I'm sure that working in most companies in the Valley and in a heavily-male-skewed environment such as tech, there's STILL a lot of harassment and sexism, both explicit and implicit, and this has to be eradicated. It sickens me that women can't come to the workplace and just be treated like an equal. I've work with many intelligent women who are more intelligent and successful that I ever will be, and they deserve to be in positions of leadership just as much as any male.
However, this is definitely a story that I would like to hear from the other side before taking as absolute gospel. The tone of the blog post leads to a lot of skepticism in me about the veracity of the events.
She accuses her supervisor of sexism for standing up for her, and then basically accuses Apple of sexism for doing nothing. The contradiction is glaring, and she throws around these words pretty thoughtlessly without thinking how it reflects on the believability of her story. Another pet peeve of mine is that she conflates misogyny with sexism. People can be sexist without being misogynists. Many men and women are sexist. It's largely cultural. Very few are misogynists but they are sickening and scary, and need to be eradicated by any means necessary.
> I approached my management when the situation escalated, who directed me to HR.
This here is the part of the article where my skepticism starts to increase. Where is her story about what happened when she contacted her supervisor, or her management chain. Did she not seek help or advice from the supervisor who was ready to help her? There's a lot that was handwaved over that requires explanation. Without understanding what her supervisor did, who defended her previously, I can't understand what happened. The supervisor and direct manager are the ones who are best suited to deal with this problem directly, especially if it's between coworkers.
On a side note, I don't blame the blog post author for thinking that HR would help. I've been in a situation where I had to talk with HR about my direct manager, and they weren't too enthusiastic to help, and I had to fight my own battles essentially. However, I'm a lot better equipped to fight those battles than the blogger because I'm argumentative and stubborn, and most other people, male and female, aren't as motivated.
> My HR representative was simply unfriendly after I gave feedback about her being unduly confrontational with me.
I think this is an interesting comment from the author. It seems like she doesn't have a high EQ, and doesn't know how to interact with people to get the things that she wants or needs. Her HR rep is the most immediate person who would help her navigate this situation, and she apparently pissed her HR rep off. That wasn't smart and speaks a lot to her EQ, and might explain a lot more about the back story here. She could get better help from her HR rep without pissing him or her off, but she didn't do it or didn't know how to do it.
> While I never heard back in person, I do believe that it likely triggered some of the following actions by the company.
This was laughable, and also reflected poorly on the author. The idea that a single complaint about workplace harassment would trigger this is ridiculous, and the fact she is taking credit for any changes at Apple also reflects on her EQ.