> 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 partner in the Silicon Valley office of law firm Morgan Lewis. For example, a key allegation in the case is that a Kleiner partner, Randy Komisar, behaved inappropriately when 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. Komisar says it was completely friendly and that his wife bought the book for Pao. Will men now retreat from cordial gestures toward female colleagues?
Does anyone else not see the immediate disconnect here?
I agree that Pao's case is weak but:
It juxtaposes that with a woman saying something about "being nice and mentoring" while pointing out at the same time a married man is handing out gifts on Valentine's Day.
I mean, come on. Does anyone seriously think that was anything other than hitting on Pao?
Any other day of the year it would have been fine. That specific day out of the 365 options was picked solely for that implication. It just feels weird to me that they'd compose things that way in the article.
"Being nice" - Doing nice things for a woman on days other than those dedicated to romance.
"Hitting on a woman" - Doing nice things and inviting her to be alone with you on a day dedicated to romance.
well she did have an affair with a married coworker, so how are other men supposed to judge her? You make that kind of serious mistake in a professional environment and people are right to judge your competence. They did try/fire the guy involved over her objection.
As for handing out valentine gifts, hell my entire work place would be in trouble for gifts, cards, and the like. We celebrate a lot different events, though you learn real quick whom to avoid as some people look to take offense; not saying she did. The can subpoena the gift giver's wife to see if that side of his story holds up. As for asking her out, she already demonstrated that marriage was no barrier.
Let's be honest. We only get a picture, one tinted by personal views and time. It will be interesting what the court digs up and how the final determination comes about.
> As for handing out valentine gifts, hell my entire work place would be in trouble for gifts, cards, and the like.
Oddly enough, where I work, the accepted standard is you simply don't hand out stuff to coworkers on Valentines.
I mean it is one f'n day of the year, how hard is it to avoid that unless your sole goal is to entice someone?
> We celebrate a lot different events
I think you are making my point for me. Any event except Valentines/romance related, the behavior would have been appropriate. Specifically doing it on Valentines with the unspoken implication of he'd be alone with her and his wife would be out of town....? :/
> Let's be honest. We only get a picture, one tinted by personal views and time. It will be interesting what the court digs up and how the final determination comes about.
Of course. However, it disgusts me that the article seems to imply that "hitting on a woman" and "being nice/mentoring" is the same behavior as the positioning of that quote implied.
Having an affair with one married coworker doesn't give other coworkers license to hit on you.
The argument you're using is basically, "She slept with someone else, so why should other people not expect to be able to get to have privileged relationships with her too?"
And even if you ignore that, you obviously shouldn't be hitting on people at work.
I don't even make friendships at work anymore, given the ugly fallout that can result from something negative in the friendship impacting a professional relationship. It is wise to completely disconnect your professional life and private one in this climate, as this Pao case demonstrates in some ways.
Drinks with the team? Sure, but I leave after one. Gifts to a coworker and an invitation to dinner? Not a chance. It's just too unpredictable no matter what you mean by it. I respect my coworkers enough not to force them into ambiguity with me as a person. Personal relationships have so many opportunities to go south. Why would I complicate my workplace?
Is that unfair? Maybe. I'm not there to make friends. Silicon Valley is pretty bad at this in general. The last thing I want to do on a weekend anyway is see the same people I see all week and do something social, and have to pretend that business stays at the office.
You should try it. I haven't been burnt out for years, like I was when I left work only to go socialize with the same people. It was like living in Groundhog Day. The startups that force this culture on its employees are part of the problem. I do not devote my life to a company. I'm sorry.
> Coworkers don't need a license, because it's not illegal to make a pass at a coworker.
I never said anything about legality. Ethics should not strictly be a reflection of laws, laws should be a reflection of ethics. Using laws as the only things that guide your ethical decisions works fine if you want to be a major asshole to people, but not if you want to exist in a healthy community.
> "Hitting on" is a crude way to describe buying a gift. Is love now banned at work?
This isn't about "love" being "banned" at work or anything, this is about what constitutes appropriate behavior. You should try to not make things uncomfortable for others. The immediate personal cost you incur when you work to make a group of people less uncomfortable is tiny compared to the costs that they have to deal with from society handing them a raw deal, and it can help a lot.
> The argument you're using is basically, "She slept with someone else, so why should other people not expect to be able to get to have privileged relationships with her too?"
Actually, the argument is "She slept with someone else, so why shouldn't I be allowed to see if she's interested in sleeping with me?"
> Actually, the argument is "She slept with someone else, so why shouldn't I be allowed to see if she's interested in sleeping with me?"
Finding out if she's interested in sleeping with you is a privileged relationship. You don't just find that out from random coworkers. The "privileged relationship" I was referring to was one where you get to find that sort of thing out, not one where you automatically get to sleep with them.
