A Colleague Drank My Breast Milk and Other Wall Street Tales | Hacker News Reader

A Colleague Drank My Breast Milk and Other Wall Street Tales

nytimes.com

89 pointspavornyoh78 comments

There was a real suggestion buried in this piece. Ban mandatory arbitration. I'm most interested in knowing what HN thinks about that piece, since I have no informed opinion of working conditions on Wall Street.

Mandatory arbitration seems like a generally bad idea that employees should be protected from. Does anyone have a good argument counter?

Mandatory arbitration reduces the cost of resolving disputes (i.e. lawyer's fees). There are many arbitrators available who are comparable to the courts in outcome, but much speedier, more predictable, and cheaper. In cases where the parties are interested in good low cost dispute resolution, they may be willing to choose one of these arbitrators to reduce uncertainty and transaction costs. In other cases, one party may pay the other extra to 'buy' biased arbitration, or a specific arbitrator (or set of rules) may be selected as a way of shifting risk from one party to another, much like buying insurance; I do not see why this should be disallowed.

There is also a signalling aspect to this, which we usually do not account for. By allowing the other party to select the arbitrator, you may be showing that you trust them; refusing their pick may be a sign of deeper issues.

Ah, perhaps I should have been more specific.

Having mandatory arbitration be a part of an employment contract seems like it is something that should be disallowed as part of employee protections. Or perhaps disallowing the choice of arbitrator by the employer would be sufficient.

I don't care (I don't think) if two companies agree to mandatory arbitration as part of their business dealings, in part because it seems more like a meeting of equals. But for vastly unequal negotiations (renters would also be a likely culprit) it seems like a 'works in theory, but not in practice'.

I know that in Canada, mandatory arbitration for consumers was disallowed recently in BC. Note that I'm not a lawyer or in the know, this is just a google search result: http://www.duhaimelaw.com/2011/03/18/supreme-court-of-canada...

By disallowing mandatory arbitration, you are essentially putting a substantial risk premium on the deal (and undiversified entities will probably have to buy insurance for it). This extra cost is likely to be reflected in reduced demand (i.e. less hiring) or reduced price (or salary); I am not sure this is a desirable policy.

In any case, isn't this whole problem caused by an ineffective, slow, costly, and unpredictable legal system? Would it not be better to fix the courts, so that people actually wanted to use them?

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

"Estimates of employee win rates and damage award amounts based on the AAA-CC filings data indicate that arbitration outcomes are generally less favorable to employees than those from employment litigation."

"These results suggest that, while a substantial minority of employees use self-representation, in the large majority of instances employees are retaining counsel to represent them in employment arbitration. The cases in which employees do have representation by counsel are on average those in which they have a greater chance of success and recover larger damage awards. Thus employment arbitration appears to be a dispute resolution system predominantly based on employee representation by counsel, as is the case with litigation."

So the takeaways here are the arbitration is worse for employees than litigation, and that employees usually need a lawyer for the arbitration process. The study notes that more research is needed, but it's far from clear than arbitration is a good idea for larger complaints, much less as the only option available.

I would love to see some citation that shows businesses without mandatory arbitration clauses have to buy insurance or otherwise have to offer lower wages. This sounds very similar to other unsubstantiated but oft-repeated arguments about unionization, torts, consumer protection laws, etc.

I don't disagree with you about the legal system, but how exactly will the court system become reformed through disuse?

There are also papers which support the notion that arbitration is more favorable to the complainant.[1] We can all cherry-pick documents that support our prior beliefs, but if neither side can convince the other, as is the case here, I think it is more fair to say that the evidence is unclear.

Nobody has to buy insurance against employee claims, but many of the largest insurers offer it, which suggests that this is a common issue.[2]

[1] http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...

[2] https://www.nationwide.com/employment-practices-liability-in...

The paper that you cited doesn't contradict anything I said or support what you're saying:

"...even the more refined recent studies show that lower-paid employees still had quite respectable success rates in arbitration, ranging from about 21% to almost 40%. That compares very favorably with the 23% win rate of union-represented employees that I found in one of the oldest and most respected labor arbitration systems in the country."

The author is comparing arbitration and arbitration, not arbitration and courts. Is there any place in the article where he addresses the research in the other paper, or is he just saying "it's not that bad."

Also, I'm not sure what the existence of insurance against employee claims has to do with the claim that wages would be lowered? Do you have any evidence for a connection other than inductive reasoning?

