"Cupcakes and Toxicity" is at Medium, so you don't need to worry about a paywall. Brougher was the COO at Pinterest. Excerpt: "There is a reason that women do not negotiate as hard as men for higher pay. It is not because we are not good negotiators. As I would learn at Pinterest, it is because we get punished when we do."
December 15, 2020
"The Pinterest Paradox: Cupcakes and Toxicity."
Great title for a fascinating exposé — by Francoise Brougher — of the inner workings of Pinterest. This was written last August, but I'm reading it now because it was linked in a new NYT article, "Pinterest Settles Gender Discrimination Suit for $22.5 Million/The suit had been brought by Françoise Brougher, Pinterest’s former chief operating officer, who said she was fired after speaking up about mistreatment."
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To negotiate with your employer, you need leverage.
I have changed jobs 3 times because negotiations with my employer did not go the way I wanted. I then went and found an employer that would agreed with my value as an employee.
I retired because my employer would not agree to a new job description, and raise.
Negotiation requires the exercise of leverage. If you are not willing to use the leverage you posses...do you actually have leverage? Or are you just making unjustified demands.
Business is hard.
This lawsuit discrimination hustle endlessly enthralls you, prof.
You have zero interest in anything that might include productive work.
This is why Trump’s simple managerial competence didn’t even interest you. You didn’t even notice. In fact, you thought it rather “weird.”
Your discrimination obsession is the poisonous corruption of our system.
How much longer can we go on with rich spoiled women cannibalizing our system for spoils?
"As I would learn at Pinterest, it is because we get punished when we do."
Women in the business world now are surprised to find out that negotiations can get rough and dirty and that you can find yourself battling those you are supposed to work with. Sometimes having scorn, group-hate, boss intimidation thrown on you.
Men have been dealing with this forever. Which is just one of the many reasons that men die younger. Stress at work, to achieve, to provide. Now that women are evening things out, and fewer men are graduating college, getting post grad degrees, working in corporate slots, more women will now start coming to a realization that...maybe this is not what we want. Or...maybe this is, but now we'll die younger. Or we'll be less fulfilled. Or maybe it's not all we thought it would be.
But you can't take to the press, or write books, or take to social media every time things don't go your way, or you think you're a victim. You're not a victim. You're taking part in a thing we call...life.
Maybe she had nothing to offer but sex and they weren't interested. She's a victim of #MeToo.
If you were building a society from scratch, prof, what products and services would you create besides lawsuits and lawyer fees?
I stopped using Pinterest when I learned they banned a pro-life group and some others. I don't even remember all of them, but it made me mad at the time. I'm not pro-life, but I realized they are just another woke company that I don't need in my life.
Cupcakes and Censorship.
Oh, they banned James O'Keefe too. Sorry Pinterest. I don' have enough need for you and your selective ways.
I'm reading the Medium piece now.
How could they have fired her? She planned offsites and came up with "Care with candor!" and didn't get along with the founder. Boy oh boy it sounds like she brought a lot to the table. Sexism!
negotiations can get rough and dirty and that you can find yourself battling those you are supposed to work with. Sometimes having scorn, group-hate, boss intimidation thrown on you.
I never left with any animosity. My core principle values always required that I be honest and open with my negotiations. I never used a job offer to squeeze a few extra shekels from my boss. I always moved on with nothing but respect for those I worked with, and for. I guess money was never the most important thing about my job. Maybe that's why the core message of this post strikes me as strange. Its focus is on money, not about the reward of the job.
Just don't hire Women
avoid the
DRAMA
women do not negotiate as hard as men for higher pay
I doubt it.
Pinterest Settles
Never had any use for that website.
Gender Discrimination Suit
Wacky government lawyers gone wild again. As usual.
After reading the piece at Medium, I'd be interested in hearing the other side of the story (which obviously we'll never hear since there was a settlement). She certainly paints a picture of a fairly disfunctional working environment, but the cynical part of me wonders if there's more to it than her version.
Nonapod- it does sound dysfunctional, but I think you have to learn to deal with that when the founder is still working there, he's had his team in place, and you are the outside hire.
It sounds to me her kiss of death was when her team did better than ever when she was at home on leave, and the CFO decided he could do her job along with his own. I also wonder, when she says she championed the underrepresented, how she treated the workers who were not under represented. Did those people feel they were being pushed aside even though they were doing a good job? Did she dish out the same treatment she believes she received?
@iowan2
Could you coordinate your advice with the material in "Cupcakes and Toxicity," because it REALLY doesn't fit. I'm guessing you didn't read it, but please make the commitment, if you think your advice is actually good, and test yourself, by reading Brougher's description and factoring in that Pinterest chose not to fight but to give her $22 million, and explain where you think she went wrong if that's what you think. Because I believe that she already knows the stuff you're talking about and processes it as she tells her story. So to me you just sound like someone who doesn't want to hear the evidence.
"Oh, they banned James O'Keefe too. Sorry Pinterest. I don' have enough need for you and your selective ways."
