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Ellen Pao Suit Against Kleiner Perkins Heads to Trial

80 points by greenburger 12y ago

mahranch 12y ago
> An anonymous Reddit employee sent a letter to Kleiner’s legal team, asking them to subpoena Reddit employees “for information regarding conflicts with Ellen Pao.” Wow. I had heard about the case, but didn't know the drama had sprawled over to reddit. All things put aside, including my own biases, if I was reddit's board, I'd get rid of her immediately. It doesn't matter whether if her claims are justified, or even if she's 100% in the right (and Kliener was in the wrong) - she's obviously a toxic presence and brought some of that toxicity with her over to reddit.
- graeme 12y ago
  Good heavens. You've just levied a harsh accusation against Pao: you called her a toxic presence, and called for her immediate termination. Your only evidence is one letter sent by anonymous employee (assuming the NYT has accurately described the person in question and they were in fact at Reddit). It's very possible the employee just had a grudge against Pao and was trying to complicate things (No CEO will ever avoid having enemies). Or they weren't a Reddit employee at all. We know almost nothing. You're calling for a woman's career to end, and for Reddit to upend their management, based on a single anecdote. We know nothing of Pao's actual performance at Reddit. Presumably the board made her interim CEO for a reason. Claims such as yours demand much stronger evidence.
  - mahranch 12y ago
    > Your only evidence is one letter sent by anonymous employee (assuming the NYT has accurately described the person in question and they were in fact at Reddit). Do you really need more evidence? Your CEO should be a pillar of stability. A rock, a mountain of fortitude. One mistake or "situation" I can understand, but it appears her issues have followed her to reddit. There's clearly and obviously something more going on. Again the point is not one of right or wrong, but who you want heading up your company. And quite frankly, I wouldn't want her anywhere near my properties. If you have a person who never does anything wrong, but trouble has a way of following them everywhere, would you want that person working for you? Put yourself in the shoes of reddit's board. This isn't about her career, they don't care about her career, her needs or wants, it's about what's best for reddit. This isn't a fantasy world where ideology wins out, the good guy wins, and pragmatism and compromise are only found it stories... No, this is the real world where you have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks and make extremely hard and difficult decisions.
    - mentat 12y ago
      You can't possibly be serious. I've had one CEO like that over 20 years. Most CEOs are somewhat less than that and they do at least ok if not great.
- davidu 12y ago
  Such strong language, and such vitriol. If you really believe this, you need to recognize that sometimes the best people are fleeing a bad situation -- a situation that they were a victim of. I don't really know the details of what happened at KP, but I am not surprised that discrimination (deliberate or otherwise) exists in venture capital. Did it happen to her? I don't know. Will the real truth ever come out? Probably not. Are there multiple versions of the real truth? Probably. But you are calling for her termination. For something unrelated to her current job. Her resume and academic achievements place her in the exceptionally accomplished category, so to casually describe her as toxic, without first-hand experiences, seems antagonistic and trollish, at best. She can't control what an anonymous Reddit employee might or might not do. That's no reason to fire her.
  - jgoah 12y ago
    His comment history is filled with him being far more rude than is necessary. He's either a troll or an asshole. Sucks that he's here.
    - mahranch 12y ago
      Thanks for stalking me instead of taking my comment at face value (I wonder if that's a new, evolving form of the ad hominem logical fallacy). It's funny, actually. I've never seen so many downvotes flying on hackernews as I have in this thread. Not my comment, this is actually my first downvoted comment on this website in 2 years (which would contradict your claim of me being "a troll"), but watching this thread proves it's a hot button issue for many people. I'm a "she" by the way. And no, my comment history isn't littered with rude comments. I may speak frankly and honestly which is often confused with being rude, especially to those who are extremely sensitive to such things, but the hard truth should never be considered "rude", it should be welcomed. Warts and all.
