Wow! To imagine that the culture at one of the best engineering teams in the world is this poisonous is shocking.
I wonder if things would have played out differently if she had immediately addressed her supervisor's unnecessary defense. While this seems like the starting point for the harassment, my guess is that it was ingrained in the team all along and would have come out at one point or another. Not that that makes it any better.
Truly horrible experience for anyone to go through and I hope she finds a better place to work in and can perhaps put this bitter experience to help others.
Agreed. Pity that being an asshole can't be determined through some sort of pre-employment screening process. Unfortunately, assholes are often quite adept at using their superficial charm to conceal their true identity.
It's easier than you'd think. The sad truth about assholes is everyone knows. Everyone knows who they are. Everyone knows what they're doing. Everyone knows that management is aware of the assholes, and chooses to do nothing.
These things happen at most companies .. people get jealous and have different ways of dealing with it .. it's up to management to handle it well, but since no one talks about it, there is no management for it ..
Are you the author of the article? I'd like to apologize on the behalf of ... pretty much everyone, really, for all the stupid comments here that are focused on doubting your story. It sounds like an awful experience and I imagine all these people missing the point are compounding it.
In my experience in the tech industry, these sorts of victim-blaming people are very vocal but also are a minority, and I am embarrassed that this comment section is full of them.
There have indeed been a number of such comments, but by the time I saw the thread (I was traveling today, so missed it earlier), the community had weighed in more thoughtfully. The discussion now is genuinely not awful, and perhaps a notch better than we've seen in the past.
It's a common pattern that shallow, knee-jerk reactions show up first (because some people's reflexive defenses get triggered quickly) while thoughtful, meaningful responses take longer to appear—for one thing because they simply take longer to write. This sometimes leads to a perception gap about the community. The majority of users here, probably the vast majority, are fair and considerate. But it takes a while for that to reveal itself—longer, unfortunately, than the time it takes the rapid internet readership to move on. Not sure what we can do about this.
thank you :-) i needed your empathy :-) my earlier attempts to respond sooner to your comment failed to get posted. :-/ i would have thought my saying that apple apologized would be enough of a reason to believe me, but i think they are just not thinking this through.
Just for context, I'm a man, and I'm very sorry this happened to you. This is a problem in cultures all over the world, and as a species, we simply have to do better. I have two female relatives who work in tech and both of them have had experiences very similar to yours. Sadly, the younger of my two relatives has had this experience at more than 1 company.
Your post highlights a critical issue: the near total lack of visible justice for the victims. So let me tell you about the invisible justice that gets meted out. This doesn't excuse what happened to you, but I want you to know that there are people who are trying to address this issue in a way that provides significant financial and professional consequences to the perpetrators.
As a manager, it's far easier for me to quietly - dare I say silently - kill someone's career at the company by dead ending them than it is for me to ever do anything formal. With respect to HR, most managers have about as much power as the average employee, which is to say that we can just as quickly end up on the wrong side of the fence as the person being harassed. HR is not our friend either! Therefore, in the case of ordinary harassment, the best thing an employee can do is find a quiet way to put a manager on notice that something is wrong. Then a manager can start watching. We can proactively go through emails. We can start looking for bad behavior while the perpetrator has no idea, and we have the power to use quiet, offhand remarks to make the perpetrators paranoid. We can reassign employees to different work, and we can take work away from them that they really enjoy. I recently punished a loud-mouthed developer by taking him off a feature that he originated and giving it someone else. Yeah, his work was excellent, but it's always easy to find justifications once I know that I have to act.
Men with sexist ideas about how the world should operate, or men who believe that bullying other employees is acceptable, need to understand a few things. When they just can't seem to get that promotion, and feel like they're constantly sand-bagged by their manager, it's very likely because their manager is doing invisible damage control. HR doesn't know. Their manager's manager doesn't know. They don't know, and even if they suspect, there's no way they can ever prove it because there's no paper trail. As a manager, I stop mentoring these guys for promotions and start teaching their well-behaved coworkers instead so that I have a nice slate of well-prepared employees for promotion season.
Even though most of this is invisible, it's happening and it costs these men tens of thousands of dollars over the two and three years they spend waiting for promotions that never come. It's incredibly easy to take someone's excellent technical work and find fault with it for any number of reasons. Yes, this strategy uses some of the same tactics as the perpetrators, but I learned a long time ago that bullies and sexists don't care about rules. So why should I?
Yeah, eventually a bully leaves and some of them get a higher salary elsewhere, but they don't get to leave with a better resume. They don't leave with that title. And make no mistake, their new employer figures them out pretty fast and the same thing happens.
I don't know how to put this ... but this is fascinating because it is a glimpse of what likely happens on the "other side of the fence" when a manager is discriminating while maintaining plausible deniability.
[The previous comment is flagged, but I hope the comment stays as it gives insight into the power a manager has.]
My comment hasn't been removed. I don't know why it was flagged because I don't see how what I wrote violates the terms of use.
*
We can use words like bully and harass, but very often the victims feel absolutely terrorized, as described by the author of the Medium post that inspired these comments.
Unfortunately for bullies and harrassers, I'd wager that, at most companies, much more is done behind the scenes than in front of the camera.
I am ultimately responsible for those I promote, and I simpy cannot, both in terms of my conscience, and in terms of my career, promote people who bully and harrass others.
I don't want to promote someone who draws HR's attention, or, god forbid, a lawsuit, because it makes me look very, very bad. If it were to happen a few times, I'd probably be looking for another job.
Thus, it's just easier to dead end people because the reality is that bullies aren't more likely to produce superior work than anyone else. But this doesn't even matter because, even if a bully does produce superior work, I can just use words like 'temperment' and 'leadership qualities' in informal, closed door discussions and my manager will sign off.
Like many here, in addition to believing that bullying and harrassment is utterly repellant, I can't afford to do my job badly because I have a family and kids to feed. The people I protect - and it's not all women by any means - usually have families and kids to feed as well.
We're all trying to have as civil and substantive a discussion as we can here, and this is about as active as one can get in inviting an political flamewar. Please don't do this.
> But this resolution still seems incomplete. I was a productive employee at the company. While the company and its culture stood silently by, I have lost years of my life, career and happiness because of the racial and gender harassment I endured at work, it’s mishandling and the brutal aftermath.
Definitely listing damages here. Likely preparing for a lawsuit with this phrasing.
She's stating her opinion -- which is worth respecting -- of how the situation has impacted her life. Be careful reading into her motivation for doing so.
>> I also faced hostile remarks about Indian women being subservient and arranged marriages being forced on Indians for generations.
Yes. But please, don't present it like the arranged marriages has stopped.
It is quite often that young people in the bay area (of both genders) get destroyed, when they fall in love with an Indian women (or men), only to discover that the parents reject a marriage (to a non Indian). And arrange a marriage instead.
That's such an extreme and off-topic stretch that we've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.
You genuinely do not believe that Apple's engineering teams is "one of the best"? It is a pretty arbitrary measure, so where would you place them? Would they make your Top 10? Top 100?
> Calling Apple one of the best engineering teams is little much, don't you think?
In a word, no.
Yes they are a huge company and make a lot of boneheaded technical decisions, not all of which can be blamed on management/marketing (their web services are behind the curve, as is a lot of user-facing software).
But at the same time a lot of their hardware work is amazing: their chip work, general hardware robustness, the fact that they are one of the largest phone mfrs with a unusually low hardware defect rate, and who has pulled some amazing rabbits out of hats (when the iPad was released its retail price was lower than the BOM of most alternatives). Their privacy engineering (secure enclave that protects your fingerprint data, determination to keep certain data in the terminal rather than the cloud) shows dedication and hard engineering. Though a lot of their apps are shambolic (iTunes, photos, etc) their drivers are typically quite solid and standards compliant (cough ignoring wifi, ahem), and Frankly they're willing to knife the baby (Windows suffers a lot due to their longstanding commitment to backwards compatibility).
Yes, you can legitimately complain that the OSX scheduler still sucks, network stack is slow, or you can roll your eyes that their marketing pronouncements are ludicrous and their vocal fans somewhat creepy. But yes, they have one of the best engineering teams.
Don't get hung up on they hype either way. It's like talking about Musk: fundamentally he's a complete bullshitter, but he did found a company that makes rockets fly into space. Apple are bullshitters, no question about it. But they also deliver.
Preamble: I'm not questioning or talking against the article at all, just making some notes. The problem seems to be real all around the world, which is yet another indicator that most societies are not ready for global market.
The only thing I miss from the article: did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager?
Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step.
My additional notes:
> Instead of helping me, HR embarked on a defensive and confrontational script.
HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines.
They will only look at what's best for the company and for it's business. There are no labor unions any more; those are the ones that would actually care about your wellbeing.
> It is not reasonable to expect the victim to have the presence of mind to know how to tackle this problem.
In certain situations it's very hard to make decisions, that is true, but this is not a seconds/minutes scenario, when you need to make immediate calls. When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone.
> Until the investigation was completed, even my honesty was at stake.
This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.
> harassment is one of the most brutal experiences women encounter in the workplace [...] Companies need to do far more than what they are doing right now to prevent women from eventually quitting. [...] The company needs to support and empower women to take a stand in these situations. [...] This includes considering women in these situations as people, rather than as pawns in the greater agenda of protecting the company’s legal liabilities.
s/women/people
Harassment get target _anyone_, it comes in all flavours. Please don't make harassment part of the gender wars. You can get harassed for having a foreign accent in the UK. ( In a country where English pronunciation differs from village to village. )
> The only thing I miss from the article: did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step.
I understand where you're coming from. But... there should be no need for one adult to educate another that bad behavior is unacceptable.
Hi! I know you enjoy punching me from behind when I'm doing my work, but could you please stop?
The larger issue is that (like most companies) actually doing anything is secondary to management politics. Protecting the bureaucracy is the #1 goal.
thank you :-) i think that is the point of the article .. we are in a chicken and egg situation here .. no one believes women when they say there are problems and hence there is no progress ..
So when people say no one believes women when they say there are problems, and at the same time, there are huge public awareness campaigns, I have to point out the inherent contradiction involved.
Everything I see in the media is that there are not only huge awareness campaigns, but that when something does happen, there are also huge outcries about it.
We are complete strangers to the situation, we are only hearing one side of the story, and now we're the bad guys because we don't take 100% of what you said for granted?.
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, as sexism is undoubtedly a real issue in our society and our industry, but every other comment I read of yours makes it ever closer to a textbook case of a baseless accusation made to get back at someone you didn't like, and I'm ready to be conclusive about this. Do you realize how much this impacts all future cries for help from women being grossly mistreated because of their gender? My SO is going into engineering and it boils my blood to think how much people are willing to abuse the system until she can no longer be protected by it and we're back to the 1950's.
I'm afraid that HR protection of corporate interests is only tangentially related to sexism and racism. Even if you banished racism and sexism from the earth, that HR machinery will still be doing everything in its power to build a paper trail narrative against you should you make the company uncomfortable in any way.
Isn't a logical extension of having a company be responsible to shareholders, that it shall optimize for no lawsuits, as they're very pricy and damage the brand more than a blog post?
> there should be no need for one adult to educate another that bad behavior is unacceptable.
In a perfect world, where each and every one of us is aware of each and every culture around the world, this is true.
Right now, we are in the middle of a process, where we encounter with culture we never dealt with before.
In some societies the boundaries for certain acts - such as personal space, physical contact, etc - is completely different to others.
Therefore I do believe talking could solve a small percentage of situations, which one considers harassment. ( Not the one in the article. )
You can tell somebody about how the bribery system works in another country after they've fallen victim, but that doesn't mean you think they own the blame for a foreign country's bribery issues.
And, if something is a serious issue, like HR motivations to build a case against you no matter what, then people should say it out loud.
> did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step.
How do you support this statement? It doesn't strike me as a given and you don't really back it up at all.
To clarify - your statement is, "this [talking to one's harassers] should always be the first step". It is an extremely broad statement and I am curious how you defend it.
One man's harassment is another man's ribbing. It is important to clearly define boundaries between two parties before one party decides a boundary has been crossed (n.b. I haven't read the article yet but stand behind my statement in the general case).
I may not have used enough words, but you should not add yours either. Talking to someone should be the first step, not talking to their managers, parents, superiors, whatever.
If the situation is that bad, call the police, but that is an assault.
I did confront them and ask them to stop, but I still had to work with them, and they didn't entirely stop .. Unless you expect women to have taken Harassment 101 as a college course, they are really flying blind with this one .. when more than one person is involved or supervisors are involved, it's not that easy to say oh here, let me pull so many people into HR .. legalities aside, it's the end of a happy working relationship ..
I have been in adversarial relationships at my workplace that took a huge toll emotionally and eventually physically, just as you described. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I think it's good that you are talking about it and hope you recover - I still get stressed just thinking about those situations, years later.
I did learn the hard way how to deal with it, which I think is mostly about attitude. I think part of your ordeal was that you had certain expectations from the people around you, and a lot of the grief was having those broken. So first of all, I guess you get a little more realistic (or disillusioned...) about workplace relationships, leadership and company policies. Sad as it may sound, loss of innocence and thicker skin will help the next time.
Second thing is to nip things in the bud and not let anything fester. At this point I will straight up confront anyone if I feel treated unfairly and not let it rest. More often than not this solves the situation. If not, I will move on. Life is too short to stick around and being miserable somewhere, as long as you have the freedom not to.
It sounds from your writing like you've already learned these lessons, but I just wanted to share my experiences.
Workplace abuse is definitely a massive problem. Like personal relationships, it isn't something that the abused party can simply walkaway from without a major impact on their own life.
I would guess a double digit percentage of jobs globally are abusive. A big chunk of which wouldn't even qualify as consensual employment - either through unpaid slave labor or misleading information about wages and work conditions.
There needs to be more transparency about employment and the people involved in them. I think we will eventually see something like LinkedIn but which provides both positive and negative feedback about people and doesn't require a user to sign up for a profile to exist.
There is a hard question as to where to draw the dividing line. Without robots, some jobs are just abusive - period. Many jobs lower the life expectancy of the workers, and I suppose the alternative would be (without robots) that no one does them. In the West we kind of get to firewall ourselves off from this, and we get to use, sell, or consume the product after all of the dirty work is done. At the minimum, reducing non-consensual employment will help push the true economic costs of produced goods closer to reality and eliminate the market forces which benefit non-consensual labor (basically cheating.)
In terms of adversarial work environments, which if not addressed can easily become mutually abusive, no matter what the policies of a company are, the fired workers are going to end up working somewhere else. A big company like Apple may be capable of implementing ideal processes and eliminate those workers, but what happens at the next company they show up in? Should an employment blacklist exist at the federal level, or should employers only allow known abusive employees just to work in isolation?
I recently joined a new team and company, and the senior person became threatened by me (I am stronger and would have become the tech lead), and he started bullying me. I switched teams. It cost me time and reputation. I didn't know what else to do, since bullying is a covert aggression and designed to be felt but not witnessed (e.g., he arranged a group after-work get together, in front of me, without asking me the newcomer to join). People don't believe when you point out that someone is aggressing unless it is overt. You get all of the asinine replies that people are writing to your article here. My company gets to reap the reward though: they have someone that is protecting his position of poor performance through bullying, causing us to lose users due to his buggy product, and since he is friends with the management, they don't seem to understand his poor performance.
BTW, good article, kudos for publishing it, and you are correct to have those feelings.
thanks for the link, it was a nice read. i still have a problem with this:
> Saying "target all harassment" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to
the problem is harassment. not just women harassment, not just racial harassment. isn't it just as dismissive to say "focus on these kinds of harassment, everybody else will just have to wait because they can consider themselves lucky enough to even be white males"?
they key bit is "targeting harassment properly". of course dismissing is not proper handling.
Saying "it happens to everyone, it's not gendered" is ignorant at best.
