Silicon Valley's Toxic Bro Culture

about every business in between. And Katie, you know what really staggered me to watch your hour on nat Gio. Do you think we've promoted your hour on nat Gio enough? Anyway? The effect of sexism in Silicon Valley and Hollywood isn't just in those industries. It's on all of us who are consumers of those industry. For example, there's research that you brought out that the more hours of TV a girl watches, the fewer options she believes she has, and the more hours of TV a boy watches, the more

sexist he actually becomes. And so this is a contagion. It's not just a problem relegated to these industries. Absolutely, we asked folks to share their experiences with gender bias and discrimination at work. People like Dr mommy Kay that's her display name on Twitter wrote in medicine, it is very common to be seen as a nurse if a female physician doesn't put on her white coat, and even then it's not presumed. But most men in scrubs are doctors.

So many inequities in medicine. Hashtag too much to tweet That, of course is true. You know, there's that old riddle that I used to hear as a kid, and it goes along these lines of father and his son are in a car accident. The doctor comes in and exclaim animes, I can't operate on this child. Why not, the nurse asked, because he's my son. The doctor responds, how is this possible? And of course, still in two thousand eighteen, people are

left scratching their heads. Okay, everyone, how is it possible? The doctor is the mother? Hello, everybody, the doctor is a woman. But it just shows how deeply ingrained these gender biases are in US even today. Yeah, I have to admit it took me a few seconds to get that, so, you know, shame on me. Katie. Also on Twitter, someone named Kristin Malloy wrote, I was the only female in management in twenty two local locations of a restaurant was

told I wasn't bubbly enough to be GM. Pretty sure bubbly was not a qualification for all the males, and that's true. I've never been criticized for my lack of bubblinus, and I don't think I'm particularly bubbly, and I'm nothing. Men are ever called perky either, Brian, Just to pick a random example, Yeah, exactly. We also got a male perspective from Joe and Can Dada, who works in healthcare. He emailed us saying he feels he's held to a

different standard of behavior than his female colleagues. He writes, I cannot and would not make comments about a particularly attractive nurse or visitor, But when, for instance, the firefighters have to come in the building, the women go wild and make all sorts of sexual comments. I hear the same comments from them about attractive doctors. I feel like if I said half of what came out of their amounts at a nurse's desk, at best, I would be looked at like a pervert. At worst, I would lose

my career. I mean, I think that's actually a very interesting and somewhat valid point. There is a bit of a double standard that I think women need to be aware of when they're hyper sexualizing men in the office or making sort of loot or sexual comments. Um, what's good for the goose should be good for the gander. What are your views on this, Brian, Um, I agree with that. That said, the overwhelming problem here is a lack of opportunity for women in the workplace and a

lack of flexibility for women who are still the primary parents. Um. And so you know, I think this is true, but to me, this doesn't seem like the brunt of the problem. Now, I agree, but it's something just to be cognizant of, I think. But all I have to say is go Rustle and Karen Goldsmith. You have officially raised a feminist here.

But it's true. I think we're talking about opportunities. Obviously a lot of it is about behavior in the tone set, but how do these translate into doors closing or opening for everyone, not just for women, but for more diversity. And I think I hope that things are changing. In today's show, we're delving into gender inequality and bias, specifically in the tech industry. Of course, Silicon Valleys generated headlines about sexual harassment and pay in equity for some time.

Our guest today is journalist Emily Chang. She's one of the most respected interviewers in the tech industry, and she's out with a new book called ro Topia, which is all about the boys club culture of Silicon Valley. We talked with Emily about the dam stats when it comes to diversity and inclusion in tech, the Czech glitterati she interviewed for her book, and the shocking sex parties attended by Silicon Valley big wigs, which really, honestly sound like

such a throwback to Mad Men days. I mean, I just wanted to grab a bottle up Purel while she was even talking about these things. Yeah, I felt pretty gross. And folks, if you don't tune in about wild Silicon Valley sex parties, don't you what we can do? Anyway. Today's conversation is actually an extension of an episode of Katie's nat GEO doc series called The Revolt, where she looked into gender inequality, or as some might call it, the hostile male culture in both Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

So you kick things off, Katie by asking, are we paying too much attention to these two arenas tech and entertainment. Certainly, sexism and sexual harassment exists everywhere, It's in every industry, but you know, these are the industries where women have been the loudest, and Hollywood much more so than Silicon Valley.

