Ellen Pao Drops Appeal of Gender Discrimination Suit

McGruber writes: Jeff Bezo's newspaper is reporting that Ellen Pao is dropping her appeal of the gender discrimination suit she lost against her former employer, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Pao sued KPCB in 2012, claiming that women were not given fair consideration in the male-dominated workplace. She also said that a male colleague with whom she had an affair unfairly cut her out of e-mail correspondence and upper management did nothing about it. She was fired soon after filing her suit. After a bruising month-long trial in which her personal character and work performance were repeatedly brought into question, a jury of six men and six woman ruled that there was no evidence of gender discrimination.

Comments

Re:Why now?

[sinij]

Dropping the suit is playing right in to the "it's too hard to fight" theme. Surely if she wants to actively fight gender discrimination she should push it as long as she can.

The jury disagreed with your premise that there ever was gender discrimination in this specific case. Just like you can't cure cancer if there is no cancer, you can't fight gender discrimination when incompetent employee was fired for a cause.

as in Germany

[argStyopa]

Now, she should be liable for the costs of the suit.

Why management is hard

[phantomfive]

She also said that a male colleague with whom she had an affair unfairly cut her out of e-mail correspondence and upper management did nothing about it.

These sorts of petty fights aren't uncommon these days. Most project management books and classes talk about things like allocating resources, "managing up," agile vs waterfall, etc, but managers spend a surprising amount of time dealing with bizarre interpersonal issues and personal issues that don't really show up in the books. If I were teaching a management class, the first chapter would be "how to get your underlings to overcome weird personal issues."

The fight about the radio in Office Space feels sadly real.