That is complete crock and you know it. You know it. Overpaid CEOs has been a meme for years and almost exclusively focused on male CEO because most CEOs are male. Why propagate this kind of maliciousness?
My observations are that I typically see a female CEOs income be the first thing that is ever brought up when they are in the spotlight but I don't ever see that as the first go to with male CEOs. In this case, I'm referring to reading HN for 7 years everyday and watching comments in response to all articles as well as the ones about female CEO, and noticing without(atleast consciously, but maybe I am subconsciously looking for it, or maybe as a female I'm just noticing it more) seeking it out, that over time, pay and negative things seem to jump to in comments first without delay.
Luckily for me I'm not overlapping my perceptions of reddit with HN on how reddit treated both Ellen Pao and Sheryl Sanders (she devil, satanist among other things are names they endured upon their first week in office).
Now CEO pay is clearly an issue across the board, but I would still argue that it seems to be brought up more quickly with female CEOs. Perhaps I've just noted it in the past few years, and perhaps I am wrong and it comes up just as quickly with male CEOs.
I am glad to see other companies now care about child care and it's relevancy in the economic feasibility of raising families and enabling smart parents of both genders to contribute to society in more ways than child bearing. Unfortunately, I did not see Apple jumping into back the notion of childcare needs years ago When Marissa was chastized for having a nursery in her office. I don't even know or have an opinion on what the best potential solution is for the childcare thing in general, but I know it was never a big public issue in the news until a woman went out of her way to take care of her children who was a CEO
I've always wondered why it wasn't an issue for all the men who did not have nurserys in the office for all the decades proceeding this. There has never been a concern about male CEOs not spending enough time with their kids, but if a woman wants to have a nursery next to her office, its conflated as unfair in the face of not letting employees work remotely from home, without any data about how many of those employees are doing it for childcare, when there was data that remote work did not seem to be meeting standards of remote work for competing companies who let their software engineers work remotely. Nevertheless, news articles had no problem joining these two ideas together, and commenters had no problem agreeing how elitist it was.
It's really a just an observation about the things that certain populations seem to choose to critisize and how much those criticisms seem to consistently differ when looking at say 4 female CEOs and 10-15 male CEOS consistently in HN news over the past 5-7 years.
I also find your statement hard to agree with that there is no bias with females in tech, in the face of a billionaire resigning today from the most highly funded started up in Silicon Valley this morning where as of three months ago I believe 1/4 of every VC dollar was tied up in Uber, after claiming that women being on a board will increase the amount of talking. In the face of this as well as Trumps attitude towards women, its a wonder any of them have the patience to deal with these billionaire men who seem terribly inconvenienced by the mere idea that a woman is on the board, and then the fact that now they have to listen to her talk.
To lightly sway aside the idea that this pervasive attitude at the helm of the Country Silicon Valley resides in, along with some of the most well funding prominent board members in the most highly funded startup in silicon valley, in business, as complete crock, without having any data points to back it up (I presume the population here is educated enough on Uber and Trump I don't need to provide data points here about their issues with female bias) is willfully ignorant.
I'm not going to go further into this, because I respect the HN community enough to know your statement is an outlier statement, and I don't need to convince people here bias against women in tech is ongoing pervasive issue, more consciously with men like I've mentioned, but sometimes I think subconsciously as a male dominated communitiy, we are prone to being more interested when a woman does reach CEO status, and maybe thats not HNs imposed bias as much as there is more likely to be more news about a female CEO (including but not limited to additional articles about how great it is there are females CEOs etc) and therefore we tend to subconsciously have more developed opinions about them because we know more about them, and things like their income and flaws never seem to go unannounced.
Myself a woman in tech, I find most forms of sexism Ive experienced are that maybe 1/50 guys are actual jerks and I can downright call them out on needing to fix their behavior. However, for alot of men I interact and have worked with, most actions are somewhat subtle, and typically not conscious or even intentional by men, and usually a genuine approach to them or bringing it up in intelligent conversation while giving them the benefit of the doubt and the time and respect of their ability to reflect on their own actions and analyze their own motivations, as we all should in all areas of our lives, that most men can concede and agree with me if I bring something up. Because I don't bring up every little thing, and I don't accuse all men of being sexist pigs the second I sense a bias I can perceive and therefore claim as sexist, I tend to make more one on one progress changing mens outlooks on how they may intentionally or unintentionally approach situations.
Both male and female CEOS should be subject to scrutiny on income situations, but I find it to be highlighted more frequently with women, which is unfortunate considering so few of them at this point get into the position where they have the opportunity to be scrutinized at such a high level, and furthemore, as described by a commentor validating an aspect of my observations with the "glass cliff" that when they do seem to come into leadership, the cards are highly stacked against them. Therefore, they have an increase in the spotlight for being a minority in their position, and the increased spotlight is more likely to end in failure given the situations in which they come into leadership where the company is literally on the brink of failure.
