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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

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.

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>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.

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