YouSaid · the spoken record

Trae Vassallo

lines on the record: 91
first: 2016-01-11
most recent: 2016-01-11
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

“Well, and it's important to say something. And actually, what we learned was a significant percentage of folks didn't do anything for a number of reasons, because they wanted to forget 33% because they wanted to forget, 33% did not report because they didn't think that reporting would make a difference. 20% were too embarrassed. And obviously we let people check multiple boxes, which is why these don't add 200. 39% did nothing because they thought it would negatively impact their career. Interestingly, 13% of those who did report were satisfied with the course of action that was taken. Interesting.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so we actually, what we did is we didn't want people to feel uncomfortable. And so we want to take anonymity out of it, but we also offered a way for them to stay in touch with this project by giving us their email addresses. So we actually do have the email addresses of a lot of the participants, but their data is not associated with any individual response.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me ask you, why did you want to make it economist? Because people wouldn't tell their stories. Sometimes it's more powerful when actual names are next to it. Like the Sudecker piece was very strong because Sudecker was saying it.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I should also say that we had 222 respondents to the survey. These were all women. We sourced a list of women who've been working in the valley for 10 years plus three quarters of them are VP or above, three quarters of them have children, and three quarters were 40 or over. So we're talking about very senior level women, and they were, you know, again, happy to tell their story.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ways. You know what I mean? Well, and this was part of the reason why we wanted to do a survey because it is hard to talk about it, and this survey is anonymous, and we went through, and Michelle can talk more about this, but we went through a lot of steps to make sure people felt comfortable in their anonymity in this survey. And then we also tried to back up the data with specific anecdotes, because it's one thing to hear 60%. It's another thing to hear, oh, it's 60%, you lost a client because you wouldn't sit on their lap, right? You know, there's all these very specific stories that, you know, make it much more meaningful.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The number is rather large, 60%. That means it's probably even higher in some ways. You know what I mean? These are people wanting to report it. How did you get people to talk about these things? Did they just feel like they're just waiting to talk about it?”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then we asked us further on that is this from a colleague? Is this a client? And is this a superior? So we have a lot of data on this. I'd say the surprising one for me was that 65% of these women said that it was from superior. So, you know, it isn't just colleagues not behaving well. These are”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can, although we ask for anecdotes also just to take the temperature, what are people actually saying? And some of these anecdotes included things like the first time I traveled with a new CEO, he made an advance. I turned him down. After that, I was never asked to travel with him again. This impacted my ability to do my job. And there were many, many anecdotes like that. So this isn't asking your coworker on a date. These are.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Well, I guess first off, we wanted to make it really clear that the survey was not just about harassment, but all sorts of issues. But to get it out of the way, since this was part of the reason for pulling the survey together, we'll start with some of the sexual harassment numbers. And the way we asked the question was how many women had experienced unwanted sexual advances in the workplace? And it came back that 60% had that experience, which is.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Conversation rather than just anecdotal stories which everybody has. Michelle, why don't we start with the data, what it's showing?”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And type in decode that's stamps.com, enter decode. We're back with Michelle Medansky and Trey Vasello, who are talking about the elephant in the valley, which is Trey, the elephant is.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Getting your mailing and shipping done can seem like a no win situation going to the post office takes up valuable time, leasing a postage meter is expensive with multi-year commitments and hidden fees. Luckily, I know a better way at stamps.com. With stamps.com, you can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter or package right from your desk using your own computer and printer. You even get special postage discounts you can't find at the post office. Plus stamps.com is more powerful than a postage meter at just a fraction of the cost. You can save at least fifty percent compared to a postage meter, and you'll avoid those time-consuming trips to the post office and those long, long lines. Right now, sign up for stamps dot com and use my promo code decode for this special offer. It's a four-week trial plus a $110 bonus offer, including a postage and a digital scale. Don't wait. Go to stamp.com and before you do anything else, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess different ways, I guess. You know, I don't know. I think if they can code all of Google, they can figure this out. That's my feeling. Anyway, we're going to go to break. I'm going to talk from our sponsor very quickly, and then we'll be back with Trey Vicello and Michelle Medansky about the elephant in the valley and their surveys about sexual harassment, gender bias, and other issues.