From the NYT article "At Kleiner Discrimination Trial, a Battle Between Legal Powerhouses." This is a lawsuit for $16 million over the firing of a female who claims that "Men were judged by one standard and women by another."
The trial has garnered widespread attention because, whatever the truth of what happened to [Ellen] Pao, it is undeniable that women have a minimal presence in venture capital.
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Maybe sex discrimination lawsuits have something to do with it. I wouldn't want to work with them, either.
Silicon Valley is run by nerdy white men and a few well-adapted Asian men. It is social darwinism at it's most elemental.
Simply an observation by one who worked there for a generation.
You can usually disregard whatever comes after someone says: "whatever the truth of what happened..."
Because it is self-evidently coming from someone whose opinions are not impacted by facts.
Nice how NY Times totally skipped the back story about Pao's financial difficulties and her husband's apparent ponzi scheme. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/03/12/ellen-pao-kleiner-perkins-alphonse-buddy-fletcher-jr-bias/70193504/
Doesn't fit the narrative. The more you read about her and her husband, the less attractive her case.
An interesting post from Richard Bradley, who I first started reading during the UVA/Rolling Stone mass rape hoax: But I’ve been following it closely for another reason: Ellen Pao is married to a man whom I’ve written about in depth. His name is Buddy Fletcher, and and he has a history of filing dubious lawsuits inspired by perceived slights and financial desperation. In my opinion he is, at the very least, a scoundrel; the forces of law may yet prove him a criminal...
There sure are a lot of lawsuits over people getting their feelings hurt
a summary of the Plaintiff's case : For the most part the plaintiff's case, and her testimony, involved actions by the defendant and its employees which disadvantaged her in the workplace such as inappropriate gifts, invitations, or conversation; positioning of sitting at meetings or office space in the defendant's offices; contradictory evaluations such as "too bold," "too quiet;" and failure of collegiality by junior and senior partners resulting in exclusion from meetings and information about investing opportunities.
the Defendants case: John Doerr, one of Kleiner Perkins's top venture capitalists and Pao's former boss, when asked about Pao being fired rather than promoted, replied that of the approximately 25 people who had been hired into the same level position as Pao, ("junior partner") only five were promoted, while the other 20 were similarly dismissed.[46] "The junior partner is an up-or-out role. We have no lifetime junior partners." - John Doerr[46]
A strong man who hires a woman that. Knows the Employment Laws, and he wants control over her performance is a situation that will always end badly for some other woman that he employs, or for the man himself if he defends the other woman.
Consider that free advice.
The hidden costs of hiring a woman are almost enough to not be worth the trouble. But I like women, especially smart professional women, so there's that.
Anyway, Ms. Pao's "interesting" domestic situation makes me highly skeptical of her motivations and the merits of her case.
In what area of technology or finance have (more than a handful of) women been "thought leaders"?
Are women more risk adverse than testosterone driven males? Are they less likely to become adept at math and science? Are they more easily wounded by the bruising competitiveness of certain endeavors? Are they more likely to be cowed by defeat? Are they more likely to blame someone else for their failures? Are they more able to bring successful lawsuits under current law and attitudes?
The answer to all these questions is "yes" and it explains a good part of the "underrepresentation" of women in venture capital. Talented women self select out and many who want to be in find that some of their traits result in competitive disadvantage.
Does all of this mean that Ms. Pao was not discriminated against? No. Emphatically no. That depends on the facts of the case, which no casual follower can possibly command.
But it does mean that the undoubted (but eroding) male domination of the field is not primarily caused by discrimination. It's caused by a phalanx of social and perhaps biological factors that have influenced the field.
Whatever one might say of Pao, the person responsible for hiring her (given the easily-discoverable relevant history) certainly isn't a thought leader.
Being a "thought leader" also excuses you from working parties and allows you to skim 10% of everyone else's weed.
Because, ya know, you are busy pondering the important stuff, like whether clapping is triggering and should be replaced with jazz hands.
The courts are a popular tool for scam artists who are also Special People.
Shamelessness: Ellen Pao and Buddy Fletcher
Gruesome Twosome Update: Ellen Pao & Buddy Fletcher
Silicon Valley Adulteress Sues for $16 Million
Interesting to read about her and her husband shadiness yet the NYT and some others just seem to believe her without question.
20% of the partners at Kleiner are women.
Kleiner stupidly (they thought they were too small for it to matter) had no HR dept or hiring process. At the big Wall Street firms I worked for everyone had a background check. Besides criminal history, if you were financially struggling and deeply in debt you would not be hired. They also would have found out about her husband.
I worked for an endowment that supported science and Kleiner made a lot of money for the endowment in the 90s with tech investments in Cisco and so many other geniuses. It was fascinating.
http://fortune.com/2012/10/25/ellen-pao-buddy-fletcher/
Interesting article from 2012.
