I'm surprised it took so long, actually. What did she expect? Suing her employer makes her a massive liability to the firm. The only thing keeping her there was how a firing would reflect on the case and in the press. KPCB must've decided that the bad press was the better alternative (and rightly so, IMHO).
Exactly, I don't know why she didn't quit right away- even if it turns out her claims are completely true, can she still work in a place that she's (successfully or unsuccessfully) sued? And why would she want to? And why would you want an employee who's sued you? Is it standard to keep going to work after suing someone?
I have no idea who this person is. From what I understand she sued her employer because she claims she "was shut out of promotions" and did (or did not) get fired. Then she used Quora to tell the world she was fired. Her employer replied saying she was not fired, but is "in a successful career transition".
I suppose she was done working anywhere. Who would want to hire someone like that?
I would hire someone like that. People who are not afraid to stand up and speak loudly when they feel that they have been mistreated are a valuable asset, assuming that you don't mistreat them. For everyone who runs their company on secrets, bullshit and idiocy, they are a terrible liability.
You said it exactly: "They feel that they have been mistreated... It's a feeling and you can never control how someone feels. At her level I would expect her to be professional about it and communicate within the team about her feelings. I don't think suing and posting on Quora helps her or the company involved. That was 100% "feelings" as well. Not professional.
You are right that it's often tactically the wrong decision to post about an ongoing dispute. I will give you that. I'd be surprised if any attorney would recommend for her to post on Quora about the termination while the suit was ongoing.
However, this one-sided "professionalism" whereby people are expected to keep the secrets of employers who fuck them over is disgusting. That expectation exists because there's a power relationship, and because society really hasn't advanced much out of the Dark Ages, and not for any good moral reason.
You are referring to people being slavish and excessively subservient to authority figures? I wasn't looking at it that way. I was merely thinking she would like to work somewhere else again. The way she publicly played this makes her look unprofessional. If you have a feeling you're being fucked over, make a case, collect the evidence and by all means, break the news. But don't go all emotional and start posting on Quora and then keep quit about the whole case. The way she handled this does not make her case stronger, only weaker.
Who is right or wrong (she or the firm), it is hard for outsiders to decide without knowing the facts. But what is very very sad is the fact that much of the "civilized" society accepts that:
1. Employers can treat their employees like crap, not many people seem to be bothered by it. But when a employee says anything even remotely bad, suddenly he/she is unprofessional, immature etc
2. In the case of whistle blowers, we spend more time arguing the behavior of the whistle blower (aka the "correct" way of whistle blowing) than actually looking into the allegations.
So in short, even if I (the whistle blower) have a legitimate case (racism, ageism, sexism...whatever), then I am expected to act totally "professional" if I ever expect to be taken seriously.
Having seen whistle-blowing cases play out, there's never a socially "acceptable" to raise this sort of issue. No matter when you do it, people will say that you were "emotional", blew the whistle "too soon" (oblivious to the failed negotiations they didn't see) and "bit the hand".
In Hollywood movies, people like whistleblowers.
Unfortunately, in real life, whistleblowers almost always get a negative reception, even from people who are supposed to be neutral because they have no obvious interest. (People just don't like bad news, full stop.) And the discussion usually gets to a smear against how they are saying it (status reduction) rather than what they are saying. The goal is to create the appearance that: (a) this person didn't go through proper channels, and (b) therefore isn't worth listening to, and (c) deserves various unrelated adverse consequences (such as being blacklisted from future employment) that will make it harder to concentrate from the case at hand.
You're right that her employment opportunities in the future are damaged by this. That's the reality of the world we live in. It shouldn't be that way, but powerful people tend to protect their own.
You are absolutely correct. Ive seen local whistle blowers get seriously mangled for decades... The info user "michaelochurch" (top) just provided makes me think the company she used to work for is a huge bag of dicks. Her claims might well be relevant. At the end of the day her reputation (and future) could well be seriously damaged. You could ask yourself if that was worth it...
The danger of he-said/she-said contests is that peoples' perceptions (myself included) end up being biased heavily by their own attitudes toward power. This can be described as an emotional left/right that may or may not correlate with economics. (Many libertarians are emotionally leftist-- they despise centralized power-- but economically toward the right. They just happen to see governments as more of an enemy than corporations... and I disagree with them, but that's another story.) This whole mess is probably the result of a failed negotiation and we have no way of knowing who failed, miscommunicated, or did wrong.
If there isn't much hard evidence (and in this case, there's not) then people will tend to side with power if they're emotionally rightist and against power if they're emotional leftists. (I'm an emotional leftist, as you can probably tell.)
What you discover when you become a whistleblower is that about 70 percent of people are on the emotional right. They think they're in the center because they don't reject the whistleblower out of hand (instead, they complain that "she may be right, but she didn't use proper channels and I certainly want nothing to do with this matter.") That's not always a bad thing; the powerful entity is known, and the whistleblower is a total unknown, and people tend to be afraid of unknowns. It does, however, make it very difficult to be an effective whistleblower. Worse yet, an even larger percentage of people in positions of power (such as future employers) are on the emotional right.
