Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Gender Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins 365
vivaoporto writes As reported by the New York Times, USA Today and other publications, a jury of six men and six women rejected current Reddit Inc CEO Ellen Pao's claims against her former employer, the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Ms. Pao's suit, that alleged employment discrimination based on gender, workplace retaliation and failure to take reasonable steps to prevent gender discrimination, asked $16 million in compensatory damages plus punitive damages. The jury decided, after more than two days of deliberation and more than four weeks of testimony, that her formed employer neither discriminated against the former junior partner for her gender, nor fired the complainant because of a high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit against the firm in 2012. She alleged that Kleiner Perkins had promoted male partners over equally qualified women at the firm, including herself, and then retaliated against her for raising concerns about the firm's gender dynamics by failing to promote her and finally firing her after seven years at the firm after she filed her 2012 lawsuit.
The perfect summary of the case: (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.cnbc.com/id/1025377... [cnbc.com]
Written by a female ex-CEO.
In a nutshell, the case is obviously frivolous, and if it had succeeded it would have been another barrier for women in the industry because companies would see a female applicant and go, "Is she worth the risk?"
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yeah, i read that article. it's kind of baseless. she uses the term "frivolous" over and over, but that would imply she knew that facts and evaluated the situation. there's no facts in the article all. she's calling it frivolous because,
"A job is an exchange of services on one side for compensation on the other. If that exchange is not working for either side, then move on. If you don't like how you are being treated, what you are getting paid, your opportunities, your co-workers or any other aspect of wher
Pot meets Kettle, only worse! (Score:2)
You claim to dislike the article because it provides no facts, and follow that up with two of your own assertions which appear to be nothing more than slander. I am assuming you have facts which back these two statements.
basically, she an extreme capitalist that doesn't believe in "workers' rights" at all.
she's saying "hey, being discriminating on? just leave and work somewhere else. it's a free country."
I make no claim that you have to agree with her opinion, but I do claim that poisoning the well with slander is a pathetic way of garnering agreements with your own opinion. Placing the proverbial icing on the cake, your last statement is completely irrational.
"leave and get a new job or start your own business."
that's just a little elitist. assuming everyone has the capital to start their own business.
Notice that your short rant
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The irony is that the same logic applied to the job by the worker basically means -- I'm free to do whatever I want at this job, and if it doesn't work out of them they can fire me.
For the company, the logic means they can be abusive, discriminatory, dishonest and exploitive.
So for the worker then, I guess they can be lazy, dishonest, unproductive, etc. It's the worker's role to exploit the company for the maximum gain they can get. Maximum shirk, minimum work.
What's funny is, I would bet that author if
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Or maybe they'd go; Gee whiz, we really are hiring mostly males for these positions. Perhaps we can take a closer look at these ladies to see what they're offering.
Then they'd be accused of soliciting prostitution.
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Or maybe they'd go; Gee whiz, we really are hiring mostly males for these positions. Perhaps we can take a closer look at these ladies to see what they're offering.
Then they'd be accused of soliciting prostitution.
Badum-tish.
Funny and informative at the same time, just like Sesame Street.
Re:The perfect summary of the case: (Score:4, Interesting)
We already do for black females as they are more likely to cost us money bringing a claim against us for dismissing them. Either firing them or terminating their employment for various reasons.
As a small company we cannot afford to make a mistake with the whole weight of Federal and State laws for someone to crush us with so we have taken risk mitigation very seriously.
So you admit to the discrimination you are saying you don't want to be accused of? yeah, shocking that you might get sued...
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Yes, discrimination against "High-litigation-risk" minorities. The gender/race correlation against said risk makes it appear like gender or race discrimination, but in essence it's just a good business practice to avoid employees that can ruin your business.
The fact feminists thought ruining their employers is a good gender equality promotion tactics... uh.
Wouldn't Want To Be In The Same Room With Her (Score:5, Insightful)
Man has an affair on the job, expects to get fired, woman has an affair on the job, expects $16M. Nothing coming out of this case makes it look like she had even the tiniest shred of evidence she didn't deserve what she got besides her gender.
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I got my job just because the company I work for had over twenty developers that were all male, and it looked bad on their EEO report.
Not because you were the most qualified applicant? That means the company you work for hired you not because they should have, but because they were strong-armed into it. In fact, they should not have had to have hired you, they should have been able to hire the best-qualified applicant.
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But the difference is that men have the power.
You might have a point if the man she had an affair with was her boss. Instead he was just a colleague. As it was, it didn't reflect sexual harassment--just very poor judgement.
This whole issue needs to be buried (Score:5, Informative)
I don't mean the article but this gender bias issue which is almost entirely factious and where not factious almost always radical hyperbole.
