Let them serve cake

By any reasonable standards, Nancy Saltzman is a smart cookie and an accomplished professional. She’s an Amherst grad with a law degree from Hofstra. She spent a couple of years at a white-shoe law firm (Dewey Ballantine), and then served as general counsel for a couple of good-sized firms. So, real chops. She’s no kid, either. Based on her college graduation year (1987), she’s in her early fifties.

She was the most senior woman at ExlService Holdings, which was her last gig.

Saltzman didn’t find Exl a great environment for women, to put it mildly. Metaphorical push came to metaphorical shove, and after four years with the company, she was fired. Although there’s email evidence to suggest the contrary, Exl claims she resigned. Saltzman says no way, and she’s suing Exl for $20M.

Having enjoyed/survived a career in largely male high tech, I can identify and sympathize with Saltzman’s story. And I’m disheartened, but not surprised, that the situation for women in senior positions in male-dominated companies hasn’t changed all that much over time.

Here’s the particular event that precipitated Saltzman’s eventual action against Exl:

For some Exl employees, the afternoon of May 21, 2018, was a celebration — it was the company’s 19th anniversary.

For Saltzman, it was a breaking point.

Of the more than 20 employees in attendance, only four of whom were women. The complaint said Kapoor “personally directed that Ms. Saltzman,” as one of the “ladies” in the room, “serve cake to the Company’s junior male employees.”

“Humiliated, Ms. Saltzman was forced to walk across the room to cut and plate slices of cake for the Company’s male employees,” court documents recount, “the vast majority of whom were subordinate to her in rank.” (Source: WaPo)

Sigh.

It so reminded me of an incident that happened midpoint in my glorious career.

I was a senior product manager, and it was my product’s “turn” to be examined by the company’s senior executive team. My boss, not incidentally a woman, informed me that I was not invited to this all day event. “Product managers don’t come to this meeting.” Which I understood to not be the case 100% of the time. And which made no sense whatsoever. Who would know more about the product, the market, the competition, future plans, etc. than the product manager? No one.

I made my case to my manager, but it was no dice. (I don’t think she bothered to push the issue with “the boys.”)

Instead, I was asked to create all the supporting material that she’d need to talk about my product. Including creating an easy-enough-for-her-to-give product (actually a beta for an upcoming release) demo.

I was galled to find out that, while I wasn’t going to get a golden invite, my counterpart in engineering, i.e., the lead developer on my product, was going to be in attendance. I got along with this guy. We were quite good buddies. And he was my organizational peer. Oh, yes, as it turns out, he would be giving the demo I scripted.

I was even more galled when I was told that “they” needed to borrow my PC to give the demo. This meant that I would need to spend the day working on a crappy old spare computer in a remote, windowless conference room.

But the galling request to end all galling requests came when, at about 11 a.m., my manager popped into that remote, windowless conference room.

“I think I’ve found a way for you to get into the meeting,” she told me. I was, of course, all ears. “You could go out an get pizzas for us. Then, when you bring it in, you can stay.”

No way, I told her, was I going into that meeting as the waitress. “If you want someone to go fetch pizza, I suggest you ask your admin.”

Harrumph!

Anyway, toward the end of the day, my manager popped back in to apologize.

“I wouldn’t have asked you, but you’re usually so good-natured about things, so willing to do whatever needs to get done for the team.”

I enumerated the reasons why asking me to Domino-deliver for her wasn’t exactly an empowering career thrill. Why not call me in as the expert who could answer the questions she couldn’t? Why not have me give the demo? We didn’t say FFS in those days, but FFS.

Furthermore, I told her, “You know, you’re the only woman on that team. So you might want to think twice about you’re always being the one to jump up and get lunch for the boys.”

This was more than 30 years ago.

Serve the pizza, serve the cake.

Apparently, some things just don’t change.

After the cake incident, things went from bad to worse.

She took her grips to Exl CEO Rohit Kapoor. He claimed she was being over emotional:

— a criticism that she said was “grounded in sexist stereotypes” — Saltzman reported the gender discrimination to two executives. She asked the company to form a plan to remedy the situation. Fearing retaliation from Kapoor, she also expressly asked that she be told if he was informed of the allegation. Saltzman planned to take protective steps.

Kapoor had other things in mind: getting the Exl board to authorize him to fire Saltzman.

So he went ahead and fired her.

Now he’s he-saying that when Saltzman came to him with her complaints, he considered it a resignation.

Obviously, the cake story isn’t the only reason for the $20M suit. There was a pattern of discrimination at Exl. But the story is exemplary. The icing on the cake, as it were.

And when it comes to reasons to root for Nancy Saltzman success with her lawsuit, the cake story is just one of many. But for me it’s good enough to hope that Saltzman wins big time.

Let her serve cake? Not this career gal, mister.