From article above:
> yes, people disagree and are jerks. But they also tend to be much bigger, nastier jerks to women, people of color, and folks in other marginalized groups. Women and people of color can shrug off harassment too, of course, and often do. But they also tend to face more, and more vicious, attacks
"Women .. face more attacks" is what I mean by not equal. "More", meaning "not an equal amount".
> which has happened to me, to friends, to my wife equally...
I assume your lying to try and prove a point. Unless you back this up with evidence, one should safely assume you are lying.
I don't like doing this, but as someone once said: there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.
Fair point. If the situation would have been that bad, I'd probably had it recorded. Thankfully it resolved after talking to them or, in case of a random stranger, friends stood up against them.
I was replying to the person who said the very same thing I said. I literally use their own comment to demonstrate how bad comments like this are.
Maybe I should have explicitly called that out for those that weren't reading this comment in context, but the person I replied to knows what I said, and they were who I was replying to.
Honestly, I couldn't even make sense of what that commenter was trying to say. But that's the trouble with counter-trolling! Just by being better at writing a coherent sentence, you can end up unilaterally making threads worse.
To add to what tptacek has said, this everyone-is-lying position is not compatible with the discussions that this site is for. So if you'd like to have those kinds of conversations, they'll have to take place elsewhere.
My position isn't that everyone is lying. The person I replied to said this. I was demonstrating to them how easy it is to take that approach and have it turned against them. They replied as well, and understood what I was saying.
Maybe I should have been more clear what I was doing, but considering I know what I was saying and so did the person I replied to, I feel it's fair to say that assuming I was being negative and not understanding the context is also on those who disagree with what I said. Especially considering the status of the post that says all this in the first place.
Basically, I stand by what my comment says (assuming everyone is lying is wrong), and those that disagree with me are wrong.
I agree with you. I definitely wouldn't trust an employee's accusations without a proper investigation, but contacting the alleged abusers and reminding them to behave professionally doesn't seem to be a problem. Especially since (in general) they might be unaware of the effect their behaviour has on you!
No, actually, it's not. You're accusing someone of something very serious that puts their livelihood at stake. You need to have proof in that situation. It's a very intense and emotional experience, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to automatically assume the alleged victim is being honest.
What does? The necessity that you should actually show something is occurring before a company destroys someone's reputation and livelihood? Reality is that people lie. Do you genuinely believe that an accusation should be taken as 100% truth simply on one person's word? Do you not see how easily that become a weapon? Even reprimanding a person, when there's no proof they've done anything wrong, establishes a bias against them. That's a great way to alienate an employee who may have done nothing wrong, not to mention opening the thread of legal repercussion.
Why can't a formal investigation happen anyways in an anonymous fashion? It takes the concerns seriously and also doesn't automatically assume I'll intent on either side. I don't see the point in dismissing op and assuming someone accused of harassment is the first person that needs protection and support over people who are concerned they are being harassed to the point they make complaints about it...
An anonymous formal investigation absolutely should happen. The OP seems to arguing that you shouldn't even question someone who claims they are being harassed, and that is what I take exception with. Both people in the situation should be treated as innocent until there is proof otherwise.
There is a difference between questioning someone and proceeding with the investigation to ascertain proof and actions if necessary. One assumes there are concerns that need to be looked into, the other one implies the accuser is lying ... the former is good faith and the latter is dissuading someone from proceeding.
Yes, but consider the opposite scenario, where the onus is placed on the accused. Virtually every situation would be a nightmare to deal with; careers would be ruined on false allegations, and eventually accusers would lose credibility. I understand where you are coming from, and I do empathize with your situation and believe that Apple should have done more, but I'm firmly in the camp that the onus of proof should be on the accuser while also firmly believing that the accusers claims should be taken very seriously.
to be honest, women's careers are ruined far more than men. how many men do you know who have been ostracized ? trump is president for crying out loud.. and ailes is happily working for him..
anyway, i only said the company needs to encourage investigations and reporting, not discourage them. this has nothing to do with people at all - it is the company's attitude that i am talking about.
I disagree slightly - having been in management and having dealt with multiple harassment issues, the responsibility of the target of harassment is to report it, and it is the management's responsibility to investigate even handedly. As outside observers, we need to try to restrain ourselves and refrain from brash judgements.
Harassment situations like these can be difficult to talk about publicly for a number of reasons; respecting the privacy of all parties involved, readers' natural tendencies to issue a judgement, and so on. My take has always been that anonymized public stories like these are mostly as awareness raising not specific accusations - the emphasis is on the difficulty of the experience, not really trying to bring a specific person to justice (usually, of course there are exceptions). I do think that, if the reader is receptive, such stories are useful for helping to understand what this sort of thing looks like and what someone who is targeted by harassment is going through and perhaps provide suggestions to those who can help on how to help.
But as for placing guilt itself, I'd suggest that's not the business of stories like this or the business of those reading it. Even when you are in a position where it is your responsibility to address an issue of harassment, getting the story in a fair way is very difficult, and it's really unpleasant for everyone involved. Those who are responsible for others of course need to get over the discomfort of such discussions and work to resolve the issues, whether it's by correcting behavior or helping to explain misunderstandings, which can still be hurtful even if they are not meant to be.
It is unfortunate though understandable why many businesses take a handsoff position out of fear of legal reprecussions, since such actions just make the entire thing worse. Pretending it's not happening doesn't help anyone, whether it's based on a misunderstanding or not.
edit: changed onus to "responsibility of" since I cross posted mentally from a different discussion
In this context, "No, actually, it's not" is not a particularly civil way to make this point. The valid countervailing concern you're raising would not be hard to express in a good-faith way. I think we can all agree that there are multiple concerns and it's not obvious how to balance them.
The fact that you led with "No actually" instead, and ended by imputing a strawman ("everyone needs to automatically assume") gives your comment an absence-of-good-faith quality that we should all be striving to avoid on HN—particularly when the topic is divisive.
I'm sorry if I've violated some set of community standards. I personally find this article rather distasteful and lacking in details. The cultural signaling strewn throughout it come off as an attempts to raise an angry internet mob against a company based on what is very clearly a bias representation of the situation. This sort of manipulation and axe-grinding is not something I see as being in particularly good faith, so my distaste for it colored my comments.
I tried to make sure I wasn't attacking anyone, but rather the ideas presented. I'll keep your guidance in mind if I find myself making such comments again.
> did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager?
There are a huge number of reasons why you should not be expected to do this. The harasser can be in a position of authority, for example. Even separately to that (and i understand this is a reducio argument, but..) would you ask an abuse victim to speak to their abuser? No, they go straight to the police.
> HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines.
This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.
> When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone.
I report an assault. Do I suggest to the police how they should investigate and prosecute this assault? No. The victim reports the behaviour, but other parties should determine how to investigate and proceed with that report.
> This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.
Sometimes, yes, people do lie, but each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.
In the (very unlikely) event of the victim being untruthful, the matter should be dropped, not blow back on the reporter -- or nobody will report real problems for fear of being unfairly punished themselves.
> s/women/people
This didn't need to be said. The author is talking about her experiences of harassment as a woman in technology. Yes, there are other problems that also need solving. This isn't the hill on which to make this point.
> > HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines.
> This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.
Ah, but it's not a gendered problem, and outside of gender laws, there's not much you can do to "fix" something nebulous like this in corporate America.
> This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.
This is not a problem that can realistically be fixed. An organization that's going to work for the best interests of employees cannot be paid by the company, nor can it report to the company or someone with whom the company has significant influence. That means unions.
sigh - but management can do a better job managing and if victims know what or how to recognize problems, they can be better prepared to deal with the situation more effectively. which is the point of this piece.
"In the (very unlikely) event of the victim being untruthful, the matter should be dropped, not blow back on the reporter -- or nobody will report real problems for fear of being unfairly punished themselves."
What? Apparently, being untruthful about reporting harassment could result in the untruthful reporter being _unfairly_ punished?
Sounds like an all-win situation. Report harassment, true or not. If it helps your lot in life/work, great. If not, even if proven false, it gets dropped, non-consequentially. After all, it would be unfair to punish you...
I think kalleth was saying that _fairly_ punishing an untruthful reporter could discourage future _truthful_ reporters as they may fear being _unfairly_ punished.
> There are a huge number of reasons why you should not be expected to do this.
When you get attacked in the street, talking is the first thing you should do. When you are harassed by a teacher in class as well. You always need to talk to the person attacking you unless it's too dangerous to do so. It may fail, but if you don't do it, you basically give up your ability to act.
> This didn't need to be said
This does need to be said. There is a high focus on making everything about gender these days, and it's very detrimental. It makes people focusing on specifics, instead of global issues. Worst, it usually focus on fighting against something instead of empowering the victims, which needs to be done for long term results.
> each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.
That's actually very hard to do, but it's true it would be the ideal call.
Lots of down votes because of uncomfortable truth? I've seen this happen a few times and the only thing you need to do is honestly apply feminist values to all people without discriminating to start condemning it.
It's like asking for respect for getting addicted to pills by pharmaceutical industries because that's a part of American culture. Maybe some criticism would be in place despite the "it's our culture" thing?
But do not harass every Indian person you can find about it!
I've had many fine coworkers from India working in the US or from India in the past and I can't imagine harassing them about this.
I would say it has downvotes because it's at best tangentially related and has some weird framing: it frames person A who gets feelings for person B as a victim when person B decides not to marry them.
Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them. I really don't see any compelling parallels to pharmaceutical addiction. As someone who is neither religious nor inclined towards marriage, Baptist vs. Anabaptist seems like a more reasonable comparison.
I think a lot of non-Indians have this impression that arranged marriage means forced marriage or child marriage. I was talking to a South Korean guy and he thought we (Indians) get married at a young age or something equally bad. When I told him how it happens in India, he remarked "thats how it happens in his country as well".
Nowadays, we have matrimonial sites similar to your eHarmony. Guys/girls or their parents will create profiles and contact each other. If all their criteria match, guy will meet the girl, talk for some time and may say yes or no. Both the girl and the guy can say no. Nobody is forcing us.
I know the next question will be how can you choose a life partner in 30 minutes. To me, marriage involves a lot of understanding and compromise from both the parties. I was talking to a 65+ year old American recently. He was talking about something called a "spark" when a guy/girl meet. If you have that spark, you go ahead in the relationship. I don't know if this "spark" is real, I saw a lot of girls in person after liking their profiles, but didn't like them (or they didn't like me) in person.
I think at some point, our culture decided that interest of the society is bigger than personal freedom. They may have decided its better to find a partner this way rather than spending several years like in other cultures (I worked with an American who dated the same girl for 5 years and got divorced in 6 months). If you are going to say that such a lack of personal freedom is regressive, I don't feel that way. In America, you have the draft which to me means you loose the right to your body.
> In America, you have the draft which to me means you loose the right to your body.
The draft hasn't been used in America since 1973 - our military service is all volunteer.
What we do have, though, is called "Selective Service" - basically when you turn 18 years of age (and on thru 25 years of age), you have to register for "Selective Service" which is there to provide a list of "able and ready" (but maybe not willing) members of society which can be called up in a re-instated draft if and when it becomes necessary.
> Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them
It's the part where people are forced where they don't want to that I don't like. There's plenty of people married to someone introduced by their parents. You should be able to take another path when you want to.
arranged marriages are usually family introductions and rarely forced. the way they limit choice is by constraining potential partners to your own caste or community, to the supreme thrill of family conservatives who regard that as "respectable". if you're american, you're talking about a society that places a lot of importance on self - not the case in other societies. in a lot of indian families, family comes first, not the individual.
"Lots of down votes because of uncomfortable truth?"
No, downvotes because "the current state of arranged marriages in India" has absolutely nothing to do with the article. You're doing exactly what the author said was done to her.
"they made comments about not liking to work with me or with the growing number of Indian tech workers in the company. I also faced hostile remarks about Indian women being subservient and arranged marriages being forced on Indians for generations."
I have seen a scenario where a black colleague in a on-campus lunch discussion suddenly faced hostile remarks about black people being predisposed to crime. This is the exact same type of problem. Whether or not the topic is true is completely unrelated to how the topic is used to isolate and move the person from the category of a normal team member into "other" who can then be bullied or sidelined.
Right, I don't like to single out people to put them forward as "spokespeople for their group". As an immigrant myself it's kind of weird that people see me as some kind of representative of my culture/country. I don't see myself as not very typical for my country at all.
Is this sarcasm? Most of what she is talking about seems to be in person comments that she couldn't really record but anyway she is just talking about her experience and what she thinks could be done to improve the industry so I'm not sure proof on the specifics that happened to her are necessary
It's the sad truth. This is exactly the kind of story I expect on Medium, that's their clickbait, their MO to drive the traffic up. That's all you need to know about it.
It's so predictable, I don't know if it's more funny or more sad, actually.
And yes, I totally believe every single word of that story. Now that is sarcasm.
Look at the choice of words. It's all there, all the buzzwords, all the expected jargon, signalling virtue and belonging to the tribe.
This account has been posting primarily uncivil or unsubstantive comments, and we ban accounts that proceed like this. Please (re-)read the guidelines:
From my mothers similar experiences followed by her unions absolute refusal to help, in a word, no. They exist to parasitically take your money, forcibly take others who don't want to give and really offer very little in return other than more bureaucracy.
Your much better off paying a lawyer than a union.
> They exist to parasitically take your money, forcibly take others who don't want to give and really offer very little in return other than more bureaucracy.
If we look at historical facts rather than your mothers anecdotes this is incredibly far from the truth.
Unions have fought for and won such a huge amount of the workers rights we enjoy today that it would be a disservice to try and cover all of them in a comment. Google is your friend if you'd like to learn about the history of unions and labour movements.
OK, I tried searching "worker rights due to union" and "union worker rights" and only found pages about unions protecting the right to associate. What should I input into Google?
Google searching like that is going to have trouble separating news from history.
Maybe just start with "history of worker rights." Or maybe just the wikipedia labor movement article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement It's not all strictly about changes forced through unions vs other types of activists, but once unions were made legal they were one of the strongest methods for demanding and enforcing these for large numbers of workers in the days before they were turned into laws.
> Throughout the world, action by labourists has resulted in reforms and workers' rights, such as the two-day weekend, minimum wage, paid holidays, and the achievement of the eight-hour day for many workers. There have been many important labour activists in modern history who have caused changes that were revolutionary at the time and are now regarded as basic. For example, Mary Harris Jones, better known as "Mother Jones", and the National Catholic Welfare Council were important in the campaign to end child labour in the United States during the early 20th century. .
a) two-day weekend
How is this a right? Some people want to work less; some want to work more. If it were forced by unions, forcing a two-day weekend stops people from working more.
b) paid holiday
Same; not everyone wants paid holidays as opposed to getting more money in their pockets.
c) minimum wage
The minimum wage stops less skilled people from working; this especially affects blacks and teenagers. I see the minimum wage as a negative effect of unions (nobody wants their job to be replaced by a cheaper worker).
d) Again, not everyone wants to work an 8-hour day. Poor people want to work more and other people want to work in different schedules (like a 3 day week).
It is not clear to me why a), b), and d) can't be achieved without unions if people wanted those 3.
I have no problem with people having a), b), and d) voluntarily and unions persuading people and employers for those causes; but I don't want workers to be forced to have those three (there's no free lunch--these worker "rights" come at the expense of the worker's salary).
Sorry but this comment is just incredibly stupid. You (probably) have the right to free speech but you aren't forced to spew bile constantly. You might have the right to bear arms but you wouldn't be forced to carry an AR-15 24/7.
Having the right to something means it can't be taken from you, not that you can't give it up. I worked as a chef for many years and many workers rights (particularly the EU working directive) are simply incompatible with the industry. Does this mean I was unable to work? Did the industry collapse? No. I just signed a waiver each time I started a new job.
c) Is actually an interesting subject and personally I do not agree with having a minimum wage and I feel that the purpose of introducing it was to undermine unions. There is a lot more to say about min wage but this comment thread is probably not the place for it. The rest of your post is, objectively, nonsense.
no because people can quit and losing good people is a liability for any company. I am assuming that she continues to work there despite being treated poorly is due to immigration issues which make it impossible to switch jobs. We need to end immigration bonded slavery.