Yeah, that's their "cupcake" image. Brougher calls bullshit on that cupcake image.
"After reading the piece at Medium, I'd be interested in hearing the other side of the story (which obviously we'll never hear since there was a settlement)."
They paid $22 million to avoid having to put up their side of it, so I would hold that against them. They thought they were better off not having to answer and paying $22 million, so I presume their answer would have made them look bad.
Do we have any evidence this outcome resulted from her being a woman, other than her own — obviously biased — opinion?
I didn’t see any, but maybe I missed something. I only read it once and skipped a couple parts.
We all get it, women face unique challenges in the work world, especially in “bro culture” environments. And the Pinterest management team seems far from ideal and possibly at fault here. But we don’t have any other information from others in the story.
So I’m not going to form any kind of opinion based on a first hand account, as if it were factual and objective. It’s just one piece of a puzzle.
For the last ten years of my office career, I simply stopped talking with or relating to women beyond the necessary minimum to do the job. That seemed to be the best defense.
My church clients advise me to avoid anything that might look like a personal relationship with a congregation member. It’s in the online training BS.
You seem to find this fucked up shit admirable, prof. Why?
I'm underwhelmed by her evidence. Her main business complaint seems to be that decisions are made by the CEO before meetings to discuss the issues. This reminds me of a scene from West Wing with Josh mocking someone as naïve because he still believes decisions are made in meetings. This is routine - perhaps not the best process but certainly not unusual. I've been in hundreds of meetings where this was the case. But it's interesting the issue is so well understood it's part of pop culture but our experienced COO doesn't understand it. As such it seems her complaint is more that her advice wasn't always solicited or followed which is always the case for someone.
This issue is also not inherently sexist, and the evidence she uses to conclude so is nothing more than imagining men would be treated differently. In fact she claims women are told to "pipe down" and men are not without recognizing if she were a man the behaviors triggering the advice she characterizes as "pipe down" would be classified as mansplaining.
"I'm reading the Medium piece now. How could they have fired her? She planned offsites and came up with "Care with candor!"..."
You should read more carefully! That is not true. The founders, acting without her, came up with "Care with candor," then imposed it on her perhaps with some sort of notion that the female should take care of caring.
"When the founders redrafted Pinterest’s mission in early 2019, one of the five values was “care with candor.” I interpreted this initiative as a commitment to changing the culture. Team members would now be encouraged to share their ideas directly and respectfully. Employees who had been excluded would finally have a voice. Ben asked me to be the company spokesperson for the “care with candor” value. I did not seem to understand what everyone else knew intuitively: saying what you really thought was still dangerous at Pinterest. I was naively proud."
“They paid $22 million to avoid having to put up their side of it, so I would hold that against them. They thought they were better off not having to answer and paying $22 million, so I presume their answer would have made them look bad.”
I wouldn’t presume anything about what amount of cash is a lot, or a little, or anything in between, to a Silicon Valley companiy that wheels cash in through the front door in wheelbarrows.
Companies that see insane levels of growth, like this one, don’t look at the world the way we do. For all we know, that’s chump change to them.
I stopped reading. Everything she described sounds like the corporate structures everyone experiences. Upper management doesn't share or work efficiently. Reimbursement packages are negotiated separately and may not be as advantageous. If you rock the boat -- male or female -- you're not a team player.
It's a shame. She could've just complained without attaching sexism. But then she may not have been published. Or received a payout. A disenchanted man isn't going to rate 22 mil.
You should read more carefully! That is not true. The founders, acting without her, came up with "Care with candor," then imposed it on her perhaps with some sort of notion that the female should take care of caring.
Ok, she didn't come up with the value, but how to implement it. And perhaps it was the notion that the female should take care of caring, but she says herself she was proud. She, too, thought she should take care of caring. It sounds like perhaps she had trouble with the "candor" part. What does "saying what you really thought" mean, ever, in a business environment?
Perhaps they gave her the "care with candor" value, because they meant "take care if you have a mind to be candid". Subtle. I agree with Kate, there is nothing special about this person. Bullshit leadership is routine in corporate life. I say the offended Frenchwoman used "I" quite an awful lot in her telling. I suspect her former team mates might have something to say about it, but they are probably careful about being candid.
I bet it is because she is not a good negotiator. And then decided the "fault must be in her stars".
$22.5M?
Discriminate against me. Please.
In tech, you negotiate your deals BEFORE you are hired.
Afterward you may negotiate raises and/or promotions, but if you are a decent negotiator you are already starting at a decent place, especially if you are a C-level employee.
She wasn't working her way up from the mailroom...
Note to AA: I am commenting from the standpoint of negotiation...I don't have access to the NYT and don't like giving them clicks anyway...
She was the number 2 person at the company.
I once tried to negotiate a salary commensurate with my assigned duties at my workplace, to no avail. I cited pay scales of peers within my workplace, local and national pay scales published by professional organizations, seniority and experience and certifications and education versus salary data, and got back nothing but "No" from my management.
