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Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

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Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#471

Post by mistermann »

smsowmya wrote: post #340
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…

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.

Please don't take this as confrontational, but maybe there is a point that you are missing, that maybe you have made an error in your assessment of what happened, of what people's actual motives are. I genuinely feel like you are unnecessarily secretive about the details of this. Of course there often are details that must be kept secret for various reasons, but my intuition is suggesting otherwise.

Personally, I don't just take someone at their word. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, in this case you seem reluctant to give any evidence. Can't you see how that might make some people a little suspicious, especially if they've observed this sort of thing before?

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#472

Post by escherize »

Asooka wrote: post #135
csydas wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And this line stood out at me as being divorced from reality especially at a big company. I get it that we mostly want companies to be like this but I think it's also obvious that they're not. They are primarily profit motivated and we're lucky if they don't pollute the environment or commit atrocities in the process. You can look for smaller companies that do it, you can put it in your own company, but if you real…

Sadly, if the company isn't profit-motivated, it will be displaced by a profit-motivated one. At this point large companies are eerily similar to the hypothetical paperclip-maximizing AI that converts the entire earth in paperclips. Except that making more money lets you make even more money in a snowball effect. The fix is probably to check glassdoor etc. as much as you can before working for a potentially unethical…

    Worker bees can leave.
    Even Drones can fly away.
    The queen is their slave.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#473

Post by gedrap »

analyst74 wrote: post #125

For anyone new to office politics, or have not experienced hostile politics before, keep those in mind: - Make sure to have some real friends at work. No, someone you work with everyday is not necessarily a real friend, you have to make real connections with them, so they are willing to defend and support you when things get tough. - Be observant and empathetic, so you can notice problems when they first arise, and r…

Good points. I'd add that you should be careful about joining the 'negative' (can't think of a better word) social circles. You know, the kind who are talking about how something sucks or how bad some person is, for the vast majority of the time. Nothing good will come out of this.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#474

Post by gedrap »

stevenh wrote: post #408
analyst74 wrote: post #125

For anyone new to office politics, or have not experienced hostile politics before, keep those in mind: - Make sure to have some real friends at work. No, someone you work with everyday is not necessarily a real friend, you have to make real connections with them, so they are willing to defend and support you when things get tough. - Be observant and empathetic, so you can notice problems when they first arise, and r…

It's sad that with very few words changed, this could just as easily be a guide to surviving prison.

Well, when money and power are at question (which is true for pretty much every company), it tends to get the worst of some people.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#475

Post by orsenthil »

I appreciate her command over the language, and also feel sorry for problems she encountered.

Will I judge that Apple has a culture of Harassment and Tech Industry has a culture of harassment from this medium article? Definitely No. I would be foolish to judge so from hearing the arguments from a single party.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#476

Post by tps5 »

pklausler wrote: post #406
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 would put this in almost literary terms: I don't want events to be described, I want them to be recounted. That's a great idea and, if applied, is going to save a lot of time in fiction writing. For example, chapter 3 of Ulysses can now be just: Stephen walked on the beach, sometimes with his eyes closed, and sometimes looking at the sea.

Described/recounted maybe isn't the best way to put it.

I'm okay with description, I just find that the most effective literature tells a story that implies something rather than explicitly spelling that thing out.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#477

Post by tps5 »

coldtea wrote: post #426
tps5 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People do lie, but that doesn't mean we should assume they're always lying. I don't believe you can prove anything. I mean to say that's my perspective on the universe: that it is physically impossible to prove anything. At the same time, you can't live your life that way. If I second guess the way my brain is interpreting light reflecting off objects all the time then I'd never leave my apartment. Of course I'm skep…

> I don't believe you can prove anything. I mean to say that's my perspective on the universe: that it is physically impossible to prove anything. Tons of things can be reasonably proven. A videotape of an incident can pretty much settle a dispute as to what happened for example, except if very special arrangements are involved (the camera angle hides the actual act, etc).

Key word is reasonably.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#478

Post by yesThis99v »

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 connected to this instantly. The rest of my team, and engineering here as a whole really, is exactly like this. I'm coming around to seeing it as what is killing the company; they've shed ~200 people in 18 months, despite making money (for now). They've tried paying people more to stay, but they still leave.

There's a lot of history among these folks, with many of them at the company 5, 10, 15 years. Firing the worst offenders never happens. But it's failing the company. New hires aren't allowed to integrate, have every idea shot down, and leave after 12-18 months of frustration.

I think it's largely generational. There are only 8-10 people younger than 35 in an engineering org that is 100-105, split along {front,back}end dev, QA, and server ops lines.

We have Nerf guns and late Friday maintenance pizza parties. Our net new rollout is horrendous. We're constantly 18 months behind targets. Customers are getting wise as features keep getting cut or shipped late, and emails keep being returned to sender because the person no longer works here.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#479

Post by monksy »

geoka9 wrote: post #459
monksy wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> women that get offended by it because they aren't male. There are a few people who get upset over it or intentionally make a vocial issue out of something that isn't. ("Guys" is generally a genderless term ["You guys, take a look at this!"]

Would you be comfortable saying that to a group of females in a professional environment?

"How are you guys doing?"

Yep. It's the northeastern influence on my mannerisms.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#480

Post by easuter »

sctb wrote: post #453
easuter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP's milking that victim card for all it's worth.

Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When was I not civil? Also I did follow up on my original comment when prompted.
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