The gender wage game since the 1970s has been less then TWO percent not 30 percent WHEN you factor in years on the job. Nearly every comparison between men and women that cite a large gender pay game ignores that the women often take as many as ten years off while they raise children. To compare that person's value to the company against someone that didn't take those ten years off is either gross incompetence or calculated deceit. And that was in the 1970s and that is only when factoring for a SINGLE additional variable.
There are other variables that can easily account for the remaining 2 percent and then some.
Subject this garbage to the cold light of reality and it evaporates into nothing.
By all means, contradict me... but if you do, provide some logic and if you cite evidence, expect it to be audited.
I will accept nothing from anyone that isn't open to examination.
Re:This whole issue needs to be buried (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is forgetting that. But why is the employer responsible for it either?
You want to take ten years off and then come back and earn the same as the man OR woman that didnt' leave? How is that fair?
The best way to track the effect of children on the earning power of a woman is is to compare the earning power of women that don't have children versus the ones that do.
The women that do not have children earn almost the exact same amount as men.
That was how the gender cap statistic was first debunked. They just removed all the women that have children and the gap vanished.
Now you say we need kids? No disagreement. But that is a different issue from gender discrimination or a wage gap.
All you're asking for now is maternity welfare. Which already exists. Nearly all the public subsidy money for healthcare etc goes to women. Roughly 90 percent goes to women.
So... you're being paid. And the next time you want to talk about how hard it is being a woman, lets look at the gender imbalance in homeless people. Nearly all homeless people are men.
This issue is bullshit. It needs to be cut in to little pieces, dosed with holy water, and then buried on opposing sides of a church on holy ground. Otherwise known as another fun way to deal with vampires.
The issue is bullshit. Nuke it from orbit.
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Fairness has nothing to do with it. The person who was on the job and loyal to the company for 10 years is likely being overpaid for the job out of gratitude for his loyalty and dependable track record. It's why a rookie will often be hired in at a wage less than the 10 year veteran regardless of their sex. That is likely the value of the job, over that and it is a reward for "time ser
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... none of which matters because it has nothing to do with sexual discrimination.
Next issue.
You show sexual discrimination... that is discrimination that is not correlative with other factors but caused directly by gender or you have nothing.
The issue is that when women have children their careers get put on hold which means their male peers make more money at the end of their careers than women do that took large portions of their career off.
That is what happens.
It is not sexual discrimination and there i
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Oh, I see I hit a nerve with the SJW crowd or something. It's ok, I understand you cannot help it.
Yes, you are getting overpaid and deserve it for the reasons mentioned. Its simple economics, the job pay is worth what people are willing to do it for and if someone is willing to do it for less, whether you like it or not, that is what it is worth. If the company or DoD decides to pay you more because you have 10 years in with them, you deserve that but are being overpaid compared to the going rate of anyone
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This is false equivalency.
This notion that someone is automatically being overpaid simply because of seniority.
You don't know that. Just because the company replaces someone that is paid X with someone else that is being paid X/2 does not mean that the person replacing them is doing the same work or quality of work as the previous employee. You really don't know.
Go look at a job listing and you'll see they tend to all say "DOE" under the wage/salary section.
That stands for "Depending on experience".
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It's pretty reasonable to assume they are in most jobs like line workers at a factory or whatever. There simply is not that much variance in requirements for the jobs and often the jobs or slip shifted with similar results being expected. But it doesn't matt
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The employer is in no way responsible for either of those things.
Your employer is not your liege lord, you fucking filthy peasant. :D
You are in a contractual relationship where the employer provides a set wage or salary in return for a set service.
They are not responsible to take care of your children if you die unless they somehow caused your death.
What is more, your point doesn't address the fact that you are conceding a difference in the value of work between group A and group B.
It is merely your content
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No they're not. They're responsible for paying the employee an agreed upon rate for their work. You make it sound like the company is supposed to act like everybody's mommy and daddy.
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In fairness the men in prison are there mostly because men tend to commit crimes with greater frequency and when they do they tend to commit more serious ones.
It is important to be fair so that when you pass judgement it has meaning.
If you judge impulsively or unfairly then your judgment is of diminished value.
Keep that in mind and keep your comments fair.
The homeless comment is fair. The prison comment is not.
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It isn't unusual in some cultures for an extended family to care for children, thus allowing both parents to work.
May or may not result in kids with more emotional ties to the grandparents but, what can you do.
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Only if they pay strictly on piece meal or commission.
Every place I have worked with gave a 5% or better yearly raise each year you worked up to a ceiling limit on pay. Once you maxed out on pay, you lost the raises but were still making comfortable wages.
Re:This whole issue needs to be buried (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no stigma against working women with children. The stigma is against an employee not showing up for work for ANY reason. Ultimately the employer doesn't pay you to take care of your children. They pay you to do your job. You do that well and you're more valuable to the company and will be paid more. You do it worse and you're less valuable to the company and will be paid less.
