Sometimes bad things happen when you least expect it, and in ways that you could never anticipate. This article is the story of what happened to me when I applied for a job at Ziff Davis and was discriminated against by one of their senior vice presidents.
Before I get into it, you should know that I worked for Ziff previously for more than 11 years in the same role, back when it was owned by the Ziff family. I had a stellar track record and only left because of layoffs that also affected other staff members. I was the community manager for ZDNet, and later I also managed the ExtremeTech Forum and PCMag Forum when Ziff went back onto the web, after ZDNet was sold to CNet.
In those days, Ziff was a great company to work for, and they treated their people well. But Ziff fell on hard times financially and was eventually sold to a company by the name of J2 Global. It is the J2 Global people who run Ziff Davis now, and they are nothing whatsoever like the Ziff family. Not at all, not in any way.
How I was discriminated against when I applied for a job at Ziff Davis
After applying, I did a phone screen, then two interviews with people who were doing the same job that I applied for (there was to be a total of three of us on staff), and then I was passed to an SVP and General Manager by the name of Ronak Patel (more about her later).
All of the interviews went well except for the last one, the two people doing the same job I applied for were quite nice to me and we hit it off very well. However, I found the last person I interviewed with (Ronak Patel) to be rather cold and distant, and my initial impression proved to be true. Three of my interviews were via video, including the one with Patel, and it is that interview that likely cost me the job.
Then I was asked for references, as well as a resume with specific dates on it (I had used years instead of dates to avoid age discrimination). This last request seemed odd to me: why ask for dates on my resume AFTER all of the interviews had been completed? More on that below, and you know where this is going: age discrimination. You cannot hide your age in a video interview, and that made all the difference for me in this situation as you will see below.
Roughly 7.5 weeks went by, and I got no job offer nor did I get a rejection. I spent almost two months hoping I had the job, and desperately needing it. I can’t tell you how stressful this situation was for me, it took a toll on my mental and physical health. But I kept hoping, figuring I had a good chance at getting hired, given the great track record I had the first two times I worked for Ziff.
I emailed Ronak Patel, the SVP and General Manager of Spiceworks Ziff Davis, multiple times to inquire about the job, but got no response whatsoever from her. I even asked for a cut-off date on hiring me or sending me a rejection, just so I would know where I stood. No response at all from Patel, she completely ignored me.
Finally, running low on bill money, I contacted one of the lower-level guys I had interviewed with and asked about the job. He didn’t respond, but he must have forwarded my email since I got a message on LinkedIn from Ronak Patel saying that Ziff first wanted to hire an Editor in Chief so that person could have input into hiring for the job I applied for and that she was “close to hiring an Editor in Chief.”
And why did Ronak Patel contact me on LinkedIn instead of using Ziff’s company email? I had emailed her a few times already so my email address was in her email client. The answer is simple: she didn’t want the lie about an Editor in Chief to be on Ziff’s official email servers, so she used a private social media account to send it.
Two days or so later I got a generic email from Ziff Davis informing me of a “hiring freeze.” Wait, what? A hiring freeze while they were supposedly close to hiring an Editor in Chief?
My first thought: what is going on here? Almost two months with no offer and no rejection, and now the contradictory messages between Ronak Patel on LinkedIn and the official email from Ziff (clearly sent by their HR team as it had no name associated with it) sent a few days later.
I was the most qualified since I had already done the same job for Ziff for 11 years previously, and I had a fantastic track record, so why no offer? And if they wanted somebody besides me, why not send me a rejection letter at some point over the two month period?
The answer to those questions is simple: Patel didn’t want to hire me, but didn’t want to go on the record as rejecting me either. So she dragged it out endlessly, then tried to get me to go away with the Editor in Chief lie. She didn’t want to leave her fingerprints on an overt rejection, but still wanted to avoid hiring me because of my age (and possibly my race and sexual orientation).
Here is a screenshot of the email from the Ziff Davis HR department on February 23, 2023:
For context: the first time I was hired at Ziff it took about a week and a half, the second time it took about two days (back when the Ziff family owned the company). This time? Nearly two months with no offer and no rejection.
It took me a while to understand what had happened: Age (and possibly race and anti-LGB) discrimination. I identified myself on my resume as LGB, and I am of mixed-race descent. I am also older and that was why Patel wanted dates listed on my resume, so she could more easily extrapolate my age, after seeing me in a video interview. Once Patel had all of that information, she made her decision not to hire me, and thus I got the contradictory lies about needing to hire an Editor in Chief and a “hiring freeze.”
AGE DISCRIMINATION: Note also that the requests for dates on my resume came AFTER the interviews, and one of those interviews was a video interview with Ronak Patel herself. It was then that she got a look at me and realized I was older. She was cold and distant to me in that interview, and I believe it was then that she decided not to hire me because of my age.
