11–20 of 81 posts
I don't think this trial has much to do with larger women in tech issues. There's a lot of politics at play for ALL employees of VC firms and this doesn't sound any different. If you've been following all of the coverage of this case, Pao isn't coming off well. She states that it was discriminatory that she didn't get her review on time. Unprofessional to have a delayed review? Yes. Gender harassment? No. Instead of…
I don't think this trial has much to do with larger women in tech issues. There's a lot of politics at play for ALL employees of VC firms and this doesn't sound any different. If you've been following all of the coverage of this case, Pao isn't coming off well. She states that it was discriminatory that she didn't get her review on time. Unprofessional to have a delayed review? Yes. Gender harassment? No. Instead of…
> That said, a Kleiner victory is well within the realm of the possible. Many women in the tech industry are concerned that Pao’s case is weak and that her accusations might exacerbate bias in the workplace. "I worry that it will make a lot more men feel that—being nice to and mentoring and trying to be a good person toward women colleagues—they, too, will be hauled before a jury," says Melinda Riechert, managing par…
I'm sure Pao's attorneys are arguing it is a part of a larger hostile work environment. But itself isn't sexual harassment.
I don't think this trial has much to do with larger women in tech issues. There's a lot of politics at play for ALL employees of VC firms and this doesn't sound any different. If you've been following all of the coverage of this case, Pao isn't coming off well. She states that it was discriminatory that she didn't get her review on time. Unprofessional to have a delayed review? Yes. Gender harassment? No. Instead of…
I downvoted you, because you purported to summarize the case for readers who haven't been following it, and then provided a very misleading summary. Pao's case does not revolve around delayed reviews, or who took notes in meetings. One needn't have an opinion about the merits of Pao's case to have a negative opinion about the merits of this summary.
> That said, a Kleiner victory is well within the realm of the possible. Many women in the tech industry are concerned that Pao’s case is weak and that her accusations might exacerbate bias in the workplace. "I worry that it will make a lot more men feel that—being nice to and mentoring and trying to be a good person toward women colleagues—they, too, will be hauled before a jury," says Melinda Riechert, managing par…
Hitting on a woman isn't even illegal unless there is a threat of coercion or it is so frequent/severe that it creates a hostile work environment. I'm sure Pao's attorneys are arguing it is a part of a larger hostile work environment. But itself isn't sexual harassment.
Mentoring and being nice to a woman is very, very different than flirting with her. Implying they are the same is gross.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how you could possibly not see how it has larger implications. For years we've been told that the reason there's no women in tech is because of all us sexist brogrammers, despite the typical programmer being the opposite of a 'bro', while the VCs very much resemble them, and somehow VCs being 96% male with most top firms having NO women as partners slips by unnoticed. VCs intentionally create frat house c…
You're throwing a lot of opinion out there that's not backed by evidence or even anecdote. I currently work for a VC funded company and have worked for several in the past. I would not describe any of them as "frat house cultures". You're making some pretty sweeping generalizations. The dinner with Al Gore was for senior partners and there WAS women invited, they just couldn't make it. Here's Mary Meeker on the subje…
I've been to several VC-funded companies that involved things like excessive drinking, happy hours as part of the interviews, etc. For some bizarre reason involving an algorithm called Future Founders that looks for potential founders, I also got invited to a VC lunch where they talked about these strategies, ways to effectively outsource, etc. I am going to write a tell-all about it eventually but I'm still too mid-career for it to be a good idea.
VCs are throwing around a lot of intangibles and "we just can't know for sure" for why there field is 96% male, and yet the woman who objectively outperforms them doesn't get promoted. You can easily fact check the sexism I'm talking about by just looking up top VC firms and scrolling through their list of partners, and I would also recommend every tech employee look at the gender makeup of their board of directors, and reading more about this case.
Are you joking about saying her qualifications are debatable? She has an engineering degree from Princeton, an MBA and JD from Harvard, and the only thing that prevents her from having a track record of successful investments is the sexism being demonstrated in this case!
96% male, paying yourselevs $3 million a year but running to Democrats like Obama and DeBlasio to spend taxpayer money to fill your "talent shortage", harassing and retaliating against the few female VCs you do have, I do see sickening behavior, and the reason you can't is because you're a corporate shill.
