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Win Or Lose, Discrimination Suit Is Having an Effect On Silicon Valley
SpzToid sends word that the Ellen Pao vs. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers discrimination case wrapped up yesterday. No matter what the outcome turns out to be, it has already affected how business is being done in Silicon Valley. "'Even before there's a verdict in this case, and regardless of what the verdict is, people in Silicon Valley are now talking,' said Kelly Dermody, managing partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, who chairs the San Francisco law firm's employment practice group. 'People are second-guessing and questioning whether there are exclusionary practices [and] everyday subtle acts of exclusion that collectively limit women's ability to succeed or even to compete for the best opportunities. And that's an incredibly positive impact.' Women in tech have long complained about an uneven playing field — lower pay for equal work, being passed over for promotions and a hostile 'brogrammer' culture — and have waited for a catalyst to finally overhaul the status quo. This trial — pitting a disgruntled, multimillionaire former junior partner against a powerful Menlo Park, Calif., venture capital firm — was far from the open-and-shut case that many women had hoped for. More gender discrimination suits against big tech firms are expected to follow; some already have, including lawsuits against Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc."
Jeez.
Women in any industry have long complained about an uneven playing field — lower pay for equal work, being passed over for promotions and a hostile 'brogrammar^H^H^H^H^H^H^H' culture
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Some women can't succeed because they lack talent and now they need someone to blame. Sure makes a mockery of women who work hard to get into their positions.
Ellen Pao just accused John Doerr of KP of sexually harassing her when he gave her a print of "The Birth of Venus"
The only reason I don't like to work with women is because of the insane sexual harassment laws and HR policies.
As someone who happens to have been born with a penis, if I so much as smile the "wrong" way, I am instantly a creep, marked a sexual predator, fired, sued into oblivion, and my life ruined - all with everyone immediately believing the woman.
Immediate vilification. There doesn't have be any supporting evidence, or a witness, or anything - I'm immediately bad, no matter what actually happened. It's worse than being declared guilty before being proven innocent; it's simply guilty, with no chance of being innocent.
Women have ultimate power over the career of men. If a woman doesn't like someone, it's 1. Accuse, 2. Fired. Bam. Person gone. Any questions asked are merely procedural.
I have seen this happen to a co-worker, so don't give me that "that never happens" crap. It does happen.
I always have a lot of trouble finding room in my brain to give a flying Dutchman about whether the top 1%, people who I will never be, are slightly disadvantaged in one way or another.
Oh, some super rich venture capitalists are composed of slightly more of some group or another? You'll have to excuse me, but I don't care. Figure your shit out, or don't. It sure doesn't affect us proles outside of privileged circles.
... forcefully feed all men oestrogens until we behave like women. Problem solved. Oh wait, women will complain there are no real men around anymore and how unhappy they are about that.
Two words for all whiners out there: toughen up.
I see women whining about this issue making claims, you're not bothered by that?
Cue the whiners, indeed.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Hip hip hooray!!! I love more pussy in my workplace
A multimillionare woman complains of being passed up for promotion? How rich are the guys (I assume they are guys. For all I know, they are also women) that got the promotion( if there was even a promotion to be had)?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If you're a dickhead (pun not-intended), you'll be treated like a shithead.
Sexual poetry book? Talk to the dude who gave it to you, tell him it's inappropriate. or go to HR (which is usually women-biased) and tell them you felt offended, they will talk tot he dude.
Colleagues discussing pornography on a plane? Tell them to keep it quiet (add "please!" because it's polite) and they will stop. if they don't, do as above.
Men tend to slip back to pseudo-savagery if women aren't around in a workplace for a while, and when a woman comes in, they tend do remain savage unless their eyes are opened. Don't pry their eyes open with a crowbar and acid, do it nicely and all's gonna be okay.
As for the other "reasons", they're dumb and weak.
A male partner touched your leg under a table? C'mon, really now. gender bias right there: imagine a male complaining about the same thing performed by a female: I bet everyone would laugh at him. but noo, when a woman experiences it, it's baaad, it's almost rape! Unacceptable!
It looks like currently the appropriate action is "shut up and sue" rather than "talk to the offender, then HRm then escalate, then sue if issue isn't resolved and he continues".
Here's something that happened at my workplace (which fields men and women almost in equal percentages). There was this new dude who had a rather unpolished character, swearing a lot, etc. One female colleague felt offended and went to HR. Another talked to him directly, in private and explained that he's crossing some lines. Dude got it, stopped, then a week later he's called to HR (follow-up from the first woman's complaint) and slammed with 10% pay cut for 3 months.
After that, everyone (men and women alike) isolated themselves from that woman (socially) because they felt uneasy around her. One could never be sure that they might slip and say something that "offended" her somehow and end up being punished for some little thing they might not have realized.
Being an arsehole swings both ways and can backfire.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Regardless of the outcome, it will continue to be socially acceptable to make fun of nerds, and The Big Bang Theory will still be America's #1 sitcom. I certainly don't participate in any "brogrammer" culture, but I can't feel sorry for it having an impact on the very people who fostered it in the first place. You may have the same right as I do to sit down and eat, but using bully tactics to win a seat at the lunch table isn't going to earn you any respect.
Talking about how to hire only men so they can avoid sex discrimination lawsuits in the future.