I don't know where you're getting that from. Like I said, CEO compensation has been a big issue for years. It comes up all the time when a high-profile CEO is fired - especially if they are fired for doing a mediocre or a terrible job.
So I cannot believe you actually went there on this issue and in light of countless articles and podcasts discussing this matter from all angles, from the right-wing, mainstream, and left-wing media, and all you could see is that women (one woman specifically - because you haven't given any other examples) are unfairly singled out.
Jesus, just google it - you don't have to dig too deep. Change the search criteria to this year, and then last year, and then the year before, etc. And you'll have countless examples.
>In this case, I'm referring to reading HN for 7 years everyday and watching comments in response to all articles as well as the ones about female CEO
You are aware of what confirmation bias is, right? Turning this around, if Marissa was man, all things being equal (as in the compensation and level of criticism), would you have even bothered commenting? Would you have disagreed with any criticism in this thread?
>I'm not overlapping my perceptions of reddit with HN on how reddit treated both Ellen Pao and Sheryl Sanders (she devil, satanist among other things are names they endured upon their first week in office).
And you just did so don't pat yourself on the back too much. And you're right, it has nothing to do with this case.
> Unfortunately, I did not see Apple jumping into back the notion of childcare needs years ago When Marissa was chastized for having a nursery in her office.
I'm not sure what the point of that dig at Apple is but I remember the Marissa/nursery controversy well. And this a good example of your dishonesty or maybe your blind-spot. Marissa was chastised for her hypocrisy. She banned working for home - a policy that was very popular with new parents, but then built herself a nursery - just for herself - so she could bring her kids to work because unlike everyone else, she worked hard. Of course people will criticize her.
>You are aware of what confirmation bias is, right?
I am aware of the confirmation bias, which is why I explicitly provided a disclaimer for that in the statements I made, and again, stated my observations to elicit feedback, and continue to welcome your constructive feedback. That being said, I've mostly observed over 5-7 years, and I never set out with the intention to observe this, because it was moreso a shock over time that this bias seemed to be occurring.
For sure, most of the sexism I seem to realize as bias is due to a shock or feeling that something is not right, and never that I'm seeking it out. When I set out to be an Engineer, noone told me I would experience sexism. I thought it was going to be a lovely experience all in all, and was relatively naive going into about the ratio in general, and how much it would effect my life. So from my perspective, I don't feel confirmation bias is relevant, but I'm willing to believe over time it can cascade upon itself, just as much as men can cascade their negative opinions of females upon itself.
I am a firm advocate that females can be sexist and abuse their positions too, and I've witnessed it first hand a number of time, and have plenty of criticisms of my own gender for sure. They have not been all in all, in aggregate the role models I needed when I started out in a male dominated environment, to the point where I don't expect women to be role models for me just because they are women anymore.
>I'm not overlapping my perceptions of reddit with HN on how reddit treated both Ellen Pao and Sheryl Sanders (she devil, satanist among other things are names they endured upon their first week in office).
>And you just did so don't pat yourself on the back too much. And you're right, it has nothing to do with this case.
I brought this up because you used the word malicious that I would even bring up the idea that women CEOs face a bias. I wanted to clarify that there absolutely is one, and maliciousness is hardly an adequate term to describe the words used against female CEOS in explicitly wording that encompasses their gender, though I barely see it shine through maliciously on HN as I have seen on reddit and other communities.
I don't think pointing out the fact that many people have acted malicously towards these individuals and wondering if its due to a bias conscious or unconscious, is malicious, or propogating maliciousness.
> Unfortunately, I did not see Apple jumping into back the notion of childcare needs years ago When Marissa was chastized for having a nursery in her office.
>I remember that, and this a good example of your dishonesty or maybe your blind-spot. Marissa was chastised for her hypocrisy. She banned working for home - a policy that was very popular with new parents, but then built herself a nursery - just for herself - so she could bring her kids to work because unlike everyone else, she worked long hours. Of course people will criticize her.
Please reread my statements about her remote work decision, and how the data was related to not meeting remote work standards, and no data whatsoever was provided about remote work in relation to parenting, but news had no problem conflating the issues, and readers had no problem assuming there was hypocrisy in the decision, despite there being no data to prove hypocrisy existed in the decision.
If anything, allowing the known lack of accountability and performance quality of remote work to continue due to parenting, would proprogate sexism further by sending a signal that quality of work/the bar can be lowered if you are parent.
In regards to that while having a nursey, I'm going to have to push back here. I worked on wallstreet, and it is commonplace for years that they have one secretary for their work life, whose job it is to help manage their personal life, and this has ALWAYS been acceptable without question for decades in multple industries.