That isn't discrimination.
There is a big problem with people conflating "equality of outcome" with "equality of opportunity".
Equal opportunity does not mean you're going to make the same as anyone else. It means you "COULD" have made the same.
If you make choices that reduce your earning power that isn't anyone else's fault. It isn't a civil rights issue. It isn't discrimination.
Its like blaming your employer for not hiring you to be a doctor even though you don't have a medical degree. You COULD have gotten one but you chose not to go to school for 8 years to get it. And as a result... you're not a doctor and they're not employing you as one.
This whole "equally skilled women are being paid less than equally skilled men" doesn't take into consideration years worked on the job. Which means it can't possibly evaluate if the people being hired or paid are actually equally skilled. All they're doing is looking at what people studied in college. If you studied the same thing in college and passed... those statistics consider you "equally skilled" which completely ignores so many fucking things it is beyond retarded.
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This whole "equally skilled women are being paid less than equally skilled men" doesn't take into consideration years worked on the job.
Yes it does. I'm yet again going to crank out that PNAS argument that we argued over before. Last time you eventually conceded that the article was valid, yet here you are denying the same facts.
For those of you new to this: they made fake CVs with identical experience and the ones with female names attached were routinely rated as less competent and routinely offered less
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They sent those to both male and female employers.
What is more, it was exclusively in academia. You don't know how that would be received in other institutions.
What is more still, we're talking about wage gaps that tend to form over time. Your entire premise is based on the notion that at hiring the prices people are paid are different and you're not taking anything beyond that into consideration.
Your study while interesting is hardly definitive of anything... even in academia.
There was also no follow up to
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Yep, it was about academia, but it demonstrates that your claim that wage gaps is only due to years served is not universally true.
There was also no follow up to find out why any of that happened. The could be correlative problems associated with female applications.
So in other words, they're judging based on something other than their skills and experience but it's OK because reasons? A clue: whether or not it's OK it's still judging based on gender. That is more or less the definition of sexism. You're th
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it *is* always the woman who is supposed to take that responsibility.
It is *always* the man and woman who are expected to share that responsibility equally.
Yet 90% of the time the woman takes on that responsibility by her own choice.
Re:This whole issue needs to be buried (Score:5, Informative)
As to why the woman takes care of the children... I need to take some deep breaths here... *calms down*
Okay, first responsibility and rights go hand in hand. For women to share responsibility they must share rights... over the child. If they are doing that, then their male sperm shooting buddy will probably be sharing that responsibility.
Second, even if the guy has no rights over the child, he generally has to pay child support. Which renders your whole comment about why men don't help out completely silly.
Third, the attractiveness and value of men is tied to their utility to the family and their ability to "nest build" for women. This is why rich dudes marry poor women with big tits and poor men are not as often married by rich old women. It doesn't really happen. We're sexually dimorphic. To further address your point, if a man stops working when his wife has a child and says "I'll take care of the baby" it puts more strain on their marriage than if he keeps working and she stops working. What is more, many women literally prefer to take the time off to spend with their child. And guess what, that has career consequences... Get the fuck over it.
Fourth, what makes your statement about men abandoning women so mind numbingly painful to listen to is that there are instances of women literally drugging men, tying them up, raping them, the man reporting the rape, nothing happening to his rapist, her giving birth, and then him having to pay child support for her rape baby. That has literally happened. Another fun example, some lesbians asked a guy to donate sperm so they could have a baby. The understanding was that he would not be responsible for the baby. He either shot it in a cup or has sex with one of them until she got pregnant. After birth, the other lesbian abandoned her partner and her partner went on welfare. Then the people at the welfare office said she had to declare the father for paper work reasons. Then the welfare office demanded child support from the guy that donated his sperm to the lesbians. And from this you conclude that men are just let off the fucking hook?
I don't want to live on this planet anymore... there are far too many retards.
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Your view is that of a dedicated capitalist who sees workers as tools for business and nothing more. The reality is that society needs children. Look at Japan where due to the things you mention the birth rate is very low. It's a huge problem for them because and their population is set to fall by 30m in the next 40 years.
More over most people do want children at some point in their lives. Most people are supposed to make the rules (democracy) so companies are going to have to respect that and make allowanc
Re:This whole issue needs to be buried (Score:5, Insightful)
No, my view is of someone that understands the employer employee relationship.
As to society needing children, yes... but it is not the corporation's responsibility to do that. That is up to the family and the community. Not the company.
What is more, the community does help women. Again, about 90 percent of government medical subsidies go to women. Why is that?
What percentage of homeless people are men versus women? Why is that?
Women are taken care of far better by our society than are men. We recognize that women must be protected. But no one owes you a job. And if you show up with this entitlement that you should be paid more than you are worth, then you are in for disappointment.
