The whole point of the lawsuit was all about how Magic Leap's company culture and product plans and demos and self image all revolved around adolescent male egos and sexist fantasies, and excluded women.
Tannen Cambell, who filed the lawsuit, was actually hired for the express purpose of solving Magic Leap's recognized "pink/blue problem", but was rebuffed and ignored. They knew they had a problem, and even gave it a name, but they refused to solve it.
Read the lawsuit:
https://regmedia.co.uk/2017/02/14/magic-leap-sex-discriminat...
>Campbell, one of whose responsibilities was to help Magic Leap with the “pink/blue problem,” had to endure hostile environment sex discrimination while proposing ways, not only to make Magic Leap’s product more woman friendly, but also to make the workplace more diverse and inclusive. Campbell was terminated after (and because) she, like the child in “The Emperor’s New Clothes” who blurted out that the Emperor was naked, challenged Magic Leap’s CEO, Rony Abovitz, to acknowledge the depths of misogyny in Magic Leap’s culture and take steps to correct an gender imbalance that negatively affects the company’s core culture and renders it so dysfunctional it continues to delay the launch of a product that attracted billions of investment dollars. Campbell also raised concerns that what Magic Leap showed the public in marketing material was not what the product actually could do—admonitions ignored in favor of her male colleagues’ assertions that the images and videos presented on Magic Leap’s website and on YouTube were “aspirational,” and not Magic Leap’s version of “alternate facts.”
Did all of that suddenly change after the lawsuit was settled?
Because if it did suddenly tangibly change, then that might be evidence that settling a sex discrimination lawsuit by changing their behavior was a positive signal.
But if they only forked over a big pile of hush money, signed non-disparagement agreements and gag orders, and went their separate ways, and Magic Leap didn't actually change their culture, then I don't think you could consider it positive sign or a constructive settlement for anyone other than the woman who was paid to keep her mouth shut.
So I took the time to read through the entire complaint and I hope she settled. I wouldn't characterize this lawsuit as frivolous, but a lot of what is put forward is extremely flimsy.
For example, it is perfectly fine to criticize someone who works at the same company in a slack channel if they're doing poor work. There are a lot of claims, but not many specifics to back up those claims. She paints Abovitz as a poor leader, being constantly mired in agendaless meetings and struck with a strong case of analysis paralysis. While bad leaders often do illegal things, it is not illegal to be a bad leader. Not every requested product change is ignored without cause. It's not shocking to have to ask for a promotion. Organizing speaking engagements with high profile female executives that command well over six figures per speaking engagement is unrealistic. Magic Leap is certainly not the first company to over hype the capabilities of its product.
I do find it curious that while Ms Campbell was hired to solve this "pink/blue" problem, none of her proposed solutions involved talking to potential female consumers about the product. If your solution to "How are we going to market this product to women when we release in Q1 next year?" is to raise a new generation of female engineers, your company will die. Also, I would like to point out that recognition of a problem does not guarantee that there is a solution to it. I'm certain that the makers of needlepoint kits would love to sell more embroidery materials to men. I'm less certain that there is a way of doing so.
I did like this excerpt from 25:
"A chaotic discussion with people talking over each other followed. The group made no decisions and none of the proposed changes were made to the design."
That accurately describes any large group product meeting I've ever attended.