The union isn't necessarily going to protect you here either: Your coworkers would also be union members, and you'd just be moving the discussion to a different place that calls favorites too. Do the union reps like you more than they like the harassers?
I have seen harassment go south for the harasser, but the cases had one thing in common: The person that was being harassed had far more status than the harassers believed, so, in practice, they were spitting upwards. If high management believes you are the more valuable, likable party, you will win. If they don't, you will lose. Facts are relatively unimportant.
So the moral of the story is to make friends in high places. Depressing, but real.
what could hypothetically be argued is the need for the equivalent of the medical board, or bar, or cpa, cfa, engineering license, etc. and it would be a legitimate debate, but no clear cut answer exists.
you'll note that all of those bodies have ethics and competency standards and none of them are unions, meaning none of them negotiate contracts on behalf of their constituent members.
i DO NOT (DO _NOT_) want a union negotiating my business relationships for me, and exclude me from my own industry if i refuse to let them.
A union in this case would actually be more likely to protect the harassers than the victim. Unions exist to protect employees in general even when that hurts specific employees.
You can find plenty of cases where union reps have disputed sexual harassment claims.
Having been through an eerily similar episode as what you describe (but then as an LGBT employee) I did have an almost perfect paper trail but it still didn't help.
It takes an absolutely insane amount of energy to fight a huge company like this and even if you do everything right the chances are pretty good they'll wear you out first.
Best of luck with your recovery! It's been a really tough few years for me and I can't think of much to say except that I empathize with you and perhaps recommend this book [1] which looking back lists a lot of things that helped me get over it.
Thanks for sharing the book. I am an employee of another big tech company currently going through similar process of HR not being very helpful despite raising grievance for last two months. The book is on point. With children and family, the fight is not worth the stress and permanent health impact.
Indeed. I wouldn't suggest anyone enduring months and months of not feeling safe at a visceral level if you also have the choice to disengage.
If you find a way to keep feeling safe, like I imagine having a good pro-bono legal advisor could have done for me, then by all means go ahead. If not, then there's also no shame in just moving on.
i agree about walking away, but i think by the time you think its a legal issue, its too late. its not easy to find a job when you have anxiety or depression - i tried a lot to do that. i also trusted the company, which i think is a fair thing to do.
> i also trusted the company, which i think is a fair thing to do.
I thought the same; but like you was mistaken in that. Looking back I've come to realize that, even though it shouldn't be, as soon as you get HR involved it's become a legal issue.
But yeah; my point was that if solid legal backing could prevent you from developing the anxiety and depression, like I think it would have for me, then it could be worth going through with it...
Your contributions in this thread have been extraordinarily clearheaded, and levelheaded too. I'm a moderator here and want to thank you for that. It isn't easy to keep your balance this way when a large internet community is dissecting every grain of what you wrote, let alone on such a difficult topic.
According to the author, she'd discuss one thing with HR and their official report would state something completely different. To be precise, HR said, the author refused the company's help.
What do you suppose she do in this case apart from recording the meeting?
I think she followed the correct procedure. A problem was occurring and she went to HR to inform them. Would of it been better if she had evidence? Of course, but it's HR's ultimate responsibility to conduct the investigation. Just like it's the police's responsibility to conduct a investigation after an incident, not the victims. (This is of course best case which unfortunately didn't happen here.)
You must be careful about recording things, because there are a lot of laws around that, and you can end up in more trouble yourself, as in, Federal law violation and go-to-jail trouble. See for instance: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-co... Though I would never recommend making decisions about that based on one web page.
For the sake of argument, assuming that this took place in California, that's a "two-party" consent state for recordings, which at least means you don't have a unilateral right to record anything you want. Exactly how that would interact with taking place on corporate property in a corporate setting is something you'd have to ask a lawyer about.
Wouldn't Apple's hiring policy likely mean that she was given the job on the basis of her race and gender? They have to be doing that in order to achieve the diversity numbers they're so happy to publish each year.
Users may have flagged this comment because you made a very controversial claim without any support. On Hacker News, the bar for substantiveness is higher in this situation because the site exists for civil, intellectually interesting discussion, and predictable flamewars are precisely opposite.
Is not this the default situation white straight male faces?
For example I was accused of somehow being responsible for slavery, LGBT discrimination, anti-immigrant policies etc.. That was just a few days after I moved to US, I had zero influence on those things and I was immigrant myself.
I dont think its about white males and brown females. Such behaviour in any corporate setting or any workplace setting is vile. No one has to go through harrassment of any kind and thats why big companies at least invest some time in setting up HR policies to prevent such kind of culture to develop but as we see its never perfect.
I can't help but notice the contradiction. A man jumped to her defense, which was sexism, and then her co-workers got resentful, which she wanted to be defended from but wasn't, and that was sexism too. Somehow, we all need to display more empathy for her situation.
I imagine there's a different side to this. Her coworkers noticed her getting treated differently and started teasing her about it, in a typical form of male ribbing on each other, in an attempt to equalize the status among the team. Rather than take this in stride and rolling with it, she clammed up and got offended, being used to a very different social style. The mistake was to see herself as the primary victim from day 1, rather than a beneficiary of unearned perks. The empathy she demands for herself she doesn't grant to others, and the reasonable and self-sufficient behavior she expects of everyone around her, she was unable to muster herself.
So here's the long medium post where she is unable to dissociate her experience from her identity. A "personal perspective" that nevertheless puts up a list of changes necessary for supporting women and minorities. She also somehow concludes that despite management not seeming to care and not bothering to reply to her final letter, her experience was nevertheless instrumental in causing sweeping and highly visible changes in policy.
Sorry but, being empowered by being uniquely protected is a contradiction. She opens "as a woman and minority" as if that's a liability, rather than the trump card she's actually playing it as. People who don't use that line still have problems, but they don't get to instruct others on how to solve them. If one of her white male co-workers had gotten bullied, I imagine we wouldn't be reading about it today, and she probably wouldn't have noticed either in her me-bubble.
> The mistake was to see herself as the primary victim from day 1...
Except if you read the entire article, she says that she didn't at first see this as harassment, only as an embarrassing situation. It was only after the harassment and intimidation escalated that she looked back to see where it really began.
> ...rather than a beneficiary of unearned perks. The empathy she demands for herself...
Your entire post comes across as something one of her harassers would write in retaliation, and this in particular sticks out. If a woman doesn't want white knights to come to her rescue, that's her prerogative, not for you or anyone else to dictate, and it's certainly not a character flaw or an excuse for continued harassment and intimidation.
It wasn't sexist for a man to jump to her defense. Sometimes people defend other people, irrespective of gender. Had it been a woman who'd come to her defense, that too could be criticized. Her department likely has more men. Blame statistics.
Edit: Actually, OP characterizes gesture by the dude defending her as "sexist".(Above opinion stands.)
It sounds like she was rather obviously being white knighted, in a situation where it was clear to her and her coworkers that it was inappropriate. Which then started the problem that her coworkers saw her as favored. (My reading)
There are definitely multiple sides to this, like any story. Your imaginary account of the other side does strike me as presumptuous. You were not there, but you do feel entitled to paint a picture of what could have happened.
It's like saying to somebody who said they got beat up in the park, that there is another side to their story: they were provoking the other party, and when they got into a fight they didn't run.
Last time I was in Amsterdam, a friend of mine related the experience he had last night. (Details changed a bit to protect the guilty.) After being out late drinking, he was refused service at several bars for being too drunk. Then, while stumbling around in the streets in search of a bar that would serve them, this craazy biker stopped and punched him in the face completely unprovoked. Then he biked away. Finally he found a bar that would let him in, and gave him sympathy for his bleeding face. Shortly thereafter the asshole bartender kicked him out for no good reason. He's doesn't remember getting home.
Now I wasn't there. But I do feel entitled to paint an alternate picture of what could have happened. After recovering from his hangover he recognized that my alternate picture of what happened was actually pretty reasonable.
So... second guessing someone's retelling of a completely sober, undoubtedly career impacting scenario (one way or another) in the workplace is equivalent to second guessing someone's retelling of a drunken haze of a night?
It's folly to think that the same level and style of scrutiny need be applied to both. You aren't wrong to paint the alternate picture for your friend's case, but it's sidestepping the issue in question (e.g., potential harassment in the workplace) to attempt to make that equivalency here.
Yes, my point is that it's completely reasonable to second guess stories we hear. It's a normal, everyday behavior and one which gets us closer to the truth.
Due to her not being drunk I give her retelling more credibility, but that doesn't mean she should be unquestioningly believed.
But that's a problem, too. You weren't there and have no way of knowing if this whole story isn't made up. What's the point and purpose of a current employee(?) at Apple running to Medium at posting such such a public article?
A man jumped to her defense, which was sexism, and then her co-workers got resentful, which she wanted to be defended from but wasn't, and that was sexism too
I would argue, quite strongly, that you're not in a position to make that call.
Being a privileged, white male it was hard for me to see what woman are put through in terms of casual sexism in the workplace and in society.
Since my girlfriend works as a secondary school teacher I see much clearer what's wrong and it's partially very subtle.
Here's an example: performance review? Criticism about how she dresses. This would never come up with one her male colleagues (and yes, she checked).
That's totally casual sexism over which you may "harumph!" about. But unless you're a woman (or another discriminated against minority) you're in no position to make that determination.
It is indeed easy as a white male to miss the sexism and racism. It's only by being empathic and actually listen to victims that you learn to see it.
If you dismiss accounts of victims or try to second-guess them like happens so often (examples abound in these comments), it should be no wonder that victims are hesitant to bring these issues up.
Comments on divisive topics that go "I imagine" and "Sorry but" have a strong tendency to make these conversations worse.
You're indeed imagining a tremendous amount here, and projecting it into a situation you have no direct knowledge of. Well, we all can imagine a lot of things. This is not substantive contribution, it's borderline trolling. Please don't do this on HN.
Edit: you've also been using HN primarily for ideological rhetoric. That's an abuse of this site, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do that either.
> I can't help but notice the contradiction. A man jumped to her defense, which was sexism, and then her co-workers got resentful, which she wanted to be defended from but wasn't, and that was sexism too. Somehow, we all need to display more empathy for her situation.
There's no contradiction. Sexism can express itself both in putting women down and in putting women in a pedestal.
There's no contradiction. Sexism can express itself both in putting women down and in putting women in a pedestal.
There's no contradiction, if the witch had led an evil and improper life, she was guilty; if she had led a good and proper life, this too was a proof, for witches dissemble and try to appear especially virtuous. After the woman was put in prison: if she was afraid, this proved her guilt; if she was not afraid, this proved her guilt, for witches characteristically pretend innocence and wear a bold front. Or on hearing of a denunciation of witchcraft against her, she might seek flight or remain; if she ran, that proved her guilt; if she remained, the devil had detained her so she could not get away.
From Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, the Cautio Criminalis ('prudence in criminal cases') in 1631.
I see you posting your libertarian stuff all over HN. I'm not very surprised you also think the real victims here are her coworkers, whom you are unironically trying to liken to prosecuted witches.
You've turned this story about a woman being harassed at Apple into a story about her numerous anonymous male coworkers, and dudes at large, being targeted. It's fascinating.
When did I say the real victims were her coworkers? The fact that I think your reasoning is deeply flawed does not imply I hold what you believe to be the opposite view.
Pointing out logical flaws in the reasoning of the inquisition doesn't make me a Satanist (or a libertarian, for that matter).
I don't think that the witch trials, which were effectively a small genocide against women, are a particularly effective metaphor for refuting manifestations of sexism.
I suppose that would be true if you think arguments are soldiers in favor of women or against them. You think I believe I raised a +1 for men, while you think I raised a +1 for women by mentioning a time they were victims.
In fact, I believe arguments are attempts to converge to truth. The fact that women were victims in 1631 has no bearing on this discussion.
RoderickDay made an argument that happened to be flawed (here's a more formal argument illustrating the flaws: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence... ), and his argument paralleled the Inquisition's arguments which were flawed for the same reason. Now that his incorrect argument is rejected, we can make better arguments and approach the truth.
"This man did a sexist thing to curry favor with a woman. This other man did a sexist thing against her. Clearly, the woman must have been lying in one of the two scenarios."
You're an idiot dude. Linking to a wikipedia fallacy page lmao you're like a caricature.
I think what you were trying to say in your original comment was that "positive" sexism doesn't exist. That the author was being unreasonable when she interpreted her co-worker standing up for her as sexism.
I will assert that such "positive" acts can be and often are sexist. Negative actions can also be sexist. It is possible to take a sexist action while you think you're being helpful. Not all sexism is manifested in malice.
Consider similar racial stereotypes like "Asians are good at math" or "black people are good at sports." You might think that someone is positive, but those beliefs are deeply rooted in racism and racial stereotypes.
I wasn't trying to say this at all. What I was saying is simply that X and !X cannot both be evidence of a hypothesis. If X increases your confidence that Y is true, then !X must reduce your confidence.
If you want to make a more complicated argument as to why these things aren't actually X and !X, do it. But RodericDay wasn't doing that.
For those who doubt it: yes "benevolent" sexism (or racism) is real, unfortunately. There are many ways it can manifest itself, but what it always boils down to is someone with the proverbial "good intentions" who decides to treat someone differently, even in a way they think of as positive, for no other reason than because of their sex (or race). It can be particularly poisonous because once you call someone out for being different, even if it is in a way that you believe to be beneficial, it highlights to everyone around them that they are different, which can make them a target.
The best solution is to always strive to treat everyone equally. People are not perfect, so there will be mistakes, but that should nevertheless always be the goal.
>There's no contradiction. Sexism can express itself both in putting women down and in putting women in a pedestal.
Since she didn't include a direct quote, or more detail, it's really difficult to say much about the supervisor jumping to her defense. It's clear that, in hindsight, she viewed it as sexist. However, a little more detail on what was said, or the nature of the situation would be helpful to understand it better.
It's not unusual at all, to me, for a supervisor to defend members of their team...and not automatically sexist, or even undesirable.
Regardless of how bad someone else's comment is, you can't be uncivil or call names here. Please (re-)read the site guidelines and don't do this again.
While not the perfect solution it seems like a lot of the mentioned issues (standardized communication channels, no conflict of interest) could be solved by installing work councils (I take it they are not wide spread in the US? They are standard in Germany): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_council
unions and work councils are fairly rare in the IT/startup sector in Germany. If they exist it's usually because it's the IT department of an old, established enterprise. The rate of union membership in anything that's IT related is comparatively low as well.
Personally, I consider that a problem, because it leaves each employee to fight their own fight. But IT folks somehow tend to believe that they don't need any help (and then subsequently sign contracts with unlimited unpaid overtime because they don't know it's illegal).
But the outcome of that depends largely on who's got the position they want.
If a contract has an illegal non-compete, it's easy for an employee to sign and then ignore it. After all, the employer would have to find the violation, sue them, and risk summary dismissal. The employee wins just by having everyone give up.
If a contract features unpaid overtime, though, the employee is working time and not getting paid. They can refuse the work, get fired, and then sue, or they can do the work and then sue for nonpayment. In either case, they need to win to come out ahead, which is a lengthy and uncertain process.
Ignoring unenforceable provisions is only easy for someone who doesn't need a court decision to get a good outcome.
While it's always an option to sue for payment of unpaid overtime after you left that will still leave a mark on your resume an people may be hesitant to hire. It's also lengthy and risky because it requires solid documentation. And, first of all it requires that you're aware that the clause is overreaching and thus null and void. I often see people not getting paid for time worked because they're unaware. I also fairly often hear about uncompensated non-compete clauses which are also illegal, but people are scared to go see a lawyer. A good union provides both: a check on the contracts in a company and legal advice and professional backing in court when needed.
