Investors Who Back VC Funds Are Worried About Valley Culture (axios.com) 117
An anonymous reader shares a report: Limited partners in venture capital funds are having conversations about how to prevent themselves from investing in the next Binary Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that has collapsed over allegations that one of its co-founders sexually harassed female entrepreneurs. This includes the largest LP trade group -- the Institutional Limited Partners Association -- which tells Axios that it is planning to address these issues this summer, as part of the development of its new ILPA Principles 3.0 document. Silicon Valley, and venture capital in particular, has swept sexual harassment under the rug for decades. Binary Capital, coming on top of the situation at Uber, has grabbed that rug and begun to shake it vigorously.
Yeah but... (Score:1)
Read the allegations. It sounds like they're selectively quoting a FB message where he's accusing her of hitting on him.
This is more like the baizuo want to push for cultural takeover of SV because they consider it a strategic asset.
Tech Culture Does Protect Some Harassers (Score:5, Informative)
This is more like the baizuo want to push for cultural takeover of SV because they consider it a strategic asset.
Yup, and they'll defend bullies to do it, as long as those bullies express the right politics. A good example happened just this weekend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
TL;DW - A feminist panelist at a conference recognizes a critic in the audience and uses her position behind the mic to berate and insult him. The conference acknowledges this as violation of their rules, yet apologizes to her (without ever even contacting the attendee she abused) and still allows her to sit on a second panel about (no bullshit) dealing with harassment and bullying. One of her fellow panelists (IMO one of the kindest and most innocuous humans on the internet) has been anxious for months just knowing he'd be in same room with her and walks on eggshells around her, terrified of what might set her off. Sure enough, after the panel she immediately accosts him and cusses him out.
The conference eventually releases a public statement making excuse after excuse for her behavior. That's what it means to reach Cruise/Travolta status in your cult, I suppose.
Re: Tech Culture Does Protect Some Harassers (Score:1)
Oh fuck right off. He's not a "critic", he's a harasser that deliberately took up the front rows with a gang of his cronies in a transparent play to intimidate her, and she wasn't having his shit.
She gets endless death and rape threats online every day, and you want her to play nice-nice with that pack of fuckwits?
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I agree, Sargon can't scream harassment now when he had called Sarkeesian much worse.
She could have handled it better, sure. Rather than let the crowd attack him, which he seemed to have anticipated since he brought allies to support him, simply asking the organisers to remove him would have been better. He had already broken the conference rules multiple times.
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I was wondering when this would come to. Here's what actually happened.
Anita Sarkeesian was on a panel at Vidcon. Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad on YouTube, turned to with his entourage and occupied the first two rows of the audience. He started filming, which Vidcon asked people not to.
For context, Carl has spent years obsessing over Sarkeesian. His Twitter page has a picture of her in the banner. His videos about her are some of his most popular and lucrative. He claims he is merely criticising her, b
Re: Tech Culture Does Protect Some Harassers (Score:1)
She is only human... Excuse her failings but not others.
You are the fucking problem, dipshit.
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Getting a bit worked up one time is forgiveable, especially considering she was being intimidated at the time. Sargon has a history of, at the very least, taking things she says out of context and it's likely that was one reason for filming her.
If Sargon wants a debate, he can simply ask and accept the rejection (and make a shitty video about it). Following her around in public with his entourage isn't acceptable behavior. He flew there from the UK, thousands of miles, just to bother her.
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That's rich. The woman is pretty much a whore willing to say or do whatever she needs to do in order to keep the feminist bucks rolling in. And that includes things like lying and plagiarism.
She's a thoroughly vapid individual that deserves the criticism she gets. If she would just show evidence of a brain she might be able to avoid some of the criticism. But, no, she's a man-hating feminist bitch and nothing will distract from that point. People like you ought to be ashamed of yourselves for enabling such
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Well, my suggestion would be to not go to a panel where a known aggressive and self-absorbed asshole is in the panel. Ignoring these people robs them of what the thrive on: Attention.
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Sargon was in the audience, not on the panel. They didn't really vet the audience members, something of a mistake given the history.
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Intentionally misunderstanding something just makes you look stupid.
Easy (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't hire women.
That may sound sexist. But the reality is; if you can't trust the boys to behave around girls, or the girls not to accuse the boys, just keep them apart. No judgement about who was right, wrong, made false accusations, or thought the business was just a big frat party.
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This comment brought to you by the Taliban. Banning women since 1991.
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Right, so let the women design and build the equipment and put the men in the basement to handle the support help desks.
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Sounds like you would fit in great in the middle east.
Re: Easy (Score:2)
The more popular solution is to hire only men for department A and only women for department B.
Men can do the real work, while women do irrelevant stuff like HR, accounting or legal.
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There is no need for that. Most adult women are perfectly capable to say "no" as forcefully as needed and, if necessary, back that up with a full-armed slap to the face. That usually resolves the problem nicely.
So stop locating there (Score:5, Interesting)
There are other, nicer places with better culture.
