Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective • Hacker News Board

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#481

Post by abalone » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:13 PM UTC

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…

Asking basic factual questions is not "aggressive litigation". It's true that the piece is heavy on prescription and short on detailed accounting of what happened.

Providing detail would actually advance the cause of fighting harassment. It would better help everyone identify its specific forms even at companies that have diversity programs in place. In light of that, absence of detail should absolutely warrant inquiry.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#482

Post by vertex-four » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #442

vertex-four wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 he…

> My original observation is the different treatment the powerful get from the not-powerful, even when the questioning is ideological.

I don't think you've shown that the powerful get different treatment from the not-powerful. In fact, as far as I can tell, you've agreed that the powerful do come under criticism, just that they handle it better?

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#483

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

shoefly wrote: post #208

I read the entire article and this is my take: this writer worked with an extreme bulley. The bulley was a ringleader. And potentially psycho. This isn't about sexism, racism, etc. This is about a ringleader selecting a victim to prey upon for the sole purpose of causing pain.

[deleted]

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#484

Post by mistermann » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:16 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #448

mistermann wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, it's a stereotype, that a lot of people find offensive, depending on who they are talking to of course.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#485

Post by mikestew » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:21 PM UTC

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…

However, people usually see any non-positive comment about a cultural minority as racist (e.g. "Black people eat a lot of chicken.").

I've heard a lot of references to the amount of fried chicken eaten by African-Americans, and their apparent taste for that particular dish. Not a single time have I heard it mentioned casually in passing as you describe. No, it's usually the punch line to a joke.

Given the demographics of the neighborhoods in which I see a Church's or a Popeye's, such a casual note-in-passing might (and I emphasize might) merit some discussion of the dietary tastes of various cultures. "Man, the Japanese are big on fish, huh?" "Well, sure, when you have relatively small amounts of farmland and you're surrounded by ocean, makes sense that they'd eat more fish than beef." "Oh. Duh. Makes sense." I've had that conversation, don't see a problem with it. The only discussions I've heard about the dietary tastes of African-Americans have been a lead-in to the derogatory remark the speaker wished to make. (Disclaimer: I grew up in an area where the water fountains still had the faint outlines of the letters spelling "whites only" and "colored" above them, having only recently been removed. Your conversations on the dietary tastes of racial groups might have varied.)

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#486

Post by clifanatic » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:21 PM UTC

sctb wrote: post #440

clifanatic wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had never before encountered this kind of visceral hatred You should try being a white man on the internet.

We've asked you too many times to please not inject inflammation without substance into the threads: it's indistinguishable from trolling, no matter how you meant it. We've banned this account, but we're happy to unban accounts that email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe will only post within the guidelines in the future.

Good job proving my point.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#487

Post by sctb » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:22 PM UTC

easuter wrote: post #480

sctb wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That comment does not have sufficient basis in reality to teach us something, which is what we're here for, nor is it civil enough to say in a face-to-face conversation. Each of our comments have to reach this bar individually, because the threads degrade when they don't.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#488

Post by slantyyz » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:22 PM UTC

Jtsummers wrote: post #257

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)?

Goes back to familiarity. I'd be comfortable saying girls to one of the social/professional groups in my office that's all women. But I know them. I wouldn't do that with women I didn't know. Our travel office is all women. I don't call them "the girls in the travel office" because I don't know them (in a familiar way). I use guy a bit more often despite unfamiliarity, but it's not a diminutive like girl is though it…

Real question - is "ladies" considered offensive these days?

Disclaimer: I'm probably older than the average HN'er so I'm used to using woman/lady interchangeably in casual usage, and now I'm wondering how out of date I am.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#489

Post by FrancoDiaz » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #226

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…

Honestly, I think many of the dismissive reactions to these things have a similar basis. It can look like people excusing this behavior, but I think in many cases they've just never seen this behavior. If the worst you've seen at work is friendly teasing and maybe some racy language, it's easy to assume that's what happened and someone is overreacting. If you've seen someone truly corrosive, that assumption changes.…

I think it's sometimes important to get in a toxic person's/bully's face. It's a lot easier for a developer who knows she/he will not have a problem finding another job.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#490

Post by Sacho » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 8:26 PM UTC

pdeuchler wrote: post #447

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…

I believe it's a pit of success vs pit of doom matter. Without a toxic employee, everyone is focusing on work, team cohesion is high, people are encouraged to emulate the good behavior of everyone else, etc. Once you introduce the toxic employee, all of that changes - at first people simply learn to ignore them, but the tension introduced in the atmosphere slowly moves you towards the pit of doom. The stress from having to deal with their toxicity leads to you reacting negatively in a situation where you would have laughed it off; Low-friction problems that used to be oiled by the team's happy outlook now suddenly turn into arguments.

The team can definitely beat this trend, self-organize, ostracize the toxic employee and distance themselves from them. This however requires a conscious effort and active participation from everyone. For some teams, that might work, and you might say "they were not just a great team in a well-managed workplace". For others, the influence might degenerate into a spiral of negativity, and you might say "well it was a toxic workplace in general".

I'm not sure it's easy to make the determination whether the workplace was "toxic in general" or not, but I know that humans are fallible. Following the pit of success mantra, you don't really want to test whether your team is really resilient and cohesive, instead, you want to make sure that in most cases they don't even have to exhibit conscious effort to work together effectively.

Of course, the pit of success takes a lot of behind-the-scenes effort from management. I would be happy to place the blame on them here, although sometimes "the problem" is not obvious and easy to solve.