YouSaid · the spoken record

Ellen Pao

lines on the record: 141
first: 2017-10-02
most recent: 2017-10-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I feel positive about these new companies. A project includes this nonprofit I started with seven other women to try to push for change in tech. There are these like Early stage startup CEOs who get it, and they're like, you know, I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. I'm doing it because I want better product. I'm doing it because I want to be able to recruit people in 15 years when 75% of the population is either”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reset their cultures that they'll bring in people at higher levels who have different perspectives, not just gender, but race and age and sexual orientation and immigrants as, you know, all of these different aspects that are different from who's currently running things. But it's super slow. People aren't tracking it. It doesn't seem to have an impact on product.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's hard because as you said, people don't feel accountability, so then they don't feel any kind of responsibility to clean it up. So I don't know. I don't have that much hope for maybe the congressional hearings will push people a little bit more. Maybe But people still use the products, right? There's still people who are using Uber, who are using Facebook. You know that they're selling every bit of information they can. And they're advertising to you based on everything that you've done. But it doesn't prevent people from using it. I think people have gotten really addicted and really tied into these products. And the hope is that they'll fix these products that they'll kind of.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I do, though. It's fascinating because I find them naively optimistic about, I don't think they necessarily, it's odd because I will have conversations. I generally believe they believe this isn't happening or that it's not their fault. Like it's sort of, I call them open wounds. So like, oh, we feel bad this happened. I'm like, yeah, but you made it. You know what I mean? Which is an interesting thing. So what is that? Where are we then in Silicon Valley in this issue? And then the next section we'll talk about project include include include in”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a very insular community. It's not that many people who influence a lot of things. And then it's a lot of people who are trying to make those people happy because so much wealth and power concentrated in so few people that it's distorted the kind of Social mechanisms, which would make people understand what else is going on in the world”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's an echo chamber itself, right? Where you go to all these different events, it's all the same people and they're talking about the things that matter to them, which is different than what matters to the rest of the world. So it's a very”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I totally agree. I think they absolutely don't. I had a conversation at Facebook when live and I kept saying, well, someone's going to kill someone. And a lot of their executives were like, Kara, you're so cynical. And I was like, what? I'm sorry, people are awful. That's my experience. And so what was interesting is why doesn't it occur to them? Or maybe the penny's dropping now with all these congressional investigations. And then I want to get back into the issue of gender because it's the same thing. It never occurs. What happens in Silicon Valley particularly?”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are you blaming the media? I'm just curious. Is it the media's fault or is it Facebook's fault, or what is the, or people just using these tools? You could say, you know, it's really interesting that the US built all these social media tools. So they're using things we invented. And I do think these people never thought of these consequences in the first place.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there are still people that you can, but it will be harder to find those people and it will be a set of people who will never, you know, say that was a good conversation. It is harder to bring everybody together. I agree because there's so much misinformation out there. People are so locked into their views and they've had so much. Confirming information because of the way the news gets presented today.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Create like conversations across different groups of subreddits so that it's not these silos that, and you can build some empathy and you can build some understanding and you can hopefully stop shouting at each other.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So at Reddit, I was working with a project manager on this idea of bringing together subreddits that are opposing. Having conversations between the more thoughtful people from those subreddits. So find the moderators who are open to having the conversation and are not just going to scream at the other side and actually have a conversation about these different issues and see if you can bring people together a little bit more, right? Or at least have people think through these ideas and just”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, yeah, right. So, how do you change that idea? Like, you discussed this issue. How do you get that? And the next section I want to talk about project include and things you're doing now, but how do you get them to that? Because again, I would rather see. What they actually think, like pretending they don't think like this is. I want to hear from them.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How many authoritization, right? I'd rather get more users. I'd rather figure out my business model. I'd rather make sure the technology scales. And at the end of the day, Rules around the community and all of these many complicated decisions get determined. And they're not subject to the community.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a super easy rule, right? Like, we allow whatever you want to say to go on the platform, and that's it. So you don't have to pay anybody to monitor it. You don't have to build technology to prevent it. You know, it's a free for all, and everybody understands it, and that's what happens.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right? Free speech is easy, it's free, you just let it go, whatever happens, happens. So that's, I think where Reddit got where it is today. Like it was a super small organization. It's easier just to say we allow whatever, you know, it's an easy good.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The problem is when you don't make rules. You're allowing this behavior that ends up making rules. Right, exactly. You are making rules anyway. So you may as well own up, take the responsibility, or hire some people that you pay a shit ton of money to do that.