Sexism at Pinterest: former COO files lawsuit, employees to stage virtual walkout on Aug. 14
Alphabet workers news
In the latest in a cascade of revelations of toxic workplace culture at Pinterest, employees have launched a Coworker.org petition demanding "an end to all forms of discrimination and retaliation", and have announced a virtual walkout on Friday August 14, using the web site changeAtPinterest.com. Here's a roundup of some of the recent workplace culture news surrounding Pinterest:
- Former Pinterest employees Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, both Black women, publicly resigned from the firm in late May, both alleging racial discrimination at Pinterest. The two women were profiled in the Washington Post in early July.
- Business Insider published a story (paywalled) back in June helpfully titled "Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'", which pretty much tells you what kind of story you're going to read with just the headline.
- The company's former COO, Françoise Brougher, was fired in April and has just filed a lawsuit against the firm, alleging gender discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination. She published her story on August 11 in a Medium post titled "The Pinterest Paradox: Cupcakes and Toxicity"
I'll post some extracts from Françoise Brougher's public essay below. Also feel free to sign on to the Coworker petition, which has some very specific demands.
- Bruce
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The Pinterest Paradox: Cupcakes and Toxicity
Françoise Brougher, Aug. 11, 2020
https://medium.com/@francoise_93266/the-pinterest-paradox-cupcakes-and-toxicity-57ed6bd76960
... Although 70 percent of Pinterest’s users are women, the company is steered by men with little input from female executives. Pinterest’s female executives, even at the highest levels, are marginalized, excluded, and silenced. I know because until my firing in April, I was Pinterest’s chief operating officer...
According to Pinterest, I was fired not for the results I achieved, but for not being “collaborative.” I believe that I was fired for speaking out about the rampant discrimination, hostile work environment, and misogyny that permeates Pinterest...
It is time to eliminate the “boys clubs” that dominate far too many companies and make room for more women leaders and their ideas.
In the fall of 2017, a friend called with an exciting opportunity. Pinterest Co-Founder and CEO Ben Silbermann wanted to hire the company’s first ever COO...
... When I was hired, I was told that all Pinterest executives had the same backloaded vesting schedule. Our equity portion vested 10 percent the first year, 20 percent the second, 30 percent the third, and 40 percent the fourth...
With the S1 filing, I realized that I was the only executive on the leadership team given this backloaded deal. In my first year, I vested 37 percent of what my closest peer, Chief Financial Officer Todd Morgenfeld, vested in his first year...
Discovering that I was given a less favorable vesting schedule was upsetting, but what really bothered me was that I had been misled...
My performance review came a few months later. In earlier reviews, I had been praised for championing the “care with candor” value. Now I was being told that I was “not collaborative.”...
My review was a textbook case of the “abrasiveness trap,” a concept Kieran Snyder, a female tech executive whose writing I admire, coined. “Men are given constructive suggestions,” she writes. “Women are given constructive suggestions — and told to pipe down.”...
Below are simple steps Pinterest, or any organization, can take to improve its culture and create an equitable and effective working environment for all.
1: Stop making grandiose statements without taking meaningful action. [...]
2: Recognize and dismantle the system of gender bias. [...]
3: Take effective, proactive steps to root out discrimination. [...]
4: Focus on retention, not just hiring. [...]
5: Stop making decisions in ad-hoc, opaque ways. [...]
8: Don’t use NDA’s to buy silence.