Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective | Hacker News Reader

Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

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406 pointssmsowmya604 comments

If I was back at the start of my career, I would of dismissed this article and told the author to "toughen up". After all, what's a bit of ribbing among co-workers? Surely she's just being overly-sensitive.

Until I had the (mis)pleasure of working with a truly toxic co-worker did my mindset completely change on the issue of bullying, intimidation, and hostility in the workplace. He was a senior guy, decent at his job. But how he was able to change the dynamic of multiple teams was very offsetting. Communication declined, as people didn't want to go near the team that had the guy that was insulting them everytime on a whim. Workplace politics were on the rise. The common denominator was this guy was involved with every issue. Management stayed quiet and attempted to push it under the rug for a bit, but eventually they had to take notice. It was so relieving to walk in one day to him cleaning out his desk. I remember locking eyes with him one last time and giving him a final unspoken send off with a stern glare. He turned the corner and I never saw him again. My co-workers and myself went out for lunch as a celebration. The amount of relief was incredible. It was like starting fresh again.

Back to the article, I still can't say I fully understand what this woman went through. But just having a taste of how off-putting 1 toxic employee can be really opened my eyes. I can't fathom having multiple employees or even a manager with that type of behavior. I won't comment on gender or racial issues.

Being stressed from work is okay. Some jobs have more stress than others, and at higher frequencies. But being stressed from the people at work is needless stress that compounds on top of the regular work stress that we all accept to some degree when entering a job or role.

Honestly, I think many of the dismissive reactions to these things have a similar basis. It can look like people excusing this behavior, but I think in many cases they've just never seen this behavior.

If the worst you've seen at work is friendly teasing and maybe some racy language, it's easy to assume that's what happened and someone is overreacting.

If you've seen someone truly corrosive, that assumption changes. There's a world of difference between teasing and toxicity, even if the person doing it is careful enough to use language that could fall into either category. I can only imagine the frustration of writing down someone's comments and thinking "that doesn't look so bad on paper" when context made it clear (often to everyone present) that the exchange was terrible.

And on a related note, I think companies that handle these things poorly have misunderstood their incentives. Yes, avoiding lawsuits is important to them, and yes, I can even see why they wouldn't admit there was a problem. But to not take action is terrible - as your story indicates, a sufficiently toxic employee can destroy the functioning of an entire team. Burying an incident may be easy, but it's not a good business choice when you're going to lose good, valuable staff over the issue.

(I believe The Dilbert Principle suggested this was the single most important thing a manager could do: make sure this kind of hostility never, ever persisted on a team.)

I think part of the problem is that it's hard (or impossible) to tell how much someone is exaggerating on the internet. Sometimes the answer really is "toughen up" because what they're experiencing is really nothing. Other times, it really is a horrible situation and people should be fired for it.

That's never the answer. Why is it that it's ok to not treat some people with basic human dignity and respect?

I'm not entirely sure if you're saying "toughen up" is never the answer, or "firing" is never the answer.

Assuming the former: It is entirely possible to misinterpret friendly ribbing or banter as something far more malicious. To assume the worst of someone who genuinely means no harm, and to suggest they should be punished, censored, and shunned. "Toughen up" is perhaps not quite the right phrasing here: It's asking people to perhaps extend the basic human dignity and respect you request of others, to others. Where, perhaps, simply asking them firmly to knock it off, explaining you are finding their jokes hurtful, and giving them the chance to change their behavior, is perhaps more appropriate than forming an internet lynch mob based on assumptions of malice. Treating the other person as a person capable of mistakes or being misunderstood, instead of a gremlin to simply assume the worst of.

Assuming the latter: Sometimes you simply can't work through the problem. They may be a toxic individual - they may simply be driven to toxic behavior at this job (perhaps they hate it) - perhaps it's simply a matter of deciding who you're going to keep between two people who simply cannot get along with each other, to the point of causing problems for the rest of the team. Assuming you can fix their issues when they can't isn't treating them with dignity or respect. Leaving the situation to fester and drag on isn't treating the rest of your team with dignity and respect. Firing one or both of them might not be treating them with dignity and respect either - but you've only so many options. But just because you're firing someone doesn't mean you can't at least strive to do so. Wish them well on their next venture, and mean it.

To add further to the former category: appropriate friendly ribbing or banter definitely fall under the category of basic human dignity or respect.

People cry at weddings. Not because they are sad, but because they are happy (usually). Why cry when you're happy? Studies[1] suggest that crying lowers your defenses. Similar to how salutes and handshakes were ways of demonstrating you weren't armed, you form a lot of social bonds when you are comfortable enough to be defenseless.

Friendly banter is exactly that, on an emotional level. Sure, crying may make me physically less defended, but allowing some friendly coworker banter makes me emotionally less defended. This encourages bonding. it's the difference between laughing at and laughing with.

Targeting someone maliciously is never acceptable. But friendly banter is sometimes not acceptable. Different people have different tolerances. Calling someone a fat worthless piece of garbage. Probably not ok. saying "geez, another donut?" to a coworker may trigger a group laughter (the subject included: "I start my diet tomorrow, i swear!") or it may cause a reaction the exact same way calling them a worthless piece of garbage might. Discussing their weight might make them feel vulnerable in a bonding sort of way, or in a targeted sort of way, you really should know a person before making those kind of comments though.

I had a young colleague who quit recently. He missed our weekly developer meeting (because he was new, and forgot) and when we got back, another colleague said "Yeah, since you weren't at the meeting, we spent the whole time talking about you" in a clearly joking way, trying to include the new guy in the banter. In fact, he said it to 3 different people who missed the meeting (man, a lot of people missed the meeting that week). The guy demanded he not be a part of the "bro culture" and wanted to work remotely full time. The counter was remote 3 days a week, in office 2, and his desk could be on the opposite side of the building. He rejected that. If you were there, it was apparent that he wasn't being bullied. he had moved across the state for a job and was looking for any way to be able to move back home while keeping the job. His goal was not to get dignity and respect, his goal was to get his way. If he wanted dignity and respect (and honestly thought we spent a whole meeting talking about him behind his back), then any of the concessions offered to him should have worked. Everyone on the team tried to include this guy. Treating him with kid gloves really was kinda more segregating than a toxic individual (when its better to just not talk to someone about real problems than risk upsetting them, that's an issue too). The other guys who missed the meeting looked at the clock, said a profanity, then laughed about it.

[1]: http://www.livescience.com/7854-theory-cry.html - "Crying is a highly evolved behavior," said researcher Oren Hasson, an evolutionary biologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. "My analysis suggests that by blurring vision, tears lower defenses and reliably function as signals of submission, a cry for help, and even in a mutual display of attachment and as a group display of cohesion."

Bisby, I just can't understand how you go from a - very clearly to me - thought-through understanding of the nuances of response to targeted banter, to your apparent mind-reading of your colleague's motivations. I'm not saying that his motivations weren't bound up with a desire to move back home, but you state it with such dogmatic certainty it undoes any reasonableness your previous arguments so convincingly showed. "His goal was [...] to get his way". The assumption that your view must also be his view, and that if it is not he must be duplicitous, bespeaks a terrifying lack of imagination. Perhaps he's not the kind of guy to "say a profanity" and carry on working. Who knows? Perhaps you're right, but we just can't say. Why assume the worst of him?

You're right, I can't for sure say that. I've left out some stuff, but it is sort of a "you had to be there" kind of things. A lot of small stuff added up.

He had been working 2-3 months at a job where it was clearly labeled as remote work is a one off privilege (Snowed in? Work remotely. Kid sick? Work remotely. In general, be in the office). Yet after the incident, his only demand was full time remote. He didn't care if people were reprimanded. He didn't care if he didn't have to see the people that offended him. Anyone who was actually bothered by the situation I feel would care more about having the situation corrected rather than just getting full time remote. "I don't like the culture in the programming area" - "we can move your desk so you aren't even within earshot of that area, and we'll make sure the programmers are more professional in their discussions" - "no, that won't do, I need to be full time remote"

We had previously invited this guy to partake in stuff on weekends with us. The one time he even said "maybe", he wound up going to visit his parents that weekend instead. This was not some sort of exclusionary tactic, and this was probably the first time he was "targeted" by something.

Also, I'm not going to say that the "bully" was in the right here. This was a person who was clearly not intending to be a friend. Keeping things limited to professional interactions only would have been just fine, I don't need to be friends with all my coworkers (though I could see being the only one in a department that isn't a friend as kind of intimidating, but again, that was by his decision, not anyone else's). This "bully" has a hard time determining when it is appropriate to make jokes or when he's pushing it too far. But this wasn't an exceptionally inappropriate comment in my mind.

I used a bit of hyperbole perhaps, but it truly did seem like a case of "straw that broke the camel's back." The incident very possibly did bother him, but it was an isolated incident, and any of the reparations offered to him should have worked. This was not a scenario of him being bullied constantly. In my mind, in any other scenario, this event could not have triggered the response it got. Quitting your job because they won't let you work remotely after someone says "we were talking about you when you weren't around" seems like an extreme response.

To that extent, I'm not assuming "the worst of him." He was a young homesick guy who was having an off day. Unfortunately, that off day was the day someone decided to include him in the office banter, and in that moment, he made a decision to go back home and made a last effort to keep his job while doing it.

Edit - point being that someone being constantly harassed for sexual, gender, religious, racial or whatever reasons, I can totally see making a "fuck this I'm out"... Maybe I'm too close to the situation to see why this guy was bothered so much, but his situation to me doesn't seem anything like the woman in the article's.

"Toughen up" is never the answer.

"It is entirely possible to misinterpret friendly ribbing or banter as something far more malicious. "

This is still entirely the fault of the one who mistakes ribbing for actual team building.

"To assume the worst of someone who genuinely means no harm, and to suggest they should be punished, censored, and shunned."

Telling them to knock it off is NOT censoring.

"Where, perhaps, simply asking them firmly to knock it off, explaining you are finding their jokes hurtful, and giving them the chance to change their behavior, is perhaps more appropriate than forming an internet lynch mob based on assumptions of malice"

Because no one has ever faced retaliation for doing just this. No one, upon hearing this from a co-worker, has never ratcheted up the "friendly ribbing".

> This is still entirely the fault of the one who mistakes ribbing for actual team building.

When two people agree that they're engaging in friendly banter with/against each other, and an unrelated third party freaks out with their own misinterpretation of the situation, is it still the people engaging in banter who are to blame? Because I've seen this.

And what about the person who cannot handle having their code reviewed - no matter how softly and kindly the reviewer attempts to approach the topic? Despite making it very clear that minor suggestions for further improvements aren't some kind of slanderous attack against one's personal character?

Look: We agree sometimes someone's just being a dick, even if they weren't intentionally malicious about it, and it's their fault and they need to change their behavior. But it does not follow that absolutely every bit of miscommunication is completely and utterly the fault of the person attempting to convey something. If I misremember the meaning of a word, that's on me. If I willfully twist and misinterpret someone's words, that's on me. If I mistakenly do so, when the other party has communicated quite clearly and in good will? That's still on me. Communication requires the effort of two parties, and completely absolving one of them from any roll in doing so successfully isn't reasonable or helpful.

If I have a habit of ascribing malice where there is none - in an ideal world, someone sits down and we have a conversation where they can successfully convey that, no, pointing out a typo in a doc comment isn't a personal attack on my character, we all make the same mistakes, we're just trying to help each other out and get more stuff done better as a team - they mean to offer me a hand up, rather than to put me down. I'd call this a long winded way of saying: "toughen up." What would you call it, instead? Or do you even agree with me that this conversation should happen? Surely we shouldn't just fire the person giving me a code review, because of my own hangups and hypersensitivities?

> Telling them to knock it off is NOT censoring.

Which is why I suggested it.

On the other hand, we see calls to disinvite people from conferences, ban their social media accounts, fire them, to 'dox' them and harass them off the internet entirely for perceived transgressions. These, perhaps, are attempts at censorship. This I suggest against.

> Because no one has ever faced retaliation for doing just this. No one, upon hearing this from a co-worker, has never ratcheted up the "friendly ribbing".

At which point, you've moved from assumptions of malice to evidence. Yes, there are assholes out there. It sucks. We should try to do something about it. "Doing something about it" should not be pretaliation based on thin assumptions, being an asshole before they can be an asshole.

Why is it just hard "on the internet"? And why do people find certain things easier to believe while finding others easier to dismiss as likely exaggeration?

If we could find easily-actionable answers to those two questions... sigh.

I'd assume that "on the internet" means hearing only one side ant not witnessing the story yourself.

Except its almost never teasing, its bullying.

I learned the difference between teasing someone and bullying in elementary school, directly via the education system (ie. the teacher).

Repeated 'joke' on/about the same subject? Bullying.

Is it mutual fun between/with different subjects, and can the subject themselves laugh about the joke? Teasing.

Telling someone to 'shape up' after they heard a joke regarding their race, sex, or something else the umptieth time is nigh annoying, and they will explode internally if they're introvert. People do notice this, and it gives bullies (ie. narcissists) fuel. The extroverts will more clearly defend their boundaries, so bullies tend to stick away from those. I don't know if the subject in this story is introvert, but I do know -and this is a generalisation- Indian women are rather courteous.

I agree with the distinction you're making, but I don't see at all how it supports the "almost never teasing" lead-in. I'm making a general point, and there are plenty of workplaces where "different subjects and people laugh at themselves also" is a perfectly good summary.

I also agree that teasing really shouldn't tread on race/sex/etc - even if it's innocently meant it can easily be a topic too raw for human, and too similar to not-at-all-innocent comments.

Which is why your last line is jarring - it's almost exactly the sort of comment that you and the original post are objecting to!

I think they way you know it's "almost never teasing" is that these people are not friends, they are co-workers.

I don't mean offense, but this comment seems completely insane to me - you are saying that in the majority of cases, anything insulting said among coworkers is meant as an insult rather than good-natured ribbing?

I look at the world today and despite an absolutely massive improvement in acceptance of diversity, many so called minorities seem to think things are even worse.

It makes me wonder if there is some sort of cultural misunderstanding in play here, whereby "people of color" (I despise that term) have finally achieved pure acceptance to the degree that people feel completely comfortable with them enough to not walk on eggshells in their speech, cultural harmony has finally been completely achieved, but then the informality of speech between close friends is mistakenly taken as an insult, the reaction is holy shit what a bitch, and we're back to where we started.

