I am sure there are cleaner cases, like your “Bob works for BigAI” example, where taking legal action, and amplifying in media, could produce a Streisand effect that gives cultural awareness to the more ambiguous cases. Some comments:
Silicon Valley is one “big, borderless workplace”
Silicon Valley is unique in that it’s one “big, borderless workplace” (quoting Nussbaum). As she puts it:
Even if you are not currently employed by Harvey Weinstein or seeking employment within his production company, in a very real sense you always are seeking employment and you don’t know when you will need the good favor of a person of such wealth, power, and ubiquitous influence. (Source.)
Therefore, policing along clean company lines becomes complicated really fast. Even if Bob isn’t directly recruiting for BigAI (but works for BigAI), being in Bob’s favor could improve your chances of working at to SmallAI, which Bob has invested in.
The “borderless workplace” nature of Silicon Valley, where company lines are somewhat illusory, and high-trust social networks are what really matter, is Silicon Valley’s magic and function. But when it comes to policing bad behavior, it is Silicon Valley’s downfall.
An example that’s close to scenarios that I’ve seen
Alice is an engineer at SmallAI who lives at a SF hacker house with her roommates Bob, Chad, and Dave, who all work for BigAI. The hacker house is, at first, awesome because Bob, Chad, and Dave frequently bring in their brilliant industry friends. Alice gets to talk about AI everyday and build a strong industry network. However, there are some problems.
Chad is very into Alice and comes into her room often. Alice has tried to set a firm boundary, but Chad not picking up on it, whether intentionally or not. Alice starts getting paranoid and is very careful to lock her room at night.
Alice does not want to alienate Chad, who has a lot of relationships in the industry. She feels like she’s already been quite firm. She feels like she cannot tell Bob or Dave, who are like Chad’s brothers. She’s afraid that Bob or Dave may think she’s making a big deal over nothing.
Alice’s friend Bertha, who is an engineer at MidAI, has stopped coming to the hacker house because, as she tells Alice, she finds their parties to be creepy. At the last party, the hacker house hosted a wealthy venture capitalist from AI MegaInvestments who appeared to be making moves on a nineteen-year-old female intern at LittleAI. When Bertha tried to say something, Bob and Chad seemed to get really annoyed. Who does Bertha think she is, this random MidAI employee? The venture capitalist might invest in their spin-off from BigAI one day! Bertha stops coming to the hacker house, and her network slightly weakens.
Alice also debates distancing herself from her house. She secretly agrees with Bertha, and she’s finding Chad increasingly creepy. However, she’s forged such an incredible network of AI researchers at their parties—it all must be worth it, right? Maybe one day she’ll also transition into BigAI, because she now knows a ton of people there.
One day, Alice’s other ML engineer friend, Charlotte, visits their hacker house. She’s talking a lot to Bob, and it looks like they’re having a good time. Alice does not hear from Charlotte for awhile, and she doesn’t think much of it.
Six months later, Charlotte contacts Alice to say that Bob brought her to his bedroom and assaulted her. Charlotte has left Silicon Valley because of traumatic associations. Alice is shocked and does not know what to do. She doesn’t want to confront or alienate Bob. Bob had made some comments that Charlotte had been acting kind of “hysterical.” And what if Charlotte is lying? She and Charlotte aren’t that close anyway.
Nevertheless, Alice starts to feel increasingly uncomfortable at her hacker house and eventually also leaves.
As you can see, Alice’s hacker house is now a clusterf*ck. Alice, Bertha, and Charlotte have effectively been driven from the industry due to cultural problems, while Bob, Chad, and Dave’s networks continue to strengthen. This scenario happens all the time.
Proposal
I propose that the high-status companies and VC firms in Silicon Valley (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Sequoia, etc) could make more explicit that they are aware of Silicon Valley’s “big, borderless workplace” nature. Sexual harassment at industry-related hacker houses, co-working spaces, and events, even when not on direct company grounds, reflects the company to some extent, and it is not acceptable.
While I don’t believe these statements will deter the most severe offenders, pressure from institutions/companies could weaken the prevalent bystander culture, which currently allows these perpetrators to continue harassing/assaulting.