>"Experienced plaintiffs' attorneys have estimated that only about 5% of the individuals with an employment claim who seek help from the private bar are able to obtain counsel."

>"One study concluded that litigation is not a plausible option for employees below around the $60,000 income level, but arbitration is a realistic alternative"

>" The American Arbitration Association in one study found a winning rate of 63% for arbitral claimants. 41 In a much-criticized system operated by the securities industry, employees still prevailed 55% of the time, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office." By contrast, plaintiffs' success rates in separate surveys of federal court and EEOC trials were only 14.9% and 16.8%, respectively."

Did you read any of the paper at all?

...uh, still comparing apples to oranges, I see, and the American Arbitration Association hasn't published their full dataset, but according to their internal study that contradicts external studies, it's great? Here's a paper that digs into this a bit more:

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

So if people don't have access to legal representation below a certain income level, the solution is not to increase accessibility to courts or to allow them to represent themselves in court, but instead to set up binding arbitration where they also have no representation? Do you feel that in abstraction, a neutral observer would reach that conclusion?

While reducing costs is a valid concern for both parties, particularly the employer, I wonder if there is a better approach than binding arbitration with the arbiter selected by the employer, which has serious conflict-of-interest concerns?

I would suggest fixing the legal system, so that dispute resolution through the courts was timely, lower-cost, and more predictable. Trial lawyers will probably oppose any changes to their rent-gathering system, but this seems to be the first-best choice.

So why should arbitration be mandatory rather than voluntary? If you both want to take arbitration at the time of dispute it can be done. This just sounds like the employer using a time of goodwill where its difficult to argue (signing an employment contract) to get an employee to 'agree' to sign away what should be a fundamental right to a fair hearing

I never said arbitration should be mandatory. I am merely making the case for why it is a useful term of a contract, much like a late fee, performance bonus, or M&M color requirement.[1] You are also assuming that the arbitration will be unfair, which may or may not be the case; I have seen evidence on both sides, and there are many arbitrators who reach decisions more favorable to plaintiffs than the courts do, but at much lower transaction costs. Transaction costs often dominate employer-employee disputes.

[1] http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp

The thing is, insurance is almost always meant to spread around risk from random events, such as a car accident, unexpected disease, act of nature, or in the most extreme case, an engineering or manufacturing mistake that causes a rocket to blow up. Except in cases of fraud, these situations arise randomly or due to systemic problems that can be quantified within the context of the insured parties. With arbitration, especially when mandated by an employer, the process is easily used to make possible behavior that the legal system would otherwise never allow, by people who fully intend to do so, just like when someone buys insurance with the intent of burning their own house down for the cash payout. Unlike the insurance company, however, the employee has no remaining legal recourse outside of a predetermined (and possibly biased) arbitration process just because it is in the contract.

If an employer is explicitly trying to minimize their risk and costs by mandating arbitration how can you ever trust them to pick an unbiased arbiter? If an agent is trying to maximize their outcomes by forcing arbitration, why would they then chose any arbiter that isn't more likely to side with them?

You can argue that allowing arbitration is a trust signal, but at the same time it can send a signal that the employer is planning on, or at least thinks it a possibility, that they will violate some terms of the contract, whether those terms are explicit or implicit (i.e. due to legislation or court precedent). The problem is that the information assymetry between an employer and employee is so vast such that arbitration is a tool easily used to further exploit workers.

>"The thing is, insurance is almost always meant to spread around risk from random events..."

Health 'insurance' covers many predictable issues, such as eye glasses and continuing care issues, but I will grant you that insurance is generally best used to hedge against risk. A number of national US insurance providers offer policies which cover employee suits, so it must be a large, insurable market.[1]

>"If an employer is explicitly trying to minimize their risk and costs by mandating arbitration how can you ever trust them to pick an unbiased arbiter? If an agent is trying to maximize their outcomes by forcing arbitration, why would they then chose any arbiter that isn't more likely to side with them?"

There are many kinds of risk which one might try to minimize; one of these risks might be that of a long, drawn-out civil jury trial which can take a long time to be seen, and have a completely unpredictable outcome. Having an arbitrator decide against you for a reasonable sum might be preferable to devoting time and resources to a trial and investor relations disaster over many years (even if the verdict is in your favor). In addition, having a defined process from the outset may help the damaged party get their issue resolved quickly and easily; as a long civil suit can be ruinous to an individual (even if they win). In short, real people are not risk-tolerant robots.