You will be paid what you are worth. What you get beyond that will be charity.
Furthermore, if the point is for women to have children, then why are we putting women into the labor force and encouraging them to have careers? This does not help women have children.
What is more, why do we not encourage women more strongly to be bound into some sort of sexual relationship with the opposite sex? It would help the birth rate.
You can't have it both ways. You can't say society should give you a career because society needs babies. That is not an argument for giving women jobs. That is an argument for denying them jobs, compelling them into the kitchen, and giving their male partners the jobs instead.
The argument for giving women careers is EQUALITY. Not babies. Equality. And equality means you get paid what you are worth.
You cite babies and I have to ask how giving you a career helps society get babies? Limiting the opportunities of women has a proven track record of improving birth rates. Actually, the more opportunities women have, the lower the birth rate becomes.
Think about it.
You can't use babies in this argument. If society really needed the babies then the last thing it should do is give women anything to do besides have babies.
Again.
Think.
Be.
Rational.
As to your various welfare recommendations, that is fine. The government can raise taxes and give more women welfare and subsidies. That is however not the company's responsibility. You can tax the company and use those taxes for various things. But as an employee you're going to get paid what you are worth.
Crying discrimination when you're not being discriminated against is dishonest and foolish.
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The reality is that society needs children.
The reality is that you are asking employers to pay for that, but making children isn't their business. If society needs children, then society should pay for children, through income redistribution. Oh wait, guess what? We already give people a tax break for having children. I've known people who made more than me but paid no taxes because of their children. Now you want employers to pay again?
Of course the rules should apply equally to both genders. You could argue that people who don't have kids should get more time off,
Or you could argue that people who do have kids don't deserve to get paid for their time off. A person who doesn'
Re: This whole issue needs to be buried (Score:2)
And why is it that the woman is the one to take care of children?
I don't know if you have noticed that men and women are different. Women happen to be more suitable for taking care of babies because they can do one thing men can't: breastfeed.
At least, that is one of the reasons why my wife took 6 months maternity leave, and luckily in those 6 months our situation changed so that we could manage without her working. And we have had more children since, so she is still at home.
Of course, we do realise that she will have fewer years of work experience when/if she returns t
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Actually I said that if you contradicted me, I wanted some logic or reasoning behind your position.
Many people will just say "I disagree" and not provide any kind of rational for it which isn't constructive.
I further said that IF IF IF IF IF you cited evidence it would be audited.
That is what I said. Nowhere in my post did I demand citations.
Read it again and then apologize to me.
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As to something getting people upset on slashdot, that is not evidence that it is a good topic. Especially since most of the comments are "oh this shit again".
You know those sad attempts by Dice to insert job advertisements into the news stream? They get the exact same response. "oh this shit again."
So no. The fact that it is getting a negative reaction is not evidence of it being a something important that we need to talk about.
As to people lacking introspection, in what way has what I PERSONALLY have said
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No, it was a typo... I meant fallacious.
As to your conclusions... these are non-proofread comments on an internet forum. Put your grammar nazi dick back in your pants. No one wants to see that.
This is a casual environment and I'm not going to suffer getting brow beaten by people making observations a word processor would flag as if they're revealing the mysteries of the fucking universe.
If that comes off overly hostile... i'm been dealing with more than my fair share of idiots on this board lately and I hav
Re:This whole issue needs to be buried (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so her first issue is that there are a lot of men in tech.
That isn't a valid complaint or evidence of discrimination. Do men in the fashion industry or any female dominated business have the right to whine about discrimination because they're surrounded by women? Obviously not.
next issue.
Her next point about computer science degrees and women 30 years ago is a half truth. Yes, women were getting those degrees but it was because at that time the job was seen as clerical and like typists, women tended to dominate such professions at that time. When the personal computer came around and programming stopped being about managing the giant business computer in the basement... it stopped being seen as a clerical position and so not part of the traditional female jobs. The lack of women in programming these days is not due to companies not wanting to hire women. It is due to women not thinking that they need to CS because they don't think it is part of that traditionally female career path.
There is no discrimination there.
Next issue.
She then busts out with an out of context quote from a 1980s silicon valley programer saying that he didn't have time for women... He was mostly talking about girlfriends and relationships... not female peers in his industry.
Next issue.
She then blames it on lack of role models. Which begs the question of who are the male role models? The thing about technology is that you get into it because you love it. You don't do it because of role models.
How is lack of female role models the fault of MEN? That's on you ladies. Women have to take some responsibility for themselves. Providing their own fucking role models is a pretty low standard to meet. I mean, if they really can't then we men can of course provide such role models for them. However, they will be abdicating that choice to us. Comes with the territory.
I don't see how this issue is the fault of men or even society.
