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Investors Who Back VC Funds Are Worried About Valley Culture (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Limited partners in venture capital funds are having conversations about how to prevent themselves from investing in the next Binary Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that has collapsed over allegations that one of its co-founders sexually harassed female entrepreneurs. This includes the largest LP trade group -- the Institutional Limited Partners Association -- which tells Axios that it is planning to address these issues this summer, as part of the development of its new ILPA Principles 3.0 document. Silicon Valley, and venture capital in particular, has swept sexual harassment under the rug for decades. Binary Capital, coming on top of the situation at Uber, has grabbed that rug and begun to shake it vigorously.
Read the allegations. It sounds like they're selectively quoting a FB message where he's accusing her of hitting on him.
This is more like the baizuo want to push for cultural takeover of SV because they consider it a strategic asset.
Don't hire women.
That may sound sexist. But the reality is; if you can't trust the boys to behave around girls, or the girls not to accuse the boys, just keep them apart. No judgement about who was right, wrong, made false accusations, or thought the business was just a big frat party.
Funny thing is that these VCs and the other investors didn't care about Silicon Valley before there was money to be made.
To be fair, this happens to every niche thing that gets big. There are always a few hardworking folk who get it off the ground, followed by a torrent of bottom feeders seeking gold that ruin the party. The gender politics bit is at right angles to this, and is mainly thanks to awkward my little pony fucks, trying to bang the fat purple haired cows that may decide to mount them, if they are lucky. Basically, losers trying to get laid being played by broken chicks with personality disorders.
There's always been women with terrific math/programming skills. That's nothing new. What's new is that the industry is now bloated with incompetents, it's like a gold rush. And it attracts (in part) immature men and gold digging women. The Julian Assanges, the Ellen Paos. They're the bloat.
There's no deep social movement, no revolution with long-term impact, no real disruption. The number of competent people in tech hasn't changed over the last 25 years, there's just more incompetents around who think they belong.
Same shit happened in finance and real estate. Just wait, the pendulum is coming back at some point.
lucm, indeed.
The proposed fixes usually are worse than the original problem - where political correctness and mandated diversity make things worse.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
there's just more incompetents around who think they belong.
They're called guest workers.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
There are other, nicer places with better culture.
You'll never be able to fix the "sexual harassment problem" in Silicon Valley. Why? Because:
1) Liberal Silicon Valley will keep moving the goalposts on what constitutes sexual harassment. The more you do to fix it, the more the goalposts will move--until virtually everything is considered harassment.
2) Firms will keep hiring more women in hopes that it will virtue signal that they're progressive. These women will repay this effort by filing more and more sexual harassment claims. You'll hire more women to fix the problem, which will make the problem worse, which will cause you to hire more women....
3) No victim is ever going to give up their victimhood status without a fight, no matter how much you do to appease them.
But if you want to waste your time trying to do the impossible, then go for it. On the upside, it will hopefully speed up the inevitable Silicon Valley crash that's long overdue.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Over the years the most creative environments I've ever been in, would now be considered the most toxic. Crude language, rough housing, liberal amounts of beer, meditation, music and so forth have played major roles in helping people to innovate. Every shop I've been in has done things differently (depends on the people).
Whats going to happen when people are not allowed to go against the grain?
I think you're a bit gullible.
When a company fires a CEO for "Sexual harrassment", it's like firing them for "boondongle of the day".
So Uber's CEO is likely to face criminal charges over the theft of Waymo IP, Uber cannot say "we're sacking him to protect the company from secondary damage over these potential criminal charges", instead they say "we're sacking him because of inappropriate sexual remarks"..... right, of course you are.
You understand that when a politicians resigns to "spend more time with their family", that's not really about spending more time with their family, don't you?
Binary Capital collapsed because the VC's spent the money chasing poontang not viable businesses, and didn't make money. One of the sacked people can see a way to make money off the back of the Uber lawsuit. A classic opportunist at best.
I expect the other will announce his plans to spend more time with his family any time soon.
"Over the last few days, both Caldbeck and his partner, Jonathan Teo have effectively resigned, and Binary is expected to be wound down."
Not much of a company if it goes out of business just because two people quit.
Like, you know. It is soooo rad!
*sigh* How I long for the old days...
"On November 21, 2014 Binary offered Lai a job with a start date of January 5, 2014."
*facepalm*
Jeez you can't even make it to page two without a fuckup. What kind of assclown attorney does she have?
When I first had a job in tech in 1984, there were quite a lot of women in tech. They were doing what today is IT work - system admin, computer maintenance, etc. Also in undergraduate from 81, women in computer science were well represented, maybe 1/3 of students were women. The same was true when I was at grad school a decade later.
Also note that in the 50s and 60s that "operating" a computer was secretarial work which was heavily dominated by women. Women were also common as "computers" before then, meaning people all working on their piece of an algorithm to come up with an answer, before electronic computers made this obsolete.