Be aware also that after I submitted the resume to Ronak Patel’s HR person with specific dates instead of years, I stopped hearing back from the company. She ignored all of my emails and that is when I had to contact one of her subordinates to find out what was going on. Only then did she contact me on LinkedIn with the EIC lie.
Ronak Patel and the Editor in Chief lie
I knew Patel was lying in that LinkedIn screenshot, but months later I was proven to be right. What did I come across recently while looking through the job boards? An ad for an Editor in Chief for Spiceworks Ziff Davis, the very part of the company I had applied to and the division Patel was “close to hiring an Editor in Chief” for, and here’s a screenshot of the ad:
That ad went up around June 1, 2023, months after she told me on LinkedIn that she was close to hiring an Editor in Chief. She was lying to me and was using the Editor in Chief hiring as cover to deny me gainful employment based on my age ( and probably my mixed-race heritage and sexual orientation). This is a crystal clear case of discrimination, proven by Ziff Davis itself when it put that ad for an EIC up on the job boards.
Ronak Patel’s callous treatment of job applicants
It’s notable how Ronak Patel refused to respond to emails from a job applicant who was acting in good faith, simply trying to get a clarification on where he stood in the process. She ignored all attempts at communication, and only responded when forced to when one of her subordinates became involved after I emailed him.
What does that say about her? It suggests to me a callous indifference to and contempt for job applicants, and is likely how she also treats her employees. It would have taken her less than a minute to respond to my emails asking what was going on with the hiring process.
It also seems clear that she wanted to make sure she left no email trail on Ziff’s official servers. As I noted above, she was very careful not to respond from an official Ziff account and instead opted to use her private LinkedIn account to contact me. No person in a company’s management team who is acting in good faith would ever use a private social media account for company business.
Ronak Patel: A clever bigot
Ronak Patel is clearly well-connected inside of Ziff Davis. She has not been held accountable in any way whatsoever by Ziff’s management and was recently promoted despite her bigotry. So that shows you that she is politically favored and can do as she pleases to any job applicant who applies at Ziff Davis.
My sense of Ronak Patel is that she is a clever bigot. If you go to her LinkedIn page you’ll notice that she wraps herself up in DEI terminology in an attempt to camouflage herself and insulate her from being held accountable for discriminating against job applicants.
This is nothing new, we’ve seen such behavior by bigots before. They tend to virtue signal like mad on social media to cover their tracks. In the case of Patel, she discriminates quietly behind closed doors and avoids all public behavior and statements that might give her away.
Take a look at some screenshots from Ronak Patel’s LinkedIn page:
The last screenshot is laughable, given what she did to me and has likely done to other job applicants during her time at Ziff Davis. But give her some credit, she knows how to hide her tracks and present a public persona that is completely at odds with her hiring decisions behind closed doors.
Unfortunately for Patel, she decided to discriminate against a writer, and thus I am holding her publicly accountable for her bigotry with this post. I want anyone who encounters her to understand fully the kind of person they are dealing with and to be on their guard against being taken in by her public persona.
Ronak Patel: The mind of a bigot
So which part of my identity set her off and made her decide to deliberately deny me gainful employment? My age? My mixed-race descent? My sexual orientation?
It’s impossible to know which one, or which combination of identity factors made her decide to act on her hate without putting her under oath in a court of law. We can’t get into the mind of a bigot, we can only deal with the consequences of their behavior and acts of social aggression toward others. My gut feeling is that it was my age, as that ties directly into the video interview with her and the subsequent requests for dates on my resume instead of years, the ghosting of me, and then the Editor in Chief lie, and the fake hiring freeze.
In Patel’s case, however, it might also have something to do with her Indian descent. Bigots come in all colors and there are plenty of female bigots as well as male bigots.
Indians have a reputation for discriminating against native workers of all races, and it’s quite likely Patel is one such Indian. I found an illuminating article about Indians in IT, and I think it helps to understand Patel’s mindset:
I want to be clear here that not all Indians discriminate against people the way that Patel did to me, but it’s impossible to ignore Patel’s ethnic heritage given the information I included from the link above. It is likely that my mixed-race heritage played an important role in Patel’s discrimination against me, as well as my age.
What’s awful is that people like Patel not only engage in bigotry, they encourage it against the good and decent Indians who don’t do it. In that sense, her behavior is truly appalling and a base betrayal of the principles of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Why hasn’t Ziff Davis investigated Ronak Patel?
The thing that perplexes me the most about this is that I have seen no evidence whatsoever that Ziff Davis has investigated this situation. Ronak Patel is still on the payroll and reputedly makes around $400,000 per year. She is a wealthy, privileged woman who could not care less about the damage she does to job applicants and employees with her bigotry.