> They can refuse the work, get fired, and then sue...
The parent was talking about Germany in particular.
Employee protection is fairly strong, so an employer will think twice before firing someone over non-compliance with an illegal contract, as they will get their ass handed to them in court.
Why is this the victim card? It's an anecdote that one persons grad class is a certain way. How does this reflect on the demographics of the industry? I've been to many companies that are majority white male.
Opening the article with "as a woman and minority" in tech is exactly playing the victim card right up front.
It has no weight on whether the supposed actions of her managers and colleagues were wrong, because they'd be wrong no matter who they did this to.
And by your standards even the OP is "just an anecdote". We have no proof whatsoever that she was in fact mistreated.
That comment does not have sufficient basis in reality to teach us something, which is what we're here for, nor is it civil enough to say in a face-to-face conversation. Each of our comments have to reach this bar individually, because the threads degrade when they don't.
Whenever I'm dealing with something that is serious to me, I always clearly first state to myself 1) what I want and 2) what do I do if I don't get what I want. For example in this case, it could be: 1) Jack told me this and that and I consider this is inappropriate. I never want to be told that again in this company 2) I leave.
What I do next is that I make sure I communicate clearly those two points to whoever I think should get me what I want. For example, in that case, I would go see my manager and say: "Jack told me this and that and I consider this is inappropriate. I never want to be told that again in this company. If it happens again, I quit. Have you understood? (wait for his answer) What will you do to make sure it doesn't happen anymore?" (it is important to ask if he has understood, it forces him to go right in the middle of the circle you just draw on the floor, that put him in your territory, right under your guns).
Sometimes, you will have to apply 2). For example in this case, your manager would have to tell you something substantial about what he gonna do to stop that. If what he tells you is not substantial, tell him you are not satisfied and ask him again the same question: "what can you do to make sure it will stop?". Don't quit on that. Keep asking. Only apply 2) if he don't answer anymore. It's typically a situation where "you don't leave the shop until...". If your manager tells you to go see the HR department, tell him clearly again 2): "if I don't get what I want I will leave. Do you still want me to go see the HR department? Are you sure?". Apply pressure, at every step.
Do not have a discussion. Don't discuss the problem with your manager. Don't talk. Ask your question and wait for an answer. If he want to discuss, make him understand you won't.
It's crucial to apply 2) right away when you don't get what you want. I've found it's rarely the occasion to make a deal and make a compromise not so much because the deal is bad but because by doing so, they will start kidding you again.
I'm super happy so far with the result of this method. I get fantastic results from my family, employers, friends, from everybody. At first, you will feel like a freak. Then you will notice the others won't think so much that you are a freak but will think you are a strong person they should not kid with. You end up being respected.
> I was getting preferential treatment because of my “cuteness factor”
> Indian women being subservient
I agree that these comments don't belong in the workplace. I have seen similar ones lead to people fired on the day and escorted to the door. Thankfully it's relatively rare but some places do take it very seriously.
Apple was wrong. In Australia the law is clear and they've breached it. Take them to court and get your payout. It's annoying that the victim has to do that but it's possible.
For other parts of the article I put myself in her shoes and didn't find management's treatment of her particularly different from how I (a male) would be treated after complaining about the actions of anyone else (male or female) in the workplace - which is why I don't. HR is ineffectual and the company is against you regardless of whomever is at fault. It just wants one or the other party gone so things can go back to normal, so if it's you versus five other people it's easier to fire and rehire one than five.
> employers also have an obligation to handle the situation with empathy and integrity
And this line stood out at me as being divorced from reality especially at a big company.
I get it that we mostly want companies to be like this but I think it's also obvious that they're not. They are primarily profit motivated and we're lucky if they don't pollute the environment or commit atrocities in the process.
You can look for smaller companies that do it, you can put it in your own company, but if you really felt Apple would be like that then it's being a little naive.
I worked at one mid-size company that was acquired by a competitor who wanted to drive in the boot heel by firing the previous management in as embarrassing a way as possible. My boss was on the chopping block and had false charges levelled at him over email and summarily fired. He took it through the Australian workplace relations system to try to get some closure, until the government advised there's no law to prevent a company making anything up and firing you for it. He could have pursued defamation but that's also extremely difficult, long, and expensive, and he didn't have the money.
It was at that point I grew up in my career and decided you really can't trust any company to look out for you. That's not how it works.
> And this line stood out at me as being divorced from reality especially at a big company.
I get it that we mostly want companies to be like this but I think it's also obvious that they're not. They are primarily profit motivated and we're lucky if they don't pollute the environment or commit atrocities in the process.
You can look for smaller companies that do it, you can put it in your own company, but if you really felt Apple would be like that then it's being a little naive.
I do not disagree that this is true, but I would suggest that this also is not an acceptable status quo. Complacency doesn't help it, and the unfortunate reality is that most companies just want to get into a battle of wills with those who are targets of harassment rather than take the time to address the issue as they should be.
You are right that this seems to happen once you breach a certain threshold - I assume at that point legal gets more pre-emptive in its protection of the company and tries to divorce itself from the goings-on in Human Resource areas. Plus, as I said elsewhere in this discussion, finding and/or training managers to handle these issues in a fair way is not easy, nor is it easy to be the manager dealing with this situation.
But I don't think that complacency is the answer, and she's not wrong that in many countries, the employer does have an obligation to handle the events. Attributing the sensations to it I'm not sure I fully agree with, but many countries do require investigative procedures, which according to the article weren't really performed well by management at Apple.
Sadly, if the company isn't profit-motivated, it will be displaced by a profit-motivated one. At this point large companies are eerily similar to the hypothetical paperclip-maximizing AI that converts the entire earth in paperclips. Except that making more money lets you make even more money in a snowball effect.
The fix is probably to check glassdoor etc. as much as you can before working for a potentially unethical company. But then you'll be restricted to working for only a small handful of companies.
The other fix is to only work as a contractor, so you're isolated from the effects of being practically a serf to a company entity.
Indeed they don't, but then neither does preferential treatment due to cuteness, which I routinely observe. How society has become so fond of denying objective reality is very strange, especially when it doesn't seem to achieve much.
Unionization is not banned in any state. Your link does not agree with your dishonest comment.
Right to work laws simply prohibit collusion between unions and employers to prevent non-union workers from working. They are no different than other worker protection laws, e.g. the laws prohibiting Apple and Microsoft from forming an anti-poaching agreement.
Well, effective unions–those capable of overcoming the free rider problem–are banned, then. It's like banning all sports equipment but saying Baseball isn't banned, in that you can still get together and say you're playing baseball and go through some of the motions, kind-of, and perhaps even play some cup-ball and call it baseball.
I don't know what you mean by "free rider problem". Rather than buying negotiation services from a union, I simply negotiated my own employment agreement. Who am I "free riding" on?
If I hack together my own IDE in emacs, am I somehow "free riding" on the people who sell commercial IDEs?
(EDIT: to expand, this is the problem with voluntary associations when it comes to acting effectively toward their goals, and if you follow this general rabbit hole far enough, basically why government is a thing)
In reality, price discovery does not require any such monopoly. For example, the stock market is highly efficient at price discovery, yet there is no single monopolistic buyer who chooses prices for everyone who wants to purchase a stock.
I am aware of the debate as to whether index funds should be illegal (e.g. [1]), but I don't find them super compelling. Index investors are not, in fact, passive, they are merely investing in one particular direction, and active investors can trade against them if that direction is wrong.
Unions don't exist to improve price discovery per se, they exist to reduce the power imbalance between massive autocratic organizations given great power (for good reason) by the state and individual workers, on a broad set of issues that does usually include compensation.
I'm perfectly happy with that "power imbalance", whatever that means. Why can't the union refuse to protect non-union workers against this "imbalance"?
It sounds like the union needs special legally granted monopoly powers to sell me services I don't actually want. The term for that is "rent seeking", actually.
> I don't know what you mean by "free rider problem"
> I'm perfectly happy with that "power imbalance", whatever that means.
> It sounds like the union needs special legally granted monopoly powers to sell me services I don't actually want. The term for that is "rent seeking", actually.
You may want to do some reading on the topic, it seems, if it's interesting to you. You appear to have picked up some ideas and vocabulary, but missed a lot of others. Should be able to find political-economy or labor relations focused econ textbooks that cover this stuff without difficulty, and probably in some cheap older-revision copy that'll be fine for the purpose. A few minutes looking at 200ish-level poli-sci and econ class syllabi should give you a good idea of what kinds of materials you'd want to hunt down, and I'm guessing a skim over a broad selection of that stuff would be helpful.
(EDIT) to give a nutshell description of the power imbalance: it is far more harmful, in the general case, to the individual than to the company when a, say, 500+ person company rejects them as a candidate or fires them, which means they have vastly less leverage in any sort of negotiation, official or otherwise, which may occur.
No one is forcing you to work at a company which colludes with competitors to avoid poaching each other's employees. No one forces you to purchase products from companies that form cartels.
However, we've decided as a matter of public policy that collusion of this sort harms consumers and workers.
So the "You don't have to work there" argument isn't ok here, but it's ok for pretty much any other facet of the job? I mean, when someone talks about conditions with Uber drivers or Instacart shoppers, the number one dismissal is always "you don't have to work there". Why is that acceptable there, but not here?
When a supplier is granted monopoly power by the state (as unions are), it's perfectly reasonable to impose additional restrictions on them.
That's why Cable/Telecoms need to negotiate with regulators to change prices, but Joe's Pizza can charge $20/slice if they want. Joe's Pizza lives in a competitive market and if Joe abuses customers, Mario will show up and sell Pizza on better terms. The same is not true if Comcast abuses customers, or if a union does.
You're not addressing my point. You're kinda just reinforcing the idea that "You don't have to work there" is ok to tell, say, Uber drivers, but not ok to tell you regarding a company having a union.
I am addressing your point. When you have a non-competitive market - e.g. yellow cabs prior to Uber, employment under current union rules - you often need extra regulation to protect people.
If we want to create a competitive market - one where unions have no special legal powers, and employers can stop doing business with them if they choose - then eliminating these worker and employer protections might make sense.
No. But if you sell and distribute your own commercial IDE based on emacs and don't release your changes to their source, you are a "free rider".
Emacs devs even have a clever license to prevent just that. You do agree that there's value in their licensing scheme, right? I mean, it would be weird if you were comfortable casually using the software in a metaphor against "right to work" laws but were dead set against their license choice.
You mean those where people are forced to join the union whether they want to or not? Because those are very much a thing. Try becoming a public school teacher or police officer without joining a union.
Please read the wikipedia article before spreading further misinformation. In fact, "right to work laws" simply allow non-union members to negotiate their own employment agreement with a company.
Your comment is like saying Comcast isn't much use in municipalities where Google Fiber (or other competition) is legal. If that's true, it's merely illustrating that the monopoly provider is creating no value for customers.
When I worked at Boeing, membership in SPEEA was optional. They offered benefits to paying members, but the benefits I received as a "free rider" were pretty minimal.
The real benefits will be things like a decent contract with e.g. proper treatment of overtime, sensible safety policies and so on. Which you absolutely get to free-ride on.
There is no reason Boeing can't offer a non-decent contract without overtime or safety to non-union workers.
This is like saying Joe 401k is free-riding on Goldman Sachs because Goldman tries to find the right price while Joe 401k just takes whatever price is available.
On the other hand, you also get all the negatives while losing many of the benefits. Unions have some positives and some negatives. Some of the positives you benefit from even if you're not in it, some you don't. Some of the negatives you are impacted by if you're not in it, some you don't. It's not a clear case of "getting a big bucket of benefits without paying the cost" if you work for a company w/o joining the union.
I am pretty sure if I don't pay dues the union will tell me to go take a hike if I come to them with a problem. Or at least they will require me to join.
And I will probably still be subject to retarded contract where advancement is by seniority, no benefit for doing a great job and it is basically impossible to fire people.
There's a curious lack of detail in this story. No direct quotes, or even reasonable level of detail to the accusations.
For example:
"One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism."
I'm sure there's a way that a supervisor jumping to your defense could be sexist, but this isn't showing that, at all.
"At a lunch with several other coworkers, one of these men ordered me to summon the waiter and pay the bill, in the tone of a command to someone inferior and subservient."
Certainly odd behavior, but I'm not sure I would call it sexist. Arrogant for sure, but surely there's more context?
To be clear, I'm not saying she's wrong, just that this story isn't helping me understand what she went through, or that it was particularly sexist, versus just hostile.
A direct quote, or more detail would go a long way in helping others understand the situation. I don't see how either would identify specific individuals. In fact, she specifically says "her supervisor", which already calls out a specific individual.
For example, the supervisor jumping to her defense. What did he say, exactly? Or failing that, what was the situation, how did he defend her? All we get is that he defended her, and she interpreted it as being sexist...sometime later.
I think you're missing the point of the article. She's helping us out by giving us a heads up about a problem in the industry. If you choose to disbelieve her, that's your prerogative.
It's pointless to make a pretence of scrutinising the article when it's obviously impossible for her to prove beyond all doubt that her recollection of events is accurate. Just believe it or don't. Don't go asking "where's the proof??", as if you are expecting her to have videotape evidence for all of this.
But, there's several stories in there where a direct quote of what was said to her would be more enlightening than her interpretation as to the motive behind what was said. Or failing a direct quote...how about just the basis of his "defense" of her. Did he call out the high quality of her work (seems fine), or did he say to lay off because she was fragile (seems not fine), or what?
Her supervisor is a real person too, and I don't see why it's okay to post a public accusation without some detail other than just interpretation...what you think his intention was.
Edit: You keep saying I don't believe her. Didn't say that. It is, however, a post of public accusations, almost all based on something that was said....without a single direct quote of what was said, or even enough detail to understand why she interpreted them the way she did. That's odd to me, whether I believe her or not.
There's a big difference between "excruciating detail" and "almost no detail, and not a single direct quote".
I think you are just demanding that she presents the whole story in excruciating detail so you can pick over it. I think it was smart of her not to do that, and I think that we should generally assume that women are capable of figuring out when they're being harassed.
I see nothing odd in her leaving out direct quotations. She's telling us about a problem. She's not submitting evidence to a tribunal. However much detail she gives, you'll just say that it's not enough according to some arbitrary standard.
What if someone posted an accusation about something you said, with scant detail and no direct quote?
"One day, foldr jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism."
You don't feel like there should have been a quote of what you said? Or lacking that, a little more detail as to why jumping to her defense was sexist? Like, that you defended her by saying the team should lay off because she's female? What if you defended her by calling out her high quality work? Is jumping to someone's defense somehow automatically an awful thing to do?
Edit: For what it's worth, I do believe that she was treated in a sexist way by some people there. I think, however, she may be projecting that onto other people that did not. I might feel differently if there were enough detail.
I don't see how it would make any difference if they quoted me or not. But you are not comparing like with like here, as she did not mention any specific person.
Her supervisor is a specific person that would be easily identifiable by internal Apple employees, specifically the ones that work directly with the accused.
There was no quote because it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen. It was this "equal" status that made the others feel that I got better treatment. I made no remark about anything else because I do not wish to speculate about anyone else's intentions or motivations - and that is not relevant to the point of this article at all.
>it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen
That sounds like you're saying the supervisor didn't do anything wrong, but rather that your coworkers took a reasonable gesture the wrong way? If so, that doesn't really jive with "One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism"
I'm really not trying to be confrontational, just trying to understand. Is it that the "jumped to defense" thing was clearly sexist? Not asking for a direct quote, but what was the basis of the defense...something gender related, or the high quality of your work, or something else?
There is no quote that can translate that context well. And it was sexist, perhaps even meant to be complimentary and not necessary. But it was not evil. What he did was not the point. The point is what followed and how it was handled. And every employee has more than one supervisor. I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.