      - saraid216 12y ago
        If you want your truths welcomed, don't make them hard. Is that a hard enough truth for you to swallow?
- guiambros 12y ago
  So you're putting "biases aside", but yet you're suggesting that the board should terminate her immediately, without any investigation. And they should do this because there's one source, anonymous, alluding that she may not have treated Reddit employees properly... Seriously, I wouldn't call this a well-thought and balanced position, which is the minimum you'd expect from your board.
  - mahranch 12y ago
    I think the situation with KP should have pretty much disqualified her right off the bat. She shouldn't have been hired in the first place (though I think she got the job by default thanks to Yishan unexpectedly quitting). They shouldn't have hired her at least until her lawsuit/court case was over with. Right now it's clearly a huge distraction and has proven to be as such. If reddit didn't hire her to begin with, they wouldn't have had one of their employees telling the defense to subpena the rest of them because of all the conflicts. Her actions with that company are now affecting and a distraction for reddit itself. Put yourself in the shoes of a reddit board member and tell me you'd gladly hire her to run your company. With all her current baggage and the drama, and conflict with your current employees. Tell me you'd genuinely be happy and fine with her overseeing your company. One which happens to be one of the hottest web properties and quickest rising social media sites out there. Your job, as a board member, should be to minimize any and all risks to your business, no, investment. Ellen Pao is risk personified at the moment.
- bsder 12y ago
  Uh, no. You cannot assume anything is this case except that it is going to be very surprising. These people operate a level that normal people simply do not comprehend. They expect that the rules do not apply to them, and they respond very badly when someone breaks that bubble. This is why we have courts. And this is going to get ugly.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
michaelochurch 12y ago
I hope she wins, but this issue is a lot bigger than this one case, and what we also need is a new law that holds investors responsible for the conduct of the people they fund. Right now, they can fund frat boys and while the frat boys get sued for sexual harassment or domestic abuse, the investors are scot-free. Indeed, the appeal of Silicon Valley and VC is the disposable company. (As in... don't like what has attached itself to your creation? Shoot it in the head.) But this allows founder quality levels to reach an all-time low, and it's time to reverse course by holding investors responsible for the character of the people they fund.
- joshu 12y ago
  Did something happen to you? This seems like an absurdly high bar.
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    The better question to ask of Michael Church would be what hasn't happened to him, from his perspective. (Then disregard his answer.)
  - pen2l 12y ago
    What do you mean "Did something happen to you?" The comment by moc is a pretty standard moc comment. (Just curious to know what you meant)
  - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    His view is that in the valley, the VC investor relationship to founders is more like an employer/employee relationship. I happen to think that is true to some extent. For all the...excess...in MoC's commentary, there are kernels of truths that people who have drunk the SV/VC kool aide are made uncomfortable by.
- kchoudhu 12y ago
  There's no way to write a law like this that isn't open to horrific abuse. If investors are going to be held responsible for their management's criminal activities, the law isn't just going to be used in Silicon Valley. I don't want to be held liable the next time I buy a few hundred shares of a company whose managers fuck up and (defraud mortgage borrowers|turn NJ into a superfund site|whatever). I'm generally very supportive of your observations about the feudal nature of Silicon Valley -- but this isn't one of your finest moments.
revelation 12y ago
