A Data-Storage Titan Confronts Bias Claims

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

TECH AND TESTOSTERONE
A Data-Storage Titan Confronts Bias Claims
Some EMC Saleswomen Fault Office Culture; Visits to Strip Clubs
By WILLIAM M. BULKELEY
September 12, 2007; Page A1

EMC Corp. has long prided itself on its hard-driving sales force. Marketing chief Frank Hauck says he hires salespeople with "the passion to knock down walls" who will fit into "a culture of doing whatever it takes." In training sessions, new sales reps walk across beds of hot coals and break boards with karate-like chops. The sales team regards itself as an elite force that has turned the maker of data-storage systems into a market leader.

But some former EMC saleswomen say the company's sales culture has a less attractive side: a macho, frat-boy atmosphere that can be intimidating and, at times, discriminatory to women. In interviews, 17 former saleswomen and men who left between 2000 and this year described what they said were locker-room antics, company-paid visits to strip clubs, demeaning sexual remarks or retaliation against women who complained about the atmosphere. Three of the women said male managers unfairly took away accounts they had developed and gave them to men. Many of their allegations, including the strip-club visits and the taking away of accounts, are also contained in at least six sexual-discrimination lawsuits filed since 2003 by women who once worked in EMC sales offices. The suits claim the women received unequal pay.

(snip)

Discrimination against women has proved intractable in some male-dominated industries such as construction, and in recent years, financial-services firms have been hit with a string of embarrassing lawsuits alleging discriminatory treatment of women. "Hostile environments for women tend to occur where they're dramatically in the minority," says Gillian Thomas, a lawyer for Legal Momentum, a New York-based women's legal rights association. Today, 13.5% of EMC's sales force is female, the company says, compared with 40% at International Business Machines Corp. and 29% at CA Inc., a big software vendor, those companies say. According to the 2000 U.S. census, about 25% of high-tech employees nationally were women.

(snip)

EMC, which notched sales of $11.2 billion last year, sells data-storage devices and software to big corporations. Founded in 1979 by two electrical engineers, it branched from selling office furniture to making printed circuit boards and eventually storage products. By the 1990s, its aggressive sales force had persuaded many corporate customers to use the company's hardware instead of more expensive devices from competitors such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard Co. Its sales force, recruited heavily from the ranks of former college athletes, developed a reputation for never taking no for an answer. Salesmen called their best customers daily, gave them small gifts and sent them expensive bottles of wine when they dined out with their wives. Sales reps were expected to spend evenings dining with clients and weekends golfing with them.

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118955478194424452.html

[Katherine Brengle]

1. Puke. I hope they win.

But I can see a lot of obstacles to that happening.

:(

[Orrex]

2. This probably happened because women don't understand technology

:sarcasm:
and
:puke:

Holy shit. Even in my meager experience I've seen shit like this in other industries. You'd think that there'd be mechanisms in place by now to prevent it, rather than fostering it.

[Triana]

3. I am a woman in a high-tech career and I can tell you this is EVERYWHERE...

...I have NEVER ever, in TWENTY-SEVEN years of my career, worked where there was NOT a "macho, frat-boy atmosphere", or where collusion against and exclusion of females in the field wasn't RAMPANT. EVEN OTHER FEMALES (such as female managers) sometimes participate in it or condone it - if simply by NOT being wise enough to recognize and disallow it when it happens.

I've seen 26-year old hotshot frat-boys get the red-carpet treatment and endless preening during their first three months of employment as a contractor -- in comparison to experienced, more mature female employees (or ANY females regardless of experience or age, for that matter) getting mostly ignored or worse, actively excluded during their first three months as employees of IT organizations.

THIS IS NO ACCIDENT, nor is it at all unconscious, NOR is it caused by the women or anything they do or do not do (other than their having no penis to keep their brain in).

And THAT is my testimony to this crap. It EXISTS. It is NOT "all in our minds". It is NOT "our imaginations". It is NOT "blown out of proportion" and it is NOT "caused by us", and it is NOT "getting better" or "improving".

It is a rampant, insidious issue that has NOT changed or improved in OVER TWO DECADES - even on college campuses - especially on college campuses - where the "frat-boy" mentality rages like teenage hormones on viagra.

WHY are there not more women in high-tech?

GUESS....

[question everything]

4. Yes, this is where it starts

in high schools and in colleges, where the "heroes" are the jocks while women do the cheering.

And then look at "professional" women on TV. Yes, you have your lawyers, and doctors, and crime scene investigators - all dressed in a way that are aimed more to excite the male viewers than to perform a job. With tight skirts and plunging necklines and long hair.. when was the last time you had your doctor with long hair brushing over you, the machines, etc.?

So women can now hold jobs not available for them a generation ago, but they are still expected to be sex symbols.

[Triana]

5. They're expected to be sexy and empty-headed...

..and they're treated as if they're empty-headed whether they are or not, and if they're not "sexy" then they're treated with contempt, in addition.

I have, on more than one occasion, including now, currently, been appalled at how 20-something hotshot frat-boyz are treated with such admiration and respect and such inclusion, while females of any age are doubted, ignored, and have to "prove" themselves (ie: be TWICE as competent to be considered AS competent as males), and many times, even THEN they are treated with much less regard than a male.

There are people who didn't even SPEAK to me during my first year of employment at some places, but come along a young hotshot dude who was my junior or peer, and they were all over him, inclusive, friendly, helpful, and complimentary. It's silent contempt, it seems. A WORLD of difference in how males vs females are treated in high-tech.

I've NEVER seen it otherwise.

EVER.

[musette_sf]

6. i've been in high tech for 21 years

and though it kind of was that way when i was starting out, i think things seem to have gotten better in the last 10 years or so.

i spent the first 12 years in Texas, so i am sure that had something to do with the problem :-)

i've been in the SF Bay Area since then, and i find things to be mostly egalitarian here. outside of a few years on a project that was a voyage on the Ship of Manly Men (Bu$hbots too, of course!), it's all been pretty much okay.