Somewhat naive, of course. Completely wrong - I doubt it.

Coworkers are not friends as a general rule. You get to choose your friends--you don't get to choose your conworkers. As a consequence, the inter-coworker relationship is a highly artificial and delicate one. Good natured ribbing has no place in it.

Yet good natured ribbing between co-workers happens all the time. And many co-workers like each other and became good friends.

And many don't, but are provided with no effective way to avoid it. I'm not sure what your argument is here.

> You get to choose your friends--you don't get to choose your conworkers.

I don't like that you say this. For us introverted folks, that's the only way some of us meet. This is, in a way, questioning the sincerity of my friendship with my coworker... with whom I'm now connected with pretty intimately. I know I became close with this person because I was forced to be with her 7 hours a day every weekday for 3 years. No way I would have become so connected were it not for this weird scenario.

And besides, when choosing friends myself I'm probably going to find like-minded people... life is more exciting the other way... and that's more likely to happen when relationships are made without your choice.

Nobody is saying you can't befriend your coworkers. They're saying that you can't presume friendship with coworkers as an excuse to treat them unprofessionally.

> but I don't see at all how it supports the "almost never teasing" lead-in

Agreed! Not sure where the theory I use is from but allow me to explain:

Ring 0: 0-5 people. Your best friends. Can be family members, too. Max 5 people, likely less. Ring 1: Your other family, and friends. (These are not your Facebook friends.) Ring 2: Everyone else you know, or think you know. Your co-workers are probably in ring 2. You barely know them, if at all, and you must stay courteous to them by default. Maybe you drink a cup of coffee with a few of them during a break, and eventually get close and get to ring 1 (or even 0, just don't dream about that).

[Note I am not sure if there is also a ring 3 to distinct further. I don't use it.]

So IOW I default co-workers in ring 2.

Those people in ring 0, you can say pretty much anything you want to them. I can make a very, very bad joke about something to people in ring 0 and they'll know I am joking. They can take the offence, and I can take offence from them as well, besides I know when they're joking and when not. It is because I know these people very well, for a longer period of time, and I love them. You don't make friends, you become friends; ie. you can't really force people to get higher in the ring. It kinda goes natural, over time.

The people in ring 2 require a professional attitude. Those are your co-workers. You don't insult them, you don't hurt them, you don't bully them, and... you don't tease them. Why not? Teasing belongs to those in ring 0, and perhaps in ring 1 provided you're careful.

> Which is why your last line is jarring - it's almost exactly the sort of comment that you and the original post are objecting to!

Oh, in such a situation I'd keep it before me, so that'd be some kind of thought crime. The reason why it matters in this context tho is because that detail makes it easy to envision how she became a victim of bullies. You see, bullies pick their victim like a leopard picks their pray. In this example they wouldn't pick a vocal woman who seems to stand up for themselves.

I like your explanation using rings, and I'd say there is a ring 3 which is new acquaintances. For instance, someone who you're introduced to by a ring 1 or 2, and end up hanging out with for the remainder of a night out. They're not as much a stranger as someone you pass on the sidewalk, but you only know about them based on what they've told you during this first extended encounter.

I would argue that if the repeated joke is agreed upon by all involved, it doesn't have to be bullying. Friends have inside jokes that only they enjoy and get repeated constantly. Why can't an inside joke be about someone?

I'm the worst dresser on my team and i commonly (not daily, but monthly) get "hey nice clothes!" comments. We all laugh and move on. if the comments bothered me, i could say something, or dress like an adult. The issue only occurs if it truly bothers me and im too afraid to say anything. it's pretty easy to say "are people saying things because they dont like me or because we're friends bantering".

I think the real difference is mutual fun with the subject also being involved. The repeated subject matter shouldnt matter. If someone can't tell that the subject isn't involved, the problem isn't their bullying/teasing, it's the fact that the person is a jerk. it's all subjective and some people can read it better than others.

> I would argue that if the repeated joke is agreed upon by all involved, it doesn't have to be bullying.

True, and this can occur on work, but by default it does not. See my comment hereunder on the different social rings.

There is also the argument that one needs to accept criticism, or "take some flak". People take much better criticism 1 on 1. So if your boss finds that you clothe yourself badly he could address that during a meeting. Another way is by addressing a whole group without mentioning individuals. I suppose at a small company the likelihood you're on close terms with your direct superior is higher, making a situation where a boss just casually mentions your clothing style more fitting.

> If someone can't tell that the subject isn't involved, the problem isn't their bullying/teasing, it's the fact that the person is a jerk.

I'd say a bully is a jerk (and very likely, worse, suffering from personality disorder(s)), but also there is the autism spectrum which meddles with the point you make. A normal person learns this in their childhood but there are people who simply lack the social skills to read their joke is inappropriate. Although even then, it is a spectrum, not a binary 0/1.

I agree. no one has a problem with how i dress. it isn't brought up in a "fix this" sort of way. it is brought up in a "oh look, another new ninja turtles shirt" way. My clothing choices aren't inappropriate, but many of my coworkers prefer dressing more formal, which makes me stand out. I don't view it as teasing of any sort so I'm ok with it... but I'm aware that other people might be hurt by being called a poor dresser.

And I would agree with that about the spectrum. My point was more that the only issue arises when someone doesn't realize they are being offensive:

Trying to be offensive -> clear violation -> handle it.

Recipient speaks up -> clear violation -> handle it.

Trying to be playful, recipient offended but doesn't speak up -> unclear that it is in fact a violation -> may wind up unhandled resulting in issues.

Trying to be playful and everyone gets along -> no violation

If you're trying to be playful and the recipient doesn't respond well, they shouldn't have to speak up to end it. So if you cant read someone, the "dont keep pushing it" is a good default to have, but if its apparent everyone is having a good time, no biggie.

I think it's sometimes important to get in a toxic person's/bully's face. It's a lot easier for a developer who knows she/he will not have a problem finding another job.

I agree - explicitly pointing out and condemning this stuff can make a big difference. I wouldn't focus on confronting the person, though, because I think that rarely influences the individual. What I've seen matter most is making clear in front of others that it's not something people will "let go" or ignore.

I fortunately haven't been in this position since I became a developer, but better jobs do offer more leeway in regard to this. The other question, of course, is power dynamics. Calling out a coworker has more potential to help than calling out someone who can fire all their critics without trouble.

For sure, although probably more difficult when you're on a visa and not exactly free to walk if things go south.

Exactly. It's hard to understand sometimes until you've witnessed it yourself. Albeit we are living in a "cry wolf" time, actual harassment is a true issue that needs to be taken seriously. Equality and respect aren't that difficult to achieve, I never understood why people are so corrosive towards others. It makes me happy hearing stories about them getting canned over their childish behavior.

Felix Dennis talked about this type of management behaviour (petty abuse of power) in his book How To Get Rich. He said sick days in a department were a good indicator that a manager was doing this and had to be fired.

> If I was back at the start of my career, I would of dismissed this article and told the author to "toughen up".

I think this is the problem, until one works in a toxic environment it's hard to truly sympathize with people that do. How do we broaden our understanding of this phenomenon as a society?

I don't mean to discount your experience, but honestly I don't feel like this is the whole story.

At least from what I've seen these sorts of things are systemic issues, and it is extremely rare for such problems to be caused by a single bad apple.

Again, not trying to discount your personal experiences or lessons, but I'd just be very wary of assigning scapegoat status to a single person for what is clearly a toxic workplace in general ("Management stayed quiet and attempted to push it under the rug for a bit", "Workplace politics were on the rise", etc etc). Often times this mentality plays to the people in power who are responsible for the lack of safeguards, and when you don't fix the underlying causes you're essentially just relying on HR to filter the "bad apples" out of the hiring practice... and we all know how much of a crapshoot hiring in tech is already.

Last, I'd re-examine your impulse to go out and celebrate when this guy was fired. I obviously don't know the details here, but it definitely sounds like an "us vs him" mentality was being fostered, and that could have very well contributed to the exacerbation of this guy's toxic behavior. Often times these sorts of people are just desperate for attention or social contact, and the only way they've figured to get a consistent response from people is to piss them off. Disengaging and relying on "management" to solve these issues very often can make a problem worse. Other times these people can be simply responding to being bullied themselves, often simultaneously, by other groups within the company, or are reacting to problems in their personal lives. These explanations are not absolving them of responsibility for their actions, but it's important to realize that most assholes aren't genuinely bad people, they're just normal humans like you and I who respond to stress and stimuli in a poor way.

Going to the guy as a group and discussing his behavior, while uncomfortable, often can be very illuminating and solve issues that would have just festered until someone was forced to be fired or leave. Worst comes to worst you'll immediately realize the situation is untenable at that point, and the solution will be quite obvious.

Again, disclaimer, I don't know the specifics here and I don't want to indict the parent, but let's make sure we don't use the above example as a primer on how to deal with toxic colleagues in general.

I believe it's a pit of success vs pit of doom matter. Without a toxic employee, everyone is focusing on work, team cohesion is high, people are encouraged to emulate the good behavior of everyone else, etc. Once you introduce the toxic employee, all of that changes - at first people simply learn to ignore them, but the tension introduced in the atmosphere slowly moves you towards the pit of doom. The stress from having to deal with their toxicity leads to you reacting negatively in a situation where you would have laughed it off; Low-friction problems that used to be oiled by the team's happy outlook now suddenly turn into arguments.

The team can definitely beat this trend, self-organize, ostracize the toxic employee and distance themselves from them. This however requires a conscious effort and active participation from everyone. For some teams, that might work, and you might say "they were not just a great team in a well-managed workplace". For others, the influence might degenerate into a spiral of negativity, and you might say "well it was a toxic workplace in general".

I'm not sure it's easy to make the determination whether the workplace was "toxic in general" or not, but I know that humans are fallible. Following the pit of success mantra, you don't really want to test whether your team is really resilient and cohesive, instead, you want to make sure that in most cases they don't even have to exhibit conscious effort to work together effectively.

Of course, the pit of success takes a lot of behind-the-scenes effort from management. I would be happy to place the blame on them here, although sometimes "the problem" is not obvious and easy to solve.

Good leadership can have the power to stop a good amount of squabbling between teammates, simply by spreading their view point and guiding people through tough situations.

You seem like a good leader. I felt more stressed after reading the original post, but I felt a lot less stressed after reading your comment.

I hope you use the way you think to lead and do good.

It's not the whole story, as I can't speak on behalf for the toxic employee, nor on behalf of the manager's. However, there's not much use dissecting it, as it serves to represent many months of multiple employee altercations with this individual summarized into a paragraph.

To be frank, I was part of and witnessed a smaller role compared to others, as I prefer to keep my head down and work, and not participate in office politics. Regarding the lunch, it was something we often did when we were feeling cheerful. Most, if not all had a reason to be plenty cheerful by the time lunch hit, but I digress. It turned out to not differ from a normal outing. It was the defining topic of discussion, of course.

In this case, I think catering to the notion of trying to "fix" someone this toxic who is bringing others down in hopes of rehabilitating their work behavior is a lost cause. He had numerous chances and it was unanimously understood that work life would be easier for all without his presence. I believe you are very right in stating that this shouldn't be a primer. Thanks for your response.

I think commenters who are reacting negatively to this story are reacting to the vocabulary rather than the story.

Obviously I'm not a witness, but I tend to believe that these events took place more or less as the author describes them.

At the same time, words like "sexism" and phrases like "as a minority..." are a big turn-off to some readers, myself included. This isn't because I don't believe in racism/sexism/xenophobia, it's because we're never going to be able to agree on definitions for those terms and so they end up being almost useless as descriptors.

I would put this in almost literary terms: I don't want events to be described, I want them to be recounted. This is also how I feel about movies and literature: I want novels/screenplays that "show rather than tell." I don't want to be told how to think about an event, I just want it to be presented to me.

I also believe that categorizing your personal experiences in terms of broader social phenomena is a mistake. In my opinion, this kind of thinking leads to generalization and tends to obscure the actual events that took place and the actors involved.

All that aside, absolute sympathy to the author here. It's incomprehensible to me that people can behave like this, but sadly they do.

TL;DR know your audience

Great point about recounting instead of describing, it's really important to stay objective in such cases, especially as both sides (there are more than two however) continue to get more aggressive and vocal, each, maybe unconsciously, trying to push an agenda. This means like you said avoiding using ambiguous descriptors that can mean one thing for someone and something different for someone else. I would at this point add that through personal experience I'm led to believe the author entirely in the objective part of her description, one day we'll be able to partially criticise what people do or say without having to also point out to others that we agree with them, just not yet.

Very well said. This was my reaction, and in other comments here my objections along these lines are being interpreted as malicious and/or victim blaming. I do really want to understand versus being told how to feel about it.

I actually agree about the (mis)labeling - I was not consciously doing it, if it makes a difference. It is something I will be cognizant of in the future. My point was to simply say that there is more to managing harassment than is presently being addressed. I have to work with men all my life, and I cannot do that if I start making them uncomfortable now ! This is the problem with this situation to begin with - it is so fraught with conflict even if everyone has the best of intentions.

Why did you leave out details about the initial issue? You described being defended by your manager - and you implied he only defended you because of your sex; he is sexist. This seems very important in this context.

At what point did sexist discrimination enter the scenario? That's what's not clear. If the original offense against which the employee was defended by her manager was inherently sexist, then the defense need not be viewed as being inherently sexist.

(i.e., a manager can and should defend an employee against sexist behavior, and such defense isn't a priori sexist behavior itself even though the defensive behavior wouldn't have ever taken place if the employee weren't of their particular gender, which would of course make it otherwise look sexist.)

space - impossible to cover everything in 10-12 minute read. sexism can also be non-verbal, which again, is hard to convey.

Yep but so the counsel I would give to anyone in such an undesirable situation will be the same I give to everyone that is subject to any form of harassment in workplace : Gather proofs!

A good friend of mine just get out of an impossible job position where she was under constant oppression of her boss and one of her subordinate (that incidentally was a friend of her boss)...

She started documenting everything so that when thing escalated she had proofs to show the big boss and guess what the big boss sided with her. But she left anyway for a better work environement.

But guess what, this story involved only women (boss, big boss, subordinate). So that's why I think that no matter which "type" of discrimination you met at your job place (sexual, racial, physical, age, etc...) the common response is "document you experience". Cause you'll need this to sound credible.

