I did not follow Ellen Pao’s attempt to shake down the Silicon Valley VC firm closely. I read the news reports toward the end summarizing the case and I concluded, like everyone else, that she was just shaking down her former employer. The employer decided not to blink, thus the court drama. The very average people in the jury apparently thought the same thing and ruled against her on all counts.

If you look at her bio, it is not hard to figure out what’s going on here. She is not very good at doing real work so she has focused on gaming the system. That seems to be the only thing she is good at doing. Her work history suggests she checks the right boxes and pushes the right buttons. When it comes time to do real work, she starts screaming about discrimination. It just goes to show that a high IQ does not trump a lack of scruples.

The news brings word that she is now installed as the interim CEO of Reddit. How or why she landed in this job is unknown to me, but I’m familiar with failing up, having spent enough time in the Imperial Capital. From what I gather, Reddit is just a group-sourcing site with a small staff. They claim 68 employees so you would assume even Ellen Pao is not going to screw that up. But, you would be wrong.

Ellen Pao is swiftly emerging as the new face of feminism in the U.S., despite losing a closely watched gender discrimination lawsuit against one of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capital firms last month. Pao, who has been interim CEO of Reddit since November, is now speaking out about how her experience has changed the way she manages her own employees.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Monday, Pao says she decided to rewrite the rules of hiring at Reddit. In addition to hiring workplace diversity consultant Freada Kapor Klein, the company no longer allows new hires to negotiate their salaries. Pao defended her move based on studies that have shown that when women negotiate, they don’t fare as well as their male counterparts.

“We’ve got a lot of diversity on our team,” she told Yahoo’s Katie Couric in a separate interview. “We could use more, but we’re very excited to make sure we have different perspectives that represent the people we have using the site.” 

If I’m the owner of Reddit, I fire this stupid twat tomorrow. Her job is to run a profitable firm, not engage in social science experiments. But, Reddit is not a real company so the owners can afford to have her engage in the nonsense of the day. Reddit is a rich man’s hobby.

Although Pao doesn’t name specific research, there have been plenty of studies to back up her claims. One 2006 study led by Carnegie Mellon University professor Linda Babcock revealed that when women negotiate, both men and women are less likely to want to work with them. Men, on the other hand, are much more respected for their negotiation skills. For women, it’s generally a lose-lose situation. In another study published in 2014, researchers found that female negotiators are perceived as more easily misled than male negotiators and are more likely than men to be lied to in negotiations.

Sensible people would look at this data and conclude that men and women are different. Crazy people, like the social justice warriors now plaguing tech, think Harrison Bergeon is a true story.

Pao’s solution wouldn’t give hiring managers a chance to inadvertently discriminate against women who ask for more. “We come up with an offer that we think is fair,” Pao says. “If you want more equity, we’ll let you swap a little bit of your cash salary for equity, but we aren’t going to reward people who are better negotiators with more compensation.

We reached out to Reddit for comment but have not heard back yet.

This might sound like a good idea, in theory at least. It’s hard to argue with any move that might make the hiring process and salary decisions as democratic and equitable as possible.

Still, it’s hard to imagine a corporate world where salary offers are the final word. There are people whose entire careers are built upon the promise that they will help people (and women in particular) master the art of negotiating. In recent years, blockbuster books like “Lean In” and “Know Your Value,” penned by high-ranking women working in male-dominated industries, have focused on coaching women to negotiate in a gender-biased workplace.  And by removing the ability to negotiate, it’s possible some employees will feel disempowered knowing that they have no real control over their compensation.

It’s more likely that talented people will tell this goofy bitch to fuck off and take a different job. What they will end up with are the beta males and losers who worry about this nonsense. But, Reddit is a hobby and having a trophy like Ellen Pao burnishes the liberal credentials of Condé Nast.

Ellen Pao has figured out how take Reverend Al’s game into tech and give it an Asian flair.