VC firms are to technology businesses as Berkshire Hathaway is to journalism as owner of the The Buffalo News. This is if anything an indictment of venture capital firms.
tmpacct1 12y ago
I founded a KP backed company during those years. I'm not longer involved, so I don't have a stake in this. Likewise, I don't have any specific knowledge of the events. At the partners' meeting and other interactions, Pao seemed uninterested and out of place. Their culture seemed to be intense, friendly, joking debate. I don't think it's a gender thing, as I remember Meeker and Lee being incredibly helpful. This whole thing made more sense to me when I read http://nypost.com/2012/06/11/of-love-and-lottsa-lawsuits/ http://nypost.com/2012/06/11/of-love-and-lottsa-lawsuits/ and http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/case-builds-against-former-ny-hedgie-buddy-fletcher/ http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/case-builds-against-former-ny-h.... (To be fair, the alternate hypothesis is that they had already hurt her so badly that she checked out b/c of their actions or that I just saw some off days.)
- birken 12y ago
  I've seen VCs sleeping during partner meetings. I don't want to defend that type of behavior, but I don't think it is necessarily indicative of some deeper issues. If your company isn't in the area of expertise of a particular VC, I would imagine those meetings aren't the most exciting thing in the world and it would be easy to be uninterested.
- bjwbell 12y ago
  Wow, I wish the nyt piece mentioned the fletcher angle.
  - defen 12y ago
    It's quite a fascinating angle. In addition to all the financial fraud he's been accused of, before marrying Ms. Pao in 2007, Fletcher was in a gay relationship for at least 10 years: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/nyregion/50-million-gift-aims-to-further-legacy-of-brown-case.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/nyregion/50-million-gift-a... To me, that's interesting. We've all heard of the straight married man who comes out of the closet in mid-life and realizes he is gay, but is it at all common for the opposite to happen? Maybe I just don't know enough people.
    - 12y ago
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- pen2l 12y ago
  Spiegel is at least saying things slanderous of other people, whilst our boy Zuckerbeg expresses his willingness to share private information like social security numbers and other things to his friends of his own site's users: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks What are you going to do about it? Nothing will happen. Both of these guys are doing well and providing return to the already rich, and that's the way this world works. edit: commenter above deleted his comment sadly, for whatever it's worth, it was: > A case in point is Snapchat, the disappearing-message service. Last spring, emails that its chief executive wrote a few years ago to his Stanford fraternity brothers surfaced. They were contemptuous of women to a degree that is unquotable in a newspaper. But not unquotable on HN: http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy-frat-emails-of-snap-1582604137 http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy... Spiegel's "fuckbitchesgetleid" tagline sums up the theme of the e-mails.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    NB: I deleted my comment, because I read over the rest of the emails and my feminist rage kind of dissipated. In retrospect, the one about him getting too drunk and accidentally peeing all over some woman's shirt is more representative of the whole set.
joshlegs 12y ago
My favorite part is this: """ Ms. Pao says a married colleague pressured her into an affair and then retaliated against her when she broke it off. When she complained, she says she was discriminated against and got poor reviews, resulting ultimately in her dismissal. She accuses Kleiner of treating her “despicably, maliciously, fraudulently and oppressively” from “an improper and evil motive amounting to malice.” """ Sounds like classic blame-shifting to me.
- tsotha 12y ago
  That tripped me up, too. A colleague "pressured her into an affair"? She might have a beef if it was someone with power over her, but a colleague? When women don't want to have affairs with colleagues they say "no". Reads to me like she compromised her position at the firm and now she wants a big payday. If that's the case, I wouldn't settle with her either.
