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Comment by sergiotapia | Hacker News Reader

>On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't.

Totally normal behavior! Who hasn't spoken about their sex life the very first day of interactions?

"Welcome to the team, we use Git for source control, all of our company knowledgebase is on Confluence, and I'm in an open sex relationship! See you at lunch!"

I can't fathom what kind of weirdo does something like this, male or female.

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I would guess that this happens more often than you imagine. Women often don't share stories like this for fear of retribution at their current company or future companies, or because they think you won't believe them. In addition NDA's are often a condition of receiving severance.

Most women in Silicon Valley have had experiences similar to those mentioned in the article (HR disbelief, multiple women reporting same man to no effect, retaliation, legal threats, &c, &c).

The OP probably declined a severance package to write this.

Well, it sounds like she quit, wasn't fired/laid off, so a severence package probably doesn't apply (although if the rumors about how bad Uber is to work at are true, perhaps they do offer severance packages to those quitting...).

I know multiple women at other companies who have been offered severance after they quit just to keep quiet about how bad things are. Not rare.

Unfortunately the 'I am in an open relationship, want to fuck?' line is something that I've seen more than once, initiated by both men and women engineers. At least one of those examples goes to a lot of conferences, and pretty much opens with that line to people in the opposite sex, and has a Twitter following in the 5 digits.

I am also aware of a funded dev tools startup that has a single woman engineer: She happens to share a bed with the CEO every so often. Imagine how comfortable that must be for any other woman that might join the company, or anyone sharing a team with said woman engineer.

So I have seen the kind of weirdos that do something like this. I don't wish them on my worst enemy.