[1] https://www.nationwide.com/employment-practices-liability-in...

I came here to say this. Never touch a job, contract, anything that takes away your right to avail yourself of the legal system. There are quite a few "Christian" organizations (in particular, rehabs) that require "biblical" arbitration. While the discussion around this is usually limited to "lol conservatives are scared of sharia law and then this???", the real issue is that arbitration clauses, whether they're founded in corporate culture or bibilical law, always hurt the person who gave up their legal rights.

Perhaps the corporate U4 agreements are more honest, as their purpose is simply to save the employer the cost of arbitration, but they're every bit as scary.

Don't sign away your rights!

They always hurt the person who gave up their rights?

I'd argue that 99.9% of the time, they don't. How often do people want to sue their employer, anyway?

I've worked at two big-name companies, and I think they both had arbitration classes. I don't remember for sure. Never mattered.

It is always either neutral or negative is probably what OP meant here. I.e. it is never in your interests to have such a clause.

In theory, you could use that clause as leverage for a better salary or benefits or other positive outcomes, but in practice I doubt that there are any cases of employment contracts where you give up this right for anything other than 'the right to sign the employment contract'.

I feel as though being a stickler for your contract rights places you in a bit stronger negotiating position, if only on a purely psychological level.

It's often very positive because by signing the contract, you get a potentially desirable job.

I agree that these sorts of clauses should be banned, but "never sign a mandatory arbitration clause" is overly simplistic advice.

Rights still matter even if you don't exercise them. The presence of those rights can make your employer act better than they would have just because of the increased chance of being sued by some employee. Even if you would have tolerated larger violations of your rights than your fellow coworkers, the least tolerant coworkers protect the rest because they will take action against smaller violations.

Unless one thinks small violations of workers' rights can make themself worse off than larger violations, they benefit from protecting their class rights for the collective effect.

I don't think you understood my point. I don't think mandatory arbitration clauses are ideal, and I wish they were banned. That's what you're arguing here and I agree with you

The point is that it's overly simplistic advice to say never to sign such a thing, when there are potentially huge upsides (getting a high-paying job that treats nearly all employees well).

This is like asking "Why do the police matter? I've never been the victim of a crime!".

The police are protecting you because they offer a deterrent to crime, and the civil law protects by providing a deterrent to your employer fucking you over. Signing away your right to sue your employer when they give you the shaft is just as stupid as signing away your right to call the police when someone steals your car.

Aren't you always able to sue? Even if you sign a contract saying that you consent to internal arbitration? You can always sue.

No, you can't. That's what the "mandatory int "mandatory arbitration" means. Those contracts are binding, even in discrimination claims.

Nope. Not if you sign one of these.

You can always attempt to sue. As in, there is nothing stopping you from serving the papers to a court to initiate the process. However, it would be a pretty clear-cut dismissal motion if a mandatory arbitration clause in in place. And you'd probably piss off the judge for wasting their time to boot.

You have to be a bit careful with things like this. There is an implicit assumption that this is a pure one way play. In other words that there is no recompense for waiving the right to court arbitration.

Now, I don't happen to know the ins and outs of the pre-crash Bear contracts for traders, but from my experience of similar contracts in similar institutions, I tended to get amply compensated for the various things I waived my rights to.

There are cases, mine included, where both parties signed a contract with full knowledge and were able to walk away if they were unhappy. I'm going to guess that, as much as we all regularly feel sorry for the plight of investment bankers, this was likely true in this case too.

That's not to say I have any issue with employee protection in general. It's hugely important. But there are most definitely cases where the relationship is not necessarily one sided.

That's not going to happen. The trend has been towards increased enforceability of arbitration in employment contracts.

I don't think people should be allowed to waive their rights to civil claims when there's a public policy implication to the claims (discrimination of all sorts, where the suit serves not just to remedy a specific harm but to deter it in the future, would be a canonical example) --- but SCOTUS has decided that people can.

While I completely agree that the behaviour described by the author is totally unacceptable and must be rooted out from the workplace, I also find the context ironic: Bear Stearns just before the 2008 financial crisis.

As we aspire to a better society, is this really the goal we want to reach for? Better female representation in a corrupt enterprise that precipitated a global financial crisis which caused hardship for hundreds of millions of people?

I hope the author, a member of senior management, was troubled by more than just sexism at pre-collapse Bear Stearns.

