I wasn’t going to write about the Away scandal. I thought everything had been said and in the end, it’s really not the most outrageous thing to hit Silicon Valley. But here we are.
I realized tonight that some people might be viewing this as a specifically “female” issue.
Well, Is it?
No. It is not and here’s why.
In short, a founder/CEO treated their employees poorly, specifically employees that are often treated as replaceable and unworthy of respect at (probably) most companies.
Has this happened before? Is it the worst case of it ever happening?
Yes, it happens often and no it was not the worst. But it’s usually done by men who either continue in their positions as if nothing ever happened, fail up to new positions, or, even better, quietly leave the company with several billion dollars in hand.
Does it even matter that the founder of Away is female? Of course, it does.
Here we are with a founder- excuse me- I mean a Female Founder- doing something Bad. Apparently, this is causing a “ripple effect” throughout the Female Founder community. Wait, though. I’m a Female Founder- a woman who is also a founder if you will. I have felt no ripple. I have seen the standard Silicon Valley gossip and twittering. As a (female) founder who has managed people in these “throwaway” roles, I have never once treated people the way that Steph Korey treated her people. The condescension and cruelty were inexcusable. Maybe that’s why I did not connect it to her femaleness. It’s not what I do and I expect every manager- every founder- to not resort to such behavior due to stress or missing deadlines regardless of gender identity. Maybe, if you grow up being fed stereotypes of Queen Bees or wombs that make us hysterical it’s easier to think this behavior is inherent in women. But to get there, you must turn a blind eye to so very many male founders and their behavior which often far surpasses Korey’s as far as toxic, fireable offenses go.
Do these offenses cause a “ripple” in the Male Founder community? No. They don’t. Also, that’s not a term. They’re just founders, normal founders- not “male founders” and there is no community that they are all automatically funneled into. They may get a write-up and they may get talked about but, in the end, it’s not that big of a deal and you can congratulate him for walking away with such a grand payout. But what happened at Away could reflect on Female Founders in the eyes of VCs for years to come. Are we all like that? Can we be trusted? Are we shrill or do we have vocal fry or maybe we up-talk? Oh, dear… Do we have CHILDREN? So many Female Troubles to consider!
Perhaps we should make a list of Male Troubles- oh wait, that’s not a term either. Never mind.
It’s not that the problem be ignored. It was terrible and if anyone can learn from it, they should. It just saddens me to see only women saying it has caused them to reflect on their behavior- I mean, that’s good and they should- I did too! But I’ve seen so many men commend Korey’s behavior as scrappy or hustle or excuse it because running a company is harrrrd. All of those men, in fact especially those men, should be reflecting and asking themselves why they think this behavior represents hard work and why they are so ready to defend it. How do they treat their employees?
If you treat your employees the way Korey did, I hope every one of them quits today so you can see what your business would be like without them. I’m 100% positive that you could not do the job they do. Spend a week doing that job and imagine doing it on the pay you give them. Can you even?
In the end, this is not about gender. This is about being in a leadership position and lacking the necessary skills to lead. That’s it. Every founder, every CEO, every manager should look at this story and think critically about how they treat their employees and how they could do better.
And then think about all the other times a founder or CEO behaved in an unsavory way that we could have learned from had we not dismissed it, calling him a genius, a wunderkind, or whatever. How many opportunities to learn have we passed up because we patted a bro on the back on his way out instead of paying attention to why he was leaving in the first place?
Side note: The term “female founder” irritates me to no end. I mean, it’s fine. It’s not wrong, exactly. But in my head, in my world where I surround myself with people who I respect and who respect me, I’m just a founder. I wish we could retire that term and move forward without it but I know that’s naive. I’m not expecting anything. I had a colleague, an engineer, who remarked that she had been an engineer for ten years but a female engineer for one- this was in 2014. I think that illustrates my point. We are just doing our jobs, doing what we love, making things- just like the guys we work next to, and then all of a sudden we are othered. There are ways to talk about getting more women in tech or funded by VCs without doing that. In a faux effort to elevate us, we are sidelined and delegitimized- after all, we are still viewed as less qualified and less successful in spite of available data. Just think about it before you qualify founder- or any position- with “female”. Is it essential to the plot? Is that the part of the story that matters? That’s it. Just think. Thank you.