She talks also about games marketed to men forgetting that the game companies have tried to market to women all along. THey've just not been very successful at it. It isn't that games for women aren't made. It is that women don't buy them. That is until Candy Crush came along and now women love all those facebook games. But that won't stop people from complaining that there are games made that men like. Why is that a problem? There are books and movies made for men. And there are books and movies made for women. there are also games made for men and games made for women. These various markets meet different levels of success.
So yet again, no discrimination.
And that got me past 10 minutes.
I want the last ten minutes of my life back. X-(
Pao was told she needs to own the room (Score:2)
Pao is like her husband with lawsuits (Score:5, Informative)
Lost in court? Can still win and make some money (Score:2)
She just has to claim she got because of this law suit rape and death threads and had to leave her house. In no time she is a twitter star and.....?????? ..... Profit.
Is this suprising? (Score:4, Insightful)
...and then retaliated against her for raising concerns about the firm's gender dynamics by failing to promote her and finally firing her after seven years at the firm after she filed her 2012 lawsuit.
Why would someone expect their employer to keep them around after they file a lawsuit against them?
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Why would someone expect their employer to keep them around after they file a lawsuit against them?
Well, actually, I would expect that to happen if the lawsuit was justified. Let's say there is building work at my company and my car gets damaged, and I think it's the fault of my company. Sorting that out should have no effect on my career. It's different if you file a lawsuit and it turns out it is all based on lies.
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Well, actually, I would expect that to happen if the lawsuit was justified. Let's say there is building work at my company and my car gets damaged, and I think it's the fault of my company. Sorting that out should have no effect on my career.
She's costing her employer time in a legal defense either way. What company wouldn't get rid of a troblemaker like that?
Also, I would think filing a lawsuit for poor treatment by an employer while continuing to work there would only hurt her case, unless she's going to claim she has some form of Stockholm Syndrome with them.
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When did she lie? It seems like she just interpreted what happened differently. The facts don't seem to beer disputed, only the interpretation of them.
Re:One more view. (Score:5, Insightful)
Jury: Kleiner Perkins not liable for Pao’s gender discrimination claims [Updated]
Trial highlighted Silicon Valley's male-dominated tech and investment culture. via http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]
Absolutely loving the reasoning here. There are two possible outcomes.
1. Kleiner Perkins freed of all charges. This highlights just how male-dominated and sexist the tech industry is.
2. Kleiner Perkins guilty of all charges. This highlights just how male-dominated and sexist the tech industry is.
Perhaps this could be used as some sort of Turing test for feminazis?
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It's kinda like "global warming," where any change in the weather (or any lack of change in the weather) is cited as proof. A Venn diagram of SJWs vs. warmistas would, I suspect, have a very high degree of overlap.
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Re:One more view. (Score:5, Interesting)
But that's been the standard MO with feminist for a while now-
Assist women: benevolent sexism.
Don't assist women: supporter of rape culture.
Cite lack of voting rights for women: proof of misogyny.
Point out universal suffrage for men is tied to conscription: patriarchy hurts men too.
Feminism has been a wonderful exercise in mental gymnastics to where everything can be spun as proof misogyny. And even when pointing out glaring hypocrisies: there are several branches of feminism, and the particular one you are debating does not support that particular contradiction.
But then again, a woman is always free to change her mind.
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Absolutely loving the reasoning here. There are two possible outcomes.
False dichotomy.
I am not much interested THAT Pao lost the suit. I am interested in WHY she lost the suit.
Until we know that, all other bets are off. You're guessing, and your guesses are probably not correct.
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What reasoning?
You just made up that ludicrous collection of logical fallacies all by your self. If it's anyone's reasoning therefore then it's yours.
Re:One more view. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been here a while too. Long enough to remember when /. was so reflexively liberal and dogmatic that only one voice on any topic was ever heard. That wasn't such a great place for those of us whose views are more nuanced, who don't just parrot the party line. Here are some harsh truths that never got a voice in those days:
Not every allegation of sexism/racism/rape/etc. is true.
White, heterosexual, American males are not responsible for all evil in the world.
Sometimes conservatives are wrong, but sometimes they're right too.
It's not okay to support censorship when it comes to Islam unless you're also okay with supporting censorship when it comes to Christianity. Judaism, Hinduism, etc. too.
Bill Gates isn't a Borg and sometimes does some good in the world. Conversely, Steve Jobs isn't a flawless god, and did some bad things in his life.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Re:One more view. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ellen Pao comes from a culture of lying for victimhood and money. She and her kind actually make it more difficult for women to get hired, due to fear of false claims actually succeeding.
Good job.
That seems correct. Mod parent UP. (Score:5, Interesting)
A long time ago, I was dating an attractive woman who had 2 jobs in traditionally male areas. I said to her, "Women often say they have trouble with unacceptable male attention." She told me, "They ask for it!" (Exact quote) I questioned her and learned that opinion of hers was very strong and rooted in considerable experience.
