Liz Gannes:
A who’s who of leaders from companies such as Yelp, Square, Twitter, Lyft, Airbnb, eBay, PayPal and others signed their names to a petition today urging legislatures to forbid discrimination or denial of services to anyone, saying, “Discrimination is bad for business.” Petition leader Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder and currently CEO of finance startup Affirm, told Re/code: “I am asking all CEOs to evaluate their relationships and investments in states that do not specifically protect LGBT people from discrimination.”
That’s great and even admirable, except that here on the home front, Silicon Valley has its own very obvious discrimination problems. Gender is a big one. Race is another.
Good read.
who gives a fuck if it’s bad for business? It’s just bad.
This article is BS. Statistics do not equate to discrimination. If around 70% of job applicants for engineering positions are male then it makes sense that 70% percent of the hires will be male. Should companies just hire every female applicant and only choose to be selective about which male applicants they hire?
Liz Gannes was also saying how terrible Kleiner Perkins is prior to the Ellen Pao lawsuit, and she probably still is badmouthing them — after all, they must be guilty if some smart, Harvard grad woman is suing them for sexual discrimination. Once the evidence was revealed (the actual evidence, not what the press decided to talk about) it was clear that she was not a victim and was in fact just a grudge-holding, unpleasant person to work with and refuses to take ownership of her shortcomings. Also, her husband is a wall street fraudster that owes millions of dollars for various crimes committed, which is likely why she went through with this lawsuit, knowing her chances of winning were slim at best. Maybe she’ll at least get a book or movie deal out of it since it’s so popular these days to whine about how unfair the world is for women.
If you want to really know what it’s like working in silicon valley read this:
http://recode.net/2015/03/27/what-is-silicon-valleys-problem-with-gender/
SV is one of the most diverse places in the world. I’ve been working here for over 15 years. People don’t give a shit about the color of your skin or which bathroom you use. They care about your ability to do your job.
Says a man who’s probably never had to worry about being discriminated against?
Are we really to believe in this day and age that the human rights issue most in need of Tim Cook’s attention is the plight of same sex coup,es in Indiana who can’t get pizza from one of five pizza shops in town who have religious objections to gay marriage?
Rather than, say, the homosexual Saudis who are stoned to death (what are Apple’s profits in Saudi Arabia?)?
Or the atheistic cartoonist in Paris gunned down over a cartoon, or, if you prefer, the comedian in Paris who feels the weight of the State brought down on him for saying he is Carlie Coulibaly (what are Apple’s profits in France?).
Or the prisoners in China whose organs are taken for transplant, or the Tibetans and Uighurs whose cultures are being eradicated, or the Falung Gong and non-State sanctioned Christians who are thrown in jail for peacefully practicing their religion? Or the slave laborers who work 18 hours a day in Chinese sweatshops (what are Apple’s profits in China?)?
Tim Cook is one of the greatest CEOs ever. But his priorities appear to be skewed.
It needs to be said that there are federal laws prohibiting discrimination based on gender or race – there are no such laws for gender identity. Indeed, there are states where attempts are being made to legalize such discrimination.
I think Liz needs a reminder that it’s not always about her…
you mean to say nerds are respected in this society.
Have you attended any school system here.
Do you want Nerds to be fair to Women and Jocks who now want to come in to their territory and bully nerds again.
Nerds didn’t created this industry to chase women.
I’m sure she believes in her cause and means well, but the lede and the premise are clickbait that cheapen the discourse. These issues may be fundamentally related, but there is no double standard. This method of discourse is why the phrase “perfect is the enemy of good” exists.
So women are dying to come in to a industry dominated by Nerds.
Is this country can’t even teach Algebra until grade 9
wants to show that same people who laugh at match and science
can do the job.
Most of the high schoolers cheat by getting test answers from prior year.
It is system for popular and rich kids.
a lot of doctors and nurses have been recruited from third world countries.
Why are not you crying about that.
Agree completely. Company should hire the best man or woman for the job. They shouldn’t turn down the suitable hire because of sex or race though.
If you think discrimination isn’t pervasive, you’re not paying attention. An example: https://twitter.com/joelle_emerson/status/583713476415102976
It starts at home, buddy. I’m more concerned when my own country starts passing discrimination laws than what goes on in Saudi arabia.
Why do you go to Finland for your example of SV evilness?
This is what we call “whataboutery”, and it’s a dishonest way to conduct oneself in a discussion.
I went to twitter, because that was the most recent example in my timeline from today.
This article is specifically about discrimination in silicon valley, which is nearly non-existent, as pointed out by Donna Dubinsky in the article I mentioned below:
http://recode.net/2015/03/27/what-is-silicon-valleys-problem-with-gender/
I’ve been discriminated against, but I don’t see how that is relevant.
The comments in this thread are unspecifically about discrimination in tech, which is what I was replying to. I was at Palm when Dubinsky was there, although I never ran into her. It’s possible that discrimination is worse than it was when she came up through the ranks in the early 80s. The article you linked says that women are “woefully underrepresented”. Is it your contention that women just don’t want to be in management? Or that women are just unfit for management?
First of all ‘underrepresented’ is highly subjective. Second, I happen to be screening software engineering candidates at the moment and at more than 70% of the applicants are male. Unless there is sexism going on at universities (btw, the majority of college-level students are female), then I have a hard time believing that is somehow preventing women from applying.
Perhaps men and women, being quite different from one another in many ways (see: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/male-and-female-brains-really-are-built-differently/281962/ ), generally have different interests? Or is that a sexist thing to say?
Sexist or not, it’s an easy thing to say, and gets you off the hook from any responsibility or need to change anything. “That’s just the way it is.”
I like how you point to an article, I quote from it, and you say “oh, that’s highly subjective.” 🙂
This topic has been discussed before, of course. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8490074
There is evidence that girls have gradually been pushed out of computer science, in part by the targeting of games towards adolescent boys. This leads towards the impression that computers aren’t for girls, women in university don’t go for computer science, and boom, 70% of your applicants are men. Big surprise.
I’m sure it’s not cause-and-effect cut-and-dried, but try this: follow someone on twitter like Brianna Wu, or read some feminist articles. The crap that women in tech have to put up with is way beyond anything I run into, and I’ve come around to believe that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
Do you honestly doubt whether there is sexism in technical departments at universities, simply because you’ve never personally experienced any?
It starts at home? Apple is more at home in China than the U.S. and will shortly be making more profit there as well.
More power to them, and Cook, but the hypocrisy remains.