No matter how important it is, talking about discrimination and the lack of diversity in tech can feel draining. It’s unusual to read something that’s equal parts infuriating and invigorating, but not at all exhausting.
Ellen Pao’s new book, Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, is the rare story that, by going into all the most depressing details about how twisted and difficult life is for women in Silicon Valley, leaves the reader energized for the fight ahead.
"This is new territory; there is no road map," Pao writes at the end of Reset. "All we have are the occasional signposts that show us we're headed in the right direction."
In 2012, Pao sued Kleiner Perkins Caufield Beyer, her employer and one of the most powerful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, for gender discrimination and retaliation. Three years later, she lost her lawsuit when a jury sided with Kleiner.
The intervening years saw Pao’s reputation nearly destroyed. Kleiner hired a crisis management firm that planted negative stories about Pao and her family, and had the resources to constantly demand corrections that favored Kleiner's side from reporters covering the trial.
She was forced to keep working at Kleiner while her colleagues disparaged her behind closed—but clear—glass doors. Then, she was forced to leave her job.
Pao declined a few settlement agreements that would have earned her millions but required her to sign a non-disparagement clause.
Now her story is out there, and it answers a few questions, similar to another memoir published this September: What, from her perspective, actually happened? And was it worth it?
“I thought the only way to help Kleiner understand that their behavior and attitudes were wrong was to have the public weigh in,” Pao said in an interview last week. “They weren’t listening to me and they weren’t listening to other women who had complained.”
The trial, covered exhaustively, forced the public to weigh in on Kleiner's behavior. Reset, which builds on and promotes Pao's work with her diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include, is the next step.
This time around, it's hard for anyone reading to judge Pao too harshly when she describes partners at Kleiner who "treated my taking maternity leave as the equivalent of abandoning a ship in the middle of a typhoon to get a manicure" and, at trial, her struggle to appear relatable on the witness stand.
"I kept my answers short and my emotions in check."
"I kept my answers short and my emotions in check," she writes. "Often I just sat there and said nothing as the defense lawyer went on and on with her vigorous attacks. I knew if I challenged her, the jury could interpret my pushback as confirming that I was difficult or aggressive."
Anecdotes like these, which show what was going through Pao's mind at the time, give pause to anyone who watched the trial in 2015 and thought, "good cause, wrong plaintiff." The narrative of the perfect victim and the tendency for people on the outside to side with those in power are all upended in memoir form.
Even if Pao's story is slightly messier than her book makes it sound, her memoir is still important reading for everyone in Silicon Valley.
For anyone in tech considering speaking up against their employer, Reset is a roadmap that doesn't mince words about just how hard it can be. For those in positions of privilege in Silicon Valley, Pao's story works as an eye-opener into how other people experience their world and how their own behavior might, consciously or not, make others' lives and careers more difficult.
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For women who followed Pao's trial and have kept up with her fight for diversity and inclusion afterwards, Pao has become a sort of hero. She took an incredible amount of skepticism and criticism so that women coming forward reporting harassment in Silicon Valley today are, for the most part, believed.
“I really did not think I would be doing this early on in my career, even up until I started raising these issues at Kleiner,” Pao said. “It’s hard for me to imagine what it would’ve been like if I hadn’t been at Kleiner.”
“It’s hard for me to imagine what it would’ve been like if I hadn’t been at Kleiner.”
The fact that so many women are still experiencing what Pao did shows the need for Reset. Pao's story explains why we need to be talking about diversity and inclusion and why there's still so much work to do.
“I do see firms losing their lead partners. I do see CEOs being more frequently pushed out, but they’re often replaced with somebody who looks very similar,” Pao said of the current VC world. “It’s not clear we’re on the path for meaningful, substantial change.”
That's why Reset matters. With more stories like Pao's going public, and more women, people of color, and allies in tech fighting to make sure others don't experience the same thing, the path for meaningful, substantial change moves slightly more within reach.
