Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t
I think it&#x27;s very important to parse Pao from the reprehensible behavior she describes in her workplace. Being polite, Pao does not come off well in her own personal story. But she was also swimming in a garbage pit.<p>I have no doubt that what she writes about is true, and probably even holds back on much of the frat house nonsense. There can be entire semesters spent at school exploring other avenues that she might have pursued, and in most cases she truly really <i>was</i> a victim of a truly terrible environment nobody should have to work in.<p>But for those of us who remember the case well while she was at Reddit, she also isn&#x27;t <i>only</i> an innocent victim and had made some really bankrupt decisions all on her own. I don&#x27;t get the impression from this article that she&#x27;s really done any soul searching since then and she even tries to soft-peddle her affair with a co-worker as just a little bit of a school girl crush and doesn&#x27;t mention various other questionable behaviors that became public as a result of her lawsuit.<p>There&#x27;s a lot of thought that equality in the workplace should not mean &quot;start slotting women into the existing power structures and processes&quot;, but should instead take into account differences in style and ideas that women might naturally bring. But it goes both ways, terrible behavior also can manifest itself in different ways. As innocent as Pao seems to think she is in her own bad behaviors (which she either ignores here or downplays), her former co-workers also don&#x27;t think there was any particular harm -- they&#x27;re both wrong. To truly respect Pao, you have to also respect that she was capable of making bad decisions and that she needs to own them. In my mind, her behavior is not as bad as her former colleagues, but she could probably throw a softball and hit them.<p>Pao&#x27;s story is important to tell, but she lacks the personal credibility for people to care. I really feel like if she were a bit more open about where she also messed up, and her motivations, she would come across as a much more empathetic story teller that would get more people&#x27;s attention and give her better credibility than her former colleagues. But her general unwillingness to publicly confront, and get out in front of, her own behavior leaves her story vulnerable to various naysayers and that&#x27;s a shame.