But I sort of like to think of the me too movements starting in Silicon Valley with Ellen Powe, you know, five six years ago when she sued her venture capital firm, Kleiner perkins Um, and she lost in court, but over time, she's sort of won in the court of public opinion. And I wonder if she had filed her suit today, would the outcome have been different? And I actually I asked her this question, and she said, you know, there's

no way to answer that question. But I almost think we wouldn't be here if I hadn't done it when I did, and she helped open the doors for so many others. I did her first interview. I was just over and it was fascinating to me because so much of it was sort of intangible things that Ellen experienced when she was working at Kleiner Perkins for example, really being excluded being marge a lies, not being part of the quote unquote boys club, not getting to go on

ski weekends or golf outings, and things like that. You also talked to her boss for your book. What was his take, because I did not get the opportunity to do that, right. I spoke with John Doer, who hired her and was in his view her champion um and really gave her an opportunity when some of the other partners didn't want her to have that opportunity. And you know what's interesting is Kleiner Perkins was actually kind of at the forefront in venture capital when it came to

hiring women. There are so many firms who still don't have any women, and he made a concerted effort to bring women into the fold. What they did wrong is they didn't make the environment inclusive enough for them, and they didn't create a place where women could really thrive

and and really succeed. And so it was kind of a case of where good intentions aren't enough, you know, and good intentions aren't enough, and Ellen experienced so many of those things that are just so much more difficult to pinpoint and call out, you know, it's a lot easier to talk about these egregious forms of sexual harassment,

and I agree that that is a huge problem. But I actually think the bigger problem is, you know, the systemic forces that are really working against all women that are so hard to describe and also hard to fix, which is why you know it was worth writing a three page book about Emily. You wrote that Silicon Valley has become increasingly toxic for women. Do you think the problem is actually getting worse and not better? M um? You know, in some ways I think it is getting worse,

and in some ways I think it's getting better. Um. And by getting worse, I mean the fact that we just haven't seen movement for so so long has led so many people to believe, you know, this is just how it is, or it's not my problem. This is a pipeline problem. This has to do with how many women are studying computer science or how many resumes I get in my inbox. And you know what, that's an excuse.

You know, I argue in my book that the tech industry created the pipeline problem by having such a narrow idea of who could do this job. And you know, they were doing these personality tests and these aptitude tests in the sixties and seventies to find good engineers, and they decided that good engineers quote don't like people. Well, um, there's no evidence to support this idea that people who don't like people are better at this job than people

people do. People who don't like people have a little bit of a tradition, Emily of Katie singing in every episode. You know, so I don't really want to get into we can have like a sing off Emily. Anyway, this is a stereotic. This is a stereotype that shuts out more than half the population. And you know, there's a great argument to be made that we need people who do like people and care about people who understand the users whose problems they are trying to solve to be

doing this job. And so, in my i view, the tech industry created the pipeline problem, but also is reinforcing that problem today by you know, it's not just about hiring, it's about retention, it's about progression. It's about making sure the women that are already working in this industry want to stay, because women do leave tech at twice the rate as men. And it's not because what we would think maybe issues with work life balance. It's actually because

of toxic cultures. And why is the culture so toxic? I mean, you hit on some of it in the book. Some of these crazy parties that people have. Is it because it feels so uncharted in a way innovative, and so they feel they have to be risk takers, not only in business but in every aspect of their lives.

So there's this idea that Silicon Valley and everyone there is changing the world and making the world a better place, and so much wealth and power has been amassed in such a short span of time that it has unfortunately led to a sense of entitlement and quite frankly arrogance and this sort of unwillingness to admit that they're part of the problem. Um and I think that that has honestly gone on too long. And you do have a

lot of people who are very young. We've made a lot of money very fast, and it comes without the same sort of socialization that would happen over a longer career, and not a lot of emotional intelligence. If they're hiring people based on sort of the fact that their nerds, they don't like people, they're super analytical, it would only make sense that those people are not necessarily really great at interpersonal skills or emotional intelligence, reading a room, understanding

how their behavior affects others. Right, And if you were stuffed in your locker as a kid, it can be hard to admit that you're discriminating against someone today. And it's not just about having one kind of intelligence or having people who don't like people who want to be alone coding in a room. You need all kinds of people. Well, you do need that emotional intelligence because billions and billions of people are using these products. And by the way,

half of them are women. And so you know, this isn't just Silicon Valley's problem. This isn't just a problem for people who want to work in tech. This is everybody's problem. This is my problem, your problem, this is our children's problem. I mean, these are products that are changing our lives every day. This is an industry that is inventing the future. In fact, let's talk about artificial intelligence.

You know, one of the things that Kara Swisher said, and she was featured in my hour on this is that the people who are programming the content for the future and what's going to be on our screens, Like nine of the people in artificial intelligence are men. Can you explain in Layman's terms how that influences how that gender bias plays into content creation online and really in product creation as well. So AI and machine learning, these

things aren't biased. Algorithms are the products of the people who created them and the people who use them and the people who use that. Right, because isn't often it it's called from a set of information that is pulled from how frequently people use information. Does that make in a way it's crowdsourced, right, But if it's better for certain people, then it is for others. That's also crowdsourced. And so I think about face i D facial recognition technology,

which is the way that you get into your iPhone. Well, facial recognition technology is already sexist and racist and doesn't recognize women and people of color as easily as it does white men, in part because you have mostly men who are designing these who are not aware of their biases. That's part of the problems. So they're not actually it's not, they're not. They're not compensating for the implicit bias that