Agree strongly with this: "Does anyone seriously think that was anything other than hitting on Pao?"
Any man who is beyond college age, and who sincerely does not realize the meaning of handing out gifts and asking women out to dinner, is an idiot and should be removed from any position of authority. Emphasis on "sincerely" -- Randy Komisar is not that stupid, and his denials are hardly sincere.
The line "his wife bought the gift for her" has become something of a cliche which married couples use when the husband has been caught flirting but the wife is not yet ready to end the marriage.
Gifts given in public, for work well done, are always welcome, but a pattern of private gifts and requests for dinner are universally understood to be requests to initiate a sexual relationship.
One last word about "sincerely" -- there are some men who sincerely are that stupid. I have known at least 2. They somehow reach middle age and it does not occur to them that the gifts they are giving to an attractive young woman are being interpreted as sexual overtures. As Schiller said, "Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain." There is no cure for such men, but they need to be kept out of positions of power.
Tell me how I'm supposed to talk to them, oh super sensitive sage of all gender interactions in all contexts forever.
How machine-like and sterile should I be? How many of their emotions should I deny in the pursuit of professionalism? Should I consult with a lawyer with every photon they reflect?
It's obvious you've never lead a single human being in your life. You just give them orders like they were some bot, and then pat yourself on the back for practicing equality.
You're simply too stupid to understand the alchemy of human relations.
Just because the collective assumes Valentine's Day to be of importance has no bearing on my interactions. In fact, my SO and I do NOT celebrate Valentine's day. At all.
My SO also goes out drinking with other men. Without me. In private.
Why bring any of this up? Because I do not condemn expressions of affection just because the collective makes some childish assumption that grown adults must feel one emotion at a time per person.
Plot twist: You can feel affection for someone and not desire sexual activity from them in the same exact way you can feel bloodthirsty rage for someone and not desire to kill them. Yes, I know, it's a mind-blowing concept... the idea of people having complex and nuanced relationships instead of easily codified stateful interactions. (Once again, programmer bias trying to dictate how life should be)
Because we must all strive to make life easier for faceless administrators to conduct their soulless policies. /s
Not my argument. I'm saying that social norms have failed and to hold them up as some infallible moral authority of how we should conduct ourselves is absurb. I will not let Generation Helicopter Parent dictate what emotions are acceptable and which ones aren't... especially since they themselves have ZERO experience with emotional nuance and leadership.
You go treat people like robots for administrative ease and CYA legalisms, and I'll go treat people like complex humans capable of handling their own lives. Let's see who gets to the top first.
"you reject social norms and have no responsibility to communicate effectively" != "Just because the collective assumes Valentine's Day to be of importance has no bearing on my interactions"
You're citing social norms as the de facto mechanism of "communicating effectively" and damning all alternatives based on absolutely nothing.
I'm explaining the alternative, one that does NOT follow social norms, one that COMPENSATES for all of the flaws of the CYA police state culture you apparently subscribe to... you know, treating human beings as if they are capable of nuanced emotion instead of trying to assign at what times they need to feel what emotions... and you are doing everything in your power to avoid acknowledging it.
> I have everything I want.
Apparently, you don't want basic comparison skills.
> Valentine's day, regardless of your personal feelings, is relevant when choosing the timing of a gift to give to a woman
To which woman? The model of women you have BASED ON SOCIAL NORMS? Because it doesn't matter to my SO, and it clearly doesn't matter to Pao in any other way then to split administrative hairs. I'd venture to say Valentine's Day doesn't even matter to you, so WHO THE HELL is subscribing to this SOCIAL NORM you seem so desperate to defend?
Other than some theoretical woman you have to conjure up to give your position an angstrom of merit.
> I'd say the fact you are at -10 karma on your original account and had to make a new one demonstrates pretty effectively my point. You communicate poorly or a troll. Either way, it simply reinforces my point that your behavior ITT is not that of someone who has an interest in communicating effectively.
What part of intentionally shunning social norms did you not get from the previous posts?
You seem to be laboring under the terrible misconception that wish to surround myself with a bunch of people who think they are going to be the next Zuckerberg if only they could land a Series 1 for their Social Justice Dog Walker ecosystem.
I am communicating efficiently to PRECISELY the kinds of people I wish to surround myself with. You just don't see them because they have no desire to participate in the systematic downvoting of anyone who isn't towing the political/moral line that HN is notorious for enforcing.
> My desires stem from a desire to have sufficient income to be comfortable, sufficient ability to acquire wealth as to be secure in the long term, and an enjoyable personal life. I have these things and I have no particular interest in acquiring anything beyond that.
Then you shall never have anything beyond material and sensory.
> The fact you seem to feel the need to belittle me is hilarious because I only engage with you on the off chance you are not a troll and I find your absurd statements entertaining.
