Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

Sure there's people who make spurious claims, and a few who get paranoid and blame discrimination for every setback they have. But that's sort of not relevant. The existence of mis-diagnoses and hypochondriacs doesn't disprove the existence of a disease.

Edit: my comment is 'meta.' I know little about this case, so I don't have a strong opinion on it.

Of course, then all we have to work with is overwhelming statistical evidence for both issues, and that never convinces anyone.

I also don't get how, exactly, women are buzzkillers. But maybe I just don't speak bro.

It's similar to the Michael Brown case. On inspection, we found that his was one of the weaker cases when it comes to racial harassment by police. It doesn't invalidate the issue or the grievance.

Pao v. Kleiner was going to be a close call. I wanted to find KP guilty and, looking at the evidence, it seemed that the worst interpretation that I could summon was of negligence. They did fail in allowing her to recover her reputation after Mr. Nazre's attack on her. They did have a performance review system that allowed him to damage her professional reputation out-of-band to the point where she couldn't recover. That was a major moral failure on their part. (On the other hand, they seemed decent in offering a transition plan, and I'm surprised that John Doerr wasn't able to fix her career on an external vector, making all parties happy.) Gender discrimination? A tough call. Probably not, to be honest. Plenty of people have their reputations ruined because of irrelevancies and political chicanery. Management being bad at its job (in this case, performance appraisal) is not the same thing as a Civil Rights Act violation.

Is Silicon Valley corrupt as hell and a bit sexist? Sure. Is it likely that Ellen Pao's "personality conflicts" were, to some degree, gendered? Yes. Did Kleiner Perkins violate the CRA? It's not so clear. But I really don't want anyone to interpret this to mean either (a) that Valley meritocracy is vindicated, or (b) even that this suit was "frivolous", because it clearly wasn't.

The credibility of the claim that there's overwhelming institutional bias against women is dependent on understanding why in cases where there unquestionably was considerable bias--like medicine, law and politics--the bias has either dropped dramatically or been reversed in the past half-century to the point where no one anywhere is the least bit surprised to see a female doctor, lawyer, or politician.

The absence of women in tech may be due to many factors. Given we have seen how easily bias has been overcome in other areas, we should at least keep our minds open to alternative models. One such model is the observation that women remain under-represented in areas where the working conditions are terrible, the career prospects are nil, and the tangible effect of their efforts on others are zero, all of which conditions pertain to tech, but not to medicine, law or politics.

This suggests that maybe we ought to be paying attention to the conditions men work under in tech, rather than making this out to be a man-woman thing.

I'm not claiming this is necessarily true, but nor do I think it is entirely implausible, and hope people concerned with these things will at least be open to alternative explanations.

We are all a node on the same graph, but every one of us is in a different section of the graph. Each of us has a "max flow" of influence that we can direct out of our node, into any given other node. Influence affects society, and it can be passed down within families. Families are small components of the social graph who can collude with each other. Assuming the "nodes" with the largest influence want to pass it to their heirs, then influence will naturally accumulate within families. The neighbors of max influencers need capacity to support the flow from the max influencers. Therefore the neighbors also have influence, and thus a component of the worldwide social graph becomes a concentrated subsection of wealth.

One way for families and their neighbors to protect influence is to form institutions. Literally, to institutionalize their influence. By definition, institutions are founded around a biased component of the social graph. It should be no surprise that they retain their structure across generations.

The only way to get a truly "fair" institution would be to seed it with a random subgraph of the entire worldwide population and hope that it could not only survive that heterogenity, but preserve it. We cannot force diversity into institutions like some bandaid solution to inequality. It needs to exist from the moment of creation, or else it never will.

Out of curiosity, just what kind of evidence would you need in order to falsify this proposition?

Where is the actual evidence this is true?

This trial is about two parties. It isn't a proper representative in any way of any other parties or of any larger ideas or trends in tech.

12 people were tasked with carefully listening to all the evidence over a month, and not listening to the media summaries. They decided for KP. We have very reasonable basis to trust that they got it right, or that at least they did as well as we could given the same evidence.

What does this say, if anything, about more general matters? Bayesian statistics might suggest that it decreases the belief in rampant sexism among VCs. But by how much, it's really impossible to tell. So we don't have much of a basis to change any general views on the industry based on this case. Just like it would have been had the verdict been the opposite (but again, Bayesian-wise it would have been some amount of support to the opposite position).

I did think the "resentment chart" was very high school, though.

where?

Factually incorrect on two counts:

1. They didn't decide "she had no case". Deciding whether or not a claimant "has a case" isn't even the jury's job. They're there to decide whether or not the evidence supports the claims.

2. You might want to re-check the jury poll again. (Hint: not all 12 jurors decided against Pao.)

So what? The reporter isn't obligated to think the jury was correct.

