Hacker News Reader

We have very strong laws about these things; if her report is accurate (which I have no reason to doubt), Susan has strong standing to sue.

It seems like she has chosen not to sue Uber, which is also a legitimate choice; she may just want to move on.

Toxicity has to be stopped at every level, in every team where it is found, in this story it sound like the toxicity extends up to the C-suite, so it would seem some changes need to be made there.

We should teach our sons to truly respect women. We should teach our sons to be respectful honest decent human beings. We should teach our sons to not be assholes who think they are entitled to a woman’s body. We should teach our sons to be humans with emotions and empathy for others. We should teach our sons to not be toxic despicable entitled pathetic beings. It’s on us (men). If we behave badly, it’s squarely on us. No external factor (law, regulation, social status, etc) would have any effect if we don’t know how (or don’t want) to be good.

You're missing a huge part of the problem here. People with power are the ones who need to be "taught" (punished).

This behavior can only occur repeatedly when someone can get away with it, because they have power. If they don't have power, they are punished (often harshly), and a rational person will not repeat that behavior.

Your blanket approach is completely ridiculous. You act like the problem is that men aren't being "taught" properly, when the real problem is that there is little or no accountability for people who have accumulated enough money and/or political power (whether it be on a social scale, or within an organization, as seen in the article).

It's also very wrong for you to assume that only men can abuse their power. Fowler's article even has an example of women abusing it (HR).

I have zero power now but have the potential to have it. If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power (e.g. become a manager). But, then, I'd have the power to cause irreparable emotional and societal damage. If I don't know how to act like a rational reasonable human being who respects others no matter their background or gender, this won't change. All that will change is that I have the authority to cause great damage.

I don't know much and I certainly don't claim to know much. All I know is that if we (men) don't curb our own behavior, we're the one squarely at fault.

I'm so tired of this "not all men" attitude. As someone who gets paid to make fact-based decisions all day, I cannot possibly ignore this ridiculous argument that women are at fault. No, way. Yes, anything is possible but the scenario you're proposing is so rare that is an anomaly. Get off that horse, dude. Stop being on the wrong side of history.

Once again, you are unable to grasp the real problem. Guess what -- men can be victims of the abuse of power too, whether that's at the hands of men or women.

>I have zero power now but have the potential to have it. If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power (e.g. become a manager). But, then, I'd have the power to cause irreparable emotional and societal damage.

Simply becoming a manager doesn't give you power. One of the main purposes of middle management is to take the fall for C-level mistakes, after all. You also need to have your employer's backing. In this case, this manager is especially powerful because Uber backs him even when it's not in their best interest). I don't know how the manager in question here was able to obtain that sort of empowerment, but you are sorely mistaken if you think that his ability to stick around was simply due to a job title.

>I don't know much and I certainly don't claim to know much. All I know is that if we (men) don't curb our own behavior, we're the one squarely at fault.

I don't know how to get this through to you. This problem is that powerful people are unaccountable due to the way that our current society is structured. It has nothing to do with gender. Maybe you think this sort of thing wouldn't happen under a female CEO, but you don't know what the context of the relationship between the manager and powerful people within the company who provide him with agency.

>I'm so tired of this "not all men" attitude.

I have no idea what you mean by this.

>As someone who gets paid to make fact-based decisions all day, I cannot possibly ignore this ridiculous argument that women are at fault.

Who made that argument? I honestly have no idea what your thought process is here.

>Yes, anything is possible but the scenario you're proposing is so rare that is an anomaly.

When did I propose a scenario??

>Get off that horse, dude. Stop being on the wrong side of history.

Ok, you're just incoherent at this point.

> If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power.

You're talking as if the men in the article don't know that what they're doing is wrong. If some man accidentally does something harmful against a woman, he can learn from those mistakes. A pattern of repeated sexual harassment, though? That's certainly not due to ignorance.

You assume that abuse of power is male only thing. It is not, it is general people thing. The problem is not that men don't know what is right, these know full well what they are doing. Problem is that this behavior is tolerated while women rudely telling that guy off while they are both young is likely to have team turn against her.

> I'm so tired of this "not all men" attitude.

Do you believe that all men are incapable of being decent human beings?

Can I ask why you believe that?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

"Teach our sons better" ignores the fact that most people know better and behave better. Plus, it kind of has a generational feedback cycle - do you really want to wait twenty years before figuring out whether this plan works?

Much better is consistently work to undermine the power of folks who behave badly.

Can you write an even more sexist comment? Why not teach our children instead to respect other people?!

Maybe we as men got to let the women know we have their back?

