Are they really so much above typical Bay Area rates?
> Career path? Career security?
Plenty of people are still hiring in the current bubble, and she's an SRE, not an auto specialist or something.
> Coworkers?
Like the one who dropped his pants?
> The early belief that HR would help correct this?
Of which she was quickly disabused.
But I agree with you that we should be training people to detect bullshit early on and to just get the fuck out in those situations. Labeling her actions as rational and healthy is probably not helpful either.
Ask some women about this post, and listen to what they tell you. Don't argue, just absorb.
Would I have quit? You bet. But you have to understand that my freedom to do so is conditioned by a few assumptions:
1) I have the financial freedom to quit.
2) Working conditions are appreciably better at competing companies.
3) I'm able to land another job with comparable pay.
4) Quitting won't have negative repercussions on my future career.
Can you say, unequivocally, that all these conditions (and more) are met for her? I can't. Nobody knows that but Susan.
I understand you don't mean to, but you're coming awfully close to blaming the victim. Her quitting would have done nothing to change the environment except to reinforce the culture further, and we have no window into her personal reasons for staying. The point that everyone in this subthread keeps harping on is that they are not at all relevant. Period.
That she stayed is completely immaterial. That's -- legally -- her choice. The fact that, by choosing to stay employed, she was subjected to repeated sexual harassment and misogyny is as deplorable as it is illegal.
My read of this is that most on this thread would say that it would be commendatory for her to stay and fight for change, but 100% ethical for her either to stay in her situation hoping for improvement or leave for a better place to be, and that in her shoes they would opt for the latter.
To me this would not meet the plain language meaning of 'blaming the victim', but I recognize that plain language is not always so plain. I would like to better understand if it is victim blaming and, if not, if there are ways you know of to communicate the distinction being drawn above well. If it is, could you highlight what makes it so? Obviously it is not your responsibility to help me learn to communicate, but I would appreciate it if you did.
And just to make sure it's clear: the behavior of the other employees mentioned is illegal and unbelievably unethical, and I am not in any way condoning or making excuses for it.
People who say "Well I would have left" when they hear a story of abuse are missing the point entirely. By focusing on what they would have done in the victim's place, they're re-framing the event as somehow the victim's choice and thus, at least partially the victim's fault.
That is a form of victim blaming. Full stop.
Focus on the abuse. Leave the victim out of it. Without context, you can't know what you'd do in the same situation. As I noted, if I -- a white, well-to-do male with no debts and no professional entanglements -- suffered that type of abuse, I would have left. But that's irrelevant, because she's not me. To say that she should have left, or that she was "irrational" for not doing so is to make a mountain of assumptions about her situation.
As noted in TFA, she was young, on a sponsored scholarship, and in the middle of writing a book. To switch jobs immediately could have had lasting career implications, cost her an education, and ruined her ability to finish the book. Surely those considerations weighed on her decision to stick it out.
Without insight into her personal affairs, we can't know how much pressure she felt to stay in the job in spite of the abusive environment. Ultimately, whether she left or not is totally immaterial.
I can see how the statement that it was irrational of her to stay makes potentially invalid assumptions. It seems appropriate to me to asterisk that with something like "if my boss did this to me I'd leave", which I suppose is how I was reading the earlier statements anyways.
Having said that, the amended statement seems innocuous to me and could be read positively ("I wouldn't be as tough as she is in this situation"). Reading the rest of your response it seems this kind of what-if is the core of the issue to you. Is that correct?
Now, if what you want to say is "I wouldn't be as tough as she is...", then simply go for it. It's still irrelevant, but can at least be construed as supportive to the victim.
The original statement -- that she was "irrational" for staying -- cannot, and is wildly inappropriate.
I think I understand what you're saying, but that's a pretty extreme stance and one that I don't agree with. You seem to be saying that a person's actions and decisions can not possibly have any effect on the situation, simply because the situation is undesirable and because the person is a victim. That view removes any notion of agency in the person in question. It removes the acknowledgement of free will and offends the dignity of the individual as an architect of their life. It's a kind of extreme infantilization.
Now, before you're led to believe that I'm advocating some kind of honor killing of adulterers, let me assure you that I absolutely am not. I find that extreme to be completely abhorrent and void of reason. From my vantage point, I believe that I'm standing precisely in the middle of the two extremes, being careful not to fall into the trap of either view.
Now, some victims share more of the blame for their situation than others. But without any insight into their reasons for tolerating abuse, it's presumptuous to assume someone has total agency to change their circumstances. She did some calculus and concluded that the costs to leave were steeper than staying.
That was her choice but, as I've said a half dozen times already, it's completely irrelevant. If I'm mugged, it's no less a crime if I also happen to be black or gay or in the "wrong" part of town. Regardless of her reasons for staying, what happened was wrong, and no person should be forced to make the choice she did.
If you're mugged, the crime is a crime by the very definition of a crime. Since you seem to think that I'm an idiot, I'll point out that the victim's identity doesn't play into the definition of a crime. The mugger deserves to be punished according to the laws that we've agreed on as a society, and this is true whether you're a purple Martian or a lizard person.
But none of that has anything to do with the fact that it was your actions that brought you into the situation. Only you have the power to be where you are. Whether you were ignorant of there being a mugger down the street is irrelevant to the fact that it was you who walked there. It's not an extreme statement, upon hearing that you were mugged, to suggest that you avoid that street from now on, to try a different route, and be more vigilant in the future. It's not an extreme thing to say that it's unwise to go down the same street again.
You're twisting my words into making it sound as if I'm saying that a mugging never occurred, or that mugging is not a crime.
Some possibilities:
- Because she's loyal to her co-workers
- Maybe still not jaded enough to jump ship at the first reason
- quite possibly didn't have another job lined up to jump ship to
A year isn't all that long, and if things had been turned around who knows she might still be working there today. Obviously they have not, things have gone rapidly downhill so she made the right choice in abandoning Uber but you really can't fault someone for trying to fix things before they give up.
There were multiple articles on HN relating to the Uber offers and contracts, which showed they gave terrible conditions and dangerous traps.
By the way, she said in the article that she was doing a CS degree, sponsored by Uber, and they retracted the grant at the last minute.
She had sponsorship in a graduate program at a great school. Eventually this was allegedly ruined in a retroactive performance review change. It seems like it was roughly a few weeks after that when she left.
People are always having to weigh risk and adversity against reward. This is why the power dynamic between superiors and subordinates is such a huge factor in company HR policies and it's taken so seriously; from corporate US to the military. The situations that can arise can be quite complicated and messy.