Please don't take this as confrontational, but maybe there is a point that you are missing, that maybe you have made an error in your assessment of what happened, of what people's actual motives are. I genuinely feel like you are unnecessarily secretive about the details of this. Of course there often are details that must be kept secret for various reasons, but my intuition is suggesting otherwise.
Personally, I don't just take someone at their word. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, in this case you seem reluctant to give any evidence. Can't you see how that might make some people a little suspicious, especially if they've observed this sort of thing before?
But the way you talk about him totally is. You shouldn't defend people who give you undeserved favors at the cost of others, if this is what he did. And you absolutely shouldn't be surprised by the consequences, if you do.
Your coworkers may have felt equally threatened by this supervisor as you did by them. Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good.
> I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.
No doubt. People have their own agendas to play, not everybody will support yours.
sigh. i did not take any favors - i want my career to be built on merit and not favoritism - that is why i left the company. but do people realize that's not actually fair ? and this happens to a lot of women, not just me.
Hey, I didn't want to say that you were taking favors from the guy. I reacted to your defense of him here on HN - you initially described him as awkward and sexist but later said that he was just treating you fairly. If he was awkward there's no point pretending he wasn't. If he provoked others to hate you, there's no point pretending he didn't. It's not your fault anyway and coworkers were wrong to retaliate on you even if provoked.
And maybe my yesterday post was too harsh. I take your word that you don't want favors. But be careful with how you present this guy - I doubt that he was exactly awkward, sexist, equal and fair all at the same time :) And you wouldn't want to give appearance of rationalizing somebody who actually happens to be unfair to others, that's what I wanted to say.
I wasn't being defensive - he WAS treating others unfairly too ... you think they would have sprung on me if he had not been an ass to them and they hadn't felt threatened ? I am thinking about following up with another post with more details about the background on that, because that's a separate discussion.
From my response There was no quote because it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen. It was this "equal" status that made the others feel that I got better treatment. Note "equal" not equal. Note "nicer than they thought he should have been".
tyingq, your line of inquiry reads as a rather aggressive litigation of someone who is a self-identified victim of harassment. I can't speak to your soul, so I don't know if it's intentional or not, but in so doing, you're actually contributing to the harassment in some small way. Other women who read this story and these comments could see the way you're doubting and questioning the author on her experiences, and easily take that as stay silent on her own negative experiences. Think about the effects of your words; defer to empathy over suspicion :)
I dont think you read her blog post. she wasn't just treated in a sexist manner. That sparked the issue, which turned into alleged bullying an harassment by most of her team. You dont have to be a woman to understand how badly that would suck.
> a woman would have to be foolish to create such a ruckus about "just sexism".
I disagree, and that's not what I intended with my use of the word "just". It seemed to me like the poster was saying "look, no sexism here in this sub-incident" and I meant that your post wasn't just about sexism, it was about harassment.
I understand what you meant, but what I said is that public discussions on these issues are career-impacting, and usually negatively. As painful as sexism is, I don't think it is practical to make a public discussion out of it - there is usually a threshold.
thanks :-) and i really do appreciate your support of me in the threads. more than one guy has defended my post for me and that has been encouraging to see :-) honestly, not all men at apple are jerks either. its just that the jerks tend to be the loudest.
I think I was being sarcastic. Publishing this post has been a draining experience for me and I don't think I can be trusted to make coherent arguments about this issue for a while now. :-/ I didn't expect it to pick up the way it did since this was a re-post after a barely noticeable first attempt.
For the record, I really appreciate that you took the time to record these events and make clear the sorts of things that you experienced. Even though it's hard to see now, from the commenters in this thread and others, I think stories like yours are important, especially as they contribute to a broader narrative. I hope and believe that we are working towards a sort of inflection point, where the scales tip and this sort of subtle and subversive nonsense is reliably identified, acknowledged, and rejected.
Asking basic factual questions is not "aggressive litigation". It's true that the piece is heavy on prescription and short on detailed accounting of what happened.
Providing detail would actually advance the cause of fighting harassment. It would better help everyone identify its specific forms even at companies that have diversity programs in place. In light of that, absence of detail should absolutely warrant inquiry.
Extracting information from self-contradictory accounts is a bit of a black art, but this being said my guess is that he actually did something to deserve these labels just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail. So calm down :)
>just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail
I have to say, if the OP is comfortable in making these very grave accusations but not comfortable enough to explain what happened but just to give her assessment of the situation; it doesn't do her credibility any good.
There are a number of red flags noted throughout the comments, and much of this criticism has been met with "omg so horrible you have to believe the victim". This is a very worrying trend that will only lead to polarizing individuals into either of the hate camps; where those that rush to sympathize will create fertile grounds for false accusations and those who feel are being deceived are going to be desbelieving of actual victims.
On her desk :) Why does it matter to you to see this damn paper?
It seems to me that the OP deliberately avoids naming concrete people and publishing whatever paper trail she has. Which is probably a good thing, after some known cases of one-sided accounts published completely with details and real names resulting in lynch mobs against the accused and sometimes also against the victim. Discussion forums are not a court, which is where you submit this kind of papers to "prove" things to one another in slightly more civilized and controlled conditions.
>Why does it matter to you to see this damn paper?
If you read the previous comments, she brought it up as proof that her statements were sincere.
And this is very much the "court of public opinion", which is why the author wrote this post and chose to publish it here. People will make their own judgment with direct consequences. For an accusation of this level when the story has many holes and all we have is one side, some proof is needed. If anyone's reputation can be trashed forever with an improbable accusation, any civility you speak of is doomed.
She's making a direct accusation against Apple, but doesn't provide any concrete quotes that we can evaluate for ourselves. Seems like it would be more fair to leave the company name out of it if she's only trying to give us a heads up about a problem in the industry.
I don't understand what it would mean for you to "evaluate this for yourself". You have no way of independently verifying what's she's saying, quotes or no quotes.
The background assumptions behind this sort of comment strike me as weird. It's as if you think that women themselves aren't able to tell whether or not they're being harassed, and this can only be determined by an online panel of (mostly) male nerds who have no direct knowledge of the relevant events. I.e., please tell us more details so we can figure out for you if you're actually being harassed or if you're just a crazy female.
>I don't understand what it would mean for you to "evaluate this for yourself". You have no way of independently verifying what's she's saying, quotes or no quotes.
It is the difference, though, between accepting a conclusion, and seeing the path that led there.
"This guy is incompetent because he writes insecure code"
vs
"He often wrote code that would allow untrusted input, of undetermined size, into a fixed size buffer. This behavior caused me to question his competence."
vs
"<the actual code, dumped here>. He was constantly checking in code like this, or worse. I question his competence."
The first requires you take the author's conclusion at face value. The second and/or third give you a better idea of why they got there, which makes it more credible.
And, while no names were named, there's enough contextual clues that I'm sure many at Apple know who's being talked about. So, it's less about "you're a crazy female" and more about "lots of people are being called sexist here (one supervisor, several coworkers), would be more comfortable with that if there were more detail".
I guess this is not getting through, but she's not submitting the article to you for you to evaluate. She's not obliged to tell you about any of this in the first place, and she can give as much or as little detail as she feels is appropriate. If you just don't trust her, then quotes would make no difference. If you are willing to believe her, then believe also that a woman is perfectly capable of figuring out when she's being harassed and doesn't need you to check her reasoning for her. The idea that you are going to find some flaw in her reasoning on the basis of a few quotes, with no knowledge of the individuals or situations involved, is really quite absurd.
a direct quote may be useless as much more is said in context and tone which is hard or impossible to convey in a blog. with people who are good at emotional or verbal abuse, they have a sense of how to intimidate and tear down people while usually staying "within the lines" of not being overtly outrageous/illegal/fireable.
I think she made a convincing case, but maybe you dont think so. But adding a direct quote would hardly do much.
I personally wonder if using a voice recorder would be appropriate in these cases. It's legally complex, because I dont think you can always legally record someone without their permission. But just having that kind of evidence, to play back to HR, to an attorney, a court, or even youtube, could be quite powerful.
Yes, we lack of details here. The statement A (sb jump at the defense of a coworker in a team event) does not imply B (this is a display of sexism) necessarily. Could be because she is a self-called very private/introverted person, not because is a woman. All supervisors know that introverted people can score poorly when dealing with "mosh pit like" and argumentative situations.
My concern is people seem to think it only happens in previously (and still) male dominated fields. It happens everywhere.
I think the woman that voice their concerns and challenges are more abundant in the tech industry probably because the industry is more progressive and generally more educated.
Where I have seen ultra sexism has been in sales and finance. Extremely disturbing in your face sexism. Anecdotally the sexism in tech is sort of passive aggressive but the sexism in other industries is disturbingly direct (one could argue the subtle one being worse). My point is it is everywhere.
I hope the tech industry fixes it and becomes the leader.
How is women dealing with harassment different than men dealing with other men who are just assholes?
I've been in a number of companies where I've had to call out the behavior of a colleague with a manager because the alternative would have been knocking the guys teeth out. Nothing changes, except maybe a "talking to" by a manager or HR, and said asshole just presses against a different boundary.
I have also found that men organize into a natural hierarchy pretty quickly, where women can miss those social cues, (or disregard them completely) and that can be extremely disruptive to team cohesion.
Many women think nothing of finding the most powerful man in the organization they can and using him as a "friend" to undermine their direct manager. Male executives typically tell male versions of these climbers to get back in line, as it undermines the cohesion of their organizations. It's not like women are connecting with the most senior woman in the organization as a "friend," because those women got to where they were by not getting used as stepping stones.
Firing a woman for insubordination risks sexism liability, but we fire men for that all the time.
This is a more complex issue than just harassment and patriarchy and other bugbears. The workplace can change to accommodate women, but this complaint culture is anathema to doing business.
Maybe they just take it more personally when they have chosen to victimize their identity?
A lot of white guys in startups recognize racial nepotism and can't call it out, so instead they go and start their own companies, or get politically isolated, quit, and go somewhere else. Maybe some of them vent frustrations on extreme subreddits and vote trump, but they aren't going to HR or the news over it.
Source? I suspect it would be hard to find even single cases of bullying without psychological elements. Intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation are not gender exclusive, and I would not categorize them as "the work" being attacked.
For example, a person who identifies themselves as a successful professional might be bullied by someone who attack their work, but thats just an indirection. The attack is on the identity, and the work just happen to be the easiest attack vector in order to attack the identity of the person.
Because of the power differential? In the same way that it's different for a short man dealing with harassment from a tall man, or an average man dealing with harassment from a gymbro.
Where is the line between assertiveness in an environment where people are so-called "equals," and harassment? People (men, women, etc) use leverage to achieve their goals, and most managers in tech aren't equipped to resolve power dynamics.
Most of what guys do to each other to get leverage when they are "equals" would be considered harassment by a gentler temperament.
There is a counter narrative to the progressive political one that has some valid questions.
There are always power dynamics in corporations. It's called office politics. They'll always exist because that's how human relationships work.
Some people are better than others at relationships. Your prejudice for so-called "gymbros" aside, most employees have underwhelming relationship skills, and anyone can learn to play the politics game well enough to have a good career. Blaming being "short" is just excuse-making.
Ironically, someone trying to arouse a mob mentality by making such an issue public is playing office politics just as much as anyone else is, only in a more underhanded way, since instead of advocating for themselves within the workplace, they cast themselves as victims and invite others to "rescue" them. Isn't that a dysfunctional relationship dynamic? At least as dysfunctional as the dynamic it alleges to opposes?
This whole debate seems more temperamental in nature. The idea that her being defended by her boss was "sexist" (akin to tumblr feminists' whining about door-holding as a sign of sexism) just strikes me as offense-taking for the sake of it. And the tech industry's dominant temperament (they aren't known for being particularly masculine, though I assume most of them will be offended by this description; this isn't meant as an insult BTW, to each their own) is likely to be much more receptive to damsel-in-distress-type narratives as to the exact same relationship dynamics happening between men of higher social stature and men of lower stature.
People here really should read up on what "relationship triangles" are. Most people a) can't recognize them when they occur, and b) don't realize how toxic and dysfunctional this relationship dynamic is. This must not become the new norm in the workplace, as there will be, as with any type of dysfunction, large human costs.
In an ideal world, people would assert themselves respectfully to the people causing undesired behavior (which OP admits she didn't do) and coworkers should empathically listen and adjust their behavior (which according to her also didn't happen). Both of those things should have happened; there are two reasons they didn't:
1) Most people are simply not mature enough to communicate like this. People don't get taught how to resolve conflict among each other and how to assert themselves respectfully. Most people don't know how to assert themselves, and instead blame, generalize ("you always do this"), and attack. And most people also can't empathically listen, and adapt their behavior, they might just refuse to change, or even feel slighted and seek "revenge". This is a complex problem, and the people treating it as a "women's issue" are presenting an almost pathetically oversimplified view.
2) Even if people dared assert themselves, they're afraid that the company would punish them for it. This also should be fixed, but it doesn't undermine the existence of the first point.
The real problem is that the vast majority of people have pretty poor communication skills, and nobody is willing to address this, instead opting to play political partisan games. Schools and the culture at large should teach effective communication, assertion and problem-solving skills, if we want to make any progress.
We appreciate that you've been making an effort to comment substantively on HN, but what you posted here is an uncharitable reading of the article, and that makes for low-quality discussion. (By "charitable" I mean that we should respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of a thing, not a weaker one that's easier to argue against.)
For example, you appear to me to have completely misread that use of the word "sexist". Ok, we all misread things sometimes, and the article wasn't clear at that point. But framing this as "trying to arouse a mob mentality" is so out of keeping with how the author engaged with HN commenters in this thread that I think you were clearly wrong to take it that way, and therefore wrong to post it.
It's true that some people do try to arouse mob mentalities about things. But we should be extra careful not to treat people that way when they aren't—otherwise their good faith has been squandered on us, and that's very bad.
It is actually very different. I did not believe this either. About a decade ago I was a one man startup and needed to create the illusion there were more employees. I decided that one of them should create a fake female name. Now keep in mind I did not even work with these people.
I could not believe the number of crude and rude things said to this fake woman. It was disgusting. I could not imagine the night and day treatment just because I looked like a woman. Sometimes saying sexual stuff. Sometimes asking for a man since as a woman I did not know computers that well. It really changed me around.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] threadI wonder if things would have played out differently if she had immediately addressed her supervisor's unnecessary defense. While this seems like the starting point for the harassment, my guess is that it was ingrained in the team all along and would have come out at one point or another. Not that that makes it any better.
Truly horrible experience for anyone to go through and I hope she finds a better place to work in and can perhaps put this bitter experience to help others.
If you must hire an asshole, keep them somewhere they can't do any damage to the culture.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/park-ser...
In my experience in the tech industry, these sorts of victim-blaming people are very vocal but also are a minority, and I am embarrassed that this comment section is full of them.
It's a common pattern that shallow, knee-jerk reactions show up first (because some people's reflexive defenses get triggered quickly) while thoughtful, meaningful responses take longer to appear—for one thing because they simply take longer to write. This sometimes leads to a perception gap about the community. The majority of users here, probably the vast majority, are fair and considerate. But it takes a while for that to reveal itself—longer, unfortunately, than the time it takes the rapid internet readership to move on. Not sure what we can do about this.
Your post highlights a critical issue: the near total lack of visible justice for the victims. So let me tell you about the invisible justice that gets meted out. This doesn't excuse what happened to you, but I want you to know that there are people who are trying to address this issue in a way that provides significant financial and professional consequences to the perpetrators.
As a manager, it's far easier for me to quietly - dare I say silently - kill someone's career at the company by dead ending them than it is for me to ever do anything formal. With respect to HR, most managers have about as much power as the average employee, which is to say that we can just as quickly end up on the wrong side of the fence as the person being harassed. HR is not our friend either! Therefore, in the case of ordinary harassment, the best thing an employee can do is find a quiet way to put a manager on notice that something is wrong. Then a manager can start watching. We can proactively go through emails. We can start looking for bad behavior while the perpetrator has no idea, and we have the power to use quiet, offhand remarks to make the perpetrators paranoid. We can reassign employees to different work, and we can take work away from them that they really enjoy. I recently punished a loud-mouthed developer by taking him off a feature that he originated and giving it someone else. Yeah, his work was excellent, but it's always easy to find justifications once I know that I have to act.