She always dressed in a way that made people respect her.
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"She always dressed in a way that made people respect her."
That's horrifying.
I'm a middle-aged male. I have waist length hair, a huge beard and never iron anything. I definitely don't dress so people respect me, but people respect me because I am an expert. Why should women have to dress so people respect them to be valid people?
The unkempt person in the high level meeting... (Score:4, Insightful)
"She always dressed in a way that made people respect her."
That's horrifying.
I'm a middle-aged male. I have waist length hair, a huge beard and never iron anything. I definitely don't dress so people respect me, but people respect me because I am an expert. Why should women have to dress so people respect them to be valid people?
The unkempt person in the high level meeting is either the client or a technical expert.
The client is unkempt because, hey, screw you, you want their business, you put up with them.
The technical expert is unkempt because They Can Get Away With It Because They Are The Expert. It's actually part of their robes of office.
In other professions, there are other uniforms. Finance people always have very expensive clothing because they want to exude an aura of money. Do you trust a finance person in a Grateful Dead T-Shirt? Maybe, if you are scoring weed from them at a concert, but in a business meeting, you expect Warren Buffet will be in his suit and tie.
Everyone else "dresses for success".
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I think it is an unfair to say a woman dresses to be respected. It's more that some women refuse to dress in ways that get them disrespected.
How much respect would you earn if you wore assless chaps?
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I said to her, "Women often say they have trouble with unacceptable male attention." She told me, "They ask for it!" (Exact quote)
Nope, there's no problem at all with generalising what one woman said to 50% of the population. Nosiree, no stereotyping there at all. Anyway, I can duel with anecdotes and find women to say exactly the opposite.
Hell, I've observed exactly the opposite at a computer science.
One female presenter being followed round by a gaggle of lost puppies including one guy who waited for abo
She was comfortable around men. (Score:3)
She was comfortable around men. Men accepted her as someone with whom they could talk.
Most women in the U.S. show by their manner that they aren't comfortable around men.
It will be interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
...how will this reflect on her husband's Ponzi scheme lawsuits. [nytimes.com]
Those $16 million would have probably come in handy.
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Ellen Pao comes from a culture of lying for victimhood and money.
Well, she is a lawyer, so that is stating the obvious.
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Re:One more view. (Score:4, Insightful)
When you assume every women who loses a case is because of "male domination", then nobody takes you seriously when you have an actual case of discrimination.
Ars Technica just lost my respect and readership. If they can be this biased toward their agenda even when the facts are obviously to the contrary, they can't be trusted to report on anything.
Re:One more view. (Score:5, Insightful)
For reporting the jury's verdict? The phrasing is very much "legal-ese": The jury held that KP is not liable for her claims. Don't see why that bothers you so much.
The subtitle is a statement of why the case was even remotely interesting: it is an indisputable fact that the tech industry and investment banking are "dominated by" men. Men make up the overwhelming majority of people in both of those industries, and the skew is even more pronounced at the executive levels. And at question during this trial was the behavior of those men towards women: which means... the trial DID highlight the male-dominated tech and investment banking cultures in Silicon Valley. That was the FOCUS of the case.
By describing the tech and investment banking industries as "male dominated," they are, in fact, being as absolutely factual as if they were writing a story about the "female dominated" nursing field. There was nothing in the article about "male domination" being the reason for Ms. Pao's loss; nor was there any presumption that "male domination" somehow influenced the jury. I think you need a refresher course in reading comprehension, friend. Your sense of outrage is clearly cutting off your oxygen.
Re:One more view. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:One more view. (Score:5, Informative)
Half the juriors were WOMEN.
You should not assume that women are more pro-woman. Many female managers will tell you they have a lot more problems with female subordinates than with males. This is especially true if there is a significant age difference: if a talented young woman is put in charge of a team that includes older women, you will often have a lot of friction.
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Ars Technica just lost my respect
Welcome to the party, it began several years ago.
Please tell me you already feel this way about Gawker.
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Ars Technica just lost my respect and readership. If they can be this biased toward their agenda even when the facts are obviously to the contrary, they can't be trusted to report on anything.
If you think Ars Technica is bad, you should have read Wired's coverage of the case. Davey Alba was all but wearing a cheerleading outfit for Pao.
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Whoosh.
Holding up the Sheldon Cooper sarcasm sign.
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Re:N4N? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because surprisingly enough, most of the people on this site work, and of those workers, many work in technology. Furthermore, many work in America with jobs held by companies that are required to abide by laws. Once an important / relevant law causes a cascade of business changes (think the whole API copyright fight between Oracle and Google), people reading this site will care. A LOT.
