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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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"How can she complain?" Did you hear what she had to put up with? Are any of us such saints that we wouldn't be upset? I'm definitely not. Also, consider what she might have accomplished without those hurdles.

Then why did the lawsuit fail on all 4 counts?

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

#442
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide a source please? Interested to read about it! Thanks in Advance!

Here's a piece in response to the damore memo, written up by an evolutionary biologist. https://medium.com/@tweetingmouse/the-truth-has-got-its-boot... It spends a while at the beginning on credentials and the importance of using citations (something damore failed at), and starts getting into the science at 'universal across all cultures, are we sure?'

Damore didn't fail at providing citations. You did apparently fail at reading the original document, however. References were deliberately stripped out by Gizmodo, and then republished by everyone else.

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to speak up in favour of r/fatpeooplehate. The various weight loss subreddits (such as loseit, keto, intermittentfasting) often have personal accounts of being undermined by family and friends when trying to follow orthodox medical advice. It is hard to avoid getting fat when family and friends are already fat and encouraging you to join them. sangharakshita (a Buddhist teacher) preached that the central probl…

Does one not think that there could have been a better way to encourage people to lose weight than to laugh at them, ridicule them and, to be honest, hate them? I'm not so sure if I consider your analysis to be a valid representation of the intentions of the people there, though I have little experience with the community itself, this model of "helping" people seems very alien to me, and contrary to what I had (intel…

I don't think he's saying it's supposed to help the people being laughed at - it's supposed to help the reader, by de-normalizing and shaming fatness, so they are motivated to become or stay thin. The target is collateral damage.

I don't really buy it, it's transparently a post-hoc rationalization for a sub engaging in the age-old business of being nasty to low status people because it makes us feel good and superior.

You can click on "view the rest on the comments" on that voat thread he linked to to see what's it's really all about.

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I thought that biology was struggling with not having enough quantitative students with an aptitude for complex statistics and simulation, even though those directions have the highest research potential. Hardly seems like fertile ground to find software development in large numbers.

You're only partially correct.

1 ) Its true that there aren't enough quantitative oriented students, and the ones we get really suck. Aka, I searched some text and now I'm co-author!

2) A lot of these directions have really low potential because they are mainly putting spin on otherwise failed or inconclusive work. p-hacker is a pejorative. From personal while simulating a development biology model might be computationally challenging (although often not), the models I've seen seem to be flawed somewhere in their conceptual design as they lack underlying mechanics or a null hypotheses. But after you've spent a few years hanging around doing little work for little pay, you really gotta get this stuff published

tldr; computational people rare add anything of value compared to the holistic (not individual) contributions who actually do the work.

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read what I was replying to? I was making an argument against the idea that she is somehow doing this for monetary gain. It doesn't matter how much she values money. If her chosen course of action is somewhat certain to pay less than the alternative, she is demonstrably not motivated (solely) by money.

Did you read my post? I was saying that perhaps she is indeed solely motivated by money. Turning down easy money in the chance to strike it big from the civil suit. If you only see the first part, then she apparently isn't motivated by money. But with the second part it becomes a possibility again.

What is your estimate for the potential upside?

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recruit junior devs from the ranks of biology grad Targeting specific groups just because of the racial or gender makeup of the group seems inherently wrong to me. A biology major doesn't give people many relevant skills for programming. If it was a math intensive subject like Physics, Stats or Math, I could see it being more fair and valid.

It's a bit cynical to say that's done simply in the name of gender. There are certainly many talented people who move away from tech because they look at it from the outside and observe that tech "isn't for them". There is nothing "inherently wrong" in correcting some of that unless you willfully ignore how our society came to be.

> There are certainly many talented people who move away from tech

Let's be honest, most biology majors turned programmers aren't oppressed people who had passion for tech but were discouraged from tech by terrible, systemic biases. They're people who either couldn't make it to med school or didn't want to go to med school who realized that there is more $$$ in the tech field than in biology research.

> It's a bit cynical to say that's done simply in the name of gender.

Not really. In this context, that is exactly what the parent was saying. Again, there are many non-CS majors that give people skills more relevant to programming. There isn't much of a reason to specifically recruit biology majors (other than for demographic reasons or if the company software is related to biology).

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

#447
post #69

An interesting read. Though, for me, VC in general is not the kind of job that favors people who are nice. When people are rude to you, or try to use you, there's a multitude of ways you can interpret that. For Ellen, it's sexism. What baffled me was that in the opening paragraphs she felt the need to point out that the powerful men were white. For me, it set the tone for the whole article, and painted a clear pictur…

White males are overly represented but I think it's fair. After all the US is white male culture at the higher levels so those who grew up with this culture have an advantage. They are fish while everyone else are forced amphibians. It's natural for advantages to compound.

