
Yahoo ex-employee sues, alleging performance review manipulation, gender bias - mcknz
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-yahoo-lawsuit-20160202-story.html
======
CryoLogic
I'm very interested in seeing how this case pans out, seeing that he cited
"favoring women" as a criteria.

In many courts, similar cases like this have been laughed off. In today's
world, in many established companies the gender bias (female given priority)
is a real form of discrimination. At my University (a top 10), the average
female graduates where picked off by Google, MS and the likes - the extremely
hard working, talented and passionate grads (male) couldn't even get
interviews at big G half the time.

It's an interesting world we live in, where discrimination is now being fought
with discrimination.

~~~
x5n1
Google's defense is probably algorithmic.

~~~
CryoLogic
I don't know if it could be blamed on an algorithm. Some of the companies (MS
was one) even hosted parties for the female members of IEEE and ACM. Took them
out to their campus, free meals, mock interviews, free swag, networking
events. But they where female only events.

------
moistgorilla
So apparently he had been given a promotion and took a leave of absence to
participate in a prestigious fellowship and was fired for having a low
performance review? What metrics were they going by for the performance review
if he wasn't even working at the time?

I have a feeling this lawsuit will actually go somewhere.

~~~
walshemj
mm yes sounds fishy a bit like women on maternity leave getting a bad
appraisal.

and allowing only women to appeal sounds like an automatic win on sex
discrimination grounds.

Sounds like HR had a quota to fill and took the easy route and screwed up.

~~~
funkyy
Ah yes, to fight with inequality and racism companies now use quotas - a
system where they hire based on gender and race.

~~~
walshemj
No HR had a quota to get rid of x% and took what they thought was the easy
target.

Its incompetence in Yahoos HR function

------
epx
Not judging the merit of the complaints, but trying to "cure" gender
imbalances by adding another imbalance will create strong non-linearities,
that will attract people that like to exploit these non-linearities instead of
attracting true talent.

For every individual, every probability is always 50/50 - either something
happens, or not. If an individual, a man, is affected negatively by a pro-
women policy, he won't forget it for a lifetime. Because he is not a
statistic, he is a person that has only one life to live.

Personally, if I were affected by this, or a colleague were, I'd find another
job immediately, and watch the ship sinking from a safe distance.

~~~
CryoLogic
Affirmative action is discrimination, and has strong negative effects on local
economies.

Consider a firm which operates at equilibrium (where peak profit is achieved),
with a ratio of 80% male, 20% female. Artificially capping the number of males
allowed in the corporation, or artificially increasing the number of females
pushes the corporation out of equilibrium thus reducing profits in the long
term.

On the flip side of the coin, if the firm discriminates (equilibrium 50% male,
50% female but it chooses 80/20) - the economy punishes the firm by reducing
its potential profits.

Companies should be hiring on skill, and culture fit. Not to fill a quota or
someone's agenda.

It's true that there is a gap within genders in tech - but the answer isn't
reducing another equally skilled person's chances of getting the job - this is
bad for everyone (except the person who got the job). Instead, we need to look
at the root cause and try to learn why the gap is so obvious. Fix the issue at
the source, rather than using affirmative action as a bandaid. Maybe it even
turns out not to be an issue. Who knows.

~~~
tomp
> Companies should be hiring on skill, and culture fit. Not to fill a quota or
> someone's agenda.

As opposed as I am to discrimination (including "reverse" discrimination), i
have to point out that you're missing part of the picture.

Companies are optimising for _profit_ , and there are many things that
influence it. Including, for example, the media - and unfortunately, in the
current (pro-female, anti-male) media climate, it pays off to be seen as pro-
women - such companies simply get a better media exposure and extra praise! In
other words, if the whole country supports discrimination, it might be in the
best interest of a company to go along with it.

In general, I don't think we, as a society, should expect _companies_ to
influence the _culture_ (in a positive way) - it would have to be the other
way around.

~~~
cameron111
Yep. You're touching here on one of the common bridges from libertarianism to
neoreaction. Libertarianism is based on a handful of simple principles that
work -- in theory. Neoreaction takes a step back and looks at the practical
issues surrounding implementation of libertarianism (e.g. profit being derived
from culture as you mention here), and of the results of libertarianism, and
thus all the philosophical deductions and political necessities that result
from those considerations.