... that more and more investors are deciding to not put their money into places where frivolous lawsuits are prevalent, such as the Silicon Valley
Fact that Intel had to put up $300million for their 'woman in tech' program as a bribe to the feminists is alarming to many investors
Good grief I am so tired of hearing this bullshit argument by people when it is so easily discounted with.. oh my.. FACTS! The only I can believe at this point, is that people in power are desperate to keep us pitted against each other so they are dumping shit tons of money into the extremist feminist movement. Everyone needs to just start boycotting. Turn off any TV station that repeats the bullshit, turn off the radio station, don't buy the publication, and don't read the blogs.
Women don't want to work in tech! Oculus proved it, and even stated openly that they gave favoritism to women. Women did not apply for jobs, so how can they "fix" the balance unless these dipshit SJWs start forcing women into a career they don't want? Everyone knows that IT jobs in general are longer hours, less vacation, less time off, and extremely high stress. I don't blame women for not wanting to work in the field, and see nothing wrong with their choices.
Without all the recent hype, and since the very early 70s, women have been on an unequal field in THEIR favor! There are more women graduating college today than men, there are more women PHDs than men, there are more women in education than men, there are more women than men in industries like child care where women can be closer to their kids. Further, the rate of suicides for women is much lower than men while their work participation is at an all time high, meaning they are not suffering from the same stress as men.
All the bullshit about a patriarchy and rape culture is exactly bullshit. Most women get it and ignore the feminists, so why the fuck are our politicians and media outlets giving them so much air time hmm? I believe the answer is what I started with.. people in power want us pitted against each other and the argument is too simple to latch on to.... if you are a useful idiot that is
Just what can you reasonably expect? Most programmers have been emotionally hurt repeatedly by women (much fewer by men) so it is natural they form protective shells (no not `bash`, the other kind). Yes, that does tar all women with one brush but all men are equally tarred by the misbehaviours of a small minority.
As for discrimination, I personally consider it cowardly -- fair competition, and let the best [wo]man win.
It will encourage high tech companies in general and venture capital firms in specific to:
A). Locate their businesses in a state (like Texas) where Social Justice Warrior-type lawsuits have little chance to succeed.
B). More carefully screen potential employees for Social Justice Warrior tendencies so as to minimize the chance of future lawsuits.
Businesses exist to make money, they don't exit for believers in victimhood identity politics to wage politics and cash in at their expense.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This also makes it more risky for companies to hire women. They need to increase the HR budget to make sure there is plenty of data to back up promotions. This is a very subjective area. Especially for a company like this one where I seriously doubt anyone is a slacker. It's like trying to judge between all 4.0 students. You have to look at things that are impossible to measure.
I'm not saying if she is right or wrong.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Are people really that stupid? Huge payouts in these sorts of lawsuits isn't going to demonstrate to companies they should spend all their time policing their "everyday subtle acts". It's going to convince them women are legally dangerous and shouldn't be hired at all. It's a hell of a lot harder to bring a suit against a company that never hires you than against one for which you're employed, and business owners know this.
Give me a break. Where is the glass ceiling preventing any woman from developing a successful website or app? Many have started from scratch. Why are most of them built by men?
Don't hire women. Don't take that risk of lawsuits.
I've been a reader of /. for many years now. While this site has never been known for having the highest quality content, I'm seeing more and more and more social justice submissions making it onto the front page here.
So there's this submission. Just a few hours ago there was one about "booth babes" being banned at some conference. A few hours before that there was one about some British TV host who was dismissed from his show over some incident.
While this stuff may be indirectly related to technology, it's all so irrelevant here. If I cared to read about whatever minor social injustice is trending these days, I'd go read Twitter comments or even the mainstream media.
Yeah, I know I could just ignore this submission, and the many others, but there are just so many of them these days! They also end up taking up front page space that could be used by more interesting and relevant submissions.
I say this as a woman, as well. Just because I was born with a vagina it doesn't mean that I want to read about all of this social nonsense junk. And just because I wasn't born with a penis it doesn't mean that I'm not interested in reading about scientific discoveries or technological breakthroughs or new mathematical proofs! /. editors, please tone down the social justice poop. Give us good articles about relevant topics! Social justice is not a relevant topic here!
Works well.
I created the first ever magnet and suffice to say I'm not happy with so called by another intelligent people, that being computer and software designers, building something without my direct request to do so.
Unless your job is literally "produce widgets and you will be paid based on the amount of widgets you produce."
There is a budget that an employer has for a job and the amount of that budget they will spend is based on their perceived benefit of spending it. If it's a situation of supply and demand then a worker will be paid more in order to incentive them to not leave for greener pastures. Sometimes it's job specific experience. Other times it's trying to pick you over their other opportunities.
Additionally, employers aren't blind. They see patterns in behavior and know good and well the patterns that comes with hiring women. No matter how committed to her career a woman is at some point odds are good that she's going to want to have kids. When that happens she's going to be gone for 6-12 weeks (paid). When she gets back there's a good chance that will happen again. As we know, for an employer to make that observation is sexist. Then for an employer to have any resistance to paying somebody to not work...also sexist. Then we have to pretend that your job is so easy that a temporary replacement can just be found for you until you get back (but clearly, equal pay is desired since it's all the same so that statement shouldn't bother anybody). Also, depending on the pregnancy there may be complications that require leaving work to be put on bed rest.
