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I don't see how you could possibly not see how it has larger implications. For years we've been told that the reason there's no women in tech is because of all us sexist brogrammers, despite the typical programmer being the opposite of a 'bro', while the VCs very much resemble them, and somehow VCs being 96% male with most top firms having NO women as partners slips by unnoticed. VCs intentionally create frat house cultures at the tech companies they invest in because they assume it saves them money to hire misfit programmers who need a workplace to provide a social life rather than act like processionals and demand professional compensation, and that frat house culture is also antagonistic to people who aren't young males. Finally, I don't see how you could read a case where a VC firm made mis-step after mis-step, and a highly qualified woman suggested they invest in winners like Twitter only to be ignored, and brushed off for invites to the Democrats the VCs are in bed with like Al Gore, and not see how she clearly as an extremely strong case of gender discrimination against a rich and powerful sect of elite VCs who have hidden their sickening behavior in the shadows for far too long.

I think that she just might've just been a bad egg, given the facts presented in the article.

Very convenient that this 'bad egg' in VC happens to be one of the 4% women in the field, and who again, seemed to do a far, far more competent job at the actual job description of picking the right companies to invest in, rather than total intangibles like 'thought leadership' and 'owning the room'. Read more articles about the case, read about how she wanted to invest in Twitter but they picked a bunch of losers instead, and still ignored her for promotion for intangibles that can straightfowardly be construed as gender-biased.

I'll read more into it like you suggest.

You're throwing a lot of opinion out there that's not backed by evidence or even anecdote.

I currently work for a VC funded company and have worked for several in the past. I would not describe any of them as "frat house cultures". You're making some pretty sweeping generalizations.

The dinner with Al Gore was for senior partners and there WAS women invited, they just couldn't make it. Here's Mary Meeker on the subject:

http://recode.net/2015/03/16/liveblog-mary-meeker-testifies-...

> a highly qualified woman suggested they invest in winners like Twitter only to be ignored

We don't know the fully story here. They had already looked at investing in Twitter and passed. A mistake? Sure. But anti-portfolios are famous. Whether Pao is "highly qualified" or not is debatable. Has she made any successful investments? Was she previously a successful entrepreneur? Those are things that would make you highly qualified to be a VC.

I don't see anything "sickening" here.

Wrong, I do have facts on my side, and we do have a big chunk of the story because it's being aired out in a high profile court case for those of us paying attention.

I've been to several VC-funded companies that involved things like excessive drinking, happy hours as part of the interviews, etc. For some bizarre reason involving an algorithm called Future Founders that looks for potential founders, I also got invited to a VC lunch where they talked about these strategies, ways to effectively outsource, etc. I am going to write a tell-all about it eventually but I'm still too mid-career for it to be a good idea.

VCs are throwing around a lot of intangibles and "we just can't know for sure" for why there field is 96% male, and yet the woman who objectively outperforms them doesn't get promoted. You can easily fact check the sexism I'm talking about by just looking up top VC firms and scrolling through their list of partners, and I would also recommend every tech employee look at the gender makeup of their board of directors, and reading more about this case.

Are you joking about saying her qualifications are debatable? She has an engineering degree from Princeton, an MBA and JD from Harvard, and the only thing that prevents her from having a track record of successful investments is the sexism being demonstrated in this case!

96% male, paying yourselevs $3 million a year but running to Democrats like Obama and DeBlasio to spend taxpayer money to fill your "talent shortage", harassing and retaliating against the few female VCs you do have, I do see sickening behavior, and the reason you can't is because you're a corporate shill.

Yes, this case is exposing the sordid 1950's style inner workings at a modern VC, as it should.

The issue is that Pao is a lousy person to get behind on many of the issues she's the complainant on. She appeared to have routinely crossed good social boundaries that she's now complaining about, and was well rewarded for her work, receiving sizable bonuses for missing a performance eval.

I wish on my wildest dreams my reviews went as poorly as the ones she's taking issue with.

She still has plenty of valid complaints, but it's like she's infected with a logical fallacy disease, and any attempt to rationally examine her case almost forces one to wrongly dismiss her due to a list of fallacies that infect any examination of her claims.

She was hit on by a married man at work? That's genuinely unprofessional. But then she had an affair with a married coworker. It makes it easy to dismiss her on this, even if her complaint is still valid.

She was discriminated against? She received six figure bonuses and huge pay raises for missing a performance review that she then "forgot"! Again, did everybody else get 7 figure bonuses and even bigger raises? Maybe her claim is still valid even if it's easy to lose sight of it in the logical fallacy bait she keeps throwing into the case.

And so on.

Maybe she was lousy at her job and that's why she missed out on opportunities. Maybe she missed out because she's a minority class who was discriminated against.

Maybe she's just an unpleasant person to be around and people didn't invite her to parties, where he easier to get along with peers made good networking connections. Is that discrimination? Not if she wasn't invited for being a whiny bore (I don't know that she is), but it is if she wasn't invited for being a woman or a minority or whatever.

Whatever the case is, it's not entirely clear that she was personally discriminated against, even if the VC firm she was part discriminates in other cases. What is clear is that she definitely played in the same game as many of the people she's now complaining about post-facto, and this soils her arguments.

One of the reasons it's important to try and maintain a good reputation based on strong personal integrity is that if a case like this comes up with you, it's much easier for an arbiter to parse out the bad doings against you from the bad doings you committed.

edit here she is in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJp3sTM2oeo

There's no doubt she was playing the same games. Doesn't change the fact that she was discriminated against for being a woman, and in retaliation she's looking for the millions she wasn't paid and letting all of us lowly engineers know what games the VCs are playing.

