Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ellen Pao Launches Advocacy Group To Improve Diversity In The Tech Industry (theverge.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the online-diversity dept.

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.

11 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Fuck anyone with a penis! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you disagree then you're part of the patriarchy.

  2. When you can't do real work.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Start an advocacy group to harass people who can.

    1. Re:When you can't do real work.... by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If this "project" follows the standard race-hustling/gender-hustling formula, it will look something like this:

      1) They approach your company and ask for you to sponsor them, or hire them to provide diversity training, or pay them to do a diversity study of your company (aka they'll shake you down for money)
      2) If you do sponsor/hire them, they'll call you progressive and give you a social justice free pass (a real commodity in ultra-liberal Silicon Valley)
      3) If you don't, they'll cite you as an example of a company that's not "embracing diversity" and is clearly racist/sexist/homophobic blah blah. You must be, otherwise you would have embraced diversity by giving them money, right?

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    2. Re:When you can't do real work.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Painting them with mob tactics. This is frighteningly accurate and come to think of it, not the first time I've heard of social issues being falsely used for personal financial/commercial gain; See Anita Sarkeesian.

  3. Step 1 to improving your company by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Never hire Ellen Pao.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  4. Let's shift that focus a little by suupaabaka · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  5. Slashdot Still Fooled by Harassment Narratives? by Kunedog · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  6. Re:I think I finally understand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. Re:How about more 'diverse' U.S. citizens? by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Informative

    agism is the elephant in the room (I'm biased, I'm over 50 and unemployed in the bay area). I see lots of women where I was previous employed (at pretty much any place); but if you look for grey hair guys and girls, no, there are some token hires or maybe some rock star that happens to be old; but for the most part, if you are over 35 and looking to stay technical in this area of the country, LOTSA LUCK to you.

    the other elephant (yeah, its crowded in this room) is that if you are born in the west, especially the US, employers mostly prefer to NOT hire you and instead take an h1b or other form of import. its not about race; its about being brought up here and knowing your rights, knowing you can say NO to your boss for that 4th weekend request in a row of his, knowing lots of things that foreigners who were not raised in the US culture simply don't know.

    employers leverage the HELL out of that fact. most people outside the US who are from asia, for example, has zero idea what freedom really is. they are perfectly fine with being eavesdropped, spied, directed, micromanaged and then disposed of. they think its normal. US born folks know better, and so we are not the first choice when it comes to hiring.

    the cries of DIVERSITY! is bullshit and yet another distraction to hide what is really going on. war on middle class; and that mostly means folks born here and who have a vested interest in what happens here in the next 10, 20, 50 years. but we are being passed over for most of the core hiring in the valley.

    btw, indians who end up staying here and having kids; YOUR kids are now americans and they will be passed over just like I and my friends are, now. think long and hard about that, immigrants; and think again if you really should hire yet more h1b's or if you should, maybe give some locals a chance at some of those jobs. later on, your kids will be the locals. think about it.

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  8. Chairman Pao by zapadnik · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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".

  9. She should try improving her own competency by JoeyRox · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.