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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 o

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.

lefstathiou 9y ago
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.
- thebiglebrewski 9y ago
  I didn't know Smoove B was on Hacker News. Oooooh yeah. http://www.theonion.com/personalities/smoove-b-1022 http://www.theonion.com/personalities/smoove-b-1022
- thebiglebrewski 9y ago
  Also woah I didn't read your whole comment. "Will men consider beautiful girls a risk to the workplace?" What kind of question is that? So beautiful girls don't have a right to a job because men are afraid of them? Honestly that's kind of messed up to think about. "Beautiful girls" are people too...
  - rndmwlk 9y ago
    >Also woah I didn't read your whole comment. Is this some form of satire? I would suggest reading their whole comment or refraining from commenting yourself.
    - thebiglebrewski 9y ago
      No this comment was not. Sorry if you thought my comment was offensive. I'm just saying that I think it's offensive to say that "beautiful women" are a problem in an office as if they're not people too...is that an outlandish thing to think?
      - thebiglebrewski 9y ago
        ...apparently it is judging by the number of downvotes I'm getting.
      - bluntfang 9y ago
        it's outlandish to think that your reading comprehension is so poor, but it true.
        thebiglebrewski 9y ago

lefstathiou 9y ago

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.

thebiglebrewski 9y ago
I didn't know Smoove B was on Hacker News. Oooooh yeah. http://www.theonion.com/personalities/smoove-b-1022 http://www.theonion.com/personalities/smoove-b-1022
thebiglebrewski 9y ago
Also woah I didn't read your whole comment. "Will men consider beautiful girls a risk to the workplace?" What kind of question is that? So beautiful girls don't have a right to a job because men are afraid of them? Honestly that's kind of messed up to think about. "Beautiful girls" are people too...
- rndmwlk 9y ago
  >Also woah I didn't read your whole comment. Is this some form of satire? I would suggest reading their whole comment or refraining from commenting yourself.
  - thebiglebrewski 9y ago
    No this comment was not. Sorry if you thought my comment was offensive. I'm just saying that I think it's offensive to say that "beautiful women" are a problem in an office as if they're not people too...is that an outlandish thing to think?
    - thebiglebrewski 9y ago
      ...apparently it is judging by the number of downvotes I'm getting.
    - bluntfang 9y ago
      it's outlandish to think that your reading comprehension is so poor, but it true.
      - thebiglebrewski 9y ago