8 ms·
I spoke up about Rivian’s toxic bro culture and got fired
- ravedave5 5y agoThis is wild, my wife was hired as a supervisor at a sporting goods store ~15 years ago and faced almost the same style of discrimination. Meetings held with all the other super visors except her, Work that should have been hers given to other supervisors, boss was hard to meet with. What a strange pattern of behavior.
- greenail 5y agoFirst question I would have is why did they hire a woman if they didn't want her to succeed? Just to marginalize her? There are not many details in the article so we can only guess.
- jacquesm 5y agoAs a PR move. To be seen as a diverse employer by clueless outsiders.
- greenail 5y agoAssuming this is your motive you wouldn't put a token diversity hire in charge of the thing that drives your revenue. You would put them in a bullshit job that had no impact on your top or bottom lines.
- jacquesm 5y agoAccording to the article that's exactly what they did. Nominally in charge but actually completely ignored, she was quite literally hired as a figurehead due to her pedigree, not because of her capabilities.
- a4isms 5y agoIt’s not an either-or, she describes her female colleagues in other positions saying the same thing. In this case, Rivian got to brag that they poached a well-respected executive with experience managing sales for a small but high-status brand. This assured investors, lenders, and the market for their IPO that they’re “growing up” and “scaling for success.” Meanwhile, they got to do whatever they felt like doing with the investment money, because they had zero intention of doing anything said executive proposed. Given sufficiently sexist and misogynist executives, hiring a woman for a role they had no intention of empowering makes even more sense than hiring a man, because misogynists would respect a man and feel bad about marginalizing them.
- greenail 5y agoSure, this is possible but based on her experience she should already be good at navigating in male dominated auto environments based on her career. The lack of details and the cynic in me tells me that if she was at-will and was fired the only way she can sue is by claiming title VII discrimination. Timing wise it also helps that they have the IPO looming. I'd love to read the actual case filing but I can't find it. If she's right I hope she wins but based on the article I am highly skeptical.
- a4isms 5y agoI will summarize your reply as: 1. If it happened the way she says it happened, it’s her fault. She ought to have known how to deal with this. 2. Alternatively, she’s a lying, scheming, conniving woman. I have nothing else to say to you.
- a4isms 5y agoPerformative inclusion. — Inclusion: A seat at the table. Equity: When you speak at the table, others listen.
- garmaine 5y agoYou mean equality.
- a4isms 5y agoIn this case, “equity” is the term I was after. Equality means treated the same as everyone else. Equity means participation, with the same roots as when we talk about common stock being “equity.” If management excluded everyone in sales from meetings regardless of gender, the author might have equality but not equity. Whereas if management ignored everyone in sales but listened to the author, the author would have equity without equality.
- garmaine 5y agoThat's not how the terms have been used in the past decade. "Equality" has always meant a level playing field (everyone judged based on what they bring to the table), whereas "equity" in present-day discourse means everyone is literally treated the same regardless of merit. If you want people to listen to your ideas at the table and accept or reject them based on merit, that's equality. Everyone starts off from an equal standing. If you want your one vote regardless of what people think or how grand or stupid your ideas are, that's equity. Among N people you always get 1/Nth the attention, reward, impact, etc.
- dwaltrip 5y agoYou are skeptical of the general concept of someone getting hired and then being marginalized by the same people who hired them?
- jacquesm 5y agoWow. To let go of a coveted position and then to land in a shitshow like this must be absolutely terrible. Props to her for speaking up, and taking what she wrote as true (I see no reason not to) that company should be avoided like the plague, both on your resume as well as as a potential customer or stockholder. This won't end well.
- mataug 5y agoMaybe its just correlation/coincidence but I wonder why companies associated with Jeff Bezos have such a toxic culture ?! I know Rivian is only funded by Amazon, not run by them.
- greenail 5y agoVP of sales and marketing of a 54B valuation company tends to have a bit more scrutiny so this doesn't really seem apples to apples. That aside, perhaps they didn't like her and it had nothing to do with gender?
- jacquesm 5y agoPerhaps they did, or perhaps you are dragging in your own prejudices here.
- greenail 5y agoAnything is possible. The difference between us is that you are starting with the arguably paranoid assumption that "the patriarchy" is the root of the problem and I'm starting with the Occam's razor assumption they simply didn't like her.
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, and I have a piece of evidence: the article, and you are just making stuff up.
- garmaine 5y agoThe article by itself is not evidence.
- jacquesm 5y agoNo, of course not, she's making it all up. /s
- garmaine 5y agoMaybe she is, maybe she isn’t. Maybe she earnestly believes it but is misconstruing what actually happened. We don’t know. But her account is just that: one account, which is intrinsically subjective and biased. When verifying the validity of an account, you don’t get the hold up the account itself as evidence. That would be begging the question.
- dial8now 5y agoCrazy thought here especially for you high educated coastal elites but perhaps she was already on thin ice due to underperforming and was let go. She came from a smaller luxury brand while Rivian (being an Amazon funded company) is focused on growth and scale
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]