Silicon Valley’s Thin Skins and Giant Egos
I’m Kara Swisher, and you’re listening to “Sway.” Big tech is undergoing a huge cultural shift right now. Workers at Google are unionizing. Leaders at companies like Coinbase and Basecamp have clamped down on political and social discussions at the workplace. And reports are out that Bill Gates, the biggest nerd in tech, pursued affairs with female employees.
But the cracks in the culture have been there for decades. I saw them, and so did my guest today, Ellen Pao. She was one of tech’s earliest whistleblowers. Nearly a decade ago, she sued the prominent venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination. She worked there for seven years, saw successful deals, and was still passed over for senior partner. It was the trial heard around Silicon Valley.
Though Pao didn’t win, the case brought attention to the white male dominated industry and just how much the firm and the Valley operated as an exclusive boys’ club. The experience also refocused Pao’s career. In 2014, she became CEO of Reddit for a brief period during which she banned revenge porn on the platform. Now she’s an angel investor and CEO of Project Include, a non-profit she co-founded to improve diversity and inclusion in the industry. Good luck with that. In any case, I wanted Pao’s take on where Silicon Valley is today and how far the culture has come — or rather, has not.