White-collar employment culture is emotionally rightist in the extreme; if your ex-company says you weren't a leader and you say you were, they're often taken to be right and you're wrong. It's extremely unfortunate and wrong that it's this way, but I don't see how it could be any different (surprise: high-ranking people in powerful institutions tend to side with power) but it is something one needs to be aware of.
>if your ex-company says you weren't a leader and you say you were, they're often taken to be right and you're wrong
This is true, the best solution is normally to go elsewhere and succeed. Whether that means at another company or on your own. People tend to have a lens through which they understand the world, once they have slotted you it is over (see: bozo bit, various cognitive biases, etc...)
But at her level, as a partner to the firm, she would be expected to deal with litigation. So yes, her behavior here is absolutely a professional issue. Her Quora post is such an insanely bad idea that it does cast some doubt as to her professional behavior, and how she would react in a similar high stress situation involving a lawsuit.
I don't have a problem with the fact that she filed the suit. She clearly felt discriminated and harassed enough to file it. It's fine to drop a line to journalists with the unsealed court documents, and build your public opinion case that way.
I don't see how suing my employer can ever be the right answer when passed over for a promotion. For something as subjective as employee performance in a company, I am the last person qualified to evaluate my own performance or suitability for leadership. In general, an individual's word is worth less than an organization's, particularly when it concerns their own financial interests. Any winnings in the slim chance a discrimination suit against my employer goes in my favor are likely outweighed by the damage to my career as I am seen as a litigation risk for the rest of my life.
You are saying you would hire the accuser before her case is even sorted out? Why do you assume her version of events are true, and her employer's version false?
Just because you don't get the promotion you feel entitled to, doesn't mean you should sue your employer for discrimination.
I think she definitely cut her ties to the VC world by doing this which is why it's such a big deal despite none of us knowing who she is- she's either forfeiting her career to take a stand, or she's forfeiting her career for money/attention. Which possibility sounds more probable? I don't know.
The only thing I know about her is an article from when this lawsuit first came out saying her married boss gave her a book on sex poetry with a handwritten note inside of it. She claimed he would often make suggestive remarks and the others wouldn't invite her to parties with founders bc having a woman would "kill the buzz" (Is this tenable? Do men think women kill the buzz? I always get invited to stuff but I don't know if I'm missing special male tech networking parties). Those claims sound really gross and easily testable- if she has the book then they should fire that guy and if witnesses come forward saying they had all-male VC-founder parties then that's evidence of gender affecting her networking and career.
I don't think we'll ever know whether she's right or wrong. She could quite possibly be in the wrong, but I increasingly doubt it the more I read.
Here's why: her firm acted like a massive dick.
First, making employees sign a non-disparagement, arbitration-only agreement (except as a term in a severance negotiation) is vile and should be illegal. You're effectively threatening to fire someone (or rescind an offer) if he or she doesn't give up a basic right.
All of these "Here's what rights you would have if we fired you, but you have to give them up to work for us" terms (non-disparagement, non-litigation or arbitration-only, non-solicitation of employees) are unethical and only exist because most people can't afford to be without an income. They are contracts under duress and should be categorically stricken.
Second, rather than arguing that the discrimination claims are untrue by bashing the employee's performance, the appropriate thing to do would have been to establish with actual data (not performance reviews, which can be fudged) that she wasn't experienced enough for the promotion, and that she would have been the least qualified person at that level if she had been promoted. The proper way to handle a bogus harassment claim (if it is that, and I doubt it given the way the firm has behaved) is to show the person's trajectory of promotions, and then show the average for a person of that experience, and to use hard data. "The average partner makes senior partner after 7 years. She was only here for 4." Or: "To make senior partner, we generally expect that a person bring in $20 million in business. She brought in $12 million." That's what you do if you're decent.
Also, the truth is that a company in that position will almost never need to air performance reviews. Unless this was a "lock-step" or expected promotion where it's professionally damaging not to get it, the onus is (or at least should be) on her to prove, using hard data, that she did deserve to get the promotion. If they were decent, they'd sit back and wait for her to make a case that she did deserve the promotion, and then argue against that.
Third, they are asking to have her pay their legal fees. They are a venture capital firm. When you're that rich, trying to scrounge money off of people who are quite possibly not rich is pretty debased: an inverse Robin Hood sort of thing.
Fourth, using performance reviews for anything other than direct feedback is immoral and, itself, constitutes legalized (but ethically illegitimate) harassment. If performance reviews are confidential between manager and employee, then that's how things should be. They should be direct feedback for mutual benefit, and nothing more. If they're aired to the public, that's wrong. That's effectively extortion.
How are employment contracts for 6-figure jobs "under duress"? KPCB isn't obliged to hire anyone. It seems entirely reasonable that they should be able to choose their own terms, and, similarly, if employee candidates don't like those terms, they don't take the job.
What you've done here is subtly shifted the frame of the discussion. You make it sound like if she didn't sign the contract, she'd be fired. That's not at all what happened, is it?. As a prospective hire at one of the most "prestigious" VC firms in the country, this person no doubt had many options for where to work next. Kleiner extended her an offer and with it an employment contract, right? If she didn't think she could keep the promises in that contract, she should have gone somewhere else.
