Ellen Pao’s Work Reviews Changed After She Sued Kleiner

Ellen Pao leaves the Civic Center Courthouse along with her attorney, Therese Lawless, left, during a lunch break in her trial Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2015, in San Francisco. Eric Risberg/AP

After Ellen Pao filed her gender-bias suit against big-name venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, there was a change in the way her superiors evaluated her performance at the company, court testimony shows.

Before the company had any knowledge that her planned to sue, Kleiner partner Ted Schlein confirmed today in court, the firm’s partners generally rated her performance as positive, as did her peers and the board members of the outside companies she was involved with. But after she filed her lawsuit, Schlein testified, her performance fell “below expectations.”

Schlein was testifying as the Pao case approached the end of its first week in a San Francisco court. His deposition provided another window into on the inner workings of one of the most prominent venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. As the trial continues to unfold, it provides an unusually detailed look at gender issues within the world of high-tech, and it could have far-reaching consequences over how the tech industry views and treats women in the future. Pao was eventually dismissed from the company, and with her suit, she said that gender bias played a role in her dismissal.

In 2010, Pao’s review did include some criticism, including that she needing “more seasoning and time,” and that she had a “sense of entitlement.” But by the time Pao’s performance was being evaluated in 2012, Pao’s lawyer tried to show, there was large change in the way this review was worded.

At one point during his testimony, Schlein said he was likely aware that Pao intended to sue the firm as he was providing input for her June 2012 review (she sued that May). And according to Schlein’s testimony, he wasn’t the only member of senior management who was aware Pao might be suing the firm. Even board members of the companies Pao was working with had likely read about the lawsuit in the media.

As her legal team showed, one bullet point in Pao’s review from that year read: “CEOs/board members of companies where EP is involved have asked other KP Partners for help because EP was not providing desired level of impact or leadership.” One year before, the team showed, Pao’s boss and longtime mentor John Doerr had written: “I don’t know how a junior partner could have had a better year than Ellen had.” In a 2011 review, some Kleiner partners had suggested Pao find a position with a portfolio company; but Doerr fought for Pao to stay on.

In court on Friday, Pao’s legal team also tried to paint a picture of a firm that didn’t give women a seat at the table. At the 2009 CIOSE conference—a conference for chief information officers, which Kleiner Perkins routinely attends—Pao was asked to sit in the back with staff, while four Kleiner Perkins parters—Schlein, Murphy, Nazre, and Lane—sat at the front table.

At the trial, Schlein testified that the conference organizer had said someone from the firm had to sit in the back. “Why didn’t you go sit in the back?” Pao’s lawyer asked Schlein in court. “That’s not how the meetings work,” Schlein responded.

Schlein, responding to an email in which Pao voiced her concerns about the situation, wrote: “I really did not think it was a very big deal to us in who sits at a table or does not…Ellen is always sensitive to her ‘status.’ I actually think this is a personality flaw of hers.”

With its rebuttal, the Kleiner’s legal team tried to show that there was no retaliation against her suit. Although Pao was not promoted within the company, the Kliener lawyers said, there were actually very few promotions within the firm—and implied Pao was reaching for opportunities she was not yet qualified for. Schlein testified that Kleiner had only promoted three people—Doerr in 1982, Joseph Lacob in 1992, and Doug Mackenzie in 1994—in its first thirty years. It promoted Aileen Lee in 2005. And, while there were no female managing members at the firm, there have only been eight managing members at Kleiner Perkins in all of its history, according to Schlein’s testimony.