  - lurkha 12y ago
    I was on her side until I read the part about being pressured into an affair. Sexual harassment is a real, horrible thing. But an affair with a married dude??? As an educated executive level woman??! That is some bs and poor judgment. And unfortunately it casts poor light on the rest of her claims.
gnu8 12y ago
Which startups are breaking off with Kleiner Perkins over this? I want to know which founders value their principles more than money.
- hackles_raised 12y ago
  None of them if they have any sense. Would you expect them to act before a verdict is given? That seems profoundly naive and self defeating.
- s73v3r 12y ago
  You want to know what founders simply take someone's accusation at face value?
mc32 12y ago
So KPCB is retaliating with a civil lawsuit, claiming: >“lacked the ability to lead others, build consensus and be a team player, which is crucial to a successful career as a venture capital senior investing partner.” I won't pretend to know who did or said what, but language such as the above, is so broad as to mean nothing. It's typical HR verbiage used when they want to pressure someone to quit, or get them outright fired. Whosoever presides over this, I hope they seek and drill for specifics, and demands comparison with other partners' specific performance, because on its surface, you can use this as an excuse to fire anyone. And it's a particularly maddening symptom, which may not have an easy solution. One person's "exceeds expectations", is the other person's, "failed to meet expectations", it's totally arbitrary. With that filter, I can see how one moment she's a star partner, the next she's accused of the above, as retaliation.
- mathattack 12y ago
  The reality is it's very hard to have objective performance. Salespeople somewhat have it, but even then you don't know the performance of the deals until many years later. You can somewhat come up with it for VCs, but it takes many years to sort out talent vs luck vs good or bad markets. Observing the quality of decisions is by it's nature extremely subjective.
- tptacek 12y ago
  That's their claimed reason for (constructively) terminating her, right? It's not the basis of an actual claim against Pao, but a defense of their own actions. It reads like standard HR speak for an exec termination.
  - mc32 12y ago
    Yes, that's correct, it's their defense. I think my claim is that this claim is so broad as to be meaningless. It can retroactively apply to anyone because it's very unspecific. My subtext is that because the language is so broad, it can be used to excuse any firing, with or without cause. And they may cite specifics, but in reality, they could come up with similar specifics and cause for people who have not been fired. It's somewhat similar to when there are explicit rules one must live or work by, but then there are implicit rules to follow, which allow skirting of the explicit rules. This then allows the implicit rules to be used against a transgressor of choice, since they broke the explicit rules. And that aspect makes it arbitrary.
imroot 12y ago
I'm really surprised that neither KPCB or Pao has settled this out of court. It's going to be a nasty airing of dirty laundry across the board by the time this thing is over...
- nedwin 12y ago
  From the article it sounds like they tried to enter arbitration to settle the matter but it was described as being "less than productive".
martin1975 12y ago
She was "pressured" into an affair? I don't really buy that line entirely because it puts the responsibility entirely on the man who "pressured" her. She eventually gave in to the "pressure" instead of raising alarms to HR and/or John Doerr at that point about the harassment, before any sex took place. Based on what I've seen in similar scenarios - and I'm not claiming this is the case here - it is more likely that she had sex with a married man because she was implied/promised a payoff of some sort (e.g. promotion, bonus, marriage, job certainty, whatever...). Then when the man couldn't (or wouldn't) deliver, she wigged out and then they got rid of her.. and now she's putting up this jilted lover b.s. in court. Best advice someone gave me awhile back - don't dip the pen in the company ink unless it's out in the open and you intend to get hitched/married, at which point if it's some kind of a supervisory relationship, you will get reassigned. Both, not just her, should've been fired when the affair was discovered.

