Ellen Pao, tech investor and passionate champion for diversity and inclusion, unpacks why tech's meritocracy is broken and how to fix it.

Ellen Pao On Breaking Tech’s Toxic Status Quo 7 | 3

Alright, let’s get real—tech’s so-called “meritocracy” is doing more harm than good, and it’s time to face it head-on. This week we’re bringing you an episode of the Radical Respect podcast. Kim and Wesley sit down with Ellen Pao, founder of Project Include, to dig into how the industry’s obsession with merit often masks deep-seated bias, exclusion, and outright harassment.

Listen to the episode:

Episode at a Glance: Ellen Pao On Breaking Toxic Tech

 

Ellen doesn’t hold back as she breaks down why quick fixes (we see you, generic unconscious bias training) just don’t cut it, how unchecked bias erodes trust and psychological safety across teams, and the way Project Include is leading the charge with real strategies for change.

From CEOs stepping up to own their role in DEI to addressing the messy realities of AI in the workplace, this conversation is all about building environments where everyone has a shot. Ellen’s story is packed with takeaways for anyone who’s struggled to balance compassion with calling out the tough stuff, and is ready to challenge the status quo and build workplaces where it’s better to have a hole than an asshole.

Radical Candor Podcast Resources: Ellen Pao

The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript: Ellen Pao

Ellen Pao, tech investor and passionate champion for diversity and inclusion, unpacks why tech's meritocracy is broken and how to fix it.

[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Hello, everybody. It’s Kim Scott. This week on the Radical Candor podcast, we’ve got a treat. We’re dropping an episode from the Radical Respect series right into your feed. This one features Ellen Pao, a tech investor and passionate champion for diversity and inclusion. Ellen shares her work with Project Include, a non profit that’s all about making companies more inclusive, and dives into a candid conversation about the tech industry’s so called meritocracy. She highlights how this culture can sometimes lead to discrimination and harassment. I think you’ll find Ellen’s insights incredibly valuable. Enjoy the episode. 

[00:00:42] Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Radical Respect podcast. I’m Kim Scott. 

[00:00:48] Wesley Faulkner: I’m Wesley Faulkner, co host of Radical Respect podcast. And we have a new guest today. Uh, one that is, uh, definitely a person that’s really done personally to move the needle in terms of DEI awareness, inclusion, and has a very, very storied background, Ellen Pao. And. Kim, could you please read her bio? 

[00:01:14] Kim Scott: Sure. So Ellen is a tech investor and advocate. The for, she’s the former CEO of Reddit and a co founder of the award winning diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include. Ellen needs no introduction, but there it is. Welcome Ellen. Thank you for joining us. 

[00:01:32] Ellen Pao: Thank you both for having me. 

[00:01:34] Wesley Faulkner: Really, really excited to have you. 

[00:01:36] Kim Scott: Yes.

[00:01:36] Wesley Faulkner: Thanks. 

[00:01:37] Kim Scott: Wesley has been agitating, is so excited to meet you. So, uh, and I am always excited to be chatting with you. Uh, so why don’t we just start off, uh, with Project Include? I would love to hear what’s new, uh, with Project Include. And how you’re thinking about that organization in this environment? 

[00:02:00] Ellen Pao: Yeah, it’s an interesting time, um.

[00:02:02] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:02:03] Ellen Pao: Project Include turns ten next year and it’s a organization that came out of a group of us just kind of deciding like, hey, people don’t have the information they need to be inclusive. They’re getting all this information that, oh, just run and, you know, what they called unconscious bias training for an hour and a half, go out and do a press release. And all of a sudden the people will come and you can hire them and they’ll be all great. 

[00:02:29] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:02:30] Ellen Pao: We’re like this, it needs so much more. 

[00:02:32] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:02:32] Ellen Pao: And we came up with, I think it was eighty-seven different recommendations. We put them into a document and then we put it on a website. And then people wanted more like they, they were like, oh, we want to do more stuff. We need more information. This is super helpful. So we ended up running cohorts, teams of CEOs to kind of work on it a little bit together to run surveys to find out where their weak spots were. And then six months later, like having done some work, where are the new weak spots and have you made progress? And can we hold each other accountable here? Um, during COVID, we weren’t able to do that. We want, we have them meet in person, so it wasn’t a risk we were willing to take. And we ended up doing some, research on like, how did COVID affect the workplace? And we found that not surprisingly, it had a negative impact. People had, I think, ninety-seven percent of the people that we surveyed had gone remote and it was causing a lot of harm. People were still super hostile and they were still harassing people, over video, over the phone. All of a sudden you’re in your bedroom and you’re getting all of this. It was causing 