Glad I can be of service, but bad comparison skills had to be examined.
> The fact they are social norms means they are cues used to communicate. I'm confused why you would think they were anything other than communication cues?
Social norms are just memes of an unusually consistant level of infection, generally caused by centrally homogenizing vectors. (Institutions, media, etc) If you think those buried memes exist solely for others to try and extract and then have the gaul to call that extraction process "communication", you're in for a real shock when you realize those memes exist entirely to steer self-censorship behavior.
Communication isn't a like mining Bitcoins. Jesus, people. Come on. Here, I'll spell it out: E-M-P-A-T-H-Y.
>I'm discussing communicating effectively at that your method is fundamentally flawed by the fact a large segment of the population [those who subscribe to social norms] will assume you meant something other than your intended communication if you disregard social norms as a factor in communicating.
I have no interest in large segments of the population and if that's your metric of measuring communicatino, then you've been on social media for far too long. Accumulating the most "likes" doesn't mean you are a pro at communication. It's means your a pro at superficial meme excavation.
>The fact you insist it is about me rejecting your lifestyle choices by pointing out the relevance of social norms in communication is silly. I don't give a fuck about your lifestyle choices. You can sexually identify as an apache helicopter, declare every day a day to celebrate Valentines Day, and enjoy sex with men who view the world similarly for all I care. None of these things alter the fundamental fact that you must anticipate the way your message will be received by other people to communicate effectively. Given that a very large group ascribes to "social norms", one must assume that your action will be viewed in such a light regardless of your other intentions.
I have anticipated the way other people are reading these words. I've done so to great detail, in fact.
The memes you subscribe to DO affect HOW you anticipate your impact. It's the entire foundation of your position: Valentine's Day is statistically relevent to X people, therefore, the meme should be considered.
I think the author of this article made it (perhaps deliberately) ambiguous as to when these events took place.
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.
The problem is the choice of gift on Valentines and the fact the author of the article basically equated buying erotic poetry with being "nice and mentoring".
This is why I feel it's just better to refrain from any sort of judgment on this case based on what you read in the news. You're right - as it's written, it looks like "Duh, he's hitting on her." But did he give a gift to everyone on Valentine's Day? When he "asked her out to dinner on a night when his wife was out of town", was it a date or a "Let's talk about a potential investment at a popular VC haunt"?
I have no idea which is true, and I don't think I'm going to be able to find out based on summaries in the news.
Based on my reading of the stuff from the defense, that would have been the first thing they would have trotted out and the fact they failed to do so makes it pretty clear.
> Pao: I thought it was inappropriate, it had drawings of naked women, poems about masturbation and older men longing for younger women, and [Randy Komisar] gave it to me for Valentine’s Day.
I'd say any defense of that would make it pretty clear he gave out gifts to everyone and/or this book to multiple people.
But once again, its not relevant because my comment is in regards to the fact the article implies this sort of behavior is the equivalent of being nice and mentoring.
I don't find the dinner invitation to be damning in the slightest. Have you all not been around VCs? They're always having dinner, having multiple dinners in one night, flitting from one company to another, to some new prospect, whatever. On this night, he has no plans, his wife is out, so he invites a coworker to grab food after work. So what? Things will get steamy at University Cafe?
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 doing her review, they just gave her a bonus of $150,000 and a $40,000 raise (that she claims not to remember).
> Pao has also raised an incident in which one of the firm’s senior partners, former Hewlett-Packard Chairman Ray Lane, asked her and a second female colleague to takes notes at a partners' meeting. "I just froze, I wasn’t sure what to do," Pao testified on the stand.
I'm a man in a managerial position. I've been asked to take notes many times in meetings. Sometimes I do, sometimes I have to talk a lot and so someone else has to.
> Kleiner waited too long to fire a male partner who seemed to be treating the firm as his own private dating website.
Pao and Nazre were dating and both married at the time. There's a ton of he said she said, but to put it all on Nazre isn't fair.
[EDIT] I was incorrect about this. See Anechoic's comment below.
Pao has stated that she took the Reddit CEO role because she couldn't get a job as an investor. Honestly, Reddit CEO sounds like a much better job than all but the most senior of investment positions.
There's a lot to this story, and it's getting legs because gender issues in tech are a HOT topic right now. I don't see any of this case having larger implications though.
[EDIT] Please don't just downvote me. If you disagree, leave a reply.
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 cultures at the tech companies they invest in because they assume it saves them money to hire misfit programmers who need a workplace to provide a social life rather than act like processionals and demand professional compensation, and that frat house culture is also antagonistic to people who aren't young males. Finally, I don't see how you could read a case where a VC firm made mis-step after mis-step, and a highly qualified woman suggested they invest in winners like Twitter only to be ignored, and brushed off for invites to the Democrats the VCs are in bed with like Al Gore, and not see how she clearly as an extremely strong case of gender discrimination against a rich and powerful sect of elite VCs who have hidden their sickening behavior in the shadows for far too long.
