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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

#341

Post by cuckcuckspruce »

jadeklerk wrote: post #333
strken wrote: post #183

Articles like this really make me aware that men and women like Ellen Pao and her former partners live in a separate parallel world: three degrees, $10 million golden parachutes, private jet flights to ski resorts, affairs with a creepy married co-worker in Germany, machismo-driven muscling for VC connections, bisexual finance wizards who kickstart an Ivy-League LGBT program, dominance games over which chair an exec…

Sorry, what is 'hiring junior devs from the ranks of biology grads' intended to help with?

There's a meme (in the literal sense, not image macro sense) going around that because enrollment rates of women in computer science is dropping that companies should considering hiring junior developers from other programs with a higher rate of women enrolled - typically social science or biology.

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

#342

Post by Bartweiss »

Nursie wrote: post #272
strken wrote: post #183

Articles like this really make me aware that men and women like Ellen Pao and her former partners live in a separate parallel world: three degrees, $10 million golden parachutes, private jet flights to ski resorts, affairs with a creepy married co-worker in Germany, machismo-driven muscling for VC connections, bisexual finance wizards who kickstart an Ivy-League LGBT program, dominance games over which chair an exec…

Yeah, that really struck me as well. I've been in tech for close to 20 years now. I get paid pretty well compared to the national average pay, and globally speaking it's off the charts. But the figures and activities mentioned there are completely alien to me. This is the (a?) world of high finance and I can't relate to it. I've seen a lot of casual and systemic sexism in the tech industry, in the trenches and at the…

> I just don't recognise the business painted here to be "tech"

I get this feeling off a lot of high-profile stories, whether tech, banking, real estate, or something else altogether. Theranos gave me some of the same sense, that the business wasn't 'medicine' but 'power'. Back before his campaign, Trump's Scottish golf course did also. He bought cheap land that wasn't zoned for a golf course, because at that level zoning laws are business hurdles to have altered, not boundaries to work within. The hiring collusion story in tech as well; it happened in the Valley, but was a consequence of power, not tech.

At a certain point you're not talking about the culture of some specific industry, you're talking about the culture of the rich, powerful, and cutthroat across any industry. I think it's an important distinction to maintain.

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

#343

Post by b4ux1t3 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #329
b4ux1t3 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone would disagree that being respectful is a "professional" quality. "The staff was very professional." What imagery does that illicit? If you're like me, or just about anyone else I've ever heard use the term, polite is one of the first words that springs to mind. It doesn't matter if you get your work done. There are a hundred other people who can get your work done and do it without being a dick.…

Again, we just shift to the meaning of "being a dick", another subjective term. If you want to pin down a concept, you can't just deal with easily categorised instances - the real distinctions exist in the grey areas. There's a multi-dimensional gradient between polite and impolite, and where the thresholds lie is determined by personal value. Pick points far enough to either side, and most of those thresholds will f…

There are arbitrary, unambiguous, agreed upon standards of politeness. You don't curse people out. You don't sexually harass women (or men, for that matter). You don't show up for work late every day, smelling like a brewery.

However, those are all things that I've personally seen these so-called "talented" individuals do, because they think their talent makes them immune from criticism. And, sure, that's just my own, anecdotal experience, but the very fact that it's also a widely-held stereotype of these types of people, I would wager that I'm not alone in having been confronted with these types of people.

This isn't a gray area. This is the basic idea of being professional, and it holds true between places where a suit and tie is mandatory and places where you can bring your dog to work every day.

And to be absolutely clear, this is a very Western-centric view. I simply _don't know_ enough to comment on how this applies to more Eastern work environments.

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

#344

Post by abtinf »

"I didn’t have time to go through all my emails to figure out which ones to give Kleiner, so during the discovery process we gave them practically everything, some 700,000 emails — most of which we could have legally withheld. ... During depositions, they brought up everything from my nanny’s contract to an exercise I’d done in therapy where I listed resentments. Emails to friends, emails to my husband, emails to other family members, even emails to my lawyers."

This is the single most incompetent legal behavior I've ever heard of. It shows such a profound lack of judgement that, by itself, it is enough to blacklist Pao and every lawyer advising her.

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

#345

Post by Aqueous »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #287

>and downplays the impact of obvious and unobjectionable steps like [..] "give expectant mothers maternity leave" This is a bit off-topic, but maternity leave is neither obvious nor unobjectionable. There is significant empirical evidence that shows that policies such as long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression. Have a look at: * The impact of Nordic countries’ family friendly policies on…

> There is significant empirical evidence that shows that > policies such as long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression.

