Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can (and I, personally, do) but that isn't a practical standard. Healthy humans are sexual ones and especially when you have younger people working 60+ hours with a close group you will have people talking about sex. That should be expected but the current legal standard doesn't allow for that.
> Healthy humans are sexual ones In the appropriate context, of which the workplace is not one. There are other places where individuals make an effort to curtail sexual discussion (church, the dinner table, around small children, within earshot of their parents), so I think it is well within the capabilities of healthy young professionals to generally keep sex out of the workplace. > when you have younger people wor…
Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
231–240 of 534 posts
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure they're not your friend, but Jesus Christ, the amount of legal trouble this particular HR establishment exposed themselves to through their actions is breathtaking. THAT'S their job: to prevent the company from getting sued!! In this case I'm completely bewildered as to why HR handled this particular situation so clumsily.
Agreed. The "HR is not your friend" trope gets thrown out a lot, but in cases where your goals align with the company's (i.e. you don't want to get harassed, and the company doesn't want to get sued), HR is the place you should be able to go.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#233This paragraph is indicative of how terrible the NYTimes is with editorializing. They couldn't just report on one case with objective facts. Instead they decided to make it sound like this level of harassment is endemic to Silicon Valley (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) and the only evidence they provided was the Ellen Pao case where a jury decided she was wrong.
This completely devalues the entire article and puts it on par with political commentary.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#234>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her gender — a case she lost. This paragrap…
Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's your point? That harassment occurs frequently and is often mishandled? I never disputed that.
Understood. You should get your lady friends in tech to read the comments you posted on a throwaway. Do you think they'll feel safer around you?
You are implying that women should feel unsafe around someone who suggests waiting for a legal resolution to a very serious problem before jumping to conclusions.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Earlier you thought I was insisting women would be offended by something, and you’ve since stated that if I wasn’t insisting that, my “argument” was meaningless. What did you think we were discussing? Did you think that if women were offended, that would have been an argument for pitchforking? Were you saying I hadn't provided enough evidence women were offended? You haven't really said what you think is missing here…
Yes, when you said women might be offended by the statement that pitchforking is bad, that was clearly a criticism of the statement that pitchforking is bad. That criticism is nonsense, and you supplied no actual logic or evidence of an issue with that statement. I don't see why this is difficult to understand. Your response to someone advocating against pitchforking was clearly hostile.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Understood. You should get your lady friends in tech to read the comments you posted on a throwaway. Do you think they'll feel safer around you?
I think this kind of thing is uncalled for when all the commenter just pointed out that we should wait for some kind of evaluation of evidence before pitchforking. The entire justice system in the US is founded on "innocent until proven guilty". In pitchfork-heavy threads like this, pointing that out should not result in an implication that you make women feel unsafe. You are implying that women should feel unsafe ar…
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#238When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it's all PR.
You are assuming that the allegations are true. From what I've heard, it seems plausible that the alleged culture may exist at this company. But I don't take allegations to be true simply because they have been made - as is, in my opinion and in the opinion of the legal system of the United States, the correct perspective.
Outside of court, things work differently. But we have other ways of dealing with evidence and trust, which wouldn't work very well in the courtroom.
But you already know this, and I can prove it. Suppose a close friend, who you trust, tells you that someone broke into his house and stole his TV. Are you going to set aside judgment about this situation until you can collect more evidence? Are you going to demand that he show you security camera footage? Probably not, and rightly so.
You believe your friend because of reputation. Your friend has staked your trust in him against his lying. You both know that if you find out that he lied, it will hurt your friendship, and you will be unlikely to trust him in the future. This is very much like the concept of precommitment in game theory. He has set up the situation so that if his claims turn out to be false, he's likely to suffer negative consequences. This allows him to produce evidence seemingly out of thin air, by tying his personal interests to the veracity of his claim.
Now look at the two parties in this case. Fowler has staked her professional reputation on the truth of her allegations. She posted this under her real name, on her blog which is the second Google result for her name. If she turns out to be lying, things will go very badly for her. Not only will it be difficult for her to find a company willing to hire her, but Uber could sue her for defamation.
Uber has staked... nothing. Indeed, they've done the opposite. Rather than cutting off their escape routes to establish credibility, they sacrificed credibility to buy an escape route. They publicly stated that their CEO is too unaware of the goings on at his own company to confirm or deny the allegations. They took a hit now so that they have more flexibility later.
It would be hard to overstate how bad this looks. There's no good outcome for the move Uber just made, which means that they're probably hedging against something even worse. Barring the possibility that Uber has no idea how to handle basic PR scenarios, the only reasonable explanation is that they know they're holding a weak hand.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
That article doesn't support anything about her being a pariah.
Anecdotally, I can confirm that most mentions of her on Reddit that I've seen are very pejorative toward her.
Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Earlier you thought I was insisting women would be offended by something, and you’ve since stated that if I wasn’t insisting that, my “argument” was meaningless. What did you think we were discussing? Did you think that if women were offended, that would have been an argument for pitchforking? Were you saying I hadn't provided enough evidence women were offended? You haven't really said what you think is missing here…
Yes, when you said women might be offended by the statement that pitchforking is bad, that was clearly a criticism of the statement that pitchforking is bad. That criticism is nonsense, and you supplied no actual logic or evidence of an issue with that statement. I don't see why this is difficult to understand. Your response to someone advocating against pitchforking was clearly hostile.