And how underpaid we are?

I'd trade what I'm getting paid right now to take on what sounds like a far easier job that pays quite a bit more in a bad year than what I make in a great year.

But qualifications don't get you into these kinds of clubs, connections and pedigree do.

Pao and Nazre were dating and both married at the time.

Implied in the Ars article, and stated directly in other articles [0,1,2], the affair happened in 2006, but according to Wiki [3] Pao wasn't married until 2007.

[0] http://www.siliconbeat.com/2015/02/17/ellen-pao-vs-kleiner-p...

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/3/8141053/ellen-pao-kleiner-p...

[2] http://www.wired.com/2015/02/ellen-pao-trial-day-two/

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Pao#Personal_life

Thank you for this. I'll add it to my comment.

I downvoted you, because you purported to summarize the case for readers who haven't been following it, and then provided a very misleading summary. Pao's case does not revolve around delayed reviews, or who took notes in meetings. One needn't have an opinion about the merits of Pao's case to have a negative opinion about the merits of this summary.

Care to provide some links to what you think the case IS about? I'm addressing points raised in the submitted article and the article I provided a link to. How am I being misleading?

Cherry-picking.

Please supply the missing information then. I want to be as accurate as possible! I'm not cherry picking, just pointing to actual points being raised in these articles.

It's ok to be uninformed about a random legal case. You don't have a duty to be informed about Pao. What's not OK is to casually and incorrectly declare yourself informed and then to provide an opinionated summary based on that false credential, which is what you've managed to do here.

Aside from Anechoic who gave a very appreciated correction to my comment, not a single person has provided any additional information.

You keep saying I'm uninformed but you've not provided any information to this discussion. Please do! I want to know more.

Possibly the internet at large, or hn, doesn't consider it our jobs to babysit you. Type something like ellen pao lawsuit into google and educate yourself.

I provided data to support my case. Some people are attacking me but not providing a reason.

Saying "I'm right, but I refuse to prove it!" doesn't get you much.

You provided cherry-picked facts, and couldn't even manage get the few you included right.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=ellen+pao+lawsuit

I'm disengaging with you because you're obviously here to troll. If you want to provide any additional information do it somewhere in this thread.

That commenter is being a bit aggressive, but they don't appear to be trolling; their critique is valid. One of the oldest message board rhetorical tricks in the book is to use a grossly incomplete summary as an ambit claim, and then to retcon facts from the inevitable rebuttals into that argument. It shouldn't surprise you that people don't want to help you do that.

Their critique is: you're wrong but I won't tell you why.

I don't see how that's helpful. I don't know what you're suggesting we do either. You don't want to supply facts because they'll be "retcon"-ed? That's a new one.

If it weren't obvious to anyone who'd been following the case how superficial your summary was, that would be a valid point.

Ok, well if you can't provide any information then I'm afraid there's not much else for us to discuss.

Another one of the oldest message board rhetorical tricks is to claim somebody is wrong because they're supplying incomplete information and then after multiple requests to multiple people to fill in the gaps simply refuse to do so.

I strongly object to this form of argument. It boils down to "I'm right because you haven't done the work to show I'm right." You can always demand more work, and it doesn't require any correlation with the truth.

What is the case about then? To me at least the summary seemed aligned well with the media coverage I've been following. But I'll admit I haven't had the time to read the source documents.

What is your concise summary of the biggest accusation that demands justice ? I fail to understand from the bloomberg article as it seems to make all accusations petty and even harmful to her case.

it's really not that hard

Pao and her supervisor hooked up. She stopped fucking him and he retaliated (illegal). She complained to the head of the firm and he didn't stop the retaliation (also illegal).

Ajit Nazre wasn't Pao's supervisor.

The Kleiner Perkins pre-trial brief also implied that the case was launched due to Pao's husband's money problems.

"F. Pao Files A Complaint Full of Unnecessary and Salacious Details

In May 2012, Pao filed this lawsuit alleging gender discrimination, retaliation (for allegedly complaining that Nazre sexually harassed her in 2007), and failure to prevent discrimination. Simultaneously, Pao’s husband, Alphonse “Buddy” Fletcher Jr., filed for bankruptcy on behalf of his hedge fund Fletcher Asset Management (“PAM”) when PAM failed to pay back pension funds that requested reimbursement of their investments.8 The appointed bankruptcy trustee ultimately issued a report stating that PAM had not had a single profitable investment since 2007 (the year Fletcher married Pea) and had committed several improper acts..."

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/256174...

I know I haven't been keeping up on this hot topic.

But Wow, I didn't know that.

It adds a whole new dimension to this case.

This is a women in VC story, nothing to do with women in tech.

VCs are the bosses of tech. VCs are the real executives in Silicon Valley and "founders" are upper-mid-level project managers in the world's first postmodern corporation.

If you've been following all of the coverage of this case, Pao isn't coming off well.

In the worst case for her, Ellen Pao turns out to be like Michael Brown: not sympathetic, not a victim, but the case still illustrates a lot of systemic bias and moral failure.

(Not to say that is how it is playing out or will play out.)

I think she probably did have her reputation (internal to the firm) damaged for reasons that constitute gender harassment. I also think that she was passed over and fired not because she was a woman, but because her reputation was damaged and she probably couldn't get much done. The question is how responsible the firm itself is for spotting problems like that and allowing people to clear their own names.