Then she starts balancing desire to be a good mom with job stress no matter how good of a husband/partner she has. The icing on the cake happens when an employer pays for maternity leave and then at the end she decides she's not coming back. Also, if you gripe about that it's sexist. You're made of money, remember?
All of this goes into compensation. especially with younger women. Not liking it or getting angry with it doesn't change reality. With women in their mid 30s who have kids at an age where life is easier it's completely different. From an employment standpoint these ladies are the ultimate employees and experience shows that also.
Men have plenty of issues as employees, but younger men working to get ahead do not come with the built in biology concerns.
People rail against sexism and oppression for everything. This is biology. This isn't oppression, it's just reality.
if it's a substantial defeat for pao, this is going to set back these kinds of discussions as well it should. a defeat could throw some cold water on confirmation bias and maybe get people to look at the situation and ask if maybe the cigar just is a cigar.
The sooner you realise you are in Jail the better.
If a person works 35-40 hours a week should they receive the same pay as someone working 45-50 hours? Anyone looking at that should say "No, the person working more hours should receive more pay." but somehow this obvious point eluded you.
There are several valid reasons for pay differences between genders. Men work more. More hours, more days, and even the shitty shifts tend to be occupied by males (barring food services where it's close to equal). Men choose higher risk and higher stress fields to work in. In the same fields of work with the same hours worked women make the same amount of money as men and often receive MORE money than men in the same field of work.
Your anecdotal fallacy of what an ideal work day provides nothing of value to the conversation. Logic is not that goddamn hard, learn to use it!
Most women get it and ignore the feminists
Exactly, the only way the summary makes any sense to me is if you replace the word "woman" with "feminist".
Oh yeah, just to be clearer. You are all in jail and the key has been thrown away forever.
women...C Ya...guys, too.
In fact women of great standing within tech have long said the exact opposite and that it's the constant lies and fearmongering from Social Justice types convincing people there's a wage gap that doesn't exist.
There's a word for when someone uses fear and lies to control someone else's behavior for their own gain. Generally we call that an abusive relationship.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I believe it was a series of counter suits combined with public boycotting that finally ended these people in most areas. You know, the ones that would send a few million snail mails to the FCC when someone said something they didn't like, and had numerous people fired from jobs because their viewpoint was not the same. Similar actions are needed against the extremists.
Extreme competition happens to draw more people with high testosterone than people with high estrogen, so the extra mindless aggression gives people an edge. Careers in financial trading are similar.
Race discrimination is a bigger thing than Gender in tech. If you're non-white, expect your salaries to be at least 20% less than whites.
This is a woman who fucked a married colleague, has a history of being abrasive, and thinks she's entitled to get paid more than Tim Cook earns in a year.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
For an interesting take on gender bias and pay disparities, check out this recent discussion over on Scott Adams' blog. It's one of the more balanced treatments of the issue I've seen.
Sometimes cliques form for various reasons including a desire to get friends or family members hired into new openings or to simply create an illusion that workers in the clique are superior workers and they do that by targeting individuals. As these cliques often make false complaints to managers it can appear that the firm is the one holding back the victim. When loss of job or failure to get raises or promotions takes place the firm is often the one that pays in court. Management may never know the degree to which they have been steered into a precarious position. Worse yet a potential litigant can work with others to get hired and with cooperation of others create undeniable evidence that a firm is doing something that it simply did not do deliberately. For example you hire an applicant that unknown to you has a long time relationship with a trusted employee. That trusted employee is in place to affirm false claims by the new employee. Out of the blue there is a false witness claiming to have seen unwanted groping of the supposed victim. And when the victim throws a fit over the supposed molestation the company feels it has to dismiss her as the work place is not functional due her lashing out over the molestation, over and over again. So the gal works there for three months and ends up with twelve years pay due to law suits.
"Even before there's a verdict in this case, and regardless of what the verdict is, people in Silicon Valley are now talking," said Kelly Dermody, managing partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, who chairs the San Francisco law firm's employment practice group.
"People are second-guessing and questioning whether there are exclusionary practices [and] everyday subtle acts of exclusion that collectively limit women's ability to succeed or even to compete for the best opportunities. And that's an incredibly positive impact."
Which people? I'm in Silicon Valley, unlike people who work in San Francisco.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
They don't call it Man Jose for nothing. Diggity Diggity.
These people don't want justice. They want revenge for past wrongs.
It's wearing mighty thin.
In the mid 2000's, I worked as a first level manager in a well-known tech firm everyone here would recognize by name. (Hint: it's one of the parties to the anti-poaching lawsuit who hasn't settled yet) I had a handful of subordinates, up to six at a time, perhaps a dozen total over three years, including two minority females. Mind you, all of my team were competent, technically proficient, and generally not problem employees. But each year at Ranking and Rating, there was a pointed questioning, only about the minority female technical employees, that was HR-driven. "What is your justification for not ranking this employee higher?" "What are you doing to make sure that this employee is promotion-ready next year?" On the basis of those directed questioning, one of the minority women was given a specific high-profile task by my manager, which she completed competently. On the basis of that task that was steered to her based on her gender and skin color, she was promoted. To the best of my knowledge, she has no idea that she was treated favorably; I know I never told her.
