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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."
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.
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)
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.
IMHO everyone should have that amount of time off.
Why? You may value time off. That doesn't mean everyone does. When I was younger, I routinely worked 60-80 hour weeks, and loved it. My work was much more interesting than anything I could sit at home and watch on TV. I got a lot of bonuses for getting stuff done, and at that age the extra money was far more important than time off. Now that I am older, with a family, and stable finances, I prefer the opposite tradeoff. But I am not going to force my choices onto anyone else.
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.
This reminds me of my dad's 5 rules for life (slightly asciified, and probably from someone before him):
^ That way is up
v That was is down
All men are assholes
All women are crazy
Beer is good.
I prefer red wine, myself. Like maybe a good, dry cabernet sauvignon. But to each their own! Enjoy that beer, my friend. Salud!
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Or, approximately 76% of their 8.5 billion net income for 2013. Think anybody's gonna rate Coca Cola's stock a "buy" if their dividends fall by 76%?
I know it's fashionable to be ignorant of how finance works here on Slashdot, but what you're proposing is literal suicide for any company that tries to do it.
If you owned a factory, and you had a way to make your workers ten times more productive, would you fire 90% of them? Or would you realize that your profit per worker was now ten times higher, and expand your factory and hire more workers?
Doesn't that depend on what I'm making? After all, if I'm making laser guided missiles or nuclear bombs, I have a limited number of 'customers' I can sell them to (legally anyways), so if my 100 employees are suddenly 10x more productive... *yes*, I might fire 90% of them, or maybe 80% of them and hire a few lobbyists to spend the extra money bribing... er, lobbying... politicians to increase the budget for my products, or at least swaying them towards invading "Wherethefuckisthatistan" where I know my products will be used and they'll need to resupply by buying more from me.
Just what can you reasonably expect? Most programmers have been emotionally hurt repeatedly by women
WTF? Almost every programmer that I know is in a stable and good relationship with a woman. Except for one female programmer, who is in a stable and good relationship with a man.
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
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?
Yes, it is having an effect on Silicon Valley.
Yes, it's causing an existential conflict between the hipster liberal side of Silicon Valley that's convinced that evil white males can do no good and women and minorities can do no wrong, and the ruthless capitalistic side that wants to make shitloads of money and just wants the best people for the job.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.