When I turned in my resignation, having found a job that payed 33% more for less onerous duties, I was offered a small bump in pay in an attempt to keep me. It was pleasant to respond that their pay bump wouldn't match my signing bonus at the new job.
Note that I did not mention my gender in any of the above.
It didn't matter, as far as I could tell.
I read the article. Lots of corporate speak. Other than Pinterest lying to her about the terms of her compensation package, I didn't see direct evidence of maltreatment--just typical corporate bullshit/ingroup backstabbing.
As far as I could gather, Brougher is a person who has an impressive amount of experience in developing tech companies. She champions a certain management style and corporate culture and had great success in implementing her strategies when working for other companies before going to Pinterest. What was missing, though, was any evidence that she was fired because she's an outspoken woman, instead of simply because she was not a good fit at Pinterest and they ended up not wanting to buy what she was selling.
It seems that the founder/CEO hired her to do a certain thing, and she did it with some notable success--but the Boss didn't actually want to make the further changes she sought. Maybe he is a short-sighted fool for not going outside of his comfort zone, instead reverting to reliance on his trusted inner circle where the real decision-making took place. After all, he should have realized what he was getting when he chose to hire a person who had achieved success by following a certain formula that was based on extreme transparency, trust, comradery, and feedback from all employees. The CEO then resisted following that formula. She was an irritant, and so she was ejected. Wouldn't a man who tried to make those sweeping changes ALSO have been resisted and rejected?
This "inner circle" management style has been the structure of every office I've ever worked in--regardless of the recurring promises to have "open doors" and (dishonest) solicitation of feedback. Since in all those years I often had direct report to female high-level managers--and for 20 years THE Boss was a woman--the fact that decision making was always inner circle had very little to do with sexism.
Maybe Brougher had difficulty making headway in leading the company because she was a woman, or maybe not. Based on the article, I don't see how we could know that. The fact that they made a $22 million dollar settlement means very little in today's cancel culture and social-media-driven feeding frenzies.
After being chastised by our host, I went back and read both articles.
Her article reads like an overdone cover sheet on a resume. Lots of success listed. But I noticed she talked about big expansions, measured by several varying metrics. Revenue increases yes, bet global expansion was involvolved. As the sales manager supervised the doubling of car sales, (while the boss bought up four new stores). I have no doubt she is able, talented, hard working and has a nose for her corner of the business world.
Not being included in the inner circle? Tough noogies. If you want to be included, you have to figure out what "they" are looking for. Motivations, personal goals, etc. This sounds like every place I ever worked. Took years to earn my way into the trust of others. Hard work, insight offered when it applied, exceeding the personal expectations of the inner circle. Its not enough to exceed with company goals, you need to exceed expectations on a personal level. That's if you want to be a team player. She sounds like the leadership team didn't view her goals as their goals. Big picture? No sales skills. She wrongly concluded all she had to do was grow numbers, or figure out why. There is much more involved in nurturing personal relationships. That is a skill set she is lacking
I did riff off the "women don't negotiate as hard as men because...reasons.
Negotiating is just one art of salesmanship. But again she wanted others to "buy into" her vision. Because she failed at "selling" her vision. Does not mean they treated her different because of her gender, she never explained her vision. After reading the article I don't see where she ever attempted to negotiate anything(other than a settlement that is heavy on symbolism and short on substance.)
In tech, you negotiate your deals BEFORE you are hired.
This. I was really surprised that they had her negotiate a new equity vesting schedule with HR, as that's pretty much unheard of. I suppose they were already reading the tea leaves at that point. I have no doubt that the culture there felt toxic to her, as it would in any startup in its ultra-growth phase still being piloted by its founders. It also sounds as though rather than being committed to her operating style, they may have brought her in to burnish the pitch-book as they headed for IPO: she's the adult in the room, the corporate suit with experience at larger later stage companies. And it sounds like that part worked out, and was well worth what they paid her, including the settlement. $22M to avoid a PR shitstorm is not unreasonable. Maybe they paid her out because her claims had merit, but just the fact that they paid her out does not mean her claim had any merit. I'm in that world, and incidentally my spouse does corporate employment defense, and I can imagine or even just remember many times she's advised clients that it may be worth paying out a hefty settlement to avoid negative PR and also inviting other lawsuits. On that last point: if the COO were really out to help the women at the company, and the toxicity and harassment were as widespread as she alleges, she might have considered using her clout for the other women there in context of a class action lawsuit. That would have been virtuous and brave and likely much less remunerative or likely to succeed.
I don't have a problem with women executives, but being transparent about biases, these "pure executive" types who are all about management theories and process, well, I may have a problem with them. That part of growing a company, scaling it to true scale, is just awful. It requires people like that, skilled practitioners and propounders of their management philosophy, good coaches and number crunchers who are all about reporting and information sharing and metrics metrics metrics, people who don't have to know a damned thing about the product or the market or even the industry. That's why this stage of the company is so far from the fun part of building a company. It's where long term partnerships that built the company to begin with die on the altar of mammon.
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