Men with sexist ideas about how the world should operate, or men who believe that bullying other employees is acceptable, need to understand a few things. When they just can't seem to get that promotion, and feel like they're constantly sand-bagged by their manager, it's very likely because their manager is doing invisible damage control. HR doesn't know. Their manager's manager doesn't know. They don't know, and even if they suspect, there's no way they can ever prove it because there's no paper trail. As a manager, I stop mentoring these guys for promotions and start teaching their well-behaved coworkers instead so that I have a nice slate of well-prepared employees for promotion season.
Even though most of this is invisible, it's happening and it costs these men tens of thousands of dollars over the two and three years they spend waiting for promotions that never come. It's incredibly easy to take someone's excellent technical work and find fault with it for any number of reasons. Yes, this strategy uses some of the same tactics as the perpetrators, but I learned a long time ago that bullies and sexists don't care about rules. So why should I?
Yeah, eventually a bully leaves and some of them get a higher salary elsewhere, but they don't get to leave with a better resume. They don't leave with that title. And make no mistake, their new employer figures them out pretty fast and the same thing happens.
[The previous comment is flagged, but I hope the comment stays as it gives insight into the power a manager has.]
*
We can use words like bully and harass, but very often the victims feel absolutely terrorized, as described by the author of the Medium post that inspired these comments.
Unfortunately for bullies and harrassers, I'd wager that, at most companies, much more is done behind the scenes than in front of the camera.
I am ultimately responsible for those I promote, and I simpy cannot, both in terms of my conscience, and in terms of my career, promote people who bully and harrass others.
I don't want to promote someone who draws HR's attention, or, god forbid, a lawsuit, because it makes me look very, very bad. If it were to happen a few times, I'd probably be looking for another job.
Thus, it's just easier to dead end people because the reality is that bullies aren't more likely to produce superior work than anyone else. But this doesn't even matter because, even if a bully does produce superior work, I can just use words like 'temperment' and 'leadership qualities' in informal, closed door discussions and my manager will sign off.
Like many here, in addition to believing that bullying and harrassment is utterly repellant, I can't afford to do my job badly because I have a family and kids to feed. The people I protect - and it's not all women by any means - usually have families and kids to feed as well.
Sounds like Her boss and Hr failed I wonder if things Like brexit and Trump have made closet racists fell they can be more open
Yeah I'm sure they felled that way here.
Definitely listing damages here. Likely preparing for a lawsuit with this phrasing.
Yes. But please, don't present it like the arranged marriages has stopped.
It is quite often that young people in the bay area (of both genders) get destroyed, when they fall in love with an Indian women (or men), only to discover that the parents reject a marriage (to a non Indian). And arrange a marriage instead.
Well, maybe these comments were just comments on this practice, and how that particular part of Indian culture is ruining some lives around the area.
In a word, no.
Yes they are a huge company and make a lot of boneheaded technical decisions, not all of which can be blamed on management/marketing (their web services are behind the curve, as is a lot of user-facing software).
But at the same time a lot of their hardware work is amazing: their chip work, general hardware robustness, the fact that they are one of the largest phone mfrs with a unusually low hardware defect rate, and who has pulled some amazing rabbits out of hats (when the iPad was released its retail price was lower than the BOM of most alternatives). Their privacy engineering (secure enclave that protects your fingerprint data, determination to keep certain data in the terminal rather than the cloud) shows dedication and hard engineering. Though a lot of their apps are shambolic (iTunes, photos, etc) their drivers are typically quite solid and standards compliant (cough ignoring wifi, ahem), and Frankly they're willing to knife the baby (Windows suffers a lot due to their longstanding commitment to backwards compatibility).
Yes, you can legitimately complain that the OSX scheduler still sucks, network stack is slow, or you can roll your eyes that their marketing pronouncements are ludicrous and their vocal fans somewhat creepy. But yes, they have one of the best engineering teams.
Don't get hung up on they hype either way. It's like talking about Musk: fundamentally he's a complete bullshitter, but he did found a company that makes rockets fly into space. Apple are bullshitters, no question about it. But they also deliver.
The only thing I miss from the article: did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step.
My additional notes:
HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines. They will only look at what's best for the company and for it's business. There are no labor unions any more; those are the ones that would actually care about your wellbeing. In certain situations it's very hard to make decisions, that is true, but this is not a seconds/minutes scenario, when you need to make immediate calls. When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone. This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious. s/women/peopleHarassment get target _anyone_, it comes in all flavours. Please don't make harassment part of the gender wars. You can get harassed for having a foreign accent in the UK. ( In a country where English pronunciation differs from village to village. )
I understand where you're coming from. But... there should be no need for one adult to educate another that bad behavior is unacceptable.
Hi! I know you enjoy punching me from behind when I'm doing my work, but could you please stop?
The larger issue is that (like most companies) actually doing anything is secondary to management politics. Protecting the bureaucracy is the #1 goal.
There are huge public awareness campaigns around all of these issues.
Everything I see in the media is that there are not only huge awareness campaigns, but that when something does happen, there are also huge outcries about it.
I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, as sexism is undoubtedly a real issue in our society and our industry, but every other comment I read of yours makes it ever closer to a textbook case of a baseless accusation made to get back at someone you didn't like, and I'm ready to be conclusive about this. Do you realize how much this impacts all future cries for help from women being grossly mistreated because of their gender? My SO is going into engineering and it boils my blood to think how much people are willing to abuse the system until she can no longer be protected by it and we're back to the 1950's.
In a perfect world, where each and every one of us is aware of each and every culture around the world, this is true. Right now, we are in the middle of a process, where we encounter with culture we never dealt with before.
In some societies the boundaries for certain acts - such as personal space, physical contact, etc - is completely different to others.
Therefore I do believe talking could solve a small percentage of situations, which one considers harassment. ( Not the one in the article. )
I was asking questions and stating a few thing I made as mistakes - HR as someone to turn to -.
Now, is he incorrect? If so, why?
And, if something is a serious issue, like HR motivations to build a case against you no matter what, then people should say it out loud.
How do you support this statement? It doesn't strike me as a given and you don't really back it up at all.
If the situation is that bad, call the police, but that is an assault.
An example to back my "statement": https://www.gov.uk/how-to-resolve-neighbour-disputes/overvie... => 1.1.
It's also usually the logical thing adults do.
I am saddened that HN people completely miss this, and act like it's completely outside the bounds of normal behavior.
Everyone in this story was an adult. She definitely should have spoken to them first.
I did learn the hard way how to deal with it, which I think is mostly about attitude. I think part of your ordeal was that you had certain expectations from the people around you, and a lot of the grief was having those broken. So first of all, I guess you get a little more realistic (or disillusioned...) about workplace relationships, leadership and company policies. Sad as it may sound, loss of innocence and thicker skin will help the next time.
Second thing is to nip things in the bud and not let anything fester. At this point I will straight up confront anyone if I feel treated unfairly and not let it rest. More often than not this solves the situation. If not, I will move on. Life is too short to stick around and being miserable somewhere, as long as you have the freedom not to.
It sounds from your writing like you've already learned these lessons, but I just wanted to share my experiences.
I would guess a double digit percentage of jobs globally are abusive. A big chunk of which wouldn't even qualify as consensual employment - either through unpaid slave labor or misleading information about wages and work conditions.
There needs to be more transparency about employment and the people involved in them. I think we will eventually see something like LinkedIn but which provides both positive and negative feedback about people and doesn't require a user to sign up for a profile to exist.
There is a hard question as to where to draw the dividing line. Without robots, some jobs are just abusive - period. Many jobs lower the life expectancy of the workers, and I suppose the alternative would be (without robots) that no one does them. In the West we kind of get to firewall ourselves off from this, and we get to use, sell, or consume the product after all of the dirty work is done. At the minimum, reducing non-consensual employment will help push the true economic costs of produced goods closer to reality and eliminate the market forces which benefit non-consensual labor (basically cheating.)
In terms of adversarial work environments, which if not addressed can easily become mutually abusive, no matter what the policies of a company are, the fired workers are going to end up working somewhere else. A big company like Apple may be capable of implementing ideal processes and eliminate those workers, but what happens at the next company they show up in? Should an employment blacklist exist at the federal level, or should employers only allow known abusive employees just to work in isolation?
BTW, good article, kudos for publishing it, and you are correct to have those feelings.
But does it target everyone _equally_ ? Of course not, far from it. This is why we pay attention to the groups that get targeted a lot.
> Please don't make harassment part of the gender wars.
Assuming that it isn't already.
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/e...
> Saying "target all harassment" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to
the problem is harassment. not just women harassment, not just racial harassment. isn't it just as dismissive to say "focus on these kinds of harassment, everybody else will just have to wait because they can consider themselves lucky enough to even be white males"?
they key bit is "targeting harassment properly". of course dismissing is not proper handling.
LOL, wat?
Each and every case is unique, there is no equal in this.
I even gave an example, which has happened to me, to friends, to my wife equally...
Saying "it happens to everyone, it's not gendered" is ignorant at best.
From article above:
> yes, people disagree and are jerks. But they also tend to be much bigger, nastier jerks to women, people of color, and folks in other marginalized groups. Women and people of color can shrug off harassment too, of course, and often do. But they also tend to face more, and more vicious, attacks
"Women .. face more attacks" is what I mean by not equal. "More", meaning "not an equal amount".
I assume your lying to try and prove a point. Unless you back this up with evidence, one should safely assume you are lying.
I don't like doing this, but as someone once said: there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.
Maybe I should have explicitly called that out for those that weren't reading this comment in context, but the person I replied to knows what I said, and they were who I was replying to.
If you are against this comment, you should also report the original comment that said this as well. It's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13192777
Maybe I should have been more clear what I was doing, but considering I know what I was saying and so did the person I replied to, I feel it's fair to say that assuming I was being negative and not understanding the context is also on those who disagree with what I said. Especially considering the status of the post that says all this in the first place.
Basically, I stand by what my comment says (assuming everyone is lying is wrong), and those that disagree with me are wrong.
Harassment situations like these can be difficult to talk about publicly for a number of reasons; respecting the privacy of all parties involved, readers' natural tendencies to issue a judgement, and so on. My take has always been that anonymized public stories like these are mostly as awareness raising not specific accusations - the emphasis is on the difficulty of the experience, not really trying to bring a specific person to justice (usually, of course there are exceptions). I do think that, if the reader is receptive, such stories are useful for helping to understand what this sort of thing looks like and what someone who is targeted by harassment is going through and perhaps provide suggestions to those who can help on how to help.
But as for placing guilt itself, I'd suggest that's not the business of stories like this or the business of those reading it. Even when you are in a position where it is your responsibility to address an issue of harassment, getting the story in a fair way is very difficult, and it's really unpleasant for everyone involved. Those who are responsible for others of course need to get over the discomfort of such discussions and work to resolve the issues, whether it's by correcting behavior or helping to explain misunderstandings, which can still be hurtful even if they are not meant to be.
It is unfortunate though understandable why many businesses take a handsoff position out of fear of legal reprecussions, since such actions just make the entire thing worse. Pretending it's not happening doesn't help anyone, whether it's based on a misunderstanding or not.
edit: changed onus to "responsibility of" since I cross posted mentally from a different discussion
The fact that you led with "No actually" instead, and ended by imputing a strawman ("everyone needs to automatically assume") gives your comment an absence-of-good-faith quality that we should all be striving to avoid on HN—particularly when the topic is divisive.
I tried to make sure I wasn't attacking anyone, but rather the ideas presented. I'll keep your guidance in mind if I find myself making such comments again.
Actually labor unions tend to protect people accused of sexual harassment.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-mis...
In fact they seem to be legally obligated to advocate for all union members, which would include the people doing harassing.
> did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager?
There are a huge number of reasons why you should not be expected to do this. The harasser can be in a position of authority, for example. Even separately to that (and i understand this is a reducio argument, but..) would you ask an abuse victim to speak to their abuser? No, they go straight to the police.
> HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines.
This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.
> When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone.
I report an assault. Do I suggest to the police how they should investigate and prosecute this assault? No. The victim reports the behaviour, but other parties should determine how to investigate and proceed with that report.
> This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.
Sometimes, yes, people do lie, but each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.
In the (very unlikely) event of the victim being untruthful, the matter should be dropped, not blow back on the reporter -- or nobody will report real problems for fear of being unfairly punished themselves.
> s/women/people
This didn't need to be said. The author is talking about her experiences of harassment as a woman in technology. Yes, there are other problems that also need solving. This isn't the hill on which to make this point.
> This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.
Ah, but it's not a gendered problem, and outside of gender laws, there's not much you can do to "fix" something nebulous like this in corporate America.
This is not a problem that can realistically be fixed. An organization that's going to work for the best interests of employees cannot be paid by the company, nor can it report to the company or someone with whom the company has significant influence. That means unions.
What? Apparently, being untruthful about reporting harassment could result in the untruthful reporter being _unfairly_ punished?
Sounds like an all-win situation. Report harassment, true or not. If it helps your lot in life/work, great. If not, even if proven false, it gets dropped, non-consequentially. After all, it would be unfair to punish you...
When you get attacked in the street, talking is the first thing you should do. When you are harassed by a teacher in class as well. You always need to talk to the person attacking you unless it's too dangerous to do so. It may fail, but if you don't do it, you basically give up your ability to act.
> This didn't need to be said
This does need to be said. There is a high focus on making everything about gender these days, and it's very detrimental. It makes people focusing on specifics, instead of global issues. Worst, it usually focus on fighting against something instead of empowering the victims, which needs to be done for long term results.
> each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.
That's actually very hard to do, but it's true it would be the ideal call.
It's like asking for respect for getting addicted to pills by pharmaceutical industries because that's a part of American culture. Maybe some criticism would be in place despite the "it's our culture" thing?
But do not harass every Indian person you can find about it!
I've had many fine coworkers from India working in the US or from India in the past and I can't imagine harassing them about this.
Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them. I really don't see any compelling parallels to pharmaceutical addiction. As someone who is neither religious nor inclined towards marriage, Baptist vs. Anabaptist seems like a more reasonable comparison.
Nowadays, we have matrimonial sites similar to your eHarmony. Guys/girls or their parents will create profiles and contact each other. If all their criteria match, guy will meet the girl, talk for some time and may say yes or no. Both the girl and the guy can say no. Nobody is forcing us.
I know the next question will be how can you choose a life partner in 30 minutes. To me, marriage involves a lot of understanding and compromise from both the parties. I was talking to a 65+ year old American recently. He was talking about something called a "spark" when a guy/girl meet. If you have that spark, you go ahead in the relationship. I don't know if this "spark" is real, I saw a lot of girls in person after liking their profiles, but didn't like them (or they didn't like me) in person.
I think at some point, our culture decided that interest of the society is bigger than personal freedom. They may have decided its better to find a partner this way rather than spending several years like in other cultures (I worked with an American who dated the same girl for 5 years and got divorced in 6 months). If you are going to say that such a lack of personal freedom is regressive, I don't feel that way. In America, you have the draft which to me means you loose the right to your body.
The draft hasn't been used in America since 1973 - our military service is all volunteer.
What we do have, though, is called "Selective Service" - basically when you turn 18 years of age (and on thru 25 years of age), you have to register for "Selective Service" which is there to provide a list of "able and ready" (but maybe not willing) members of society which can be called up in a re-instated draft if and when it becomes necessary.
It has yet to be used.
It's the part where people are forced where they don't want to that I don't like. There's plenty of people married to someone introduced by their parents. You should be able to take another path when you want to.
No, downvotes because "the current state of arranged marriages in India" has absolutely nothing to do with the article. You're doing exactly what the author said was done to her.
"they made comments about not liking to work with me or with the growing number of Indian tech workers in the company. I also faced hostile remarks about Indian women being subservient and arranged marriages being forced on Indians for generations."
I have seen a scenario where a black colleague in a on-campus lunch discussion suddenly faced hostile remarks about black people being predisposed to crime. This is the exact same type of problem. Whether or not the topic is true is completely unrelated to how the topic is used to isolate and move the person from the category of a normal team member into "other" who can then be bullied or sidelined.
More fake news stories, good job.
It's the sad truth. This is exactly the kind of story I expect on Medium, that's their clickbait, their MO to drive the traffic up. That's all you need to know about it.
It's so predictable, I don't know if it's more funny or more sad, actually.
And yes, I totally believe every single word of that story. Now that is sarcasm.
Look at the choice of words. It's all there, all the buzzwords, all the expected jargon, signalling virtue and belonging to the tribe.
People still don't realize this? Really?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The tech industry absolutely doesn't need unions /s
Your much better off paying a lawyer than a union.
If we look at historical facts rather than your mothers anecdotes this is incredibly far from the truth.
Anyways, that's just another anecdote, what are the historical facts?
Maybe just start with "history of worker rights." Or maybe just the wikipedia labor movement article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement It's not all strictly about changes forced through unions vs other types of activists, but once unions were made legal they were one of the strongest methods for demanding and enforcing these for large numbers of workers in the days before they were turned into laws.
a) two-day weekend
How is this a right? Some people want to work less; some want to work more. If it were forced by unions, forcing a two-day weekend stops people from working more.
b) paid holiday
Same; not everyone wants paid holidays as opposed to getting more money in their pockets.
c) minimum wage
The minimum wage stops less skilled people from working; this especially affects blacks and teenagers. I see the minimum wage as a negative effect of unions (nobody wants their job to be replaced by a cheaper worker).
d) Again, not everyone wants to work an 8-hour day. Poor people want to work more and other people want to work in different schedules (like a 3 day week).
It is not clear to me why a), b), and d) can't be achieved without unions if people wanted those 3.
I have no problem with people having a), b), and d) voluntarily and unions persuading people and employers for those causes; but I don't want workers to be forced to have those three (there's no free lunch--these worker "rights" come at the expense of the worker's salary).
c) Is actually an interesting subject and personally I do not agree with having a minimum wage and I feel that the purpose of introducing it was to undermine unions. There is a lot more to say about min wage but this comment thread is probably not the place for it. The rest of your post is, objectively, nonsense.
Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St...
Try "historical benefits of unions".
Past Performance Is No Guarantee Of Future Results. These aren't the 1900's.
To paraphrase most anti-union people's favorite refrain, "Nobody is making you work someplace that requires union dues."
I have seen harassment go south for the harasser, but the cases had one thing in common: The person that was being harassed had far more status than the harassers believed, so, in practice, they were spitting upwards. If high management believes you are the more valuable, likable party, you will win. If they don't, you will lose. Facts are relatively unimportant.
So the moral of the story is to make friends in high places. Depressing, but real.
the tech industry does NOT need a union.
what could hypothetically be argued is the need for the equivalent of the medical board, or bar, or cpa, cfa, engineering license, etc. and it would be a legitimate debate, but no clear cut answer exists.
you'll note that all of those bodies have ethics and competency standards and none of them are unions, meaning none of them negotiate contracts on behalf of their constituent members.
i DO NOT (DO _NOT_) want a union negotiating my business relationships for me, and exclude me from my own industry if i refuse to let them.
You can find plenty of cases where union reps have disputed sexual harassment claims.
If she'd gone to HR with recordings and they brushed aside her concerns then she'd have a much stronger case.
Well as she said, a distressed mind doesn't think properly.
It takes an absolutely insane amount of energy to fight a huge company like this and even if you do everything right the chances are pretty good they'll wear you out first.
Best of luck with your recovery! It's been a really tough few years for me and I can't think of much to say except that I empathize with you and perhaps recommend this book [1] which looking back lists a lot of things that helped me get over it.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...
If you find a way to keep feeling safe, like I imagine having a good pro-bono legal advisor could have done for me, then by all means go ahead. If not, then there's also no shame in just moving on.
I thought the same; but like you was mistaken in that. Looking back I've come to realize that, even though it shouldn't be, as soon as you get HR involved it's become a legal issue.
But yeah; my point was that if solid legal backing could prevent you from developing the anxiety and depression, like I think it would have for me, then it could be worth going through with it...
What do you suppose she do in this case apart from recording the meeting?
For the sake of argument, assuming that this took place in California, that's a "two-party" consent state for recordings, which at least means you don't have a unilateral right to record anything you want. Exactly how that would interact with taking place on corporate property in a corporate setting is something you'd have to ask a lawyer about.
For example I was accused of somehow being responsible for slavery, LGBT discrimination, anti-immigrant policies etc.. That was just a few days after I moved to US, I had zero influence on those things and I was immigrant myself.
And my coworkers made racist jokes about Russia.
Xenophobic jokes.
Russia is not a race.
I imagine there's a different side to this. Her coworkers noticed her getting treated differently and started teasing her about it, in a typical form of male ribbing on each other, in an attempt to equalize the status among the team. Rather than take this in stride and rolling with it, she clammed up and got offended, being used to a very different social style. The mistake was to see herself as the primary victim from day 1, rather than a beneficiary of unearned perks. The empathy she demands for herself she doesn't grant to others, and the reasonable and self-sufficient behavior she expects of everyone around her, she was unable to muster herself.
So here's the long medium post where she is unable to dissociate her experience from her identity. A "personal perspective" that nevertheless puts up a list of changes necessary for supporting women and minorities. She also somehow concludes that despite management not seeming to care and not bothering to reply to her final letter, her experience was nevertheless instrumental in causing sweeping and highly visible changes in policy.
Sorry but, being empowered by being uniquely protected is a contradiction. She opens "as a woman and minority" as if that's a liability, rather than the trump card she's actually playing it as. People who don't use that line still have problems, but they don't get to instruct others on how to solve them. If one of her white male co-workers had gotten bullied, I imagine we wouldn't be reading about it today, and she probably wouldn't have noticed either in her me-bubble.
Except if you read the entire article, she says that she didn't at first see this as harassment, only as an embarrassing situation. It was only after the harassment and intimidation escalated that she looked back to see where it really began.
> ...rather than a beneficiary of unearned perks. The empathy she demands for herself...
Your entire post comes across as something one of her harassers would write in retaliation, and this in particular sticks out. If a woman doesn't want white knights to come to her rescue, that's her prerogative, not for you or anyone else to dictate, and it's certainly not a character flaw or an excuse for continued harassment and intimidation.
Edit: Actually, OP characterizes gesture by the dude defending her as "sexist".(Above opinion stands.)
>One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism.
It's like saying to somebody who said they got beat up in the park, that there is another side to their story: they were provoking the other party, and when they got into a fight they didn't run.
Now I wasn't there. But I do feel entitled to paint an alternate picture of what could have happened. After recovering from his hangover he recognized that my alternate picture of what happened was actually pretty reasonable.
Was I wrong to suggest this alternate picture?
It's folly to think that the same level and style of scrutiny need be applied to both. You aren't wrong to paint the alternate picture for your friend's case, but it's sidestepping the issue in question (e.g., potential harassment in the workplace) to attempt to make that equivalency here.
Due to her not being drunk I give her retelling more credibility, but that doesn't mean she should be unquestioningly believed.
Being a privileged, white male it was hard for me to see what woman are put through in terms of casual sexism in the workplace and in society.
Since my girlfriend works as a secondary school teacher I see much clearer what's wrong and it's partially very subtle.
Here's an example: performance review? Criticism about how she dresses. This would never come up with one her male colleagues (and yes, she checked).
That's totally casual sexism over which you may "harumph!" about. But unless you're a woman (or another discriminated against minority) you're in no position to make that determination.
If you dismiss accounts of victims or try to second-guess them like happens so often (examples abound in these comments), it should be no wonder that victims are hesitant to bring these issues up.
You're indeed imagining a tremendous amount here, and projecting it into a situation you have no direct knowledge of. Well, we all can imagine a lot of things. This is not substantive contribution, it's borderline trolling. Please don't do this on HN.
Edit: you've also been using HN primarily for ideological rhetoric. That's an abuse of this site, and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't do that either.
There's no contradiction. Sexism can express itself both in putting women down and in putting women in a pedestal.
The rest of your comment is trash.
There's no contradiction, if the witch had led an evil and improper life, she was guilty; if she had led a good and proper life, this too was a proof, for witches dissemble and try to appear especially virtuous. After the woman was put in prison: if she was afraid, this proved her guilt; if she was not afraid, this proved her guilt, for witches characteristically pretend innocence and wear a bold front. Or on hearing of a denunciation of witchcraft against her, she might seek flight or remain; if she ran, that proved her guilt; if she remained, the devil had detained her so she could not get away.
From Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, the Cautio Criminalis ('prudence in criminal cases') in 1631.
You've turned this story about a woman being harassed at Apple into a story about her numerous anonymous male coworkers, and dudes at large, being targeted. It's fascinating.
Pointing out logical flaws in the reasoning of the inquisition doesn't make me a Satanist (or a libertarian, for that matter).
(Hint: I'm neither a satanist nor a libertarian.)
Maybe you think your "Draw your own conclusions ;) / Just my 2c" baiting is super clever, but I think it's pretty transparent.
In fact, I believe arguments are attempts to converge to truth. The fact that women were victims in 1631 has no bearing on this discussion.
RoderickDay made an argument that happened to be flawed (here's a more formal argument illustrating the flaws: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ii/conservation_of_expected_evidence... ), and his argument paralleled the Inquisition's arguments which were flawed for the same reason. Now that his incorrect argument is rejected, we can make better arguments and approach the truth.
You're an idiot dude. Linking to a wikipedia fallacy page lmao you're like a caricature.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I will assert that such "positive" acts can be and often are sexist. Negative actions can also be sexist. It is possible to take a sexist action while you think you're being helpful. Not all sexism is manifested in malice.
Consider similar racial stereotypes like "Asians are good at math" or "black people are good at sports." You might think that someone is positive, but those beliefs are deeply rooted in racism and racial stereotypes.
If you want to make a more complicated argument as to why these things aren't actually X and !X, do it. But RodericDay wasn't doing that.
For those who doubt it: yes "benevolent" sexism (or racism) is real, unfortunately. There are many ways it can manifest itself, but what it always boils down to is someone with the proverbial "good intentions" who decides to treat someone differently, even in a way they think of as positive, for no other reason than because of their sex (or race). It can be particularly poisonous because once you call someone out for being different, even if it is in a way that you believe to be beneficial, it highlights to everyone around them that they are different, which can make them a target.
The best solution is to always strive to treat everyone equally. People are not perfect, so there will be mistakes, but that should nevertheless always be the goal.
Since she didn't include a direct quote, or more detail, it's really difficult to say much about the supervisor jumping to her defense. It's clear that, in hindsight, she viewed it as sexist. However, a little more detail on what was said, or the nature of the situation would be helpful to understand it better.
It's not unusual at all, to me, for a supervisor to defend members of their team...and not automatically sexist, or even undesirable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13192987 and marked it off-topic.
Personally, I consider that a problem, because it leaves each employee to fight their own fight. But IT folks somehow tend to believe that they don't need any help (and then subsequently sign contracts with unlimited unpaid overtime because they don't know it's illegal).
If a contract has an illegal non-compete, it's easy for an employee to sign and then ignore it. After all, the employer would have to find the violation, sue them, and risk summary dismissal. The employee wins just by having everyone give up.
If a contract features unpaid overtime, though, the employee is working time and not getting paid. They can refuse the work, get fired, and then sue, or they can do the work and then sue for nonpayment. In either case, they need to win to come out ahead, which is a lengthy and uncertain process.
Ignoring unenforceable provisions is only easy for someone who doesn't need a court decision to get a good outcome.
The parent was talking about Germany in particular.
Employee protection is fairly strong, so an employer will think twice before firing someone over non-compliance with an illegal contract, as they will get their ass handed to them in court.
And by your standards even the OP is "just an anecdote". We have no proof whatsoever that she was in fact mistreated.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
What I do next is that I make sure I communicate clearly those two points to whoever I think should get me what I want. For example, in that case, I would go see my manager and say: "Jack told me this and that and I consider this is inappropriate. I never want to be told that again in this company. If it happens again, I quit. Have you understood? (wait for his answer) What will you do to make sure it doesn't happen anymore?" (it is important to ask if he has understood, it forces him to go right in the middle of the circle you just draw on the floor, that put him in your territory, right under your guns).
Sometimes, you will have to apply 2). For example in this case, your manager would have to tell you something substantial about what he gonna do to stop that. If what he tells you is not substantial, tell him you are not satisfied and ask him again the same question: "what can you do to make sure it will stop?". Don't quit on that. Keep asking. Only apply 2) if he don't answer anymore. It's typically a situation where "you don't leave the shop until...". If your manager tells you to go see the HR department, tell him clearly again 2): "if I don't get what I want I will leave. Do you still want me to go see the HR department? Are you sure?". Apply pressure, at every step.
Do not have a discussion. Don't discuss the problem with your manager. Don't talk. Ask your question and wait for an answer. If he want to discuss, make him understand you won't.
It's crucial to apply 2) right away when you don't get what you want. I've found it's rarely the occasion to make a deal and make a compromise not so much because the deal is bad but because by doing so, they will start kidding you again.
I'm super happy so far with the result of this method. I get fantastic results from my family, employers, friends, from everybody. At first, you will feel like a freak. Then you will notice the others won't think so much that you are a freak but will think you are a strong person they should not kid with. You end up being respected.
> Indian women being subservient
I agree that these comments don't belong in the workplace. I have seen similar ones lead to people fired on the day and escorted to the door. Thankfully it's relatively rare but some places do take it very seriously.
Apple was wrong. In Australia the law is clear and they've breached it. Take them to court and get your payout. It's annoying that the victim has to do that but it's possible.
For other parts of the article I put myself in her shoes and didn't find management's treatment of her particularly different from how I (a male) would be treated after complaining about the actions of anyone else (male or female) in the workplace - which is why I don't. HR is ineffectual and the company is against you regardless of whomever is at fault. It just wants one or the other party gone so things can go back to normal, so if it's you versus five other people it's easier to fire and rehire one than five.
> employers also have an obligation to handle the situation with empathy and integrity
And this line stood out at me as being divorced from reality especially at a big company.
I get it that we mostly want companies to be like this but I think it's also obvious that they're not. They are primarily profit motivated and we're lucky if they don't pollute the environment or commit atrocities in the process.
You can look for smaller companies that do it, you can put it in your own company, but if you really felt Apple would be like that then it's being a little naive.
I worked at one mid-size company that was acquired by a competitor who wanted to drive in the boot heel by firing the previous management in as embarrassing a way as possible. My boss was on the chopping block and had false charges levelled at him over email and summarily fired. He took it through the Australian workplace relations system to try to get some closure, until the government advised there's no law to prevent a company making anything up and firing you for it. He could have pursued defamation but that's also extremely difficult, long, and expensive, and he didn't have the money.
It was at that point I grew up in my career and decided you really can't trust any company to look out for you. That's not how it works.
Is the OP in Australia?
I do not disagree that this is true, but I would suggest that this also is not an acceptable status quo. Complacency doesn't help it, and the unfortunate reality is that most companies just want to get into a battle of wills with those who are targets of harassment rather than take the time to address the issue as they should be.
You are right that this seems to happen once you breach a certain threshold - I assume at that point legal gets more pre-emptive in its protection of the company and tries to divorce itself from the goings-on in Human Resource areas. Plus, as I said elsewhere in this discussion, finding and/or training managers to handle these issues in a fair way is not easy, nor is it easy to be the manager dealing with this situation.