[00:03:40] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:03:40] Ellen Pao: A lot of anxiety. And we had a bunch of recommendations around like what are things you should and should not be doing in this environment? How do you think about the anxiety that’s been created? How do you create space for people to take time off? People were working all the time. They were expected to, like, I know you’re home, so let me give you some more work to do. But how do you then manage people in an environment where, yeah, they are home, but they’re struggling? So, you know, it’s, it was a very necessary, um, piece, I think, and we’ve ended up doing more reports like that. How are, um, disabled workers treated in the workplace? 

[00:04:20] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:04:20] Ellen Pao: And what are the kind of common, um, common assumptions and stereotypes and how do we break through them? We did one with TechEquitable on how contract workers are treated and what are the ways that you should be treating them. And most recently we are in the process of getting ready to publish a report with MMG Earth on, you know, how should you be incorporating AI into the workplace? What are the things that, you know, people are doing that aren’t working? And what are the problems with these products? What are the ethical risks? What are the environmental risks? And then what are ways that you can still incorporate it, but in a thoughtful way where you know what your employees are doing. Most people don’t know what their employees are doing. And a lot of people are using AI without their company approval or knowledge. And how can you really make a thoughtful decision on whether to incorporate it and then whether it’s working once you’ve incorporated it? And, you know, and how do you ameliorate some of the risks around adoption? 

[00:05:25] Kim Scott: Yeah. So important and so interesting. I mean, one of the things that you found I think during COVID is that in a virtual environment, there’s more bias, more prejudice, more bullying. Um, so why is that? And what can folks do about it? 

[00:05:45] Ellen Pao: I think we’re in a similar time now where there’s just a lot more anxiety. Like people are afraid there’s something out of their control and it is, you know, it is an existential threat, right? So they end up kind of lashing out at each other in a way that’s not super healthy or productive, but it is kind of a human instinct. 

[00:06:05] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:06:05] Ellen Pao: So how do you try to alleviate that anxiety? How do you create forms of connection? And one of the people I spoke with, Professor Leanne Williams from Stanford said, like, connection is what can be extremely healing and can alleviate anxiety. You feel like, you know, you’ve made that connection and somebody has your back, right? 

[00:06:26] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:06:26] Ellen Pao: And it’s not transactional. It’s like, I care about you. I care about how you’re dealing in these times. And I want to connect with you on a personal level. 

[00:06:37] Kim Scott: So important. 

[00:06:38] Wesley Faulkner: And Project Includes you kind of focus on the tech industry. And of course this happens with a lot of different verticals and industries. Is there anything specific about tech that kind of lends itself either to this type of behavior or either the more amenable to kind of, um, kind of finding ways to get past it? Why tech specifically? What are the things that make tech kind of like a good place to focus?

[00:07:09] Ellen Pao: I think it’s what we knew, that’s what the cohort of us knew, but I also think looking back and seeing what we’ve learned since we launched almost ten years ago. It’s an environment where people were very wedded to this, and you know this, Kim, idea of meritocracy, right? 

[00:07:28] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:07:29] Ellen Pao: Every decision was right. We know what we’re doing, where that, you know, that founder mythology was very strong, and it was so, um, white and male. I mean, it was a very, you know, and it was a very small, uh, and often secretive environment and very network dependent, very relationship based. So it was a natural place where a lot of these problems festered. And I think, we’re, um, just now, you know, aware of how deep it goes and, you know, what people are saying now where Elon Musk has gone. 

[00:08:08] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:08:08] Ellen Pao: It’s a very different environment than the kind of meritocratic, everybody gets a fair chance environment that people were, um, promising that, you know, they wanted free speech, but now it’s like, no, we don’t want free speech. We want, free speech for ourselves and not for anybody else. 

[00:08:25] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:08:25] Ellen Pao: I mean, a lot of these, you know, a lot of these secret kind of conditions and situations have started to, um, pop up more publicly and they’re not pretty. 

[00:08:37] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, and we wanted disruption but now that we’re, now that we have disrupted someone else, we never want anyone ever to disrupt us. You know?

[00:08:46] Ellen Pao: Yes. 

[00:08:47] Kim Scott: Hypocrisy is, uh, and, and not just, it’s sort of brutal incompetence, really, is what it is. 

[00:08:56] Ellen Pao: Yeah, it was like, and the amount of wealth generated in such a short amount of time, there was so much opportunity, but it was so limited. 

[00:09:06] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:09:06] Ellen Pao: And you can witness, like, these people who made these promises or had these relationships and ended up raising so much money for, you know, products that were like, just dumb, Juicero. I mean, you just, 

[00:09:23] Kim Scott: Absolutely. 

[00:09:24] Wesley Faulkner: I think you also are pointing out, like speaking of Juiceros, this is the implication of not just the hubris that some people would have. But also the people who aren’t necessarily most adept at running a company at, uh, doing the right thing. And how easily that they are elevated in this system. And of course you have a lot of case studies really demonstrating about diversity and how much, um, it helps with being successful as a company or as an organization. 

[00:09:58] So there’s a lot of data and there’s a lot of case studies that bring this together to say like here, we actually have comprehensive information on this. But yet there’s still a resistance around DEI in general, seeing it as something that is infesting companies with lower quality, lower standards. How do you like have conversations when you have the data and you have everything that says the opposite? But people are sometimes cemented in this understanding of what DEI is and how bad it is for companies.

[00:10:36] Ellen Pao: It’s hard, right? There are some people I’ve just come to understand are not going to change, like, I don’t think Elon Musk and I will ever be on the same page. And there’s a whole group of tech Barons who are in that category where.

[00:10:53] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:10:53] Ellen Pao: You know, maybe one day they have a child who experiences something and that changes their minds. But like my arguing data to them is not going to change it. And I’m just comfortable, not comfortable. I’m not happy with it, but I’m comfortable with like letting go of trying to change something that I cannot change. And, the part that I try to focus on is there are a lot of people who do want to figure out how to do it right. 

[00:11:19] And they realize, hey, the data show that I’m going to have better financial results, or I’m going to have a happier employee base, and there’s going to be less churn, and I’m going to have better decision making, and I just feel more comfortable when there’s more inclusion in the room because people feel more relaxed, and it’s a better environment. So there are a lot of people who are still, um, committed and are still doing the right things. They’re not, they’re hiding it a little bit more, you know, they don’t want to be a target. It is not a good environment to be waving that flag right now. But there is a kind of understanding that like this is progress and we’ve got this data. 

[00:11:59] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:11:59] Ellen Pao: And we realize oh, we were actually holding people behind and we weren’t letting our company run at full capacity because we weren’t letting people operate at full capacity and we weren’t bringing in the best people. So we need to change that. We need to figure out how we improve our hiring processes. How we you know, um, give people the best opportunities, how we pay people, compensate people better. And it’s something that actually helps the whole company, right? 

[00:12:25] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:12:25] Ellen Pao: When you have pay ranges and you have job descriptions and you have expectations of what you need to do to be promoted, that’s good for everyone. When you’re more inclusive, when you allow people to kind of, uh, work from where they want to work or, you know, give them opportunities to, uh, you know, take time off, that helps everyone, right? It’s not just, oh, only this one group gets this benefit, everybody benefits from it. And it’s so hard when people are so fixated on one group getting something that maybe they’ve already had forever, that it’s complicated. Like, I think if we were to have conversations with a lot of people who think they are against DEI, they would not be opposed to it.

[00:13:12] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:13:12] Ellen Pao: It’s not like a, it’s not like we’re saying, you’re going to get fired, but there’s so much fear. Like people have been able to stoke so much fear around DEI that it’s become this very scary, horrible thing when it’s actually, it’s just, I’m going to make your company better. 

[00:13:28] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:13:28] Ellen Pao: I’m going to make you make better decisions. I’m going to have you have more people that you can hire from. And that means like everybody gets lifted up because the company does better and can hire more.

[00:13:46] Wesley Faulkner: When you’re having conversations with CEOs and companies, um, and they even buy into the bringing in the best people, how much work do they put in, in the orchestration of the idea? Instead of just saying, that’s a great idea. Let’s do it. Do they think about actually writing policy? Um, after they have a policy, enforcing the policy. After enforcing the policy, making sure that it’s enforced equitably. Um, uh, and then all the steps that fall into and under that, when they’re trying to do the right thing. Instead of the other side of just like, get rid of it, just, you can’t do it. To more of like, this is a complex issue. We need to make sure not only do we institute these solutions, but we have to think of the second order, the third order and the fourth order effect of implementing these types of inclusions. How do you counsel, how do you have conversations around that issue about the commitment and the pipeline of ensuring that this happens? 

