Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

Apple gets a lot of good PR for having a relatively high percentage of female employees; stories like this damage that, and in this case, it sounds like the black mark is at least in part deserved.

As for the difference between American and other countries, some possible conclusions that don't rely on the meme that women are catty or that everyone is too sensitive (even if they sometimes are):

- There are legitimate cultural differences between the U.S. and other countries. Look at parental leave policy in Europe vs. the United States.

- You may be exposed to more U.S. media than non-U.S media.

- Protections for women and minorities in general in the U.S. are weaker.

- Many of the biggest tech companies are U.S. companies. Silicon Valley is in Silicon Valley. Non-U.S. companies often get less media exposure than U.S. tech companies.

I have to wonder if behavior like this follows from bad leadership. I'm not saying Tim Cook, given the case of Apple, but middle managers. I just cannot believe that a person above the woman in TFA didn't know about this, and just let it ride, because it was just "boys being boys" or some BS like that.

I can tell you if I ever saw or heard of anyone doing this in my company, I would crack down very quick and hard. But more than that, I think the people we have lead by example and I just can't believe anyone would ever do something like TFA outlines.

There's a reason that information doesn't make it all the way up the "chain of command".

This is a very difficult job which can be extremely stressful for a long duration of time. As a society we tend to laud grueling hard work rather than recognize that it's probably the worst aspect of the work environment by far.

As far as TFA goes... it appears to be reporting on "leaked" emails telling a one-sided narrative with no attempt to validate the claims. Not to diminish the claims being made, but I think this is technically called "storytelling".

Taking it a face value though, it seems tame in comparison to other 'scandals'. I simply do not expect that people will constantly remain professional. They will need to blow off steam, and sometimes the way they do that will not be fully inclusive, or necessarily politically correct. Yes, sometimes men actually complain about their wives at work -- this is not shocking to me. I don't like that employee complaints seem to be poorly handled; all employees should be valued and listened to at least.

None of what I read in TFA I really understand to be a hostile work environment, as the term is defined. Is "toxic" supposed to be a new term to describe feeling uncomfortable or not getting the promotion you wanted? Apple's work environment is certainly extreme, but I think for reasons very much apart from gender.

It's a change in culture and expectations. It's also class specific. Men and women in the working class have different expectations and, in my experience, women in the working class can be just as brutal as men, when it comes to harassment.

To further the cultural aspect, it's like corporal punishment in the US as a way to steer child behavior. In some places of the world it's still okay and people see it as normal but most kids in the US would see corporal punishment as something that only happens to kids in bad households and many would call the cops on their parents or strangers --this of course was not the case 50-70 years ago.