80 points by greenburger 12y ago

> An anonymous Reddit employee sent a letter to Kleiner’s legal team, asking them to subpoena Reddit employees “for information regarding conflicts with Ellen Pao.” Wow. I had heard about the case, but didn't know the drama had sprawled over to reddit. All things put aside, including my own biases, if I was reddit's board, I'd get rid of her immediately. It doesn't matter whether if her claims are justified, or even if she's 100% in the right (and Kliener was in the wrong) - she's obviously a toxic presence and brought some of that toxicity with her over to reddit.

graeme 12y ago
Good heavens. You've just levied a harsh accusation against Pao: you called her a toxic presence, and called for her immediate termination. Your only evidence is one letter sent by anonymous employee (assuming the NYT has accurately described the person in question and they were in fact at Reddit). It's very possible the employee just had a grudge against Pao and was trying to complicate things (No CEO will ever avoid having enemies). Or they weren't a Reddit employee at all. We know almost nothing. You're calling for a woman's career to end, and for Reddit to upend their management, based on a single anecdote. We know nothing of Pao's actual performance at Reddit. Presumably the board made her interim CEO for a reason. Claims such as yours demand much stronger evidence.
- mahranch 12y ago
  > Your only evidence is one letter sent by anonymous employee (assuming the NYT has accurately described the person in question and they were in fact at Reddit). Do you really need more evidence? Your CEO should be a pillar of stability. A rock, a mountain of fortitude. One mistake or "situation" I can understand, but it appears her issues have followed her to reddit. There's clearly and obviously something more going on. Again the point is not one of right or wrong, but who you want heading up your company. And quite frankly, I wouldn't want her anywhere near my properties. If you have a person who never does anything wrong, but trouble has a way of following them everywhere, would you want that person working for you? Put yourself in the shoes of reddit's board. This isn't about her career, they don't care about her career, her needs or wants, it's about what's best for reddit. This isn't a fantasy world where ideology wins out, the good guy wins, and pragmatism and compromise are only found it stories... No, this is the real world where you have to weigh the benefits and drawbacks and make extremely hard and difficult decisions.
  - mentat 12y ago
    You can't possibly be serious. I've had one CEO like that over 20 years. Most CEOs are somewhat less than that and they do at least ok if not great.
davidu 12y ago
Such strong language, and such vitriol. If you really believe this, you need to recognize that sometimes the best people are fleeing a bad situation -- a situation that they were a victim of. I don't really know the details of what happened at KP, but I am not surprised that discrimination (deliberate or otherwise) exists in venture capital. Did it happen to her? I don't know. Will the real truth ever come out? Probably not. Are there multiple versions of the real truth? Probably. But you are calling for her termination. For something unrelated to her current job. Her resume and academic achievements place her in the exceptionally accomplished category, so to casually describe her as toxic, without first-hand experiences, seems antagonistic and trollish, at best. She can't control what an anonymous Reddit employee might or might not do. That's no reason to fire her.
- jgoah 12y ago
  His comment history is filled with him being far more rude than is necessary. He's either a troll or an asshole. Sucks that he's here.
  - mahranch 12y ago
    Thanks for stalking me instead of taking my comment at face value (I wonder if that's a new, evolving form of the ad hominem logical fallacy). It's funny, actually. I've never seen so many downvotes flying on hackernews as I have in this thread. Not my comment, this is actually my first downvoted comment on this website in 2 years (which would contradict your claim of me being "a troll"), but watching this thread proves it's a hot button issue for many people. I'm a "she" by the way. And no, my comment history isn't littered with rude comments. I may speak frankly and honestly which is often confused with being rude, especially to those who are extremely sensitive to such things, but the hard truth should never be considered "rude", it should be welcomed. Warts and all.
    - saraid216 12y ago
      If you want your truths welcomed, don't make them hard. Is that a hard enough truth for you to swallow?
guiambros 12y ago
So you're putting "biases aside", but yet you're suggesting that the board should terminate her immediately, without any investigation. And they should do this because there's one source, anonymous, alluding that she may not have treated Reddit employees properly... Seriously, I wouldn't call this a well-thought and balanced position, which is the minimum you'd expect from your board.
- mahranch 12y ago
  I think the situation with KP should have pretty much disqualified her right off the bat. She shouldn't have been hired in the first place (though I think she got the job by default thanks to Yishan unexpectedly quitting). They shouldn't have hired her at least until her lawsuit/court case was over with. Right now it's clearly a huge distraction and has proven to be as such. If reddit didn't hire her to begin with, they wouldn't have had one of their employees telling the defense to subpena the rest of them because of all the conflicts. Her actions with that company are now affecting and a distraction for reddit itself. Put yourself in the shoes of a reddit board member and tell me you'd gladly hire her to run your company. With all her current baggage and the drama, and conflict with your current employees. Tell me you'd genuinely be happy and fine with her overseeing your company. One which happens to be one of the hottest web properties and quickest rising social media sites out there. Your job, as a board member, should be to minimize any and all risks to your business, no, investment. Ellen Pao is risk personified at the moment.
bsder 12y ago
Uh, no. You cannot assume anything is this case except that it is going to be very surprising. These people operate a level that normal people simply do not comprehend. They expect that the rules do not apply to them, and they respond very badly when someone breaks that bubble. This is why we have courts. And this is going to get ugly.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

michaelochurch 12y ago

I hope she wins, but this issue is a lot bigger than this one case, and what we also need is a new law that holds investors responsible for the conduct of the people they fund. Right now, they can fund frat boys and while the frat boys get sued for sexual harassment or domestic abuse, the investors are scot-free. Indeed, the appeal of Silicon Valley and VC is the disposable company. (As in... don't like what has attached itself to your creation? Shoot it in the head.) But this allows founder quality levels to reach an all-time low, and it's time to reverse course by holding investors responsible for the character of the people they fund.

