that someone wrote this with a splashy headline and juicy intro to make it seem like some new phenomenon that perfectly dove tails with current events about sexual harassment or lack of company diversity.

How is that a splashy headline? Are you referring to "sneaking"?

> “The companies don’t want their staff to be talking to someone and think, Oh, this person was hired to socialize with me,” says Kermaani, who’s sending models to seven tech parties in the same weekend.

It's just accurate.

And where in the article is there any implication that this is an entirely new thing?

> say a record number of tech companies are quietly paying [..] it’s part of an older trend. Tech companies have long used models to run their booths at trade shows such as CES in Las Vegas, hype up crowds at product launches, and direct foot traffic at conferences. That said, this year’s record-setting requests for the minglers, known as “ambiance and atmosphere models,” are a step beyond what the industry has seen before, says Chris Hanna, who’s run TSM Agency since 2004 and counts among his clients “one of the largest search engines in the world.”

The agencies themselves seem to say it's reaching a new level in both number and now becoming about a generic fun-ness, rather than more specific tasks, like sit in this booth and be pretty. But other than that, the article outright says it's not new.

The record numbers are not up for debate anyway I guess, but as for the "type" of engagement, if you imply this has always been so generic and fake, what's your source for making that claim?

> that perfectly dove tails with current events about sexual harassment or lack of company diversity.

So you are you saying it doesn't? Can you eloborate on how sexism has nothing to do with it, then?

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#66

Post by Helmet »

throwawayjava wrote: post #24
jasode wrote: post #8

Yes, this practice of models at parties brings back memories. In 2000, a very well-known enterprise software company (Northeast not Silicon Valley) hosted a conference for customers and had a night party for the attendees. The most memorable thing I remember was the group of extremely pretty women on roller skates mingling with the crowd. E.g. they'd skate up and ask random attendees, "Hey where are you from? Are you…

IDK. My logical brain says "it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal." My emotional brain says "This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."

My logical brain goes:

I bet these women are getting paid a pretty penny to go to some stupid party and mingle with the patrons. Probably get drinks and food on the house too. Lucky bastards!

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#67

Post by aosnfoasnf »

jdavis703 wrote: post #10

This is not new for sure, but it deserves discussion in light of the #metoo movement. In SV we're supposed to be innovators, why aren't we leading the way towards a more equal society? If our holiday parties are boring because we've hired a masculine monoculture, then maybe the solution is to hire more diverse people the entire year. It's objectifying to women and minorities if the only time we're hired is to make so…

I don't believe SV has the kind of culture to do that. It's clear to me that liberty, equality, and fraternity in this place died a long time ago in pursuit of power and money. You can try to reform them, but the system at its heart encourages these kinds of behaviors, behaviors that are at its root symptomatic of inequality.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#68

Post by adamsea »

natecavanaugh wrote: post #54
davidu wrote: post #7

Pathetic. The whole point is to celebrate with the employees and their families and recognize the hard work everyone has put in over the year. A stranger not connected to an employee would take away from that value. If you want more women at the event, hire more women at the company and create a culture that encourages that.

I too think this is pretty crass and as artificial as so much else in SV. But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical. And why shouldn't those women be able to work? For me, I don't mind anyone being hired or contracted for skills in guest relations, market…

> But to play devil's advocate, aren't they hiring more women, but instead of employees, they're hiring contractors? They just happen to be hiring women whose gifts are more physical and social than technical.

The issue is the gender disparity in _software_engineering_, which is actually made worse by this, because hiring someone because they look pretty (they're not asking agencies for, like, conversationalists with master's degree, and if they were, they'd still have to be attractive) is straight-up objectification, which is bad for women everywhere - and men.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#69

Post by firstplacelast »

throwawayjava wrote: post #24
jasode wrote: post #8

Yes, this practice of models at parties brings back memories. In 2000, a very well-known enterprise software company (Northeast not Silicon Valley) hosted a conference for customers and had a night party for the attendees. The most memorable thing I remember was the group of extremely pretty women on roller skates mingling with the crowd. E.g. they'd skate up and ask random attendees, "Hey where are you from? Are you…

IDK. My logical brain says "it's not 1950 anymore; the PR blow-black has the potential to be truly brutal." My emotional brain says "This is horridly objectifying and super awkward."

It’s kind of sexist too. I would like pretty male models to look at please.

Re: Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into This Year’s Holiday Parties

#70

Post by thorell »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #52
ardit33 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize that they are tech companies and need engineers, and only 16% of CS graduates are female? Where will they find the balanced ratio if the supply is so bad? You can't just wave a magical wand and suddenly make more women engineers. Most tech companies genuinely want to have balanced gender ratio in their workforce, but they can't as there are just not enough women that graduate on CS. "By dividing the sc…

Ya, and with limited supply, as more bigger richer companies strongly focus on gender diversity, it will make it worse than it was before for the rest of the industry. The problem will have to be corrected in the universities before it is in the industry. Many higher end CS programs are making great strides here, so I think it will happen in a couple of generations.

But you're presupposing a problem. It's possible that women don't enter CS due to personal preference. Not because CS is hostile to women but because the subject matter isn't interesting to them.

I heard somewhere that there are just as many women in undergrad math as men, but the ratio dramatically decreases in graduate math because so many women leave... to teach.

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