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Comment by eigenvector | Hacker News Reader

While I completely agree that the behaviour described by the author is totally unacceptable and must be rooted out from the workplace, I also find the context ironic: Bear Stearns just before the 2008 financial crisis.

As we aspire to a better society, is this really the goal we want to reach for? Better female representation in a corrupt enterprise that precipitated a global financial crisis which caused hardship for hundreds of millions of people?

I hope the author, a member of senior management, was troubled by more than just sexism at pre-collapse Bear Stearns.

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Sexism may have been one of the problems that contributed to the problem. The collapse originated in that frat boy echo chamber of insanity. Maybe if Wall Street was a place where responsible adults of both genders thrived, it could have been prevented. Just as many men as women feel alienated by that environment.

I usually find arguments about how "underrepresented group X in upper management will somehow make the company better" unconvincing, but the downfall of Bear Sterns is a great and decisively convincing example of how a monoculture with a lack of multiple perspectives and backgrounds created a really corrupt and toxic environment. At the very least, the sexism towards women in the corporate culture should've been seen as warning indicator for their business practices as well.

In this case, I think sexism was as much a symptom as a cause, and the larger cultural problems were very destructive to women, men, and the US economy.

Bear Stearns was the naughty upstart.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/why-larry-summers-is-...

http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

Sometimes rules matter.

When things are going well, risk takers and rule breakers are heroes. When things start going downhill, they're the first ones with arrows in their backs.

(not excusing giving liar loans to strippers... go see The Big Short... splitting hairs but I think in some ways Moody's and MBIA and AIG and were more corrupt because their job was to keep people honest and reduce risk, instead of engaging in regulatory arbitrage, financial shenanigans to let people ramp up risk. Bear Stearns you sort of expected to be riverboat gamblers. They were the guys who took theglobe.com public when Goldman and Morgan Stanley laughed. Unlike Lehman they were in good enough shape to get taken over by a TBTF monstrosity to JPM's ongoing benefit, their takeover didn't bring down the system, and they lost mostly all their own money. left as an exercise, whether behavior towards women, civility etc. are better or worse in startups. )

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