Thank you for explaining the “Big borderless workspace” concept. This is the first time I have seen a reasonable-looking argument in favour of company policies restricting employees’ actions outside work, something which I had previously seen as a pure cultural-imperialist power grab by oppressive bosses.
I think this framing is helpful: one could push for companies to take a stance as described in your proposal, and publicize whether or not they had done so. Good talent has options, and hopefully a decent fraction of that talent would prefer not to work for a company that wasn’t doing its part in addressing sexual harassment in the subculture.
The details would be tricky—a statement of disapproval would probably not accomplish much without some sort of commitment to enforcement action. In other words, I think the effectiveness of AI Corp.’s statement is contingent there being a policy or practice with some teeth / consequences behind it. Otherwise, it seems pretty performative.
I started writing a list of concerns AI Corp. might have with such a proposal, in an attempt to fashion it in a way that maximizes the possibility of getting at least one major AI firm to agree to it—and thus pressuring the others to follow suit. But I decided that might be responding to a version of the proposal that might not be what you had in mind.
I think the key design elements would include whether there was an enforcement mechanism, and if so what it would be triggered by.
One of the challenges here, I think, would be delineating differences (if any) in what is acceptable (or at least actionable) in the workplace / with co-workers vs. in the hacker-house subculture vs. in the broader world. I consider my views pretty strict on harassment/EEO matters in the workplace. But part of the reason I’m willing to make employees potentially walk on eggshells there is that workplace harassment/EEO law generally only applies at the workplace, with co-workers, and in other circumstances with a clear nexus to employment. The risk of workplace harassment/EEO policies suppressing acceptable sexual behavior is not as great a concern to me because the policies cover only a slice of the individual’s life, leaving lots of opportunities for sexual expression off the job. To the extent that a policy is going to cover the employee’s primary subculture, it is going to affect much more of the employee’s life, and the risk of a chilling effect on acceptable sexual behavior seems potentially more relevant.[1]
It’s certainly possible that I would reach similiar results about what is acceptable / actionable in the subculture as someone whose view of what was acceptable / actionable in the workplace was less strict than mine, but applied much the same standard to the subculture as to the workplace.
Thanks for this, this is interesting.
I am sure there are cleaner cases, like your “Bob works for BigAI” example, where taking legal action, and amplifying in media, could produce a Streisand effect that gives cultural awareness to the more ambiguous cases. Some comments:
Silicon Valley is one “big, borderless workplace”
Silicon Valley is unique in that it’s one “big, borderless workplace” (quoting Nussbaum). As she puts it:
Therefore, policing along clean company lines becomes complicated really fast. Even if Bob isn’t directly recruiting for BigAI (but works for BigAI), being in Bob’s favor could improve your chances of working at to SmallAI, which Bob has invested in.
The “borderless workplace” nature of Silicon Valley, where company lines are somewhat illusory, and high-trust social networks are what really matter, is Silicon Valley’s magic and function. But when it comes to policing bad behavior, it is Silicon Valley’s downfall.
An example that’s close to scenarios that I’ve seen
Alice is an engineer at SmallAI who lives at a SF hacker house with her roommates Bob, Chad, and Dave, who all work for BigAI. The hacker house is, at first, awesome because Bob, Chad, and Dave frequently bring in their brilliant industry friends. Alice gets to talk about AI everyday and build a strong industry network. However, there are some problems.
Chad is very into Alice and comes into her room often. Alice has tried to set a firm boundary, but Chad not picking up on it, whether intentionally or not. Alice starts getting paranoid and is very careful to lock her room at night.
Alice does not want to alienate Chad, who has a lot of relationships in the industry. She feels like she’s already been quite firm. She feels like she cannot tell Bob or Dave, who are like Chad’s brothers. She’s afraid that Bob or Dave may think she’s making a big deal over nothing.
Alice’s friend Bertha, who is an engineer at MidAI, has stopped coming to the hacker house because, as she tells Alice, she finds their parties to be creepy. At the last party, the hacker house hosted a wealthy venture capitalist from AI MegaInvestments who appeared to be making moves on a nineteen-year-old female intern at LittleAI. When Bertha tried to say something, Bob and Chad seemed to get really annoyed. Who does Bertha think she is, this random MidAI employee? The venture capitalist might invest in their spin-off from BigAI one day! Bertha stops coming to the hacker house, and her network slightly weakens.