I'm also not sure what their being a "VC firm" has to do with who pays legal fees. The rules aren't different for "rich" firms and "poor" firms. People make frivolous claims to both kinds of companies, and larger companies shouldn't have to shoulder the legal costs of fending off bogus claims simply because they're larger. Obviously, if KPCB is wrong about what happened, it's they who will be paying the legal fees. What matters is who's right and who's wrong, not which side of the conflict is easier to caricature.
I have no opinion about the sexual harassment charge itself, nor do I think that "non-disparagement" clauses should (or even can) prevent someone from litigating a sexual harassment or discrimination charge, or even from making a case to the public about them. No doubt KPCB's lawyers want that clause to shut down the drama, but there's a public interest issue involved in firms forcing employees out due to sexual discrimination or harassment.
The reality here is probably that you don't know anything about what happened with Ellen Pao and Kleiner Perkins, but that this is a message board and so you feel it's appropriate to litigate the issue with cartoons. I wish you'd not do that. It makes us all dumber.
Late edit: 5 minutes of Google research suggests that non-disparagement clauses are not enforceable in matters of discrimination and, broadly, in public interest cases of all stripes; similarly (you may have already known this), where non-compete agreements are valid, they are still not enforceable when they directly harm the public interest.
The problem is what happens when all employers follow suit with this arbitration garbage and it becomes standard practice, which it is becoming. Employers have all the leverage in these cases.
What is the problem with arbitration? If I were Ms Pao, I wouldn't want a jury trial. Jurors hate people who they think are looking for a handout.
Here is how it is going to play out: "KPCB is an investment fund, meaning we take money from groups such as a teacher's union retirement fund, and invest it in companies. The returns from those investments are paid back to the investor, ultimately helping secure the retirements of teachers. We pay our employees exceptionally well, because the stakes are so high. Small investment decisions can impact the bottom line of the fund by many millions of dollars".
Juror thinks: "I am not going to take from school teachers to pay Ms Pao because her feelings were hurt. I am sorry some guy harassed her, but that doesn't mean she wins the lottery. Hell, I'd let my boss kick me in groin every day if it meant I got her salary.".
Jury trials are a bad idea when the jury can't relate to the victim. Getting a fair jury is almost impossible in a sexual harassment case.
The problem is that the company pays for the arbitor, who is usually an independent contractor hired on a per-arbitration basis. The arbitor is ecnomically pressured to side with the company, because siding against the company is likely not to result in repeat business. This effect is well-established and has been documented (I'll come back and post a reply with sources if I have the time).
Jury trials are a bad idea when the jury can't relate to the victim. Getting a fair jury is almost impossible in a sexual harassment case.
Getting a fair jury is not only possible, it's almost impossible not to get a fair jury for a civil trial. Sexual mores and attitudes have changed significantly over the past several decades, to the point where sexual harassment is no longer perceived as acceptable in the general workplace by either gender.
Note that in male-centric fields (sports, programming, etc.) attitudes toward sexual harassment have not changed as much as they have in more gender-balanced fields. This skewed perspective on sexual harassment has made more than a few plaintiff's lawyers quite wealthy.
Wow! What has here husband got to do with anything? Also you seem to be discounting her husbands claims without knowing much of his history, from being a trader I have read a lot of material on this guy and his story is nothing short of amazing. He also did get a settlement in the 80s when the firm thought that he was too young to get paid the money he earned. He settled for less than what he was supposed to get. You should really research situations before making broad claims about people and their ethics. Reading one nymag article is not research. Regarding Ellen Pao, I will wait to hear more evidence before I make any accusations but the guy that was married and always coming onto her does not seem like appropriate behavior.
How are employment contracts for 6-figure jobs "under duress"?
Those non-standard terms (non-disparagement, arbitration only) are almost always presented after the person has gone through the interview process, accepted an offer, and given notice at the previous employer. If the companies put those policies on their websites for the public to find, then it wouldn't be under duress. Companies with onerous employment terms would be known to have them before people spent time on an interview.
"If EA were some kind of exploitative entity, wouldn't we have heard about it sooner? Wouldn't we have heard about it from multiple people? Instead, it's coming from someone whose husband clearly had trouble climbing the career ladder at the firm." [Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Hoffman]
Given the problems that suing your employer is likely to give you, few people do so even if their employer is really bad.
(I have no opinion on this case, and there are people who sue their employer for no good reason. But the fact that it's just one lady is not a strong argument.)
Agreed, moreover even if KPCB is not an "exploitative entity" as whole, it is possible this was a single case of harassment and retaliation by this guy - so there may not be multiple victims to speak up. When this kind of thing happens many companies don't know how to deal with it appropriately and maybe they didn't.
"If KPCB was some kind of discriminative entity, wouldn't we have heard about it sooner?"
This is a misleading argument. If discrimination occurs in a organisation and is reported, then someone has to report it first. Claiming that the first person to report it is not credible because they are first, and there have not been prior reports, is fallacious.
(To be clear, I'm not taking a side wrt Pao or KPCB. I've never heard of this case before, and know nothing about it. The other reasons you cite may be correct for all I know.)
