>1. Pao is a hero to many online for her gender equality fight, but was ousted by people online as well. This is mostly beyond dispute, except for the presumption that the Reddit mob actually did oust her, which all the principals in the story deny. That interpretation favors the Reddit mob.
Who is she a hero to? How many is "many"? What evidence do they have of this statement? Is she actually fighting for gender equality? You were also right to question whether the 'crowd' (the current wording) is the cause of her ouster, but it is also worth asking just who is to be included in that group, and whether they can legitimately be thought of as a single coherent entity.
That's just one sentence. Your second point:
>2. Pao's resignation was abrupt and happened amidst a torrent of misogynist drama, renewing concerns about SV sexism. It's indisputable that her resignation was abrupt. It's indisputable that the story has generated concern about online sexism. Some people may not appreciate that concern, but that doesn't make its existence not a fact.
We can split hairs about what is meant by "abrupt resignation", but the community has been unhappy for quite some time. The change.org petition has been around for about a month. "happened amidst a torrent of misogynist drama" is a phrase nearly without empirical meaning. Certainly there was "drama" involved, as with any other significant occurrence, but one must ask to what extent was "misogyny" involved, how was that relevant, and what criteria do they use to qualify that term. And of course, "renewing" what "concerns" to whom?
One can continue down your list in a similar fashion.
Furthermore, the context is certainly manufactured. Pao is famous for her lawsuit, and as a consequence gets associated with "sexism in tech". Ironically, while the outcome of the lawsuit determined that she had not suffered gender discrimination, any news about her now assumes as context a narrative that she is the victim of sexism.
The new sexism angle is a red herring, and the article is worse off for it.
I think it's difficult to argue that sexism is a red herring when someone resigns in the wake of a petition that leads off by criticizing them for taking a sexual harassment case to court. It's also difficult to argue that sexism isn't a factor in a resignation preceded by many hundreds of misogynist rants.
So, your responses to my challenge. Thank you! I think the first one is valid, and that reasonable people can disagree; the second one, less so.
Who is Pao a hero to? Not so much me. I think it's fair to argue that she's less a hero than "someone with a cheering section". Is she fighting for gender equality? That depends on the semantics you adopt. Reasonable people will argue that taking a sexual harassment case to court is "fighting for gender equality". Pao's reasonable detractors will say that she's fighting for her own financial interests.
Did Pao resign abruptly? Categorically yes, so much so that I'm a little irritated at Altman and Ohanian to see how it was managed. In an orderly succession, the CEO announces that they're leaving at, say, the end of the month. That didn't happen here. Not only that, but this CEO resigned amidst loud, newsworthy clamor for her ouster. Reddit's choreography leaves open the question of whether Reddit mobs can oust people at Reddit --- certainly, the mob thinks it can! There's no practical reason Pao couldn't have been quietly replaced by Huffman, who could have joined the board, and then a few weeks from now announce her resignation at the end of, I don't know, September. Operationally, Huffman would be doing the same thing he's doing now, but the optics would be clearer.
They didn't do that because Pao resigned abruptly. Not only did she resign abruptly, but both she and the board noted in their announcement that that Reddit mob was a destructive factor in the resignation.
Pao would not have resigned had the last few months of drama --- most of which does not appear to have been her making, and before you settle on "the buck stops with the CEO" please note that in this weird company, the CEO's boss had an operational role, and was himself responsible for the most dramatic misstep the company made. She probably did leave because she genuinely didn't feel she was the right person at this point to grow Reddit's userbase. But that judgement was almost certainly based in part on the fact that anything Reddit did with her name attached would be trolled and harassed by the redpill "chairmin pow" mob.
>1. Pao is a hero to many online for her gender equality fight, but was ousted by people online as well. This is mostly beyond dispute, except for the presumption that the Reddit mob actually did oust her, which all the principals in the story deny. That interpretation favors the Reddit mob.
Who is she a hero to? How many is "many"? What evidence do they have of this statement? Is she actually fighting for gender equality? You were also right to question whether the 'crowd' (the current wording) is the cause of her ouster, but it is also worth asking just who is to be included in that group, and whether they can legitimately be thought of as a single coherent entity.
That's just one sentence. Your second point:
>2. Pao's resignation was abrupt and happened amidst a torrent of misogynist drama, renewing concerns about SV sexism. It's indisputable that her resignation was abrupt. It's indisputable that the story has generated concern about online sexism. Some people may not appreciate that concern, but that doesn't make its existence not a fact.
We can split hairs about what is meant by "abrupt resignation", but the community has been unhappy for quite some time. The change.org petition has been around for about a month. "happened amidst a torrent of misogynist drama" is a phrase nearly without empirical meaning. Certainly there was "drama" involved, as with any other significant occurrence, but one must ask to what extent was "misogyny" involved, how was that relevant, and what criteria do they use to qualify that term. And of course, "renewing" what "concerns" to whom?
One can continue down your list in a similar fashion.
Furthermore, the context is certainly manufactured. Pao is famous for her lawsuit, and as a consequence gets associated with "sexism in tech". Ironically, while the outcome of the lawsuit determined that she had not suffered gender discrimination, any news about her now assumes as context a narrative that she is the victim of sexism.
The new sexism angle is a red herring, and the article is worse off for it.