The other was when a minority female candidate was identified late in the process for a very weirdly specific job opening I had. I had identified three decent candidates, all of whom happened to be white males, interviewed them all, and made an offer to the top candidate before HR found this new resume for me. My department was given an extra FTE from magical goodness-knows-where to interview and extend an offer to this lady. You NEVER get free headcount--but I did. So, we interviewed her, but found she had already accepted another offer from another (non-competitor) firm. I was then authorized to beat their offer to get her on our team, and did. So, we ended up with an extra person to do the job, and life was very good for a while, since she turned out to be an even better fit for the job than the white guy we were already in the process of hiring.
Again, over the course of the several years I knew them, both of these women were middle- to top performers among a bunch of other technical specialists, but NEVER have I seen any white male bent-over-for like these two were.
But I had to shine through several other candidates, waded through several rigorous interviews and finally was passed through by being in top 4% worldwide on my field in Mercuri Urval "suitability" tests to land my lead developer position in the fastest growing technological company of a very technology-oriented country. My team had only men, no females. None of the tests were discriminatory. In the continuance R&D side that does not focus on disruptive technologies, there were no women. But their sales, marketing and HR teams had plenty of women, in H&R it is 100% women. Basically no women even applied to the technical roles, while hundreds of men did.
This firm got the strong arm from the government because of their discriminatory policies -- they said that the firm does not employ enough women in R&D positions.
Perhaps it is not because they are women, but because there are no suitable candidates?
Some women that we have worked with in the past are _excellent_, but they are very, very rare.
Why is news here filled with articles that are not reflective of reality, but try to drive in the progressive truth that does not exist in real life?
Most women get it and ignore the feminists
Exactly, the only way the summary makes any sense to me is if you replace the word "woman" with "feminist".
The feminist organizations are much like the federal Rural Electrification Commission. Long after their stated goals have been accomplished, the institution seeks to perpetuate its own existence and exaggerate its own relevance. A sane, rational institution established to accomplish a few clearly stated goals would dissolve itself after those goals have come to pass. But this is not the way of establishments of any sort. They take on a life of their own, complete with their own survival instincts, and become monsters, and truth is easily compromised if that helps advance this goal.
I can hardly wait for the inevitable posts from while males complaining that if there's discrimination going on, they're not seeing it except against themselves. Their whining is so...
White males are the one group that it's tacitly deemed "okay" to discriminate against. Especially if they happen to be Christian, and even more so if they're Protestant ("WASP").
You just can't have a civil, enlightened society if there's ANY grounp it's okay to fuck with. Even if you think they deserve it. Even if retaliation, based on group identity, against those who didn't personally decide historical events (with their enduring consequences) is somehow your idea of "justice", and simultaneously not your idea of "vengeance". Reversing the tide doesn't cause the state of "tide-free". And it isn't going to.
Otherwise, like if a single individual -- or single institution -- or small group of institutions -- made all these bad decisions, I would be perfectly fine with shunning and refusing to trust that person based on an observed track record. But what you have with the group-guilt scenario is this implicit idea that a large group of people, including those who had no input into the process, should bear some guilt for it. That's a total flat-out rejection of any sort of accountability or individuality.
If you want some kind of one-ness or collective, you don't get it this way. Dystopias are created by trying to find more efficient ways of doing it like that. No, you start by honoring the individual and letting those flourish, interact, and coalesce as they will.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Give everybody 2m/y off and work 30h/w, then we will have less unemployment and more efficient businesses.
Actually... No.
You are incorrectly assuming that the per-employee cost for hourly employees to the business for 3 x 30 hr/wk is the same as for 2 x 45 hr/wk. It's not. There is cost loading to the business in the form of unfunded government mandates, such as employer provided medical insurance, workers comp, social security, and so on.
As a specific example, there's a social security tax cap, and employers must match employee contributions. What this effectively means is that if I have 2 employees, my business is out of pocket (2 x CAP) in matching funds, and the rest of my income is mine, whereas if I have 3 employees, I am out of pocket (3 x CAP). This is generally true of all capped max-out-of-pocket employer matching.
Similar capped match values include 401K matching contributions, Medicare.
Other per-employee costs include state unemployment tax, federal unemployment tax, workers compensation insurance, paid holidays, vacations, and sick days, profit sharing plans, direct pension contribution, post-retirement health insurance contributions.
This ignores non-shared resources, like office space for individual employees simultaneously at the business, business equipment costs per employee, furniture, electricity for their computers, and so on.
So it costs a hell of a lot more for a business to employ 3 people than it does for them to employ 2 people.
Your math does not work.
No. Just no. It _used_ to cater to the libertarians. It is now infested with oh-so-reasonable Eurosocialists and left wing progressives.
I find it interesting we are bashing tech (AGAIN).
If you look at the Fortune 500, there are 5.2% women CEOs.
If you look at the Fortune 500 tech companies, there are 8% women CEOs.
If you look at the Fortune 500 non-tech companies, there are 2.8% women CEOs.
(1) Tell me again how this is a tech problem, and not a systemic problem.
(2) Tell me again that tech is not on the right trajectory, compared to all other businesses.
(3) Tell me again how tech is not more progressive than every other business sector.
By all means, lets go back to bashing tech, the only place where this social issue is being redressed in any meaningful fashion. I'm sure there will be absolutely no backlash from beating them up over something they are actually doing something about, while giving everyone else who is doing *NOTHING* about the issue is given a pass.
It's not like tech is full of people who are familiar with how bullying works... the actual bullies *ALWAYS* get a pass.