joshu 12y ago
Did something happen to you? This seems like an absurdly high bar.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  The better question to ask of Michael Church would be what hasn't happened to him, from his perspective. (Then disregard his answer.)
- pen2l 12y ago
  What do you mean "Did something happen to you?" The comment by moc is a pretty standard moc comment. (Just curious to know what you meant)
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  His view is that in the valley, the VC investor relationship to founders is more like an employer/employee relationship. I happen to think that is true to some extent. For all the...excess...in MoC's commentary, there are kernels of truths that people who have drunk the SV/VC kool aide are made uncomfortable by.
kchoudhu 12y ago
There's no way to write a law like this that isn't open to horrific abuse. If investors are going to be held responsible for their management's criminal activities, the law isn't just going to be used in Silicon Valley. I don't want to be held liable the next time I buy a few hundred shares of a company whose managers fuck up and (defraud mortgage borrowers|turn NJ into a superfund site|whatever). I'm generally very supportive of your observations about the feudal nature of Silicon Valley -- but this isn't one of your finest moments.

revelation 12y ago

VC firms are to technology businesses as Berkshire Hathaway is to journalism as owner of the The Buffalo News. This is if anything an indictment of venture capital firms.

tmpacct1 12y ago

I founded a KP backed company during those years. I'm not longer involved, so I don't have a stake in this. Likewise, I don't have any specific knowledge of the events. At the partners' meeting and other interactions, Pao seemed uninterested and out of place. Their culture seemed to be intense, friendly, joking debate. I don't think it's a gender thing, as I remember Meeker and Lee being incredibly helpful. This whole thing made more sense to me when I read http://nypost.com/2012/06/11/of-love-and-lottsa-lawsuits/ http://nypost.com/2012/06/11/of-love-and-lottsa-lawsuits/ and http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/case-builds-against-former-ny-hedgie-buddy-fletcher/ http://nypost.com/2015/02/18/case-builds-against-former-ny-h.... (To be fair, the alternate hypothesis is that they had already hurt her so badly that she checked out b/c of their actions or that I just saw some off days.)

birken 12y ago
I've seen VCs sleeping during partner meetings. I don't want to defend that type of behavior, but I don't think it is necessarily indicative of some deeper issues. If your company isn't in the area of expertise of a particular VC, I would imagine those meetings aren't the most exciting thing in the world and it would be easy to be uninterested.
bjwbell 12y ago
Wow, I wish the nyt piece mentioned the fletcher angle.
- defen 12y ago
  It's quite a fascinating angle. In addition to all the financial fraud he's been accused of, before marrying Ms. Pao in 2007, Fletcher was in a gay relationship for at least 10 years: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/nyregion/50-million-gift-aims-to-further-legacy-of-brown-case.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/18/nyregion/50-million-gift-a... To me, that's interesting. We've all heard of the straight married man who comes out of the closet in mid-life and realizes he is gay, but is it at all common for the opposite to happen? Maybe I just don't know enough people.
  - 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pen2l 12y ago
Spiegel is at least saying things slanderous of other people, whilst our boy Zuckerbeg expresses his willingness to share private information like social security numbers and other things to his friends of his own site's users: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/14/facebook_trust_dumb/ Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks What are you going to do about it? Nothing will happen. Both of these guys are doing well and providing return to the already rich, and that's the way this world works. edit: commenter above deleted his comment sadly, for whatever it's worth, it was: > A case in point is Snapchat, the disappearing-message service. Last spring, emails that its chief executive wrote a few years ago to his Stanford fraternity brothers surfaced. They were contemptuous of women to a degree that is unquotable in a newspaper. But not unquotable on HN: http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy-frat-emails-of-snap-1582604137 http://valleywag.gawker.com/fuck-bitches-get-leid-the-sleazy... Spiegel's "fuckbitchesgetleid" tagline sums up the theme of the e-mails.
- rayiner 12y ago
  NB: I deleted my comment, because I read over the rest of the emails and my feminist rage kind of dissipated. In retrospect, the one about him getting too drunk and accidentally peeing all over some woman's shirt is more representative of the whole set.

joshlegs 12y ago

My favorite part is this: """ Ms. Pao says a married colleague pressured her into an affair and then retaliated against her when she broke it off. When she complained, she says she was discriminated against and got poor reviews, resulting ultimately in her dismissal. She accuses Kleiner of treating her “despicably, maliciously, fraudulently and oppressively” from “an improper and evil motive amounting to malice.” """ Sounds like classic blame-shifting to me.