(new account because I would like to remain employed)

~~~
tomp
> You're touching here on one of the common bridges from libertarianism to
> neoreaction

Actually, my reasoning is coming from an entirely different point of view. My
basic assumption is that _people follow incentives_. Markets (i.e.
libertarianism) are _very good_ at providing certain kinds of incentives
(basically, they encourage competition and drive the world toward greater and
greater efficiency), but there are also well-known examples of market
failures: monopoly, duopoly, cartels; externalities (pollution, resource
exhaustion); barriers to entry and wasteful competition (main example being
infrastructure - do we really need 2 companies digging through the whole city
to establish 2 sets of separate, but otherwise identical phone lines?); agency
problem; tragedy of the commons and free-rider problem (i.e. who pays for the
fire department). In this case, I believe that government regulation is
required and welcome; it has to be carefully enacted and continuously
evaluated to make sure it results in increase of competition in the markets
(otherwise we get e.g. copyright, which significantly hurts competition). I
don't think neoreaction is a good example here; I believe that parts of EU,
allegedly Denmark in particular (with their "flexicurity" style labor markets)
are particularly good examples.

~~~
cameron111
Libertarianism is flawed in many ways, yes, and its proponents do not consider
its peripheral realities. To what you wrote I would add the observations that
markets are created from the will of a central authority, and that the mob can
become tyranny when not restrained by a more level-headed authority in
whatever form.

These critiques (and more) are prominent in the neoreactionary literature on
liberalism/libertarianism (but nowadays they have more important things to
talk about). An interesting hypothesis of neoreaction is that liberal ideals,
or even a libertarian world, will invariably lead to democratic socialism --
due to the power of the mob.

Personally, the foundation of my disillusionment with
liberalism/libertarianism is the fact that people are so much more than
economic units, and that collectivism trumps individualism. What's important
is preservation of heritage, culture, tradition, creation of art in all its
beautiful forms, and the maximization of humanity's potential.

I can't see liberalism/libertarianism getting us much further than working on
advertising systems to push junk food, while NASA spends half its time making
reports to get a few more handouts, and cultures worldwide are systemically
destroyed in the name of economic growth.

------
trhway
"It also alleges that women were treated better by managers in the media
group. While men were immediately terminated after receiving low employee
scores, women were allowed to appeal their ratings, the suit says."

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its hard to rectify gender bias without somebody crying foul.

~~~
DannyBee
Err, why not let everyone appeal their rating?

(I understand, percentage wise, due to bias or whatever, it's likely a higher
percent of things would be overturned for women, but it's not like the error
rate for non-women was 0 anyway, so why not just make a process that nobody is
going to complain about?)

~~~
codeonfire
What would be the result of that? You appeal and find, oh management really
did make a mistake and is incompetent of it's primary purpose of evaluating
employee performance correctly. AND, management did in fact discriminate and
now has proven it for any and all future and current lawsuits. There is
literally no reason for management to allow ratings appeals.

~~~
DannyBee
"What would be the result of that? "

(Let's ignore the obvious point - not everyone is malicious, some companies
really do want to try to make sure people get correct ratings and get rid of
discrimination, and aren't worried about the cost of lawsuits. These companies
exist, i've worked at them)

Again, i think you missed the point (I guess i'll be more explicit when it's a
touchy subject like this). If you read the allegation, women were allowed to
appeal, men were not.

Someone tried to say that this was okay, because gender bias affects women
more.

But it's not okay. It makes no sense. Either you believe some people are
getting terminated wrongly, in which case both women and men should be able to
appeal, or you don't, in which case nobody should get to appeal :)

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orionblastar
This is a problem in business management. If you want to discriminate against
an employee in a certain group, you just give them low scores in a performance
review. That way you can claim they are a bad employee to justify laying them
off or terminating them.

Even if they did nothing to get low scores.

It sort of avoids discrimination lawsuits if they can document that the
employee got low scores.

But this is fishy because he was given low scores while on leave.

Something like that happened to me while I was on short-term disability and in
a hospital and at home. They had employees sign papers that I was doing all
sorts of things to give me low scores. The dates when they claimed I was at
work doing those things, I was in a hospital or at home and not at work. When
I returned from short-term disability I was put on probation and then fired.
They tried to use the stuff against me to block unemployment benefits but the
state saw the complaints were on the same dates that I missed work and sided
with me considering the complaints were made up. I could have sued for
discrimination but it was the best law firm in town, and they could have
proven an undue hardship defense because they hired a software consultant for
$100/hr to do my job because none of my coworkers could do it.

So I would like to see the manipulation of the low performance ratings to be
investigated. You see the years prior I had gotten high scores and pay raises,
then as soon as I got sick, low scores and complaints.