[00:14:53] Ellen Pao: I take it from a higher level. So my goal is to get the CEOs involved. So when we started ten years ago, CEOs didn’t touch DEI, right? There is often a very junior person who had done recruiting for a year or two, um, who was in charge of DEI and inclusion, and really didn’t have resources, didn’t have any authority, didn’t have any power, but made people feel good. Check the box, I got my DEI person and I don’t know who they are, never had any contact with the CEO, probably under HR someplace, but um, not anybody who really made a huge difference. So when we started our cohorts we were, I was very intentional. Like the CEO has to be part of this program and is required to come to these sessions. Like they can bring, like if they want to bring their HR person or if they have a DEI person, have them come. Often if they’re very small, they want to bring in their head of engineering who’s doing all the hiring. And the idea is like, let’s have these CEOs talk with their peers about it. It’s a no shame, you know, we’re in the cone of silence environment. So you can ask your dumb questions.

[00:16:09] You can talk to a peer, not somebody who’s like three levels below you, that you don’t have any, you know, that might not have any experience in operations or understand all the different functions of the organization and how they interact. Like, let’s talk at a very high level and understand what it is. And then like my push is, treat it like you would any other business imperative. So when you bring in a project, you are measuring whether it’s successful or not. You’re tracking it and you’re deciding whether you’re going to renew it and what parts of it you want to renew and who worked well on it and who didn’t work well on it.

[00:16:43] And let’s do that with DEI. Like, who’s the team that’s on it? Are they, you know, what products are you using? What metrics are you using? Are they working? And if they’re not like, let’s change them. So it was more getting like the CEO buy in and then let’s start doing these surveys and show you like these are the different metrics we’re looking at. Satisfaction level, like communication in like six different areas, like communication or promotions and understanding like salaries and compensation, um, job satisfaction. And these are things that you can measure and you can understand like what groups are unhappy, what groups are happy and let’s start looking at and then you can use that information to make decisions. And here’s a whole set of recommendations that you can start with. I think a lot of them felt kind of, one even said, like, I’m the CEO, I’m supposed to know everything, and this is an area I don’t feel confident to talk about, so I don’t talk about it.

[00:17:40] And we kind of coached that CEO, like, if you want to talk about it, go talk about it with some vulnerability, like, tell people that you’re not the expert. And, but that it’s important to you, so you want to show that you’re committed to it. He went out and did that at an all hands and the co founder came back and said, it was amazing. Like he was so awkward, so uncomfortable, but so many people said that that was the most leadership he had shown in his, you know, five or ten year, um, term as a founding CEO. So there’s, you know, it’s like helping people understand where they can be and what they can do and how to do it in a way that, um, you know, that kind of keeps you away from, you know, he was worried, oh, I’m going to use the wrong term. 

[00:18:27] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:18:27] Ellen Pao: Like we’re such a progressive company, but it’s like, it’s okay. Just tell them that you’re sorry for using the wrong term, you know, because you know you’re going to, because you’re not the expert and that’s okay. But I think, you know, giving people a space to grow and to acknowledge, um, their willingness and desire to grow, I think is important, but getting the CEO to that point where they feel comfortable owning it and actually treating it like a real imperative is the most important part. 

[00:18:57] Kim Scott: Yeah. And I think what you said is so important because we are going to make mistakes, especially people who don’t know, you know, CEOs where this is not their area of expertise. They’re going to make mistakes and creating an environment where, it’s not that it’s safe, ’cause it’s never going to feel safe to make a mistake in front of a bunch of people. Like that’s uncomfortable 

[00:19:22] Ellen Pao: Co workers especially. Yeah. 

[00:19:23] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but where CEOs understand that that kind of vulnerability is part of leadership. I don’t know where we got the misunderstanding that, you know, if you’re a leader, you’re supposed to know everything, you’re not supposed to know everything. You’re supposed to hire people around you who can teach you, you know, who you can rely on. 

[00:19:45] Ellen Pao: Or who just own it on their own. 

[00:19:47] Wesley Faulkner: Right, exactly. Delegation is part of leadership as well.

[00:19:50] Ellen Pao: Yeah. Although I don’t want people to delegate DEI. So that’s the piece where I’m like, yeah, you need to delegate, but not this piece right now. 

[00:19:56] Kim Scott: Not this piece. Yeah, you can delegate technology. 