PS: For people who can read french, I'll recommend reading the "comme convenu" story of the illustrator Laurel. She had documented the bad experience her family has gone trough in the form of a web comic book. They choose to co-found a startup in California but were basically hostage of a startup CEO that hold them using financial and visa menace. (The story is not yet finished) https://commeconvenu.com

also, when the hostility started, one of the men actually went - "it's like that now, is it ?". As if I had changed my behavior since my incident ( which i hadn't ). I have gotten called hottie, haughty like a supermodel, comments about needing to lose weight, comments about being unmarried, and much worse. These statements were also ALWAYS implied in a conversation, never direct. that's what makes it difficult to identify or confront.

> These statements were also ALWAYS implied in a conversation

Can you quote one example?

> I would put this in almost literary terms: I don't want events to be described, I want them to be recounted.

That's a great idea and, if applied, is going to save a lot of time in fiction writing. For example, chapter 3 of Ulysses can now be just:

  Stephen walked on the beach, sometimes with his eyes closed, and sometimes looking at the sea.

Described/recounted maybe isn't the best way to put it.

I'm okay with description, I just find that the most effective literature tells a story that implies something rather than explicitly spelling that thing out.

Perhaps an example:

"Fred was very sad his cat died because it was given to him by his father."

"Fred, upon learning of the death of his cat, a gift from his father, broke down in tears."

That's in 3rd person. Even in 1st person...

"I was very sad as this was the cat given to me by my father."

"I recalled the day my father gave me that cat and it brought tears to my eyes."

(Poor Schroedinger...)

The vocabulary is absolutely flawed. These are very bold claims which need to be backed up with facts.

For instance, the behavior is clearly spelled out here:

    One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism.

OP explains how she felt and tells us exactly what action caused her to feel that way. However:

    The group started insinuating...

    They also made remarks implying...

These don't tell me any actual actions, just how she interpreted them. I'm left to judge the second two quotes by the severity of the action in the former.

I see it this way as well.

I would strongly argue that the by far most important thing is how the receiver interpreted the actions, though. Of course expanding on the actions themselves might help others understand better, but as far as I can understand, being met with scepticism for what you describe is part of what makes the experience so hopeless after bringing the courage to follow up on something uncomfortable.

I was thinking the same.

I'm a man an being recently made more aware of how some females friend perceive some so called "un-harmful cheesy jokes" I often advocate to my boss or college that they shouldn't make such jokes because you can never now how they are perceived.

However to escalate the problem up to the HR you need at least some ground. At some point she said than HR asked here to explain what she found was offensive. And she suggest that asking what was offensive was itself offensive. This is pretty meta.

I don't see how HR acted badly they needed to known exactly what happened in order to act. I mean you cannot pretend to be a whistleblower but kept being shy or vague about words used. And you can't say it was edited by the press, it's a blog.

So if OP is here please be clear did the manager say something like: "Guys please don't be to hard on my sweet little girl, you know she can't handle it"

And then colleges could have gone "Hey here come the boss's bitch!"

This I can understand, not vague and redacted sentences. Because unless you are precise (and sometimes graphic) sincere skeptical people will always wonder if it was your colleagues attitude or you perception that was flawed.

> just how she interpreted them

That is EXACTLY the root of the problem. People interpreted them differently. Especially if there are a country / cultural difference.

This is true with a lot of things that people have strong feelings and beliefs associated with, and -isms are good examples of it.

For plenty of people, the moment they see 'sexism', 'racism', etc it's over. They are either rooting for you, or mentally preparing arguments against your case, and things you say/write becomes largely irrelevant.

I'm not a witness to this story, but the description closely resembles two different things that happened at Apple in the late 80s and early 90s. I was acquainted with some of the people peripherally involved in both.

The story's description of Apple's response could be from people involved in those incidents. It sounds exactly the same.

There is a mental trap I have personally fallen into I will dub the "Friendliness Trap" where you start to incorrectly think of someone you work closely with as your close friend due to the forced proximity and "friendly" interaction. This can foster inappropriate workplace behavior your brain justifies as OK.

For instance friendly teasing, sometimes even started by the person themselves (e.g. "Oh, you know us [blanks], good at [blank]") can be taken way too far. People wrongly get the sense that something is OK because the person doesn't complain or laughs along and it can escalate to the point of full on harassment and your brain still thinks "[person] is my buddy, it's OK". I think it's partially human nature and wanting to fit in. The person being teased doesn't want to come off adversarial, the person teasing thinks it's "their joke".

I realized long ago simply don't tease people at work. They are not around you by choice. Don't assume people at work are friends in the way your drinking buddies are friends. You honestly have no idea how they really feel about it until it's too late, save it for your friends who are around you by choice.

I agree. But it can also develop over a period of time. And there is a difference between being friendly and being hostile - this was the latter.

I'd add : why do you need to tease in the first place ? There's no reason to do that.

Humans do a lot of things that have "no reason".

I will never, ever defend anything like that in the workplace, but some people consider teasing and joking to relationship building.

There's no reason for a lot of human interactions that are ultimately good for a subgroup's social bonds.

I'd say it depends on a lot of factors such as local culture, company culture (or team culture for larger companies), etc. So just saying 'there is no point' is probably not an answer.

Precisely. It will also depend on how well you've grown to know and become friends with the people in question.

Myself and my close friends curse, insult and tease each other in a manner that we find entertaining; however if I had this same type of interaction with someone I've only known for a couple of months it would be insulting and I'd avoid that person.

I do think teasing, especially in cis male friendships, is very often a big piece of the bonding experience. It simply doesn't translate well to the work environment and should be left out.

Teasing is a social thing. And like other social things the reasons are not necessarily concrete and "rational". Why do you smile and say hello to a person you pass in the hall? You don't intend to start a conversion- there's no reason to say hello. There's no "reason" to be friendly at all.

If you look at the social and emotional things happening, maybe it starts to make some sense. Smiling says, "Hi, I recognize you and you are an acquaintance/friend."

Teasing is a way of interacting- of making bonds, of feeling people out. By teasing, you are finding out about someone: How much do they care about the subject of teasing? What kind of person are they? And you are saying, "I know you so I can playfully poke at things you care about." And maybe eventually, "I know you so well, I can poke at you in a sensitive area but not go too far. We can do that to each other because we trust each other's intent and we know how to poke in a way that doesn't go too far." Strangers don't have that kind of bond and trust.

Besides that, teasing is joking. It can be simply harmless and funny and lightens the mood or improve the morale of a group.

So, yes, there are reasons.

I connected to this instantly. The rest of my team, and engineering here as a whole really, is exactly like this. I'm coming around to seeing it as what is killing the company; they've shed ~200 people in 18 months, despite making money (for now). They've tried paying people more to stay, but they still leave.

There's a lot of history among these folks, with many of them at the company 5, 10, 15 years. Firing the worst offenders never happens. But it's failing the company. New hires aren't allowed to integrate, have every idea shot down, and leave after 12-18 months of frustration.

I think it's largely generational. There are only 8-10 people younger than 35 in an engineering org that is 100-105, split along {front,back}end dev, QA, and server ops lines.

We have Nerf guns and late Friday maintenance pizza parties. Our net new rollout is horrendous. We're constantly 18 months behind targets. Customers are getting wise as features keep getting cut or shipped late, and emails keep being returned to sender because the person no longer works here.

a male "alpha"/masculine-type coworker pulled this trick several years ago. self-deprecates about his weight. he was fairly good at conversation/joking/etc, and somehow he made these self-deprecating jokes somewhat funny. He wasn't even obese, just a larger guy. One day the coworker sitting right next to him poked fun at his weight, and suddenly it wasn't funny anymore, and the "victim" of the joke reported it to HR. People can play nasty tricks, and so I second your advice to not partake in any form of "teasing".

I tell a lot of younger developers this, because it's an important truth that will never, ever be spoken aloud.

The sole role of Human Resources is to protect the company from liability, either through lawsuits or labor law compliance. Occasionally managers will abdicate their duty and delegate parts of hiring authority to a section of the company with no understanding of what they do and no accountability for getting it wrong, but that's not as common as you think. Most hiring just gets rubber stamped by HR, not driven by them.

That's all. They're a cost center with no authority beyond saying "this kid is gonna cost us a lot of money if we don't get rid of them"-- either by being a harasser or by being the litigious type (to HR, they're actually the same thing).

If you're expecting them to intercede on your behalf with your manager without something being obviously out of control, ie lawsuit-worthy, you're gonna have a hard time.

spot on. HR is there to make sure you abide. The funny thing is that they usually don't understand that themselves (some people don't think about why they do their job besides getting money/cars/holidays). Things seem to be different in non-profit/non-compete companies though.

Really good point. Also remember everything HR sees will be viewed through a cautionary, and oftentimes adversarial, legal lens... since at the end of the day that is how their performance is measured.

For anyone new to office politics, or have not experienced hostile politics before, keep those in mind:

- Make sure to have some real friends at work. No, someone you work with everyday is not necessarily a real friend, you have to make real connections with them, so they are willing to defend and support you when things get tough.

- Be observant and empathetic, so you can notice problems when they first arise, and resolve them before they escalate. This is hard for engineers, as we focus on computers most of the time and don't get to practice the skills of empathy a lot.

- Be strong. Sometimes escalations do happen, and now you have one or more people dislike you and try to make your life hard. You need to be emotionally strong to withstand their attacks, and keep a clear mind to figure out a way to defeat them or at least reach a ceasefire.

Sadly, politics happen all the time when inter-personal interactions happen, not necessarily the result of one shady colleague with agendas. This could happen to anyone, although sadly more often to minorities, because it's harder to hide the fact that we are outsiders.

Note: This comment is not based on the article, but my personal experience (in the UK - if that matters)

Honestly, having a third party involved has worked well. Sometimes, misunderstandings linger and fester, and then even the most innocuous things can be construed wrongly. A third party (a good manager is ideal) saying either "you're being too sensitive" or "no, they were out of line, i'll talk to them" helps. I don't know of anybody who's refused to iron out issues, and I firmly believe most people are decent enough to help.

But at the end of the day, you don't have to like everybody you work with, as long as there's respect from both parties. That's being professional. If respect isn't there, either you or your manager is going to have to make a call sooner or later. For better or worse, this is probably going to come down to team dynamics, as teams that work well together are very valuable. This might suck, but I've never seen racism or sexism being the dominant effect in a small team (<8) of people who know each other - a lot of caveats, at least there's hope.

I guess it helps if it's "just" a job to you. Normally, I'd simply start looking for a job elsewhere, but if I was at Apple, I'd want to stay there.

It's sad that with very few words changed, this could just as easily be a guide to surviving prison.

Well, when money and power are at question (which is true for pretty much every company), it tends to get the worst of some people.

Good points. I'd add that you should be careful about joining the 'negative' (can't think of a better word) social circles. You know, the kind who are talking about how something sucks or how bad some person is, for the vast majority of the time. Nothing good will come out of this.

> I was getting preferential treatment because of my “cuteness factor”

> Indian women being subservient

I agree that these comments don't belong in the workplace. I have seen similar ones lead to people fired on the day and escorted to the door. Thankfully it's relatively rare but some places do take it very seriously.

Apple was wrong. In Australia the law is clear and they've breached it. Take them to court and get your payout. It's annoying that the victim has to do that but it's possible.

For other parts of the article I put myself in her shoes and didn't find management's treatment of her particularly different from how I (a male) would be treated after complaining about the actions of anyone else (male or female) in the workplace - which is why I don't. HR is ineffectual and the company is against you regardless of whomever is at fault. It just wants one or the other party gone so things can go back to normal, so if it's you versus five other people it's easier to fire and rehire one than five.

> employers also have an obligation to handle the situation with empathy and integrity

And this line stood out at me as being divorced from reality especially at a big company.

I get it that we mostly want companies to be like this but I think it's also obvious that they're not. They are primarily profit motivated and we're lucky if they don't pollute the environment or commit atrocities in the process.

You can look for smaller companies that do it, you can put it in your own company, but if you really felt Apple would be like that then it's being a little naive.

I worked at one mid-size company that was acquired by a competitor who wanted to drive in the boot heel by firing the previous management in as embarrassing a way as possible. My boss was on the chopping block and had false charges levelled at him over email and summarily fired. He took it through the Australian workplace relations system to try to get some closure, until the government advised there's no law to prevent a company making anything up and firing you for it. He could have pursued defamation but that's also extremely difficult, long, and expensive, and he didn't have the money.

It was at that point I grew up in my career and decided you really can't trust any company to look out for you. That's not how it works.

> Apple was wrong. In Australia the law is clear and they've breached it. Take them to court and get your payout

Is the OP in Australia?

The article is pretty clear that she was in the US. Not sure what Australian law has to do with this.

> And this line stood out at me as being divorced from reality especially at a big company. I get it that we mostly want companies to be like this but I think it's also obvious that they're not. They are primarily profit motivated and we're lucky if they don't pollute the environment or commit atrocities in the process. You can look for smaller companies that do it, you can put it in your own company, but if you really felt Apple would be like that then it's being a little naive.

I do not disagree that this is true, but I would suggest that this also is not an acceptable status quo. Complacency doesn't help it, and the unfortunate reality is that most companies just want to get into a battle of wills with those who are targets of harassment rather than take the time to address the issue as they should be.

You are right that this seems to happen once you breach a certain threshold - I assume at that point legal gets more pre-emptive in its protection of the company and tries to divorce itself from the goings-on in Human Resource areas. Plus, as I said elsewhere in this discussion, finding and/or training managers to handle these issues in a fair way is not easy, nor is it easy to be the manager dealing with this situation.

But I don't think that complacency is the answer, and she's not wrong that in many countries, the employer does have an obligation to handle the events. Attributing the sensations to it I'm not sure I fully agree with, but many countries do require investigative procedures, which according to the article weren't really performed well by management at Apple.

Sadly, if the company isn't profit-motivated, it will be displaced by a profit-motivated one. At this point large companies are eerily similar to the hypothetical paperclip-maximizing AI that converts the entire earth in paperclips. Except that making more money lets you make even more money in a snowball effect.

The fix is probably to check glassdoor etc. as much as you can before working for a potentially unethical company. But then you'll be restricted to working for only a small handful of companies.

The other fix is to only work as a contractor, so you're isolated from the effects of being practically a serf to a company entity.

> that was acquired by a competitor who wanted to drive in the boot heel

Why on earth would any company want to do that? Not doubting your story, looking for legitimate answers.