Alice also debates distancing herself from her house. She secretly agrees with Bertha, and she’s finding Chad increasingly creepy. However, she’s forged such an incredible network of AI researchers at their parties—it all must be worth it, right? Maybe one day she’ll also transition into BigAI, because she now knows a ton of people there.
One day, Alice’s other ML engineer friend, Charlotte, visits their hacker house. She’s talking a lot to Bob, and it looks like they’re having a good time. Alice does not hear from Charlotte for awhile, and she doesn’t think much of it.
Six months later, Charlotte contacts Alice to say that Bob brought her to his bedroom and assaulted her. Charlotte has left Silicon Valley because of traumatic associations. Alice is shocked and does not know what to do. She doesn’t want to confront or alienate Bob. Bob had made some comments that Charlotte had been acting kind of “hysterical.” And what if Charlotte is lying? She and Charlotte aren’t that close anyway.
Nevertheless, Alice starts to feel increasingly uncomfortable at her hacker house and eventually also leaves.
As you can see, Alice’s hacker house is now a clusterf*ck. Alice, Bertha, and Charlotte have effectively been driven from the industry due to cultural problems, while Bob, Chad, and Dave’s networks continue to strengthen. This scenario happens all the time.
Proposal
I propose that the high-status companies and VC firms in Silicon Valley (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Sequoia, etc) could make more explicit that they are aware of Silicon Valley’s “big, borderless workplace” nature. Sexual harassment at industry-related hacker houses, co-working spaces, and events, even when not on direct company grounds, reflects the company to some extent, and it is not acceptable.
While I don’t believe these statements will deter the most severe offenders, pressure from institutions/companies could weaken the prevalent bystander culture, which currently allows these perpetrators to continue harassing/assaulting.
Thank you for explaining the “Big borderless workspace” concept. This is the first time I have seen a reasonable-looking argument in favour of company policies restricting employees’ actions outside work, something which I had previously seen as a pure cultural-imperialist power grab by oppressive bosses.
I think this framing is helpful: one could push for companies to take a stance as described in your proposal, and publicize whether or not they had done so. Good talent has options, and hopefully a decent fraction of that talent would prefer not to work for a company that wasn’t doing its part in addressing sexual harassment in the subculture.
The details would be tricky—a statement of disapproval would probably not accomplish much without some sort of commitment to enforcement action. In other words, I think the effectiveness of AI Corp.’s statement is contingent there being a policy or practice with some teeth / consequences behind it. Otherwise, it seems pretty performative.
I started writing a list of concerns AI Corp. might have with such a proposal, in an attempt to fashion it in a way that maximizes the possibility of getting at least one major AI firm to agree to it—and thus pressuring the others to follow suit. But I decided that might be responding to a version of the proposal that might not be what you had in mind.
I think the key design elements would include whether there was an enforcement mechanism, and if so what it would be triggered by.
One of the challenges here, I think, would be delineating differences (if any) in what is acceptable (or at least actionable) in the workplace / with co-workers vs. in the hacker-house subculture vs. in the broader world. I consider my views pretty strict on harassment/EEO matters in the workplace. But part of the reason I’m willing to make employees potentially walk on eggshells there is that workplace harassment/EEO law generally only applies at the workplace, with co-workers, and in other circumstances with a clear nexus to employment. The risk of workplace harassment/EEO policies suppressing acceptable sexual behavior is not as great a concern to me because the policies cover only a slice of the individual’s life, leaving lots of opportunities for sexual expression off the job. To the extent that a policy is going to cover the employee’s primary subculture, it is going to affect much more of the employee’s life, and the risk of a chilling effect on acceptable sexual behavior seems potentially more relevant.[1]
It’s certainly possible that I would reach similiar results about what is acceptable / actionable in the subculture as someone whose view of what was acceptable / actionable in the workplace was less strict than mine, but applied much the same standard to the subculture as to the workplace.