by
Ellen Pao
meh/style
Sarah Rose Etter,
Lydia Kiesling,
Ellen Pao,
Gabriela Garcia,
Adelle Waldman,
Natasha Brown,
Sam Byers,
Jennifer Egan,
Patricia Lockwood
[...] Spending time with open, optimistic people reminded me that it might be possible to fix some of what was broken in our country - particularly the deep divisions between the rich and poor and between those at the center at those at the margins. I felt renewed and excited. I remembered why I loved tech. When I got home I felt, more than ever, committed to making a difference through my work.
what the fuck lmao
The train took forever. I couldn’t wait to get to the hotel to shower. At last, we were off the train and walking to the hotel. Hotel shower, here I come, I thought.
who writes like this
During our courtship, I was traveling to China for Kleiner all the time. So we could spend time together, Buddy joined me. We were so in love. One night after dinner, just six weeks after we’d met, he took me to the roof of the Four Seasons Hotel in Shanghai. A band was playing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” How funny, I thought. That’s one of our favorite songs. And then Buddy was getting down on one knee and opening a ring box.
SHOW DONT TELL jesus h christ
For years, I’d tried to believe in the story of Kleiner as a place where we were really trying to help entrepreneurs to build awesome companies and products. I’d believed that we were this team of people working together and that we were trying to be missionaries, not mercenaries. But eventually I’d come to see all that talk as a big lie. My parents raised me to believe that the world was a meritocracy, that if you worked hard enough you could get ahead. But that wasn’t true at Kleiner. It just wasn’t fair.
im sorry but this made me laugh out loud
In the wake of the verdict, I just wanted to hide, but in the months after the trial, I knew it would be good for reddit if I did a little bit of press. In April, Katie Couric sat down in our offices to interview me, even though I’d turned her down at first. Initially I didn’t want to do any video, but Katie was visiting her daughter at Stanford and asked to meet with me, and we got along well. She seemed so nice and genuinely empathetic, and she even shared some of her personal experiences with bias in journalism across her entire career. She was warm and professional, so I agreed to my first on-camera interview. I was very tightly wound and found it hard to relax, but she was fair and professional. I respected her and thought the interview went well.
why does she include all this unnecessary detail??? where was her editor
And so we left town on our first trip for fun in ages. For the first time in years, there were no calls scheduled, no emails to return, and no emergencies to handle. We went to Maui to see Lori, my old friend from Google. Our daughter loved Hawaii so much—from her first taste of shave ice to sunset hikes on the beach—and Buddy and I loved being on the beach, watching her frolic in the surf. The stress of the trial, the miscarriage, and all the other crises of the past few years had taken a toll on our marriage. I didn’t know what would happen with us. But I did know that, whatever happened, sitting together on the sand watching our little girl laughing in the sun would give us a wonderful memory.
i just???? what???
[...] The spring of his sophomore year, he began to read from feverish loneliness, a loneliness he began to fear would be permanent. After all, if someone like him, wasn't happy in college, where and when would he be happy? His disappointment and isolation made him bitter, and he judged the world around him harshly, with the too-broad strokes of a crank. [...]
idk why i wanted to save this. it's kind of sad and interesting i guess. the last sentence ends in a really clunky way
[...] He had wondered if everybody took the quality they had and treated it as the most important thing - used it as a basis for feeling superior to others.
important concept, though could be better worded
[...] It wasn’t just Handler’s politics that repelled her, it was the entire ideology these life-hacking white boys espoused. Unable to explain their privilege by any other means, they had convinced themselves and others that everything that had landed in their laps had landed there not through basic structural imbalance but through some sort of philosophy. Tech-bros weren’t overpaid and over-lauded because they’d had everything handed to them on a plate, went the accepted wisdom, but because they’d focused, or lived their vision, or actualised. Because they’d done it, anyone could do it. Because anyone could do it, anyone who didn’t do it had only themselves to blame.
i mean i dont disagree with this obviously but the style feels heavy-handed?
this also glosses over the potential contradiction in "because they’d done it, anyone could do it" - surely they dont actually think anyone could do it; they think they are one of a lucky few with the natural talent. but they also know that feels unfair so they cloak it in pretensions of universality despite not actually believing in it. idk. should be investigated more.
‘OK,’ said Hugo as the car eased up to the kerb and he took in the scene, ‘I’m seeing an ambulance.’
Teddy didn’t look at the ambulance but instead checked his tablet for news of it.
‘I’m not seeing anything that would suggest an ambulance,’ he said.
‘I’m literally looking at the ambulance, Teddy.’
Teddy tapped around. ‘Looking at it doesn’t tell us anything,’ he said.
‘It tells us it fucking exists,’ said Hugo.
‘Right. An ambulance exists. I could have told you that without seeing one, no? It’s irrelevant. That ambulance could just be there as a matter of protocol. Visual confirmation of its presence is, like, literally useless at this point.’
‘Maybe we should briefly speculate,’ said Hugo.
i think this would be funnier if the fact that Teddy didn't look at the ambulance were conveyed more obliquely & w/o the all-seeing eye. like instead of that second line, something a little more basic/perfunctory: "Teddy pulled out his tablet and tapped at it for a few scconds."