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There is nothing wrong with Silicon Valley. The key is not to work for sociopaths or shitty companies. Plenty of recruiters contact me asking if I am available to work at the next greatest company selling mobile applications or social media experiences. I always tell them no. Those companies are run by incompetent bros barely out of diapers with no concrete plans for profitability. As much as I loved working for small companies in the past, the days of competent adults founding and running these types of bu
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Does the location really matter? Slashdot is full of comments that try exactly what the summary says: Deny any sexism takes place in the tech industry as a whole. We already have a comment lamenting reverse sexism. This whole comment section will be full of similar comments denying any such problem exists at all soon. Coming from exactly the kind of people that are the problem. Which wouldn't be surprising. What gets me every time is the approval in the from of karma, which suggests that the sentiment is wi
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Out of curiosity, what about sexism is unique to the tech industry? I'd be inclined to think it was a broader cultural phenomenon and not something unique to technology, I would also assume it has some regional variation along with culture.
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There are other, nicer places with better culture.
Finally, the comment I was looking for about the location.
First of all, it's the most expensive part of the country, & gives Manhattan a run for its money. In the 90s, I understood the argument that 83% of the world's VCs were based there. However, that was not a good reason not to explore and establish other 'valleys' - be it Seattle, N Sioux City (former Gateway land), Huntsville, et al. A diversification of that would have ensured a more even availability of talent, rather than try & relocat
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Yes, come to my rural city. :P
You'll never fix the sexual harassment problem (Score:1, Insightful)
You'll never be able to fix the "sexual harassment problem" in Silicon Valley. Why? Because:
1) Liberal Silicon Valley will keep moving the goalposts on what constitutes sexual harassment. The more you do to fix it, the more the goalposts will move--until virtually everything is considered harassment.
2) Firms will keep hiring more women in hopes that it will virtue signal that they're progressive. These women will repay this effort by filing more and more sexual harassment claims. You'll hire more women to f
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Redpillers in 2017 lul.
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Silicon valley is not very liberal, it's very much libertarian.
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Silicon valley is not very liberal, it's very much libertarian.
Not according to voting patterns. Congresspeople from SV are not libertarian. Dianne Feinstein has won solid majorities in SV, despite being an across the board authoritarian.
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Feinstein is in San Francisco, Silicon Valley is not.
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Feinstein is in San Francisco, Silicon Valley is not.
Feinstein is a senator. She is elected statewide. I think you have her confused with Nancy Pelosi (congresswoman from SF, and house minority leader).
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Look at how many "libertarians" (especially Koch and similar) behave on employment issues (as one example) and you'll see no difference.
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That guy sounds like an angry weirdo who doesn't understand how to behave in a professional manner. He starts ranting about how terrible all women are and uses that to justify how women then run away from him.
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Obligatory:
https://youtu.be/MtgSpGFTmTs [youtu.be]
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Creative Environments (Score:1)
Over the years the most creative environments I've ever been in, would now be considered the most toxic. Crude language, rough housing, liberal amounts of beer, meditation, music and so forth have played major roles in helping people to innovate. Every shop I've been in has done things differently (depends on the people).
Whats going to happen when people are not allowed to go against the grain?
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A stilted workplace simply can't be creative. But some people will take this opening the wrong way and it can be very hard to explain to them that crude does not equal mea
Binary Capital (Score:5, Funny)
Binary Capital, the Silicon Valley firm that has collapsed[...]
So, Binary Capital went from 1 to 0?
This isn't even vaguely new (Score:5, Interesting)
My favourite was at a recent tech talk by a woman (who gives government money to VCs) (Canada) who said that she won't give money if the founders make too much (over 100k) but that she was leaving government to become an advisor to a start-up that had recently raised around 5m. I asked her if she was only going to take 100k. She pretty much yelled at me that I had no understanding of the real world.
Her theory was that if you give the founders more than 100k in salary they become distracted spending it.
I was wondering how I could expose her in some way for the corruption she was displaying by working for a company she had just given government money to when I witnessed one of the tech people who had attended her talk, keying the living crap out of her car with the words, 100k over and over.
It was a brand new higher end BMW BTW. On a funny note, there is nothing funnier than some podunk tech "titan" who sells some company for 10-20 mil and starts giving TED style keynote speeches that are the tech equivalent of spiritual mumbo-jumbo while wearing clothing that they spent much time and money on trying to look really casual. The contrast with the person who usually gives a too long winded introduction and wears an ill-fitting off the rack suit just makes it all funnier.
Then all the desperate start-up types try their damnedest to "network" with the speaker who basically holds out their hand for their ring to be kissed.
I love how they play up their serial entrepreneur business creds when their actual history is: fail-fail-fail-fail-lottery-fail-fail-fail-fail.
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I love how they play up their serial entrepreneur business creds when their actual history is: fail-fail-fail-fail-lottery-fail-fail-fail-fail.
Works that way in other environments too. For example, applying for academic funding two times and getting it each time counts as "less experienced" than somebody applying 5 times and getting it only once. Happened to me. The level of stupidity expressed in this is staggering.