Over time this percentage of women working with computer (programming, designing, maintaing) has declined drastically. This means it cannot be due to any innate bias that the bros like to claim ("girls don't like computers"). Instead it's a bias that has arisen over time; either a distaste for the culture or bias against tech growing up (parents/teachers steering them away to other interests).
Now to be fair, you said "hobby" and I've been talking about careers. That is possibly true, as the microcomputer culture was very different from the professional computing culture. Your history seems backwards though, the businesses and industries existed before the hobbies.
Nobody crashed your party. What party was that? A frat party? Maybe in your own house you can put up a "no girls allowed" sign, but in the real world anyone can join in.
I've said this before, but there are many incompetent males that get hired in computer, but the women who are hired are almost always well above average. There will be equality when incompetent women get hired at the same rate as the incompetent men.
Binary Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that has collapsed[...]
So, Binary Capital went from 1 to 0?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Maybe the solution is a buddy system, where you are assigned a same-sex partner who goes everywhere you do, so that if anyone harasses you, your buddy will witness it, and you'll never be alone with a potential harasser. But wait, what if your buddy is homosexual? Fuuuuu...
Ok, buddy system 2.0 is MMF threesomes, what could possibly go wrong?
This is more like the baizuo want to push for cultural takeover of SV because they consider it a strategic asset.
Yup, and they'll defend bullies to do it, as long as those bullies express the right politics. A good example happened just this weekend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
TL;DW - A feminist panelist at a conference recognizes a critic in the audience and uses her position behind the mic to berate and insult him. The conference acknowledges this as violation of their rules, yet apologizes to her (without ever even contacting the attendee she abused) and still allows her to sit on a second panel about (no bullshit) dealing with harassment and bullying. One of her fellow panelists (IMO one of the kindest and most innocuous humans on the internet) has been anxious for months just knowing he'd be in same room with her and walks on eggshells around her, terrified of what might set her off. Sure enough, after the panel she immediately accosts him and cusses him out.
The conference eventually releases a public statement making excuse after excuse for her behavior. That's what it means to reach Cruise/Travolta status in your cult, I suppose.
The New York Times had an article about sexual harassment in Silicon Valley.
Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/technology/women-entrepreneurs-speak-out-sexual-harassment.html
When a mere accusation of sexual harassment against women can sink your company, the only rational option is to just not do business with female entrepreneurs at all.
All it takes is one third party to make an anonymous claim on twitter and your enterprise is blacklisted.
Of course discriminating based on sex is illegal, but what else can be done? Even videotaping every meeting and conversation isn't enough when any random person with a grudge can say "They deleted the recording. Obviously they have something to hide!" when there was no meeting at all.
Like OMG! Like totally!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have been in the tech world for more than 3 decades. I have also seen the VC scene in many places from big to podunk. I would say that the VC types that I meet come in 3 main flavours. Arrogant bean counters who know what is good for you. Arrogant assholes who think they are god. And Arrogant thieves who pretty much have to rip you off to make themselves feel better.
My favourite was at a recent tech talk by a woman (who gives government money to VCs) (Canada) who said that she won't give money if the founders make too much (over 100k) but that she was leaving government to become an advisor to a start-up that had recently raised around 5m. I asked her if she was only going to take 100k. She pretty much yelled at me that I had no understanding of the real world.
Her theory was that if you give the founders more than 100k in salary they become distracted spending it.
I was wondering how I could expose her in some way for the corruption she was displaying by working for a company she had just given government money to when I witnessed one of the tech people who had attended her talk, keying the living crap out of her car with the words, 100k over and over.
It was a brand new higher end BMW BTW. On a funny note, there is nothing funnier than some podunk tech "titan" who sells some company for 10-20 mil and starts giving TED style keynote speeches that are the tech equivalent of spiritual mumbo-jumbo while wearing clothing that they spent much time and money on trying to look really casual. The contrast with the person who usually gives a too long winded introduction and wears an ill-fitting off the rack suit just makes it all funnier.
Then all the desperate start-up types try their damnedest to "network" with the speaker who basically holds out their hand for their ring to be kissed.
I love how they play up their serial entrepreneur business creds when their actual history is: fail-fail-fail-fail-lottery-fail-fail-fail-fail.
Hillary lost because of russian hackers. After ousting Trump and have our legitimate President, Hillary Rodham Clinton, firmly in power we will punish Russia hard. I am ready to do my part for our legitimate President, Hillary Rodham Clinton. #iamwithher
Take your great ideas, money and skills to a more business friendly part of the USA. Make the best part of a very poor city in a poor state an offer.
The fastest internet connected to the site. Low cost power. The ability to hire based on skills needed. Offer locals lots of new jobs for landscaping, as guards, as technicians to swap server hardware during the night.
Somewhere in the USA a state and city exist that really needs to do a deal. That has working power supplies, fast internet and a lot of empty office space to fill.