Naturally, this assumption causes any violation to throw a LegalException, which is caught by the GovernmentSingleton anti-pattern whose separation of concern juggles between legislating, in scientifically precise terms, how genders must interact based entirely upon the rotation of the earth... and managing nuclear weapons launches.
> [EDIT] Please don't just downvote me. If you disagree, leave a reply.
Just look at that plea for reason. And this community implicitly claims a monopoly on rationality while deriding others as emotionally savage worthy of mob vengeance and professional stoning.
Can we get rid of the facade of reason on HN and just spam "IF YOU'RE NOT WITH US, YOU'RE AGAINST US" until #hilary2016 is over?
I don't think this trial has much to do with larger women in tech issues. There's a lot of politics at play for ALL employees of VC firms and this doesn't sound any different. If you've been following all of the coverage of this case, Pao isn't coming off well. She states that it was discriminatory that she didn't get her review on time. Unprofessional to have a delayed review? Yes. Gender harassment? No. Instead of…
I don't see how you could possibly not see how it has larger implications. For years we've been told that the reason there's no women in tech is because of all us sexist brogrammers, despite the typical programmer being the opposite of a 'bro', while the VCs very much resemble them, and somehow VCs being 96% male with most top firms having NO women as partners slips by unnoticed. VCs intentionally create frat house c…
The issue is that Pao is a lousy person to get behind on many of the issues she's the complainant on. She appeared to have routinely crossed good social boundaries that she's now complaining about, and was well rewarded for her work, receiving sizable bonuses for missing a performance eval.
I wish on my wildest dreams my reviews went as poorly as the ones she's taking issue with.
She still has plenty of valid complaints, but it's like she's infected with a logical fallacy disease, and any attempt to rationally examine her case almost forces one to wrongly dismiss her due to a list of fallacies that infect any examination of her claims.
She was hit on by a married man at work? That's genuinely unprofessional. But then she had an affair with a married coworker. It makes it easy to dismiss her on this, even if her complaint is still valid.
She was discriminated against? She received six figure bonuses and huge pay raises for missing a performance review that she then "forgot"! Again, did everybody else get 7 figure bonuses and even bigger raises? Maybe her claim is still valid even if it's easy to lose sight of it in the logical fallacy bait she keeps throwing into the case.
And so on.
Maybe she was lousy at her job and that's why she missed out on opportunities. Maybe she missed out because she's a minority class who was discriminated against.
Maybe she's just an unpleasant person to be around and people didn't invite her to parties, where he easier to get along with peers made good networking connections. Is that discrimination? Not if she wasn't invited for being a whiny bore (I don't know that she is), but it is if she wasn't invited for being a woman or a minority or whatever.
Whatever the case is, it's not entirely clear that she was personally discriminated against, even if the VC firm she was part discriminates in other cases. What is clear is that she definitely played in the same game as many of the people she's now complaining about post-facto, and this soils her arguments.
One of the reasons it's important to try and maintain a good reputation based on strong personal integrity is that if a case like this comes up with you, it's much easier for an arbiter to parse out the bad doings against you from the bad doings you committed.
edit here she is in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJp3sTM2oeo
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I downvoted you, because you purported to summarize the case for readers who haven't been following it, and then provided a very misleading summary. Pao's case does not revolve around delayed reviews, or who took notes in meetings. One needn't have an opinion about the merits of Pao's case to have a negative opinion about the merits of this summary.
Care to provide some links to what you think the case IS about? I'm addressing points raised in the submitted article and the article I provided a link to. How am I being misleading?
> That said, a Kleiner victory is well within the realm of the possible. Many women in the tech industry are concerned that Pao’s case is weak and that her accusations might exacerbate bias in the workplace. "I worry that it will make a lot more men feel that—being nice to and mentoring and trying to be a good person toward women colleagues—they, too, will be hauled before a jury," says Melinda Riechert, managing par…
he gave Pao a volume of Leonard Cohen’s poems and drawings (entitled Book of Longing) on Valentine’s Day and asked her out to dinner on a night when his wife was out of town
These could very well be two completely separate occasions. I suspect the author created this juxtaposition to elicit your precise reaction.