they might have in creating this equipment. For example, Siri doesn't recognize women's voices as much as men, and that's not accidental. It's a perfect example. Maybe it is talking about Well, that's the thing is. I don't think it is malicious, but at a certain point, ignorance can only be willful. And we know that diverse teams create better products. We know that, you know, having a women on your team when you're building voice assistance and facial recognition technology

makes a lot of good sense. So at a certain point, if you're not doing that, if you're not building teams that have people from a variety of backgrounds, then maybe it does become intentional and you can't say this is not my problem. I didn't create this problem. You have a responsibility if you're creating these products that are used by billions and billions of people, to make sure that

they can actually serve billions and billions of people. You know, Amazon is you know equally as male dominated as Apple, and women drive sevent of consumer purchases. Don't they want to reflect their customer base? Um, you know this is about not just equality, and I think equality is important. It's about com it's about commerce, it's the smart thing to do and not just the right thing to do. And by the way, they're not reflecting that customer base

at all. Today. Here's some of the stats from Katie's show to really back that up. Of board seats at the Unicorn companies, the companies valued at more than a billion dollars are men. Sixty percent of Unicorns have no women board members at all, and of course goes without saying most of the executive leadership positions are held by men. You wouldn't necessarily know this because the media focuses on, you know, two or three very prominent women in the valley,

but the vast majority are men and white men. And Katie had struck me when Karas Swisher said to you in Your Hour, the tech companies think they're meritocracies, but they're more like mirror autocracies. They reflect the people who are making hires are the people who have already been successful in the valley, and so Emily, how do you think that can change? Well, first of all, I think we need to acknowledge that a true meritocracy is impossible

to achieve. And I love Kara's term mirror autocracy because it's so perfectly encapsulates this idea that we are people who look like us. Um. You know, the reality is that we all come to the plate with different kinds of privileges and access, and the escalator of life is moving far faster for some than it is for others. And in fact, when you believe that you are operating in a meritocracy, you can actually be more anti meritocratic. And s already use that kind of jargon, but that's

sort of the best way to put it. Well, actually, there's a study that shows people who believe they work in a meritocracy or the least meritocratic of all because they're not. They don't acknowledge their biases. And everybody, what is the avenue queue. Everyone's a little bit racist. I mean, everybody has these biases and if you're not cognizant of them,

then you can't compensate for them. And by the way, a fun fact about meritocracy, um it actually originated in the Han dynasty, but the actual word meritocracy was coined by a British sociologist named Michael Young in the nineteen fifties to warn about a future in which people use their success to justify their success essentially, and so um, the success in the education of the winners comes becomes the sort of reason to dismiss the forces that are

working against everyone else. And fifty years later he actually wrote an op ed in The Guardian and said, I've been very disturbed by this use of the word meritocracy. Um that I meant as a warning, when in fact it's been It's been used to propagate the very problems that I was so very worried about. So how do you improve the numbers? Is it a leadership issue? Is that the problem? I mean, I can't believe that sixty eight percent of unicorns have zero women on their boards.

That is outrageous, including air B and B and we work it is it is outrageous. We should be protesting in the streets about this, to be honest, or not using their products. Um. Look, you know, I do think leadership is incredibly important. And I like to point to the example of Slack, where you've got a white male CEO who's had sort of every door opened for him

that you could possibly imagine, and he recognizes that. You know, he doesn't use words like meritocracy, but he has made hiring and promoting women and underrepresented minorities a top priority. And it's not just you know, something he said at the beginning, it's something he talks about all the time, lip service. It's not like we have a diversity task force and everybody knows this is something he cares about. So they have diversified their recruiting teams, they're sourcing from

underrepresented schools, they're going to new regions. They've you know, standardized their interview questions, they standardized their feedback and review systems. And by the way, they're beating the pipeline. So they just came out with new numbers. Forty four percent of workers at Slack are women and they started with a company of like fifty men, and so they were starting at at a disadvantage. Um forty eight percent of managers

are women, thirty some percent. Uh, women count for thirty percent of technical worlds, and so you know, they have proven that you can do this if you commit to it. And I think it's really that commitment that is so important. And so many of these companies, you know, and it's you know, not only they're not only mostly many of them young founders, but it's just it's not a priority, it's about growth. It's about raising that next round, it's

about getting that next product launch. It's rushing to fill the seats that are empty. And you know, one of the things that I like to preach is having a little patients and taking a little bit more time to find someone who believes in your mission but doesn't necessarily look like you, because it's about diversity of thought and diversity of experience, and we all bring different experiences to the table, and sometimes that is a result of what we look like and how we have um lived in

this world. And if you don't have a diverse team from the beginning, it gets so much harder as you get bigger. But you will have blind spots, you will make mistakes, you will miss things. And if you take the time to be more thoughtful about how you're building the team in the beginning, you will be able to move so much faster a few years from then when you have that diverse team in place, it's time to

take a quick break. We're going to be right back with Emily Chang, and now back to our conversation with journalist Emily Chang, author of pro Topia. So, Emily, you've got a lot of attention when the first excerpt for bro Topia was released in Vanity Fair. You wrote about wild monthly sex parties attended by the tech elite. The subhead of the piece was the guys got laid, but the women get screwed, which I thought was clever and also a bit depressing. And can you explain these parties?

