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

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101–110 of 234 posts

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

#101

This has been happening at tech companies for decades. Not only are there models at the parties, but there's entertainment, food, drinks, etc. It's a good time, enjoy yourself and don't take it too seriously. This really isn't the end of the World.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they had male models also. Actually, I’m sure someone could make that into a winning business.

The article mentions that they had a few male models. At this company, anyway.

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

#102
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?

Oddly, the company party at my place of work has been employee-only for the last half dozen years, which has consequently meant I have left the party not long after opening and saying hello to a few folks, playing darts or something, grabbing a drink, and getting the heck outta there since I want to head home to my +1 and not expose my +1 to the feeling of abandonment.

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

#103
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.

But they did hire them. Pedantry aside though, what's wrong with having a boring party?

Not enough board games to solve that boredom problem, evidently.

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

#104
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 q…

It's a splashy headline. "Sneaking" is unnecessary. Replace the word with "Hiring", you don't sneak atmosphere models into a party, you hire them and they show up. There's also no point in calling out this year's parties, this has happened at a bunch of parties for at least the last two decades. It's not even exclusive to Silicon Valley!

Tradeshow models, booth models, and atmosphere models are also not the same. Tradeshow models must at least know about the product they are representing to discuss it with a potential customer. Atmosphere models must be very sociable and capable of carrying good conversation with anyone, you cannot just turn a cold shoulder to someone you don't find interesting. Booth models are mostly there to look pretty and maybe help with generic marketing tasks like passing out flyers.

Pointing out that the practice isn't new in the article doesn't mean the article itself transforms into something new and becomes a breath of fresh air. It's still a rehash of old ideas made to feed off current events to produce a bit of ad revenue from people looking to keep their outrage up to date.

So yes, I'm saying this does perfectly fit into current events. It was designed to.

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

#105

This isn’t new. https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/the-d... They’ve been flying women to San Francisco for dates.

Totally different. The article you're referencing is trying to connect two dating markets (SF and NYC) where both sides are ostensibly interested. Models at parties are actors, pretending to be real people.

Presumably models are also real people who have an interest in being there (their interest is in being paid).

If consenting adults are being treated fairly, I don't see any moral problem here.

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

#106
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's misogynistic because it commodifies women. Having a woman to talk to is something that you can just buy, like a car or a nice meal. They're not treated as people, just as consummables.

Like hiring a software engineer to make code for you?

It's not comparable.

A programmer spent a lot of time honing their craft, faces every day challenges, has growth opportunities, can aspire to higher salaries through tough work, has growth opportunities, can influence the world around them and create new things. Coding yields power.

While modelling may require difficult labour, it's mostly just "congratulations for your face".

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

#107
When I first saw this the headline was shrunk to "Silicon Valley Is Sneaking Models into..." and I assumed "the workplace" to be the logical conclusion of this. People paid to look pretty and sit at a desk and pretend like they work to adjust the workplace ambiance? Seems like a logical direction for this to go in.

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

#108
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…

[deleted]

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

#109

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…

In light of the #metoo movement and the numerous sexual harassment accusations, all across the board, this is what I see: things aren't that different SV. Where is the "In SV we're supposed to be innovators, why aren't we leading the way towards a more equal society?" narrative grounded?

> Where is the "In SV we're supposed to be innovators, why aren't we leading the way towards a more equal society?" narrative grounded?

Mostly in the minds of people who are still trying to convince themselves that their advertising and surveillance code or "social" skinner box is "making the world a better place".

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

#110

Huh. Seems like a better way to do it would be to just invite / hire a BUNCH of artists. No need to pretend; support an important part of why the Bay is the Bay, and expose your peeps to people they might not otherwise meet.

I doubt very many artists would be interested in spending their night having awkward forced interactions with random brogrammers and Kalanicks at a corporate christmas party. There's a reason these companies have to pay women to show up and pretend to be interested in what their employees have to say.
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