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. It's not clear. It's not clear. Right. You know, I'm of the school that none of it's unconscious. I know there's all these studies saying people don't mean it, but I think this is a group of smart people who know precisely what they're doing.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Inclusion and activities. Increase your value as an employee. Yep, yep. The third one, I guess we called unconscious bias. Those were the eye contact notions, things like that. And then the fourth one, we created a category called motherhood because there's a lot of things around parent and motherhood and life choices and things like that that ultimately affect.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, for the sake of the survey, we actually broke it down into, I'd say, four key areas that I think generally fall under maybe conscious and unconscious bias. And we group those into the first one was sort of feedback and promotion. The second one was inclusion. Third one was, I guess we're inclusion.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's bad, you know you're not supposed to do it. There is saying things that are publicly demeaning, which is definitely conscious, but there are other things like not making eye contact with a woman, like only talking to my husband at a cocktail party when he's a stay-at-home dad, which is unconscious. There's lots of things that people do that they're not aware of, which is not having women in Silicon Valley be acknowledged in the same way that men are.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, bro, you know. Right, absolutely, which is difficult. So before we go to break, talk about unconscious and unconscious bias very quickly, and then we'll get into the numbers when we get back. What is that, Michelle, and how do you look at it? And Trey, I'd like you to say how you think of it, because everyone defines it differently.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, or you know, I remember being at Yahoo and they're like, you know, someone was doing something inappropriate. And like a senior guy said to me, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening. And coming from advertising, all that stuff happened all the time. I was like, wow, you know, I mean, there is some naivete, I think, among men who this is their only career or they're only, you know, not necessarily seeing the bigger picture or don't know things from the woman's perspective.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That is one of my pet peeves. I always look at the composition of the boards whenever I look at a website. And, you know, there are lots of very progressive men in Silicon Valley. So I think there are a lot of men who just are shocked. And I remember even like when I was...”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why doesn't Silicon Valley want to think of itself like this? It's supposed to be tolerant, it's supposed to be meritocracy. I think it's a mirror toracy. I call it that because it's white guys looking at white guys, kind of thing. And I know I get trouble for saying that, but it doesn't strike me as a meritocracy when 10 white men are on the same board. I don't know how that's mathematically possible. I mean, you're a numbers person. So it seems like, you know, those are the only qualified people.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I worked down the hall from her for four years. I would never have any idea. So I think that it's a lot more than sexual harassment. And I personally have not experienced any of that in Silicon Valley, but I think there's so much of this conscious and unconscious bias that does happen. And that's the broader story to be told.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. Here's someone who is a high ranking woman who's not the most outgoing on these topics and never really talked about it and just had to speak up because she's like, whatever you think of this person in this trial, this is my experience too. Yeah.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Without that finger pointing to say. Actually, it's the rule So, this is an industry that doesn't think of itself this way.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Finger point. But it's also just to get some underlying data without that finger pointing to say, hey, you know, it's not the exception. Actually, it's the rule. And it's happening all over the place. And it's happening to not just women who you could sort of point to and say there's some issues that they caused it. The women in this survey are incredibly experienced women. They're CEOs, their founders, their VPs of organizations. And so I think it's really enlightening when we can point to some of the leaders in Silicon Valley and say, look, all of this stuff has happened to them too. They just never had a venue to be able to talk about it in a productive way.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I will say, I think we're here because we believe this is a really important topic that needs a lot more data and a lot more discussion. And so, you know, if only for catalyzing more discussion, that is a good thing, but we have a lot more to do. And so part of what we wanted to do with this data is really create an environment where there isn't finger pointing. There should be a little bit of a link.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going But do you think it was a good thing this trial? A lot of people feel it mightbe wasn't because, you know, I think it was. I think whenever you get illumination, even if it's a complicated person, a complicated subject, it sort of starts people thinking on some level. We had one group of VCs saying it would be bad because men wouldn't hire women after the thing as if it was kind of inane as far as I was concerned. But do you think it had a good impact or a bad impact?”