I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails • Hacker News Board

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#81

Post by motohagiography » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

traderjane wrote: post #19

motohagiography wrote: post #8

Anecdotally, I met someone who stopped updating their linkedin profile because he found out someone was making anonymous comments and allegations to his employers. He didn't know what they were or who it was because it came second hand from a colleague who told him that an exec had asked about him because of an anonymous message. Also, whisper networks in tech are very much a thing and they are full of just the quali…

Whisper networks just mean powerful people who talk among each other and do their research. That will always be the case. In politics isn’t that just the standard form of discourse?

I actually believe the power networks that matter are made up of people who can afford honesty and magnanimity, and that gossips never make it above being minor gatekeepers.

Low stakes players sometimes get to sit at high stakes tables, and sometimes they take out a high stakes player from that round, but they go bust pretty fast.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#82

Post by Grue3 » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

>I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email.

The scariest part is that this is apparently possible in countries under the jurisdiction of GDPR now (and possibly even outside of it). Your private emails talking about a third party might be exposed at the request of the said third party. Does no one else consider this extremely concerning?

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#83

Post by ghusbands » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

zeveb wrote: post #17

jerf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just gets you into a Catch-22... being seen suing previous employers and supervisors will make it even harder to get hired in that field, and possibly any other as well. If the person in question is not really unpleasant (and I don't know that they are not, but let's take it as given for a moment), my suggestion would be doing some strong networking. If you interact with people at conferences and are clearly not…

> being seen suing previous employers and supervisors will make it even harder to get hired in that field, and possibly any other as well. If you win enough in damages then you don't need to worry too much about earning in the future. No idea how likely that is, particularly after paying attorneys' fees.

You seem to be assuming that money is the only goal, rather than, say, contributing in academia.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#84

Post by traderjane » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #81

traderjane wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whisper networks just mean powerful people who talk among each other and do their research. That will always be the case. In politics isn’t that just the standard form of discourse?

I actually believe the power networks that matter are made up of people who can afford honesty and magnanimity, and that gossips never make it above being minor gatekeepers. Low stakes players sometimes get to sit at high stakes tables, and sometimes they take out a high stakes player from that round, but they go bust pretty fast.

But a posture of honesty appears too expensive even for the Chinese ruling party; how much more power do you need?

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#85

Post by stone-monkey » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #59

wallace_f wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real world is crazy. The amount of bullying, stalking and attacks I've gotten after getting a series of promotions in a rotten workplace with a few bad apples is unbelievable. If I knew better, I'd have paid attention to the above comment.

> The real world is crazy. It's quite amazing how large the gap is between the way the world is described to us through various mediums, versus the clearly observable reality of it. FTA: > I approached the individuals and the institutions concerned about the content of my Subject Access Request. They all refused to discuss the matter with me, so I can only speculate as to what was going on. Of course, these people we…

>The adult world, even at the highest levels of authority, largely consists of the same petty cliques, backstabbing, lying, and whatnot that you'd experience in high school

I'm not a fan of claiming this type of behavior is childish and something we leave behind after high school. Before advances in mass transportation that made it feasible for people to uproot and move to a new community, most people were stuck in the same ingroup for most of their lives.

High school is just a cultural relic that mimics this previous social grouping. It's not necessarily something that kids do that we grow out of - it's the other way around - modern society has broken the existing communities we had in place, but in return gives us the freedom to find new ones anywhere we want.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#86

Post by Silhouette » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #82

>I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email. The scariest part is that this is apparently possible in countries under the jurisdiction of GDPR now (and possibly even outside of it). Your private emails talking about a third party might be exposed at the request of the said third party. Does no one el…

There is certainly an ethical challenge in balancing privacy and data protection issues when there is more than one subject involved, as in this case with both the PhD graduate and those other parties whose emails referred to them.

It seems a terrible precedent if any communications service may in general be required to disclose the otherwise private communications of its users if they happen to mention any individual by name (or, presumably, any other identifying features, since this is the GDPR).

On the other hand, for matters of professional/business correspondence that relate to a specific individual, where the information being stored or shared around may be incorrect or misleading and the individual is being personally harmed as a result, isn't that exactly the sort of problem that data protection laws (and the anti-blacklisting laws, and defamation laws more generally, for that matter) are trying to fix?

It doesn't make any practical difference whether the questionable personal data happens to be stored in something structured like a formal employee record or in unstructured form through emails shared by other staff. It's the data, how it's being used and who is using it that matter the most.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#87

Post by pwinnski » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #59

wallace_f wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real world is crazy. The amount of bullying, stalking and attacks I've gotten after getting a series of promotions in a rotten workplace with a few bad apples is unbelievable. If I knew better, I'd have paid attention to the above comment.

> The real world is crazy. It's quite amazing how large the gap is between the way the world is described to us through various mediums, versus the clearly observable reality of it. FTA: > I approached the individuals and the institutions concerned about the content of my Subject Access Request. They all refused to discuss the matter with me, so I can only speculate as to what was going on. Of course, these people we…

The leak of Sony emails a while back revealed that high-level Sony execs seemed to emailing at the emotional maturity level of middle-schoolers.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#88

Post by kire456 » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

hycaria wrote: post #41

kire456 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah stuff like that happen, have and will, (...) good luck fighting that Fatalism like the kind you suggest adds nothing to the discussion, and indeed to the academic community. It allows bad actors to keep acting badly. An article like this might motivate someone in power to examine whether this kind of conduct occurs in their institution. I don't know about you, but I see a positive expected value. And I am not…

Well if you cut part of the sentence, of course it sounds fatalist, but that refered to the specific part where people talk and use phones to the same extend of giving honest, confidential feedback. And you'll eventually have no spur of those discussions. And bad students will still be spoken of, as luckily do bad advisors. Please don't tweak sentences to make them fit to whatever discourse you want. As for the secon…

Your entire first paragraph as written conveys that the situation can not be changed, and the victim must change themself. This, in my opinion, is fatalist.

Please clarify what you mean if you find you have been misunderstood instead of getting angry and assuming malice.

I know several people in my tiny part of academia alone, whose eminence is well established, and who would not much change this by telling colleagues a certain individual is impossible to work with. I agree that it would take a vindictive mind to do so, but I am asking you to explain the facts any other way:

> Firstly, my eminent and influential PhD supervisor had let it be widely known that they thought I was an unpleasant person, impossible to work with, fundamentally stupid, and that I definitely shouldn’t be doing a doctorate.

I know no decent people who would say this about someone in a professional setting, let alone write it down and send it to many people. Also, no honest assessment of someone's academic skills can include the words "fundamentally stupid" if they are able to get into a PhD program, right?

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#89

Post by gota » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #82

>I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email. The scariest part is that this is apparently possible in countries under the jurisdiction of GDPR now (and possibly even outside of it). Your private emails talking about a third party might be exposed at the request of the said third party. Does no one el…

Regulations that are stronger than they should are made to be broken and circumvented.

There's at least one likely future in which, following a couple multi-million lawsuit baseds on such requests, a kind of 'blind referencing' becomes the norm, taught and enforced by companies and organizations. "Never refer to individuals by name, use the Company Directory's Hash Function". Or something silly like that.

Just like companies delete employees emails in the second they are allowed to do so by law - can you imagine if the law was to keep them forever? We'd have extreme changes in email formats and technology every decade or so, to render it impossible to read old-enough emails from disgruntled ex-employees and etc.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#90

Post by clavalle » Thu, Jul 25, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

Singletoned wrote: post #35

As a fellow Aspy, I started reading this thinking, I bet he's a bit of a difficult person. Maybe an Aspy. > Where my personality was called into question perhaps my working-class background, my northern accent, and my Aspergers could be a reasonable explanation. Ah! Yes, I can guess which one of those three is the reason people found you difficult.

I know plenty of people on the spectrum that are pleasant to be around and work with.

Engaging differently socially, while difficult in some sense, isn't necessarily unpleasant.