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Ellen Pao Launches Advocacy Group To Improve Diversity In The Tech Industry (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Ellen Pao, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist, today announced the launch of Project Include, an advocacy group aimed at improving diversity in the technology industry. The group was started by Pao and fellow female engineers and executives, including members of Slack, Pinterest, and other Bay Area VC firms. The initiative will focus on providing startups and established tech companies with information on making hiring more inclusive, improving retention, and examining bias in the workplace. Pao became embroiled in one of the most divisive debates in tech last year after suing her former employer, VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, for gender discrimination. She lost at trial and, later, stepped down from her position as interim CEO of Reddit following a severe harassment campaign. Project Include is also accepting as many as 18 startups, who can apply to receive recommendations through a program called Start-Up Include.
If you disagree then you're part of the patriarchy.
This woman is having the longest period ever.
Start an advocacy group to harass people who can.
Never hire Ellen Pao.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If she's backing more U.S. citizens being employed instead of more overseas workers brought in on H1-B's, then I'm all for it, otherwise I couldn't care less.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The article is a bit light in detail as to what Pao's trying to accomplish, but from her history, I'm assuming it's about gender
But maybe we should focus on diversity of skills and experience rather than diversity of physical characteristics?
She lost at trial and, later, stepped down from her position as interim CEO of Reddit following a severe harassment campaign
Please. Here's an outline of the shitshow that Pao and the rest of the Reddit regime (which is still largely intact) caused, leading to her ouster:
https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
Just getting tired about all this diversity stuff and not enough with just simply having the best workers. If they want diversity why does this seem to be limited to the Technology area and not to other areas like medicine? For examples most nurses are women, you don't hear them saying they need more men in nursing?
You are still a problem if you are a critical part of a team...
I hate it when the handlers don't warn the bystanders before they throw in the raw meat.
Yes, we must end the scourge of things being designed by well educated engineers, and add the diversity of blond bimbo strippers, people who "identify" with the gender that they were not born into, people who choose to waste their public education and remain illiterate (although some of those are still waiting for the Basketball or rap "music" opportunity that society owes them), and people who bring different insight through dubious chemical means that Obama chooses to look the other way on. Of course, we will still let the engineers do the actual work, but we must add the other diversity to the design teams.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Yeah, just for some background. Ellen Pao was no-one. She wasn't a long term user of the site. They tried to make it look like that, but it was a transparent attempt. She was one of these Ivy League fucking for-no-other-reason climbers. They tried to give her a back story as a long term "one of us" people. That only made it worse. And when there was the inevitable pushback against her inevitable claims of sexism, there was an inevitable escalation of those claims. That's all you need to know, other than that she was defeated soundly in law about similar claims regarding her dismissal from a previous job...
But she lacks both the warmth and depth they have...
If such is possible in Silicon Valley (i.e. complaints about lack of diversity in many SV companies if not counting janitorial staff). I haven't RTFA but appears this group will go nowhere with the techies based on the comments here.
mfwright@batnet.com
Why tell other people what to think when you can just do what you think everyone else should do, then if it brings you success people will emulate what you have done when you led by example. Share holders see advocates as a risk vector, where as experts with a proven track record are seen for their potential to grow profits and their advice is sought-after.
Fuck anyone with a penis! if you disagree then you're part of the patriarchy
Use apps! only apps can apps apps, NOT LUDDITE feminists! Apps!
I think i finally understand this woman is have the longest period ever
When you can't do real work... start an advocacy group to harass people who can
hire more gay linux nerds who like hard cocks in their rectums
Can you not fathom how there just might be some discrimination happening in the tech world?
Oh I can. I see strong discrimination in favor of employing and promoting 'diversity' candidates. That means STFs (Senior Technical Female), black, native American and disabled. It's not my imagination. It's written down corporate policy. As a hiring manager I would get dinged for not discriminating in this way.
But I actually know someone exactly like that. Late 50s, has worked in every facet of QA, administration, and even mid-range scripting (never really got into dev work, but could do basically every other role you'd need to round out your team.)
She got laid off around the '08 downturn and hasn't been able to get a hire since, despite having 20 years of techwork under her belt and staying up to date on the OSes, software, etc for which she'd be responsible.
Maybe the real issue isn't all the old people being 'weeded out'. Maybe the real issue is the lack of old people leadership willing to invest in their fellows to create the 'next big thing' and show the whippersnappers why wisdom and experience trumps 'hype it and they will invest.' :)
If you are a start up, the news that a major member of your team is going to have a baby is NOT good news... So...