How important are they and what the effect is for women in tech? So, for of all, one of the interesting things about Silicon Valley that may set it apart from some other industries is that work bleeds into life. In fact, life is work and that's just the way things go. Um. And so you know, if you're working at one of these companies, you're going out for drinks after work, maybe for drinks in the middle of the day. Um. And you know, there's this implicit pressure to be one

of the cool kids. And you know, there is a subset of people in Silicon Valley who believes they're not just changing the world when it comes to the products that they're building. They're challenging social morais and challenging traditional morality, challenging monogamy and that's all great. The Bay Area has been um, you know, this this this hotbed of sexual

exploration and liberation for so so long. But if you look at actually how some of this socializing happens, and you know, I am quite descriptive about some of these parties where you have powerful men inviting women two to one so that the odds are in their favor. It's not challenging traditional morals at all. In fact, it's a

tale as old as time. You know, these women who participate are discredited and disrespected, when for the men it's like a networking opportunity, even though they're not trying to do business. Business gets done. And so women sort of feel like they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. And for some people, this lifestyle was ever present and they felt like they could not escape it.

And especially um some women entrepreneurs that I spoke with, you know, they had to leave Slicon Valley moved to New York to get away from Not to all, not to be too purient, but tell us about these parties and and who are these women? Would they hire prostitutes? Would they bring in women from the office? I mean, set the scene for us if you could. It sounds like Plato's retreat or something. It's a range of of women.

You know, sometimes they are women who work in the industry and entrepreneurs, and sometimes they'll bring in UM women for from l A or or women who they've met via adjacent industries UM in San Francisco, UM. And the idea is that these are women who can hang and want to party UM, and you know, some of them are also just exploring their sexuality. UM. The problem is that you know, they're not sort of afforded the same

freedom to explore that sexuality as the men are. And for men it's cool, and for women, you know, it sort of doesn't get them anywhere. In fact, they end up moving backwards. And so I spoke to one woman, for example, who was part of a co founding team with with another woman, and and one of the women got very involved in these parties and the other just didn't want a part of it, but wanted to try to get access to some of the men who were part of the scene, and they essentially got shut out.

Whereas all of these men we're obviously doing business together, any names that we would recognize that part took in these kind of activities. So, you know, the chapter is very largely anonymous sources for obvious reasons. You know, I do talk about one party that was hosted at the home of Steve Jervidson, who's a very prominent venture capitalist, and it was actually the official after party of the d f J Big Think Conference, so the official after party for his VC firm. Um, and I never said

this was a sex party. But later in the evening there was some behavior that made people uncomfortable. Um. There was cuddle puddling, and there were drugs, and there was um, well it's sort of like do you know, Brian lying together in a pretty boring life. It's sort of you know, lying together, uh, in a group on the floor, on the couch or overlapping from the couch onto the floor. And um, there's some heavy petting involved, and it can be a very as I understand it, you know, an

emotional and connective experience. Um, but it's not necessarily something you want to do at a company party. And the point is this was aut of a company party, and DFJ, the venture capital firm, apologized right away and said we are so sorry if anyone was made to feel uncomfortable. This is not behavior that we support. But the fact is I met they didn't support getting caught, but it was clearly behavior they supported because they were doing it.

You know, Um, when people apologize, I do like to think that there is some meaning there and and and you know, maybe they didn't expect the party would take that term. Maybe some people at the firm didn't expect the party to take that that turn, but it did. And you know, this venture capitalist and question no longer works at the firm. So um on there. You know, I have been told that there has been a bit of a pause in some circles, that people are asking

about this in board rooms. Is this happening at our company? Do you know? Um? Do we need to discuss this? And so? Um what my hope is that is that if this behavior is could you need to happen, that it happens more thoughtfully, um, and that work boundaries and professional boundaries aren't getting crossed. Let's talk about this lunch spot sometimes called Conference Room G. Can you describe that place?

Conference Room G is a nickname that was given by Yelp employees to the local strip club, which is actually called the Gold Club in Soma, the tech heavy part of San Francisco where a lot of the startups are right next to the Moscony Center where you've got all the big tech conferences. And I went in with one of my female colleagues am on a Friday, and there was a line out the door for lunch in the

middle of the day. And you walk in and you knows your typical strip club, except you know, the clientele are you know, the vast majority of these people are clearly tech workers. And you know, they've got their oodies or their T shirts. And there's an all you canet buffet. It's actually the cheapest lunch in San Francisco. Mean, it's five dollars for so much food. UM. So I'm sure that is some part of the attraction. I'm sure they could go to a Bob's Big Boy if they wanted,

and all you could eat the fat. But you know, really it's the you know, it's it's the topless entertainment and um, and women go there and men go there. I saw very few women. I saw very few women. Um. You know, right away, we you know, we started talking to one of the women who worked there, and you know, I confessed right away, like I'm a reporter, um, doing

some research. Can you tell me a little bit about this place, and she was really helpful, Um, and she talked a lot about how she sees, you know, groups of men coming in with their bosses. They're talking about deals or you know, some exact walks in the door and everybody's flocking around him. Maybe they go up to a private room together, and this is set lunch, you know. Um. But again this brings me back to my question about sort of the tone the leadership at the top sets.

And I think that without being too pure botanical and like no fun at all, is it because they're super young, these guys who are running these places. It just so young. But and so I do think part of the problem is that the behavior has been normalized and it becomes acceptable.

You know, I had women at uper who told me they were invited to go to the Gold Club in the middle of the day by their male bosses and it was no big if they didn't come back until three three am, as long as they got their work done. And so you know, they're putting this. First of all, people are going to strip clubs in the middle of

the day, which I still don't get. But you know, for women especially, you're put in this super awkward position where you know, are you the woman who goes along and sort of um, you know, put yourself in this really uncomfortable territory or do you not go and then you miss out on work talk and maybe someone gets an assignment or they decide this new feature to work on. Um, it's it's this impossible catch twenty two, you know, similar

to the parties that we were talking about earlier. And this is an organization if you look at Uber in particular, just one example where you saw the CEO going to

an escort bar in South Korea. And so if this kind of thing is happening at all the way to the very top, just think about the fires that this hr organization is trying to put out, and the things like Susan Fowler's experience of being hit on over the chat by her male manager becomes, you know, far less of an emergency than the fact that your CEO is at an escort bar in South Korea with his colleagues. The number of women getting computer science degrees has steadily

declined since the mid eighties. And I'm wondering about the pipeline problem because yes, you do need different skills, but you also do need some people who have those basic engineering skills to work at some of these technology companies. So is there you know, I talked to some women from Silicon Valley in my the hour that I did for Nacio, and they said, there are many men who don't have computer science degrees who get hired. So is there a double standard when it comes to the quote

unquote you know CS degree? There absolutely is a double standard. And one example is if you look at the Forbes Midas list of the top venture capitalists, UM, the vast majority of women have STEM backgrounds and a significant percentage of men do not, which shows that the standards are different for men and women. UM. And you'll see a lot more men on that list like Peter Thiel and Peter Fenton who have philosophy backgrounds, or Mike Morritts of Sequoia,

who was a journalist. And yet Mike morrets is the very person who told me, and this is when Sequoia had no women in their US investing business, that not enough women were studying STEM and that they were not prepared to lower their standards. And so, yes, the standards are different. That said, there is a pipeline problem. And you know, as I mentioned earlier, My argument is the

tech industry created the pipeline problem. But there is a lot of hard work and had done and how the tech industry, because it's such a toxic culture, people don't gravitate towards that. So, going back to the forties and fifties, women actually were there. They were programming computers. Men were predominantly the hardware makers, but women were actually well represented among software programmers right, which we saw hidden figures hidden

figures is real. This was industry wide. They were programming computer for the military, programming computers for NASA, and then as the industry was starting to explode in the sixties and seventies, the tech industry was so desperate for new talent that they were doing these personality tests and aptitude tests to find good programmers. Hence the tests where they decided that good programmers don't like people. Well, the research tells us that people who quote unquote don't like people.

If you're looking for those kinds of people, you'll hire far more men than women. And again, there's no research to support the idea that men are better at this job than women, but it's a stereotype that's been held for decades. I mean, we're talking about companies as big as IBM that using these tests, and fast forward fifty years, you've got people like James Demore, that Google engineer who's

repeating the very same toxic assumptions. He is the guy who wrote a memo who said that men are biologically more suited to this. I interviewed him. I interviewed him, and then I interviewed a neuroscientists who analyze his research from Bernard to refute his claims. But he said, not that women have less capacity to perform these jobs, but they're less interested in these jobs because of prenatal testosterone, which was totally refuted and is considered really junk science, right.

I interviewed James to Moore as well, and he says his paper has all these citations, but even the people he's citing disagree with how he uses the data. And you know what is unfortunate is I think he's repeating an assumption that many people have and is more widely held than we would like to believe. And that's the kind of stereotype that we need to break down if

we're going to fix the type blind problem. And the tech industry has a responsibility there well, if he blames it on prenatal testosterone, then there's no onus on the industry to change things because it can't be fixed ostensibly. And that's but and so it's a cop out in terms of taking any proactive measures as well. And in fact, there's new research. There was just a great Harvard Business Review article about this that shows that men and women

are far more alike than they're just as ambitious. Justice driven Emily that said, do you think the more should have been fired? Yes? And I think Google also could have done some things better in that situation as well. First of all, that memo was out and about hanging around and you know Google, Google Or's email boxes for like a month before anyone said anything, and it was not until it leaked to the press that it became

a company emergency. But you know, companies do have a right to decide what values they have, and you cannot write a memo like that that makes fifty of people, well actually thirty some percent because it's Google and women are underrepresented. But that makes all of your female colleagues feel like they don't belong or don't deserve to be there, or are constantly questioning when they speak up in a room.

