The “Empty Chair” of The Women of Silicon Valley
I did something last night which I actively try to avoid: I watched Silicon Valley.
This is atypical behavior for someone who works in tech. Most of my colleagues love the show so much they talk about hosting premier parties, our events team in the Marketing department considered throwing viewing parties, our CEO says applicants regularly identify themselves in cover letters as to which character they most closely align.
Me? I can’t stand the show. I watched the first few episodes with eager anticipation. I loved Office Space, and couldn’t wait to see how Mike Judge made us all view the tech industry through his smart, critical, satirical lens.
But that never happened. Its an exaggeration of reality, for sure, but calling Silicon Valley satirical would be exceptionally generous.
As a woman in tech, I get a front row seat to white, straight guys succeeding in an industry that rewards them generously, despite numerous missteps. That is a frustrating enough reality. Watching a show celebrating that reality is not exactly how I want to get myself amped for the week ahead of me.
A few episodes in, I decided my blood pressure couldn’t handle it any more; I stopped watching the show. So then, why did I watch last night?
Well, I’m just over 20 weeks pregnant and on top of several weeks of nausea and vomiting, I’ve also suffered from incredibly poor sleep. Most nights I wake up around 2 or 3am and either cannot fall back asleep at all, or sleep lightly with many more interruptions until morning. I have to get up and commute from NJ to New York City and work a full day at my job (where I am the only woman in product/design, and one of the few women in the company at all). When I get home, my husband and I take care of our little doggie and make dinner. By the time we clean up, I’m so exhausted, I often to crawl into bed by 9pm.
On the nights I can force myself to stay up closer to 11, I sleep better.
Sunday night, 9pm GoT has been helping. I decided last night to try to stay up through Veep (which is an absolutely hilarious show) so I could try to get a good night’s sleep to kick off this week.
I did so knowing that we likely wouldn’t change the channel between the end of Game of Thrones and the start of Veep. And so, I watched Silicon Valley last night.
All the reasons why I gave the show up initially seemed to be compounded tightly into one, 25 minute episode. My blood pressure shot through the roof. I was up late into the night thinking about it. I woke up thinking about it. It consumed me as I was getting ready in the morning until finally I announced: “I have to write something about why this is bothering me so much.”
So here goes* **.
*Let me preface this by saying, I have no idea what happened in the rest of this season. I haven’t watched it. So I might be missing some key story lines or plot developments. That being said, I think what I’m about to say stands outside of any larger story line.
**Oh, I guess, spoiler alert for all you fans who haven’t seen the episode yet.†
†Lolz. Didn’t finish this when I thought I would. I’m sure you’ve all seen this episode by now, if you’d get worked up about a spoiler, at least.
The episode centered around Richard’s frustration that he was not being named the CEO of his company after the board appointed CEO had been removed. He was further frustrated by a female tech blogger writing that the board’s inability to find a replacement was due to Richard’s poor technology.
He begged the VC lady to let him speak with the blogger. She finally relented but made him agree to speak with their PR person to help him prep for the interview.
The morning of the interview, he storms into an office (is this office familiar to regular viewers? Is it the office of their VC? I was confused why both the PR person and the blogger would both be at this location). The unnamed receptionist attempts to direct him but he cuts her off and claims he knows where to go because he isn’t stupid (or something like that).
He then storms into a conference room, where a mid-30s ish, blond ish lady is seated. He doesn’t let her introduce herself; instead, he yells at her all of his frustrations with his current situation. He insults nearly everyone involved, discloses far too much proprietary information, and generally just acts like a moron.
Its obvious to everyone watching that this woman is not the PR person with whom he thinks he is speaking, but rather the blogger.
When he realizes his mistake, he insults the woman by saying she’s not a journalist: only a tech blogger. The PR woman then walks in and he attempts to act like everything is fine.
While the narrative device here is obvious, its predicated on the audience accepting that a man such as he shouldn’t be bothered to walk into a room with a woman and treat her with the most basic respect as introducing himself to her and waiting for her to reciprocate. Its predicated on the understanding that its acceptable to scream at a woman who is there to try and help him, while insulting and disregarding the help that she is trained to provide. Its predicated on accepting that Richard seeing a woman in a conference room must be *the woman* he was supposed to meet with — because C’MON how many women can there be hanging out in conference rooms? This is TECH remember? A female professional colleague can be identifiable based upon her gender alone.
Maybe I just have a terrible sense of humor and everyone else finds this to be satirical. However, this exchange does not feel critical of the lack of respect shown to all three of the women in the scene. Yeah — Richard acts like a clown, but in the end, *he* is the one who gets the position as CEO. The receptionist is still a receptionist who has to deal with clowns who storm in, talk over her, treat her like shit — day in, day out. The journalist will have to report on more white dudes who are bumbling fools, yet some how get to be CEO. The PR rep will have to deal with tech bros who devalue her work and her contributions, while refusing to admit to her they are wrong when they have screwed up royally. The audience will never think about these characters again — they accepted the storyline because they accept that treating women that badly, especially in tech, is normal and justified.
There was another moment in the episode that just infuriated me. The awful curly haired guy is trying to take advantage of some character they call Big Head, who has the capital that awful curly haired guy needs for some new business venture he’s trying to start up. He manipulates this Big Head character into buying him a juicer as a reconciliation gift for some previous altercation. The dynamic here is humiliating and emasculating.
However, when humiliated and emasculated Big Head says he had to drive a far distance to get the juicer, curly haired bro says “Why didn’t you just have your assistant get it for you?”
“Because she was on the phone.”
SO MUCH TO UNPACK!
While the audience is supposed to feel just how weak, stupid and powerless this Big Head is, we shouldn’t think of him SO BADLY that we should expect him to have to do work that a female assistant should be doing instead! No man should be doing THAT kind of work!
But then. THEN. “She was on the phone.”
Now we are supposed to feel even more badly for this character as he was being disrespected by this lazy, self-absorbed girl. Of course she was on the phone. This is why we can’t let women into tech. They aren’t motivated and innately talented like the men. They can’t even do the menial tasks we ask of them — like driving far distances to buy juicers as a gift for another man.
The abuse of women here is not employed to make the audience think critically about gender diversity in tech; its a punchline. The audience is never asked to consider whether this behavior should continue, if action should be taken to change this dynamic.
In a world where fewer women run companies than men named John, can we really afford to make diversity in tech a punchline? In a world where the CEO of one of the largest and most influential tech companies believes that women should not ask for raises, can we really afford to make diversity in tech a punchline? In a world where our standard interview practices are deeply biased against women and minorities, can we really afford to make diversity in tech a punchline? In a world where powerful men still block even the most basic strategies of keeping women safe at tech conferences, where the culture is so inhospitable, women abandon the careers they have worked their whole lives for, where little girls are told they aren’t as smart as boys …
So go ahead, keep laughing. Its hilarious, right?
Its taken me a few more weeks to finish writing this. I’m now over 22 weeks pregnant. I thought that I would just let the writing I had done so far act as a therapeutic exercise and let it go. But then I had a meeting with some folks at work — the conversation turned to how much they love Silicon Valley. When I explained why I dislike the show so much, one of the guys said:
“I never noticed how women are treated in the show.”
Of course you didn’t, bro. Of course not.
With that motivation, I became determined to finish and get this published. I know its a few weeks late, but I guess thats why we shouldn’t let pregnant ladies into tech either, right? They can never finish anything.
So. lazy.