For example, a secretary to a male boss is allowed and explicitly told to spend a large portion of their time arranging personal events around public events and I've sat next to a secretary interning on wallstreet who spend the majority of her day buying chanel and juicy couture gifts for her bosses daughters to apologize for him not being able to make it home, and doing these kinds of thing on a daily basis.
There are entire sub markets within industries dedicated to secretaries being paid on company salary to help manage and perform private life upkeep to help with busy men.
Its just that, the actions here tend to be buying gifts for women or paying their secretary to appease the women they never have time to be home for, because there is of course a woman at home to raise the children his secretary is buying gifts for, and arranging limos to pick their kids up in private schools to the after school events these men don't have time to make it to.
Sitting next to one of these secretaries on wallstreet for a summer internship informed me greatly how commonplace this is.
Of course though, this is not criticized ever, but for Mayer, investing office space to accomodate her personal life is. Why is that? The employees at the bank I worked for who also worked 80+ hour weeks did not get secretaries on pay to send limos to pick up their 12 yr old daughters from ballets they could not attend with a sorry note attached to a juicy couture bag, but I don't see articles about unfair and slighted the males and females feel about their inability to accomodate their children.
The actions are exactly the same, but accomodations are in action explicitly different in representation because Mayer is a woman. The difference ends there. The criticism does not.
Just because two things occur at the same time does not mean they are related. i.e. Marissa having a nursery, and also deciding remote work was not allowed at the company anymore.
I fail to see the connection between these individuals. Cheryl Sandberg is a successful executive ... so is Marissa Mayer for that matter - having had a senior position at Google and then led Yahoo. Sophia Amoruso ran a company that went bankrupt (it happens). I don't know anything about Elizabeth Smith and Ellen Pao implemented some needed but highly controversial and unpopular polices at the reddit cesspool but also fired a popular moderator, Victoria.
What is the connection here besides these are all women?
>I brought this up because you used the word malicious that I would even bring up the idea that women CEOs face a bias.
Yes. It is malicious. You can't just assert racism or misogyny. Those are very powerful words and they are completely misused, frequently to push some ideological agenda. If I'm being charitable, it reminds me of the way UFO conspiracy theory nuts reason. They'll look at some phenomenon and argue "I can't think of anything that could explain X, therefore X must be aliens".. No. That's not how it works. If you don't know the cause of X, don't assert a conclusion. Aliens are not the default position for unknown stellar phenomena. Misogyny and sexism is not the default position every-time a woman gets fired or criticized.
>Please reread my statements about her remote work decision, and how the data was related to not meeting remote work standards, and no data whatsoever was provided about remote work in relation to parenting
But that doesn't change the optics of this policy contrasted with her private nursery.
>but news had no problem conflating the issues, and readers had no problem assuming there was hypocrisy in the decision, despite there being no data to prove hypocrisy existed in the decision.
Sure. You're trying to argue her criticism is unfair - nothing wrong with that. It may be unfair, but nuances and subtleties are lost all the time and certain narratives take hold. For example, I don't think Uber is a sexist organization, but now there's a narrative that they have a sexist culture top to bottom. All subtly is lost when Uber is discussed on HN. It happens. Argue against it and move on.
My first statement in my first comment
> Yes. It is malicious. You can't just assert racism or misogyny.
We both agree overt name calling is malicious. We both agree you can't assert racism or misogyny. If terms like "she devil" is used, I'm going to assume misogyny. If name callers want to be recognized as name callers, but are particularly sensitive about also being labeled as misogynists, I will leave it up to them to find another word to use. Enough on this topic, I think, as in my first statement where I asked if there was a slight bias and did not state or assert there was one, is enough to reiterate my agreement on all of these things with you.
>But that doesn't change the optics of this policy contrasted with her private nursery.
Again, commonplace for a long time that personal secretaries are hired to manage private lives of CEOs, in this case it seems the money was oriented towards childcare. But its commonplace CEOs have long since hired or invested in personal management secretaries or other arrangements in their offices. I've never seen it criticised before, but I'm open to proof that it has been.
you are correct, the optics do not seem to be an issue when secretaries are hired to manage the private lives of male CEOs, but the optics of investing in personal life management of the CEO do appear to be an issue of optics here. We agree.
>Sure. You're trying to argue her criticism is unfair - nothing wrong with that. It may be unfair, but nuances and subtleties are lost all the time and certain narratives take hold. For example, I don't think Uber is a sexist organization, but now there's a narrative that they have a sexist culture top to bottom. All subtly is lost when Uber is discussed on HN. It happens. Argue against it and move on.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/13/uber-board-member-gets-sex...
There is no sexism on this point. We all agree that if a person is added to a board meeting, there will be more talking, assuming the board member talks.