A site on the good side of any city. Not the most expensive parts, but the good safe parts of a city.
Dont get lured into helping with their idea of gentrification in a poor city in a poor state. Its a trap and your company will be used to offer full employment to a lot of people who have been looking for any kind of work for a very, very long time.
Good local advice should help avoid that offer.
A relaxed agricultural state with nice views from the office, hills, fast internet, forests and hydro power? A more central, relaxed part of the USA with a lot of fast internet.
Escape from the growing stress of the elite west coast politics and rediscover Americana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
Its only a short flight away and is always very welcoming to any level of investment.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Perhaps - but what have done that matched Assange's record? You can't even put up quotes without always resisting the urge to edit them to pretend they make your point for you. Or Ellen Paos, she's a lawyer and HR type so her inclusion is a bit strange here, but at her age had you done as much with your career as she has done with hers to date? If you are going to call those two incompetent are you not insulting yourself and almost the totality of the readership here?
> when incompetent women get hired at the same rate as the incompetent men
Can hardly wait
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Nice job tanking the economy by making up allegations of sexual harassment every time a man you don't like makes a pass at you!
VCs created the toxic culture in the valley, and now they are crying about how it harms the viability of their equally toxic business model? I hope they all line up and die in a fire, one at a time. The inrush of shitheels is due specifically to VCs handing out money to anyone who can get their crayon sharp enough to draw up a business plan.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is not a tech problem. This is a finance problem. Stop hiring the asshole children of rich assholes.
Oddly, CA has fairly low taxes when considered as an average - it has a highly progressive tax structure (as does the federal tax system), and property tax tends to penalize new money (if you bought your house 30 years ago, you're paying tax on the value it had 30 years ago). Texas may have no state income tax, but it has property tax that is 3-5 times higher than California. Both have high sales tax
In any case, CA is among the lowest overall tax burden states when calculated for the median person living there. Yep, if you're in the 0.1% you'll find California pretty punitive, but on the other hand, the weather is nice and the scenery is nice.
https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer/2416/#complete-rankings
note also that "tax freedom day" is in April for all states - so there just isn't much difference.
https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170320110931/TF-Facts-Figures-2017-3-20-2017.pdf
The Tax Foundation calculates on "all taxpayers", while wallethub does a "median income"
for engineers, one might want to do the calculation for, say, 80-100k/yr income (90th percentile)
We have seen the aftermath of the last "Valley Culture". "You know, like, gag me with a spoon". Do we really want that type of culture to persist all over again?
Oh, that's easy. There are just as many incompetent women; we just have to change the culture to make it equally acceptable to call them incompetent.
AND SHAKE IT VIGOROUSLY
Oh, that's easy. There are just as many incompetent women; we just have to change the culture to make it equally acceptable to call them incompetent.
It's been a while since I've seen a truly competent woman and not yet another who was hired to meet a gender/racial quota.
there is a shortage of incompetent female workers due to government sector employment and welfare vote-buying
Also note that in the 50s and 60s that "operating" a computer was secretarial work which was heavily dominated by women.
This persisted well into the 1990s, depending on the business. You haven't lived until you've tried to help a secretary at a freight expediter troubleshoot a UUCP problem over the phone.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You have just described capitalism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The incompetent females get out for better options, whether they are career options or social.
Very much this. It has gotten to bad that, for example, "web programmers" have no clue how the web works. I just had to explain to a bunch of them after they had debugged a "problem" for several days how a relative link works. These are people with 3-5 years of "experience" in that role. And this is just one example.
I do agree that the total number of competent people in tech is stable, but we are getting less effective because the morons are standing in our way at every corner. It is a disaster.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
WRONG AGAIN. Previous post was accurate. Even now some Democrats are realizing that demonizing Trump to shift the blame away from the real reason is becoming reality for the majority of the people. She lost the support of the Obama voters group at her own doing.. Oh wait, FAKE NEWS from CNN, I forgot about that. [/sarcasm]. Seriously, when are you Hillary diehards going to admit that she was a terrible candidate. Much worse than the current administration.
I've said this before, but there are many incompetent males that get hired in computer, but the women who are hired are almost always well above average.
I've seen phony Facebook status, bullshit tweets and shallow press release boilerplate, but when it comes to being an hypocrite, you just take the cake because not only are you a bend-over puppet of political correctness, you also happen to be an immensely sexist pig.
If there's one thing I'm grateful for, it's not being a prisoner of your social shackles.
Have a nice day.
lucm, indeed.
Hillary lost because of russian hackers.
I don't think it's fair to blame russian hackers. They were just hired to do a job. We all know the real puppet master in this political drama: Michelle Obama. She just couldn't stand having a cracker as first female President.
#michelle2020
lucm, indeed.
The proposed fixes usually are worse than the original problem - where political correctness and mandated diversity make things worse.
Fact.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.