Let's be clear here and not mis-assign causality. The workplace's reaction to paid maternity leave harms a woman's career and wages. Not maternity leave itself.

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

#346

Post by sattoshi »

balfirevic wrote: post #258
ForHackernews wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protectionism that prevents lowering of wages too much This is a really weird complaint from somebody who is (presumably) a developer. [If parent commenter is an owner or executive, then it makes more sense] Are there other industries where workers actively disdain proposals to secure better treatment at the hands of owners?

Is it so weird that somebody would oppose what they (apparently) consider unethical practice, even if it would benefit them?

Yes. And any more of this mindset could lead us into a functional democracy. Unacceptable.

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

#347

Post by jazzyk »

balfirevic wrote: post #258
ForHackernews wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protectionism that prevents lowering of wages too much This is a really weird complaint from somebody who is (presumably) a developer. [If parent commenter is an owner or executive, then it makes more sense] Are there other industries where workers actively disdain proposals to secure better treatment at the hands of owners?

Is it so weird that somebody would oppose what they (apparently) consider unethical practice, even if it would benefit them?

So importing cheap labor is ethical, opposing that practice - is not ethical?

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

#348

Post by coldtea »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #287

>and downplays the impact of obvious and unobjectionable steps like [..] "give expectant mothers maternity leave" This is a bit off-topic, but maternity leave is neither obvious nor unobjectionable. There is significant empirical evidence that shows that policies such as long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression. Have a look at: * The impact of Nordic countries’ family friendly policies on…

>There is significant empirical evidence that shows that policies such as long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression.

That's the problem -- not the maternity leave.

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

#349

Post by Bartweiss »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #300
bobcostas55 wrote: post #287

>and downplays the impact of obvious and unobjectionable steps like [..] "give expectant mothers maternity leave" This is a bit off-topic, but maternity leave is neither obvious nor unobjectionable. There is significant empirical evidence that shows that policies such as long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression. Have a look at: * The impact of Nordic countries’ family friendly policies on…

> long paid maternity leave harms women's wages and career progression Of course it does. What it benefits is the actual human beings in question (child, mother, father). Most humans think that significantly increasing the well-being of your family, and in particular your infant, is a whole fucking lot more important than wages and career progression. Like all things in life it's a trade off, but an unobjectionally g…

I think that's not the issue under discussion.

It's not about whether taking a year off work hurts career progression, it's about whether offering paid maternity leave creates pressure not to hire and promote women, regardless of whether they have kids. If the result was strictly "taking a year off work delays your career", that would be a fairly obvious outcome. Instead, what we see is "knowing some job candidates can take a year off work with pay discourages hiring and promoting those candidates".

It is, among other things, an indirect argument for paternity leave - if leave is symmetric, you can't preferentially hire/promote the people without access to it.

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

#350

Post by bitexploder »

justadeveloper2 wrote: post #273
strken wrote: post #183

Articles like this really make me aware that men and women like Ellen Pao and her former partners live in a separate parallel world: three degrees, $10 million golden parachutes, private jet flights to ski resorts, affairs with a creepy married co-worker in Germany, machismo-driven muscling for VC connections, bisexual finance wizards who kickstart an Ivy-League LGBT program, dominance games over which chair an exec…

I got a bit confused when she ticked off her resume--how does anyone get that much experience at all top flight companies in just a compressed amount of time? Despite the obvious issues she has faced, my career is a completely dead, non-starter compared to hers so how can she complain? Also, I think places like Kleiner don't need to exist and the world would likely be a better place without them. But that's just my t…

It is all relative right? She did do those things and she probably had to work harder than her male peers to get to Kleiner in the first place. I think dismissing her "complaints" is just not fair. Discrimination can happen anywhere at any professional level, the teeny top .00001% and the bottom percentage of wage earners making minimum wage. Just because it she is arguably very successful does not mean her claims have no basis.

Sorry if I am taking the tone of what you wrote wrong, I know this is a sensitive topic. I will admit I did have a sort of similar thought, "But you are still very successful and wealthy compared to practically anyone else, you are winning Ellen!" But then I realized money doesn't matter. What matters is purpose and validation of your effort in a professional environment. When your bosses and peers are constantly shitting on you, even if they are giving you a lot of money it hurts in ways that are almost impossible to know without putting your life and a little piece of your soul into something only to have it rejected by people you desperately want the respect and peerage of.

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