Pao also sued a company that she used to work at before they fired her after providing her one-on-one mentorship and trying to make her senior partner material. Then she went on to keep claiming how they discriminated against her despite the fact that they showed the exact evidence they used to terminate her employment none of which was at all able to be contested because it was data on how much money she was bringing in from clients and what the yearly targets for a person in her role were for poor performance, satisfactory performance, and exemplary performance. They showed that after two consecutive review of poor performance due to insufficient revenue from clients, that the standard policy in their corporation was to terminate the employee.

But you know, let's just all ignore the fact that she was fired from a role not-unlike a CEO's where her job was to seek out and acquire money because she was incapable of getting clients even after one-on-one coaching paid for by the company trying to get her performance metrics to increase. And then she claimed sexism when the evidence clearly shows that she couldn't meet the minimum performance metrics needed to keep her job.

Then of course there is her husband who isn't exactly a saint either.

There are many reasons people are extremely suspicious of Ellen Pao. Anyone with her history of a very high-profile frivolous lawsuit (the jury found her claims of sexual discrimination so outlandish that the called them frivolous when delivering their verdict, i.e. there was no evidence what so ever that she was discriminated against) and a significant other who was a hedge fund manager accused of massive fraud would be very distrusted by any community.

She isn't exactly showing competence in even performing damage control. Talking only behind closed door on reddit until today. Talking to the media before addressing the community at large. It all speaks to someone that isn't CEO material.

As for sexism in the community, yes it exists. But I don't think the mods and users are this upset because of sexism. I think they are this upset because yet again the reddit administrative team have ignored the community in their actions. This probably wouldn't have been that big of a deal if it was the first time the admins ignored mods and community members. But it isn't, it's just the latest in a long string of ignoring the community and people are taking their frustrations out on Ellen Pao because she is the head. If Yishan was still the CEO, you can bet your ass they would be just as mad at Yishan. Heck, they might even be madder because he would have been around a lot longer than Ellen.