Find a better state (Score:2)
The fastest internet connected to the site. Low cost power. The ability to hire based on skills needed. Offer locals lots of new jobs for landscaping, as guards, as technicians to swap server hardware during the night.
Somewhere in the USA a state and city exist that really needs to do a deal. That has working power supplies, fast internet and a lot of em
Re: Find a better state (Score:2)
Top engineers do not live in the middle of nowhere.
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Women tanking the economy (Score:1)
Nice job tanking the economy by making up allegations of sexual harassment every time a man you don't like makes a pass at you!
VCs CREATED that culture, and now complain. (Score:5, Insightful)
VCs created the toxic culture in the valley, and now they are crying about how it harms the viability of their equally toxic business model? I hope they all line up and die in a fire, one at a time. The inrush of shitheels is due specifically to VCs handing out money to anyone who can get their crayon sharp enough to draw up a business plan.
Here's the thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Well..... (Score:2)
We have seen the aftermath of the last "Valley Culture". "You know, like, gag me with a spoon". Do we really want that type of culture to persist all over again?
They should be worried about the replacement. (Score:1)
The proposed fixes usually are worse than the original problem - where political correctness and mandated diversity make things worse.
Fact.
Re: Funny thing is.. (Score:2, Interesting)
To be fair, this happens to every niche thing that gets big. There are always a few hardworking folk who get it off the ground, followed by a torrent of bottom feeders seeking gold that ruin the party. The gender politics bit is at right angles to this, and is mainly thanks to awkward my little pony fucks, trying to bang the fat purple haired cows that may decide to mount them, if they are lucky. Basically, losers trying to get laid being played by broken chicks with personality disorders.
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You have just described capitalism.
Re:Funny thing is.. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's always been women with terrific math/programming skills. That's nothing new. What's new is that the industry is now bloated with incompetents, it's like a gold rush. And it attracts (in part) immature men and gold digging women. The Julian Assanges, the Ellen Paos. They're the bloat.
There's no deep social movement, no revolution with long-term impact, no real disruption. The number of competent people in tech hasn't changed over the last 25 years, there's just more incompetents around who think they belong.
Same shit happened in finance and real estate. Just wait, the pendulum is coming back at some point.
They're called H1b's. (Score:1)
there's just more incompetents around who think they belong.
They're called guest workers.
Re:Funny thing is.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've said this before, but there are many incompetent males that get hired in computer, but the women who are hired are almost always well above average. There will be equality when incompetent women get hired at the same rate as the incompetent men.
Re: Funny thing is.. (Score:2)
> when incompetent women get hired at the same rate as the incompetent men
Can hardly wait
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And the award goes to you (Score:2)
I've said this before, but there are many incompetent males that get hired in computer, but the women who are hired are almost always well above average.
I've seen phony Facebook status, bullshit tweets and shallow press release boilerplate, but when it comes to being an hypocrite, you just take the cake because not only are you a bend-over puppet of political correctness, you also happen to be an immensely sexist pig.
If there's one thing I'm grateful for, it's not being a prisoner of your social shackles.
Have a nice day.
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Perhaps - but what have done that matched Assange's record? You can't even put up quotes without always resisting the urge to edit them to pretend they make your point for you. Or Ellen Paos, she's a lawyer and HR type so her inclusion is a bit strange here, but at her age had you done as much with your career as she has done with hers to date? If you are going to call those two incompetent are you not insulting yourself and almost the totality of the readership here?
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Very much this. It has gotten to bad that, for example, "web programmers" have no clue how the web works. I just had to explain to a bunch of them after they had debugged a "problem" for several days how a relative link works. These are people with 3-5 years of "experience" in that role. And this is just one example.
I do agree that the total number of competent people in tech is stable, but we are getting less effective because the morons are standing in our way at every corner. It is a disaster.
Close enough (Score:2)
Hillary lost because of russian hackers.
I don't think it's fair to blame russian hackers. They were just hired to do a job. We all know the real puppet master in this political drama: Michelle Obama. She just couldn't stand having a cracker as first female President.
#michelle2020
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When I first had a job in tech in 1984, there were quite a lot of women in tech. They were doing what today is IT work - system admin, computer maintenance, etc. Also in undergraduate from 81, women in computer science were well represented, maybe 1/3 of students were women. The same was true when I was at grad school a decade later.
Also note that in the 50s and 60s that "operating" a computer was secretarial work which was heavily dominated by women. Women were also common as "computers" before then, mea
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Also note that in the 50s and 60s that "operating" a computer was secretarial work which was heavily dominated by women.
This persisted well into the 1990s, depending on the business. You haven't lived until you've tried to help a secretary at a freight expediter troubleshoot a UUCP problem over the phone.
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The New York Times had an article about sexual harassment in Silicon Valley.
Women in Tech Speak Frankly on Culture of Harassment
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/30/technology/women-entrepreneurs-speak-out-sexual-harassment.html [nytimes.com]
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Like OMG! Like totally!