As someone that works for a start-up with five developers that have had three pregnancies in the past three years, this. My god, this. We had to do another round of funding because of the year it delayed our release.
Over on Reddit they started calling her "Chairman Pao" for the censorious regime Ms Pao imposed. She also 'purged' pro-Free Speech moderators. We gotta fight such people, the authoritarians "doing it for our own good" or because it "hurts someones feelings".
Free Speech is the whole ballgame. Lose that and no-one gets to "talk Truth to Power".
What would help diversity (among other things) is not extorting a multimillion dollar settlement out of your employer by filing a lawsuit about things you've made up.
You mean like learning how to tolerate outsized egos and intrusive innuendos so the Pao's of the world don't quit?
No matter where you are, you learn to fit in or you become a crybaby and leave.
Pao is still operating under the delusion that she's no longer a VC due to sexism. Anyone who closely followed her bias case against Kleiner Perkins knows the exact opposite is true; she was given extraordinary opportunities there, much more than the average partner-in-training. Yet she still couldn't get out of her own way on the path to success paved for her by John Doerr. Diversity was not her foe; it was entitlement, jealously, laziness, and incompetence.
While there's problems everywhere, since the biggest issue is long before any tech company can get (directly) involved (how parents raise kids, school, TV, etc), there's starting to be statistics showing that women right of college are starting to make quite a bit more than men (because of all the big tech companies under fire desperately trying to hire them).
So unless you're critically incompetent, right now if you come out of CS and you're a girl, you're basically an instant-hire and you can negotiate your salary to oblivion.
Welp, since my wife is a pretty successful software engineer, I indirectly benefit...but...
Did you see the "Personal Life" section in the wikipedia article. Her husband, besides being a terrible businessman and suing people over racial allegations, used to be married to a guy, for 10 years.
I don't know what, as a society, we've done wrong to make this kind of couple possible.
lucm, indeed.
Being inclusive is not a pre-requisite or a moral obligation. Being inclusive is a game that people with too much time and money on their hands play because they're too afraid to tackle real social problems (like homeless people who live in terrible conditions or ISIS sympathizers who open fire in large crowds).
If you decide to play the inclusive game when you don't have time and money, you'll lose.
lucm, indeed.
Here's a tweet from their talented "Lead Growth", who's also founder of "Women in Product":
Day three of using a Windows machine: was totally mentally exhausted last night, dreaded work this morning. Struggling to do small things.
https://twitter.com/merci/stat...
How fucking entitled can someone get?
When I see people like that, I seriously wonder if I should consider another career than IT. Those idiots just ruin the entire industry.
lucm, indeed.
Likely because that is exactly what we would want of Disney to require of any company that they are about to acquire and then turn to crap. Although you may make it seem that way at times, most of the world isn't perverts.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
yet another affirmative action extortion racket--her gay black diversity litigant scam artist husband Buddy Fletcher is rarely mentioned, btw. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Fletcher)
Against who, though? I'm getting old now, and for my entire life women around me have been given extra opportunities. Free tutoring in college, extra consideration for jobs, easier paths to promotion. It takes a lot of gall to complain about discrimination when you'd still be working in the proverbial mail room without it.
Erica Joy Baker
bethanye McKinney Blount
Tracy Chou
Laura I. Gómez
Y-Vonne Hutchinson
Freada Kapor Klein
Ellen Pao
Susan Wu
Inclusive indeed
There are many nations for a reason. Don't listen to "diversity" arguments. If you want to experiment with "diversity" then do it in one house as a beta test. One of each race and one of each culture etc. eg. 1 Amish 1 Buddhist 1 Sikh 1 Jehova's Witness 1 Japanese 1 Black 1 Lesbian etc. Mix the genders too.
If that fucks up, don't do it to the world.
there just might be some discrimination happening in the tech world?
Of course there is! How else would Ellen Pao ever have gotten a job with a tech company?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What's sad is that the knee jerk sexist responses here only prove Pao's point.
Go fuck yourself, snowflake. We're talking about Pao, not women in general.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That is true on a national level too.
if you are looking to recruit people based on their skin color, sex, age, etc. then what you are actually doing is discriminating against the majority. racism/sexism/ageism/etc. are not magically acceptable because you have good intentions. instead of forcing diversity people should be looking to reduce selection bias for everything except their merits.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I'm glad to see she'll be doing something where she can't effect or harm other people. Hopefully it'll be a few decades before she realizes that everybody is ignoring her.
