Reset by Ellen Pao

Author:Ellen Pao
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

My filing was as simple as we could make it; everything that had happened to me over seven years at Kleiner was condensed into twelve double-spaced pages. My claim specified gender discrimination in promotion and pay, and retaliation—the poor treatment I received after reporting the harassment. I asked for damages to cover the lost pay and to prevent them from doing it again.

It didn’t take long for me to realize why nobody points out problems, much less files lawsuits. I’d given so much time and energy to Kleiner, but after I sent one formal memo, all the goodwill I’d built up vanished. When I eventually sued, suddenly things got tense and everyone had to pick a side. It was complicated and messy, and, by local standards, tremendously uncool.

My lawyer said my case would be stronger if I continued to work at Kleiner. And so, for several months after the memo in January 2012, and even after filing the lawsuit in May, I kept showing up to work around people who actively avoided and ignored me. If I’d thought getting anything done was hard before, it became pretty much impossible.

The managing partners sent around two emails informing everyone about the lawsuit. A coworker showed me the first email but wouldn’t send it to me. I assumed she was concerned about getting in trouble, and I didn’t blame her. The gist was: “Ellen is suing. She’s upset because she wasn’t invited to dinner with Al Gore. Save your emails.” It made me sound crazy.

Before and after I filed, Kleiner made three attempts to have the dispute mediated, to make it disappear quietly. They wanted to figure out a quick way to appease me and to carry on doing things exactly as they always had. Their arrogance and their confidence that my silence could be bought made me angry. I was appalled by their refusal to admit, despite their near-total homogeneity, that they had any problem with diversity.

From the beginning, Kleiner’s main defense lawyer, Lynne Hermle of Orrick law firm, seemed to go out of her way to make my life a living hell, and she raised her voice in a menacing way whenever addressing me. Right off the bat, she intimated that she would shame me publicly for interviewing several lawyers as I tried to build my case. And she intimidated my friends and family. I had decided on a “no collateral damage” approach. I would avoid harm to Kleiner partners’ friends and family members, as they weren’t directly responsible for the firm’s problems. I would not put CEOs in the awkward position of having to protect or implicate their investor. Don’t hurt the innocent, I thought.

Kleiner had no such qualms. Lynne even attacked my friend Lori Park, one of the earliest engineers at Google, whom I’d met in 2005, saying she was fair game because she had sued a former employer. They didn’t observe customs around privacy and used personal information from emails covered by marital and attorney-client privilege, including emails to my husband and my lawyers and even personal notes I’d taken during therapy.

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