Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective • Hacker News Board

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#531

Post by digler999 » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #121

foldr wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a curious lack of detail in this story. It's not curious at all. She's being careful not to identify specific individuals.

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…

a direct quote may be useless as much more is said in context and tone which is hard or impossible to convey in a blog. with people who are good at emotional or verbal abuse, they have a sense of how to intimidate and tear down people while usually staying "within the lines" of not being overtly outrageous/illegal/fireable.

I think she made a convincing case, but maybe you dont think so. But adding a direct quote would hardly do much.

I personally wonder if using a voice recorder would be appropriate in these cases. It's legally complex, because I dont think you can always legally record someone without their permission. But just having that kind of evidence, to play back to HR, to an attorney, a court, or even youtube, could be quite powerful.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#532

Post by st3v3r » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:03 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #134

kalleboo wrote: post #26

> No one at the company took responsibility for anything other than protecting the company’s liability in case of a lawsuit The tech industry absolutely doesn't need unions /s

no because people can quit and losing good people is a liability for any company. I am assuming that she continues to work there despite being treated poorly is due to immigration issues which make it impossible to switch jobs. We need to end immigration bonded slavery.

So she should have to be the one to leave, and potentially have to take a lower paying/lower status job? How on earth is that fair?

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#533

Post by digler999 » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC

qb45 wrote: post #513

smsowmya wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What he did was not the point. But the way you talk about him totally is. You shouldn't defend people who give you undeserved favors at the cost of others, if this is what he did. And you absolutely shouldn't be surprised by the consequences, if you do. Your coworkers may have felt equally threatened by this supervisor as you did by them. Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good. > I feel like…

> Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good.

that's called "blaming the victim". how do you not "associate" yourself with your own supervisor ??

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#534

Post by digler999 » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:14 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #445

sagichmal wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I dont think you read her blog post. she wasn't just treated in a sexist manner. That sparked the issue, which turned into alleged bullying an harassment by most of her team. You dont have to be a woman to understand how badly that would suck.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#535

Post by st3v3r » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:22 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #178

ashark wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions don't exist to improve price discovery per se , they exist to reduce the power imbalance between massive autocratic organizations given great power (for good reason) by the state and individual workers, on a broad set of issues that does usually include compensation.

I'm perfectly happy with that "power imbalance", whatever that means. Why can't the union refuse to protect non-union workers against this "imbalance"? It sounds like the union needs special legally granted monopoly powers to sell me services I don't actually want. The term for that is "rent seeking", actually.

"It sounds like the union needs special legally granted monopoly powers to sell me services I don't actually want."

To paraphrase the classic anti-union argument, "Nobody is forcing you to work somewhere with a compulsory union."

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#536

Post by st3v3r » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:26 PM UTC

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.

Here's the thing I don't get: You have been told repeatedly in this thread that referring to women as "girls" is demeaning and treating them like children. This is fact. A normal person, when told that they are calling someone something that they do not want to be called, will say, "Ok, I'll stop, and use the preferred term." You, however, have doubled down on it, even insisting that treating women like children is the preferred nomenclature.

Tell me, why do you have such an attachment to that word? Why is it so important to you to refer to women as children?

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#537

Post by mistermann » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:31 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #522

mistermann wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's culturally stereotypical, not racially stereotypical. > it's clearly applied to an entire race Clearly? How so? You likely think I am playing a game of semantics, but I genuinely think if we keep playing this game of trying to find reasons to be victims, things will never get better, even if that is what all parties want! The reason I brought up comedians is because they seem to allow normal people a view into t…

All I can say is that it is true. Look at this article, and please try to ignore the provocative headline, I just can't find a better presentation of the data: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-white-republicans-mo... You can explore the data yourself here: https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/vfilter?keyword=&... As you can see, 15% of white people think black people are more unintelligent than intellige…

Thanks for that, it's a very interesting article. That's the type of thing we should be reading in the newspaper and sharing on Facebook and cordially discussing (as you and I are, I hope) so we can determine where we actually stand on this matter as a society.

Race relations are very complex, it involves (imho) deep-seated biological cruft leftover from years of evolution, racist teachings in the home (like many other people, I grew up in a home of so-called "racists"), etc. If we are going to live in non-segregated societies, we just have to work through this together. I think a lot of those numbers from your article are just going to keep going down over time, partially as older people die off, and otherwise just as people realize, from being physically near people of different cultures on a regular basis, that yes in fact they are different (contrary to what the media and various other busybodies tell us), but it's just fine the vast majority of the time. And, sometimes it isn't - there is nothing saying that the level of cultural harmony between various combinations of cultures must always equal the same value, it's a preposterous assertion.

I believe there are numerous paths one can take to reducing the various "isms" we have in our societies. OP has chosen the name and blame approach. I'm fine with that, provided it is based in fact. Is that a successful approach, we'll likely never know.

Here's another approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHhKMu8jrfw

In this case we do have a bit of insight into the reactions of the "host culture":

https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/5im83w/when_we_let_...

Seems generally pretty positive! I'm going to try to remember to look into what the general opinion in the physical community where these dudes live is, but then how do you know people are telling the truth? That's the benefit of anonymous forums, at least people tend to be more honest.

I just thing we as a society are really not going about this in anywhere near an optimal manner, for no good reason.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#538

Post by foldr » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #529

foldr wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

>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. It is the difference, though, between accepting a conclusion, and seeing the path that led there. "This guy is incompetent because he writes insecure code" vs "He often wrote code that would allow untrusted input, of undetermined size, into a fixed size b…

I guess this is not getting through, but she's not submitting the article to you for you to evaluate. She's not obliged to tell you about any of this in the first place, and she can give as much or as little detail as she feels is appropriate. If you just don't trust her, then quotes would make no difference. If you are willing to believe her, then believe also that a woman is perfectly capable of figuring out when she's being harassed and doesn't need you to check her reasoning for her. The idea that you are going to find some flaw in her reasoning on the basis of a few quotes, with no knowledge of the individuals or situations involved, is really quite absurd.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#539

Post by pklausler » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

pokemongoaway wrote: post #436

smsowmya wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Why did you leave out details about the initial issue? You described being defended by your manager - and you implied he only defended you because of your sex; he is sexist. This seems very important in this context.

At what point did sexist discrimination enter the scenario? That's what's not clear. If the original offense against which the employee was defended by her manager was inherently sexist, then the defense need not be viewed as being inherently sexist.

(i.e., a manager can and should defend an employee against sexist behavior, and such defense isn't a priori sexist behavior itself even though the defensive behavior wouldn't have ever taken place if the employee weren't of their particular gender, which would of course make it otherwise look sexist.)

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#540

Post by sctb » Fri, Dec 16, 2016, 10:42 PM UTC

beachstartup wrote: post #377

wpietri wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and avoid getting into culture wars Complaining about identity politics is how white men practice identity politics. Your post here is a shot fired in a culture war. You can't do that and complain about culture wars. The phenomenon you're exploiting here is that the status quo is seen as the default state of the system. When women talk about bias, it's easy to say, "Why are women always talking about bias? Why are…

> Complaining about identity politics is how white men practice identity politics i despise identity politics, and i'm not a white man. so... did you just assume my race and gender, shitlord? or do you have some tidy explanation for why i, too, am privileged without knowing it? (of course you do)

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