I know you're a troll an all that, but sadly, many don't see how immediate any change like this can have to their own lives. I personally think discrimination bias should absolutely be investigated and addressed on a case by case basis, though considering they found no obvious discrimination then mission accomplished! Just like John Oliver's Infrastructure segment: "Congratulations guys, nothing happened!".
Damage has been done (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter win or lose, the lawsuit itself has done much damage to the Silicon Valley
In the eyes of the investors the Silicon Valley no longer represents a place where technology means everything, where one can get the best talents to work on and create marvelous new and fancy and profitable ways to boldly forge new pathways towards the next technological frontier
No
The Silicon Valley, thanks to the feminazis like Ms. Pao, has turned into a place where one can get sued just because one bases one's hiring on the best qualified candidates - and not on the basis of creed, gender and/or racial background
The world today that we live in the Silicon Valley is no longer the only place where the investors can find talents - nowadays there are so many options for the investors - They can also go to Europe or India or Korea or Japan or China or Singapore or even Africa / South America
If America does not stop these kind of frivolous lawsuits from happening, it gonna make the Silicon Valley a very unwelcome place for those with money to invest - and investors in general do not like to invest in places where 'political minefield' are abound
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I dislike the militant feminists as much as you do but my feeling is that verdict here was not right.
The proper verdict would have been to destroy both the KP partners and Pao as they all horrible human beings.
I won't state why Pao is a horrible person as I'm sure it's been stated before. However, let's not forget the things within KP that were, in my opinion, outrageous. These incidents were garbage regardless of whether Pao was a man or a woman.
1. The partner (?) who did not want to invite the women in th
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Are you equating a book written by Leonard Cohen with an issue of Penthouse?
Re:Damage has been done (Score:5, Insightful)
The partner (?) who did not want to invite the women in the company to a getaway with Al Gore because it would "kill the buzz." The buzz would be killed because the excluded party were women, not because they were unpleasant people.
Maybe that was because the partner recognized that Pao was just the kind of sensitive narcissist who would do things like keep enemies lists and sue people who she perceived as wronging her. Yeah, having someone like that along would in fact be a pretty big "buzzkill" for any fun retreat.
Pao was stupid to sleep with the Indian sleazebag and that probably gave her a reputation in the office. But let us assume she's an utter whore and slut. Do the married men in the company have absolutely no control over themselves?
That argument, of course, cuts both ways. It could as easily be rephrased as "Do the women at KP have absolutely no control of themselves when it comes to married men?"
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The jury deliberated for 2 days, so there were some serious arguments to deliberate about, and thus this was not a frivolous lawsuit.
Lawsuites like this impose a cost of litigation but in the long run they give us something more important, something other places like Korea or China lack. This advantage is the prime reason the Silicone Valley exists in the Valley as opposed to some shithole where laws are questionable
agree with one part of that (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on the technical women I've worked with, I have to agree with one thing you said:
Women comprise over 50% of population and any ... that can tap that ... suddenly has a tremendous advantantage
Kidding, of course. Seriously, what you said is true not only of countries, but of COMPANIES. Companies who hire and promote people who do well have a tremendous, almost insurmountable advantage. A company who wasted half of their good people and good candidates would quickly be beat by the competition. Therefore, tremendous successful companies like Google MUST be promoting people who are both technically and with "people skills", employees who work well with others. If Google systematically ignored half the available talent, Apple or Microsoft would wipe the floor with them. They'd never had gotten this big because Yahoo would have had twice as many really good people. Therefore natural forces are such that companies that identify and nurture effective people (effective technically and as a team member) will grow and will win.
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Silicone Valley
That is something *ENTIRELY* different to Silicon Valley.
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In the eyes of the investors the Silicon Valley no longer represents a place where technology means everything, where one can get the best talents to work on and create marvelous new and fancy and profitable ways to boldly forge new pathways towards the next technological frontier
And they would largely be correct.
The Silicon Valley, thanks to the feminazis like Ms. Pao, has turned into a place where one can get sued just because one bases one's hiring on the best qualified candidates - and not on the basis of creed, gender and/or racial background
But not for that reason.
The world today that we live in the Silicon Valley is no longer the only place where the investors can find talents - nowadays there are so many options for the investors - They can also go to Europe or India or Korea or Japan or China or Singapore or even Africa / South America
Or, even easier: Oregon or Washington or South Dakota or Texas.
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n the eyes of the investors the Silicon Valley no longer represents a place where technology means everything, where one can get the best talents to work
Is this the same silicon valley that has the quite astonishing ageism problem as well? Silicon valley has never been just about the technology.
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And this is venture capital - not technology. Just because they're investing in technology, don't assume they all need to be technologically savvy. VC is as much about showmanship and cooking the books in prep for the IPO as it is about the underlying tech they're hawking. Of course, that's an entirely different (and perhaps bigger) problem...
