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Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

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Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#441

Post by ben174 »

foldr wrote: post #122
tyingq wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A direct quote, or more detail would go a long way in helping others understand the situation. I don't see how either would identify specific individuals. In fact, she specifically says "her supervisor", which already calls out a specific individual. For example, the supervisor jumping to her defense. What did he say, exactly? Or failing that, what was the situation, how did he defend her? All we get is that he defen…

I think you're missing the point of the article. She's helping us out by giving us a heads up about a problem in the industry. If you choose to disbelieve her, that's your prerogative. It's pointless to make a pretence of scrutinising the article when it's obviously impossible for her to prove beyond all doubt that her recollection of events is accurate. Just believe it or don't. Don't go asking "where's the proof??"…

She's making a direct accusation against Apple, but doesn't provide any concrete quotes that we can evaluate for ourselves. Seems like it would be more fair to leave the company name out of it if she's only trying to give us a heads up about a problem in the industry.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#442

Post by stcredzero »

vertex-four wrote: post #414
stcredzero wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the behaviours of rich, successful male feminists get called into question by feminists all the time. Where did I say that I never see this? (Hint, I don't. You projected this onto me.) The thing is, though, that it's usually much harder to have such attacks stick against the powerful. Also, men who are in positions of power in such environs generally know how to navigate them. It's not that powerful men don't…

> The thing is, though, that it's usually much harder to have such attacks stick against the powerful. Sure, I'd agree with that. People with power can more reasonably say "fuck this label, it brings me too much criticism, I'm picking another one". Is the solution not to question anyone for harmful beliefs and actions? Feminists criticise each other as a matter of course - if your goal is to avoid people questioning…

People with power can more reasonably say "fuck this label, it brings me too much criticism, I'm picking another one".

Not how they usually spin it.

Is the solution not to question anyone for harmful beliefs and actions?

The solution is to treat ideas and principles more as ideas and principles and less as emotionally based ideological bludgeons.

if your goal is to avoid people questioning your behaviour

Where the heck did this guff about this "goal" and labels come from? (I certainly wasn't intending that.) I'm all for questioning. My original observation is the different treatment the powerful get from the not-powerful, even when the questioning is ideological. Especially when the questioning is ideological. You can think of it this way: I'm questioning the self-awareness behind such questioning as practiced, not the notion of questioning itself.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#443

Post by mistermann »

burkaman wrote: post #384
kutkloon7 wrote: post #255

Very well put. I find it very annoying when people declare something to be racist. Racism is the idea that some races are superior or inferior. Unless you literally declare that some races are superior or inferior, what you say is not racist. I do agree that some things might imply that you think some races are inferior, but by declaring something racist, you state that the author has that specific idea and is trying…

What word would you prefer? How would you describe the comment "Black people eat a lot of chicken"? Also, FYI, most (all?) dictionaries disagree with you on the definition of racism. > the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

That may be the dictionary definition, but it is no longer the generally accepted definition in my experience.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#444

Post by jasonlotito »

tptacek wrote: post #392
jasonlotito wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which has happened to me, to friends, to my wife equally... I assume your lying to try and prove a point. Unless you back this up with evidence, one should safely assume you are lying. I don't like doing this, but as someone once said: there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.

You can't comment like this on HN, and by this point you should know that.

I was replying to the person who said the very same thing I said. I literally use their own comment to demonstrate how bad comments like this are.

Maybe I should have explicitly called that out for those that weren't reading this comment in context, but the person I replied to knows what I said, and they were who I was replying to.

If you are against this comment, you should also report the original comment that said this as well. It's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13192777

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#445

Post by tyingq »

sagichmal wrote: post #353
tyingq wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

tyingq, your line of inquiry reads as a rather aggressive litigation of someone who is a self-identified victim of harassment. I can't speak to your soul, so I don't know if it's intentional or not, but in so doing, you're actually contributing to the harassment in some small way. Other women who read this story and these comments could see the way you're doubting and questioning the author on her experiences, and ea…

>Think about the effects of your words

That's fair enough. For what it's worth, I do have sympathy, and I do believe that some people treated her in a sexist manner.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#446

Post by sctb »

lostboys67 wrote: post #6

The "No Meaningful Process" is shocking in a company of Apples size - in the UK they would get the book thrown at them at a tribunal for that. Sounds like Her boss and Hr failed I wonder if things Like brexit and Trump have made closet racists fell they can be more open

We're all trying to have as civil and substantive a discussion as we can here, and this is about as active as one can get in inviting an political flamewar. Please don't do this.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#447

Post by pdeuchler »

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…

I don't mean to discount your experience, but honestly I don't feel like this is the whole story.