[00:19:59] Wesley Faulkner: Yeah. Do they understand as well that doing this or walking this walk involves sacrifice, um, to like, I know there’s vulnerability and being able to, and saying the wrong thing. But like right now in this space where there’s a lot of focus on artificial intelligence, if their company wants to be competitive and this big shot PhD who pioneered some sort of technique is now on the market. And their company wants to be to make a name by hiring them and they find out during the interview process that there’s some history of bigotry or, uh, being someone who’s a little bit of a bigot or a misogynist. And being true to understanding what they want to stand for would mean to say, no, we’re not going to hire you.

[00:20:51] But now they’re like, do I, is that what’s right for the company from a position standpoint? But if they’re thinking about like, this is right for the company, because we bought into doing the right thing, whenever we find something, that we act and we wouldn’t hire someone like that. How do they square that circle? How do they make sure that they are doing quote unquote, the right thing? Which we know what the morally right thing is, but then, we have the marketed, like what the market will respond to right thing. Do they tend to understand that that’s a decision that they may need to make? And they should possibly go all in on DEI in terms of making sure that it’s a good place for everyone who works in the company?

[00:21:35] Ellen Pao: I think it’s, um, I think there are two things. So one, like, I think there are some CEOs who are very deliberate about it. I had the same situation where there was an excellent candidate, um, and I asked like, what was the, you know, what was the makeup of the team? And it was like all white and like, he didn’t have a good explanation for why, except like he wasn’t willing to lower the bar. And it was just like super uncomfortable. Um, and then I was like, there’s no way I’m going to hire him. I’ve got like, you know, like the mobile team was, you know, it was like mostly women. It was like, you know, we had, I think, uh, one or two black engineers, you know, it was, and I think one gay engineer, like it was a very diverse team.

[00:22:24] And I was like, wow, he’s gonna like, he’s going to cause all of them to have a harder experience and potentially leave, which would be a disaster. So I think people are able to, like, maybe you’ll make the mistake once and then you’re like, oh, man, this is so hard. I’m losing all my people. This guy’s a good coder. It’s usually a guy. Um, but he can’t make up for the ten people that we’ve lost or there’s just so much friction in the organization. And it’s like a constant, you know, I’ve constantly got people complaining and threatening to leave. It’s too much drama. I think you may make that mistake once. And then when you realize I mean, some people make it all the time, right? 

[00:23:05] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:23:05] Ellen Pao: But they’re not trying to grow, but you know, but people who are like, oh, this is a hard decision. I’m going to go with like expediency over finding the best candidate because the best candidate is one who is not, 

[00:23:18] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:23:19] Ellen Pao: You know, biased and doesn’t exhibit like bias in, um, in the workplace. I mean, I think they, you know, they know, and they’re like, oh, that was a mistake. Like I erred on the wrong side. I do think there are also people who are, you know, there’s one CEO who talked about, you know, he hired like, five of his friends to start the company and they all happen to be white men and then he realized, oh my god, if I hire another white man I’m just going to be like, it’s just gonna get harder and harder. Because right now like people aren’t really that excited about coming to work here, even like the white men don’t want to work here. They want to work someplace where there’s more diversity. So I am purposely not going to hire another white man, and I don’t really care what my lawyers say. This is what I need to do for the health of my company, right? And so I think people are like much more, where there’s so much more information out there. They are absorbing some of the data. And also they, they’re feeling , like I have this, you know, like he was like, I have this place where now I don’t have to like, feel like I need to go and like, you know, play beer pong or whatever. 

[00:24:27] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:24:27] Ellen Pao: Like we have like many different people doing many different things and it’s like much more relaxed. You don’t have to fit into a specific mold of, you know, what people look like and behave. It’s much more, um, relaxed. Like people can be, uh, you know, they don’t have to do the same thing all the time. 

[00:24:44] Kim Scott: Yeah, you can show up as yourself. Uh, I think that’s so important, the way that I always put it is it’s better to have a hole than an asshole. Like you’re better off, you’re better off having someone who knows how to get along with others because the bullies, the people who are obnoxious to their peers, for whatever reason, along whatever dimension, is, uh, those are the people who, maybe they get results for themselves, but they hurt the collective results. And your job as a leader is to optimize for the collective, not that one individual who’s, who’s getting their job done by making it harder for everyone else around them to get their job done, you know.

[00:25:25] Ellen Pao: Someone said that Jack Welch said the worst employee is a high performer, but, um, poor culture fit. 

[00:25:31] Kim Scott: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The big jerk. Um, so you said something else recently, Ellen, that, uh, that, uh, that I think is really important that I’d love to ask you about. You said ungoverned AI opens pathways to undermine democracy, not only during election cycles, or maybe you are quoting someone else. But I think that, like, you know more about this than just about anyone else. If we take a look at why Reddit was able to be successful, it was because you started doing content moderation on, I’m going to give you all the credit. 