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The law doesn't work the way you think it works. Just because she lost doesn't mean she lied and cheated and is a feminazi. It just means she couldn't convince a jury that on the balance of probabilities she was discriminated against. And actually there is still one claim still to be decided upon.
Let's wait and see if the judge brands her a feminazi, shall we?
Re:Damage has been done (Score:4, Insightful)
Starting in the 1970's many symphony orchestras began using "blind auditions" to hire musicians. Applicants performed behind a screen which shielded them from the judge's view. Since this practice began, the number of woman in American orchestras increased from about 10% to 35%. Studies conducted since then attribute about 50% of this increase to the use of blind auditions.
If you had asked these orchestras what criteria they were using to select musicians back then, I'm sure they would have told you that they were hiring the "best qualified candidates." And yet we now know that there was a clear, although possibly unconscious, bias in their selection process.
Putting aside the merits of Ms. Pao's particular case, the notion that Silicon Valley has been hiring and promoting the "best qualified candidates" all along has no real supporting evidence. You could argue that technology firms do the best they can with the information available to them. But, that's not a valid argument to maintain the status quo.
On the other hand... (Score:5, Interesting)
A study on anonymous hiring practices in France showed that anonymization resulted in fewer minority candidates getting hired [iza.org]. Their explanation is essentially that the companies who care enough about diversity to participate in this sort of study are already subtly biased in favor of minority candidates, and anonymization put a stop to it. Considering the amount of focus big tech companies are putting on diversity, there's a fair chance the same thing is happening here too.
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One of KP's biggest area of investment is Tech. Hell Bill Joy is a senior partner.
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Hell Bill Joy is a senior partner.
. . . and if anyone wants to file an editor gender suit . . . Bill Joy wrote vi . . .
That one would be a hoot and a half in court. None of the jurors would really understand what it was all about, and the court case would be finished, before emacs loaded.
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IIREC his name is also on some elisp files.
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. . . and if anyone wants to file an editor gender suit . . . Bill Joy wrote vi . . .
Are you saying it's unfair that the person who wrote emacs isn't a woman?
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No, but he should be forced to dress like a woman, on odd or even days, depending on whether his birthday is odd or even.
That is my simple and effective cure for sexual diversity in IT. Half the time men will be forced to dress as women, and women be forced to dress like men. Hey, presto, when someone from the government comes to do a headcount, he or she will find an equal number of men and women. Problem solved.
Jesse Jackson can be placated by having a whites wear black face and blacks wear white fac
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It's not, but Friday night is #GamerGate and MRAs night on Slashdot, when 8chan empties out and all the manbabies meet here to cry about how the feminazis are taking away their games and comics and action figures.
Look back a few months. It happens every Friday. There is a story about gender or sexual orientation or something that can be construed as violating the natural order of the primacy of white men. Then, the tears start to flow and it all ends in the gators and the MRAs in one big group h
Re:slashdot - daily news about whiny bitches and S (Score:5, Insightful)
They're starting to enclave up in videogames, much like what happened with the atheism movement. It took a few extra years but the "atheism+" crap is now collapsing under it's own corruption and regular atheism is going along just fine still. And of course there's now a similar thing to gamergate starting in comic books and heavy metal. Everything they touch they turn into a political issue, and when they don't get their way they claim sexism, bigotry, racism, or whatever else to try and make people back down. Funny enough, many of them actually sexist, bigots or racists and that can be easily seen in their social commentary on twitter or facebook.
Re:slashdot - daily news about whiny bitches and S (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you ever notice that only assholes and douchebags ARE SJWs?
FTFY
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Ah, so Martin Luther King and Gandhi are assholes and douchebags!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
Well, if I have to be lumped together with those, well, that's a quite amazing complement and one I'm not sure I deserve, but what the hell!
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SJW is only used by a smallish group, so it makes sense that the group that sticks together and acts as if there's a big conspiracy against them come to the same definition. These people sit around waiting for some slashdot story to roll about social issue just so that they can jump out and shout SJW! at someone. It's kind of pathetic.
I like SWT myself for the anti-SJW derps - Single White Troll.
Re:Wasn't it 3 out of 4 claims denied? (Score:5, Informative)
4th claim isn't a gender bias claim, but a claim she was fired out of retaliation for filing this lawsuit.
Yes, it is important (Score:5, Informative)
Ellen K. Pao, with her husband Alphonse "Buddy" Fletcher , are both Harvard Educated scam artists
Read the following link to see how Ms. Pao's hubby has stolen more than $150million from many victims, including Massachusetts and Louisiana cops and firefighters
http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/case-builds-against-former-ny-hedgie-buddy-fletcher/
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And why is THAT important?
Because, if nothing else, it's a strong indicator of her poor judgement.
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What about the women who work for women? As in those companies founded and governed by women? Are all their female employees discriminated against by the female management?