
Ellen Pao: Has Anything Really Changed for Women in Tech? - rbanffy
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/opinion/sunday/ellen-pao-sexism-tech.html
======
nodesocket
This has been said over and over again, but companies should always be able to
hire and promote the best available candidates. Unfortunately large tech
companies especially in the bay area are hiring/promoting to meet a quota and
prevent any social justice backlash even though it continues [1][2]. They are
looking for a perfect 50/50 balance, missing on talent and ultimately what's
best for the company. Truely disconcerting.

Look at what's happening at Google, perhaps the most inclusive and liberal
ideology company. Entitled and outraged employee still end up suing[3].
Employes who have different political views and try to perhaps explain why
there are traditionally more men than women in technology are just fired.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-
just-...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/githubs-diversity-is-just-as-bad-
as-the-rest-of-silicon-valleys/)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/uber-first-diversity-
repor...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/uber-first-diversity-report/)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/technology/google-
gender-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/technology/google-gender-pay-
lawsuit.html?mcubz=0)

~~~
sillysaurus3
I think quotas are a bad idea, but there is some space between quotas and not
being sexualized at the workplace. Women seem to be asking for more of the
latter than the former. And luckily, things seem to be changing in that
regard.

Quotas may turn out to just be a fad. Once people see the destructive effects
(like that no woman hired through such a program can escape undertones of
"should she really have been hired here?") they'll probably fade.

Or, y'know, we could both be wrong and quotas will turn out to be a good
thing. It'd be nice to have an objective test.

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localcdn
Aka my book just released so remember to buy it!

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Alex3917
> Before her post, others who spoke up publicly and privately about their
> experiences of harassment were at best ignored. Some of those people — whose
> names are unfortunately not well known — include Adria Richards

Seems like she's just trolling at this point.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Mm, how so? I know nothing about that person specifically, so if there's
substance to it then it's better to hear the full details.

I worry about opening the door to a low quality conversation though, so let's
try to keep it objective and substantive.

~~~
detaro
Does Donglegate ring a bell?

A bunch of guys make "dongle" jokes at PyCon, Richards tweets their photo. As
a consequence, one of the guys gets fired during the surrounding shitstorm,
counter-shitstorm, Richards gets fired as well.

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-
richar...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richards)

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sillysaurus3
It's actually a good piece. If you have some second thoughts just because Pao
wrote it, I think it was easy to misjudge her. I got caught up in this myself
at the time, believing a lot of the stories on Reddit and such.

~~~
trhway
You should read her court case. After that her Reddit story looks completely
natural. Greed, incompetence, extreme narcissism and indifference... No
surprise that she is trying to high jack the cause she has nothing to do with
and ride other people stories.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Anything specific you'd care to highlight, or is this just hate?

We're in a flagged thread now, so it's just us. But you could still change my
mind.

~~~
trhway
I especially liked how she b!tched against co-worker for using company fax to
send MRI of the brain cancer suffering mother.

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grzm
In the past, discussions on this topic on HN have historically devolved
quickly into flamewars. Anyone choosing to discuss this please reflect on why
you want to do so: are you looking to truly understand what others think on
this? Are you truly open to having your opinion changed? Are you hoping to
convince others of your position? Just let people know the truth of the
matter? Shout down those you disagree with? If you're looking for something
other than truly productive, respectful, thoughtful, charitable discussion,
please refrain from commenting here.

~~~
sillysaurus3
I mean, I'd love to, and the answer is a resounding yes. But it was buried off
the front two pages.

No one respects the moderation more than I do, and how hard it is to make good
decisions. But from a commenter POV it does get a little tiresome writing
comments that get cut off due to shuffling around the front page. But meh,
it's not a big deal.

EDIT: Welp. After looking over the other comments, it seems they made the
right call. I wish people would behave themselves.

~~~
dang
> _it seems they_

Mods didn't touch the post; it was flagged by users.

We sometimes override flags in such cases but there needs to be substantive
new information. In this case the article was an opinion piece (though a well-
written one).

~~~
sillysaurus3
The story was buried off the front two pages first. Then the flag happened.

Maybe caching was involved, so the "[flagged]" was delayed. But the story
definitely disappeared before "[flagged]" showed up.

Just reporting what I saw. Either way, it's no big deal. It would've been a
bad idea to have it on the front page.

~~~
grzm
As I understand it, the behaviors are related but independent. User flagging
affects ranking even before the [flagged] tag appears. There's some threshold
before the latter happens, which I suspect is what you observed.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Nah, that causes a story to move from page 1 to page 2, for example. (Or more
precisely, to drop in rank by ~10 to ~20.) I made certain to check the front
two pages for this story, and it wasn't on them, immediately. Then [flagged]
popped up later. It was a sharp step function, not a gradual change.

If flagg _ing_ caused a story to disappear from the front two pages, there
would never be a need for [flagged] -- a story would be as good as flagged
without it. It'd be a clarifying signal, but it wouldn't have any material
impact on the story's rank.

Again, none of this really matters, but it's fun to talk about. :)

Maybe it was buried via a torrent of flags. If three flags showed up within a
few seconds of each other, that might have caused the behavior.

EDIT: see [http://hnrankings.info/15267221/](http://hnrankings.info/15267221/)

~~~
pvg
I'm sure the moderators have nothing better to do on weekends but engage in
elaborate dastardly schemes to move stories from page 2 to page 4 without
[flagged] appearing and keep us down.

~~~
sillysaurus3
I didn't mean to insinuate anything. It's just fun to talk about, like trying
to unravel the dynamics of the stars in ancient times.

Diff the data with
[http://hnrankings.info/15150237/](http://hnrankings.info/15150237/) and
you'll see this one completely disappeared. It wasn't moved by flags -- it was
completely erased by them. It's a mystery! Pointless mysteries are fun.