tsotha 12y ago
That tripped me up, too. A colleague "pressured her into an affair"? She might have a beef if it was someone with power over her, but a colleague? When women don't want to have affairs with colleagues they say "no". Reads to me like she compromised her position at the firm and now she wants a big payday. If that's the case, I wouldn't settle with her either.
- lurkha 12y ago
  I was on her side until I read the part about being pressured into an affair. Sexual harassment is a real, horrible thing. But an affair with a married dude??? As an educated executive level woman??! That is some bs and poor judgment. And unfortunately it casts poor light on the rest of her claims.

gnu8 12y ago

Which startups are breaking off with Kleiner Perkins over this? I want to know which founders value their principles more than money.

hackles_raised 12y ago
None of them if they have any sense. Would you expect them to act before a verdict is given? That seems profoundly naive and self defeating.
s73v3r 12y ago
You want to know what founders simply take someone's accusation at face value?

mc32 12y ago

So KPCB is retaliating with a civil lawsuit, claiming: >“lacked the ability to lead others, build consensus and be a team player, which is crucial to a successful career as a venture capital senior investing partner.” I won't pretend to know who did or said what, but language such as the above, is so broad as to mean nothing. It's typical HR verbiage used when they want to pressure someone to quit, or get them outright fired. Whosoever presides over this, I hope they seek and drill for specifics, and demands comparison with other partners' specific performance, because on its surface, you can use this as an excuse to fire anyone. And it's a particularly maddening symptom, which may not have an easy solution. One person's "exceeds expectations", is the other person's, "failed to meet expectations", it's totally arbitrary. With that filter, I can see how one moment she's a star partner, the next she's accused of the above, as retaliation.

mathattack 12y ago
The reality is it's very hard to have objective performance. Salespeople somewhat have it, but even then you don't know the performance of the deals until many years later. You can somewhat come up with it for VCs, but it takes many years to sort out talent vs luck vs good or bad markets. Observing the quality of decisions is by it's nature extremely subjective.
tptacek 12y ago
That's their claimed reason for (constructively) terminating her, right? It's not the basis of an actual claim against Pao, but a defense of their own actions. It reads like standard HR speak for an exec termination.
- mc32 12y ago
  Yes, that's correct, it's their defense. I think my claim is that this claim is so broad as to be meaningless. It can retroactively apply to anyone because it's very unspecific. My subtext is that because the language is so broad, it can be used to excuse any firing, with or without cause. And they may cite specifics, but in reality, they could come up with similar specifics and cause for people who have not been fired. It's somewhat similar to when there are explicit rules one must live or work by, but then there are implicit rules to follow, which allow skirting of the explicit rules. This then allows the implicit rules to be used against a transgressor of choice, since they broke the explicit rules. And that aspect makes it arbitrary.

imroot 12y ago

I'm really surprised that neither KPCB or Pao has settled this out of court. It's going to be a nasty airing of dirty laundry across the board by the time this thing is over...

nedwin 12y ago
From the article it sounds like they tried to enter arbitration to settle the matter but it was described as being "less than productive".

martin1975 12y ago

She was "pressured" into an affair? I don't really buy that line entirely because it puts the responsibility entirely on the man who "pressured" her. She eventually gave in to the "pressure" instead of raising alarms to HR and/or John Doerr at that point about the harassment, before any sex took place. Based on what I've seen in similar scenarios - and I'm not claiming this is the case here - it is more likely that she had sex with a married man because she was implied/promised a payoff of some sort (e.g. promotion, bonus, marriage, job certainty, whatever...). Then when the man couldn't (or wouldn't) deliver, she wigged out and then they got rid of her.. and now she's putting up this jilted lover b.s. in court. Best advice someone gave me awhile back - don't dip the pen in the company ink unless it's out in the open and you intend to get hitched/married, at which point if it's some kind of a supervisory relationship, you will get reassigned. Both, not just her, should've been fired when the affair was discovered.