Again, I'm not disagreeing that humans who are paid to discuss and vote on issues increase the amount of talking, I'm just asking why its pointed out specifically in the context of a women, and where the proof is that if a woman is added to a board meeting, the net amount of talking is more than if she isn't there.
I would love to not only see the data for this, but have the opportunity to hear the things women say in board meetings with men like this.
We also agree. The subtlety is definitely lost on me here, and a new narrative took hold so quickly on Uber over this sentence that the billionaire resigned. There is no subtlety retained here. We agree.
Speaking of Uber, how much does the CEO make and when was the last time someone thought the CEO of Uber paid himself too highly or maybe...noones thought to bring that up yet? I guess it just has not popped into anyones mind yet. Perhaps noone knows how much the CEO of Uber makes because there are not enough women on his board asking those questions. As we agree with the now previous employee of Uber David Bonderman, women just result in so much more "talking" in board meetings, maybe they can talk about this next time.
No. We don't. We aren't close. I think you're so tuned to view the world through a particular ideological bent that you are blind to anything else.
This just reminds of dealing with conspiracy theory nuts like the UFO guys, like the 9/11 truthers. With them (and you) it's a constant barrage of red herring and non sequiturs arguments. You yourself are bringing out every single example of what you think is misogyny. All we're talking about is whether or not Marissa deserves to be criticized for her job as CEO. You live in ugly world governed by sexism and I wish you find yourself out one day.
I don't entirely live in an ugly world governed by patriarchy and sexism. I work with and under plenty of great men and a few awesome women, as I've stated previously in this thread that you have chosen to ignore (a blind spot on your part maybe?) but I do somewhat agree that there are facets of society that seem to have some overarching elements of patriarchy and sexism.
and I appreciate your best wishes, I have every intention of finding my way out of these situations.
It seems that the more women "talk" according to David Bonderman, the more people like David Bonderman "resign" or get fired, so I do think there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel for overcoming sexism and the patriarchy.
Maybe a little but we have reached an impasse. I just don't see the world like you do, and I know you can't provide evidence for the kind of generalizations you made.
>I work with and under plenty of great men and a few awesome women, as I've stated previously in this thread that you have chosen to ignore
I didn't ignore it. There was simply nothing I could add to that. Of course you work with good men and good women. You work in tech, one of the most progressive industries around.
Lordy.
I don't mind that kind of trolling. I'll just answer it straight.
I think we both realized we're just not on the same page and we simply view things differently - so there's probably frustration on both sides that neither of us can convince the other with reason and argument. And to be fair usmeteora did put in significant effort to answer my points and argue their cases prior to the last 1 or 2 messages.
Generally speaking, I found that playing it straight (even if the other person is not serious) tends to keep the conversation civil and more often it is more interesting for me to debate the issue - even if you are just a sounding board.
I was responding to the top rated comment on HN, and not all of these other podcasts and articles you were referring to which were not mentioned anywhere in the conversation until you brought them up. I'm talking about the HN community, and the comments on HN in general tend to be related to the posting, and other comments (by hitting reply) and not all of these other podcasts from multiple sides you never named.
Given a comment at the time I replied was top ranked after multiple days to be a criticism of her golden parachute (which is actually not an outlier situation at all given most CEOs exiting companies like this do leave with a financial situation) financial exit situation without any other context, and that was the number one pervading comment after a multibillion dollar precedent setting silicon valley company calls it quits, I did bring up that we seemed to focusing on her income more than yahoo as a failure in it's entire context. Furthermore, I did not state anywhere (go read again) that the criticism was overall a bad thing or sexist, at all anywhere (go read again), but that I was "more interested" (go read it) in bigger questions about yahoos decline and eventual sale, and of course Marissa can and will be apart of that discussion.
That's exactly where I went, and that is exactly how it is described (go read it).
"Also, on a separate note, I've noticed" as a I say, I went on to say how I noticed this being a phenomenom I've seen with many other female CEOs and provided a disclaimer as a tangential observation because I read HN throughout the day and see conversations evolve when big companies fail or sell.
Again, yes that's exactly where I went, and that is exactly how I described it.
I am sorry madam or sir, but there are no words in my comment in which you described my behavior as a malicious propaganda of sexism that purport to be so in any way, and anything related to Marissa none of which the critical comments are labeled as sexist by me, are just observed and noted, and then I asked more questions to elicit more conversation about yahoos failure as whole, and got a response from you accusing me of malicously propogating sexism.
Anyone who feels my comment above besides this person is a "malicious" propogation of unfounded accusations of sexism can feel free to call me out on it. Please educate me about how I could edit my wording to make it seem less so. Unlike some people in this thread, I am more than open to constructive feedback and considering this from a different view point other than "malicious" which is literally defined as intentional nefarious intent. I strongly reject that definition of myself and the comment as it stands in context and all by itself in the conversation.