And even in her case there's a grey area where discrimination can occur without it being illegal. In that case, you can win in court but lose the trial of public opinion.

Following tech blogs and checking HN links, you would've thought that Pao's case was bulletproof, with some minor nuances and qualifications. After reading the full details of the arguments on both sides, I now understand why the jury ruled the way it did.

I have not seen one single article on this trial that hasn't been very heavily biased in favour of Ellen Pao. Not one.

I'm not surprised this isn't the case yet again. The media are calling this institutional misogyny regardless of the facts or the judgement by the jury. If she wins, it's institutional misogyny, if she loses it's institutional misogyny.

At this stage I'm convinced that tech journalism is the lowest form of journalism available today.

I'm currently in school now majoring in computer science. I'd say its about 70-30 guys to girls in my comp sci classes, but 65-35 girls to guys in the whole school(Of course no one gives a shit that there is basically 2 girls for every guy in the school). Every week I receive emails from my faculty that are along the lines of "Come to this event to promote women in technology" or "Come participate in this high school event to get girls more interested in technology". As well the amount of women only benefits is astonishing. This includes numerous scholarships, special tutorials, private talks etc..

Anyways the school is fairly well known for its computer science program and has very good connections to the tech industry. If you are top of the class you will most likely get a job at any of the big companies. If you are a girl and around average you will also likely get a job at any of the big companies. This isn't to say their are some very talented girls who deserve it.

Last thing that I find pretty hilarious. Lets say for example Google is hosting an event where you can ask questions and get to know the recruiters. They will also hold a separate event the next day which is for women only. And it's not only Google I'd say its pretty much every big company that does this. They don't even hide the fact you have a huge advantage in getting the job you want just because your female.

I feel like I'm tired of trying to prove myself to the guys over and over, but just thinking that their feelings could be reasonable makes me feel sick.

Then I think about all the corporate advice books I've read, which basically say life is tough, limited spots available. You have to constantly prove yourself to every person you meet to get ahead. . .

* She was sent to the back row during a retreat! (except the day before, when she was given front row)

* She wasn't given enough guidance and didn't have a fair shot at the firm! (except JOHN DOERR actively mentored her)

* Her harasser at the firm was not fired! (except she told the partners over email that the guy should not be let go)

etc

if there was something to assassinate... Pao was complaining that her colleague's assistant was sending from the office brain scans of dying from brain cancer mother.

Personally I have a low faith in outsider CEO hires anyway, though

In a situation with strong institutional bias towards reduced diversity, it just feels wrong to me.

What about "bros" who want to discriminate against women? Should they feel wanted?

Here's part of a confusing argument I had with a good friend of mine recently.

A lot of people see "bros" (I really hate that term) as a problem. Their culture is a problem, their ideas about getting drunk at work and being loud and boisterous are all problems, and these are things that need to be stopped in the name of equality and progress.

But what about the individuals there? Some of the "bros" I know who run companies where they drink a lot at work, have frequent company sponsored outings to bars, go drinking after hours, go to parties together, etc. are refugees from the world where none of that was allowed.

To them, they've created a safe space for themselves where they are allowed to be what they feel most comfortable as.

The sortof neo-progressive response to these people is that what they're doing is wrong, and should be stopped...

What's confusing and difficult to me about that is that stopping these people is taking away their safe space. Yes, their safe space is discriminatory (to people who don't desire the same space, of feel safe in that space), but is that necessarily a bad thing?

For instance: there is a meetup at a hackerspace in my state called "WTF", which stands for "Women, Trans, Femme". I, as a white, cis, male would not be allowed in the shop during that time. Assuming that gender dysphoria is equally prevalent in men and women, that event discriminates against about 50% of the population.

The justification for this, which I understand, and I think I support, is that everybody deserves to have a space where they feel safe. There is a similar motivation behind things like Double Union in SF; it is a women-only hackerspace that exists for people who will feel most comfortable in a women-only hackerspace.

Good! I am glad that all of these people are getting to have their safe spaces.

But what about my friend that runs a company full of bros? What are they supposed to do? Because it seems like a lot of people think that they shouldn't be allowed to have their space (because it's discriminatory).

Unfortunately we work in an industry whereby the mainstream industry media very highly believes race and gender matter, and that the presence of too "many" of a certain race or gender is "problematic".

Why should companies have the right to tell employees what they can and cannot do in their own time? What next, authorisation to have a child? Your employer signing off on where you live?

They don't have to bury or censor them, they're just actively doing it and have been since the trial began. Anything related to Ellen or her husband generally got deleted fairly rapidly or hidden from being searchable.

In any case, the community at Reddit seem to absolutely despise her and with a Reddit staff member apparently offering to testify against her at the trial, I would be surprised if she were kept around much longer.