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe it was like a month or two ago, like their rule book was Presented and it was a mess. It was a total mess. So I think you have to have clear rules that you can point to and that people can understand so that you're working within system like raising a child. You got to give them the boundaries and you got to follow the boundaries or it's chaos.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, what is terrorism on your site? So, why not cover this area as well? I think you have to draw clear rules. So I think that's the problem. Like, I don't know if you saw.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Particularly good at it from what I've seen. So they're making these decisions why not make this decision around this? They're deciding what's terrorist.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. So, what do you do? Because then that requires people to have a point of view. Like, you know, Google was very quick to get rid of him, like, because it's a workplace issue, and that's what they hung their hat on. But I think internally within Google, there's a lot of people who supported this guy. So what does a company like Google do, for example? Or if you're Facebook, they were very loath to move into this Russia area because they're like, we're just a benign platform and we don't know what goes on here. And I see that I know that I agree with you. And I've said that many times. But at the same time, taking their point of view, it's like,”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've heard a lot. Don't I think so, but I think it's like, but you need to provide the context. You need to provide, you know, you can't just end up with these silos that we have now where it's like these echo chambers and it's just people kind of spinning out of control and fake news coming up and people believing it because it's gotten so far from the truth and there's no communication between the two sides. So I think you have to be responsible as you do it and you can't just allow this random crap to proliferate without any kind of context”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, except in who decides. I mean, the issue is it's not just the media, but it's the platforms, Facebook, and others, because they're now de facto news organizations, as far as I can tell. I don't think not hearing that, it's like taking a photograph. The photograph is what it is. I'm thinking of this election. We didn't listen to a lot of, you know, like, should you quote David Duke? Absolutely. If we had been quoting him more, we would have seen it coming, right? You know, or under like, oh, he's a fringe person. I'm like, is he? You know what I mean? Like, that's the difficulty of this.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess where is the line between depicting them as they are and encouraging them, right? Some of these ideas are not ones that you want to have encouraged and not by your institution. So similar to it's different because it's not a workplace, but similar to your workplace, there are certain ideas here that you don't want to encourage.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, except it, I think, in hearing them, I think a lot of what's interesting is happening, not just there, but just Berkeley, everywhere else. It's like, we don't want to hear it. Why not hear it? Why not hear Milo? Why not hear, listen, I don't want to listen to Laura Ingram, but I want to listen to Laura Ingram. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like if we don't hear it, it's pretending it's not there and it feeds into that movement, which is depicting things as they are is a really important, valuable thing.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But to use his name and to give him all that attention, and to, I actually had a huge problem with the New York Times article To present these ideas without any kind of context and to give him that platform, I think it, I think.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But why him? He's not him in particular. No ideas I agree with. Right, that we should be talking about them, but why should we give him any attention? There's no reason to.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I actually don't like giving him that much attention and quantity. Why? Because I think he's like some rando. Oh, I don't think he's.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. How do you allow these voices to still have these opinions? Like, you know, I'm just using James as an example de Moore as an example. I don't know him. Should he be able to articulate these things and should we listen to them or should they be like who decides on what's tolerant?”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and if you're the only site that allows it, then that is what you're going to be, and you don't have any good conversations then, right? Right.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is the line that we're willing to draw. And we want all voices to be able to use the platform. There was a period of time where, you know, before we got rid of the unauthorized nude pictures. Whole site was people looking for naked pictures of celebrities. And we could not get anything else in because the demand was so high and we just couldn't service the actual real conversation. Right. Is that what you want your site to be? Like devolve into the Know the crap that the naked”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And its values, yeah. Right. And, you know, right. So I think that's, for me, a pretty easy case. And then how do you think about free speech from the broader perspective of a platform and I want to encourage these ideas and allow people to see it? I think for us at Reddit, it was when you are harassing people to the point they don't feel safe, they stop participating on your platform.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just the other day. Get out. Yeah. Yeah So, I think there's a difference between what should the government enable and what should you be able to say on these different platforms from what are you able to say in the work environment and what are you able to be.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's different from my work environment, like who are my peers and who am I working with? Like I don't want to have people in my office telling people that they are not qualified, that they, you know, that women are worse engineers than men. Like that is not productive to my work environment. Like that is not my value as a company. So that idea has to go. And if you can't be convinced. That is not the case, then you're not going to be a productive contributing member of my team no matter what.