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Leaked Apple emails reveal employees' complaints about toxic work environment

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

#171

Post by ManlyBread »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #123
keithnz wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because in a workspace the culture is one of inclusiveness, the onus on you is to be inclusive, I'm sorry to say, that's going to require some awareness on your part. But don't worry, it will likely just make you a better person overall.

A workplace is not required to ensure you're not offended, only that you're not sexually harassed, harrases in general, or discriminated against (if a protected class). A workplace can also not force inclusiveness. I fear that the swing in PC culture is going to cause more harm than good for "inclusiveness" now that the pendulum has swung too far.

Exactly. Consider being an employer and having two candidates to hire. Both candidates posess an equal amount of skill, the only difference is their gender. Now you have two options: you can hire a woman and risk that she will complain about "toxic work environment" and "sexism in the industry" while tying your company name to these accusations... or you can hire a man and not worry about that at all. Why wouldn't you go for the second option? Not only you will get the same result when it comes to work, you'll also avoid the situation described in the article.

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

#172

Post by cpncrunch »

scott_s wrote: post #169
cpncrunch wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Still, rape jokes are not acceptable. Perhaps, but it's not something that is obviously unacceptable. I would put it on the same level as making a joke about an intruder coming to bomb/shoot everyone. Certainly it's in poor taste, but that's the level of humour you find everywhere.

Rape jokes are obviously unacceptable.

No more obviously unacceptable than bomb/murder jokes, both of which are pretty common.

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

#173

Post by ManlyBread »

laurenbee wrote: post #78
mthoms wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to diminish any of the other claims but I found this one to be a bit of an eye roller - Describing another incident, she wrote, "I was walking back to my cube from the break room and passed a group of managers exiting a meeting. The Area Manager told me to smile as I walked past." "While this is a small thing, it was notable as this is one of the most commonly reported forms of subtle sexism." No matter how hard…

By asking/telling someone to smile, one is basically saying, "You should look more pleasant for my benefit." I can't see asking someone to smile being appropriate in a workplace setting unless the person is in a customer-facing role and it affects job performance. The sexist part is that it seems to happen far more often to women than to men.

Or maybe you just want to actually cheer up that person? Not everyone follows the sociopathic line of thinking you presented.

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

#174

Post by daughart »

It's almost hard to read the comments on here.

"It's a stressful environment---people have to blow off steam."

"Is X comment really that offensive?"

"Joking around is important to office culture."

"The real damage is punishing people who said the offensive thing when he/she didn't mean anything by it."

It's really not that complicated. Act professionally at work. Working at a job isn't easy, but part of the responsibility of work is to _act_ professionally, and delivering genius code doesn't give anyone a pass to act unprofessionally. When you feel an impulse to talk or joke about physical appearance, politics, religion, sex, gender, rape, racial issues, nationality/ethnicity, etc., just hold your tongue! Or write it in a little book and save it for when you're at the bar with friends. If you do say something, and inevitably get that little "I shouldn't have said that" prickle in the back of your brain---simply immediately apologize and move on! If you don't get that prickle, and a co-worker or manager says something, just take it at face value that what you said was not professional, because professional actions never raise the possibility of personal offense. That is the bare minimum you are required to do.

If you're a little more social justice oriented, you might even become aware of the ways women and minorities are treated unfairly, and take special actions to fix this. Take notice the next time you're in YAAMM -- "yet another all male meeting" -- and think about whether there are any women who could contribute but were not invited. If you hear a good idea, give credit to the originator when you repeat it. It's actually not that hard.

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

daughart wrote: post #174

It's almost hard to read the comments on here. "It's a stressful environment---people have to blow off steam." "Is X comment really that offensive?" "Joking around is important to office culture." "The real damage is punishing people who said the offensive thing when he/she didn't mean anything by it." It's really not that complicated. Act professionally at work. Working at a job isn't easy, but part of the responsib…

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by forgottenpass »

daughart wrote: post #174

It's almost hard to read the comments on here. "It's a stressful environment---people have to blow off steam." "Is X comment really that offensive?" "Joking around is important to office culture." "The real damage is punishing people who said the offensive thing when he/she didn't mean anything by it." It's really not that complicated. Act professionally at work. Working at a job isn't easy, but part of the responsib…

When you feel an impulse to talk or joke about physical appearance, politics, religion, sex, gender, rape, racial issues, nationality/ethnicity, etc., just hold your tongue!

Going to such extremes to guarantee never offending anyone is a great way to wind up unhappy and alone at work. It's fine if that's what you want - when I don't like talking to my coworkers in the first place I happily implement that strategy.

Chances are that anyone using that strategy and isn't also miserable has a fair number of unspoken assumptions about acceptable behavior, and isn't actually using that strategy. They're just slightly more guarded than in their normal behavior.

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

#177

Post by 1024core »

flukus wrote: post #95
roywiggins wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wake me up when men are raped at the same rate as women and then we can talk about treating everyone the same.

So sexism is okay until men and women are raped in equal amounts?

It's not sexism. Women and men are treated differently from basically the day they're born. Talk to some women for a change, and learn about their fears and apprehensions. You'd be surprised. Until you try to educate yourself, the Internet can't do it for you.

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

#178

Post by pareidolia »

Artistry121 wrote: post #8
freehunter wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called gallows humor. It's a defense mechanism, a response to what one sees as a hopeless situation. Not saying it is or is not appropriate in this situation, but it's not much different than saying "I'd rather die than go to that meeting" or "this is hell" or "if I have to maintain that legacy codebase, just shoot me now".

In that case the jokes made at Apple could be in the same class.

That's certainly my impression. Some people use black humor more than others, I can't understand why some people need to thought-police it away. Black humor is a way of coping with life, and I wouldn't want to have it stripped from my culture.

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

#179

Post by rpdillon »

laurenbee wrote: post #78
mthoms wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to diminish any of the other claims but I found this one to be a bit of an eye roller - Describing another incident, she wrote, "I was walking back to my cube from the break room and passed a group of managers exiting a meeting. The Area Manager told me to smile as I walked past." "While this is a small thing, it was notable as this is one of the most commonly reported forms of subtle sexism." No matter how hard…

By asking/telling someone to smile, one is basically saying, "You should look more pleasant for my benefit." I can't see asking someone to smile being appropriate in a workplace setting unless the person is in a customer-facing role and it affects job performance. The sexist part is that it seems to happen far more often to women than to men.

> bascially saying "You should look more pleasant for my benefit."

Perhaps not.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smile-it-could-mak...

Tone of voice and mannerisms tell a much fuller story, though.

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

#180

Post by dcdevito »

zaroth wrote: post #48

The time that I worked at Apple was brutally hard work. If we're talking about work environment, I think many people reading that article have no concept of how difficult a job it is, how high are the expectations, and how many hours the average engineer is putting in there. 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 rathe…

I work for a startup and I agree with this statement
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