Let's see...attacks on Ellen Pao's character, complaints that women are whiners,complaints that having women around is a pain, complaints that white males are somehow the ones discriminated against even though they hold almost all positions of power in Silicon Valley, misinformation that a gender pay gap doesn't exist, rationalization that women just aren't aggressive enough in negotiating (while complaining that aggressive women are you-know-whats), anecdotal accounts of how this one woman you know doesn't think this way so it must be true for all of them, fear that a woman's lady bits emit magic rays that weaken men and make them crazy...yep, all the pathetic, illogical, self-serving arguments are here. Okay, I added that last one, but it's pretty much implied. The comments on this story only prove the horrible, soul-sucking environment women across this country, and women in tech in particular, must operate in every day. You seek with these comments to discredit those who complain about gender inequality in tech. The irony is that in so doing, you so perfectly prove their point.
I have seen in digg (which is also driving a pro-feminist agenda but I digress), articles about employees not being promoted to management because they were women. well I also have not been promoted in many places, and never complained it was because I had a penis. Do I need to explain it to you? Maybe because I have a CV that his long, and quite an unusual experience, I have never experienced bullying on the field, and never witnessed it too. I also have some female friends in the industry, and fact is they are more afraid than us to make the jump to newer jobs. They are more social oriented, we always take the plunge for the green grass more impulsively and with lesser considerations "about the friends that we are leaving behind" (sic). Some of them also fail to grasp the unfortunate true, that despite having a penis, often on the industry the only way to get raises and promotions is to change jobs. The fact is guys change it more and have less qualms and fear about doing it.
Make enough noise and juries award. Where's Erin Brockovich with her dodgy cluster stats?
Win or lose, merit or nonsense the lawyers always win.
All the bullshit about a patriarchy and rape culture is exactly bullshit. Most women get it and ignore the feminists, so why the fuck are our politicians and media outlets giving them so much air time hmm? I believe the answer is what I started with.. people in power want us pitted against each other and the argument is too simple to latch on to.... if you are a useful idiot that is
Note that even after we knew the UVA frat rape accusation was horseshit, MSM news articles about it still pushed the talking point that it "raised awareness" and "started a conversation" about "rape culture" and the "epidemic of sexual assault" on campuses. "Win or lose" (i.e. facts be damned) the narrative matters above all else.
I agree, I don't know why the fuck we put up with it. What pathetic, mewling sense of guilt did white men born over the last 50 years have instilled in them?
The correct answer when someone tells you "hire more women" is "fuck you". No. Hire whoever's best for the job. But so many fucking pussified men have so much shame that they are often the biggest cheerleaders for that bullshit.
No. Sorry. My team hires a woman who isn't capable she can fuck right off. They hire a capable woman and she performs, then more power to her.
My personal goal is to sabotage the SJW cause whenever and however possible.
The bullying comment was specifically in reference to the press bullying tech over something tech is already more cognizant of than any other industrial segment.
In terms of personal bullying, I think a lot of people who enter tech were bullied when they were younger, which has driven them towards technical pursuits, where they are less likely to have to associate with the general population. Perhaps, by implication, more young women should be bullies to address the STEM imbalance? I would not suggest that we should do that, even if it would be successful, since the tradeoffs are simply not worth it.
I maintain, however, social isolation leads to more STEM careers than it does to retail sales positions.
The whole "brogrammer" myth, which I think arose from the movie "The Social Network" and the Winklevii in particular, is pretty much a myth. The only fitness nerds I know in tech these days are fitness nerds because of reaction, not because that's the way they've been their entire life. In fact, most of them do it because they are using it as a means of life extension.
Pay is more than just the salary, it includes the perks and non-salary benefits too. And women, quite justifiably, get more of those than men do for the same work.
Either the cost needs to be discerned and shown whether or not it's equal to the wage gap that remains (which is only around 5-10%) or the benefits must be retooled to fit a non-gendered outcome.
We can't and shouldn't stop women being able to have babies, so we need to add "maternity leave" for men too. Stop maternity leave being only for maternity issues. Make them career breaks. Everyone and anyone can get a career break at the same terms as maternity leave has at the moment twice in their working life. They don't HAVE to take it, but they cannot be refused it.
If we calculate the benefits' cost, we'd likely find that the executive cost of allowing maternity leave is a much lower fraction than for lower workers: a female CEO can take 6 months leave and work from home, which is entirely possible to do (less medical recuperation time, a few days or weeks tops). A female coder can if they have access at home to the system, but is less effective while doing so. A female cleaner can't clean anywhere other than their home while working at home. Therefore if there WERE sexism, it's effective higher up, much less lower down, and the cost of maternity is more genuinely felt by those employing women at menial tasks than those employing executives.
Yet when the statistics are done by grade rather than amalgamated, women are far less proportionally represented by management positions, and increasingly so as you rise ranks, while being also more disparate in pay.
Which makes me wonder if the meme is continued in this manner as a distraction from the real location of sexism in the workplace. After all, pointing to the lower ranks as problematic
a) indicate that though other senior management are sexist, THEY are definitely not! look at how they push for better hiring practice in work! (just not for their level of job...)
b) keeps the fighting done between the middle and lower classes and distracts all of them from the fact that 99.9% of people, male and female, don't run the planet.