Very convenient that this 'bad egg' in VC happens to be one of the 4% women in the field, and who again, seemed to do a far, far more competent job at the actual job description of picking the right companies to invest in, rather than total intangibles like 'thought leadership' and 'owning the room'. Read more articles about the case, read about how she wanted to invest in Twitter but they picked a bunch of losers instead, and still ignored her for promotion for intangibles that can straightfowardly be construed as gender-biased.
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 subject:
> a highly qualified woman suggested they invest in winners like Twitter only to be ignored
We don't know the fully story here. They had already looked at investing in Twitter and passed. A mistake? Sure. But anti-portfolios are famous. Whether Pao is "highly qualified" or not is debatable. Has she made any successful investments? Was she previously a successful entrepreneur? Those are things that would make you highly qualified to be a VC.
Wrong, I do have facts on my side, and we do have a big chunk of the story because it's being aired out in a high profile court case for those of us paying attention.
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.
Yes, this case is exposing the sordid 1950's style inner workings at a modern VC, as it should.
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.
There's no doubt she was playing the same games. Doesn't change the fact that she was discriminated against for being a woman, and in retaliation she's looking for the millions she wasn't paid and letting all of us lowly engineers know what games the VCs are playing.
I'd trade what I'm getting paid right now to take on what sounds like a far easier job that pays quite a bit more in a bad year than what I make in a great year.
But qualifications don't get you into these kinds of clubs, connections and pedigree do.
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?
Please supply the missing information then. I want to be as accurate as possible! I'm not cherry picking, just pointing to actual points being raised in these articles.
It's ok to be uninformed about a random legal case. You don't have a duty to be informed about Pao. What's not OK is to casually and incorrectly declare yourself informed and then to provide an opinionated summary based on that false credential, which is what you've managed to do here.
Possibly the internet at large, or hn, doesn't consider it our jobs to babysit you. Type something like ellen pao lawsuit into google and educate yourself.
That commenter is being a bit aggressive, but they don't appear to be trolling; their critique is valid. One of the oldest message board rhetorical tricks in the book is to use a grossly incomplete summary as an ambit claim, and then to retcon facts from the inevitable rebuttals into that argument. It shouldn't surprise you that people don't want to help you do that.
Their critique is: you're wrong but I won't tell you why.
I don't see how that's helpful. I don't know what you're suggesting we do either. You don't want to supply facts because they'll be "retcon"-ed? That's a new one.
Another one of the oldest message board rhetorical tricks is to claim somebody is wrong because they're supplying incomplete information and then after multiple requests to multiple people to fill in the gaps simply refuse to do so.
I strongly object to this form of argument. It boils down to "I'm right because you haven't done the work to show I'm right." You can always demand more work, and it doesn't require any correlation with the truth.
What is the case about then? To me at least the summary seemed aligned well with the media coverage I've been following. But I'll admit I haven't had the time to read the source documents.
The case is about a woman who slept with a married superior of her and got preferential treatment thanks to this. Then, when they stopped, she decided to sue.
Every single one of her coworkers should be the one suing both of them for promotions lost due to her getting them by sleeping around.
Whether you're a troll or actually serious you've given yourself a very appropriate handle/name. What value did you hope to add to this discussion with this inaccurate rant?
What is your concise summary of the biggest accusation that demands justice ? I fail to understand from the bloomberg article as it seems to make all accusations petty and even harmful to her case.
Pao and her supervisor hooked up. She stopped fucking him and he retaliated (illegal). She complained to the head of the firm and he didn't stop the retaliation (also illegal).
Pao and Nazre were dating and both married at the time.
Implied in the Ars article, and stated directly in other articles [0,1,2], the affair happened in 2006, but according to Wiki [3] Pao wasn't married until 2007.
VCs are the bosses of tech. VCs are the real executives in Silicon Valley and "founders" are upper-mid-level project managers in the world's first postmodern corporation.
If you've been following all of the coverage of this case, Pao isn't coming off well.
In the worst case for her, Ellen Pao turns out to be like Michael Brown: not sympathetic, not a victim, but the case still illustrates a lot of systemic bias and moral failure.
(Not to say that is how it is playing out or will play out.)
I think she probably did have her reputation (internal to the firm) damaged for reasons that constitute gender harassment. I also think that she was passed over and fired not because she was a woman, but because her reputation was damaged and she probably couldn't get much done. The question is how responsible the firm itself is for spotting problems like that and allowing people to clear their own names.
The Kleiner Perkins pre-trial brief also implied that the case was launched due to Pao's husband's money problems.
