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Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

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Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#331

Post by smsowmya »

tps5 wrote: post #148

I think commenters who are reacting negatively to this story are reacting to the vocabulary rather than the story. Obviously I'm not a witness, but I tend to believe that these events took place more or less as the author describes them. At the same time, words like "sexism" and phrases like "as a minority..." are a big turn-off to some readers, myself included. This isn't because I don't believe in racism/sexism/xen…

I actually agree about the (mis)labeling - I was not consciously doing it, if it makes a difference. It is something I will be cognizant of in the future. My point was to simply say that there is more to managing harassment than is presently being addressed. I have to work with men all my life, and I cannot do that if I start making them uncomfortable now ! This is the problem with this situation to begin with - it is so fraught with conflict even if everyone has the best of intentions.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#332

Post by graeme »

Humdeee wrote: post #187

If I was back at the start of my career, I would of dismissed this article and told the author to "toughen up". After all, what's a bit of ribbing among co-workers? Surely she's just being overly-sensitive. 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…

Felix Dennis talked about this type of management behaviour (petty abuse of power) in his book How To Get Rich. He said sick days in a department were a good indicator that a manager was doing this and had to be fired.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#333

Post by pfarnsworth »

FilterSweep wrote: post #184
pfarnsworth wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is simply just ignorance on your part and the part of your friend. People all around the world are full of hate. Most countries are still relatively homogenous. Any country where you see some mixing, you'll see the same hate. The Middle East is too easy of an example. Germany, France, etc have a lot of overt hate. The hate in Ireland between the Protestants and the Catholics was very real and they're the…

Naivete is a possibility, but I haven't witnessed it as overt between people in my living in France (Riviera, not Paris) compared to what I've seen in America - However, as I am not a victimized group, this may be reinforcing naivete. Despite this naivete though, I would be wary of circumstance before making the declaration "mixing of any kind = hate"

You misread what I wrote, but I never said "mixing of any kind = hate". I said specifically "Any country where you see some mixing, you'll see the same hate." The hate you see in the US is not any more or any less than you will see in France, especially in Paris where it is completely overt against Muslims.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#334

Post by smsowmya »

donatj wrote: post #159

There is a mental trap I have personally fallen into I will dub the "Friendliness Trap" where you start to incorrectly think of someone you work closely with as your close friend due to the forced proximity and "friendly" interaction. This can foster inappropriate workplace behavior your brain justifies as OK. For instance friendly teasing, sometimes even started by the person themselves (e.g. "Oh, you know us [blank…

I agree. But it can also develop over a period of time. And there is a difference between being friendly and being hostile - this was the latter.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#335

Post by stcredzero »

wpietri wrote: post #205
chmike wrote: post #132

My brother, as a manager of a big team in Belgium, had once to face a complain to the HR about he harassing a secretary. The reaction of the company was immediate, and in my opinion the right one. They contracted a specialize company to investigate, collect the facts and present their conclusions. The conclusions would be sent at the same time to the alleged victim, the HR and the manager. In this case the conclusion…

I think that is a good start, but we should be aware of the flaws in an approach like this. I had friends at a company with serious security breach. There was a hullabaloo, all sort of important people in the company upset and questioning whether they should fire the head of tech. To calm the waters, the head of finance hired an outside firm to investigate. All good, right? Here, the head of finance liked the head of…

Specialized audit companies have to get paid. They claim to be neutral parties, but they have an inherent conflict of interest.

When one company is making a sale to another company, not always, but sometimes, the sale is made by exploiting an inside political conflict. Sometimes the purchase is a prize in a proxy battle between two factions. Sometimes, it is to get some independence for one group from another. Sometimes, software is used to enforce the will of one group on another.

The outside firm, knowing who buttered their bread, fished around for clues on how the report was supposed to land.

The market has spoken.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#336

Post by graeme »

dkn wrote: post #186
edblarney wrote: post #181

"there was no harassment according to legal definition. " 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…

R v Elliott is an interesting case. It contradicts what you are saying in general, but it also shows that the courts imposed strict conditions on a suspected harassment case which severely harmed the defendant's work life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Elliott

That case raises the more general issue of banning suspects or convicted criminals from the internet.

Courts commonly impose it. When such sentences first arose, the internet was marginal enough that it wasn't vital. And most judges now could probably live a tolerably normal life with an internet ban.

But if anyone on HN got banned from the internet, that would be tantamount to "banned from work", and much else.

I haven't seen much discussion about overuse of these order though.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#337

Post by stcredzero »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #263
geoka9 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what would be the equivalent of "guy" in your opinion when referring to a female in a professional environment (assuming that referring to males as "guys" is acceptable)?

Not the op, but female as well. Guy is a general term most times, but I've known a few women that get offended by it because they aren't male. Dude is also used for both, but a lot of folks don't want to use that in the office. Alternatively, just use person and be safe.

"Folks"?

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#338

Post by vertex-four »

edblarney wrote: post #252
geoka9 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what would be the equivalent of "guy" in your opinion when referring to a female in a professional environment (assuming that referring to males as "guys" is acceptable)?

"Honest question: what would be the equivalent of "guy" --> "I don't think there is one." No - the feminine of 'guy' is 'girl'. Point blank. "The guys/girls are in town this week" "Those guys/girls are from Facebook" This is very common and normal language.

Unfortunately, even where it is common and normal language, "girl" to a woman holds implications that "guy" to a man doesn't. Specifically, that the woman is in a lesser position of power, since they're being referred to as a term that is used for young females, while the men are being referred to using a term which affirms their difference from young males.

There's a point in the language that we use where boys with little power become guys with some power, but there isn't a point where girls with little power become [some word we don't really have outside of regional vernacular].

Our language is not perfect (even mine isn't) - the things we say on an everyday basis show all sorts of things we as a society implicitly believe, often without realising it. That our language reflects our society, and vice versa, is a very old idea, and part of modern feminism and the academia which backs it tries to bring that to the forefront.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#339

Post by pc86 »

jancsika wrote: post #149
yummyfajitas wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by "free rider problem". Rather than buying negotiation services from a union, I simply negotiated my own employment agreement. Who am I "free riding" on? If I hack together my own IDE in emacs, am I somehow "free riding" on the people who sell commercial IDEs?

No. But if you sell and distribute your own commercial IDE based on emacs and don't release your changes to their source, you are a "free rider". Emacs devs even have a clever license to prevent just that. You do agree that there's value in their licensing scheme, right? I mean, it would be weird if you were comfortable casually using the software in a metaphor against "right to work" laws but were dead set against t…

That is not remotely what the free rider problem is.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#340

Post by smsowmya »

tyingq wrote: post #209
smsowmya wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no quote because it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen. It was this "equal" status that made the others feel that I got better treatment. I made no remark about anything else because I do not wish to speculate about anyone else's intentions or motivations - and that is not relevant to the point of this…

>it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen That sounds like you're saying the supervisor didn't do anything wrong, but rather that your coworkers took a reasonable gesture the wrong way? If so, that doesn't really jive with "One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display o…

There is no quote that can translate that context well. And it was sexist, perhaps even meant to be complimentary and not necessary. But it was not evil. What he did was not the point. The point is what followed and how it was handled. And every employee has more than one supervisor. I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.
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