In regard to Pao, I recall reading that her lawyers presented some information about the number of female hires for the company. It seems that this was put forth to suggest that the company discriminated in its hiring of emales. What bugs me about this is it feels like unsubstantial evidence. Essentially, how useful is it for me to know how many females they hired when I don't even know how many they interviewed? That's also extremely basic information, because even if they interviewed 100 females and 1 male, how do I know that the 100 females weren't poorer candidates than the 1 male?
This has been a major tack all over the media. When they see women under-represented in fields they assume nearly all of explanation is down to discriminatory hiring practices and a hostile work environment. If data is presented that actually shows that far fewer women are applying they're told it's no excuse, that the individual companies need to be on the hook for combating education and socialization of women and girls at all areas in society, and need to be doing everything in their power to reach out to women and convince them to want to work there.
No one really cares about changing the employment ratio for female dominated fields. A common defence is that this is uninteresting because men dominate the better, higher paying fields. But I wonder how sincere this is, when game programming, which has a much worse ratio of women to men than programming at large, is pretty widely recognized to be a more demanding, less compensating, and less fulfilling career. I know I wouldn't dare move into game development, and I'm not rushing to encourage anyone else to if that's not what they're passionate about. And you don't really motivate people to be passionate about gaming. But if women are interested in pursuing this career then by all means I think they should do it.
From what I understand, Kleiner Perkins actually presented to the court that they employ far more women than the average for VC firms, and that one of their wealthiest partners has been an advocate for gender equality in the field. Which kind of puts a big hole in any argument that they're discriminatory. I suppose the counter would be that everyone else is simply much more discriminatory?
Just look at the text used in the article (emphasis mine)...
Now, I read that part before I watched the video, and I was shocked... at how tame he was. He didn't raise his voice. He said his spiel for maybe 20-30 seconds and then left. Honestly, based upon the text, I was expecting him to yell and berate the girl, and I wouldn't have been surprised if the video had involved the police. However, there was none of that. Now, do I think his video was a bit self-righteous (i.e. "douchey")? Sure, but enough to lose your job over? No.
I had exactly the same reaction.
The article painted him in a pretty terrible light. I figured that it made it sound like he deserved to be heavily shunned. I wanted to comment, but at the time I couldn't view the actual video, and there was no way I was going to say anything until I could judge it for myself. And like you, I was pretty underwhelmed by the actual video.
At this point I'm not going to trust anything a media writer says about someone. At the very least I'll want to read as many sources as I can before forming an opinion. There is no longer any kind of line between reporting and editorializing, even in articles that seem impartial on the surface. Everyone is out to sensationalize everything.
It doesn't help that nothing anyone says is ever evaluated by the words alone anymore. Instead, the context of the person's race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, income, affiliation, and so on and so forth is always a factor - sometimes to the extent that the words only have a passing impact. And much is extrapolated and assumed beyond even that data. In this case the man is judged heavily in the context of how much money he makes and how much privilege and opportunity he must have vs how little the woman makes and how bad of a position she must be in, with no consideration of the possibility that maybe he was working fast food himself 25 years ago.
Now, I'm going to be really clear about this. Do I blame his employer? Nope. So, who would I blame? The Internet. In situations like this, the Internet tends to "take it to 11"
way too easily. They're like a ticking time bomb of self-righteousness that's so goddamn smug that some of the people out there think that
submitting death threats is a proper response to being a smug ass.
This reminds me so much of the situation that happened in 2013 with Adam Orth, an employee at Microsoft. You can read a bit about what happened
here and here's an article about
a talk he gave at GDC a year later. Essentially, he had a Twitter (public) "conversation" (i.e. not a direct message) with someone that he apparently talks to often. In that, he argued for Microsoft's purported always-on scheme. The interesting part is... if I remember correctly, it was actually just a rumor at this point. Anyway, the Internet (as it usually does) took it to 11, and he ended up resigning from the public backlash.
I don't like what happens on the internet either, but I have to consider a couple things..
First, these incidents are a reaction to something going totally viral. Hundreds of thousands of people exposed to it, at least - but more often millions for it to really register as a thing. Only a small sample of people get hit by this.
Second, there's good and bad in this. The good is that going viral can and often does result in a lot of increased opportunities and a boost to someone's reputation. On the flip side though, when you get millions of views you're pretty much statistically guaranteed to reach some very disturbed people who react with death threats. If you had the misfortune of reaching them in person instead of online you might illicit the same sort of bad reaction (or much worse), but people don't generally have that kind of opportunity.
It'd be great if something could be done to keep the good and get rid of the bad there, but it can't really be done so long as people don't take (much) more effort to conceal their identity online. And you're probably not going to be able to do that if you show your face in a video.
Now those threats are one thing, very fringe, and sadly they happen to everyone who gains any real visibility plus any real controversy (but no one really gives a shit unless it happens to a feminist woman). The overall exaggerated outrage and judgemental attitude? That's not fringe, that's all over discussion forums. But, I don't think the internet really elevates this either. People have always been gossipy and quick to condemn others, especially if they don't really know them. Sadly, that's just our nature.
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