"F. Pao Files A Complaint Full of Unnecessary and Salacious Details
In May 2012, Pao filed this lawsuit alleging gender discrimination, retaliation (for allegedly complaining that Nazre sexually harassed her in 2007), and failure to prevent discrimination. Simultaneously, Pao’s husband, Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher Jr., filed for bankruptcy on behalf of his hedge fund Fletcher Asset Management (“PAM”) when PAM failed to pay back pension funds that requested reimbursement of their investments.8 The appointed bankruptcy trustee ultimately issued a report stating that PAM had not had a single profitable investment since 2007 (the year Fletcher married Pea) and had committed several improper acts..."
Leave it to programmers to assume human nature must exist within a binary modality of "apathetic amoral workhorse" and "messy emotional beast of terror"
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?
Leave it to programmers to assume human nature must exist within a binary modality of "apathetic amoral workhorse" and "messy emotional beast of terror"
Naturally, this assumption causes any violation to throw a LegalException, which is caught by the GovernmentSingleton anti-pattern whose separation of concern juggles between instantiating policies that rigidly define 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?
Gender inequality being brought to the forefront fairly commonly has definitely forced me to evaluate my own actions and words. It sounds silly (and it is because it's mostly beneficial), but I certainly treat female colleagues differently: I'm much more thoughtful about what I say and do, and try to be as explicit as possible if I think there's any way that my words/actions could be misconstrued. Thoughtful in a way that I'm absolutely not around male colleagues.
And maybe that's totally fine: I really doubt I'll ever regret being more thoughtful. I certainly do this to some extent with people from other cultural backgrounds, so applying it to people from other gender backgrounds (so-to-speak) is probably appropriate.
But it does absolutely setup this "othering" in my mind - I don't see Jennifer as just my coworker, she's my coworker and she's also a woman and I need to be cognizant of how I act and talk around her. I'm careful to think about my words and actions before they materialize, whereas with men I'm much more likely to just act/talk and explain later if necessary. "Asking permission" vs. "Seeking forgiveness".
I don't envy being John Doerr - unless Pao was an absolutely clear frontrunner for becoming a senior partner, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
"Tracy DiNunzio, chief executive officer of Tradesy, an online fashion site in which Kleiner Perkins has invested, says she was recently told by a male chief executive officer that he doesn’t know how to talk to female colleagues any more and that it’s become too easy to say the wrong thing. The case "may make it harder for men to feel free to give women the kinds of constructive criticism that men receive regularly and that they benefit from," she says."
I found this paragraph to be the most interesting. We're clearly moving from a sexist world to a less sexist world. The transition involves moving norms of what's acceptable and that's creating a lot of angst for both men and women. The above paragraph (and the one before it in the article) represent one common response "Why can't it just be like it was before?" but there's no going backward. Eventually we'll settle at a new equilibrium but Sandy's book and this trial and some other events will be viewed as pivotal moments when they write the textbooks in 20 to 30 years.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadDoes anyone else not see the immediate disconnect here?
I agree that Pao's case is weak but:
It juxtaposes that with a woman saying something about "being nice and mentoring" while pointing out at the same time a married man is handing out gifts on Valentine's Day.
I mean, come on. Does anyone seriously think that was anything other than hitting on Pao?
Any other day of the year it would have been fine. That specific day out of the 365 options was picked solely for that implication. It just feels weird to me that they'd compose things that way in the article.
"Being nice" - Doing nice things for a woman on days other than those dedicated to romance.
"Hitting on a woman" - Doing nice things and inviting her to be alone with you on a day dedicated to romance.
How is this not a clear line?
As for handing out valentine gifts, hell my entire work place would be in trouble for gifts, cards, and the like. We celebrate a lot different events, though you learn real quick whom to avoid as some people look to take offense; not saying she did. The can subpoena the gift giver's wife to see if that side of his story holds up. As for asking her out, she already demonstrated that marriage was no barrier.
Let's be honest. We only get a picture, one tinted by personal views and time. It will be interesting what the court digs up and how the final determination comes about.
Oddly enough, where I work, the accepted standard is you simply don't hand out stuff to coworkers on Valentines.
I mean it is one f'n day of the year, how hard is it to avoid that unless your sole goal is to entice someone?
> We celebrate a lot different events
I think you are making my point for me. Any event except Valentines/romance related, the behavior would have been appropriate. Specifically doing it on Valentines with the unspoken implication of he'd be alone with her and his wife would be out of town....? :/
> Let's be honest. We only get a picture, one tinted by personal views and time. It will be interesting what the court digs up and how the final determination comes about.
Of course. However, it disgusts me that the article seems to imply that "hitting on a woman" and "being nice/mentoring" is the same behavior as the positioning of that quote implied.
The argument you're using is basically, "She slept with someone else, so why should other people not expect to be able to get to have privileged relationships with her too?"