Do you have ESP?
The shit Ellen Pao has done in the past has done so much harm to the image of women in tech leadership roles than this bullshit campaign can ever fix.
Just because you find her unsympathetic and her case was lost, doesn't mean she's wrong or did bad things (you call it "shit").
Or do you have proof? Citations/links please.
Thanks.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
You couldn't tell from the headline?
That is all.
Because somebody put them in front of a computer when they were little and OFF THEY WENT.
Okay, but what if the person's parents were poor?
Or what if their parents had a gendered view of tech and didn't put a little girl in front of a computer because that was a "Boy Thing"
Where I am adding diversity would mean giving visible minority jobs to western Europeans.
But, "an 'attack' on one woman is an attack on all women." There. That precept nicely excuses ALL kinds of odious, reprehensible behavior. That type of excuse and reasoning is the cause of so many social troubles at this time in history.
I'm getting real real tired of the moderate viewpoint being the largest, but also the quietest and least likely to act.
Since that reddit mess, I've seen a number of people in discussion admitting they were swept up in the mob mentality, and they were contributing to the hate without really bothering to do their own research into what was really going on. A number of these people have apologized, and from time to time Ellen has responded to these apologies with understanding.
...He's talking about Pao as well. Do you really have to jump straight into aggressive responses? If you're position is correct, shouldn't logical discourse be sufficient? I mean, I understand that this is a passionate issue; and you have every right to be mad, but "Go fuck yourself, snowflake" only helps to shut down the ability for the various sides of an issue to come to understand each other.
Because modding is so broken here these days, you don't even get to see the actual breakdown unless you view this thing at -1,-1.
Do you really have to jump straight into aggressive responses?
Have to? No. I do so because I choose to, and your approval is neither required nor is it sought.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Many people reply to comments in order to change peoples minds; to cause either the parent, or readers of the thread to reconsider things. If you're gonna word things in such a way that both sides just dismiss you, it doesn't sound nearly as satisfying to me. But you do you.
If you're the kind of person who likes to just swear at random people
Not random people, snowflake. Only the ones who irritate me.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You get irritated by random people on the Internet? LOL, your life must really suck. I'm sorry, dude. I hope you manage to get over that someday.
This is solving the symptom and not the problem. You want more girls and minorities and poor kids to get into then support a basic income, quality education programs including access to modern computer resources, arts, music, and philosophy and/or anything and everything else.
I do support such things, however we as a nation have been "discussing" such things as "basic income" since the early 70's and it still hasn't happened.
You've probably seen the discussions on Slashdot about basic income...and how it brings out the Randroids and the computer-geek version of the selfish-suburban-white-guy who doesn't think there's a problem with our socio-economic system in the first place and that women/blacks/gays/hispanics/transpeople are just professional victims....except of course when it's H1B's threatening his IT/programming job.
It's interesting that this group of female engineers and managers didn't form a company to produce an actual tech. product.
The first thing that has to be recognized by someone attempting facilitate gender/sex diversity in the tech industry is to recognize that tech is not a "male" industry... it's an "outcast" industry. Everyone assumes that males are specifically targeted and tracked into computer-related academic/research/career paths. That's not the case. By and large, it's social outcasts who take up computers as a hobby are tracked into computer-related academic/research/career paths and those social outcasts are more commonly male.
If people REALLY want to foster a better, more inclusive environment for all people in the computer industry:
1. Parents need to stop enforcing traditional femininity norms on their daughters so that their daughters are willing to go into technology-related fields of study and careers. This change is already happening, but it's not a generation-wide ideal, so expect the swell of girls being SOCIALLY supported in the field to come 30 years from now.
2. Adults need to ensure that those whose choose computers/tech as a hobby (and are thus more likely to choose tech as a career) get the social acclimation they're likely being deprived in other parts of life. I'm speaking mainly of males here. Again, young boys don't become reclusive computer nerds because they see a rewarding career in system administration. They fall into it because it helps them escape from the tortures that come with being social pariahs. If you repair the damage of their exclusion early, you can almost guarantee a better work environment for women seeking to enter the tech field later in life.
But, of course, that's only if you want to make real change happen over time and not just attempt to force new rules and standards without any consideration for the root causes of issues.
Your reading comprehension level indicates that you're an unfortunate victim of government schooling.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."