Sounds like an IQ test for the jury.
He described Kleiner as a place where inventing the future hinged on preserving a sexist past.
That's a tough sell.
Penises are difficult to manage, but the really successful people can ignore those urges. Results matter....orgasms...not so much.
...contradictory evaluations such as "too bold," "too quiet;"...
Those evaluations are only contradictory if they are evaluations of the same incident. It is entirely possible that someone who is evaluated as "too bold" might overcompensate and become "too quiet".
Having lived and worked there, she sounds like the type who had perfect grades from the best schools and thought that that would suffice.
Working in a field which is historically and generally dominated by men, there's a reason women don't work those jobs. Some do. A smaller subset are good at it. An even smaller subset are the best. But then, when you start talking about the top X percenters, there are so few people capable of it that you are guaranteed a mismatch in the sexes.
Interestingly, we hold the top professions as ones that are dominated by men; ones that require an aggressive style or, in this case, a nerdy style, or sometimes both.
Women in traditional men's jobs do them grimly, no matter how good they are at them.
They're not at home with them.
They're very touchy, the primary symptom.
Nor do the female thinkers in physics think much about it in their spare time.
Ask any woman physicist how a gyroscope works.
You'll get the textbook vector babble instead of the simple explanation.
a summary of the Plaintiff's case : ...inappropriate gifts, invitations, or conversation; positioning of sitting at meetings or office space in the defendant's offices; contradictory evaluations such as "too bold," "too quiet;" and failure of collegiality by junior and senior partners [sniped]
the Defendants case: .. of the approximately 25 people who had been hired into the same level position as Pao, ("junior partner") only five were promoted, while the other 20 were similarly dismissed.[46]
So, 'whine whine whine' about personal interactions versus 'she just didn't cut it'. I know which way I would vote.
...contradictory evaluations such as "too bold," "too quiet;"...
We did a thing in school where people were asked to describe you with one word. I was described both as 'loud' and 'quiet'. I figured people who didn't know me said quiet, and people who did said loud (because my voice carries).
Since 20% of the partners at Kleiner are women that represents a far larger percentage of women(in operational roles with major impact) at operating companies in Silicon Valley in general! Anyway who cares, Ellen Pao is suing to get her lottery payoff a bunch of billionaires who can afford the payout! Don't understand why they let this go this far in court? Finally, Ellen Pao better hope she wins big, because given her and her husband's backgrounds splashed all over every media outlet - they had better look to be self-employed in the future! Nobody is going to hire them after this round of poor publicity!
Hstad may be correct - if Pao and hubby don't make a score this time around, they are unlikely to in the future. Or, this sort of thing is in bad enough taste that she can't really expect to be hired in this industry in the future.
That said, there are certain types of jobs where women are not going to be able to compete on an equal basis with men, and this may be one of them. And one big reason for this in a lot of fields is that they are seen as essentially pseudo-combat, a means for males to gain mating opportunities. Women often don't compete well in those fields because they don't have as big of an incentive as men do - because they already are in the desired position in regards to mating opportunities. rhhardin points out that female physicists don' tend to think about physics when not at work, while a lot of their male colleagues do. That is because the evolutionary stakes are higher for those males.
One thing that seems fairly constant for a lot of these avenues for pseudo-combat is that the results are relatively objective. At least in comparison to other fields. There is a bottom line, and sucking up to the boss (or sleeping with him) isn't going to help that much. Looking nice and being seen as nice are irrelevant. In short, they are male scored, and not female scored.
This is the sort of field that I would expect to have very objective scoring - you either make money, or you don't. Etc. The more money you make, the better you look. And, this woman seems, to me, to have been trying for female scoring, where other things besides the bottom line are important. But, any firm operating under those rules is going to lose to those firms that don't, that keep their eye on the ball.
This whole thing got me thinking a bit about GamerGate, where some women managed to win awards, etc., but in the end lost, because they weren't playing to win, but rather, to look good. And, that is another field with a bottom line, and the whiney women were looking at other, irrelevant, metrics.
"At the big Wall Street firms I worked for everyone had a background check. Besides criminal history, if you were financially struggling and deeply in debt you would not be hired. They also would have found out about her husband."
But she only married her previously-gay & bankrupt grifter husband AFTER the affair at Kleiner ended. So "finding out about" him before hiring her was impossible, since she was already at Kleiner when she teamed up with him.
They sound like a marriage made in somewhere other than heaven, though....
Given her husband's history of sexually harassing his male employees, while simultaneously suing everyone for racism AND losing upwards of $200 million of pensioners money, it would seem the only person more nervous than Ellen Pao tonight is Buddy Fletcher.
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