To make matters worse, she appears to have been recently promoted:
It says a lot about Ziff Davis as a company that they haven’t done anything about this despite being alerted to the situation, and that they’ve promoted a bigot. The two men who should have done something are Vivek Shah (Ziff Davis CEO) and Jeremy Rossen (Ziff Davis General Counsel). Both of them know about Ronak Patel’s discriminatory behavior, but neither of them has lifted a finger to do anything about it.
I am truly appalled that Jeremy Rossen and Vivek Shah have not taken such an overt case of job discrimination and bigotry seriously. When the Ziff family owned the company, Ziff Davis’ legal and HR departments would have immediately investigated the situation, and the employee involved would have been severely disciplined or fired, regardless of how high up their position was in management.
Vivek Shah and Jeremy Rossen: The good old boys of Ziff Davis
Is it just me or do Jeremy Rossen and Vivek Shah’s LinkedIn photos scream “frat boy?” Just looking at their photos reinforces my guess that there’s a “good old boys” network in the upper ranks of Ziff Davis’ management team. It makes me wonder why the Ziff Davis Board of Directors has allowed Ziff’s frat boy culture to continue and why they haven’t intervened to put a stop to it.
Corporate princelings at Ziff Davis, like Jeremy Rossen and Vivek Shah, feel entitled to their privilege. That sense of entitlement negatively affects a company like Ziff Davis and actively harms job applicants and employees. It permeates the culture inside the company and creates a feeling of helplessness among those without privilege. It also makes it difficult for marginalized job applicants and employees who must suffer a vastly inferior social, political, and financial status than Jeremy Rossen and Vivek Shah.
Such elite privilege also contributes to the game of playing favorites at Ziff Davis, which is what we’ve seen with Ronak Patel. She is favored by Vivek Shah and Jeremy Rossen and thus has not been held responsible for her ageist, racist, and anti-LGB hiring decisions. As long as Vivek Shah and Jeremy Rossen are at the top of Ziff Davis’ corporate hierarchy, it’s likely that Ronak Patel will remain favored and protected from the consequences of her decisions.
Take note of this anonymous review from the InHerSight site, that points out that Ziff is a Good Old Boys kind of company:
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a joke at Ziff Davis
It’s also important to note here that Ziff Davis’ commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has never been strong. I found a review on Glassdoor that gives us a clue to how Ziff Davis’ executive management team treats DEI and ESG like a joke internally.
Here’s a screenshot of the review:
Take note of the mention of a “boys club” atmosphere at Ziff Davis in the screenshot of the Glass Door review. Whoever wrote that was an insider at Ziff Davis and knew what has been going on at the company. That kind of internal behavior by Ziff Davis executives likely lent itself to the employment discrimination against me being ignored by Ziff’s CEO Vivek Shah and General Counsel Jeremy Rossen.
Here’s another Glasssdoor review that illuminates the dysfunctional management culture at Ziff Davis and notes that Ziff Davis executives like CEO Vivek Shah and General Counsel Jeremy Rossen love to play favorites with employees:
Ziff Davis management: Overwhelmingly white and male
Perhaps I should not be surprised that Vivek Shah and Jeremy Rossen – two privileged, pampered males – do not take instances of job discrimination, hate and bigotry seriously. Take a look at this breakdown of race and gender in Ziff’s management ranks:
From the data in those screenshots and the page they came from, it’s obvious that Ziff’s management team tilts heavily toward men, and the company as a whole tilts heavily toward white people. Gee, could that be the reason why a mixed-race person like myself was lied to and discarded by the J2 Global version of Ziff Davis instead of given a job offer despite my qualifications?
I guess my “mud blood” heritage didn’t make the cut at the J2 Global version of Ziff Davis. Always remember this about Ziff Davis: If it’s all white, it’s alright!
Ziff Davis legal department
By the way, if anybody in Ziff’s legal department is reading this post, please know that I welcome any legal action against me based on what I’ve written here.
The discovery process would be most illuminating as all emails, phone records, text messages, chats, meeting minutes, snail mail, etc., would be examined as part of a legal proceeding. We would get an excellent look at how Ziff Davis is being run and we’d have the opportunity to see how many other people the company has discriminated against since J2 Global bought it.
Speak out against bigotry and hate at Ziff Davis
If you are against job discrimination, bigotry, and hate, and you have any thoughts to share with Ziff Davis, you can reach them at the following public email addresses:
Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah
vivek.shah@ziffdavis.com
Ziff Davis General Counsel Jeremy Rossen
jeremy.rossen@ziffdavis.com
Ziff Davis SVP and GM Ronak Patel
ronak.patel@swzd.com
Ziff Davis Board of Directors Chairwoman Sarah Fay
sarah@ziffdavis.com
Don’t expect a response from any of them, however. My experience with these people indicates that they will simply ignore all attempts to communicate. Such behavior demonstrates the poor quality of leadership at Ziff Davis these days, and it also shows how hollow the commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion truly is at Ziff Davis.