[00:26:03] Ellen Pao: Thank you. A lot of people aren’t going to like hearing that, but, I did some of the harder work. 

[00:26:09] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:26:09] Ellen Pao: Some of people were not willing to do. 

[00:26:11] Kim Scott: Yeah, you did the really hard work. Took the arrows in the back for doing that hard work. And I don’t think Reddit would be where it is. And, you know, if you look at what happened to X when they fired all their content moderators, you know, it hasn’t gone well for them. Uh, so it’s really important that we learn how to, um, to understand the technologies that we’re using and, and to make some human judgment. So talk a little bit about what’s the right way to govern AI. 

[00:26:46] Ellen Pao: You know, I think what’s missing is just this that of like, common expectations. Like I want to have privacy. I want to have, be able to use my voice. I want to be able to, you know, believe in the authenticity or maybe have an expectation of authenticity or inauthenticity, like know what I’m dealing with.

[00:27:08] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:27:08] Ellen Pao: Um, and, you know, I want to have a, you know, like genuine conversations and learn real things and be able to, um, take that information and maybe improve or bring it to another conversation. But what we ended up with is like this disastrous cess pool where it’s all about engagement, right? We want engagement so we can sell ads. And that means like getting people riled up or, um, using filters to look better so that people, you know, kind of think I’m leading this glamorous life and it’s causing all sorts of harm to people. And it’s also like, how do we keep people coming? Oh, let me get them more enraged or let me show them more beautiful people. 

[00:27:54] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:27:54] Ellen Pao: And you know, people feel worse and worse the more they use it, but it’s driving the financial engine of the social media company, so it just, you just get more and more of that. And it’s very hard to, you know, I left Twitter mostly about two years ago and I feel so much better, right? And the people I talked to are like, I don’t know why I spent so much time on it, but now I feel better.

[00:28:18] Kim Scott: Yeah, I guess, uh, that’s one thing we can thank Elon Musk for is getting us off Twitter.

[00:28:23] Wesley Faulkner: It’s almost like unmasking, right? 

[00:28:27] Kim Scott: Yeah 

[00:28:28] Wesley Faulkner: People are seeing, the scales have been lifted from their eyes. 

[00:28:31] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:28:33] Wesley Faulkner: I’m sorry, purple flag. But everyone is able to observe the, what happens when there aren’t guardrails, when there aren’t safety mechanisms built in. To really, like, open the dam and the floodgates of having that wave like, oh, we just thought it was gone. Not that it was being held back or it was being filtered through, uh, when you remove the moderators, when you remove those safety mechanisms. And unfortunately, I think some of the, uh, okay this is the first instance of bringing up the election. But some of the misinformation that is on those platforms, allow people to fall into belief that things don’t exist or things are different than they actually are. I was seeing a lot of interviews with Trump supporters who were saying things of like, well, uh, Trump is for, uh, he’s pro abortion, he won’t get rid of it. Um, that, uh, he protected it, um, that he shored up the Affordable Care Act. He made sure that it didn’t fail. So when there are platforms where misinformation and hate and all that stuff gets filtered out, people think it doesn’t exist.

[00:29:47] The same thing with bias and prejudice and bullying, when there is an effective system that’s able to keep that in check, keep it at bay, make it so that it’s rare, people sometimes get lulled into this feeling that it doesn’t exist anymore. Same thing with the previous Trump administration, where there are dissenters who have made sure that they work from within so that laws didn’t get passed that were seen to be quote unquote, bad. There, the blast radius of some of the bad policy was very limited. Going forward with the new administration and the work that you’re doing, do you, by any chance, see a upside of this being more out there? Uh, people are being able to see it more? That you’re able to be having to do less work to convince that this is a problem because there will be more examples on the negative side. And not just all the examples that you have put together on the positive side. Does that help? 

[00:30:46] Ellen Pao: I think it, I don’t like, it helps is kind of a strong word. 

[00:30:52] Wesley Faulkner: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:30:53] Ellen Pao: But I think it is kind of, um, important for people to understand that this is how people are thinking. And this is how people are behaving. And this is, you know, these are the mechanisms that’s happening. But I also, I don’t want to let the social media companies off. Like they created, they amplified all of this, right? So, you know, we did not have people marching around in, publicly as, you know, as white supremacists, um, you know, ten years ago. Because, you know, and I think Reddit was one of the worst, um, offenders. It was an on ramp into white supremacy. Like the social media companies were used to groom young men into white supremacy. And I think it’s also being used to groom people into misogyny and racism. 