> these comments don't belong in the workplace.

Indeed they don't, but then neither does preferential treatment due to cuteness, which I routinely observe. How society has become so fond of denying objective reality is very strange, especially when it doesn't seem to achieve much.

This is a serious problem.

My concern is people seem to think it only happens in previously (and still) male dominated fields. It happens everywhere.

I think the woman that voice their concerns and challenges are more abundant in the tech industry probably because the industry is more progressive and generally more educated.

Where I have seen ultra sexism has been in sales and finance. Extremely disturbing in your face sexism. Anecdotally the sexism in tech is sort of passive aggressive but the sexism in other industries is disturbingly direct (one could argue the subtle one being worse). My point is it is everywhere.

I hope the tech industry fixes it and becomes the leader.

My brother, as a manager of a big team in Belgium, had once to face a complain to the HR about he harassing a secretary. The reaction of the company was immediate, and in my opinion the right one.

They contracted a specialize company to investigate, collect the facts and present their conclusions. The conclusions would be sent at the same time to the alleged victim, the HR and the manager.

In this case the conclusion was that there was no harassment according to legal definition. These argumented conclusions would have been presented to a trial as reference if any party would want to contest them.

The company performing the audit is specialized in it. So they can recognize a real harassment from an abusive claim. They also have no interest in the company. It is in the interest of the company to call them to get a leverage to apply whatever measure they would find appropriate. If the victim is an employee, and he/she would consider the reaction inappropriate and abusive, he/she could complain to a tribunal.

Today, a company that is not reacting like that (diligent an investigation by an independent party) to a harassment complain would be considered a priori suspect or would be consider to have failed complying to its duty because it is their responsibility to do so.

github was widely panned for doing the same exact thing.

I think that is a good start, but we should be aware of the flaws in an approach like this.

I had friends at a company with serious security breach. There was a hullabaloo, all sort of important people in the company upset and questioning whether they should fire the head of tech. To calm the waters, the head of finance hired an outside firm to investigate. All good, right?

Here, the head of finance liked the head of tech and trusted him. The outside firm, knowing who buttered their bread, fished around for clues on how the report was supposed to land. And as expected, the report was, "some flaws, a couple of dumb mistakes, but basically sound." From the same facts, a hostile auditor could have come to the opposite conclusion, that the dumb mistakes were indicative of deep flaws and the whole company was put needlessly at risk.

Specialized audit companies have to get paid. They claim to be neutral parties, but they have an inherent conflict of interest. If you choose the right one, you can get a better result than an internal investigation. But you can also choose one that serves the interests of whoever's paying the bills.

It seems like bond rating services here are an obvious point of comparison. They got paid to rate bonds, which meant they got paid by people with a strong desire for certain ratings, which meant that they "competed" not on price but on laxity of ratings. Most of us know how that one played out ~8 year ago.

Independent investigation is great, but you're right to observe that "outside" is not necessarily "independent". I suppose there are a few solutions to that: you could break the financial link (in the bond case, get consumers or the government to pay raters), or you could establish a culture where inaccurate results destroy reputation.

I'm sure there are auditors who do objective work for the people paying them simply because they value being known as reliable (and who are hired because the auditee wants a result people will trust). Without some precedent, we probably shouldn't assume that rosy case is happening.

Specialized audit companies have to get paid. They claim to be neutral parties, but they have an inherent conflict of interest.

When one company is making a sale to another company, not always, but sometimes, the sale is made by exploiting an inside political conflict. Sometimes the purchase is a prize in a proxy battle between two factions. Sometimes, it is to get some independence for one group from another. Sometimes, software is used to enforce the will of one group on another.

The outside firm, knowing who buttered their bread, fished around for clues on how the report was supposed to land.

The market has spoken.

The idea that a contractor is going to be unbiased when they're getting paid by the corporation is sort of absurd. They know where their bread is buttered, and it's not from employees filing complaints.

could I dare to say that, the more harassment there is, the more work they get ?

The contractor is working for the company. He is unbiased toward the employees.

He's unbiased toward the employees, but he surely knows the company will be exposed to liability if one of their employees is found to have engaged in harassment, so the best outcome would be to say that no such harassment occurred.

"They also have no interest in the company."

Is that really true? Presumably they're being paid by the company. And, in a large enough company, these kinds of things would come up decently often. If the auditor has a few investigations in a row where they find against the company, wouldn't the company start looking for another auditor?

There are many articles describing bullying and harassment. This is one worth reading as it

- does not put blame for handling it on any single person or function.

- illustrates systemic dysfunction. Normal incentives work against handling the abuse claim - HR tries to protect company, managers caught in conflict of interest

- points out the result of management not acting clearly. The person bullied feels taking on more responsibility of navigating the mess. As the person has no effective control this add more distress.

- shows the manager dilemma when supporting minority (in whatever sense) in a naive way. The person standing out stands out even more. Dammed if you do and probably dammed if you don't.

- even in an environment where the bullied person is receiving widespread support from others at times (scene at the table where other were speaking up) long running and extreme stress does damage.

- few understand that the problems often only show up months later as it is typical for PTSD

It is very difficult to say what can be done to prevent this. It is obvious that management is making the wrong decisions but why? I believe the author is on something with the conflict of interest. I would add avoidance of conflict - they are empowered to handle it but shy away. Then there is inability to handle bullies by a lot of them - trying to be even handed since this is the normal mode when one side is obviously overstepping (similar to press-Trump relationship).

What could be done by companies? Specialized people/services dealing with that sort of behavior may be one. Making sure management is well grounded in values and knows how to decide in these conflict of interest cases may help a little too.

What can one do to be prepared? Not being weak is probably the best preparation. Ability to fight and win or to pack and run is key to be able to force a resolution.

What to do when caught in it? These days I think getting external help early. Covering two sides: The psychological one (therapist with first hand experience of psychopathic people and stress management, possibly PTSD) and legal advice.

Full disclosure: Could tell a similar sad tale.

HR works for the company. When you consider your moves keep in mind HR works for the company. You are not paying HR salaries. Get outside legal help and advice.

Came here looking for this comment...

"I approached my management when the situation escalated, who directed me to HR. Instead of helping me, HR embarked on a defensive and confrontational script. I felt cornered, unsafe and unsure of what to do next."

It's HR's job to mitigate the risk to the company. They are not your friend, they are there to save the company from harm.

Yes. It is also perfectly reasonable for them to offer something, and then send out minutes that detail you rejecting it. This is simple legal CYA; it's not an attempt to be hostile.

Yep, HR are not your friend. They are there to smooth things over so that the company can continue to function, not to be your defender.

This is a major point of the article: that this shouldn't be the case.

You can disagree but just pointing out that this not the current situation is either missing the point of the article or begging the question.

Wow! To imagine that the culture at one of the best engineering teams in the world is this poisonous is shocking.

I wonder if things would have played out differently if she had immediately addressed her supervisor's unnecessary defense. While this seems like the starting point for the harassment, my guess is that it was ingrained in the team all along and would have come out at one point or another. Not that that makes it any better.

Truly horrible experience for anyone to go through and I hope she finds a better place to work in and can perhaps put this bitter experience to help others.

I am sorry to hear that the author went through this. Though I really like Apple and have friends both male and female who've worked there for many years, I also have heard it is a harder place towards women even than a place like Google. And some of its structural elements make that harder to fix (if there even is an effort to fix it, which I have no idea about either way).

It's also quite hard to be public about this (I know someone who recently left Apple for similar reasons but won't discuss it publicly).

While not the perfect solution it seems like a lot of the mentioned issues (standardized communication channels, no conflict of interest) could be solved by installing work councils (I take it they are not wide spread in the US? They are standard in Germany): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_council

unions and work councils are fairly rare in the IT/startup sector in Germany. If they exist it's usually because it's the IT department of an old, established enterprise. The rate of union membership in anything that's IT related is comparatively low as well.

Personally, I consider that a problem, because it leaves each employee to fight their own fight. But IT folks somehow tend to believe that they don't need any help (and then subsequently sign contracts with unlimited unpaid overtime because they don't know it's illegal).

Illegal contract clauses tend to be non-enforceable. So you can sign and then ignore.

But the outcome of that depends largely on who's got the position they want.

If a contract has an illegal non-compete, it's easy for an employee to sign and then ignore it. After all, the employer would have to find the violation, sue them, and risk summary dismissal. The employee wins just by having everyone give up.

If a contract features unpaid overtime, though, the employee is working time and not getting paid. They can refuse the work, get fired, and then sue, or they can do the work and then sue for nonpayment. In either case, they need to win to come out ahead, which is a lengthy and uncertain process.

Ignoring unenforceable provisions is only easy for someone who doesn't need a court decision to get a good outcome.

While it's always an option to sue for payment of unpaid overtime after you left that will still leave a mark on your resume an people may be hesitant to hire. It's also lengthy and risky because it requires solid documentation. And, first of all it requires that you're aware that the clause is overreaching and thus null and void. I often see people not getting paid for time worked because they're unaware. I also fairly often hear about uncompensated non-compete clauses which are also illegal, but people are scared to go see a lawyer. A good union provides both: a check on the contracts in a company and legal advice and professional backing in court when needed.

> They can refuse the work, get fired, and then sue...

The parent was talking about Germany in particular.

Employee protection is fairly strong, so an employer will think twice before firing someone over non-compliance with an illegal contract, as they will get their ass handed to them in court.

Day today discipline and grievances are not handled at the works council level that would be done at the branch level.

This seems negligent on the part of HR (as well as genuinely awful).

In California, all managers are required by law to take three hours of sexual harassment training every other year. One thing that stood out to me is that there is no need to make a formal harassment claim: when anyone mentions they have experienced harassment to a manager, even in a private conversation, the manager is required to report it and investigate. If the employee says they want to keep the conversation in confidence, the manager is supposed to say they can't do that. If a manager doesn't follow up, they can be personally liable.

Several companies I've been at also have a mandatory "managers and the law" training class. I didn't talk to anyone for several days after taking it. :)

IANAL, but my understanding is that one job of HR is to protect the company. One reason they investigate is to produce evidence that could be used in the event of a lawsuit to prove they took the allegation seriously. Trying to argue with the employee that it didn't happen would put them in a really bad position if they were sued, because it could be used to demonstrate a hostile work environment.

I've seen complaints happen a few times in my career (not involving me directly), and, in those cases, HR took it gravely seriously. They talked to everyone involved and documented the crap out of it. Most of the people I've met in HR seem to genuinely care. I disagree with advice that HR should not be trusted, but my advice for someone who is in a situation where they are uncomfortable is to document everything. Keep emails of all interactions with your manager and HR and send follow up email to summarize conversations you had in person.

Appearing to genuinely care is a good pose for someone who has to collect interviews. I'm sure journalists have to fake concern to get the information they want. These HR people have to be empathetic so they succeed at getting the interviews. It doesn't have to go farther than that.

I agree that when events occur, people should make their own records.

"Appearing to genuinely care" is different than being empathetic. The former implies the person doesn't really care, the latter is by definition concern for another person.

My comment on HR people caring was a more general statement on my interactions with HR in a variety of situations. As a manager, I often see both sides of HR/employee interactions.

Whenever I'm dealing with something that is serious to me, I always clearly first state to myself 1) what I want and 2) what do I do if I don't get what I want. For example in this case, it could be: 1) Jack told me this and that and I consider this is inappropriate. I never want to be told that again in this company 2) I leave.

What I do next is that I make sure I communicate clearly those two points to whoever I think should get me what I want. For example, in that case, I would go see my manager and say: "Jack told me this and that and I consider this is inappropriate. I never want to be told that again in this company. If it happens again, I quit. Have you understood? (wait for his answer) What will you do to make sure it doesn't happen anymore?" (it is important to ask if he has understood, it forces him to go right in the middle of the circle you just draw on the floor, that put him in your territory, right under your guns).

Sometimes, you will have to apply 2). For example in this case, your manager would have to tell you something substantial about what he gonna do to stop that. If what he tells you is not substantial, tell him you are not satisfied and ask him again the same question: "what can you do to make sure it will stop?". Don't quit on that. Keep asking. Only apply 2) if he don't answer anymore. It's typically a situation where "you don't leave the shop until...". If your manager tells you to go see the HR department, tell him clearly again 2): "if I don't get what I want I will leave. Do you still want me to go see the HR department? Are you sure?". Apply pressure, at every step.

Do not have a discussion. Don't discuss the problem with your manager. Don't talk. Ask your question and wait for an answer. If he want to discuss, make him understand you won't.

It's crucial to apply 2) right away when you don't get what you want. I've found it's rarely the occasion to make a deal and make a compromise not so much because the deal is bad but because by doing so, they will start kidding you again.

I'm super happy so far with the result of this method. I get fantastic results from my family, employers, friends, from everybody. At first, you will feel like a freak. Then you will notice the others won't think so much that you are a freak but will think you are a strong person they should not kid with. You end up being respected.

Great comment! Thank you for posting it, I found it useful and informative, and I am sure others have as well.

These things happen at most companies .. people get jealous and have different ways of dealing with it .. it's up to management to handle it well, but since no one talks about it, there is no management for it ..

Unfortunately it's a probably in many industries. I just read this article about the National Park Service yesterday

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/park-ser...

Are you the author of the article? I'd like to apologize on the behalf of ... pretty much everyone, really, for all the stupid comments here that are focused on doubting your story. It sounds like an awful experience and I imagine all these people missing the point are compounding it.

In my experience in the tech industry, these sorts of victim-blaming people are very vocal but also are a minority, and I am embarrassed that this comment section is full of them.

There have indeed been a number of such comments, but by the time I saw the thread (I was traveling today, so missed it earlier), the community had weighed in more thoughtfully. The discussion now is genuinely not awful, and perhaps a notch better than we've seen in the past.

It's a common pattern that shallow, knee-jerk reactions show up first (because some people's reflexive defenses get triggered quickly) while thoughtful, meaningful responses take longer to appear—for one thing because they simply take longer to write. This sometimes leads to a perception gap about the community. The majority of users here, probably the vast majority, are fair and considerate. But it takes a while for that to reveal itself—longer, unfortunately, than the time it takes the rapid internet readership to move on. Not sure what we can do about this.

thank you :-) i needed your empathy :-) my earlier attempts to respond sooner to your comment failed to get posted. :-/ i would have thought my saying that apple apologized would be enough of a reason to believe me, but i think they are just not thinking this through.