And even if you ignore that, you obviously shouldn't be hitting on people at work.
Coworkers don't need a license, because it's not illegal to make a pass at a coworker.
> you obviously shouldn't be hitting on people at work.
"Hitting on" is a crude way to describe buying a gift. Is love now banned at work?
Drinks with the team? Sure, but I leave after one. Gifts to a coworker and an invitation to dinner? Not a chance. It's just too unpredictable no matter what you mean by it. I respect my coworkers enough not to force them into ambiguity with me as a person. Personal relationships have so many opportunities to go south. Why would I complicate my workplace?
Is that unfair? Maybe. I'm not there to make friends. Silicon Valley is pretty bad at this in general. The last thing I want to do on a weekend anyway is see the same people I see all week and do something social, and have to pretend that business stays at the office.
You should try it. I haven't been burnt out for years, like I was when I left work only to go socialize with the same people. It was like living in Groundhog Day. The startups that force this culture on its employees are part of the problem. I do not devote my life to a company. I'm sorry.
I never said anything about legality. Ethics should not strictly be a reflection of laws, laws should be a reflection of ethics. Using laws as the only things that guide your ethical decisions works fine if you want to be a major asshole to people, but not if you want to exist in a healthy community.
> "Hitting on" is a crude way to describe buying a gift. Is love now banned at work?
This isn't about "love" being "banned" at work or anything, this is about what constitutes appropriate behavior. You should try to not make things uncomfortable for others. The immediate personal cost you incur when you work to make a group of people less uncomfortable is tiny compared to the costs that they have to deal with from society handing them a raw deal, and it can help a lot.
Actually, the argument is "She slept with someone else, so why shouldn't I be allowed to see if she's interested in sleeping with me?"
Finding out if she's interested in sleeping with you is a privileged relationship. You don't just find that out from random coworkers. The "privileged relationship" I was referring to was one where you get to find that sort of thing out, not one where you automatically get to sleep with them.
Any man who is beyond college age, and who sincerely does not realize the meaning of handing out gifts and asking women out to dinner, is an idiot and should be removed from any position of authority. Emphasis on "sincerely" -- Randy Komisar is not that stupid, and his denials are hardly sincere.
The line "his wife bought the gift for her" has become something of a cliche which married couples use when the husband has been caught flirting but the wife is not yet ready to end the marriage.
Gifts given in public, for work well done, are always welcome, but a pattern of private gifts and requests for dinner are universally understood to be requests to initiate a sexual relationship.
One last word about "sincerely" -- there are some men who sincerely are that stupid. I have known at least 2. They somehow reach middle age and it does not occur to them that the gifts they are giving to an attractive young woman are being interpreted as sexual overtures. As Schiller said, "Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain." There is no cure for such men, but they need to be kept out of positions of power.
Tell me how I'm supposed to talk to them, oh super sensitive sage of all gender interactions in all contexts forever.
How machine-like and sterile should I be? How many of their emotions should I deny in the pursuit of professionalism? Should I consult with a lawyer with every photon they reflect?
It's obvious you've never lead a single human being in your life. You just give them orders like they were some bot, and then pat yourself on the back for practicing equality.
You're simply too stupid to understand the alchemy of human relations.
If you can't help but spontaneously give gifts to attractive women on Valentine's day...I'm at a loss, I'll admit.
My SO also goes out drinking with other men. Without me. In private.
Why bring any of this up? Because I do not condemn expressions of affection just because the collective makes some childish assumption that grown adults must feel one emotion at a time per person.
Plot twist: You can feel affection for someone and not desire sexual activity from them in the same exact way you can feel bloodthirsty rage for someone and not desire to kill them. Yes, I know, it's a mind-blowing concept... the idea of people having complex and nuanced relationships instead of easily codified stateful interactions. (Once again, programmer bias trying to dictate how life should be)
Because we must all strive to make life easier for faceless administrators to conduct their soulless policies. /s
You go treat people like robots for administrative ease and CYA legalisms, and I'll go treat people like complex humans capable of handling their own lives. Let's see who gets to the top first.
You're citing social norms as the de facto mechanism of "communicating effectively" and damning all alternatives based on absolutely nothing.
I'm explaining the alternative, one that does NOT follow social norms, one that COMPENSATES for all of the flaws of the CYA police state culture you apparently subscribe to... you know, treating human beings as if they are capable of nuanced emotion instead of trying to assign at what times they need to feel what emotions... and you are doing everything in your power to avoid acknowledging it.
> I have everything I want.
Apparently, you don't want basic comparison skills.
> Valentine's day, regardless of your personal feelings, is relevant when choosing the timing of a gift to give to a woman
To which woman? The model of women you have BASED ON SOCIAL NORMS? Because it doesn't matter to my SO, and it clearly doesn't matter to Pao in any other way then to split administrative hairs. I'd venture to say Valentine's Day doesn't even matter to you, so WHO THE HELL is subscribing to this SOCIAL NORM you seem so desperate to defend?