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, that's a good question. You know, I personally wasn't aware of much conversation going on about this issue. And so I do think the trial did catalyze a lot of this conversation. And since then, there have been a number of people who have, you know, in their own way, really taken some interesting initiatives, whether it's the board list and what's going on there, which is really just helping elevate women into great opportunities to other people focusing on how to publish numbers and companies and things like that. So I do feel like we're at least hearing a lot more about these initiatives”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Trait, first, before we move on to the actual statistics, we're going to talk about after the break, talk about sort of the mode before and after the POW trial. Now, you were considered a star witness there supporting some of what Ellen said, some of it not. Had anything like this happened or had it just been quietly pushed under the rug?”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or they can say it was her fault, or they could say whatever. But to say, hey, 60% of senior women in Silicon Valley have felt that they have been sexually harassed in their career is pretty meaningful.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I think that a lot of women is lonely at the top, and you don't hear about them and you don't necessarily share the stories. So being able to see what is, you know, how prevalent is this really and really making this into the consciousness of everybody in Silicon Valley was important.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Supporting ad sales, supporting corporate development, supporting the general director of Yahoo. So, and now I work with all kinds of media companies. I've been in Silicon Valley for 12 years. So just putting some numbers against this and seeing how prevalent this was was important. And since, you know, I can design surveys. I said, hey, let's talk about this. Let's see what it is we want to learn. And then let's figure out who we should send the survey to.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Trey got in touch with me through other women in the valley, and I think all of us were talking about this. So she got my contact information and I do consumer insights for a living. So my last job at Yahoo was VP of global market research”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's talk about why you decided to do this, Michelle. Why put data behind it? Because, of course, anecdotal is interesting, but it really doesn't back people's stories up”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I'd say there's a number of reasons why these topics don't get talked about. First of all, and we saw this play out in the data from our survey, is that there's fear of retribution. So I think the number was I'll have to look it up in a second, but 29% of women choose not to actually bring this up because they fear for their job.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, why was it, why is it such a hard thing to talk about? Why was the POW trial such an important moment? I think it really was because it's difficult at trials it was and how complex a personnel is. It still brought up issues that continue to be an issue in Silicon Valley.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So, what surprised me was, first of all, I didn't know that it was as prevalent as it appeared to me afterwards once we sort of started a public discourse on it. And then the other thing was that while each woman I talked to tended to have some set of stories that they wanted to share, the guys didn't. There was really a lack of...”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We experience when people are covering it, I would have people just pop off, like, oh, I know that. Not just sexual harassment, but gender bias and different microaggressions. Exactly.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Well, I had the experience of being subpoenaed to testify in this trial and very publicly had to talk about a sexual harassment experience. And the surprising thing for me was that in talking about it, I had an overwhelming number of women come back to me after that experience and say, you know, thank you for talking about it. By the way, here's what I lived through. And what was shocking to me, first of all, I wasn't the only one. What really got me was the fact that just anecdotally, it seemed like more than half of all the women I talked to had some horrific set of experiences that were almost equal to sort of what I had to go.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That it is. So let's talk about how you got to do this. There's a lot of background here, and this year has really been the year of talking about these issues, not just sexual harassment, but gender bias and a wider issue that Silicon Valley has been discussing and perhaps failing very badly at. So let's talk about your background. New York Clement Perkins, and you were starring in the trial, one of the people who was testifying in the Ellen Powell trial. Let's talk about the background of how you got to this.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today's sponsor is stamps.com. Avoid trips to the post office, use stamps.com to buy and print official U.S. postage right from your computer. Go to stamps.com today and sign up for a special offer. Click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in decode. Today is also sponsored by Casper. Get $50 toward any mattress purchased by visiting Casper.com slash recode and use the promo recode. Terms and conditions apply.”
2016-01-11 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Trae Vassallo and Michele Madansky, Co-Authors, "The Elephant in the Valley" · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT