Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 692 posts

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#681

Post by smsowmya »

dep_b wrote: post #292
roflc0ptic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it has downvotes because it's at best tangentially related and has some weird framing: it frames person A who gets feelings for person B as a victim when person B decides not to marry them. Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them. I really don't see any compelling parallels to pha…

> Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them It's the part where people are forced where they don't want to that I don't like. There's plenty of people married to someone introduced by their parents. You should be able to take another path when you want to.

arranged marriages are usually family introductions and rarely forced. the way they limit choice is by constraining potential partners to your own caste or community, to the supreme thrill of family conservatives who regard that as "respectable". if you're american, you're talking about a society that places a lot of importance on self - not the case in other societies. in a lot of indian families, family comes first, not the individual.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#682

Post by [deleted] »

dep_b wrote: post #292
roflc0ptic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it has downvotes because it's at best tangentially related and has some weird framing: it frames person A who gets feelings for person B as a victim when person B decides not to marry them. Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them. I really don't see any compelling parallels to pha…

> Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them It's the part where people are forced where they don't want to that I don't like. There's plenty of people married to someone introduced by their parents. You should be able to take another path when you want to.

[deleted]

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#683

Post by Flenser »

FireBeyond wrote: post #374
kalleth wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm astonished this is as high as it is. > did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? There are a huge number of reasons why you should not be expected to do this. The harasser can be in a position of authority, for example. Even separately to that (and i understand this is a reducio argument, but..) would you ask an abuse victim to speak to their abuser? No, they go straight to the poli…

"In the (very unlikely) event of the victim being untruthful, the matter should be dropped, not blow back on the reporter -- or nobody will report real problems for fear of being unfairly punished themselves." What? Apparently, being untruthful about reporting harassment could result in the untruthful reporter being _unfairly_ punished? Sounds like an all-win situation. Report harassment, true or not. If it helps you…

I think kalleth was saying that _fairly_ punishing an untruthful reporter could discourage future _truthful_ reporters as they may fear being _unfairly_ punished.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#684

Post by smsowmya »

abalone wrote: post #481
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…

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 inqui…

https://mfbt.ca/some-garbage-i-used-to-believe-about-equalit...

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#685

Post by rrauenza »

tps5 wrote: post #476
pklausler wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Perhaps an example:

"Fred was very sad his cat died because it was given to him by his father."

"Fred, upon learning of the death of his cat, a gift from his father, broke down in tears."

That's in 3rd person. Even in 1st person...

"I was very sad as this was the cat given to me by my father."

"I recalled the day my father gave me that cat and it brought tears to my eyes."

(Poor Schroedinger...)

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#686

Post by rrauenza »

anonymous_anon wrote: post #605
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 ..

Just for context, I'm a man, and I'm very sorry this happened to you. This is a problem in cultures all over the world, and as a species, we simply have to do better. I have two female relatives who work in tech and both of them have had experiences very similar to yours. Sadly, the younger of my two relatives has had this experience at more than 1 company. Your post highlights a critical issue: the near total lack o…

I don't know how to put this ... but this is fascinating because it is a glimpse of what likely happens on the "other side of the fence" when a manager is discriminating while maintaining plausible deniability.

[The previous comment is flagged, but I hope the comment stays as it gives insight into the power a manager has.]

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#687

Post by anonymous_anon »

rrauenza wrote: post #686
anonymous_anon wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for context, I'm a man, and I'm very sorry this happened to you. This is a problem in cultures all over the world, and as a species, we simply have to do better. I have two female relatives who work in tech and both of them have had experiences very similar to yours. Sadly, the younger of my two relatives has had this experience at more than 1 company. Your post highlights a critical issue: the near total lack o…

I don't know how to put this ... but this is fascinating because it is a glimpse of what likely happens on the "other side of the fence" when a manager is discriminating while maintaining plausible deniability. [The previous comment is flagged, but I hope the comment stays as it gives insight into the power a manager has.]

My comment hasn't been removed. I don't know why it was flagged because I don't see how what I wrote violates the terms of use.

*

We can use words like bully and harass, but very often the victims feel absolutely terrorized, as described by the author of the Medium post that inspired these comments.

Unfortunately for bullies and harrassers, I'd wager that, at most companies, much more is done behind the scenes than in front of the camera.

I am ultimately responsible for those I promote, and I simpy cannot, both in terms of my conscience, and in terms of my career, promote people who bully and harrass others.

I don't want to promote someone who draws HR's attention, or, god forbid, a lawsuit, because it makes me look very, very bad. If it were to happen a few times, I'd probably be looking for another job.

Thus, it's just easier to dead end people because the reality is that bullies aren't more likely to produce superior work than anyone else. But this doesn't even matter because, even if a bully does produce superior work, I can just use words like 'temperment' and 'leadership qualities' in informal, closed door discussions and my manager will sign off.

Like many here, in addition to believing that bullying and harrassment is utterly repellant, I can't afford to do my job badly because I have a family and kids to feed. The people I protect - and it's not all women by any means - usually have families and kids to feed as well.

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#688

Post by sanderjd »

Karunamon wrote: post #677
sanderjd wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the part about everybody being in their own bubble (and I find my comment that you replied to rather cringe-y now in its implication otherwise), but I'm not sure about the part where my statement has not "proven to have value" outside my own bubble. I'm not totally sure what that means, but from my perspective, it is valuable to know when the things you say are disrespectful to a different set of people…

That was more in reference to "but it is simultaneously highly disrespectful" as if it were a universal truism. It isn't.

Fair enough. I meant "many people simultaneously feel it is disrespectful to them".

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#689

Post by wpietri »

stcredzero wrote: post #667
wpietri wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's observational. Because we white men are the default, we don't have to directly advocate for white men; we just have to push against anything that draws attention to our unequal status. You are also mostly arguing with something I didn't say. I'm not saying all complaints about identity politics are illegitimate. Just that when white men are practicing identity politics, one tool they use is to complain about ide…

Because we white men are the default As a person of color, I have to say that this is one of the most corrosively racist concepts there is, flat out. White people aren't special. They aren't a "default." Everyone else isn't a flavor of the month. The "everyman" isn't a white man. Because to say such is to relegate everyone else to 2nd rate status. I'm not saying all complaints about identity politics are illegitimate…

Let me take the second point first. I'll make the statement generic: "A way people in a dominant group reinforce the power of the dominant group is to try to prevent discussions where non-dominant groups explicitly discuss their experience as non-dominant groups and how they relate to the dominant group." That's pretty clearly not a racist statement.

Now let's take another statement: in America from the 1700s onward, white men are the dominant group. This is explicitly in the foundations of the country, and although it has become less true over time, looking at things like wealth distribution, positions of power, and access to power, it's still not an unfair statement. That statement describes a racist system, but I don't believe to be racist in itself.

What do we get when we combine the two statements, using the generic thought expressed in the first and the historical specificity of the second? "The way white men practice identity politics is to complain about identity politics."

So I believe that's not a racist statement either. I also think you over-apply it. As I already explained once, I am explicitly not saying all complaints about identity politics are illegitimate. I am saying that white men acting to maintain their societal dominance will complain about identity politics as a means.

Now to your first bit, I believe what you say is correct, but you miss my point. The reason I'm bringing it up is as part of pointing out edblarney's treating of men as the default. I agree with you it's wrong that white men are treated as the generic. But in pointing it out, I'm trying to undermine it. (In case you're curious, the technical names for the phenomena that I'm concerned about here are erasure [1] and the unmarked case [2], and I'm opposed to both.)

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/07/magazine/the-painful-conse...

[2] http://www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/driess/Readings_files/Mar...

Re: Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

#690

Post by zepto »

sanderjd wrote: post #673
zepto wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me? Or to the person you were replying to? In any case - I agree with you that we are at a time when we need to confront the fact that different social points of view can have equal validity and it's not just a matter of one side overpowering the other anymore.

I meant the collective "you". I think this is true of everyone.

True, but the implication is that you are speaking to people who don't know that, when it's only the poster you were replying to who appears not to know.
Post reply on HN