Ironically, Sarah Fay, the Chairwoman of the Ziff Davis Board of Directors, used the pronouns “she/her” in her LinkedIn profile. It makes it look like she’s very progressive and against discrimination, right? Nope, you’d be wrong if you thought that, and here’s why: I sent Sarah Fay several emails about Ronak Patel’s discriminatory behavior, as well as a certified letter via US Postal Mail, and I did not get a response to any of my attempts to communicate with her.
Ignoring clear-cut discrimination cases is par for the course for the J2 Global version of Ziff Davis. Everything you see on the company’s site about DEI or ESG is purely cosmetic and designed to give the illusion of concern about such things. In reality, the company circles the wagons and ignores all communications, hoping credible reports of job discrimination will disappear.
The rich and privileged stick together at Ziff Davis
When you have rich, privileged people like Vivek Shah, Ronak Patel, Sarah Fay, and Jeremy Rossen leading the company, what else can you expect? These are wealthy people who are likely multimillionaires and who don’t give a damn about job applicants or employees. They make tons of money from their positions, so why worry about adherence to the law when it comes to discrimination in hiring? It would never affect them personally, so they ignore it while continuing to rake in the cash generated by Ziff’s employees.
My sense of Vivek Shah and Jeremy Rossen is that they are very similar to Ronak Patel. They pay lip service to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in public, but what goes on behind closed doors in management meetings is another matter entirely. If you are a politically favored person on Ziff’s executive team like Ronak Patel, you can discriminate against whoever you want, and Vivek Shah and Jeremy Rossen will quietly smile and nod their heads approvingly.
The good old boys always protect their favorites at Ziff Davis.
Marginalized people should not apply for a job at Ziff Davis
Do not be fooled by the DEI propaganda on Ziff’s site. This is a company that actively engaged in race, age, and anti-LGB discrimination when I applied for a job with them and should be avoided by anyone concerned about such things. Anybody can proclaim “inclusion” and “diversity” on their website, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing at Ziff Davis when it comes to hiring. If you are a senior executive at Ziff Davis, you can discriminate against anyone you want, with no repercussions and no accountability whatsoever.
Never rely on corporate ESG or DEI rankings either. Such rankings can easily be bought by companies in various ways. If you want to find out a company’s real commitment to DEI, you have to look beneath the surface and listen to the critical comments of marginalized past and present employees without the company having the ability to censor their truthful assessments.
In my case, being LGB, older and mix-raced doomed any chances I had to get hired by Ziff Davis. The dragging out endlessly of the hiring process with no offer and no rejection, the falsehood about being close to hiring an editor-in-chief, and then the fake hiring freeze says it all. Those were lies and it’s obvious that the company was using any excuse it could to discriminate without being called out on its bigotry.
It’s a cruel thing to dangle a job in front of somebody who desperately needs it, only to yank it away after making the job applicant wait almost two months solely because the job applicant’s identity as a human being is hated by one of the management team. If I had known then what I know now, I would never have applied for the job in the first place.
Also, there are some Glass Door reviews that indicate that Ziff Davis’ management team has quietly been shipping jobs to India. This means that if you apply and get a job, you might find eventually that your job is taken away from you and given to someone in India. Remember that Ronak Patel, Sarah Fay, Vivek Shah, and Jeremy Rossen need their stock bonuses for another mansion or expensive car, so they’ll cut costs at your expense to keep the money rolling into their bank accounts.
I hope that this post alerts any potential job seekers to avoid Ziff Davis like the plague, and I also hope that the advertisers of Ziff Davis understand fully the damage they might do to their brands by being associated with such a company. Given the appalling, bigoted behavior by one of Ziff Davis’ senior management team, and then the subsequent excusing of it by the company’s CEO and lawyer, nobody should want to be associated with this company.
If you are a victim of discrimination by Ziff Davis, please know that my heart goes out to you and that you are not alone. Be sure to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Bigotry and hate must not stand unchallenged, and companies like Ziff Davis must answer for their actions or they will keep doing it to other people.
Ronak Patel leaves Ziff Davis to go to Hearst Magazines
UPDATE: Ronak Patel has left Ziff Davis, according to a post on her LinkedIn page. She is now working for Hearst Magazines in what seems to be a lateral move. She will be the SVP and General Manager of Hearst’s Lifestyle Group.
The announcement was around September 14, which makes the timing very interesting indeed. I suspect she was quietly broomed out of her job at Ziff because of the reasons listed in this post.
Good luck to the employees at Hearst who have to deal with Ronak Patel, particularly the job applicants. If Hearst is smart, they will keep her far away from any hiring decisions.
Are you a job applicant or employee of Ziff Davis? Share your story in the comments below, but please leave out any identifying details if you are still employed by the company to avoid retaliation by Ziff’s management team. All stories are welcome.
Jim Lynch 
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