Here is a haiku I wrote recently. As with any, it may not be applicable, relevant, well written, or discoverable:

  Do not fear mistakes.
  Fear instead those who hide them.
  They will consume you.

Just for context, I'm a man, and I'm very sorry this happened to you. This is a problem in cultures all over the world, and as a species, we simply have to do better. I have two female relatives who work in tech and both of them have had experiences very similar to yours. Sadly, the younger of my two relatives has had this experience at more than 1 company.

Your post highlights a critical issue: the near total lack of visible justice for the victims. So let me tell you about the invisible justice that gets meted out. This doesn't excuse what happened to you, but I want you to know that there are people who are trying to address this issue in a way that provides significant financial and professional consequences to the perpetrators.

As a manager, it's far easier for me to quietly - dare I say silently - kill someone's career at the company by dead ending them than it is for me to ever do anything formal. With respect to HR, most managers have about as much power as the average employee, which is to say that we can just as quickly end up on the wrong side of the fence as the person being harassed. HR is not our friend either! Therefore, in the case of ordinary harassment, the best thing an employee can do is find a quiet way to put a manager on notice that something is wrong. Then a manager can start watching. We can proactively go through emails. We can start looking for bad behavior while the perpetrator has no idea, and we have the power to use quiet, offhand remarks to make the perpetrators paranoid. We can reassign employees to different work, and we can take work away from them that they really enjoy. I recently punished a loud-mouthed developer by taking him off a feature that he originated and giving it someone else. Yeah, his work was excellent, but it's always easy to find justifications once I know that I have to act.

Men with sexist ideas about how the world should operate, or men who believe that bullying other employees is acceptable, need to understand a few things. When they just can't seem to get that promotion, and feel like they're constantly sand-bagged by their manager, it's very likely because their manager is doing invisible damage control. HR doesn't know. Their manager's manager doesn't know. They don't know, and even if they suspect, there's no way they can ever prove it because there's no paper trail. As a manager, I stop mentoring these guys for promotions and start teaching their well-behaved coworkers instead so that I have a nice slate of well-prepared employees for promotion season.

Even though most of this is invisible, it's happening and it costs these men tens of thousands of dollars over the two and three years they spend waiting for promotions that never come. It's incredibly easy to take someone's excellent technical work and find fault with it for any number of reasons. Yes, this strategy uses some of the same tactics as the perpetrators, but I learned a long time ago that bullies and sexists don't care about rules. So why should I?

Yeah, eventually a bully leaves and some of them get a higher salary elsewhere, but they don't get to leave with a better resume. They don't leave with that title. And make no mistake, their new employer figures them out pretty fast and the same thing happens.

I don't know how to put this ... but this is fascinating because it is a glimpse of what likely happens on the "other side of the fence" when a manager is discriminating while maintaining plausible deniability.

[The previous comment is flagged, but I hope the comment stays as it gives insight into the power a manager has.]

> I had never before encountered this kind of visceral hatred

This comment rang some bells for me. Have a friend from the Netherlands who was in undergrad with me, and one day in confidence he told me one of the things he didn't understand most in America is how someone can harbor, and actively maintain, such a passionate hatred for someone they aren't intimately involved with.

While this hatred is most definitely present in other first world nations, I can't avoid the fact that he is correct and far more pervasive in America. It doesn't make much sense to me.

I think this is simply just ignorance on your part and the part of your friend. People all around the world are full of hate.

Most countries are still relatively homogenous. Any country where you see some mixing, you'll see the same hate. The Middle East is too easy of an example. Germany, France, etc have a lot of overt hate. The hate in Ireland between the Protestants and the Catholics was very real and they're the same race and culture.

Naivete is a possibility, but I haven't witnessed it as overt between people in my living in France (Riviera, not Paris) compared to what I've seen in America - However, as I am not a victimized group, this may be reinforcing naivete.

Despite this naivete though, I would be wary of circumstance before making the declaration "mixing of any kind = hate"

You misread what I wrote, but I never said "mixing of any kind = hate". I said specifically "Any country where you see some mixing, you'll see the same hate." The hate you see in the US is not any more or any less than you will see in France, especially in Paris where it is completely overt against Muslims.

I can't be certain whether this affected this particular case at all, but note that Northern Indian English isn't American or British English. The vocabulary is similar (not in fact identical), but emphasis of all kinds is handled entirely differently. In fact, oppositely. In Hindi and Northern Indian English PAUSES show emphasis, whereas increases in volume (for a given word) are syntactically determined and have absolutely no semantic meaning or significance whatsoever.

In American English, pauses are almost always mechanically/syntactically determined and carry no meaning, but increasing the volume for a given word shows emphasis. This EASILY leads to extreme and sudden misunderstandings in both directions, as each side sees very obvious sarcasm and emphasis where none was intended. They're both sure they're right and that they are speaking the same language, but outside of print, these are two separate languages.

Since it's more recent, the Northern Indian English vocabulary has a cleaner logic, so personally if I had to chose just one, I'd go with that, but that's neither here nor there.

Long years ago, I attended a lecture by, I believe, the first scholar to experimentally demonstrate this and publish it; and the recorded examples of ordinary real-life interactions (not staged) taking place in British businesses that he used to illustrate the lecture were extremely striking; in fact very explosive.

In case this seems like something anyone would notice - in fact it's beneath notice. Similarly, the semantic use of tones in Chinese was denied by scholars there for something like hundreds of years, before finally being acknowledged. Language is handled unconsciously for the most part.

I appreciate her command over the language, and also feel sorry for problems she encountered.

Will I judge that Apple has a culture of Harassment and Tech Industry has a culture of harassment from this medium article? Definitely No. I would be foolish to judge so from hearing the arguments from a single party.

Thank you for sharing your story. Sounds like a very toxic environment.

What a terrible experience.

I like that she points out the conflicts of interest, wherein the legal structures in which companies are embedded so clearly work against a good solution to the problem.

However I think when she says:

"corrective actions for any violations have to be significant enough to be a deterrent to such behaviors in the future. There also needs to be some accountability for these actions"

She is taking on the same position as these legal structures - I.e. that retribution or punishment is an important part of the equation, and I think this is counter to the rest of her argument.

Men raised in a sexist society can't be individually held responsible for acting in the way they have seen people acting around them as though these are intentional crimes against women.

Massive career damage needs to be taken off the table as the first consequence for all sides of this.

That doesn't mean there shouldn't be a great deal of accountability - but it needs to be something closer to restorative justice - where those involved can understand each other rather than remain embattled.

The response of the company to create a case where they want to discredit the complainant is fairly standard. They want to protect themselves.

Unless there is someone at the top that takes these matter seriously on a personal level and has communicated it to his subordinates, senior management in general only pays lip service to taking such matters seriously. These are complex matters and every one wants to get on with their work, rather than deal with the problem.

Tim Cook, I would expect, would have sent the message about taking such matters seriously. It seems like someone between him and the victim decided to add his "personal expertise" to this case and mishandled it completely.

HR has the function of protecting the company from the employees, workers council or similar structures have the function of protecting the employees from the company. All the companies should have one.

Why has this article completely disappeared from the site? I've paged through hundreds of articles starting at the front page, and it simply does not appear.

I approached my management when the situation escalated, who directed me to HR. Instead of helping me, HR embarked on a defensive and confrontational script.

For better or worse, HR is there to protect the company, not the employee. This is why many times they report in through legal. It's not fair, but it's the way companies work.

Why isn't it fair? Can you imagine an HR department that advocated for an individual employee if their needs directly contradicted the needs of the larger organization?

There's a curious lack of detail in this story. No direct quotes, or even reasonable level of detail to the accusations.

For example:

"One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism."

I'm sure there's a way that a supervisor jumping to your defense could be sexist, but this isn't showing that, at all.

"At a lunch with several other coworkers, one of these men ordered me to summon the waiter and pay the bill, in the tone of a command to someone inferior and subservient."

Certainly odd behavior, but I'm not sure I would call it sexist. Arrogant for sure, but surely there's more context?

To be clear, I'm not saying she's wrong, just that this story isn't helping me understand what she went through, or that it was particularly sexist, versus just hostile.

>There's a curious lack of detail in this story.

It's not curious at all. She's being careful not to identify specific individuals.

A direct quote, or more detail would go a long way in helping others understand the situation. I don't see how either would identify specific individuals. In fact, she specifically says "her supervisor", which already calls out a specific individual.

For example, the supervisor jumping to her defense. What did he say, exactly? Or failing that, what was the situation, how did he defend her? All we get is that he defended her, and she interpreted it as being sexist...sometime later.

I think you're missing the point of the article. She's helping us out by giving us a heads up about a problem in the industry. If you choose to disbelieve her, that's your prerogative.

It's pointless to make a pretence of scrutinising the article when it's obviously impossible for her to prove beyond all doubt that her recollection of events is accurate. Just believe it or don't. Don't go asking "where's the proof??", as if you are expecting her to have videotape evidence for all of this.

Not looking for her to "prove beyond all doubt".

But, there's several stories in there where a direct quote of what was said to her would be more enlightening than her interpretation as to the motive behind what was said. Or failing a direct quote...how about just the basis of his "defense" of her. Did he call out the high quality of her work (seems fine), or did he say to lay off because she was fragile (seems not fine), or what?

Her supervisor is a real person too, and I don't see why it's okay to post a public accusation without some detail other than just interpretation...what you think his intention was.

Edit: You keep saying I don't believe her. Didn't say that. It is, however, a post of public accusations, almost all based on something that was said....without a single direct quote of what was said, or even enough detail to understand why she interpreted them the way she did. That's odd to me, whether I believe her or not.

There's a big difference between "excruciating detail" and "almost no detail, and not a single direct quote".

I think you are just demanding that she presents the whole story in excruciating detail so you can pick over it. I think it was smart of her not to do that, and I think that we should generally assume that women are capable of figuring out when they're being harassed.

I see nothing odd in her leaving out direct quotations. She's telling us about a problem. She's not submitting evidence to a tribunal. However much detail she gives, you'll just say that it's not enough according to some arbitrary standard.

What if someone posted an accusation about something you said, with scant detail and no direct quote?

"One day, foldr jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism."

You don't feel like there should have been a quote of what you said? Or lacking that, a little more detail as to why jumping to her defense was sexist? Like, that you defended her by saying the team should lay off because she's female? What if you defended her by calling out her high quality work? Is jumping to someone's defense somehow automatically an awful thing to do?

Edit: For what it's worth, I do believe that she was treated in a sexist way by some people there. I think, however, she may be projecting that onto other people that did not. I might feel differently if there were enough detail.

I don't see how it would make any difference if they quoted me or not. But you are not comparing like with like here, as she did not mention any specific person.

Her supervisor is a specific person that would be easily identifiable by internal Apple employees, specifically the ones that work directly with the accused.

No, she has more than one supervisor.

There was no quote because it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen. It was this "equal" status that made the others feel that I got better treatment. I made no remark about anything else because I do not wish to speculate about anyone else's intentions or motivations - and that is not relevant to the point of this article at all.

>it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen

That sounds like you're saying the supervisor didn't do anything wrong, but rather that your coworkers took a reasonable gesture the wrong way? If so, that doesn't really jive with "One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism"

I'm really not trying to be confrontational, just trying to understand. Is it that the "jumped to defense" thing was clearly sexist? Not asking for a direct quote, but what was the basis of the defense...something gender related, or the high quality of your work, or something else?

There is no quote that can translate that context well. And it was sexist, perhaps even meant to be complimentary and not necessary. But it was not evil. What he did was not the point. The point is what followed and how it was handled. And every employee has more than one supervisor. I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.

Please don't take this as confrontational, but maybe there is a point that you are missing, that maybe you have made an error in your assessment of what happened, of what people's actual motives are. I genuinely feel like you are unnecessarily secretive about the details of this. Of course there often are details that must be kept secret for various reasons, but my intuition is suggesting otherwise.

Personally, I don't just take someone at their word. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, in this case you seem reluctant to give any evidence. Can't you see how that might make some people a little suspicious, especially if they've observed this sort of thing before?

> What he did was not the point.

But the way you talk about him totally is. You shouldn't defend people who give you undeserved favors at the cost of others, if this is what he did. And you absolutely shouldn't be surprised by the consequences, if you do.

Your coworkers may have felt equally threatened by this supervisor as you did by them. Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good.

> I feel like you are totally missing why I wrote this piece by focusing on one sentence.

No doubt. People have their own agendas to play, not everybody will support yours.

> Associating yourself with people like him will do you no good.

that's called "blaming the victim". how do you not "associate" yourself with your own supervisor ??

sigh. i did not take any favors - i want my career to be built on merit and not favoritism - that is why i left the company. but do people realize that's not actually fair ? and this happens to a lot of women, not just me.

Hey, I didn't want to say that you were taking favors from the guy. I reacted to your defense of him here on HN - you initially described him as awkward and sexist but later said that he was just treating you fairly. If he was awkward there's no point pretending he wasn't. If he provoked others to hate you, there's no point pretending he didn't. It's not your fault anyway and coworkers were wrong to retaliate on you even if provoked.

And maybe my yesterday post was too harsh. I take your word that you don't want favors. But be careful with how you present this guy - I doubt that he was exactly awkward, sexist, equal and fair all at the same time :) And you wouldn't want to give appearance of rationalizing somebody who actually happens to be unfair to others, that's what I wanted to say.

I wasn't being defensive - he WAS treating others unfairly too ... you think they would have sprung on me if he had not been an ass to them and they hadn't felt threatened ? I am thinking about following up with another post with more details about the background on that, because that's a separate discussion.

From my response There was no quote because it was him being nicer to me than to the other men thought he should have been - it was actually him not treating me like a second class citizen. It was this "equal" status that made the others feel that I got better treatment. Note "equal" not equal. Note "nicer than they thought he should have been".

tyingq, your line of inquiry reads as a rather aggressive litigation of someone who is a self-identified victim of harassment. I can't speak to your soul, so I don't know if it's intentional or not, but in so doing, you're actually contributing to the harassment in some small way. Other women who read this story and these comments could see the way you're doubting and questioning the author on her experiences, and easily take that as stay silent on her own negative experiences. Think about the effects of your words; defer to empathy over suspicion :)

>Think about the effects of your words

That's fair enough. For what it's worth, I do have sympathy, and I do believe that some people treated her in a sexist manner.

I dont think you read her blog post. she wasn't just treated in a sexist manner. That sparked the issue, which turned into alleged bullying an harassment by most of her team. You dont have to be a woman to understand how badly that would suck.

thanks for the defense. a woman would have to be foolish to create such a ruckus about "just sexism". we just suck that part up as part of our jobs.

> a woman would have to be foolish to create such a ruckus about "just sexism".

I disagree, and that's not what I intended with my use of the word "just". It seemed to me like the poster was saying "look, no sexism here in this sub-incident" and I meant that your post wasn't just about sexism, it was about harassment.

I understand what you meant, but what I said is that public discussions on these issues are career-impacting, and usually negatively. As painful as sexism is, I don't think it is practical to make a public discussion out of it - there is usually a threshold.

as a male, I'm sorry you had to endure any of it.

thanks :-) and i really do appreciate your support of me in the threads. more than one guy has defended my post for me and that has been encouraging to see :-) honestly, not all men at apple are jerks either. its just that the jerks tend to be the loudest.

I think I was being sarcastic. Publishing this post has been a draining experience for me and I don't think I can be trusted to make coherent arguments about this issue for a while now. :-/ I didn't expect it to pick up the way it did since this was a re-post after a barely noticeable first attempt.

For the record, I really appreciate that you took the time to record these events and make clear the sorts of things that you experienced. Even though it's hard to see now, from the commenters in this thread and others, I think stories like yours are important, especially as they contribute to a broader narrative. I hope and believe that we are working towards a sort of inflection point, where the scales tip and this sort of subtle and subversive nonsense is reliably identified, acknowledged, and rejected.

Asking basic factual questions is not "aggressive litigation". It's true that the piece is heavy on prescription and short on detailed accounting of what happened.

Providing detail would actually advance the cause of fighting harassment. It would better help everyone identify its specific forms even at companies that have diversity programs in place. In light of that, absence of detail should absolutely warrant inquiry.

https://mfbt.ca/some-garbage-i-used-to-believe-about-equalit...

What? You did actually say this:

> One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism.

He was treating you with respect and you think it was sexist? As a male manager of female employees, what am I even supposed to do?

> what am I even supposed to do?

Extracting information from self-contradictory accounts is a bit of a black art, but this being said my guess is that he actually did something to deserve these labels just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail. So calm down :)

>just the OP isn't comfortable discussing it in detail

I have to say, if the OP is comfortable in making these very grave accusations but not comfortable enough to explain what happened but just to give her assessment of the situation; it doesn't do her credibility any good.

There are a number of red flags noted throughout the comments, and much of this criticism has been met with "omg so horrible you have to believe the victim". This is a very worrying trend that will only lead to polarizing individuals into either of the hate camps; where those that rush to sympathize will create fertile grounds for false accusations and those who feel are being deceived are going to be desbelieving of actual victims.

is the fact that Apple thought to issue me an apology not enough proof that I am not making things up ?

Where's this apology?

read the blog.

I did read you claimed Apple apologized to you before I wrote that response. Which is why I asked where is the apology.

On her desk :) Why does it matter to you to see this damn paper?

It seems to me that the OP deliberately avoids naming concrete people and publishing whatever paper trail she has. Which is probably a good thing, after some known cases of one-sided accounts published completely with details and real names resulting in lynch mobs against the accused and sometimes also against the victim. Discussion forums are not a court, which is where you submit this kind of papers to "prove" things to one another in slightly more civilized and controlled conditions.

>Why does it matter to you to see this damn paper?

If you read the previous comments, she brought it up as proof that her statements were sincere.

And this is very much the "court of public opinion", which is why the author wrote this post and chose to publish it here. People will make their own judgment with direct consequences. For an accusation of this level when the story has many holes and all we have is one side, some proof is needed. If anyone's reputation can be trashed forever with an improbable accusation, any civility you speak of is doomed.

this person is a troll - just read his comments. don't bother engaging.

She's making a direct accusation against Apple, but doesn't provide any concrete quotes that we can evaluate for ourselves. Seems like it would be more fair to leave the company name out of it if she's only trying to give us a heads up about a problem in the industry.

I don't understand what it would mean for you to "evaluate this for yourself". You have no way of independently verifying what's she's saying, quotes or no quotes.

The background assumptions behind this sort of comment strike me as weird. It's as if you think that women themselves aren't able to tell whether or not they're being harassed, and this can only be determined by an online panel of (mostly) male nerds who have no direct knowledge of the relevant events. I.e., please tell us more details so we can figure out for you if you're actually being harassed or if you're just a crazy female.

>I don't understand what it would mean for you to "evaluate this for yourself". You have no way of independently verifying what's she's saying, quotes or no quotes.

It is the difference, though, between accepting a conclusion, and seeing the path that led there.

"This guy is incompetent because he writes insecure code"

"He often wrote code that would allow untrusted input, of undetermined size, into a fixed size buffer. This behavior caused me to question his competence."

"<the actual code, dumped here>. He was constantly checking in code like this, or worse. I question his competence."

The first requires you take the author's conclusion at face value. The second and/or third give you a better idea of why they got there, which makes it more credible.

And, while no names were named, there's enough contextual clues that I'm sure many at Apple know who's being talked about. So, it's less about "you're a crazy female" and more about "lots of people are being called sexist here (one supervisor, several coworkers), would be more comfortable with that if there were more detail".

I guess this is not getting through, but she's not submitting the article to you for you to evaluate. She's not obliged to tell you about any of this in the first place, and she can give as much or as little detail as she feels is appropriate. If you just don't trust her, then quotes would make no difference. If you are willing to believe her, then believe also that a woman is perfectly capable of figuring out when she's being harassed and doesn't need you to check her reasoning for her. The idea that you are going to find some flaw in her reasoning on the basis of a few quotes, with no knowledge of the individuals or situations involved, is really quite absurd.

Neither am I submitting comments for you to evaluate my motives. Nonetheless, it's happening.

a direct quote may be useless as much more is said in context and tone which is hard or impossible to convey in a blog. with people who are good at emotional or verbal abuse, they have a sense of how to intimidate and tear down people while usually staying "within the lines" of not being overtly outrageous/illegal/fireable.

I think she made a convincing case, but maybe you dont think so. But adding a direct quote would hardly do much.

I personally wonder if using a voice recorder would be appropriate in these cases. It's legally complex, because I dont think you can always legally record someone without their permission. But just having that kind of evidence, to play back to HR, to an attorney, a court, or even youtube, could be quite powerful.

That's one possible explanation, but the fact that she identifies people (roles) suggests not.

Feeling she was discriminated against but not knowing why and therefore speculating would be another possible explanation, I'm sure there are others.

Yes, we lack of details here. The statement A (sb jump at the defense of a coworker in a team event) does not imply B (this is a display of sexism) necessarily. Could be because she is a self-called very private/introverted person, not because is a woman. All supervisors know that introverted people can score poorly when dealing with "mosh pit like" and argumentative situations.

this is an interesting perspective on tech and women in tech.

I read the entire article and this is my take: this writer worked with an extreme bulley. The bulley was a ringleader. And potentially psycho.

This isn't about sexism, racism, etc. This is about a ringleader selecting a victim to prey upon for the sole purpose of causing pain.

I didn't even work with him directly - he was just there and decided to pick on me, yes. And yes, that was the gist of the experience.

I wonder why she didn't record everything - especially since both managers and HR were trying to gaslight her - making her doubt her sanity.

If she'd gone to HR with recordings and they brushed aside her concerns then she'd have a much stronger case.

Well as she said, a distressed mind doesn't think properly.

if i had the ability to be this clearheaded, we wouldn't be having this problem at all ..

Having been through an eerily similar episode as what you describe (but then as an LGBT employee) I did have an almost perfect paper trail but it still didn't help.

It takes an absolutely insane amount of energy to fight a huge company like this and even if you do everything right the chances are pretty good they'll wear you out first.

Best of luck with your recovery! It's been a really tough few years for me and I can't think of much to say except that I empathize with you and perhaps recommend this book [1] which looking back lists a lot of things that helped me get over it.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...

Thanks for sharing the book. I am an employee of another big tech company currently going through similar process of HR not being very helpful despite raising grievance for last two months. The book is on point. With children and family, the fight is not worth the stress and permanent health impact.

i will agree. from unfortunate personal experience.

Indeed. I wouldn't suggest anyone enduring months and months of not feeling safe at a visceral level if you also have the choice to disengage.

If you find a way to keep feeling safe, like I imagine having a good pro-bono legal advisor could have done for me, then by all means go ahead. If not, then there's also no shame in just moving on.

i agree about walking away, but i think by the time you think its a legal issue, its too late. its not easy to find a job when you have anxiety or depression - i tried a lot to do that. i also trusted the company, which i think is a fair thing to do.

> i also trusted the company, which i think is a fair thing to do.

I thought the same; but like you was mistaken in that. Looking back I've come to realize that, even though it shouldn't be, as soon as you get HR involved it's become a legal issue.

But yeah; my point was that if solid legal backing could prevent you from developing the anxiety and depression, like I think it would have for me, then it could be worth going through with it...

thanks a lot :) sorry you had to do that. i will look at the book. :-)

Your contributions in this thread have been extraordinarily clearheaded, and levelheaded too. I'm a moderator here and want to thank you for that. It isn't easy to keep your balance this way when a large internet community is dissecting every grain of what you wrote, let alone on such a difficult topic.

thank you :-) that means a lot to me !

If you're trying to make people sympathise with you and support you, pulling out a recording device isn't the first thing you want to do.

According to the author, she'd discuss one thing with HR and their official report would state something completely different. To be precise, HR said, the author refused the company's help.

What do you suppose she do in this case apart from recording the meeting?

I think she followed the correct procedure. A problem was occurring and she went to HR to inform them. Would of it been better if she had evidence? Of course, but it's HR's ultimate responsibility to conduct the investigation. Just like it's the police's responsibility to conduct a investigation after an incident, not the victims. (This is of course best case which unfortunately didn't happen here.)

You must be careful about recording things, because there are a lot of laws around that, and you can end up in more trouble yourself, as in, Federal law violation and go-to-jail trouble. See for instance: http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-co... Though I would never recommend making decisions about that based on one web page.

For the sake of argument, assuming that this took place in California, that's a "two-party" consent state for recordings, which at least means you don't have a unilateral right to record anything you want. Exactly how that would interact with taking place on corporate property in a corporate setting is something you'd have to ask a lawyer about.

Preamble: I'm not questioning or talking against the article at all, just making some notes. The problem seems to be real all around the world, which is yet another indicator that most societies are not ready for global market.

The only thing I miss from the article: did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step.

My additional notes:

    > Instead of helping me, HR embarked on a defensive and confrontational script.

HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines. They will only look at what's best for the company and for it's business. There are no labor unions any more; those are the ones that would actually care about your wellbeing.

    > It is not reasonable to expect the victim to have the presence of mind to know how to tackle this problem.

In certain situations it's very hard to make decisions, that is true, but this is not a seconds/minutes scenario, when you need to make immediate calls. When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone.

    > Until the investigation was completed, even my honesty was at stake.

This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.

    > harassment is one of the most brutal experiences women encounter in the workplace [...] Companies need to do far more than what they are doing right now to prevent women from eventually quitting. [...] The company needs to support and empower women to take a stand in these situations. [...] This includes considering women in these situations as people, rather than as pawns in the greater agenda of protecting the company’s legal liabilities.

s/women/people

Harassment get target _anyone_, it comes in all flavours. Please don't make harassment part of the gender wars. You can get harassed for having a foreign accent in the UK. ( In a country where English pronunciation differs from village to village. )

> The only thing I miss from the article: did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step.

I understand where you're coming from. But... there should be no need for one adult to educate another that bad behavior is unacceptable.

Hi! I know you enjoy punching me from behind when I'm doing my work, but could you please stop?

The larger issue is that (like most companies) actually doing anything is secondary to management politics. Protecting the bureaucracy is the #1 goal.

thank you :-) i think that is the point of the article .. we are in a chicken and egg situation here .. no one believes women when they say there are problems and hence there is no progress ..

> no one believes women when they say there are problems and hence there is no progress ..

There are huge public awareness campaigns around all of these issues.

Yes, and for good reason :-)

So when people say no one believes women when they say there are problems, and at the same time, there are huge public awareness campaigns, I have to point out the inherent contradiction involved.

Everything I see in the media is that there are not only huge awareness campaigns, but that when something does happen, there are also huge outcries about it.

look at the skeptics in this thread as an example .. does it give you a warm and fuzzy ? this is a stressful thread to read.

We are complete strangers to the situation, we are only hearing one side of the story, and now we're the bad guys because we don't take 100% of what you said for granted?.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, as sexism is undoubtedly a real issue in our society and our industry, but every other comment I read of yours makes it ever closer to a textbook case of a baseless accusation made to get back at someone you didn't like, and I'm ready to be conclusive about this. Do you realize how much this impacts all future cries for help from women being grossly mistreated because of their gender? My SO is going into engineering and it boils my blood to think how much people are willing to abuse the system until she can no longer be protected by it and we're back to the 1950's.

I'm afraid that HR protection of corporate interests is only tangentially related to sexism and racism. Even if you banished racism and sexism from the earth, that HR machinery will still be doing everything in its power to build a paper trail narrative against you should you make the company uncomfortable in any way.

Isn't a logical extension of having a company be responsible to shareholders, that it shall optimize for no lawsuits, as they're very pricy and damage the brand more than a blog post?

> there should be no need for one adult to educate another that bad behavior is unacceptable.

In a perfect world, where each and every one of us is aware of each and every culture around the world, this is true. Right now, we are in the middle of a process, where we encounter with culture we never dealt with before.

In some societies the boundaries for certain acts - such as personal space, physical contact, etc - is completely different to others.

Therefore I do believe talking could solve a small percentage of situations, which one considers harassment. ( Not the one in the article. )

What you're saying may feel and sound rational. But it is victim blaming.

No, it's not.

I was asking questions and stating a few thing I made as mistakes - HR as someone to turn to -.

Congrats, you've assigned an arbitrary label to his questions. Labeling arguments is not the same as refuting them.

Now, is he incorrect? If so, why?

You can tell somebody about how the bribery system works in another country after they've fallen victim, but that doesn't mean you think they own the blame for a foreign country's bribery issues.