~~~
pc86
I'll be honest, I find this hard to believe. Any employment attorney would
absolutely jump at the chance to take a contingency case where there was
verifiable proof that a company and coworkers fabricated evidence in order to
terminate someone to avoid paying benefits.

~~~
orionblastar
I focused more on getting another job than suing because I had a family and a
mortgage to pay to keep the house.

In hindsight I should have sued but I let 180 days go by.

------
MrTonyD
I would like to see more laws to help create a better work environment for
everyone. We all spend most of our time at work -- yet, somehow, we seem to
give up every right as a human being when we become employees.

I do think that "hire/fire at will" is acceptable - but we should have decent
lives and a great social safety net at the same time. After all, we live in a
time where incredible wealth is being created (it just seems to be hoarded by
the 1%)

~~~
bobby_9x
"We all spend most of our time at work -- yet, somehow, we seem to give up
every right as a human being when we become employees."

Workers in the IT industry probably have the cushiest jobs in the world. You
make way above minimum wage, you aren't risking your life, and your job can be
done from the comfort of a heated or cooled office environment.

I'm not sure what rights you think you are giving away as an employee.
Employee/Employer relationships are usually legally bound by a contract. You
are free to change the contract or question it before you work there.

If you choose not to do this or don't want to take the time and effort into
finding another job, it's no fault but your own.

I think what's missing is education. Most people are so complacent, they don't
want to read anything they sign and then act surprised when it contains
something undesirable.

I've crossed out and questioned plenty of employee contracts. Most businesses
will work with you on this.

I also don't know what more laws you want. As a business, you have to be so
careful as to not step on someone's toes or offend them or you will find
yourself in a lawsuit.

Employees have nearly all the power in today's society (especially with
hashtag warriors starting digital riots against companies that do any little
thing they don't like), and somehow you think you need more? It just doesn't
make any sense to me beyond pure greed and entitlement.

"After all, we live in a time where incredible wealth is being created (it
just seems to be hoarded by the 1%)"

Worldwide, you are in the top 1% if you are making more than ~$30,000/year.

I know the current narrative is to punish the 1% for 'hoarding' money and
somehow screwing you out of your earnings, but it's just not happening.

~~~
MrTonyD
"IT industry probably have the cushiest jobs"

This isn't selfishly just about me, this is about what makes sense for our
society.

"Employee/Employer relationships are usually legally bound by a contract"

There is a long history of contract terms being set by the more powerful party
- and it is almost always workers who need the job and have less power.

"it's no fault but your own"

This completely ignores that opportunities are defined by our society - and
the US has very low economic mobility.

"what's missing is education"

For over a decade education has not provided an improved salary in spite of
much improved GDP. The perception of better salary has been shown to be
lowered salary for the rest of society (excluding the 1% of course.)

"what more laws you want"

We could start by emulating other countries. Denmark workers join Unions which
are funded through government. Flexcurity offsets "at will employment" with a
great social safety net and free education. Corporatism creates "interest
groups" which can be involved with decision-making for employers and
industries. Some countries require employees on the board. Some countries only
purchase from companies with transparent finances (no offshores). And these
are just some techniques proven to work, there are many others which may be a
good idea.

------
kelukelugames
_Anderson also says he may have been terminated because he reported that an
employee tried to bribe him to reduce a co-worker 's performance score. The
lawsuit says that employee had a "personal relationship" with Anderson's
manager, who later gave Anderson a low score._

This is the most believable line to me.

------
jroseattle
It's obvious that many review systems aren't designed to help an employee, but
rather provide management with justification to make staffing adjustments
while providing CYA cover to all parties involved. Sounds like Yahoo's is
really no different in that respect.

I have a non-scientific suspicion that performance reviews are going to become
the next industry "thing" that prospective candidates evaluate before joining
a company. On par with evaluation of benefits, comp structure, etc.

We're aiming to improve perf evaluation in my company, and I'll actively
promote that with prospective candidates when we begin to see benefit. We want
to identify and reward top performers, and provide support to the bottom to
enable them to improve. (We're driving toward a culture that views under-
achieving performance first as a failure of management.) We want this to be a
strength, and something that our teams use throughout their time with us.

~~~
rewqfdsa
> I have a non-scientific suspicion that performance reviews are going to
> become the next industry "thing" that prospective candidates evaluate before
> joining a company.

It's not already? The performance review system is something I evaluate very
critically before deciding whether to join a company. Use Microsoft-style
stack ranking? I'll pass.

