Rule Of Thumb: Does Discrimination Affect Minority CEOs?
Justin Zhu - Twitter
During a time of hyper-sensitivity in our society regarding addressing racial, cultural, and gender injustices, we are learning that very few groups are unsubjected to some form of discrimination. Even some of the most well-educated and financially successful, minorities in top positions are still concerned with how they are perceived among peers. Do executives at leading companies face discrimination when evaluating their job performance and capabilities?
Justin Zhu, the co-founder and CEO of Iterable Inc., was fired from his position for microdosing LSD before a company meeting. The event caused a lot of buzz in the media because it called to attention not only the prevalence of substance use in Silicon Valley, but also raised speculation of some form of racial bias that influenced the firing. The interview with Bloomberg Technology anchor and executive producer, Emily Chang, discusses Zhu’s thoughts and feelings surrounding his leave from Iterable.
Zhu felt that for over a year, he dealt with strained relationships with Iterable's investors, where he was criticized. In his interview, Justin Zhu explains that he took LSD before a business meeting to manage trauma and stress associated with the role of a CEO. In Asian-American culture, Zhu describes that individuals are to "eat the suffering." Meaning to absorb the difficulties that one faces instead of seeking external help or coping mechanisms to relieve stress.
Also known as “saving face,” the cultural concept has an extremely important role in society. Face can be described as a combination of social standing, reputation, influence, dignity, and honor. When someone loses face they are looked at less highly among their peers.
Especially in Asian-American business culture, there is even greater concern regarding saving face. “Because of China’s history of exploitation by foreign countries who colonized China or raided China for business purposes, particularly in the business sphere, Chinese do not want to be seen culturally as having been ‘had’ by Western businesspeople” So for Zhu and other Asian-Americans in high power business roles there is the cultural pressure to maintain respect and dignity. The stigma that surrounds mental health, which includes coping with stress and anxiety, tends to be associated with some sort of personal weakness. Admitting to these feelings publicly can contribute to the sense of “losing face.”
Zhu says that he was at a point where he realized he needed to heal. He cites the inspiration for turning to microdosing from the book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence written by Michael Pollan, as well as the experiences told by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
His one-time use of LSD was alleged to better the company. He claims that his research of microdosing was as a result of looking for a means to improve his mental health to make sure the company was in a "good place." He feels that the experience was a positive one that improved his relationships with his mother, employees, and his processing of emotions.
In an interview with Thrive Global by Amine Rahal, published just before Zhu's termination from Iterable, more questions were asked that delved deeper into his perspective on being an Asian-American CEO. Even as the CEO and co-founder, Zhu said that he recognized times he was second-guessing himself. He also worried that if others noticed his hesitation surrounding decisions or voicing opinions in meetings, it would be perceived as weakness and discredit his ability to be a leader. Zhu mentions that he has worked to overcome that fear by realizing his voice matters just as much as anyone else at the company.
Although it has become more difficult to keep that confidence in mind and seek support for Asian-Americans with heightened discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anti-Asian American hate crimes rose by 149% from 2019 to 2020. Zhu says that he copes with racism and prejudice by understanding that it is a side effect of a fixed mindset. Reminding himself that identities and attitudes are not permanently fixed, which aligns with one of the values of Iterable - having a growth mindset.
While Zhu says he was fired from Iterable for drug use in the workplace, his discussion of race in conversations regarding the situation seems to insinuate that some racial bias was involved in the decision of his termination. However, evidence for this reasoning is not so clear.
What seems to be a more plausible explanation is that Zhu was fired from Iterable for drug use, which was a last resort choice of treatment to cope with the stress and anxiety of his job position, which was heightened by his culture’s perspective on dealing with these more personal issues. If this is the case, should he have been fired? Should there have been greater consideration for Zhu’s cultural identity and well-being included in the discussion regarding termination?
With Asian-Americans only representing 13.9 percent of executives at five Silicon Valley-headquartered companies, there is increased pressure to stand out in their field. Women in Silicon Valley also face gender biases and harassment that are detrimental to their job titles and company growth. Niniane Wang, a highly accomplished Silicon Valley engineer, voiced her experience with sexual harassment in the field with the intent to bring awareness and action to the issue. Unwillingly pursued by venture capitalist Justin Caldbeck, Wang feared publicizing the event because she was worried it would jeopardize her relationships with other investors.
With the experiences of other female entrepreneurs in the technology startup industry who were victims of sexual harassment, their statements were posted to The Information, an online news site read by the Silicon Valley elite. Speaking out is the beginning of a cultural shift in Silicon Valley, where predatory behavior had often been whispered about but not addressed.
Startup co-founder, Cheney Zhang, says that "being Chinese and being a woman, you kind of are expected to be more timid and shy… You're just expected to work hard and do your job." She finds it hard to discern between the challenges facing any startup, and the challenges specific to her, as a female, Asian-American startup founder.
The debate over racial prejudice in the workplace and perceived influence on employment termination has been brought into the spotlight previously. For example, Timnit Gebru says Google fired her after a dispute over a research paper she was co-author of. Gebru was the executive technical co-lead of Google's Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team, one of the teams with the most racial and gender diversity at Google. She had helped draft an academic paper, with five other authors from Google, about the ethical questions raised by recent advances in AI that processes text.
Google’s head of AI research, Jeff Dean, had asked her to retract a paper because it did not meet their bar for publication. He told colleagues in an internal email his further reasoning for retracting the paper was that it “ignored too much relevant research.”
However, those that did read the research paper by Gebru and co-authors noted that it included 128 citations. A wide range of scholarly references was drawn upon by the six researchers in a collaborative effort to accurately and objectively lay out the risks of large language models.
Gebru, at Google, was known for voicing her frustration with the company's claims to create a more inclusive workspace and raised concerns about how Google handles diversity issues. She said that she feels “constantly dehumanized” at Google.
Many other leaders in AI ethics are arguing that the company pushed her out because of the inconvenient truths she was uncovering about bias in AI software. The #ISupportTimnit campaign was started by Google workers who accused the company of research censorship. In under 24 hours, nearly 800 Google employees and over 1,000 individuals in the academic industry and civil society supporters signed the campaign.
“Instead of being embraced by Google as an exceptionally talented and prolific contributor, Dr. Gebru has faced defensiveness, racism, gaslighting, research censorship, and now a retaliatory firing,” says the statement of the campaign's solidarity with Gebru.
Dean's email says that Gebru had resigned from her position. Gebru says that she had outlined conditions to be met for her to make the changes to the paper that the review process required and continue working at Google. The conditions were not going to be met and instead the head of research took that as her resignation; whereas Gebru saw that, and her corporate accounts immediately being deactivated, as her termination.
The situation highlights factual discrepancies regarding what exactly happened within the internal review process of the research paper. Nicolas Le Roux, another Google AI researcher, noted on Twitter that the reasoning given by Dean in his email was unusual. He tweeted, “My submissions were always checked for disclosure of sensitive material, never for the quality of the literature review.” This questions why Gebru’s paper was viewed in this way and why her job position was put on the line for it. Her previous concerns with racial equality in the workplace leave room to think that her research was censored due to the discrimination she faced.
In these instances, it becomes incredibly hard to discern when work-related issues are due to individual work performance or some form of identity-based prejudice. How much of our personal identity, shaped by our race, culture, gender, and mentality, influences our performance at work? When is it right to make decisions about termination from employment when one feels that it is being attributed to something more personal? Moving on, these questions will have to be repeatedly evaluated by multiple individuals on a case-by-case basis to ensure that decisions are made ethically and upholding equality.
