
Chief Executive of Social Finance to Step Down - coloneltcb
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/technology/sofi-mike-cagney-sexual-harassment.html?_r=1&referer=
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throwaway6497
Interesting that branding is not important/creatively skirted when negative
news is involved. Doesn't come as a surprise. Wondering, if this is
intentional. Difficult to imagine that the company is spoon feeding an NY
times reporter the headlines. Always saw SoFi everywhere in ads and branding.
Social Finance on Google doesn't rank SoFi in the top two organic search
results. Wonder why the headline is Social Finance instead of SoFi though
there is mention of SoFi in the article.

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CPLX
Maybe they put that in the headline because that's the name of the company.
Doesn't seem particularly confusing to me.

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greglindahl
The NYT frequently uses full company names, for example they used to refer to
SpaceX as "Space Exploration Technologies", and they still put periods in
places where other journalists won't (I.B.M.).

I wouldn't read anything into it other than the NYT marches to the beat of a
different drummer.

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djchung23
Yikes. Culture starts from the person at the top and flows down.

Curious to see how and if the cultural narrative within Silicon Valley
companies will change one year from now after all that's happened. Will there
actually be meaningful change? I don't know, but I'm hoping so.

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lefstathiou
I was chatting in bed with my lady about this last night and we hit on a few
negative potential outcomes and concerns:

Companies and their investors are going to look for ways to prevent these
issues from happening. Part of the solution will rest on coaching, monitoring
and policing (perhaps through employee empowerment etc) the "aggressive"
people (mostly men) in the workplace.

A concern my girlfriend highlighted is that this may increase unconscious bias
in the hiring process, for example:

Will men consider beautiful girls a risk to the workplace? If you have 90%
male employees working in your office and a beautiful girl who is definitely
qualified for the job but for the sake of argument not someone you "have to
have" for this role, are you introducing risk into the workplace by hiring her
knowing that people react stronger to attractive people? Said differently, is
there a possibility that her presence becomes a potential "distraction" in the
office.

Will progressive personalities be considered a risk to the workplace? Beyond
looks to personality types, if you are interviewing a candidate and through
rounds of interviews you discover they actively contribute their spare time
and energy toward socially progressive movements, rallies, campaigns etc, will
they be deemed higher risks as potential work-place agitators?

I never really thought about these things until my gf mentioned them but
apparently she and her girlfriends consider these factors when strategizing
about interviews ("don't look too good, etc").

Another anecdote: we have a handful of couples we're close to whose
girlfriends/wives insist that their CEO boyfriends/husbands never conduct
challenging performance based conversations with female employees without a
witness present. This was consistent with my girlfriend's experience in
banking where she found that her senior managers were comfortable having
performance reviews 1-1 (which in theory facilitates more candid dialogue and
deeper relationships) whereas all the girls had multiple managers present
reviews. On the margin, does this disadvantage women? I don't know but my gf
seemed to think so.

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neo4sure
"Companies and their investors are going to look for ways to prevent these
issues from happening. Part of the solution will rest on coaching, monitoring
and policing (perhaps through employee empowerment etc) the "aggressive"
people (mostly men) in the workplace."

Just be a good person... It's really easy. I don't know why a guy would need
coaching on basic decency.

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cflewis
Yeah, this is classic victim blaming. "Oh, she looked too pretty, I couldn't
help myself from touching her ass."

How about not hiring assholes in the first place? If they have to be coached
to not have issues with women, then they aren't worth your time.

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mgkimsal
Maybe he was busy having "inappropriate relations" with the people who should
have been "reviewing" my paperwork?

Tried to use them years ago and... turnaround time took _weeks_. Their web
interface just kept telling me they were "reviewing" then "need more info"
without any concrete info as to what was needed. Emails took days to get a
reply to.

Tried to use them again last year - same horrible turnaround/response time
(days/weeks).

I was able to use another institution and have my financial stuff handled and
done in less time than it took them to even clarify why the exact same info
other financial agents were fine with wasn't good enough (and, they never
did).

They followed up about 4 months later to ask if I still needed service.

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SoFiThrowaway
The internal messaging is the same as external: "buisness is strong, we
continue to execute as we did, looking for a new ceo".

However, if you read between the lines, it sounds like the board might have
been looking for an excuse to oust Mike, who preferred high risk ventures and
expansions, and replace him with someone experienced in bringing companies to
an IPO. It seems like this is an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, in
terms of bad press.

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blizkreeg
“I believe now is the right time for SoFi to start the search for a new
leader,” Mr. Cagney said in a statement.

What's with these cowardly statements? Admit your mistakes, say you're no
longer the right leader, and that's why you're stepping down.