You know how they're being constantly being questioned? Right, you cannot you know, freedom of speech is one thing, but it can't come at the expense of the freedom of speech of others. And so to play Devil's advocate for a second. Um, does everybody working at Google, the thousands of people working at Google, do they all have to share Google's ideology and views on every issue? Um? I

understand if somebody is, you know, outright racist. I mean, I mean, maybe you would argue that Demoor is outright sexist. But where do you draw the line between unpopular views and views so awful that we have to get rid of this person. I do think we need to create safe spaces for people to talk about this and if we want people to listen, if I want people to listen to me, I have to be willing to listen

to them. Um. But I don't think at necessarily sharing those kinds of views in a company wide memo is the best approach, Emily. In your book, you tell one other instructive story about Google that in its early years, Uh, Sergey and Larry, the founders, hired lots of women for leadership positions. Marissa Meyer, Cheryl Sandberg, Susan Wichitski. But now women make up only about of the key tech positions there.

So what happened, well, they lost focus. But the really important lesson that I wanted to tell, or that I wanted to share, is that they in the early days put this emphasis on hiring women and got these incredible women who you know. Susan conceived the ad business, Cheryl scaled the ad business, Marissa Meyer designed the minimalist you know user interface that we all use when we interact with Google to this day. And they were critical to

making Google a success. We sort of think Google was destined to succeed because it was the first to future, but in fact, there were like a dozen or more other search engines at the time line that we're competing to be that one, and Google broke away from the pack in part because of the diversity that they had

at the table. But that's not the story that is told, And so what is unfortunate about it is that Larry and Sergey didn't continue to make it a priority year after a year after a year and communicate that same commitment that they felt to other managers in the organization. And as Google was exploding in size. After the I p O. It became much more about filling the seats

as fast as possible. It also became very elitist. Um. And then you know, after the financial crisis, which actually Google did feel the brunt of like everybody else, because their customers are advertisers, they sort of picked their heads back up and said, oh my gosh, where are all the women? Like what happened? And so it's another example of good intentions just not being enough. Did you talk to people like Marissa Meyer, Cheryl Samberg and Susan Wojitsky

of YouTube and what did they have to say? I talked to all of them, and it's really interesting because they all have completely different views about these subjects. But I think that is so great because not all women are the same. In fact, we need more female role models so we can see that women can and do lead differently and give you know, our young women more more examples. UM. You know, they all think it's a problem. Um.

They all think it's a systemic issue. And UM, it doesn't have to just do with with women leading in Um. One of the really interesting things about Marissa and I know that you know you've worked with Merissa closely is she doesn't like to talk about this. She doesn't like to be the woman's CEO. She wants to be the CEO, and I completely understand that. But I do think that I got her to open up about this particular topic, um more than I've seen her her do in the past.

And one of the lessons that I really want people to take away from the Cheryl and Marissa stories that these are women who are incredibly successful yet faced outsized criticis si ism for things that, in my view, we're only because they were women, and we're not fair game. You know, people debating the length of Marissa myers maternity leave, or that she had a nursery in her office, or that she ended work from home. I mean, if she were a man who was about to have a child,

no one would have even known. If she were a man who ended the work from home policy, no one would have blinked any And so you know, there was this one headline our Cheryl Sandberg and Marissa Meyer setting back the cause of working moms, and I was like, what, you know, this is just it's it is just so unfair. We should be critical of them. They are business leaders, they are running, you know, businesses worth you know, millions

or billions and billions of dollars. But let's be fair about how we critique our leaders and the stories we tell about them. You know, I look at someone like Susan Wijitski, who built Google's ad business. Uh, she led the acquisitions of double click and YouTube. She has five children, and yet so many people don't even know her name, and she is a visionary and a genius, just like you know. We use these words to describe men over and over again. We don't use them to describe women.

But she just doesn't fit that sort of picture perfect idea of the young male entrepreneur in a hoodie. And that's a tragedy. We need to change the way we're telling the stories about these women, because they are equally important to building our future. I understand the complaint of women getting a separate kind of scrutiny, certainly, I've experienced

that in my professional life as well. On the other hand, if it is such a huge problem and there's such an epidemic of this broke culture, you can understand how people would look to the female leaders for setting a tone that would open the doors of opportunity to other women. So it is kind of a double edged sword, don't you think. Well, I mean, I understand Marissa and and you know, she's like, look, I plan to take a six months maternity leave at Google. It would have been glorious.