[00:31:48] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:31:49] Ellen Pao: It existed before, but it’s pushing people to act in ways that they didn’t before. Like the, you know, the marches, the protests, the, you know, the insurrection. Like, those are things I don’t think would have happened as readily without social media. Some people would say it’s inevitable, like there was, you know, going to be this clash. But I do think that it was accelerated at the very least by social media making it easy to find people and to groom people into these really hateful views. And then to kind of build communities of it where people felt like it was okay. And then instead of like a group saying, hey, this is hateful and this is not welcome on my platform, like this behavior is taboo. It’s banned. It’s not normal, and it’s not acceptable. They were encouraged for it.

[00:32:42] Like, I got more points. Meaner I was. I created, like, these, you know, horrible memes. I created, like, these videos using AI to show different things. Like, all of that has been rewarded. So you end up getting more and more of it instead of people kind of sitting down saying, hey, like, listen, like, you’re not allowed to use the N word. You’re not, you know, like, I grew up with a whole set of understanding that created, like, a more civil society. And maybe, and I’m sure it’s true, like, a lot of people were hiding their racism and stuff. But, um, you know, better that than people acting on it in these horrific ways. 

[00:33:22] Kim Scott: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s so interesting going back to 2004 when I joined Google, one of the teams that I managed was Blogger. And, uh, and I remember getting into a very heated argument, uh, with, AMAC. And I, because I wanted, I was starting to take down, if there was, if people were posting like racist comment, uh, and I was in charge, I could take down whatever I wanted. I had probably more power than, I, definitely more power than I should have. And I was told to stop doing it and there was a big policy debate. And I wasn’t sure at the time whether I was right or I was wrong. But it was my instinct that you need some standards of behavior for the same reason that as a leader, it’s your job to remember better a hole than an asshole and to fire the people who bully others.

[00:34:17] I mean, give them some feedback first and see if they can change their behavior. But if they can’t, you got to get them out of your team. For the same reason I felt like if people were, uh, advocating for evil actions or, uh, or, you know, advocating for misogyny or racism, I didn’t want them on the Blogger platform. And what the argument on the other side was kind of what you were referring to Wesley, like, oh, it’s better to know what people really think. But the problem is that it’s not necessarily what people really think. And that kind of, um, evil is contagious in a way that goodness is not contagious. And, uh, in fact, I was at the federal, I was a government bureaucrat. This, a small known fact. I worked at the FCC right outta business school. Uh, and this was 1996, I think.

[00:35:14] Yeah, 1999. So it was like right at the height of de, deregulatory neoliberalism bullshit. And, uh, and I think we made some real mistakes when I was there. Like, I think we would have, we would be in a better place if we had said, and it’s worth remembering, why did the FCC get created in the first place. It was in recognition of the ways that Hitler was using broadcast medium to, to create a genocidal, um, uh, you know, populace in Germany. Like, and we didn’t want that to happen in our country. And I, you know, I’m kind of, I’m kind of back to the, uh, you know, that way of thinking. I don’t know. What do y’all think? 

[00:36:05] Ellen Pao: Yeah, I think the, um, and so the social media companies have shown that they don’t, you know, they don’t care about the health of the nation and they don’t care about the health of their users. And somebody’s got to step in, right? I think, you know, things were like, I think, you know, Susan Wojcicki made huge strides at YouTube. 

[00:36:29] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:36:30] Ellen Pao: Jack Dorsey at Twitter, and now we’ve gone backwards, right? 

[00:36:34] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:36:34] Ellen Pao: And now here we are. 

[00:36:36] Kim Scott: Leap backwards, unfortunately. 

[00:36:38] Wesley Faulkner: It is definitely yelling. It feels like yelling fire in a crowded theater by spreading this misinformation and spreading this hatred. Um, and it’s not of, well, we’ll see what happens. It’s more like we saw what happened. And now that it is, it’s proven about where this leads to, it feels as if it’s time to actually said that that is harm. And we can not only show how much harm is caused, but we can actually trace it back to its origins and where it came from. And so that, that, that should be enough evidence to, to kind of like, hopefully disrupt the mechanisms, but, um, uh, hope, you know, hope is a big, big H hope, um, that maybe that one day that, that will be codified in some sort of law as well. 