------
MollyR
Wow if that's true, this is not the way to reduce the gender gap.

~~~
tajen
I'm very happy that a lawsuit on male discrimination is happening. Being a
male programmer, I have seen many females around me being more promoted than
men, in my 3 companies. I cannot determine whether there is actually a
discrimination happening, but I can tell that "statistics don't match my
experience".

So a lawsuit is one way of determining the "truth, according to the law". And
on the other hand, there starts to be gender equality if both genders sue
equally often for discrimination. It's ironic, but it's positive.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
It could simply be, that your company recognizes talent wherever it finds it.
And women flock there because they can succeed there. That would just make it,
competition.

As society changes, there will be many apparent imbalances. To tell if
something is wrong, we cannot just look at statistics. There must be a better
test for 'inequality'.

~~~
tajen
Because women are more talentful? If something irritates me, it's newspapers
full of articles saying that women are better at work than men, women
lecturing men on being being accordingly stupid, and no quality attributed to
men about work or private life, apart from being stronger (yay, stronger, a
great brain-dead prejudice).

I included your lecturing in my original comment, it's an humiliation that you
could think I oversaw such aspects.

~~~
ergothus
Just as a note, as I know nothing about your or your situation, but reacting
angrily will NOT help any impressions you are giving.

Frankly, when someone tells me they work in a tech place where women are
successful, I'm jealous. So if you want to point out that there is some
hostile bias at work and not just the lack of hostile environments that drive
women away from so many places, you need to prove that. Coming across as a
woman-hating man does not accomplish this (Again, I don't know you, I'm only
saying the impression you are giving).

~~~
oh_sigh
> Frankly, when someone tells me they work in a tech place where women are
> successful, I'm jealous.

I think the key there is "where women are successful *at mens expense" (feel
free to swap the genders as well).

~~~
pc86
Well promotions are by definition zero sum. Promotion of any individual is at
the expense of every other qualified individual who wanted the job.

~~~
oh_sigh
You're assuming there is a fixed pie. What if the company is growing?

~~~
pc86
It's still zero sum for the current employees. Only the following scenarios
are possible whether a company is growing or not:

    
    
      1. Nobody gets the promotion
      2. Somebody outside the company gets the promotion
      3. Somebody inside the company who isn't me gets the promotion
      4. I get the promotion
    

With the exception of #1, I only get the promotion at the expense of my
coworkers (who want and are qualified for the job).

Edit: Put a better way, it is zero sum because you and your coworkers cannot
equally share in the benefits of a promotion.

------
maxaf
It would appear that Yahoo had forsaken the three D-s of firing: Document,
Document, and Document some more. Employees fired for legitimate cause usually
leave behind a trail of evidence wider than the New Jersey Turnpike. This
documentation can take many forms, and is astonishingly easy to come by in
today's increasingly data-driven workplace.

Yahoo's apparent inability to gather evidence is just another sign of a poorly
run company. Who will miss them once they've gone for good?

~~~
paulddraper
You're right about what HR should have done, but you're overplaying the
significance towards Yahoo's current position.

------
gosukiwi
Sounds like an awful place to work at.

------
elgenie
The allegations sound very bad if true, but that's table stakes for a wrongful
termination lawsuit. Given the timing, most likely this gets settled for a
tidy sum.

------
timrpeterson
Noteworthy dirth of comments in the normally chatty HN audience. Untouchable
subject sadly.

~~~
krschultz
Wrongful firing lawsuits are incredibly common across all industries. The
merit of the case is impossible to figure out from a news article. People can
speculate all they want, but really no one knows the facts other than those
privy to the actual lawsuit.

~~~
kelukelugames
Where is the vitriol people directed at Ellen Pao?

~~~
tetromino_
IIRC, vitriol started to be directed at Ellen Pao only once she was cross-
examined in court, giving specific details, and her claims of discrimination
suddenly seemed much weaker than what the media had been reporting before the
trial.

I would expect exactly the same thing to happen here if the case ever goes to
trial and Anderson's testimony in the courtroom doesn't support his initial
claims as presented in the media.

~~~
magicalist
> _IIRC, vitriol started to be directed at Ellen Pao only once she was cross-
> examined in court_

It certainly increased after the court case began, but certainly some, uh,
strong opinions from the start:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4008796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4008796)

~~~
kelukelugames
I read the first thread. People are under informed about discrimination cases.
Ending an affair in the workplace is a common trigger for retaliation. Yet,
someone argued that a woman was more likely to fabricate complaints after
ending a relationship. Who is more likely to be vindictive? The manager or the
employee? Most people acknowledge power tends to corrupt.

Though Pao did have a few things going against her. Husband wasn't a pillar of
the community. The actual case, according to my employment lawyer friend, was
weak.