Sexism may have been one of the problems that contributed to the problem. The collapse originated in that frat boy echo chamber of insanity. Maybe if Wall Street was a place where responsible adults of both genders thrived, it could have been prevented. Just as many men as women feel alienated by that environment.

I usually find arguments about how "underrepresented group X in upper management will somehow make the company better" unconvincing, but the downfall of Bear Sterns is a great and decisively convincing example of how a monoculture with a lack of multiple perspectives and backgrounds created a really corrupt and toxic environment. At the very least, the sexism towards women in the corporate culture should've been seen as warning indicator for their business practices as well.

In this case, I think sexism was as much a symptom as a cause, and the larger cultural problems were very destructive to women, men, and the US economy.

Bear Stearns was the naughty upstart.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/why-larry-summers-is-...

http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html

Sometimes rules matter.

When things are going well, risk takers and rule breakers are heroes. When things start going downhill, they're the first ones with arrows in their backs.

(not excusing giving liar loans to strippers... go see The Big Short... splitting hairs but I think in some ways Moody's and MBIA and AIG and were more corrupt because their job was to keep people honest and reduce risk, instead of engaging in regulatory arbitrage, financial shenanigans to let people ramp up risk. Bear Stearns you sort of expected to be riverboat gamblers. They were the guys who took theglobe.com public when Goldman and Morgan Stanley laughed. Unlike Lehman they were in good enough shape to get taken over by a TBTF monstrosity to JPM's ongoing benefit, their takeover didn't bring down the system, and they lost mostly all their own money. left as an exercise, whether behavior towards women, civility etc. are better or worse in startups. )

I never understood why mandatory arbitration is ever allowed. Someone should be able to decide if they want arbitration after the incident has occurred. The default should be court and arbitration should only happen if both parties agree it is a better course of action.

> I thought of the guy known for dropping Band-Aids on women’s desks when the trading floor was cold because he didn’t “want to be distracted,”

...I don't understand. Can anyone explain?

It's a dude being fucking creepy. You don't want to know more than that.

Nipples

I'm not sure why everyone is being so elusive with their answers. Nipples (on either sex) can become erect when exposed to cold. The band-aids are meant to imply that the women should apply them to their nipples to hide them from poking through their bra and shirt. If you've ever seen a marathon runner with two red streaks on their shirt running down from each nipple, you'll better understand why. Some runners do, in fact, put band-aids (or duct tape, etc.) over their nipples to protect the tissue from rubbing against their shirt.

Since all the other comments here seem to be afraid to fully explain...

Cold makes the skin hard, especially the nipples. This happens on men and women, but it tends to have a bigger effect on women, in part because their nipples are larger and in part because they tend to wear thinner fabrics.

If a woman is going to go out in a thinner fabric and she knows that where she is going might be cold, she'll put band aids on her nipples to help smooth it out under her clothing to prevent them from poking out, which can draw unwanted attention.

The implication here is that the man can not control himself and wants them to cover up because he will stare at their breasts if they don't.

This is such a distinctly American(tm) problem that I can't help but chuckle.

Why are we so puritanical about sex, gender, etc?

I'm not absolving the guy doing this really creepy thing, but I sort of understand it.

If you were raised in a society that was very sexually repressed, then it's only natural that you'd develop these strange behaviors around the opposite sex. I can only shudder trying to imagine how warped that individual is.

It's highly unlikely that someone would leave bandaids because they were uncomfortable around nipples. It's a power play, a way of signaling.

I could understand the power play angle if it was something more mundane, like a slap on the ass.

But this whole band-aid jibe requires a certain amount of premeditated thought. It looks more like sexual deviance to me, rather than simple power play.

Even at a bank a slap on the ass will get you in hot water with HR. Bandaids have plausible deniability.

Ugh. I'm almost sorry I asked.

I assumed it must have been something much more benign.. Like too lazy to throw away used ones. My frame of reference is so different than that environment, I couldn't imagine someone would do that for that reason.

Why oh why did you have to ask! I didn't get it, now I do, and I'm that much angrier this fine morning.

> My candidate took the job, and while she was passionate about her work, she was uncomfortable with the raucous trading floor environment, and lasted only five years.

I'm surprised five years is considered short.. I imagine people in the tech industry don't get treated nearly as badly but we seem to switch jobs way more often.

Why is that?

Sounds to me like she lasted only five years in the entire industry. That's short for tech too.

Wall Street has a bigger problem, that many financial professionals are able to rationalize doing work that harms others. So let's say we can make the big evil banks a better place for women and other people with real life interests to work. Should we encourage our daughters to go work on Wall St? Or should we discourage them, not b/c they can't do the work, but b/c doing the work is harmful to others?

Yes I know banks are necessary, some do good. But I'm talking about the speculative operations at TBTF institutions that continue to add fragility and risk to our economy. These same institutions also tend to be the worst places to work for women (or anyone who has outside interests other than making money). I don't think that is a coincidence, but rather a consequence of the same underlying worldview.

This is what happens when frat boys get jobs. I think one piece of the puzzle is fostering less misogynistic environments in college, before these dudes enter the workforce.

But seriously, how fucking disgusting. This article ruined my morning, I'm pissed off now.

There are plenty of frat boys that aren't assholes. There are plenty of assholes that are borne of other stimuli.

I can agree on "disgusting," though. The wage gap's prevalence at Wall Street is unforgivable and needs to be fixed.

Frats are like the perfect petri dish for misogynism and racism. You get a bunch of white guys together in a usually racially and always sexually homogeneous club, and these kids, who don't know much about the world yet, suddenly don't have to be accountable for saying racist or sexist things. I have watched friends of mine from high school join a frat in college, and you know what? They mostly turned into douchenozzles.

Compare to something like the punk scene where radical politics, antiracism, lgbt rights, antimisogyny are almost prerequisites for membership, the community is diverse, and racism/sexism/homophobia are often called out on the spot...you see ppl go in with hateful attitudes and come out more tolerant people.

There are white frats, black frats, party frats, and studious frats. You can justify generalizing all you want but it still reeks of ignorance.

I'm sorry that some of your friends from highschool turned into douchenozzles, I'm sure if they didn't join a frat they'd be outstanding citizens.

I get what you're saying, but surely you can meet the OP somewhere closer to the middle? Fraternities seem to have done their part to earn their poor reputation, if one extrapolates from the information most of us are exposed to. When incidents of racism are publicized, they usually have to do with fraternity members. When incidents of the worst kinds of misogeny are publicized, they usually have to do with fraternity members. Those of us who are grossed out by frats aren't making this stuff up.

Obviously the apparent trend could be wrong. You could argue that mainstream media is unfairly biased against fraternities. Or that the good (or boring) frats don't do anything sensational. But, in that case, your argument shouldn't be, "You should never generalize!!" The response to that knee-jerk reaction is, "Um... I'm not blind. I read what I read. I see what I see. I have experienced what I have experienced, and it tells me that frat boys are assholes." Instead you could acknowledge that the apparent trend exists and is real, but provide evidence or reasoning for the trend being misleading.

The burden of proof is on the commenter that generalized. The plural of anecdote is not data. Generalizing that widely without very explicit proof is a pretty poor idea, from an argumentative standpoint.

Meanwhile, plenty of frats also do projects that improve their communities and campuses, and raise money for good causes. The "apparent trend" doesn't exist, and if it does I'll ask you to prove it.

The "apparent trend" doesn't exist

Prove the "apparent trend" exists? Okay, let's try to "prove" it to you. I just did the following google search: site:cnn.com "fraternity members". Let's see what the "apparent trend" is! Starting at the top:

1. Pi Delta Psi members charged in hazing incident

2. Video shows chilling aftermath of university shooting (victims AND actor(s) were fraternity members/pledges, btw)

3. Zeta Beta Tau fraternity members disrespected us, wounded veterans say

4. New clues in death of Clemson fraternity pledge Tucker Hipps (this one's about hazing)

5. Schools knew of trouble before student deaths (hazing)

6. Video shows chilling aftermath of university shooting (same incident as 2.)

7. Sigma Nu frat at Old Dominion suspended for offensive banners

8. SAE brothers at OU facing death threats, assaults, lawyer says (don't get the title wrong, this one is as much about the racist chants of SAE frat members caught on video as it is about the death threats they received afterward)

9. U. of Oklahoma fraternity shuttered after racist chant

10. Fraternities: 'A form of American apartheid' (Opinion)

So, you still think the "apparent trend" doesn't exist? You could get similar results doing an informal poll. Just walk around asking people who weren't in a frat, "What do you think of frats?"

As I said originally, all of this could be biased and misleading and just plain wrong. But not at least saying "Yeah, I admit, frats appear to be pretty fucked up" is just disingenuous and isn't going to convince anyone.

The burden of proof is on the commenter that generalized.. The plural of anecdote is not data... Generalizing that widely without very explicit proof is a pretty poor idea, from an argumentative standpoint.... and if it does I'll ask you to prove it

As a skeptic myself, the fact that so many of us can't seem to understand that human lives and opinions are not run by deductive reasoning and exhaustive proofs really does us a disservice. If you want to change minds and make real change, you should get to know how people think. If you want to be considered an out-of-touch blow-hard, keep on talking about the burden of proof. Trust me, I've been that guy, I know.

I realize I may have been fairly harsh in my choice of words. I'm making a note now not to get so angry.

I can admit that the media portrays frats as "fucked up", I just don't agree that that's the truth. I think I may have misread your argument, or in any case responded to the wrong part of it.

I agree that frats could be kept under better watch by universities and colleges, and that those specific case that you show shouldn't have happened.

At the same time, though, frats are not just a means to an end for partying and racism at college. This much is clear because of the good many frats do for their communities.

I'll concede that there's an apparent trend portrayed by the media. I just disagree with it.

> out-of-touch blow-hard

I'll agree with this one too. Sorry.

> The plural of anecdote is not data.

I never understood this sentiment. That's exactly what data is; we call them surveys or polls.

Anecdotes often lack rigidity or quantification, and they may be based on preconceived notions rather than genuine hypotheses.

You're right in a sense, but you have to be careful as to how you sample anecdotes for them to be factual rather than anecdotal evidence. "I talked to some guys from a frat and they were mean, thus all frat guys are mean" does not logically follow.

You know you're just making the case for sterotyping without using the word "sterotype", right?

I'm not being snarky, for the purpose of this post I'll explicitly state I'm not making the case that all stereotyping is bad (and not not saying that either). It's much easier to make the case that frats in general are too amalgamous to be held to their sterotype, and that frat membership is not a prerequisite to fitting the sterotype.

You know you're just making the case for sterotyping without using the word "sterotype", right?

No, I don't know where you get that from. I'm not arguing that prejudicial stereotypes are good or should be used. I'm suggesting that the strategy of pretending a stereotype doesn't exist is a poor strategy for fighting the use of prejudicial stereotypes.

We all know our brains are unbelievably bad at statistics. You're not going to get humans to all of a sudden start applying rigorous probabilistic analysis and deductive reasoning to inform their opinions.

You can give statistical reasoning to your white friends for why they shouldn't cross the street when they see a group of brown or black kids dressed "like gang members" up ahead. You might be right, and they might even agree. And guess how much difference that will make the next time the situation comes up?

It's a strategy that's as ignorant of human nature as Communism and just as likely to be successful.

Just wanna say that I don't think "white" is a requirement. It's the homogeneity of culture, background, and privilege level that makes it possible, though those things are pretty highly correlated with whiteness in the USA.

There's some irony in the fact that you wrote a bunch of fairly intolerant generalizations while mentioning hatefulness and tolerance.

Your friends from high school are responsible for themselves. Consider for a moment that perhaps your friends just grew up to be "douchenozzles" on their own, without the influence of a frat.

Your assertion that frats are racially homogenous is outright wrong and I'll ask you to cite your claims. And you think some members of frats aren't gay or similar?

Something something, generalization, plural of anecdote...

For someone who champions tolerance, you don't play the role very well.

> This is what happens when frat boys get jobs

Why do you think it is OK make a massive generalization about a group of people like that? While I wasn't personally involved in Greek life during college, I have very good friends that were upstanding and principled members of fraternities that would certainly abhor the horrific and abusive behavior described in this article.

If you met a nice person today and later found out they were in a fraternity during college, would you immediately make judgements about their morals and conduct just based on that association?

Yeah. Yeah i would, honestly. There's always the exception to the rule, but we're talking about systemic issues, not playing the "but not all men..!" game. Refer to my other reply but when you put people who have grown up in a racist and sexist society into a racially and sexually homogeneous group where they spend most of their time, racist and sexist attitudes will be fostered in the absence of accountability. (Which u don't have, because racially and sexually homogeneous.)

You know, I've had people assume I was an inferior software developer solely because I was in a social fraternity and therefore must not have spent any time studying for my exams or working on my problem sets. That's not really a nice prior to have about an individual, sort of how it would be considered quite offensive to assume that a woman were an inferior software developer due to her gender.