The lower entry rates for women at the higher levels may be more due to it being a wealthy person's club than sexism, mind. The generationally wealthy, those who come from families wealthy and connected, will tend to be not sexist, but "traditionally" brought up. Not that they think that women can't do those jobs, but that the women don't WANT to do those jobs. Neither need nor inclination. And we CANNOT insist that women MUST want to take those jobs, and whilst women don't want to take the jobs, they will be under-represented in such "traditional" clique dominated roles.
IOW I have much much much less chance of getting a C*O job than ANY woman from a family who has a billion or more in assets, but the woman is less likely to be brought up to want the job, because jobs for the children of billionaires are not a necessity. Whereas having children is, if you want to continue the family, and the generationally wealthy are ALL about the family.
There's no need for pay disparity, there, however.
Maybe they write up crazy job descriptions that almost no one can fill out of a false estimation of what they need?
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
check and check about being bullied in the past and the gym comment. I was bullied in school by a couple of colleagues, one of them slightly retarded and twice my size, and one day I was so full of it, I broke my fist on that giant face. Nobody ever bothered me that year anymore. The year after I went to a private school and there they were much more friendly.
I won't hold my breath. Why don't they set up their OWN companies? How much can it cost to start coding at home? If you've got the talent, nothing can stop you.
More Jewish Bolshevism at work - nation wrecking as usual.
Sadly, this is true for any successful organization.
"But the more an organization succeeds and prospers, the more it is likely to be diverted from its original ideals, principles and purposes ........ Every combination of two or more human beings has both a useful aspect and a political aspect. These tend to conflict with each other. As the political aspect becomes more and more influential, the organization ceases to be useful to its members and starts using them.
Why does this happen? Because the better an organization is at fulfilling its purpose, the more it attracts people who see the organization as an opportunity to advance themselves.
The ability to get ahead in an organization is simply another talent, like the ability to play chess, paint pictures, do coronary bypass operations or pick pockets. There are some people who are extraordinarily good at manipulating- organizations to serve their own ends."
[Empire of the Rising Scum]
http://bobshea.net/empire_of_t...
There is such a thing as going to far, and the feminists have overshot the mark so far it's dangerous to even talk to a female in pubic or private without facing cries of discrimination, rape or bias that will cost you. No, I haven't ever been directly accused and I personally have no issue with women getting paid the same for doing the same work. The other day my son was telling me about his yearly mandatory HR lecture on how to go about work in the workplace. Did you know there is now such a thing as 'stare rape'? WTF? Did you know you can be censored at work (reprimand or fired) for having a relationship at work that makes someone totally unrelated uncomfortable? I guess the only way to ensure a completely level playing field is to have everyone wear a gender neutral suit that hides your sex, male or female from site. You will no longer have a name since that can give you away as being either male or female. Voice changers will be mandatory as well. Of course that means that all bathrooms will be open for everyone as well, with hermetically sealed cells to prevent anyone guessing that way too. I love the world we live in now.. we're so politically correct we can't even BE what we are without the possibility of someone filing a lawsuit.
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
For evidence, see the way feminism-at-large reacted to GTA5: by denouncing the way feminists were depicted in cut-scenes.
The central unstated point of the ideology's rhetoric today is that Feminism is Right and none may doubt Feminism; those who do are Evil because they oppose Feminism.
Your example of Oculus is misleading. They are almost 100% male, and yet companies like Facebook are around 30% female, so clearly the problem is with the way they are hiring and not with women simply being uninterested in technology. They actually mentioned what the problem is in their Q/A session:
I will address this carefully. [laughter] I noted there were some people online pointing out that Oculus Connect is mostly male. I will point out that in the selection process, there were very few women that applied. It was not that we selected for males and, in fact, women may have come out slightly ahead in the selection process by a slight margin. But I'm not 100% sure what we could do.
So they know the problem - very few women applied - but don't know the solution. Companies like Facebook clearly do know the solution, it's no great mystery. A lot of applicants come from networking contacts. Men tend to network with other men more than women, so it's a feedback loop that ensures most of the applicants will be male. Maybe they were not offering much flexibility that women look for to balance their work and family lives. There are books about this stuff, they could fix it if they wanted to.
Why are you trying to make it into some kind of gender war, where one side has to lose for the other to gain? It's not a zero sum game and it's not about women trying to beat men down. That's your take on it, not what mainstream feminists and companies that make an effort to hire more women are trying to do.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Here is a really good post on Oculus and why they are failing, rather than being an example of why there isn't a problem: http://killscreendaily.com/art...
If you want to claim that Oculus is proof women don't want to work in tech, you have to explain why their parent company (Facebook) manages to employ a 30% female workforce.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Fewer women will get hired. Period.
Whenever you make hiring a particular person (woman, minority, gay, etc) riskier because of lawsuits, fewer such people will be hired. I know that if I were doing the hiring (and I do) this kind of risk would factor into my thinking. Would I say anything, would I put it in writing? Absolutely not, I'm not an idiot.
What Ellen Pao is doing with her lawsuit is making herself unemployable. And an anchor around Reddit's neck.
Corporatism != Free Market
I disagree with you. Here's my thoughts from my efforts in recruiting and trying to hire women in to CS. When posing the question to a woman "what if I proposed a field of study which I could almost guarantee a six figure salary within 5 years of graduation". They perk up and say something along the lines of "oh that sounds great, what is it?". I respond with computer science, and the falling of their face is almost comical, and followed up almost always exactly with "no, I want to do something more social, something where I work with people".
