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

When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 122 posts

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#91

Post by pseudalopex »

tempestn wrote: post #90
pseudalopex wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of them describe Bernstein as a manager, not a friend. I think Bernstein may simply have meant that the written complaint had to be specific, but that took a close reading and some charity. His direction to leave out "any reference to the previous conversation" first struck me as wanting to pretend there hadn't been one.

That's not the impression I got. It sounded to me like there had been a long, confidential conversation, perhaps spanning different media, and he just wanted an authoritative email laying out the full issue, which he could then act on, without needing to try to accurately recall all past conversation and determine which parts should be confidential or not. I'm not saying it was the ideal response, just that if we giv…

Like I said, a close reading made me rethink my first impression. Still, I can't blame the author for interpreting "any reference" as "any reference".

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#92

Post by flukus »

sethherr wrote: post #84
flukus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farting is inappropriate but not harassment (usually). There is a huge range of behaviour that's can be inappropriate but not harassment.

That's a reasonable example, but doesn't answer the question: what differentiates it? I'd say it's something like "involving people without their consent" - e.g. farting on them. Which includes forcing people to listen to tales of your sexual exploits.

I'd disagree discussing your sexual exploits is harassment either, up to a point. It's harassment when it's clearly unwelcome and directed at a specific individual.

So if we sit next to each other and I keep farting even though you don't like it, it's not harassment because it's not directed at you, but if I kept walking over to your area just to fart, that's harassment.

I would have thought the distinction would be obvious considering the overlap between HN readers and the socially awkward.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#94

Post by pseudalopex »

belovedeagle wrote: post #40
pseudalopex wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the article published what he claims were emails sent by Bernstein. If the entire story is fabricated, Bernstein's side is "I never sent those emails".

On the contrary, the emails seem very credible and do not in any way shake my confidence that the entire story is fabricated. The accuser refuses, when asked, to put any accusations into a formal statement, instead relying on making blog posts such as the this. To me that sounds very much like (a) someone deliberately making false accusations and/or (b) someone in need of help for mental illness. I can think of no ot…

Bernstein told the author not to mention their prior conversation in his complaint. The author found this suspicious and filed a complaint with the department secretary instead.

You know one thing about the author's mental health: he had panic attacks during a very stressful time in his life. Any psychologist can tell you that this has no bearing on someone's truthfulness. Continuing to speculate about his mental health is in very poor taste.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#95

Post by vacri »

tempestn wrote: post #82
wehere wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i mean those e-mails by Dan you quoted are pretty incriminating themselves

Incriminating in what way? They sounded pretty reasonable to me.

From the article, Dan and Tanja are superiors in a workplace, not unrelated folks in a volunteer project. It's their responsibility to ensure a safe place to work - telling people to take it to the courts is an unreasonable way to start dealing with an internal HR problem.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#96

Post by AstralStorm »

flukus wrote: post #65
tuwtuwtuw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people claim similar things about rape and try to use that as evidence showing that the accusation is false ("she could just have kept her legs together"). It's a bit disgusting.

And there are good reasons for that, it's to protect innocent people from false accusations. It looks like he'd be well within his rights to sue over this allegation.

Also bad reasons such as saving face or reducing workload for police officers.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#97

Post by vacri »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #48

Since this post casts djb in an unfavorable light, I feel it's important to post some of his emails here, so that his words can stand alone, uncolored. From https://www.hdevalence.ca/etc/34de2f3c2a48f7da/EmAiLs.txt "Hi everybody, As most of you know, we hired Jake for a 5-year PhD program, starting with a 50-50 split between Tor and TU/e, and increasing TU/e percentage assuming that the first year goes well. The Tor…

From the article: "Dan has written at some length about the importance of “due process”, both internally to the research group and externally to the world. But it’s telling to notice that in every such discussion, Dan carefully avoided any mention of concrete processes: he did not define the “different procedures” suddenly required for him to take action, nor what “proper procedures” should be followed." This is pate…

> It is completely standard for a complaint to go first to the alleged culprit, then (if that doesn't resolve the problem) to the supervisor, and so on up the chain. This certainly isn't something I invented, and I'm puzzled as to why Mr. de Valence seems to be skipping steps.

> Of course there are some circumstances where HR can be, should be, or must be involved. Mr. de Valence is wrong in suggesting that I said anything to the contrary. There wasn't any reason for me to mention HR when I was recommending that he file a written complaint with me.

This doesn't pass the sniff test to me. If a complaint is verbal, sure culprit first and then supervisor... which is what happened. If a complaint is written, I've never heard of it being standard procedure to give a written complaint to the accused first. As for involving HR, someone seriously complaining of sexual harassment (both parties indicate a significant confidential initial talk) is a giant red flag to get HR on-board. 'We've talked, write to me first and then we'll talk about it more' doesn't smell right.

My reading of the situation? Both sides appear to be arses. The complainant keeps talking to new parties without submitting the written complaint that was requested multiple times. The supervisor engages in questionable advice. It doesn't seem any party comes out particularly clean on this one, to me (sitting on the sidelines, getting an imperfect view...).

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#98

Post by flukus »

AstralStorm wrote: post #96
flukus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there are good reasons for that, it's to protect innocent people from false accusations. It looks like he'd be well within his rights to sue over this allegation.

Also bad reasons such as saving face or reducing workload for police officers.

Do you really think that's the case all but a small minority of the time?

Most officers go into the job for altruistic reasons and I bet they'd rather help convict a rapist than to write a speeding ticket.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#99

Post by watter »

vacri wrote: post #95
tempestn wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incriminating in what way? They sounded pretty reasonable to me.

From the article, Dan and Tanja are superiors in a workplace, not unrelated folks in a volunteer project. It's their responsibility to ensure a safe place to work - telling people to take it to the courts is an unreasonable way to start dealing with an internal HR problem.

Exactly this. They clearly failed to follow university policies and they were acting as supreiors.

Re: When ‘he’ll be kept on payroll, somewhere’ is where you are

#100

Post by [deleted] »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #72
flukus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For an industry trying to get more females to take part in it, sentiments like this against possible victims is not what we should hold. I'd rather an industry with 0 women than one where mere allegations (let's not pretend there haven't been some rather high profile false allegations) are career ending. On balance this guy does sound like a creep, but I don't think issue's like this should be tackled in public wit…

The university involved has employed people specifically to deal with the issues raised, precisely so that people don't go to the police. However, it seems their job is actually to limit damage to the university's reputation. Institutional responses to sexual accusations are traditionally terrible (we're having a Royal Commission into exactly this in Australia at the moment). Horrific sexual abuses have only come to…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN