Ask HN: How do I deal with the first sexual harassment complaint at my startup?

Can you translate to human why " the person who reported this to you, who was called a "milf" by the bizdev guy, was on a PIP." is a nightmare scenario. If she is on a PIP (just checked out what that means), she is on a final warning basically?

She did the correct thing. She went to her boss. That is where she should seek remedy before going to the police.

It is typically dangerous for a woman to try to assert herself directly with a man she feels is harassing her. I am particularly savvy and I confronted him and also copied our two bosses and I was well aware I was taking a serious risk. But I also was 100% clear that if I did not take a firm stand with the first incident, it would only get harder.

This is a problem space I have studied for a lot of years. I am unusually well equipped to deal with it. Please don't start talking like the guy must be innocent. That is as bad, or worse, than the people ready to hang him high with zero due process.

Agree with Patrick on your next steps. So go do that.

My breakdown of the reasons to terminate:

1. New employee did not follow broadly understood/legal courtship protocol with female colleague. [e.g.: On tinder/okcupid/etc., you can try your luck with "DTF?" or "You're a lovely MILF." Doing the same with a work colleague (regardless of whether on the clock or not) is broadly accepted to be harassment. Why? Because the parties are both colleagues who have to work together. On okcupid, a recipient of "DTF?" can immediately block the sender. Not so easy to do a colleague. Our legal system protects workers from harassment. "MILF" isn't just a query about going out for coffee. It is a GOTO jump over many protocol stages without ACKs from recipient.

2. New employee is either ignorant of work-based courtship protocol, new employee actively chose to disregard it, or perhaps new employee was drunk during the exchange. It doesn't really matter. Either way, the guy does not meet the standards to work in a professionally run company.

3. By so flagrantly violating a commonly understood protocol [workplace courtship] very early in his employment, the guy is demonstrating to his boss that he is not worthy of trust and responsibility. Terminate him.

As for those few of you who think the guy should be given a break, this is corporate worker bee 101 stuff. Sure he is sexually interested in a colleague. There is no problem with that. The thing that is for very good reasons, your fellow workers are protected from harassment. Dating a fellow worker requires running a very different courtship protocol than picking up someone in a bar or over tinder.

Unless you feel qualified to run corporate-dating-protocol from start to finish (what will you do post hook-up/break-up?), please consider the advice of our forebears: don't dip your pen in the company ink.

While your business might be your life, for most of your employees it's only a job.

This means that for most of them, it must be pleasant. They must be able to joke around and even, occasionally, flirt. If you try to turn every social interaction into a perfectly professional unfriendly and unsexualised environment, you will very quickly find that you are the only one left.

This is even more relevant in a small startup. In my experience, the worst kind of work environment is a startup trying to act like a big multinational. None of the perks, but all of the soulless experience.

I have nothing against firing someone for bad behavior. However, with the little info you provided us, there is nothing serious.

Make sure the new employee knows that her colleague didn't like his approaches and that it won't happen again.

You should also try to get both sides of the story.

Finally, you did say this:

> The employee in question has made it clear that it's not a big deal and she knows how to deal with it (...)

How is she going to react if you fire his ass? Wouldn't it be acting like she can't take care of herself?

And Captcha!