Now, lets take that, and no, this isn't anecdotal, unless you consider all of my recruiting efforts, hundreds of times, to be anecdotal, and look at Oculus vs Facebook. Facebook, a social networking site doesn't have a huge issue hiring women, who seem to want to work in the social space. Oculus, who makes VR equipment and is pretty close to the antithesis of social interaction has a hard time hiring people who seem to want to work in a social space.
I don't know, could there possibly be a connection?
If you want to claim that Oculus is proof women don't want to work in tech, you have to explain why their parent company (Facebook) manages to employ a 30% female workforce.
Maybe those two companies are not doing the same kind of work ?
Because Occulus is about secluding your entire world and is anti social. Facebook is social media. People who tend to like being more social (A trait commonly attributed to women) would be vastly more interested in option number two.
There is also that Occulus is a completely different field from facebook. Occulus is hardware and software programming, while facebook is a web site.
What we should be finding out is What percentage of STEM degrees are held by women and encourage companies to set that as their goal. If the number that hold degrees is vastly disproportionate then you should encourage more women to pursue STEM degrees. This is not just the fault of companies hiring people, the entire system failed and it is in a feedback loop. If you want to make the workplace more conducive to women then you need to encourage more women to be available for the jobs. As it is HR cant hire women if none apply.
Because 30% of facebook employees are basically preschool teachers/moderators?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Your delusions of persecution have no place here.
Cheap storage VM.
Kleiner Perkins isn't a technology company, it's an investment bank. As far as technology goes, they're like a 13-year-olds who've watched a ton of porn but never had a partner: they know what everything looks like, and haven't a clue how to do it for real. The idea of being a member of team that achieves something greater than any one individual could, which IMHO is the essence and attraction of technology work, is totally foreign to these people. So we're supposed to generalize about technology organizations from a millionaire lawyer suing a shark tank like KP for acting like sharks? That's like complaining that the Palace of the Borgias was a hostile working environment. These outfits all work like Trump's Apprentice TV show. Whatever passes for a team is a loose coalition, all members of which are looking for a chance to knife the others in the back. There's plenty that needs to be said about gender and minority discrimination in the giant Middle School that Silicon Valley has turned into, but this is purely a case of privilege suing privilege. The only interesting story is how they got Tom "sack of Rolexes" Perkins to keep his mouth shut through the whole thing.
It's not a zero sum game and it's not about women trying to beat men down. That's your take on it, not what mainstream feminists and companies that make an effort to hire more women are trying to do.
Given the extreme rhetoric about "patriarchy" that seems to dominate most feminism discussions in the last few years and the scandals like DongleGate, it's hard for people to not see it as women trying to beat men down. Especially when some of the extremists encourage a policy of "there are no bad methods, only bad targets."
It's a vocal minority who claim to be speaking on the behalf of all women. However, people tend to remember an extremist who shouts in people's faces over the moderate who wants to promote a healthy environment for all people. Would the discussion be more productive if the moderate voices spoke up more often so that the discussion is driven by the extremists?
Without all the recent hype, and since the very early 70s, women have been on an unequal field in THEIR favor
This is also true in computer science where they get:
- lower expectations and more encouragement.
- in both college and workplace
- in childhood, boy-version is "mom, dad, plz buy me a computer," vs girl-version "honey why don't you teach your sister what you know about that computer stuff? She wants to know everything you know but can't be expected to learn on her own like you did because that's obviously ridiculous."
- as much (or slightly more) "help" than they want completing their assignments
- encouragement and opportunity from high school and younger programs funded by big software companies and targeted at women, "introduce a girl to engineering" day, etc.
- admissions preference at elite engineering colleges like Harvey Mudd
Then they complain, "the other students are teasing me," and we all rush to defend them as if we'd never been teased.
The main things women have unequally against them in computer science are:
- the other women: warning them they will be harassed because programmer-men are supposedly so awful, internet trolls, neckbeards, aspies, etc. It's annoying to once again be marked as an easy target by bullies, but we're supposed to be talking about women now, not men. It's also something discouraging the women from computer science when research shows women make career decisions based on encouragement to a much greater extent than men do.
- the lack of other women: Petrie Multiplier models women as encountering more sexist comments than men, even if women are individually more sexist, just because of the small number of women and the way statistics works.
- the chip on their shoulder: they are constantly on alert for being slighted or excluded and assume everything that happens is because they're a women when it might be because they're newly-hired and adjustment is tough for everyone (sure was for me), because they're doing something annoying and the other person is trying to give subtle feedback which they miss because of this new version of "it's because I'm Black, right?"
seems like feminist intervention is worsening all three of these, so whether they are right or not, what they're doing is not going to work, at least not for their stated aims.
Also, WTF has this to do with the Tech World and gender discrimination in Silicon Valley? This just sounds like a regular vanilla company discrimination issue. Well, maybe not Vanilla, but Big Money Big Business company.
You should stop using sock puppet accounts to up vote your own posts.
Or do like we have hear, where leave is paid for out of a fund that all taxpayers contribute to, so nobody is penalized for taking it, and the employer doesn't pay it.
After all, people don't have to have babies.
Countries on the other hand need a fresh supply of people - i.e. babies.
But that whole discussion above (as dictated by the OP who borderline blames women for getting knocked up) ignores the real issue with the whole baby producing thing.