Other than some theoretical woman you have to conjure up to give your position an angstrom of merit.
What part of intentionally shunning social norms did you not get from the previous posts?
You seem to be laboring under the terrible misconception that wish to surround myself with a bunch of people who think they are going to be the next Zuckerberg if only they could land a Series 1 for their Social Justice Dog Walker ecosystem.
I am communicating efficiently to PRECISELY the kinds of people I wish to surround myself with. You just don't see them because they have no desire to participate in the systematic downvoting of anyone who isn't towing the political/moral line that HN is notorious for enforcing.
> My desires stem from a desire to have sufficient income to be comfortable, sufficient ability to acquire wealth as to be secure in the long term, and an enjoyable personal life. I have these things and I have no particular interest in acquiring anything beyond that.
Then you shall never have anything beyond material and sensory.
> The fact you seem to feel the need to belittle me is hilarious because I only engage with you on the off chance you are not a troll and I find your absurd statements entertaining.
Glad I can be of service, but bad comparison skills had to be examined.
> The fact they are social norms means they are cues used to communicate. I'm confused why you would think they were anything other than communication cues?
Social norms are just memes of an unusually consistant level of infection, generally caused by centrally homogenizing vectors. (Institutions, media, etc) If you think those buried memes exist solely for others to try and extract and then have the gaul to call that extraction process "communication", you're in for a real shock when you realize those memes exist entirely to steer self-censorship behavior.
Communication isn't a like mining Bitcoins. Jesus, people. Come on. Here, I'll spell it out: E-M-P-A-T-H-Y.
>I'm discussing communicating effectively at that your method is fundamentally flawed by the fact a large segment of the population [those who subscribe to social norms] will assume you meant something other than your intended communication if you disregard social norms as a factor in communicating.
I have no interest in large segments of the population and if that's your metric of measuring communicatino, then you've been on social media for far too long. Accumulating the most "likes" doesn't mean you are a pro at communication. It's means your a pro at superficial meme excavation.
>The fact you insist it is about me rejecting your lifestyle choices by pointing out the relevance of social norms in communication is silly. I don't give a fuck about your lifestyle choices. You can sexually identify as an apache helicopter, declare every day a day to celebrate Valentines Day, and enjoy sex with men who view the world similarly for all I care. None of these things alter the fundamental fact that you must anticipate the way your message will be received by other people to communicate effectively. Given that a very large group ascribes to "social norms", one must assume that your action will be viewed in such a light regardless of your other intentions.
I have anticipated the way other people are reading these words. I've done so to great detail, in fact.
The memes you subscribe to DO affect HOW you anticipate your impact. It's the entire foundation of your position: Valentine's Day is statistically relevent to X people, therefore, the meme should be considered.
<...
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.
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.
There are plenty of articles that agree the gift was given on Valentine's Day?
The problem is the choice of gift on Valentines and the fact the author of the article basically equated buying erotic poetry with being "nice and mentoring".
"Hitting on a woman" - Doing nice things and inviting her to be alone with you on a day dedicated to romance.
The invitation to have dinner may have happened anytime.
I have no idea which is true, and I don't think I'm going to be able to find out based on summaries in the news.
http://pando.com/2015/03/09/the-main-attraction-dispatches-f...
> Pao: I thought it was inappropriate, it had drawings of naked women, poems about masturbation and older men longing for younger women, and [Randy Komisar] gave it to me for Valentine’s Day.
I'd say any defense of that would make it pretty clear he gave out gifts to everyone and/or this book to multiple people.
But once again, its not relevant because my comment is in regards to the fact the article implies this sort of behavior is the equivalent of being nice and mentoring.
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 doing her review, they just gave her a bonus of $150,000 and a $40,000 raise (that she claims not to remember).
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/ellen-pao-was-res...
From this article:
> Pao has also raised an incident in which one of the firm’s senior partners, former Hewlett-Packard Chairman Ray Lane, asked her and a second female colleague to takes notes at a partners' meeting. "I just froze, I wasn’t sure what to do," Pao testified on the stand.
I'm a man in a managerial position. I've been asked to take notes many times in meetings. Sometimes I do, sometimes I have to talk a lot and so someone else has to.
> Kleiner waited too long to fire a male partner who seemed to be treating the firm as his own private dating website.
Pao and Nazre were dating and both married at the time. There's a ton of he said she said, but to put it all on Nazre isn't fair.
[EDIT] I was incorrect about this. See Anechoic's comment below.
Pao has stated that she took the Reddit CEO role because she couldn't get a job as an investor. Honestly, Reddit CEO sounds like a much better job than all but the most senior of investment positions.
