Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

mic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 253 posts

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#21

Post by sandworm101 »

exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #14
sandworm101 wrote: post #11

>>> "But this rape joke was the final straw: The next day, Danielle escalated her complaint about the offense to the very top: Apple CEO Tim Cook." That isn't the route. In such a large organization, even a very very good and proper one, such issues are not to be accelerated to the CEO. If you have thousands, tens of thousands of employees, then complaints like this will and should be a daily issue (not always a rape…

Maybe, but Apple CEOs have always given out their email addresses since the days of Steve. What is it for, if not for greater accountability?

It's there, but any rational person must realize that the CEO cannot possibly act faster than immediate supervisors. CEO will, at most, hand the immediate investigation to an underling who will then contact HR. And corporations have had employee manuals long before CEOs started maintaining a public email address.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#22

Post by akshayB »

Problems like this can happen in any company and this includes Apple as well. Since Apple is one of the biggest Tech companies people are going to make a big deal about it.

But it is a big failure if managers/management fail to take actions. The immediate manager should be fired in this case since he or she failed to take any action or involve HR or upper management

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#23

Post by skandl »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #18
sandworm101 wrote: post #11

>>> "But this rape joke was the final straw: The next day, Danielle escalated her complaint about the offense to the very top: Apple CEO Tim Cook." That isn't the route. In such a large organization, even a very very good and proper one, such issues are not to be accelerated to the CEO. If you have thousands, tens of thousands of employees, then complaints like this will and should be a daily issue (not always a rape…

What? If you have a grievance HR or legal is the last place you should turn to as an employee. No matter what your position is it basically starts the process of getting yourself fired.

HR's primary mission is to protect the company from its employees.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#24

Post by guessmyname »

Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting?

In this specific case I understand that insinuating a rape scenario — which by the way is not against women but "everybody" — in a work environment is bad, but without knowing what other toxic comments or behavior happened in the same department where this woman was working, I cannot sympathize. Knowing how sensitive are people nowadays (specially in the United States) I wouldn't be surprised if the previous comments were things like "Man, did you see [female name]'s dress today? It's so ugly". They are probably worse than this, but again, without knowing the alleged previous incidents I cannot sympathize with this specific woman.

Also, why did she quit? Why not stay and fight for the rights of her other female co-workers? If what I understand from this story is correct, the other women do not report these incidents either because they are afraid of retaliation, or because they learned how to take (or ignore?) a (very stupid) joke.

EDIT: On a side note, imagine if the genders were switched. If the people making the bad "joke" were women, and the person reporting the incident was a man. He could have reported this to the CEO but do you think the story would have been published in this website or other? I don't think so. I am glad to have worked remotely for several years, to avoid these incidents with my co-workers.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#25

Post by Blackthorn »

guessmyname wrote: post #24

Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting? In this specific case I understand that insinuating a rape scenario — which by the way is not against women but "everybody" — in a work environment is bad, but without knowing what other toxic comments or behavior happened…

> Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting?

There's some other possibilities too, like it's worse in America than in other countries.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#26

Post by Blackthorn »

redorb wrote: post #13

Telling someone to smile feels closer to trying to cheer them up than any harassment.

Don't ever do this to a woman. It's not going to cheer them up. They've been putting up with that crap their whole lives, and all you accomplish by telling them that is to add to the load of crap.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#28

Post by michaelcampbell »

exBarrelSpoiler wrote: post #14
sandworm101 wrote: post #11

>>> "But this rape joke was the final straw: The next day, Danielle escalated her complaint about the offense to the very top: Apple CEO Tim Cook." That isn't the route. In such a large organization, even a very very good and proper one, such issues are not to be accelerated to the CEO. If you have thousands, tens of thousands of employees, then complaints like this will and should be a daily issue (not always a rape…

Maybe, but Apple CEOs have always given out their email addresses since the days of Steve. What is it for, if not for greater accountability?

PR. To appear to be accepting greater accountability.

Do you honestly think Cook (et. al.) read their own email? I would be surprised if it's not filtered and triaged by at LEAST 3 levels of people before they see it.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#29

Post by smnscu »

Blackthorn wrote: post #25
guessmyname wrote: post #24

Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting? In this specific case I understand that insinuating a rape scenario — which by the way is not against women but "everybody" — in a work environment is bad, but without knowing what other toxic comments or behavior happened…

> Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting? There's some other possibilities too, like it's worse in America than in other countries.

As someone who's spent a fair bit of time in Germany and Switzerland, lol no.

Re: Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

#30

Post by Blackthorn »

smnscu wrote: post #29
Blackthorn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting? There's some other possibilities too, like it's worse in America than in other countries.

As someone who's spent a fair bit of time in Germany and Switzerland, lol no.

That's fine, but it's completely wrong for the poster to present this as a binary choice when it's anything but.
Post reply on HN