But when I got to Yahoo, like, I couldn't. I couldn't take that much time. I don't even mean about her personal thing, and and and some of it, of course, is all about how it's communicated. But changing the work from home policy, which I apparently you know, I read a lot about that a lot of people weren't being productive at home. It wasn't really an effective thing. But I think that some of it is on in the

telling of a policy change. And I think you have to be out front on some of these issues because you're under greater scrutiny and you're expected to set a more positive tone for other working women, right, And maybe they didn't communicate that well to be honest, Um, and I'm not saying certainly, you know, Yahoo wasn't perfect, and um, you know, some people don't think the result was so great, and some people don't think she did did a good job.

I don't think it's necessarily because they ended the work from home right when she took a short maternity leave. But those are the things that people remember about her tenure. And you know, she's starting a new uh incubator UM and there was just a story about it in the New York Times, and people are calling her a loser, and I just I just think it's so unfair. I just think it's the kind of outsized, overly negative criticism

that just I don't know. I don't know if she was a man, I don't even maybe people wouldn't pay attention, and maybe that's another another problem. But you know, people want to know what she's what she's doing. But let's give her a chance. Emily. This may take us a little further afield from what we're discussing, but I can't have this conversation with you without asking about the relationship

between Silicon Valley and Donald Trump. UM. We talked to Tristan Harris, who said definitively that Trump and his view wouldn't have been elected without Facebook. How is Silicon Valley, both the women and the men, how are they reacting to the election of Donald Trump, the presidency of Donald Trump,

and their role in all of that. Well, obviously Trump's election surprised a lot of people, include the President himself, UM, and many people in Silicon Valley, and I think most of Silicon Valley was not happy to see Trump elected, which, um, you know is unfortunate because Silicon Valley and the White House had made a lot of progress. And we need the government and the tech industry to be talking to each other because the tech industry really is inventing the

future and hugely influential. And as we've seen with Facebook, things can go wrong, and so I hope that there is some sort of dialogue. I mean, I know that there have been some meetings and some attempts to communicate, but in general, and this is not just about President Trump, but I do think our lawmakers need to better understand what these companies are doing. You know, if we saw, if any of one saw Mark Zuckerberg's testimony on Capitol Hill, and I was in that room, you know, some of

the questions from the senators were really disappointing. They just don't know how Facebook works, UM, and we need our government to understand or these things aren't going to get fixed. And you know, we talk a lot about regulation, but I think the tech industry has proven that it can't necessarily regulate itself. But we need the right regulation. We don't want another election to be swayed. We don't want our information stolen by you know, foreign governments. We all

want our privacy, you know. I think that Facebook has responded as they should in a way, it's it's too little, too late, But I am glad that there they are reacting to it, and I I hope they get it right. How do you think that Silicon Valley differs from what's going on in Hollywood? Hollywood, of course, has its own problems, not only with sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, but also just

playing opportunity. And of movie directors or men, eight three of TV directors or men eight percent of entertainment executives are mail. So which is worse, Silicon Valley or Hollywood? And by the way, aren't you guys surprised that Wall Street has gone gotten away relatively scott free in this whole conversation totally, I cannot get over that. Um I keep asking what's happening on Wall Street? But okay, so before we talk about Hollywood, actually, on Wall Street, if

you look at the top banks, they're about fifty fifty. Um, they have a lot of work to do when it comes to women in leadership positions, but in a way, they did a lot of the hard work in the eighties and nineties, and you know, they've gotten to a better place, which is certainly an example that Silicon Valley

and Hollywood can do it too. I mentioned at the beginning that I think some of the courage from the Me Too movement started with Allan pow And in Silicon Valley, And in fact, we saw Susan Fowler and women entrepreneurs coming forward in Silicon Valley months before the Harvey Weinstein story broke. But Hollywood really like picked up the ball

and ran with it. And you know, I've been so inspired by all of these women in Hollywood telling their stories, and I've been a little bit disappointed that I feel like the momentum there's been a loss of some of

that momentum in Silicon Valley. Um. You know, I do think the reality is when you can have Reese Witherspoon talking about it at the Golden Globes, that has a lot of impact and a lot of people see it and it raises awareness, and you know, these women in Silicon Valley are often working at companies where they've signed an n DA. They can't talk about it. They're scared

for their jobs. And so, you know, I really hope that we will see some of the more shaking up that's been happening in Hollywood happen in Silicon Valley, even without you know, potentially the role models like Reese Witherspoon, Um. But I've been, you know, I've been down in Hollywood. There's there's some folks there that are really interested in the book, and I've I've spoken to um, the people involved in the Times Up movement, and I'm really really

inspired by what they're doing. But obviously the need is there, and it's not just in Hollywood. It's it's farmers, it's flight attendants, it's you know, all different kinds of women and all all different walks of life they need help. Well, let's talk about the hath Forward. One woman in the hour I did on this subject, Emily talked about the Rooney Rule, which was started by Dan Rooney, who owned the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they wanted to have more diversity,

