Behaving Badly in 2017

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2017 was a year with a lot of bad behavior going on. People were randomly clicking, other people where hacking, others were mistreating the disadvantaged. Perhaps more dismaying was the constant string of stories about the age discrimination and the mistreatment of women and minorities in technology.

The corporate misogyny at Uber is perhaps the best example of horrifyingly bad behavior in tech companies, but it’s far from the only one. The multi-page manifesto written by a former Google engineer presenting reasons why women can’t succeed in the technology industry is another. But the fact is the “bro” culture in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in tech robs their businesses and all of society of the talent and productive potential of half the population.

Facebook is known for being one of the best places in the world to work, receiving annual accolades about its perks and benefits. But two new lawsuits are arguing that the social media giant is not an inclusive, great place to work if you’re above a certain age. 61-year-old Stephen Cohen, who lives in Manhattan, says he was approached by Facebook’s vice president of global marketing and director of sales and marketing staff about a job in communications. But when he sent them his resume, which listed his graduation date as 1978, they suddenly told him the position had been filled, according to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court. This is the second age discrimination lawsuit to be filed against Facebook in recent days. According to City News Service, former Facebook employee Gary Glouner, 52, filed a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that he was fired in 2015 over his age and disability. Glouner claims that Facebook, whose motto was once “move fast and break things,” discriminated against older employees, including himself, for “not moving fast enough.” Glouner said he witnessed several other older employees get fired after being told that they were a “poor cultural fit,” or that they “didn’t get it” or that they “didn’t move fast enough,” according to the suit. Both lawsuits reference Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s speech to a tech gathering in 2007 as an examples of Facebook’s ageist culture. Back then, Zuckerberg was a 22-year-old unpolished Facebook CEO. In a Y Combinator speech, he made his generational preferences clear. “Young people are just smarter,” he said. “I want to stress the importance of being young and technical….Why are most chess masters under 30?…I don’t know…Young people just have simpler lives. We may not own a car. We may not have family.” Those words may come back to haunt Zuckerberg.

In October that an estimated 400 to 700 Tesla employees were dismissed, many of whom said the dismissals came with little or no warning. Tesla told that these cuts were made following the company’s annual performance review process. The United Auto Workers filed a complaint against Tesla on Oct. 25 2017, claiming the company fired workers who were trying to unionize. Also, Tesla said 17% of its employees were promoted, and almost half of those promotions were within its factory in Fremont. A quick look at Tesla’s career page shows a different, yet related problem: lots of job openings. It’s an issue the Musk later addressed in the earnings call, noting that the company is “sucking the labor pool dry” to fill positions at its factory in Fremont, Calif., and battery factory near Reno, Nevada. Tesla reported that it lost $619 million in the third quarter, its biggest-ever quarterly loss. Those losses were bigger than usual as Tesla tried to speed up production of its more affordable Model 3 sedan.

What the culture in these companies does is no better than the discrimination that takes place in many levels of society because of a person’s age, skin color or their place of origin. Sadly, because nobody wants to mess with the cool guys in tech, the theoretically progressive governments in California and elsewhere are slow to enforce discrimination laws.

When 2017 is remembered in the technology industry, it will be known as much for a general failure to invest in people. If a general realization began to grow in 2018 that money does not forgive evil. Despite the fact that some Silicon Valley companies, such as Uber, have grown rich mostly on venture funding, that does not give them license to abuse and repress employees in quest of a blockbuster initial public stock offering with a get-rich-at-all-costs mentality that beggars the usual corporate objectives of giving customers a good service at a fair price and employees a decent place to work.