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Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

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Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#231

Post by ska »

ebalit wrote: post #224
ska wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are two different comments to go with your two different statement, I was perhaps unclear. 1) Most people in a college IT program are not going to end up in management (or at least, not with much responsibility), so using that class as a whole is a poor proxy. Assuming the ratio persists in a subset is too strong to leave without support. 2) Using the previous ratios of something as a baseline is only meaningful…

That would be interesting to know if the percentage of technical managers changed too. Mayer is a CS graduate that became widely successful in a management position. I would think she values technical management.

That's true, it would be interesting.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#232

Post by wfo »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #212
talmand wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily think the complaint is that they are incompetent because they are female. The complaint of gender bias is still valid even if the people who benefited from the bias are fully capable of the job. If it can be shown that the 80% women were not hired based on gender bias then the complaint is unjustified.

Do we go looking for that gender bias when its 80% men? Again, women have to prove they belong; the assumption is there has to be some bias or they would not be in those positions.

Yes of course we do. Do you read the same Internet that I do? You can't open a single web page without reading something about gender discrimination in tech and how it's biased and unfair against women. You can't walk into a college campus in the country and not see companies and universities bending over backwards to try to force more women into tech to reverse the trend. There are programs, scholarships, engagement programs, all specifically for women because the entire community acknowledges and understands the bias. Firing or demoting 60% of your workforce instantly so you can reverse the extreme inequality into a mirror in the other direction is discrimination as well, but it is explicit and direct, not implicit and insidious which is why people are offended.

But you realize this.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#233

Post by wfo »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #219
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just any man...it was a lot of men. This kind of discrimination could be excused if it brought a tangible value to the company, but this reshuffling did nothing to help this ailing company. Meyer's actions were discriminatory at worst; at best, it was merely gross incompetence.

Lots of companies fail to survive Silicon Valley forever. Yahoo!'s future aside, the conversation was about promotion, not ailing companies. A lot of women are routinely overlooked in management promotions. Since its 80% (or usually much more) men in every other company in Silicon Valley, we'll have to call discrimination and incompetence at all of them? The assumption that women can't possibly belong in management i…

Yes -- because people go to tech websites and spam entire comment sections with hundreds of comments saying exactly the same thing and telling everyone that they are sexist while intentionally missing the point.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#234

Post by amyjess »

iamleppert wrote: post #52

Just reading this brought back memories of working at LinkedIn, and why I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes. That pretty much excludes all big tech companies and I'm perfectly fine with that. The cookie-cutter performance review process is impersonal and has absolutely nothing to do with helping people do their best work. In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't…

I was once put on a PIP for political reasons by a vengeful boss. That day, I applied to what ended up being my next job, and I put in my notice the day before the PIP was set to end.

It was a very small startup. Oddly enough, that boss and I get along really well outside of work, and I'd still gladly go out for drinks with him or something, but I will never work for him again.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#235

Post by amyjess »

bobthecowboy wrote: post #227
iron0012 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true in my experience, and I doubt it's true in yours. While "guys" is sometimes employed to refer to a mixed gender group of people, it would be very weird for "guy" or "dude" to be used to refer to a woman. Argue in good faith, please. And try not to police PC here. You're not bringing anything to the discussion.

As someone who has lived in Southern California 90% of their life, and Berkeley, CA the rest, I can absolutely say that it is true in my experience that Californians (and I obviously include myself in this set) will use 'guy' and 'dude' to refer to anything . Men, women, children, dogs, cats, cars, burritos. Last week I got up from the table to throw the rest of my burrito away and offered to take my wife's as well b…

I remember using "guy" to refer to a network cable at one point.

"Do I plug this guy or that guy into the switch?"

This was in North Texas.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#236

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #219
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just any man...it was a lot of men. This kind of discrimination could be excused if it brought a tangible value to the company, but this reshuffling did nothing to help this ailing company. Meyer's actions were discriminatory at worst; at best, it was merely gross incompetence.

Lots of companies fail to survive Silicon Valley forever. Yahoo!'s future aside, the conversation was about promotion, not ailing companies. A lot of women are routinely overlooked in management promotions. Since its 80% (or usually much more) men in every other company in Silicon Valley, we'll have to call discrimination and incompetence at all of them? The assumption that women can't possibly belong in management i…

>The assumption that women can't possibly belong in management is galling. No mystery why Silicon Valley has the reputation it does.

You're putting a lot of words in other people's mouths in this thread, and I believe you are equating skepticism and discomfort from the lawsuit's allegations with willful ignorance or even sincere sexism.

If a CEO wishes to fire half the company and hire new people, sure. If the CEO wants to fire half the company (who happen to be men) and replace them with new people (who happen to be women), again, sure.

If a CEO implements a review system designed to illegitimize honest work by a cohort of people and have them demoted and/or fired to minimize severance costs while bringing on or promoting people of a different cohort, then we have a discrimination problem.

Honestly I am a little surprised at the accusations of sexism towards people that are expressing discomfort with what appears to be a primarily sexist act.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#238

Post by oh_sigh »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #180
gruez wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because men outnumber women in that field

Not at Yahoo! Not any more. When give a fair playing field, the women outnumber the men.

So in a profession that is generally 80% male, and 20% female, you think that women are so amazing that they will make up 80% of the top leadership in an even playing field?

That seems unlikely.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#239

Post by amyjess »

pyrophane wrote: post #230
twblalock wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your manager does not like you, he does not need a formal review process to screw you over. In fact, without a formal review process, it would be even easier to screw you over, because there won't be any paper trail at all.

A formal review just covers the company's ass if you come back and claim that your firing was due to illegal discrimination. That is, afaik, 100% of the reason why PIPs even exist. They've decided they wan't fire you and now they need to assemble some compelling documentation that it's you, not them.

A much bigger reason is to demoralize you and convince you that you deserve to be fired, so you won't even think about a lawsuit.

PIPs aren't really good documentation of bad performance; in fact, a badly-written PIP can actually backfire on the company because the wording is usually full of holes a good lawyer can drive a truck through. Basically instead of the company having proof you were a poor performer, you now have proof the company is lying to get you out the door.

A PIP is a lawsuit deterrent, not an actual legal defense.

Re: Lawsuit: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer led illegal purge of male workers

#240

Post by oh_sigh »

yolesaber wrote: post #151
Klibarchu wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it a rest. Trumpeting your PC nonsense won't help you. You understood what he meant. Communication successful, despite your protest!

It's not about successful communication, it's about how you present an entire group of people. Using the term "the blacks" or "Blacks" makes you sound like Archie Bunker, dude. Negative social signal.

Maybe you just have an unconscious bias against blacks, and therefore think that "blacks" sounds bad.

If I said "Whites outnumber african americans in the US 5:1", would you be offended?

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