[00:37:26] Kim Scott: Well, you’re taking some action. I agree with that, Wesley. Ellen, you’re taking some action by investing in some great companies, uh, that are pushing the world to a better place. So what are some of the investments you’ve made recently that you’re most excited about? 

[00:37:40] Ellen Pao: I’m excited about all my investments. So I’m very, I can’t, um, I mean, I started investing a little bit in healthcare. So I have one company that I invested in called Delfina that’s focused on, you know, on the health of, um, pregnant women. During their pregnancies and, you know, they’re measuring and collecting data that goes back to, um, their doctor or they’ll flag an issue. We had one instance that I’ve heard of that, um, somebody using the app realized her, I think it was her blood pressure was very high. She went in to see her doctor and the doctor was like, wow, you have preeclampsia and you need to be on bed rest. And if you hadn’t come in, you would have lost your baby. So it’s, you know, that’s the kind of thing where you’re just like, well, you know, I feel good about my investment. I feel very happy and hopefully we can reach more people and get more, um, you know, and help more people. 

[00:38:44] There’s another company that’s super interesting. Um, also in healthcare, um, the entrepreneur, uh, you know, is focused on helping people with, um, hypertension. And a lot of that happens in the Black community, and there’s some distrust of hospitals and doctors in that community, but there’s a lot of trust of, um, barbers. So he’s asked, you know, he’s built relationships with barber shops where they’re measuring blood pressure and then, you know, and then connecting them to hypertension treatment or to a pharmacist to treat it. And then, you know, that that person would come back in, you know, a month or two months to, um, you know, to, to get the haircut again, and you can check up on them. So it’s kind of coming to where people are instead of kind of really like keeping the system in place that isn’t working for a set of people. So that’s exciting to me. 

[00:39:41] Kim Scott: Yeah, I was also interested to read about Multitudes. Talk about Multitudes. That seems exciting. 

[00:39:46] Ellen Pao: That’s so cool. Um, I just got off the phone with the founder yesterday. Um, it’s just a very, like using data to help build better cultures within companies. And it started a little bit more on the DEI side, but now it’s really like, how do we keep the engineering teams going forward and communicating. And where do we see problems and how do we use the data to kind of highlight these problems and move teams along, which, um, they’re based out of New Zealand, but, um, you wouldn’t know it from. Yeah, I think it’s a very cool company. It’s been, it’s, you know, like they started very small. They didn’t raise very much money and they’ve just been working really, really hard and just building a product to, in an area where I think engineering, you know, you end up with that, that great coder managing people and it’s just often a disaster. 

[00:40:42] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:40:42] Ellen Pao: Because I don’t think we give enough managerial training or they don’t want it. I tried to train some managers at Reddit and they were so angry.

[00:40:52] Kim Scott: Yes.

[00:40:53] Ellen Pao: About being trained and I was like, well, I, just boggled my mind like I didn’t realize it was going to cause such anger. But there’s you know, so kind of trying to help people with some of these problems in a way that is less threatening, less, you know, intimidating, you’re using data and you’re helping people understand what’s happening in a way that sometimes a third party can do. Um, when, you know, you were a consultant at one point, Kim, like sometimes you need that third party data and kind of voice of reason to get the changes through. 

[00:41:27] Kim Scott: Absolutely. Well, listen, I think we’re just about at time. But Ellen, thank you so much. This was a great conversation, uh, if, where can people find you? Where do you most love to be found? 

[00:41:41] Ellen Pao: I’m starting to spend more time on Bluesky. I, uh, have a website where there’s like a contact, um, page and, um, I have a book, Reset. Wesley was so kind to mention it earlier. Um, that people can buy and read. Uh, and, um, that’s it. 

[00:42:04] Kim Scott: And Project Include dot org also.

[00:42:07] Ellen Pao: Yes. Thank you. Yeah. And we have just a lot of great information there. We’ve had some people say, you know, we’ve gotten rid of our DEI, um, our DEI division. But you know, we’re going through all the steps on Project Includes. So we need you more than ever. So that’s been, um, it’s like a mixed, you know, sorry that this isn’t working, but at least we’re able to help people who need it. 

[00:42:32] Kim Scott: Love that. All right. Well, thank you so much. 

[00:42:36] Ellen Pao: Yeah. Thank you both. I feel like we could have talked even longer, like this is a good conversation. Thank you. 

[00:42:40] Wesley Faulkner: We’ll have you back. We’ll try to get you back. 

[00:42:42] Kim Scott: Yes. We’ll do it again. All right. Take care everybody.

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