Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
101–110 of 209 posts
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first job was at a unionized workplace. I ended up doing more work to cover the guy that was loafing around under the protection of the union. Who protects you from the protectors? Rational or not, since that time, I am suspicious of the personal work ethic of those arguing for unions.
Why didn't you just not cover for him?
For real. This problem exists independent of unions.
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm not saying this person is wrong or did the wrong thing. I really don't have enough information. Despite what other people may claim about why this story was previously flagged, this is probably why: we don't have enough information to know for sure this story is the truth, but people are going to come armed with their own presuppositions and argue about it anyway. > On its face I would have to entertain the ide…
I don't think that's enough reason to be flagged. 90% of the submissions from people sharing their experience with a company/product here would fall under that description as well (and many of those are upvoted because they seem useful) That dude who interned at repl.it a while back and posted about a mildly bad experience was upvoted to the front page for over a day. people had their pitchforks out. I think we shoul…
I agree that this a perfectly on-topic post and worthy of discussion (in part because it was well written). I was just countering the claim/insuation that people were flagging the story because of their own prejudice against trans people (or whatever).
> But the silence from Rune, and dialogue suppression tactics by mystery parties honestly just make me more inclined to believe there is at least a grain of truth in the original submission.
Hypothetically, if Rune was in the right and the OP had seriously misrepresented the situation, what would be the right thing for Rune to do?
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
As another trans person that's been in a similar position before, it's really frustrating how many loops I've gone through where the moment I'd get to some part where it wasn't voice only anymore, you could just hear the tone shift and get rejected shortly after. Combine that with the current tech market being on a downswing and it's not unreasonable that this would take a while to find a new place.
I've met more than one hiring manager who tacitly refuses to hire anyone who is transgendered. Of course this is only revealed in confidence, and they'll deny it if asked. The reason is typically one or more of: - they don't want the rest of the team to have to walk on eggshells regarding pronouns and so on, or - they don't want to have to deal with any fallout from female employees getting pissed about males using t…
I’ve heard of managers who are so inclusive of trans women that they talk down to them and give them menial clerical tasks (as an engineer) as if they were cis women.
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#105Honestly, while I believe a lot of the perspective shared, there always seems to be a huge lack of objective assessment of options for these folks. In tech there are many incredibly high paying jobs - taking control over your situation has a low bar. if you don’t like your manager, taking the view that if you escalate a formal complaint to HR (in doing so lose all trust you manager and HR may have in you), you’ll be…
I have a different take: Be the change you want to be. Everyone just says "leave" but what if you have no where to go, and inversely, if everyone is just leaving, then there is no incentive for organizations to change. You can argue its "futile" but the truth is, its not, these things compound, the more people do it, the less it can be swept up and hidden away. Real change is thousands and thousands of people doing s…
I don't think it's futile to try to change an organization within, but depending on the level of toxicity a lot of times leaving (and giving opportunities to others who want to leave and are still there) does more good than spinning your wheels someplace.
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#106Honestly, while I believe a lot of the perspective shared, there always seems to be a huge lack of objective assessment of options for these folks. In tech there are many incredibly high paying jobs - taking control over your situation has a low bar. if you don’t like your manager, taking the view that if you escalate a formal complaint to HR (in doing so lose all trust you manager and HR may have in you), you’ll be…
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Please actually respond to the points made given their most charitable interpretation, as the guidelines suggest.
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#107This workplace sounds like a scary environment; this person presents themselves as someone who takes a lot of effort to try and make happy. Frankly it sounds exhausting. I don't get it; I manage 15-20 people and this stuff never comes up. They're visibly quite a diverse group and the rest of it has just never has been an issue, or any of my concern. I advocate for them against their goals and desires and have never c…
I’m not in a position to evaluate your management, but I do think it’s important to point out that you and/or your org may have biases which make it harder for you to see issues, and which may discourage people from raising concerns. Discrimination is only extra work if it’s a conscious goal, and it’s easy to miss if your effort avoidance signals the bias as “normal”.
It’s entirely possible you’re totally unbiased and your self described laziness is warranted. But it’s at least as likely somewhere on the spectrum of not enough of a problem for people to risk rocking the boat.
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#108This is an incredible piece. The fact that the 20% of the company laid off were all minority groups is absolutely insane. LinkedIn says they have at minimum 50 employees, meaning at least 10 people were laid off. Here is their LinkedIn post (linked on their website), https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058845... " It is estimated that one in five transgender people will experience homelessness. Unfo…
… but you have to ask - why can’t this person find a job? Surely not every employer is non-inclusive. There’s smells of a partial story all through this.
Anecdotal story time, when I was a young student in France, I believed that discrimination was mostly a thing from the past, I believed that in 2000, being black wouldn't affect hiring decisions that much and wouldn't make it much harder to find a job.
Then two very good friends of mine graduated, they were both black, they were both French citizens from the French islands, they both graduated as electronics engineers within the top 10% of their class, they were well-spoken, and pretty much serious model students. The average time to find a class for people who graduated in their major was less than 2 months. One of my friend found a job in 6 months, the other in 5 months. Both of them had a starting salary that was more than 40% lower than the average salary of the other students in my university graduating in the same major.
That's when I discovered that discrimination still exists and that it has tremendous impact. So, it doesn't surprise me at all that being transgendered makes finding a job significantly harder.
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#109This is an incredible piece. The fact that the 20% of the company laid off were all minority groups is absolutely insane. LinkedIn says they have at minimum 50 employees, meaning at least 10 people were laid off. Here is their LinkedIn post (linked on their website), https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058845... " It is estimated that one in five transgender people will experience homelessness. Unfo…
… but you have to ask - why can’t this person find a job? Surely not every employer is non-inclusive. There’s smells of a partial story all through this.
A lot of whistleblowers can't seem to find work after they blow the whistle
weird
Re: I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
#110My read:
Person A was potentially discriminated against, which combined with the previous incident of discrimination understandably got the author's hackles raised.
Person B may have been fired for any number of reasons, very few of which are any of the author's business. I've had to fire people who were viewed as great by their peers because they were browsing illegal porn at work, or because they sexually harassed a coworker, or they flagrantly and dangerously violated InfoSec policy, or they were observed not once but twice shooting up heroin in the work locker room. HR isn't going to share any of those reasons with nosy coworkers, and the person who was fired is also unlikely to admit to it.
After that it sounds like the author made themselves a completely unbearable coworker. ~50 person startups have code quality issues, bad documentation, lack of formal processes, etc, almost as a rule. If the author was making as big of a stink as it sounds like they were about it, they were demonstrably doing their job poorly.
While their involvement in championing person A may have absolutely factored into the decision to lay them off, so could their (potentially) inappropriate prying into the decision about person B, or their general unwillingness to help the startup meet their ship dates. Or the company could've done layoffs purely based on project need, compensation, and role redundancy (how companies are supposed to do layoffs), and the first 90% of the article could've been irrelevant to the decision.