Additionally, I'm not going to pretend that Greek life is 100% free of douchebaggery. Some people in fraternities do bad things to other people, or harbor bigoted worldviews. I feel that you grossly overestimate the proportion of people who do. To address the racial and sexual homogeneity point, I'm fairly confident that every single fraternity at my alma mater had individuals of color and homosexual individuals. My own certainly did.

I'd also like to point out the obvious blanket statements you've made about the demographics and attitudes of fraternity members. However, I really don't think anyone or anything can budge your opinion.

I understand that it is true that some fraternities have systemic issues with racism and misogyny, but isn't that a dangerous road to go down? Would it be OK for me to make judgements about the attitudes towards the treatment of women of my Muslim colleagues and acquaintances, without knowing anything else about them? Or would it be acceptable for me to make assumptions about the criminal history of acquaintances, just because they grew up in a "racially homogeneous" area that statistically has higher rates of crime?

While I accept that some social associations may have disturbing incidences of systemic problems that must be addressed, I strongly disagree that it is OK to make judgements and assumptions about individual people without knowing anything about who they are as a person.

>This is what happens when frat boys get jobs. I think one piece of the puzzle is fostering less misogynistic environments in college, before these dudes enter the workforce.

Considering how long it took us to learn the societal lessons of how wrong it was to oppress the chosen lifestyles of the gay and lesbian community, the black community and the Jewish community, I'd be surprised you'd be so keen to start institutionally crushing someone else's chosen lifestyle simply because it distresses you to be around them. Live and let live and it takes all sorts to make the world goes both ways.

None of them should have careers because they are in a group that you don't like.... Any comment on Turing yet? Wanna take back your previous comments?

Why would I want to? Based on your persistant but unpersuasive stalking of my comments, you've clearly done something you know is wrong, and I remain convinced that you should be segregated from tech development for the safety of end users and other developers alike.

It seems you are letting your (justified) anger at the situation to cloud your judgement so much so that you fail to see the irony of how similar your generalization rhetoric is to those used in environments you abhor. How is your detrimental usage of terms like "frat boy" and "dude" different from, e.g. people who observe a few women who are not interested/good at coding and declare "Women can't code"? Or when someone declares "Racial Persecution Really Isn't The Problem In Baltimore, it's "Personal Behavior" (http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/04/28/bill-oreilly-racial...)?

I came across poignant reminder of this irony while catching up with news about university protests over the weekend: After being intimidated and physically assaulted by protesters while trying to take photos in a public space in Missouri U., the journalism student Tim Tai said "He was in a similar situation when covering last year's protests in Ferguson, ... — except 'it was the police doing it then.'" (http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-missouri-protest-camp-20...)

We should not appropriate the tactics of those we oppose.

It's funny you mention the Missouri U Tim Tai incident. That entire debacle is a good lesson for us progressives in the dangers of ultra- political correctness and knee-jerk sensitivity. And that's what I thought of when I read your comment about detrimental usage of terms like "frat boy" and "dude".

"Frat boy" and "dude" are off-limits now?

Not just fratboys tbh. Wall Street is only about the money. Like power it tends to attract the worst and corrupt the best.

"..you don't believe what's next, bankers hate him!" would make this title complete. I am absolutely full of clickbait fluff. I really hope someone takes on the content filtering space on the internet. I would happily pay xx dollars per month for a service which can accurately filter all the noise coming in and mark or even completely remove all the shit that content creators feed us just so we click on it. Arguably, the technology needed isn't sexy but at least it is a challenge compared to the 1000th CRUD startup. Why isn't anybody battling this problem?

I am sick to the stomach of it.

This is an essay, in the opinion section. It's not journalistic.

Something that polled trending news in categories like "Entertainment" and pulled key phrases, and then filtered for said phrases might be a good start.

Heck, considering how much of news is just re-posted AP wire content, you could block entire redundant chunks by simply filtering by a string long enough to be a unique phrase (surprisingly short, as little as 6 words [ https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2012/07/03/how-long-should-a... ] )

I'm familiar with the type of articles you're complaining about and agree with the complaint, but I don't believe this is one of them. The title was interesting, the article was also, and it contained concrete examples and actionable requests. I thought it was pretty good honestly.

You know, with a title like this and the source, you probably could have filtered this out yourself.

People on the internet disagree with you. Grow up and deal with it.

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