At least from what I've seen these sorts of things are systemic issues, and it is extremely rare for such problems to be caused by a single bad apple.

Again, not trying to discount your personal experiences or lessons, but I'd just be very wary of assigning scapegoat status to a single person for what is clearly a toxic workplace in general ("Management stayed quiet and attempted to push it under the rug for a bit", "Workplace politics were on the rise", etc etc). Often times this mentality plays to the people in power who are responsible for the lack of safeguards, and when you don't fix the underlying causes you're essentially just relying on HR to filter the "bad apples" out of the hiring practice... and we all know how much of a crapshoot hiring in tech is already.

Last, I'd re-examine your impulse to go out and celebrate when this guy was fired. I obviously don't know the details here, but it definitely sounds like an "us vs him" mentality was being fostered, and that could have very well contributed to the exacerbation of this guy's toxic behavior. Often times these sorts of people are just desperate for attention or social contact, and the only way they've figured to get a consistent response from people is to piss them off. Disengaging and relying on "management" to solve these issues very often can make a problem worse. Other times these people can be simply responding to being bullied themselves, often simultaneously, by other groups within the company, or are reacting to problems in their personal lives. These explanations are not absolving them of responsibility for their actions, but it's important to realize that most assholes aren't genuinely bad people, they're just normal humans like you and I who respond to stress and stimuli in a poor way.

Going to the guy as a group and discussing his behavior, while uncomfortable, often can be very illuminating and solve issues that would have just festered until someone was forced to be fired or leave. Worst comes to worst you'll immediately realize the situation is untenable at that point, and the solution will be quite obvious.

Again, disclaimer, I don't know the specifics here and I don't want to indict the parent, but let's make sure we don't use the above example as a primer on how to deal with toxic colleagues in general.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#448

Post by burkaman »

mistermann wrote: post #443
burkaman wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What word would you prefer? How would you describe the comment "Black people eat a lot of chicken"? Also, FYI, most (all?) dictionaries disagree with you on the definition of racism. > the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

That may be the dictionary definition, but it is no longer the generally accepted definition in my experience.

We have very different experiences then. But again, what word would be better? Is there anything notable about the statement "Black people eat a lot of chicken"? What adjective should we use?

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#449

Post by jasonlotito »

sctb wrote: post #429
jasonlotito wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which has happened to me, to friends, to my wife equally... I assume your lying to try and prove a point. Unless you back this up with evidence, one should safely assume you are lying. I don't like doing this, but as someone once said: there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.

To add to what tptacek has said, this everyone-is-lying position is not compatible with the discussions that this site is for. So if you'd like to have those kinds of conversations, they'll have to take place elsewhere.

My position isn't that everyone is lying. The person I replied to said this. I was demonstrating to them how easy it is to take that approach and have it turned against them. They replied as well, and understood what I was saying.

Maybe I should have been more clear what I was doing, but considering I know what I was saying and so did the person I replied to, I feel it's fair to say that assuming I was being negative and not understanding the context is also on those who disagree with what I said. Especially considering the status of the post that says all this in the first place.

Basically, I stand by what my comment says (assuming everyone is lying is wrong), and those that disagree with me are wrong.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#450

Post by foldr »

ben174 wrote: post #441
foldr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of the article. She's helping us out by giving us a heads up about a problem in the industry. If you choose to disbelieve her, that's your prerogative. It's pointless to make a pretence of scrutinising the article when it's obviously impossible for her to prove beyond all doubt that her recollection of events is accurate. Just believe it or don't. Don't go asking "where's the proof??"…

She's making a direct accusation against Apple, but doesn't provide any concrete quotes that we can evaluate for ourselves. Seems like it would be more fair to leave the company name out of it if she's only trying to give us a heads up about a problem in the industry.

I don't understand what it would mean for you to "evaluate this for yourself". You have no way of independently verifying what's she's saying, quotes or no quotes.

The background assumptions behind this sort of comment strike me as weird. It's as if you think that women themselves aren't able to tell whether or not they're being harassed, and this can only be determined by an online panel of (mostly) male nerds who have no direct knowledge of the relevant events. I.e., please tell us more details so we can figure out for you if you're actually being harassed or if you're just a crazy female.

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