Item — HN Reader

The CEO/founder was into "The Game" and the Red Pill and he made all the male engineers go out in SOMA to try seduction techniques, as well as go to strip clubs. Our married and ltr engineers hated it but still had to show up and participate in this nonsense in order to fall in line and stay a "culture fit."

As you can guess, we routinely lost admins and female engineers who were generally solely hired on attractiveness and not talent, knowledge or skill.

3 comments

even as a single male I'd find being told to go to strip clubs by my CEO highly unprofessional and not want to work like that. That sounds ridiculous.

I dunno. It depends on the work environment. If it's one of those "we're all basically peers but one guy happens to be the manager" type of teams then I don't see it as being that outrageous.

Being told you have to go to a Strip Club, and that sort of environment is something that makes you uncomfortable (male or female), then that is sexual harassment.

Defending it just because most of you are 'mates' in/out of the workplace is not acceptable.

It's tough. I used to have to go to strip clubs with managers and customers. Required attendance. It gets weird after a few trips.

That's outrageously unprofessional. Is the company still alive?

Yep. They've churned most of the staff except for the CEO's college bros, but they're still going along... no outrageous IPO on the horizon but they haven't spent all the VC $$ yet.

Pretty sure a good chunk of companies are created just to burn through the VC cash while living it up a lavish lifestyle on the west coast.

At least that's my perception as an outsider from another part of the country.

I'm sorry, what is SOMA?

It's an area of SF where a lot of tech companies are located. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_Market,_San_Francisco

Thanks! Didn't find that by Googling

South of Market, a district in San Francisco with a lot of clubs/nightlife.