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Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

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Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#581

Post by dang »

evmar wrote: post #231
smsowmya wrote: post #4

These things happen at most companies .. people get jealous and have different ways of dealing with it .. it's up to management to handle it well, but since no one talks about it, there is no management for it ..

Are you the author of the article? I'd like to apologize on the behalf of ... pretty much everyone, really, for all the stupid comments here that are focused on doubting your story. It sounds like an awful experience and I imagine all these people missing the point are compounding it. In my experience in the tech industry, these sorts of victim-blaming people are very vocal but also are a minority, and I am embarrass…

There have indeed been a number of such comments, but by the time I saw the thread (I was traveling today, so missed it earlier), the community had weighed in more thoughtfully. The discussion now is genuinely not awful, and perhaps a notch better than we've seen in the past.

It's a common pattern that shallow, knee-jerk reactions show up first (because some people's reflexive defenses get triggered quickly) while thoughtful, meaningful responses take longer to appear—for one thing because they simply take longer to write. This sometimes leads to a perception gap about the community. The majority of users here, probably the vast majority, are fair and considerate. But it takes a while for that to reveal itself—longer, unfortunately, than the time it takes the rapid internet readership to move on. Not sure what we can do about this.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#582

Post by dang »

throwaway-hn123 wrote: post #274
edblarney wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Complaining about identity politics is how white men practice identity politics. " Are you sure that I'm a guy? Or even white? Your comment is simply bigoted.

>Are you sure that I'm a guy? Or even white? Yes. Yes. Next question, boy?

Since you have a history of breaking the HN guidelines and are continuing to do so despite our requests to stop, we've banned this account.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#583

Post by dang »

AlexB138 wrote: post #46
smsowmya wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the thing about questioning, I understand innocent until proven guilty, but putting the onus of everything on the victim is pretty unfair ..

No, actually, it's not. You're accusing someone of something very serious that puts their livelihood at stake. You need to have proof in that situation. It's a very intense and emotional experience, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to automatically assume the alleged victim is being honest.

In this context, "No, actually, it's not" is not a particularly civil way to make this point. The valid concern you're raising would not be hard to express in a good-faith way. I think we can all agree that there are multiple concerns and it's not obvious how to balance them.

The fact that you led with "No actually" instead, and ended by imputing a strawman ("everyone needs to automatically assume") gives your comment an absence-of-good-faith quality that we should all be striving to avoid on HN—particularly when the topic is divisive.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#585

Post by dang »

pconner wrote: post #466

> I don't mean to discount your experience, but honestly I don't feel like this is the whole story. Found the most HN comment I'll see all day.

Please don't. Even if you correctly interpreted that comment, the fact that some people litter in the town square doesn't mean you should too.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13196109 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#586

Post by AdieuToLogic »

smsowmya wrote: post #4

These things happen at most companies .. people get jealous and have different ways of dealing with it .. it's up to management to handle it well, but since no one talks about it, there is no management for it ..

Here is a haiku I wrote recently. As with any, it may not be applicable, relevant, well written, or discoverable:

  Do not fear mistakes.
  Fear instead those who hide them.
  They will consume you.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#587

Post by dang »

ghurtado wrote: post #525

> This is an indicator of the bubble you're living in And your comment is the epitome of another very common bubble: the language police / SJW bubble. You come across as if you think that censoring strangers on the internet (for what is actually the most common usage of a most common English word) is actually going to bring about some positive change in the issue of sexism. And you do it with the utmost arrogance, as…

That commenter shouldn't have overstepped the civility line like that, but that doesn't mean you get to flout it altogether in reply. On the contrary, when replying to a bad comment, we need to be more civil, not less.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194224 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#589

Post by dang »

concinds wrote: post #280
karlmdavis wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the power differential? In the same way that it's different for a short man dealing with harassment from a tall man, or an average man dealing with harassment from a gymbro.

There are always power dynamics in corporations. It's called office politics. They'll always exist because that's how human relationships work. Some people are better than others at relationships. Your prejudice for so-called "gymbros" aside, most employees have underwhelming relationship skills, and anyone can learn to play the politics game well enough to have a good career. Blaming being "short" is just excuse-mak…

We appreciate that you've been making an effort to comment substantively on HN, but what you posted here is an uncharitable reading of the article, and that makes for low-quality discussion. (By "charitable" I mean that we should respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of a thing, not a weaker one that's easier to argue against.)

For example, you appear to me to have completely misread that use of the word "sexist". Ok, we all misread things sometimes, and the article wasn't clear at that point. But framing this as "trying to arouse a mob mentality" is so out of keeping with how the author engaged with HN commenters in this thread that I think you were clearly wrong to take it that way, and therefore wrong to post it.

It's true that some people do try to arouse mob mentalities about things. But we should be extra careful not to treat people that way when they aren't—otherwise their good faith has been squandered on us, and that's very bad.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#590

Post by dang »

error3 wrote: post #54
lclarkmichalek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the fuck does that have to do with the article? GJ derailing

She has stated that she has considered comments regarding arranged marriages as personal harassment. Well, maybe these comments were just comments on this practice, and how that particular part of Indian culture is ruining some lives around the area.

That's such an extreme and off-topic stretch that we've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.
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