There's a lot to this story, and it's getting legs because gender issues in tech are a HOT topic right now. I don't see any of this case having larger implications though.
[EDIT] Please don't just downvote me. If you disagree, leave a reply.
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 subject:
http://recode.net/2015/03/16/liveblog-mary-meeker-testifies-...
> a highly qualified woman suggested they invest in winners like Twitter only to be ignored
We don't know the fully story here. They had already looked at investing in Twitter and passed. A mistake? Sure. But anti-portfolios are famous. Whether Pao is "highly qualified" or not is debatable. Has she made any successful investments? Was she previously a successful entrepreneur? Those are things that would make you highly qualified to be a VC.
I don't see anything "sickening" here.
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.
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
I'd trade what I'm getting paid right now to take on what sounds like a far easier job that pays quite a bit more in a bad year than what I make in a great year.
But qualifications don't get you into these kinds of clubs, connections and pedigree do.
You keep saying I'm uninformed but you've not provided any information to this discussion. Please do! I want to know more.
Saying "I'm right, but I refuse to prove it!" doesn't get you much.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ellen+pao+lawsuit
I don't see how that's helpful. I don't know what you're suggesting we do either. You don't want to supply facts because they'll be "retcon"-ed? That's a new one.
Every single one of her coworkers should be the one suing both of them for promotions lost due to her getting them by sleeping around.
Pao and her supervisor hooked up. She stopped fucking him and he retaliated (illegal). She complained to the head of the firm and he didn't stop the retaliation (also illegal).
Implied in the Ars article, and stated directly in other articles [0,1,2], the affair happened in 2006, but according to Wiki [3] Pao wasn't married until 2007.
[0] http://www.siliconbeat.com/2015/02/17/ellen-pao-vs-kleiner-p...
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/8141053/ellen-pao-kleiner-p...
[2] http://www.wired.com/2015/02/ellen-pao-trial-day-two/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Pao#Personal_life
In the worst case for her, Ellen Pao turns out to be like Michael Brown: not sympathetic, not a victim, but the case still illustrates a lot of systemic bias and moral failure.
(Not to say that is how it is playing out or will play out.)
I think she probably did have her reputation (internal to the firm) damaged for reasons that constitute gender harassment. I also think that she was passed over and fired not because she was a woman, but because her reputation was damaged and she probably couldn't get much done. The question is how responsible the firm itself is for spotting problems like that and allowing people to clear their own names.
"F. Pao Files A Complaint Full of Unnecessary and Salacious Details
In May 2012, Pao filed this lawsuit alleging gender discrimination, retaliation (for allegedly complaining that Nazre sexually harassed her in 2007), and failure to prevent discrimination. Simultaneously, Pao’s husband, Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher Jr., filed for bankruptcy on behalf of his hedge fund Fletcher Asset Management (“PAM”) when PAM failed to pay back pension funds that requested reimbursement of their investments.8 The appointed bankruptcy trustee ultimately issued a report stating that PAM had not had a single profitable investment since 2007 (the year Fletcher married Pea) and had committed several improper acts..."
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/256174...
But Wow, I didn't know that.
It adds a whole new dimension to this case.
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?
Naturally, this assumption causes any violation to throw a LegalException, which is caught by the GovernmentSingleton anti-pattern whose separation of concern juggles between instantiating policies that rigidly define 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?
Gender inequality being brought to the forefront fairly commonly has definitely forced me to evaluate my own actions and words. It sounds silly (and it is because it's mostly beneficial), but I certainly treat female colleagues differently: I'm much more thoughtful about what I say and do, and try to be as explicit as possible if I think there's any way that my words/actions could be misconstrued. Thoughtful in a way that I'm absolutely not around male colleagues.
And maybe that's totally fine: I really doubt I'll ever regret being more thoughtful. I certainly do this to some extent with people from other cultural backgrounds, so applying it to people from other gender backgrounds (so-to-speak) is probably appropriate.
But it does absolutely setup this "othering" in my mind - I don't see Jennifer as just my coworker, she's my coworker and she's also a woman and I need to be cognizant of how I act and talk around her. I'm careful to think about my words and actions before they materialize, whereas with men I'm much more likely to just act/talk and explain later if necessary. "Asking permission" vs. "Seeking forgiveness".
I don't envy being John Doerr - unless Pao was an absolutely clear frontrunner for becoming a senior partner, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I found this paragraph to be the most interesting. We're clearly moving from a sexist world to a less sexist world. The transition involves moving norms of what's acceptable and that's creating a lot of angst for both men and women. The above paragraph (and the one before it in the article) represent one common response "Why can't it just be like it was before?" but there's no going backward. Eventually we'll settle at a new equilibrium but Sandy's book and this trial and some other events will be viewed as pivotal moments when they write the textbooks in 20 to 30 years.