And, if something is a serious issue, like HR motivations to build a case against you no matter what, then people should say it out loud.

> did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step.

How do you support this statement? It doesn't strike me as a given and you don't really back it up at all.

I did confront them and ask them to stop, but I still had to work with them, and they didn't entirely stop .. Unless you expect women to have taken Harassment 101 as a college course, they are really flying blind with this one .. when more than one person is involved or supervisors are involved, it's not that easy to say oh here, let me pull so many people into HR .. legalities aside, it's the end of a happy working relationship ..

I have been in adversarial relationships at my workplace that took a huge toll emotionally and eventually physically, just as you described. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I think it's good that you are talking about it and hope you recover - I still get stressed just thinking about those situations, years later.

I did learn the hard way how to deal with it, which I think is mostly about attitude. I think part of your ordeal was that you had certain expectations from the people around you, and a lot of the grief was having those broken. So first of all, I guess you get a little more realistic (or disillusioned...) about workplace relationships, leadership and company policies. Sad as it may sound, loss of innocence and thicker skin will help the next time.

Second thing is to nip things in the bud and not let anything fester. At this point I will straight up confront anyone if I feel treated unfairly and not let it rest. More often than not this solves the situation. If not, I will move on. Life is too short to stick around and being miserable somewhere, as long as you have the freedom not to.

It sounds from your writing like you've already learned these lessons, but I just wanted to share my experiences.

Workplace abuse is definitely a massive problem. Like personal relationships, it isn't something that the abused party can simply walkaway from without a major impact on their own life.

I would guess a double digit percentage of jobs globally are abusive. A big chunk of which wouldn't even qualify as consensual employment - either through unpaid slave labor or misleading information about wages and work conditions.

There needs to be more transparency about employment and the people involved in them. I think we will eventually see something like LinkedIn but which provides both positive and negative feedback about people and doesn't require a user to sign up for a profile to exist.

There is a hard question as to where to draw the dividing line. Without robots, some jobs are just abusive - period. Many jobs lower the life expectancy of the workers, and I suppose the alternative would be (without robots) that no one does them. In the West we kind of get to firewall ourselves off from this, and we get to use, sell, or consume the product after all of the dirty work is done. At the minimum, reducing non-consensual employment will help push the true economic costs of produced goods closer to reality and eliminate the market forces which benefit non-consensual labor (basically cheating.)

In terms of adversarial work environments, which if not addressed can easily become mutually abusive, no matter what the policies of a company are, the fired workers are going to end up working somewhere else. A big company like Apple may be capable of implementing ideal processes and eliminate those workers, but what happens at the next company they show up in? Should an employment blacklist exist at the federal level, or should employers only allow known abusive employees just to work in isolation?

I recently joined a new team and company, and the senior person became threatened by me (I am stronger and would have become the tech lead), and he started bullying me. I switched teams. It cost me time and reputation. I didn't know what else to do, since bullying is a covert aggression and designed to be felt but not witnessed (e.g., he arranged a group after-work get together, in front of me, without asking me the newcomer to join). People don't believe when you point out that someone is aggressing unless it is overt. You get all of the asinine replies that people are writing to your article here. My company gets to reap the reward though: they have someone that is protecting his position of poor performance through bullying, causing us to lose users due to his buggy product, and since he is friends with the management, they don't seem to understand his poor performance.

BTW, good article, kudos for publishing it, and you are correct to have those feelings.

> s/women/people Harassment get target _anyone_

But does it target everyone _equally_ ? Of course not, far from it. This is why we pay attention to the groups that get targeted a lot.

> Please don't make harassment part of the gender wars.

Assuming that it isn't already.

but by targeting harassment properly you'd help all the groups at the same time.

Isn't that basically the ""everyone should get their fair share" argument?

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/e...

thanks for the link, it was a nice read. i still have a problem with this:

> Saying "target all harassment" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to

the problem is harassment. not just women harassment, not just racial harassment. isn't it just as dismissive to say "focus on these kinds of harassment, everybody else will just have to wait because they can consider themselves lucky enough to even be white males"?

they key bit is "targeting harassment properly". of course dismissing is not proper handling.

> But does it target everyone _equally_ ?

LOL, wat?

Each and every case is unique, there is no equal in this.

I even gave an example, which has happened to me, to friends, to my wife equally...

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. The point that I am trying to make is along these lines: http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/8/13882562/online-hara...

Saying "it happens to everyone, it's not gendered" is ignorant at best.

From article above:

> yes, people disagree and are jerks. But they also tend to be much bigger, nastier jerks to women, people of color, and folks in other marginalized groups. Women and people of color can shrug off harassment too, of course, and often do. But they also tend to face more, and more vicious, attacks

"Women .. face more attacks" is what I mean by not equal. "More", meaning "not an equal amount".

And the thing about questioning, I understand innocent until proven guilty, but putting the onus of everything on the victim is pretty unfair ..

I agree with you. I definitely wouldn't trust an employee's accusations without a proper investigation, but contacting the alleged abusers and reminding them to behave professionally doesn't seem to be a problem. Especially since (in general) they might be unaware of the effect their behaviour has on you!

No, actually, it's not. You're accusing someone of something very serious that puts their livelihood at stake. You need to have proof in that situation. It's a very intense and emotional experience, but that doesn't mean everyone needs to automatically assume the alleged victim is being honest.

And that's what makes victims think 100 times before making a formal allegation .. and why most don't report it.

What does? The necessity that you should actually show something is occurring before a company destroys someone's reputation and livelihood? Reality is that people lie. Do you genuinely believe that an accusation should be taken as 100% truth simply on one person's word? Do you not see how easily that become a weapon? Even reprimanding a person, when there's no proof they've done anything wrong, establishes a bias against them. That's a great way to alienate an employee who may have done nothing wrong, not to mention opening the thread of legal repercussion.

Why can't a formal investigation happen anyways in an anonymous fashion? It takes the concerns seriously and also doesn't automatically assume I'll intent on either side. I don't see the point in dismissing op and assuming someone accused of harassment is the first person that needs protection and support over people who are concerned they are being harassed to the point they make complaints about it...

An anonymous formal investigation absolutely should happen. The OP seems to arguing that you shouldn't even question someone who claims they are being harassed, and that is what I take exception with. Both people in the situation should be treated as innocent until there is proof otherwise.

There is a difference between questioning someone and proceeding with the investigation to ascertain proof and actions if necessary. One assumes there are concerns that need to be looked into, the other one implies the accuser is lying ... the former is good faith and the latter is dissuading someone from proceeding.

it should happen, but the company can either encourage it or discourage it .. and that stance is important ..

Yes, but consider the opposite scenario, where the onus is placed on the accused. Virtually every situation would be a nightmare to deal with; careers would be ruined on false allegations, and eventually accusers would lose credibility. I understand where you are coming from, and I do empathize with your situation and believe that Apple should have done more, but I'm firmly in the camp that the onus of proof should be on the accuser while also firmly believing that the accusers claims should be taken very seriously.

to be honest, women's careers are ruined far more than men. how many men do you know who have been ostracized ? trump is president for crying out loud.. and ailes is happily working for him..

anyway, i only said the company needs to encourage investigations and reporting, not discourage them. this has nothing to do with people at all - it is the company's attitude that i am talking about.

I disagree slightly - having been in management and having dealt with multiple harassment issues, the responsibility of the target of harassment is to report it, and it is the management's responsibility to investigate even handedly. As outside observers, we need to try to restrain ourselves and refrain from brash judgements.

Harassment situations like these can be difficult to talk about publicly for a number of reasons; respecting the privacy of all parties involved, readers' natural tendencies to issue a judgement, and so on. My take has always been that anonymized public stories like these are mostly as awareness raising not specific accusations - the emphasis is on the difficulty of the experience, not really trying to bring a specific person to justice (usually, of course there are exceptions). I do think that, if the reader is receptive, such stories are useful for helping to understand what this sort of thing looks like and what someone who is targeted by harassment is going through and perhaps provide suggestions to those who can help on how to help.

But as for placing guilt itself, I'd suggest that's not the business of stories like this or the business of those reading it. Even when you are in a position where it is your responsibility to address an issue of harassment, getting the story in a fair way is very difficult, and it's really unpleasant for everyone involved. Those who are responsible for others of course need to get over the discomfort of such discussions and work to resolve the issues, whether it's by correcting behavior or helping to explain misunderstandings, which can still be hurtful even if they are not meant to be.

It is unfortunate though understandable why many businesses take a handsoff position out of fear of legal reprecussions, since such actions just make the entire thing worse. Pretending it's not happening doesn't help anyone, whether it's based on a misunderstanding or not.

edit: changed onus to "responsibility of" since I cross posted mentally from a different discussion

In this context, "No, actually, it's not" is not a particularly civil way to make this point. The valid concern you're raising would not be hard to express in a good-faith way. I think we can all agree that there are multiple concerns and it's not obvious how to balance them.

The fact that you led with "No actually" instead, and ended by imputing a strawman ("everyone needs to automatically assume") gives your comment an absence-of-good-faith quality that we should all be striving to avoid on HN—particularly when the topic is divisive.

I'm sorry if I've violated some set of community standards. I personally find this article rather distasteful and lacking in details. The cultural signaling strewn throughout it come off as an attempts to raise an angry internet mob against a company based on what is very clearly a bias representation of the situation. This sort of manipulation and axe-grinding is not something I see as being in particularly good faith, so my distaste for it colored my comments.

I tried to make sure I wasn't attacking anyone, but rather the ideas presented. I'll keep your guidance in mind if I find myself making such comments again.

what about the livelihood of the victim ? is that not at stake because of someone else's misbehavior ?

Curious as to your thoughts on official corporate surveillance on employees in context of this sort of she said/he said situations.

If things happen in places that have cameras, maybe it is helpful. But otherwise ? These things just happen - they cannot really be anticipated.

There are no labor unions any more; those are the ones that would actually care about your wellbeing.

Actually labor unions tend to protect people accused of sexual harassment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-mis...

In fact they seem to be legally obligated to advocate for all union members, which would include the people doing harassing.

I'm astonished this is as high as it is.

> did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager?

There are a huge number of reasons why you should not be expected to do this. The harasser can be in a position of authority, for example. Even separately to that (and i understand this is a reducio argument, but..) would you ask an abuse victim to speak to their abuser? No, they go straight to the police.

> HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines.

This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.

> When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone.

I report an assault. Do I suggest to the police how they should investigate and prosecute this assault? No. The victim reports the behaviour, but other parties should determine how to investigate and proceed with that report.

> This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.

Sometimes, yes, people do lie, but each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.

In the (very unlikely) event of the victim being untruthful, the matter should be dropped, not blow back on the reporter -- or nobody will report real problems for fear of being unfairly punished themselves.

> s/women/people

This didn't need to be said. The author is talking about her experiences of harassment as a woman in technology. Yes, there are other problems that also need solving. This isn't the hill on which to make this point.

> > HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines.

> This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.

Ah, but it's not a gendered problem, and outside of gender laws, there's not much you can do to "fix" something nebulous like this in corporate America.

> This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.

This is not a problem that can realistically be fixed. An organization that's going to work for the best interests of employees cannot be paid by the company, nor can it report to the company or someone with whom the company has significant influence. That means unions.

sigh - but management can do a better job managing and if victims know what or how to recognize problems, they can be better prepared to deal with the situation more effectively. which is the point of this piece.

"In the (very unlikely) event of the victim being untruthful, the matter should be dropped, not blow back on the reporter -- or nobody will report real problems for fear of being unfairly punished themselves."

What? Apparently, being untruthful about reporting harassment could result in the untruthful reporter being _unfairly_ punished?

Sounds like an all-win situation. Report harassment, true or not. If it helps your lot in life/work, great. If not, even if proven false, it gets dropped, non-consequentially. After all, it would be unfair to punish you...

I think kalleth was saying that _fairly_ punishing an untruthful reporter could discourage future _truthful_ reporters as they may fear being _unfairly_ punished.

> There are a huge number of reasons why you should not be expected to do this.

When you get attacked in the street, talking is the first thing you should do. When you are harassed by a teacher in class as well. You always need to talk to the person attacking you unless it's too dangerous to do so. It may fail, but if you don't do it, you basically give up your ability to act.

> This didn't need to be said

This does need to be said. There is a high focus on making everything about gender these days, and it's very detrimental. It makes people focusing on specifics, instead of global issues. Worst, it usually focus on fighting against something instead of empowering the victims, which needs to be done for long term results.

> each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.

That's actually very hard to do, but it's true it would be the ideal call.

However, a group of other male coworkers who resented the attention I received started directing inappropriate and misogynistic remarks towards me.

That statement totally reminds me of accounts I've read of conservatives and how they feel about minorities get special treatment.

I just find it really interesting that groups in power react this way while they are still in power. It's a very, very foreign thing to me and I don't understand the source of it, but there is very clearly a common thread of this running through our world right now.

> I just find it really interesting that groups in power react this way while they are still in power

Individuals tend to do it when they perceive themselves to be in, or in danger of being in, less of a position of power and privilege than they expect. Members of groups that are, or have recently, in positions of relative power have correspondingly higher expectations as a fairly direct result of membership in such a group.

The H1B visa system needs to be overhauled or done away with entirely. It's truly sickening to see how we as a society tolerate indentured servitude in the 21st century.

Companies use the system to purposefully depress wages. It needs to end.

Harassment laws are probably not as bad as anti-discrimination laws, but I do question whether they are really needed. I remember this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857

> No one at the company took responsibility for anything other than protecting the company’s liability in case of a lawsuit

The tech industry absolutely doesn't need unions /s

From my mothers similar experiences followed by her unions absolute refusal to help, in a word, no. They exist to parasitically take your money, forcibly take others who don't want to give and really offer very little in return other than more bureaucracy.

Your much better off paying a lawyer than a union.

> They exist to parasitically take your money, forcibly take others who don't want to give and really offer very little in return other than more bureaucracy.

If we look at historical facts rather than your mothers anecdotes this is incredibly far from the truth.

I remember from a "Free To Choose" video that due to unions there was a huge amount of bureaucracy taking months to fire one worker in the government.

Anyways, that's just another anecdote, what are the historical facts?

Unions have fought for and won such a huge amount of the workers rights we enjoy today that it would be a disservice to try and cover all of them in a comment. Google is your friend if you'd like to learn about the history of unions and labour movements.

OK, I tried searching "worker rights due to union" and "union worker rights" and only found pages about unions protecting the right to associate. What should I input into Google?

Google searching like that is going to have trouble separating news from history.

Maybe just start with "history of worker rights." Or maybe just the wikipedia labor movement article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement It's not all strictly about changes forced through unions vs other types of activists, but once unions were made legal they were one of the strongest methods for demanding and enforcing these for large numbers of workers in the days before they were turned into laws.

> Throughout the world, action by labourists has resulted in reforms and workers' rights, such as the two-day weekend, minimum wage, paid holidays, and the achievement of the eight-hour day for many workers. There have been many important labour activists in modern history who have caused changes that were revolutionary at the time and are now regarded as basic. For example, Mary Harris Jones, better known as "Mother Jones", and the National Catholic Welfare Council were important in the campaign to end child labour in the United States during the early 20th century. .

a) two-day weekend

How is this a right? Some people want to work less; some want to work more. If it were forced by unions, forcing a two-day weekend stops people from working more.

b) paid holiday

Same; not everyone wants paid holidays as opposed to getting more money in their pockets.

c) minimum wage

The minimum wage stops less skilled people from working; this especially affects blacks and teenagers. I see the minimum wage as a negative effect of unions (nobody wants their job to be replaced by a cheaper worker).

d) Again, not everyone wants to work an 8-hour day. Poor people want to work more and other people want to work in different schedules (like a 3 day week).

It is not clear to me why a), b), and d) can't be achieved without unions if people wanted those 3.

I have no problem with people having a), b), and d) voluntarily and unions persuading people and employers for those causes; but I don't want workers to be forced to have those three (there's no free lunch--these worker "rights" come at the expense of the worker's salary).

Sorry but this comment is just incredibly stupid. You (probably) have the right to free speech but you aren't forced to spew bile constantly. You might have the right to bear arms but you wouldn't be forced to carry an AR-15 24/7. Having the right to something means it can't be taken from you, not that you can't give it up. I worked as a chef for many years and many workers rights (particularly the EU working directive) are simply incompatible with the industry. Does this mean I was unable to work? Did the industry collapse? No. I just signed a waiver each time I started a new job.

c) Is actually an interesting subject and personally I do not agree with having a minimum wage and I feel that the purpose of introducing it was to undermine unions. There is a lot more to say about min wage but this comment thread is probably not the place for it. The rest of your post is, objectively, nonsense.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/sep/...

Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_history_of_the_United_St...

Try "historical benefits of unions".

If we look at historical facts

Past Performance Is No Guarantee Of Future Results. These aren't the 1900's.

"forcibly take others who don't want to give"

To paraphrase most anti-union people's favorite refrain, "Nobody is making you work someplace that requires union dues."

no because people can quit and losing good people is a liability for any company. I am assuming that she continues to work there despite being treated poorly is due to immigration issues which make it impossible to switch jobs. We need to end immigration bonded slavery.

So she should have to be the one to leave, and potentially have to take a lower paying/lower status job? How on earth is that fair?

i don't work there any longer. i don't believe in allowing anyone the kind of leverage that results in me being abused.

The union isn't necessarily going to protect you here either: Your coworkers would also be union members, and you'd just be moving the discussion to a different place that calls favorites too. Do the union reps like you more than they like the harassers?

I have seen harassment go south for the harasser, but the cases had one thing in common: The person that was being harassed had far more status than the harassers believed, so, in practice, they were spitting upwards. If high management believes you are the more valuable, likable party, you will win. If they don't, you will lose. Facts are relatively unimportant.

So the moral of the story is to make friends in high places. Depressing, but real.

NO. NO NO NO.

the tech industry does NOT need a union.

what could hypothetically be argued is the need for the equivalent of the medical board, or bar, or cpa, cfa, engineering license, etc. and it would be a legitimate debate, but no clear cut answer exists.

you'll note that all of those bodies have ethics and competency standards and none of them are unions, meaning none of them negotiate contracts on behalf of their constituent members.

i DO NOT (DO _NOT_) want a union negotiating my business relationships for me, and exclude me from my own industry if i refuse to let them.

A union in this case would actually be more likely to protect the harassers than the victim. Unions exist to protect employees in general even when that hurts specific employees.

You can find plenty of cases where union reps have disputed sexual harassment claims.

Wowza, maybe they do have a problem. I'm not sure I agree with all of the complaints there but it does seem they have at least some genuine issues that should be addressed.

Just being completely honest, this reinforces my general opinion to be very cautious around females, avoiding it where possible is probably a wise idea.

Being honest about your sexism doesn't make it any better.

I dunno, to me it's more of a generational problem than a gender one, I'm just advocating keeping a safe distance from one of the most lethal weapons until society regains some sense of sanity.

I think you an adrienne need to have a talk

What makes you think i want to talk to someone who has gross opinions about women? Fuck that. Got better things to do.

(It's pretty clear you're implying that i'm a man-hater or some similar sexist bullshit. I have no idea what your problem is with me, but whatever.)

absolutely not. I made pro-feminist stances in this thread and recommended you to help deconstruct his sexist notions.

You did make some pro-feminist statements in this thread, and i upvoted them even! You also, a week and a half ago, called me a "deeply unhappy person" and suggested i was crazy. Not sure what to make of that.

> to be very cautious around females,

cautious in what way ?

I don't see any way that this comment can be called civil, and you are not welcome to break the HN guidelines when commenting here. No more of this, please.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

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Which guideline, flamewar?

> I don't believe you can prove anything

Go do some math proofs and report back

Math proofs rely on arbitrarily chosen axioms; tps5 describes a similarly arbitrary approach to reasoning, e.g.:

> Someone might say "I know she is lying because she used this term which liars always use plus I read this story about a woman making up harassment charges to elicit sympathy."

Using a mathematical approach, maybe they started from an axiom that liars use specific terms which out them as such. Then after several theorems and lemmas, they managed to establish what that specific term is. Without the guarantees given by the axiom, all the knowledge they managed to build upon it is dubious.

The problem with axioms is that they fall outside of the "purity" of maths - they're basically "something a bunch of people agree on". When you scale that to billions of people, it tends to fall apart(also evidenced in maths, where there's lots of questions which set of axioms to use as the foundation for a specific branch). Very mushy.

Meant that as a joke, mate. Humor isn't known for traveling well on the web.

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Always remember: HR IS THERE TO PROTECT THE COMPANY. NOT YOU.

Please don't use all caps for emphasis.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Calling Apple one of the best engineering teams is little much, don't you think?

It's "hacker news" ;-) It is always like this here.

You genuinely do not believe that Apple's engineering teams is "one of the best"? It is a pretty arbitrary measure, so where would you place them? Would they make your Top 10? Top 100?

> Calling Apple one of the best engineering teams is little much, don't you think?

In a word, no.

Yes they are a huge company and make a lot of boneheaded technical decisions, not all of which can be blamed on management/marketing (their web services are behind the curve, as is a lot of user-facing software).

But at the same time a lot of their hardware work is amazing: their chip work, general hardware robustness, the fact that they are one of the largest phone mfrs with a unusually low hardware defect rate, and who has pulled some amazing rabbits out of hats (when the iPad was released its retail price was lower than the BOM of most alternatives). Their privacy engineering (secure enclave that protects your fingerprint data, determination to keep certain data in the terminal rather than the cloud) shows dedication and hard engineering. Though a lot of their apps are shambolic (iTunes, photos, etc) their drivers are typically quite solid and standards compliant (cough ignoring wifi, ahem), and Frankly they're willing to knife the baby (Windows suffers a lot due to their longstanding commitment to backwards compatibility).

Yes, you can legitimately complain that the OSX scheduler still sucks, network stack is slow, or you can roll your eyes that their marketing pronouncements are ludicrous and their vocal fans somewhat creepy. But yes, they have one of the best engineering teams.

Don't get hung up on they hype either way. It's like talking about Musk: fundamentally he's a complete bullshitter, but he did found a company that makes rockets fly into space. Apple are bullshitters, no question about it. But they also deliver.

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> I don't mean to discount your experience, but honestly I don't feel like this is the whole story.

Found the most HN comment I'll see all day.

Please don't. Even if you correctly interpreted that comment, the fact that some people litter in the town square doesn't mean you should too.

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Lots of down votes because of uncomfortable truth? I've seen this happen a few times and the only thing you need to do is honestly apply feminist values to all people without discriminating to start condemning it.

It's like asking for respect for getting addicted to pills by pharmaceutical industries because that's a part of American culture. Maybe some criticism would be in place despite the "it's our culture" thing?

But do not harass every Indian person you can find about it!

I've had many fine coworkers from India working in the US or from India in the past and I can't imagine harassing them about this.

I would say it has downvotes because it's at best tangentially related and has some weird framing: it frames person A who gets feelings for person B as a victim when person B decides not to marry them.

Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them. I really don't see any compelling parallels to pharmaceutical addiction. As someone who is neither religious nor inclined towards marriage, Baptist vs. Anabaptist seems like a more reasonable comparison.

I think a lot of non-Indians have this impression that arranged marriage means forced marriage or child marriage. I was talking to a South Korean guy and he thought we (Indians) get married at a young age or something equally bad. When I told him how it happens in India, he remarked "thats how it happens in his country as well".

Nowadays, we have matrimonial sites similar to your eHarmony. Guys/girls or their parents will create profiles and contact each other. If all their criteria match, guy will meet the girl, talk for some time and may say yes or no. Both the girl and the guy can say no. Nobody is forcing us.

I know the next question will be how can you choose a life partner in 30 minutes. To me, marriage involves a lot of understanding and compromise from both the parties. I was talking to a 65+ year old American recently. He was talking about something called a "spark" when a guy/girl meet. If you have that spark, you go ahead in the relationship. I don't know if this "spark" is real, I saw a lot of girls in person after liking their profiles, but didn't like them (or they didn't like me) in person.

I think at some point, our culture decided that interest of the society is bigger than personal freedom. They may have decided its better to find a partner this way rather than spending several years like in other cultures (I worked with an American who dated the same girl for 5 years and got divorced in 6 months). If you are going to say that such a lack of personal freedom is regressive, I don't feel that way. In America, you have the draft which to me means you loose the right to your body.

> In America, you have the draft which to me means you loose the right to your body.

The draft hasn't been used in America since 1973 - our military service is all volunteer.

What we do have, though, is called "Selective Service" - basically when you turn 18 years of age (and on thru 25 years of age), you have to register for "Selective Service" which is there to provide a list of "able and ready" (but maybe not willing) members of society which can be called up in a re-instated draft if and when it becomes necessary.

It has yet to be used.

> Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them

It's the part where people are forced where they don't want to that I don't like. There's plenty of people married to someone introduced by their parents. You should be able to take another path when you want to.

arranged marriages are usually family introductions and rarely forced. the way they limit choice is by constraining potential partners to your own caste or community, to the supreme thrill of family conservatives who regard that as "respectable". if you're american, you're talking about a society that places a lot of importance on self - not the case in other societies. in a lot of indian families, family comes first, not the individual.

"Lots of down votes because of uncomfortable truth?"

No, downvotes because "the current state of arranged marriages in India" has absolutely nothing to do with the article. You're doing exactly what the author said was done to her.

"they made comments about not liking to work with me or with the growing number of Indian tech workers in the company. I also faced hostile remarks about Indian women being subservient and arranged marriages being forced on Indians for generations."

I have seen a scenario where a black colleague in a on-campus lunch discussion suddenly faced hostile remarks about black people being predisposed to crime. This is the exact same type of problem. Whether or not the topic is true is completely unrelated to how the topic is used to isolate and move the person from the category of a normal team member into "other" who can then be bullied or sidelined.

Right, I don't like to single out people to put them forward as "spokespeople for their group". As an immigrant myself it's kind of weird that people see me as some kind of representative of my culture/country. I don't see myself as not very typical for my country at all.

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When the word "harassment" appears, there's an 80% chance it's bs. Thanks, sjws.

When the word "SJW" appears, there's a 99.9% chance it's BS.

This account has been posting primarily uncivil or unsubstantive comments, and we ban accounts that proceed like this. Please (re-)read the guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

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The "No Meaningful Process" is shocking in a company of Apples size - in the UK they would get the book thrown at them at a tribunal for that.

Sounds like Her boss and Hr failed I wonder if things Like brexit and Trump have made closet racists fell they can be more open

unfortunately yes ... and they don't think about consequences ...

"Sounds like Her boss and Hr failed I wonder if things Like brexit and Trump have made closet racists fell they can be more open"

Yeah I'm sure they felled that way here.

We're all trying to have as civil and substantive a discussion as we can here, and this is about as active as one can get in inviting an political flamewar. Please don't do this.

How typical, HR that doesn't give a shit about the employees. And if you are in HR and reading this, and crying tears right now over this comment, tough shit. I don't care.

They're not.

I don't doubt that you have reason to say this based on experience, but if you want to comment on HN, please give us the reason and experience part, not the rant. Comments here should improve the level of discussion, not degrade it further.

>woman and minority in tech

its a bit of stretch to call Indians a minority in tech, if anything we are vastly over-represented by any standard.

> we are vastly over-represented by any standard.

Population India in 2013 : 1.3 billion

Number of Indians in the technology sector = ?

Lets be generous and say that all Indians in the USA work in the tech sector. That would be 2 million. Then lets be even more generous and add the entire population of Bangalore, 4 million as tech workers. 6E6/1.3E9 = 0.4 percent.

That's a simple standard showing that you are a minority and under-represented on a global level.

Considering the entire population of India is an absurd premise when discussing Asian-Indian representation in the US tech sector. Asian-Indians make up about 1% of the US population - I don't know how many work in tech in the USA, but I can guarantee you it's a greater share than 1%.

> I can guarantee you it's a greater share than 1%

What's that have to do with not being a minority?

'minority in tech' <-- phrase in question.

woman = minority

For purposes of bullying all that matters is that you are standing out and are weak. This can be taking all sorts of forms:

- younger

- older

- skin

- gender

- introvert

- education

All that matters is there is an abuser that for whatever internal reasons completely out of your control is acting out against you. That acting out is persistent as such persons are driven by internal irrational mechanisms often related to their broken attachment system.

The environment is either going along with it if it is a gang leader or are passive standing by. For bullying at the workplace to take place often the management level above has to be either endorsing or more likely ignoring it (conflict of interest, fear, ignorance, distracted by crisis).

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