That it is not something that can be permanently delayed or even planned 100% (and let's not even go into twins and triplets issues... or possible health issues), requiring from a woman to be absent from work during her most productive years - and to suffer from a reintegration gap once back at work.
And higher up the ladder the job goes, the more it shows. Particularly at promotion time.
Go away for half a year, return to find that your colleague with whom you shared a desk is now your boss.
Or that he simply has half a year of experience more, while you feel like a new recruit.
Or that you no longer know anyone in your division as everyone moved on, or up - or that the whole division got restructured while you were away.
On top of that, prolonged absences from "the grind", particularly coupled with significant changes in life, can and DO change the way one looks at their old workplace.
I got drafted two years into my first job, went away for 9 months.
But even though my employer even pulled some strings to get me out on one occasion for couple of days cause they needed someone to do the job... I still returned to a company staffed with many different faces and a new boss.
None of which was an issue - we used to have seasonal hirings so you get used to company blowing up then shrinking down, people coming and going, and my new boss was my old division boss who took over for our old boss... who incidentally just had a baby, and after her maternity leave went off to another company.
But you do get a different perspective... and you start noticing complaints other people make about things you took for granted. And so you start looking around. Or you get an offer.
And so you jump ship and start over elsewhere.
As a single, young, unattached male, switching to another company and a similar job was simple.
Sacrificed my vacation time in the process though.
Which was NOT fun after previously losing vacation time on account of being drafted, coming back to work, changing jobs and then working for another year to accumulate vacation time again...
Still... no biggie.
But had I had a baby at home... and maybe no one to take care of it while I worked...
There ARE elements of the whole "baby issue" and its effect on the career path of a woman that can't just be covered by monetary compensation (but it DOES help - a lot), NOR can the men experience all those effects even with paternity leave and shared responsibilities.
But even so - it is still the best strategy NOT to have babies, for both men and women.
Which is a form of discrimination of its own - against those who have to work for a living.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Your example of Oculus is misleading. They are almost 100% male, and yet companies like Facebook are around 30% female, so clearly the problem is with the way they are hiring and not with women simply being uninterested in technology.
You're missing a huge variable here, which is causing your argument to become silly: Oculus and Facebook are at extremely different ends of a corporate lifecycle.
Facebook may be 30% female, but that doesn't mean the females are all in R&D, and especially not in R&D on the types of problems Oculus is tackling. You can take a company like Apple or Facebook or $X and see them as having more women, but that doesnt' mean every department will have 30-60% women. Having a marketing & communications department, or customer service, or HR or $X means you'll get a lot more female applicants, and Oculus just isn't at that stage.
Which explains why FACEBOOK and other SOCIAL MEDIA companies have a lot more women working in them than, say, embedded software design.
You're one of the first people on this site to whip out the Slippery Slope card and you want to argue this point? Misnamed, random shit applied to a criteria that it doesn't affect is pretty much the definition of slippery slope. At first it is just don't grab her ass and now it's don't even talk about her. You didn't strike me as the SJW type but here you are cheerleading for them.
Different AC here. Surprise, surprise, you're a goddamned hypocrite. What happened to Be Nice, Think Twice? The VERY first sentence in your response is a smart assed implied insult. And it wasn't like you guys have had a long chain of arguments about this- it was your first reply. You stated what you believed to be the correct solution and when the first person disagreed with you, you said FUCK YOU DUMBASS I TOLD YOU WHAT THE RIGHT WAY WAS SO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND BE NICE. LEARN TO REED N00B.
IMHO, the NICE way to have responded was:
As an additional comment, your circular link back to your original post with the hyperlinking on "corporate policy" is douchetastically deceptive. Without clicking or hovering over the link to see its address, you make it appear to casuals as if Slashdot itself already has this policy in place or that they have endorsed a story supporting you. That's some bullshit right there and you should feel bad for being bad.
n/c
Indeed. I know a 40 yr old woman who's Director in a technology company (a real director, not a startup 10 man company 'director', meaning big payout, big BMW company car) and she's also complaining about the glass ceiling because all collegues she works with at about the same level are VP. She doesn't seem to get that in the last 7 yrs she got promoted from Software Engineer to Project Management to Director. That's a pretty steep promotion curve, and she still has a long career in front of her to make it even bigger. I'm sure of the former software engineers she worked with most are still just that.
Maybe if they get an even playing field, they can actually start to put out working and high quality code. Anybody?
I've yet to see a female who can code effectively. Everytime I've worked with one, I've always had to go in and fix their crap to make it work.
Don't complain about working conditions when everyone else works under the same conditions, not until you can prove you are willing to do what it takes to provide value to the team.
Male engineers and programmers are often stereotyped as "nerds" before someone even meets with them, and high school (with Hollywood backing) has taught everyone that "nerds" are super-easy to push around. Thus, if someone has an agenda, they'll go after whom they see as the softest target first, which is why there seems to be such a big blowup about gender inequality in tech-related fields vs any other field (but I get most of my news from /., so I could be biased.)
Any actual outcome is immaterial so long as it can be painted in a light positive to those trying to push an agenda.
So you think video games are not social? How come 50% of gamers are now women?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That distinction between justice and vengeance is a good one. Maybe we should be calling them Social Vengeance Warriors from now on; I think that encapsulates the emotion-based focus better anyways. Actual "social justice" should be something we all try to do; "social vengeance" is not.