Change in culture often comes with damage of supplantation of existing cultures. US culture is unique in that is can coexist with other cultures but isn't entirely replaced. At least not the high status portion. The low status portions have been excised. (trump supporters)

To replace high status white male culture there needs to be an equivalent high status opponent. Pao's article I think is useful in that it targets this directly and doesn't just stop at discussions on passing whiteboard interviews for IC2 positions.

It's expected as with any invasion that there is collateral damage. Trump supporters feel impotent and sidelined. These higher level incumbents are a lot more crafty and a lot more powerful. We can't even deal with rascists except defang them and wait for them to die.

This is why high status Chinese/Indian female/male culture doesn't exist in the valley for the most part, at most upper middle culture. There's not enough space at the top and it isn't worth it to start a war. Because in culture wars, home turf always wins. Giving coal power plants unlimited nuclear fuel or tidal plants unlimited sun doesn't tap into the necessary power.

Chinese/Indian high culture taps into society. For people in the valley this source of power is removed. I'd say that US high status white male culture is more standalone and deals with pure power in the ability to manipulate or coerce people. Interestingly this spreads more easily across gender than race though often the new entrants must give up their old culture in many ways.

For males that don't give up their mother culture they can feel marginalized and impotent, feeling that everything is unfair. For those that do they see no imbalance. The gap for women though still exists.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't a professional body for "programmers" be a bit like a professional body for "doctors, masseuses, hairdressers, tailors, and priests"? All of those have something to do with working with humans, the way we all work with computers. And neither group has much else in common.

I'd accept a job title like 'Technical Priest' or 'Code Surgeon'. One of my former bosses half-jokingly changed my title to 'Web Prophet'.

My business card used to say

Never really taken titles seriously ;).

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

#449
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sexism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. To play devils advocate, sexism is a thing everywhere . In some cases, there are good biological reasons why men and women are treated differently, e.g. child care (mostly women) versus hard physical labor (mostly men) Where those biological differences aren't effective (e.g. typing on a keyboard), then yes, men and women should be treated the same. But even with…

Counter devils advocate - let me remap what you're saying to race: >> racism in tech is a thing, and that it shouldn't be. >To play devils advocate, racism is a thing everywhere. In some cases, there are good biological reasons why blacks and whites are treated differently, e.g. basketball (mostly blacks) versus swimming (mostly whites ) If the above doesn't sound insane to you, I don't know what to tell you.

While I appreciate your point of view, I do think there are more differences between men and women than there are between the various "races" of humans.

That being said as long as a job/role's requirements are appropriate and fair, there should be no reason a senegalese (black) woman, philippino (asian) man, or danish (caucasian) woman can't be a software engineer, soldier, nurse, or nanny.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All too often the latter feels like women (and male feminists) on a power trip. The feelings of being offended aren't real, it's just a way to convince/force others to do what they want. Please explain this statement further. I am trying to understand how the person who is harassed is the person with the power or on a power trip as you put it. Wouldn't the best way to avoid such a scenario be to avoid the circumstan…

If the "person who is harassed" is actually a "person on a power trip", they will find "unwanted or unwelcome statements" in any behavior that you do. Because they can set the definition for "unwanted or unwelcome statements" and will abuse that to satisfy whatever their agenda is. You can definitely tell in cases where the target of this is a particular individual in a group setting; the double standard in treatment…

I am not saying that abuse never happens by someone who is looking to get rid of someone they simply don't like or a boss that gave them a bad review. It has happened and no doubt it will happen again. However, rest assured that it does not take long for the person who is complaining of unwanted or unwelcome statements to see that, historically at least, they are viewed as the problem.

In general, businesses, regardless of industry, have tended to view complainants as the troublemakers (or at least a legal risk) and their future at the company is affected in one form or another. Anyone that can sue a company is a threat and threats are not typically viewed positively. The individual may achieve a short-term goal (or satisfy their agenda as you point out) but long-term they are not on the winning end of the game they are playing.

Any individual who would use complaints as a career driver, or to drive whatever agenda you are alluding to, is in for a rude awakening. This would apply to those who complain of harassment, whistleblowers', or simply well intentioned employees. We have yet to come up with a way to resolve the issue and protect reputations, career advancement, etc for the parties involved when it comes to unwanted or unwelcome statements that reasonable people can disagree about.

Note: I am not addressing repeat offenders or blatant harassment. I am only addressing situations where a comment was not meant to offend but is offensive to someone but reasonable people differ on if the comment was offensive. Clearly people are different and what offends one does not offend someone else. These are the difficult situations that I am addressing, not someone showing up in a bathrobe at a coworkers hotel room.

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