more racial diversity among coaches and management positions. So the Rooney Rule requires that you interview one minority candidate, and I think they increased to seventy minority positions as a result of implementing the Rooney rules. So A, do you think that's a good idea? And B they also suggested many of the people on the show blind resumes, which, of course, as have been very successful in integrating national symphonies all over the country. So what other measures can

be taken to fix this? I think the Rooney rule is great, And you know, I've heard some companies that won't even start an interview process until they have at least two qualified female candidates and two candidates of color, and they have to be qualified candidates, like Real Canada. It's um. It goes back to this idea that if we just focus on unconscious biased training or raising awareness about our bias, that won't necessarily have a lot of impact.

You know, it's really hard to tell someone just change the way you think about women. I mean, these are so deeply rooted. These are biases that, as you said, we all have. But if you give people the tools to combat their bias, that can have a lot of impacts. So, you know, part of the problem is there's not enough research, there's not enough people who have tried blind resumes um to prove like, oh, this works, but it's certainly worth

a try. Another woman in the hours suggested for dealing with the pay and equity problem is more transparent, Like the earliest thing to solve more transparency, but no negotiations. Once suggested that you have a job, you get paid what you get paid for that job, almost like, I guess if you're in the civil service, right, I've heard no negotiation. I've heard, well, if you're going to do negotiation, make sure that women are negotiating or encouraging them to negotiate,

and that every one is negotiating. I mean, look, either way, you might lose some people, you might gain some people. Um. But I also think just being aware of it is important. And for these companies, they all see the data even though it it these companies that love data, but yet they ignore it um when it doesn't work in their favor. You know, you see what people get paid, and to me, that's the easiest thing to solve, especially when you're making

a lot of money. You know, pay people fairly, pay people what they're worth, and you know, I'm sure you know Mark Benny Off, the CEO of Salesforce, who's they did a two year comprehensive pay review and it took a lot of work, because you know, by that point Salesforce was a big organization. But now they can probably say we don't have a pay gap, and I'm sure that's attracting a lot of potential candidates. I guess. Bottom line, Emily,

are you optimistic about the future. I am, and I don't think I could be doing this whole book tour thing if I wasn't. Um. I believe that the people who are changing the world and taking us to Mars and building self driving cars and have given us rides at the push of a button and connected the world, they can hire more people, hire more women, pay them fairly, fund their ideas. Like this is not too hard of a problem from Silicon Valley to solve. A lot of

it is setting a tone, isn't it. You have to make it a priority. It can't be sort of like yeah, yeah, yeah, lip service. Oh yeah, we have this group of people and they're responsible. Oh yeah, and they're mostly women and okay, whatever, yeah, pat them on the head, go about and do your altruistic work. Absolutely, it is about CEO is making this

a priority. Explicitly, it's about investors making this a priority when it comes to funding and then the port Some companies are demanding it um Upfront Ventures, which is a venture capital firm based in l A, when they give an entrepreneur term sheet. On that term sheet, they are committing to building a diverse team. And I've talked to some of the entrepreneurs who say, look, we're small, but it's working. We're six people, two women, to people of color.

Like this matters. And the earlier you do it, the easier it will be, and the better your company will be for it, the better we all will be for it. If we solve this problem, that will have the biggest impact of any So is your next book going to be Systopia? I've been thinking a lot about what does utopia look like? Where is it working um and across industries, and you know, some of the bright spots can be hard to find because you know, not a lot of

people have gotten this right. But I do think we have a lot to learn from the people who are doing good things. And these are the workplaces of the future, and everyone's looking for a competitive edge. We all want to build the best businesses and be as productive as possible. And that's about building a workforce that can do all of those things, and a workforce that we can also be proud of. The millennials and Gen zs are demanding it, aren't they right. People care about this. Young people care

about this. Old people care about this. We all care about this, So let's do something about it. Emily Shang, author of bro Topia, breaking Up the Boys Club of Silicon Valley. So great to have you. Thank you so much. And also you're the host of Bloomberg Technology, which is every day on Bloomberg Television at two am two pm. I mean not two am, that would really be the grave two pm Pacific, five pm Eastern streaming live. We're

on YouTube. You can get us a lot of different ways. Emily, so great to have you here and so nice to meet you. Thank you. It's an honor, honestly for me as a journalist, you are always one of my role models. So um, thank you for having me. Thank you, and I'm so sorry to hear that. That does it for today's episode. Everyone. Next up on the podcast will be diving into the age of Outrage. I'm talking political correctness, microaggressions,

trigger warning, safe spaces, cultural appropriation. As usual, we really want to hear from you. What do you think. Are we in the midst of a long overdue course direction or have we simply become too sensitive? So you tell us. Call and leave us a message as always at nine to nine to two four for six three seven, or shoot us an email at comments at currect podcast dot com.

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