But I don't think that complacency is the answer, and she's not wrong that in many countries, the employer does have an obligation to handle the events. Attributing the sensations to it I'm not sure I fully agree with, but many countries do require investigative procedures, which according to the article weren't really performed well by management at Apple.
The fix is probably to check glassdoor etc. as much as you can before working for a potentially unethical company. But then you'll be restricted to working for only a small handful of companies.
The other fix is to only work as a contractor, so you're isolated from the effects of being practically a serf to a company entity.
Why on earth would any company want to do that? Not doubting your story, looking for legitimate answers.
Indeed they don't, but then neither does preferential treatment due to cuteness, which I routinely observe. How society has become so fond of denying objective reality is very strange, especially when it doesn't seem to achieve much.
Right to work laws simply prohibit collusion between unions and employers to prevent non-union workers from working. They are no different than other worker protection laws, e.g. the laws prohibiting Apple and Microsoft from forming an anti-poaching agreement.
If I hack together my own IDE in emacs, am I somehow "free riding" on the people who sell commercial IDEs?
(EDIT: to expand, this is the problem with voluntary associations when it comes to acting effectively toward their goals, and if you follow this general rabbit hole far enough, basically why government is a thing)
I am aware of the debate as to whether index funds should be illegal (e.g. [1]), but I don't find them super compelling. Index investors are not, in fact, passive, they are merely investing in one particular direction, and active investors can trade against them if that direction is wrong.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-24/are-index...
It sounds like the union needs special legally granted monopoly powers to sell me services I don't actually want. The term for that is "rent seeking", actually.
> I'm perfectly happy with that "power imbalance", whatever that means.
> It sounds like the union needs special legally granted monopoly powers to sell me services I don't actually want. The term for that is "rent seeking", actually.
You may want to do some reading on the topic, it seems, if it's interesting to you. You appear to have picked up some ideas and vocabulary, but missed a lot of others. Should be able to find political-economy or labor relations focused econ textbooks that cover this stuff without difficulty, and probably in some cheap older-revision copy that'll be fine for the purpose. A few minutes looking at 200ish-level poli-sci and econ class syllabi should give you a good idea of what kinds of materials you'd want to hunt down, and I'm guessing a skim over a broad selection of that stuff would be helpful.
(EDIT) to give a nutshell description of the power imbalance: it is far more harmful, in the general case, to the individual than to the company when a, say, 500+ person company rejects them as a candidate or fires them, which means they have vastly less leverage in any sort of negotiation, official or otherwise, which may occur.
To paraphrase the classic anti-union argument, "Nobody is forcing you to work somewhere with a compulsory union."
However, we've decided as a matter of public policy that collusion of this sort harms consumers and workers.
That's why Cable/Telecoms need to negotiate with regulators to change prices, but Joe's Pizza can charge $20/slice if they want. Joe's Pizza lives in a competitive market and if Joe abuses customers, Mario will show up and sell Pizza on better terms. The same is not true if Comcast abuses customers, or if a union does.
If we want to create a competitive market - one where unions have no special legal powers, and employers can stop doing business with them if they choose - then eliminating these worker and employer protections might make sense.
And eliminating worker protections never makes sense. It then just becomes a race to see who can undo them the fastest.
Emacs devs even have a clever license to prevent just that. You do agree that there's value in their licensing scheme, right? I mean, it would be weird if you were comfortable casually using the software in a metaphor against "right to work" laws but were dead set against their license choice.
Your comment is like saying Comcast isn't much use in municipalities where Google Fiber (or other competition) is legal. If that's true, it's merely illustrating that the monopoly provider is creating no value for customers.
Laws like that are a prime reason unions are dying.
Why pay union dues when you get all the benefits for free?
Oh sure, the union shrivels and dies and the benefits leave with it, but fuck it you saved $25 off a few paychecks.
This is like saying Joe 401k is free-riding on Goldman Sachs because Goldman tries to find the right price while Joe 401k just takes whatever price is available.
And I will probably still be subject to retarded contract where advancement is by seniority, no benefit for doing a great job and it is basically impossible to fire people.
For example:
"One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism."
I'm sure there's a way that a supervisor jumping to your defense could be sexist, but this isn't showing that, at all.
"At a lunch with several other coworkers, one of these men ordered me to summon the waiter and pay the bill, in the tone of a command to someone inferior and subservient."
Certainly odd behavior, but I'm not sure I would call it sexist. Arrogant for sure, but surely there's more context?
To be clear, I'm not saying she's wrong, just that this story isn't helping me understand what she went through, or that it was particularly sexist, versus just hostile.
It's not curious at all. She's being careful not to identify specific individuals.
For example, the supervisor jumping to her defense. What did he say, exactly? Or failing that, what was the situation, how did he defend her? All we get is that he defended her, and she interpreted it as being sexist...sometime later.
It's pointless to make a pretence of scrutinising the article when it's obviously impossible for her to prove beyond all doubt that her recollection of events is accurate. Just believe it or don't. Don't go asking "where's the proof??", as if you are expecting her to have videotape evidence for all of this.
But, there's several stories in there where a direct quote of what was said to her would be more enlightening than her interpretation as to the motive behind what was said. Or failing a direct quote...how about just the basis of his "defense" of her. Did he call out the high quality of her work (seems fine), or did he say to lay off because she was fragile (seems not fine), or what?
Her supervisor is a real person too, and I don't see why it's okay to post a public accusation without some detail other than just interpretation...what you think his intention was.
Edit: You keep saying I don't believe her. Didn't say that. It is, however, a post of public accusations, almost all based on something that was said....without a single direct quote of what was said, or even enough detail to understand why she interpreted them the way she did. That's odd to me, whether I believe her or not.
There's a big difference between "excruciating detail" and "almost no detail, and not a single direct quote".
I see nothing odd in her leaving out direct quotations. She's telling us about a problem. She's not submitting evidence to a tribunal. However much detail she gives, you'll just say that it's not enough according to some arbitrary standard.
"One day, foldr jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism."
You don't feel like there should have been a quote of what you said? Or lacking that, a little more detail as to why jumping to her defense was sexist? Like, that you defended her by saying the team should lay off because she's female? What if you defended her by calling out her high quality work? Is jumping to someone's defense somehow automatically an awful thing to do?
Edit: For what it's worth, I do believe that she was treated in a sexist way by some people there. I think, however, she may be projecting that onto other people that did not. I might feel differently if there were enough detail.
That sounds like you're saying the supervisor didn't do anything wrong, but rather that your coworkers took a reasonable gesture the wrong way? If so, that doesn't really jive with "One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism"
I'm really not trying to be confrontational, just trying to understand. Is it that the "jumped to defense" thing was clearly sexist? Not asking for a direct quote, but what was the basis of the defense...something gender related, or the high quality of your work, or something else?
Personally, I don't just take someone at their word. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, in this case you seem reluctant to give any evidence. Can't you see how that might make some people a little suspicious, especially if they've observed this sort of thing before?
But the way you talk about him totally is. You shouldn't defend people who give you undeserved favors at the cost of others, if this is what he did. And you absolutely shouldn't be surprised by the consequences, if you do.
Your coworkers may have felt equally threatened by this supervisor as you did by them. Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good.
> I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.
No doubt. People have their own agendas to play, not everybody will support yours.
that's called "blaming the victim". how do you not "associate" yourself with your own supervisor ??
And maybe my yesterday post was too harsh. I take your word that you don't want favors. But be careful with how you present this guy - I doubt that he was exactly awkward, sexist, equal and fair all at the same time :) And you wouldn't want to give appearance of rationalizing somebody who actually happens to be unfair to others, that's what I wanted to say.
That's fair enough. For what it's worth, I do have sympathy, and I do believe that some people treated her in a sexist manner.
I disagree, and that's not what I intended with my use of the word "just". It seemed to me like the poster was saying "look, no sexism here in this sub-incident" and I meant that your post wasn't just about sexism, it was about harassment.
Providing detail would actually advance the cause of fighting harassment. It would better help everyone identify its specific forms even at companies that have diversity programs in place. In light of that, absence of detail should absolutely warrant inquiry.
> One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism.
He was treating you with respect and you think it was sexist? As a male manager of female employees, what am I even supposed to do?
Extracting information from self-contradictory accounts is a bit of a black art, but this being said my guess is that he actually did something to deserve these labels just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail. So calm down :)
I have to say, if the OP is comfortable in making these very grave accusations but not comfortable enough to explain what happened but just to give her assessment of the situation; it doesn't do her credibility any good.
There are a number of red flags noted throughout the comments, and much of this criticism has been met with "omg so horrible you have to believe the victim". This is a very worrying trend that will only lead to polarizing individuals into either of the hate camps; where those that rush to sympathize will create fertile grounds for false accusations and those who feel are being deceived are going to be desbelieving of actual victims.
It seems to me that the OP deliberately avoids naming concrete people and publishing whatever paper trail she has. Which is probably a good thing, after some known cases of one-sided accounts published completely with details and real names resulting in lynch mobs against the accused and sometimes also against the victim. Discussion forums are not a court, which is where you submit this kind of papers to "prove" things to one another in slightly more civilized and controlled conditions.
If you read the previous comments, she brought it up as proof that her statements were sincere.
And this is very much the "court of public opinion", which is why the author wrote this post and chose to publish it here. People will make their own judgment with direct consequences. For an accusation of this level when the story has many holes and all we have is one side, some proof is needed. If anyone's reputation can be trashed forever with an improbable accusation, any civility you speak of is doomed.
The background assumptions behind this sort of comment strike me as weird. It's as if you think that women themselves aren't able to tell whether or not they're being harassed, and this can only be determined by an online panel of (mostly) male nerds who have no direct knowledge of the relevant events. I.e., please tell us more details so we can figure out for you if you're actually being harassed or if you're just a crazy female.
It is the difference, though, between accepting a conclusion, and seeing the path that led there.
"This guy is incompetent because he writes insecure code"
vs
"He often wrote code that would allow untrusted input, of undetermined size, into a fixed size buffer. This behavior caused me to question his competence."
vs
"<the actual code, dumped here>. He was constantly checking in code like this, or worse. I question his competence."
The first requires you take the author's conclusion at face value. The second and/or third give you a better idea of why they got there, which makes it more credible.
And, while no names were named, there's enough contextual clues that I'm sure many at Apple know who's being talked about. So, it's less about "you're a crazy female" and more about "lots of people are being called sexist here (one supervisor, several coworkers), would be more comfortable with that if there were more detail".
I think she made a convincing case, but maybe you dont think so. But adding a direct quote would hardly do much.
I personally wonder if using a voice recorder would be appropriate in these cases. It's legally complex, because I dont think you can always legally record someone without their permission. But just having that kind of evidence, to play back to HR, to an attorney, a court, or even youtube, could be quite powerful.
Feeling she was discriminated against but not knowing why and therefore speculating would be another possible explanation, I'm sure there are others.
My concern is people seem to think it only happens in previously (and still) male dominated fields. It happens everywhere.
I think the woman that voice their concerns and challenges are more abundant in the tech industry probably because the industry is more progressive and generally more educated.
Where I have seen ultra sexism has been in sales and finance. Extremely disturbing in your face sexism. Anecdotally the sexism in tech is sort of passive aggressive but the sexism in other industries is disturbingly direct (one could argue the subtle one being worse). My point is it is everywhere.
I hope the tech industry fixes it and becomes the leader.
I've been in a number of companies where I've had to call out the behavior of a colleague with a manager because the alternative would have been knocking the guys teeth out. Nothing changes, except maybe a "talking to" by a manager or HR, and said asshole just presses against a different boundary.
I have also found that men organize into a natural hierarchy pretty quickly, where women can miss those social cues, (or disregard them completely) and that can be extremely disruptive to team cohesion.
Many women think nothing of finding the most powerful man in the organization they can and using him as a "friend" to undermine their direct manager. Male executives typically tell male versions of these climbers to get back in line, as it undermines the cohesion of their organizations. It's not like women are connecting with the most senior woman in the organization as a "friend," because those women got to where they were by not getting used as stepping stones.
Firing a woman for insubordination risks sexism liability, but we fire men for that all the time.
This is a more complex issue than just harassment and patriarchy and other bugbears. The workplace can change to accommodate women, but this complaint culture is anathema to doing business.
In general, white men get their work attacked, women/minorities get their identity attacked, that's the difference.
A lot of white guys in startups recognize racial nepotism and can't call it out, so instead they go and start their own companies, or get politically isolated, quit, and go somewhere else. Maybe some of them vent frustrations on extreme subreddits and vote trump, but they aren't going to HR or the news over it.
For example, a person who identifies themselves as a successful professional might be bullied by someone who attack their work, but thats just an indirection. The attack is on the identity, and the work just happen to be the easiest attack vector in order to attack the identity of the person.
Most of what guys do to each other to get leverage when they are "equals" would be considered harassment by a gentler temperament.
There is a counter narrative to the progressive political one that has some valid questions.
Some people are better than others at relationships. Your prejudice for so-called "gymbros" aside, most employees have underwhelming relationship skills, and anyone can learn to play the politics game well enough to have a good career. Blaming being "short" is just excuse-making.
Ironically, someone trying to arouse a mob mentality by making such an issue public is playing office politics just as much as anyone else is, only in a more underhanded way, since instead of advocating for themselves within the workplace, they cast themselves as victims and invite others to "rescue" them. Isn't that a dysfunctional relationship dynamic? At least as dysfunctional as the dynamic it alleges to opposes?
This whole debate seems more temperamental in nature. The idea that her being defended by her boss was "sexist" (akin to tumblr feminists' whining about door-holding as a sign of sexism) just strikes me as offense-taking for the sake of it. And the tech industry's dominant temperament (they aren't known for being particularly masculine, though I assume most of them will be offended by this description; this isn't meant as an insult BTW, to each their own) is likely to be much more receptive to damsel-in-distress-type narratives as to the exact same relationship dynamics happening between men of higher social stature and men of lower stature.
People here really should read up on what "relationship triangles" are. Most people a) can't recognize them when they occur, and b) don't realize how toxic and dysfunctional this relationship dynamic is. This must not become the new norm in the workplace, as there will be, as with any type of dysfunction, large human costs.
In an ideal world, people would assert themselves respectfully to the people causing undesired behavior (which OP admits she didn't do) and coworkers should empathically listen and adjust their behavior (which according to her also didn't happen). Both of those things should have happened; there are two reasons they didn't:
1) Most people are simply not mature enough to communicate like this. People don't get taught how to resolve conflict among each other and how to assert themselves respectfully. Most people don't know how to assert themselves, and instead blame, generalize ("you always do this"), and attack. And most people also can't empathically listen, and adapt their behavior, they might just refuse to change, or even feel slighted and seek "revenge". This is a complex problem, and the people treating it as a "women's issue" are presenting an almost pathetically oversimplified view.
2) Even if people dared assert themselves, they're afraid that the company would punish them for it. This also should be fixed, but it doesn't undermine the existence of the first point.
The real problem is that the vast majority of people have pretty poor communication skills, and nobody is willing to address this, instead opting to play political partisan games. Schools and the culture at large should teach effective communication, assertion and problem-solving skills, if we want to make any progress.
For example, you appear to me to have completely misread that use of the word "sexist". Ok, we all misread things sometimes, and the article wasn't clear at that point. But framing this as "trying to arouse a mob mentality" is so out of keeping with how the author engaged with HN commenters in this thread that I think you were clearly wrong to take it that way, and therefore wrong to post it.
It's true that some people do try to arouse mob mentalities about things. But we should be extra careful not to treat people that way when they aren't—otherwise their good faith has been squandered on us, and that's very bad.
I could not believe the number of crude and rude things said to this fake woman. It was disgusting. I could not imagine the night and day treatment just because I looked like a woman. Sometimes saying sexual stuff. Sometimes asking for a man since as a woman I did not know computers that well. It really changed me around.
I feel sorry for you.
You people should be ashamed of yourselves with your fake veneer of civility covering up racist and sexist behaviours.