Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

He's extremely lucky.

In Canada, and in a growing number of jurisdictions - there is 'harassment' so long as the victim feels as if there was.

If a girl feels harassed - then that's it. Guilty.

It's a deep breach of our fundamental rights, in that crimes should be determined objectively, and not subject to the whims and feelings of a victim.

Obviously, this is a complex problem, and a lot of actual harassment does take place and it needs to be dealt with.

But so many authorities screw it one way or the other: by ignoring it, or handing out wicked penalties in knee-jerk righteous fear.

The Github case, in particular is pernicious: the CEO lost his job after trying to reasonably handle supposed harassment case, when there was absolutely no indication of it even happening.

Ironically, this girl, Julie Horvath - is a pariah and a terrible example for women - is now working at Apple.

Ellen Pao comes to mind as perfectly the wrong candidate in any way be representing 'women's rights' at work.

The movement needs better leaders/examples.

It also blows my mind that things like this go on - after the girl in this article complained, the other people on the team should have just shut up about it. I mean - there's 'ribbing' and 'fun' but when someone is really hurt by it ... you just stop man. Get on with your jobs.

Also - I'm not sure the 'ask the waitress for the cheque' is really a form of harassment. It's just weird.

It seems as this poor girl really has a case, that said, there's two sides to every story. I guess we should take her word at face value, but it would be helpful to hear about it from other voices.

Pettiness, vindictiveness, and the intersection of 'crude, boorish behaviour' with 'easily offended victims' can sometimes conflate to create bad situations that might seem like harassment (and often really is), but is really about another set of infantile behaviours altogether.

Until I had the (mis)pleasure of working with a truly toxic co-worker did my mindset completely change on the issue of bullying, intimidation, and hostility in the workplace. He was a senior guy, decent at his job. But how he was able to change the dynamic of multiple teams was very offsetting. Communication declined, as people didn't want to go near the team that had the guy that was insulting them everytime on a whim. Workplace politics were on the rise. The common denominator was this guy was involved with every issue. Management stayed quiet and attempted to push it under the rug for a bit, but eventually they had to take notice. It was so relieving to walk in one day to him cleaning out his desk. I remember locking eyes with him one last time and giving him a final unspoken send off with a stern glare. He turned the corner and I never saw him again. My co-workers and myself went out for lunch as a celebration. The amount of relief was incredible. It was like starting fresh again.

Back to the article, I still can't say I fully understand what this woman went through. But just having a taste of how off-putting 1 toxic employee can be really opened my eyes. I can't fathom having multiple employees or even a manager with that type of behavior. I won't comment on gender or racial issues.

Being stressed from work is okay. Some jobs have more stress than others, and at higher frequencies. But being stressed from the people at work is needless stress that compounds on top of the regular work stress that we all accept to some degree when entering a job or role.

This is not a problem that can realistically be fixed. An organization that's going to work for the best interests of employees cannot be paid by the company, nor can it report to the company or someone with whom the company has significant influence. That means unions.