Pao trial offers two very different versions of reality

SAN FRANCISCO — Testimony in the Ellen Pao gender discrimination suit on Friday featured differing views on incidents previously discussed in court, part of efforts on the part of both sides to cast doubt on the other side's portrayal of events.

Pao was a junior partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins until 2012.

She is suing the firm for $16 million in back pay and future wage losses because of gender discrimination. She alleges the firm did not end years of retaliation against her by a male partner after she ended a brief affair with him.

One was a 2009 meeting of CIOSE, a twice yearly meeting of chief information officers convened by Naomi Seligman. She is a senior partner at Ostriker von Simson, a technology research firm. Seligman sits on multiple boards and is extremely powerful in her field.

The fact that Pao wasn't allowed to sit at the main conference table but was instead relegated to the back of the room was discussed in court earlier in the week.

In an email to Seligman introduced as evidence Friday, Pao said she was "surprised" when she was not permitted to sit at the table and instead told to "sit with the staff in the back."

"I am confident that you understand how hard I've worked to become a partner," she wrote to Seligman. "And how hurtful it was to be treated like a second-class citizen."

Schlein said decisions about who sat where were made by Seligman, who only allowed high profile computer professionals at the table.

The jury also heard a different take on a plane trip by Pao, Schlein and others to a meeting on the East coast in 2011.

In testimony Thursday, Pao's laywer Alan Exelrod said Pao was subjected to discussion of porn stars and visits to the Playboy Mansion on the trip, and that Kleiner staff did nothing to bring the discussion around to more appropriate topics.

Pao wrote a letter in 2012 outlining the issues she had faced at Kleiner. She described the incident this way:

"In October I was excluded from business gatherings so a Kleiner managing partner could arrange to go to a 'club' with a portfolio CEO and investor, and I was subjected to discussion of porn stars and sexual partner preferences."

In cross-examination on Friday, Kleiner attorney Lynn Hermle asked Schlein about the trip.

He described Dan Rosensweig, whose company Chegg Kleiner Perkins had invested in, as mentioning that "he had a meeting with Playboy Enterprises and he had it at the Mansion."

Schlein said he didn't recall any discussion about porn, Playboy bunnies or sex.

Neither did he remember "a discussion of Eastern European prostitutes" and he had "absolutely not" engaged in a discussion of "preferences for Eastern European hookers and their breasts," as Hermle phrased it.

Schlein said he had not heard Pao was made uncomfortable by the conversation during the flight until her letter from January 2012.

The circumstances of Pao's leaving the firm were also discussed.

Her separation agreement, which she got on Oct. 1, 2012, specified that she would get her base salary of $33,333 per month for six months plus reimbursement for COBRA premiums.

He said Pao was not pushed to leave her office in one day.

However, Exelrod noted the separation agreement specified that "as of October 2, 2012 you will no longer be provided with office space at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byer."

"It didn't say anything about getting out or cleaning out her office," Schlein said.

"But you told her that day that was the end. She had no more office space," Exelrod said.

Schlein also said on Friday that there isn't much upward mobility at Kleiner Perkins.

"Historically, most junior partners stay three to four years," and then go on to become founders and CEOs of companies or start their own venture funds, he said.

"Ultimately," he said, there are "very few people in a venture firm."

"It's not a scale business," Schlein said. "Adding more partners doesn't mean you get better."

He added, "Unless there happens to be a need or an opening at a senior rank, there's not that much upward mobility."

The implication was Pao is not alone in not being promoted and that her lack of promotion to the much more remunerative position of senior partner is not because of her gender but rather her own abilities and, to a certain extent, luck.

Testimony in court on Thursday established that as a junior partner, Pao made more than $500,000 a year in salary and bonus, but that senior partners made up to five times that.

Schlein noted that in the firm's first 30 years, only three people were promoted from junior partner to senior partner . They were John Doerr, promoted in 1992, Joseph Lacob in 1992 and Doug Mackenzie in 1994.

Schlein painted a picture of senior partners as extraordinary people who were "coveted and a magnet for entrepreneurs.

"It's a very competitive place, there's lots of money out there for entrepreneurs, so you need to make yourself stand out," he said.