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's definitely. They don't often say it, but I know it's there and you hear it, and you can see there's a lot of people very supportive of him and what he said. And he didn't say, you know, Google has made its argument, which I think I agree is also correct, that he would create it unsafe work environment and things like that. But, you know, what's happening in Berkeley, what's happening everywhere else, and groups of men who want to say what they want to say, part of me is like, yeah, let's hear them. Let's hear the ugliness because it's not helpful to shut it down.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right. Well, let's take James De Moore, for example, which I just talked to Susan Majisky yesterday about the firing route, and she was quite firm that they did the right thing. Oh, I agree at Google. Others did not.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That journalistic integrity and being able to write what you want to write is not how it's played out on the internet. So it's not used like this idea of free speech is used to protect harassing behavior and harassing messages. And that, I think, is actually counter to the actual goals of free speech. The goals of free speech are to have this platform where people share ideas and you have conversations and you convince each other about the benefit of all these different ideas and opinions coming together and what you end up with is a bunch of really loud populated groups. Pushing off other people, the marginalized voices that free speech is supposed to enable and protect”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was one of those people. In college, I was an editor of the College Daily Paper, and I was very much like, what we do is hugely valuable and we need to be able to write what we want to write. We added some professors for bad behavior.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We got a lot of technical debt, and you want us to hire. So there's only so much that can be done. I can't commit to you that will get to 350 million. And they're like, okay, so we'll find somebody else. I don't think they're at 350 million now two years later.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was the woman on the team who got doxxed and who got photoshopped and one person got fat shamed like it was there's just a lot of misogyny and i think And I don't know if that was a strategy to put me in there to take all that, but it kind of Took a lot of energy out. They asked me to leave. So the stated reason they said to me was we wanted to get to In a varied like 350 million users or 500 million users by the end of the year. And I said that is not possible. Just is not possible. We're going to focus our effort on getting rid of all this. You know, all this harassment on the site and getting rid of some other noxious parts of the site. So we're not focused on growth. And the product is barely working and scaling. So there's a lot of”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Trial, so you're well known for that. Yeah, and also I just have a super thick skin having come through all of that, I was just like, no, I know what we're doing is right and we're just going to keep going. And if I, you know, and because I was so Sure, about it and unwavering, like it helped my team, right? They're like, okay, we're on this path and she's not joking. Like, let's just do it. And I think it was a team effort, very much so. And I supported their decisions. You know, somebody else, the person who headed our community team picked the five subreddits to take down. And we were like, and I was like, this is your call. It's your team that's going to be dealing with all this. So I'm backing you 100%. And we just went and we did it. But it was not.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I said something in my book about that. Yeah, really. Yeah, you did. That amount of energy and effort. And it was actually quite skilled in some cases.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then photoshopping to perfection. I'm just like, think about the good that you could do if you put that to work someplace. My God.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, they're just the attacks on my family and the amount of energy. You know, people did these super elaborate memes.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was You know, there's a lot of misogyny and racism on the site. It's not pretty. And when the person who's trying to get rid of it is actually a woman of color, it just inflames some of those emotions and those reactions.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That said, I think out of Georgia Tech that said the work that we did actually worked, right? So those five separates coming down, those people changed the behavior of the people who were doing it and it helped make the site better. But we knew that when we were doing it, but it was hard for people to accept that change. And then in this environment where people were very wedded to free speech, it became a personal attack on me. Right.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we've made the right decisions. So we got rid of unauthorized pictures, naked pictures, we got rid of revenge porn, and then all the other companies followed. So we were the first big company to do that. And then we got rid of some of these really harassing subreddits. And then recently there was a report.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are here in the red chair with Ellen Powell, who is the author of a new book, Reset My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change. Alan is a well-known venture capitalist. She's a techie, I guess, what you call herself a techie. So why did you write this book? We just talked about the trial. It definitely took its toll on your life and they attacked your personal life quite a bit, which was disturbing to a lot of people to watch that happen sort of the character assassination. People are more than welcome, I think, not to like you or on their own, but it really was. You became CEO and then you became subject to A series of eviscerating attacks online.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was easier to believe. And if Kleiner could do this and we thought they were so great, like, well, of course, we were pursuing it.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and they had the God view, and they're doing all sorts of things that were kind of riding the edge of ethics values. And of course”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keeping track of things, but whatever. But also think People loved Kleiner. There were a few people who had terrible experiences and they reached out to me, but in general people loved Kleiner. And they loved John Door. They loved John Door and they were afraid of Kleiner. And I think, you know, Uber did not have that reputation had a reputation of being aggressive, of not falling the law and of being invasive of privacy. Right.”
2017-10-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Ellen Pao, author, “Reset” · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT