Male order
The book which aims to end the Silicon Valley ‘boys’ club’
For many residents of the Bay area, Silicon Valley has become a glorified frat house. Drugs, ambition, sex and money have created a toxic “bro” culture in which women can feel sidelined, or abused. “[The men] think they are above the law because they think they are changing the world,” says Emily Chang, journalist and author of bestselling book Brotopia.
Silicon Valley is still reeling from Chang’s book, published earlier this year, in which she claims to expose the tech industry’s “secretive, orgiastic dark side”. The book details the drug-fuelled orgies and the freewheeling sex lives which are pursued by men in tech – from the elite down to the rank and file – and how they have consequences for how business gets done in Silicon Valley.
That certainly seemed to be the case this week, when a new, explosive series of allegations rocked the tech world. According to an investigation by the New York Times, Andy Rubin, who invented the Android smartphone software, was handed £70m in exchange for his letter of resignation after being investigated for sexual assault. He allegedly coerced an employee into performing a sex act on him in a hotel room in 2013 – a claim he denies.
Google’s bro culture has been the subject of problematic headlines before. Former Google engineer Loretta Lee sued the tech giant for sexual harassment and discrimination earlier this year. She claimed that male colleagues would spike her drinks with whiskey and frequently made her the target of lewd comments. Google failed to do anything to help, her lawsuit claimed. When she reported the incident to human resources, she was told to take medical leave, and when she returned she was fired for “performance issues”.
“This kind of behaviour is rampant in the Valley,” says a source close to Google. “We all talked about it but no one seemed to care.”
These explosive accounts only represent a fraction of the complaints against tech giants. “It’s broken and things are still not fixed,” says Therese Lawless, a Silicon Valley employment lawyer who took on Facebook. Lawless represented Ellen Pao, a former venture capitalist and tech executive, who fought a gender discrimination case in 2015 and, despite losing, lifted the lid on Silicon Valley’s toxic culture.
The world is seldom awarded this kind of peek at the seedy underbelly of Silicon Valley because NDAS and clauses in contracts ensure that any conflict is settled behind closed doors.
Instead they take place within the walls of arbitration rooms, where the public cannot hear victim’s side of the story. “People get ripped to shreds,” says Jennifer Schwartz, an employment lawyer who has tackled Silicon Valley tech giants for years. “So many women are fearful, and rightfully so, of going to a jury or an arbitrator and being torn apart.”
The vast majority of women who have exposed sexual harassment are already traumatised, she explains. “I see a lot of white-washed internal investigations where the woman is either disciplined or terminated. It upends their lives and the last thing they want to do is go through the horrors of trial.”
Allegations about the sexist culture in Silicon Valley have existed since before the #Metoo movement. Ms Chang says that Silicon Valley men get “incredible powerful and unimaginably wealthy, leading them to become disconnected with reality, causing their bad behaviour”.
Ms Schwartz says this behaviour is getting worse. There is a tolerance of bad behaviour because there is a “wild west” culture and an esteem for peculiarity. It has contributed to a failure to care about diversity and
‘Drug-fuelled orgies; the freewheeling sex lives pursued by men in tech; all have consequences for how business gets done’
egalitarianism on all levels. This, she says, has been sacrificed in pursuit of chasing the next blockbuster IPO.
Silicon Valley, she adds, is the worst workplace she has ever seen. “Over the past seven or eight years, or more, I have been flabbergasted at the kind of behaviours that I am seeing through the women that come to me with claims of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.”
Lawyers fighting sexual harassment claims have gained a small victory. From Jan 1 next year employers in Silicon Valley will no longer be able to silence workers who claim to have been victims of sexual harassment and assault. New laws will allow an alleged perpetrator’s name to be made public, while a victim’s name will remain private. The hope from the employment lawyers battling big tech organisations is that this will put an end to damaging non-disclosure agreements, which claimants are forced to sign if they want a settlement.
“Do I think it’s a perfect fix? No,” says Lawless. “We still have this issue of things being sent into arbitration to begin with. That is a huge problem that needs to be overcome. Unless we get some sort of change in that law on a national level, people are going to be forced into these secret tribunals. It’s one step forward but not the solution.”