Defend them when they are not around?

Don't stay silent?

I don't know for certain either.

No offence intended, and I realise the detail at the end about picking up the photo seals it for you, but you do realise that sometimes women lie, right? Unless there was written evidence or some other mitigating detail that was unmentioned, it sounds like you wanted the boss to be automatically fired based on nothing more than an accusation from a woman.

I've been in your bosses position, though not in a sex-related situation. A woman accused me of something in a private meeting with me and our manager. It was quite trivial and I can't even remember exactly what it was (this happened years ago), but it was work related - I was her tech lead but not her direct reporting manager and she was accusing me of undermining her, and gave an example of a specific incident that would indeed have been rather bad: if it were true. Which it wasn't.

Fortunately, this woman was an exceptionally bad liar (she lied repeatedly and frequently and had been caught many times but was mysteriously never let go). The conversation she was referring to had happened over email. So our boss asked her to bring it up so he could read it for himself. She proceeded to open her laptop, load the email and read it with the boss sitting next to her. It completely contradicted her account, and the only thing she could find to say was "oh". I remember me and my manager looking at each other with wtf type expressions on our faces.

That woman was eventually promoted into management.

What you described is a classic he-said/she-said situation. Perhaps he did have a crush on her and was a bit creepy, and the girl decided she didn't like that, but he never propositioned her. It sounds like you nor your team really knew the truth, but assumed you did. So why is it surprising to you that nothing happened? You want guilty until proven innocent to apply to you, if one day the tables are turned?

You might have missed this part:

> I made sure to cite it along with his frequent trips to our area where, when she wasn't there, would pick up her photo of her and her boyfriend and just stare at it along with his fraudulent billing of clients

It looks like you didn't read my post, as you missed the first sentence where I explicitly reference that.

> you do realise that sometimes women lie, right? Unless there was written evidence or some other mitigating detail that was unmentioned, it sounds like you wanted the boss to be automatically fired based on nothing more than an accusation from a woman. [..] > What you described is a classic he-said/she-said situation. Perhaps he did have a crush on her and was a bit creepy, and the girl decided she didn't like that, but he never propositioned her. It sounds like you nor your team really knew the truth, but assumed you did. So why is it surprising to you that nothing happened? You want guilty until proven innocent to apply to you, if one day the tables are turned?

Whoa slow down for a second. I gave a very brief overview of some events that related to the topic at hand. I'm not really sure how you took that to mean myself and my team didn't know the truth and we just assumed but I think you're letting your own, personal experience taint experiences others have gone through.

We knew for sure he propositioned her. I get that you had the opposite happen to you. That sucks and, unfortunately, there isn't a great way at dealing with things on either side (IMO anyway). Too many women are not believed and, at the same time, too many women can be believed.

Regardless, if it makes you feel better about my statements, here is just a few things I remember about my boss from approx a decade ago:

- He had done it to at least two other female colleagues one of which shrugged it off as a "that's how guys act" thing and the other, he actually told me she gets "very loose when she's drunk". As you can imagine all employee celebrations had effectively unlimited company drinks purchased for them at whatever restaurant served alcohol. He enjoyed getting everyone drunk.

- He explained, in great detail, what his penis looked like to all of us including the female employees. He threatened it pull it out multiple times but his brother stopped him (his brother directly reported to him). Then he went on to describe his brother's penis in great detail.

- He once hired a woman who he described as a "dirty feminist" and suggested to several of us that we be careful about "triggering her" if we wanted to go out with her.

- He had us interview a woman who was clearly unqualified for a job. After we declined her he repeatedly asked us to re-interview her with easier questions and that we'd "find something for her to do". This eventually boiled down to him calling her several times at home trying to re-re-reinterview her which she then stopped answering him.

- He once told me and a co-worker of mine that I'd be an amazing salesman if I lost some weight because the older women in corporate jobs would "wet themselves" to give us their business.

- He once told me he hired a PI and found out his wife was talking with a divorce attorney. So, he claims, he poked holes in all their condoms and kept stalling her from taking pregnancy tests later so she'd have another kid with him and stay with him longer.

- He had us do other various projects to try and win a customer's money by doing it for free then billing their larger client for the work. I balked at this and refused to do it then he'd log in and change our hours to be against the large contract.

Honestly I could go on and on. The dude was a sleaze bag. Some of this stuff he bragged to all of the male employees about. Trust me, he did it and trust me, many of us reported a lot of his crap and nothing ever happened beyond him being moved horizontally to a different position because he lost too many employees.

> sexual women

Unfortunate typo there.

Oops. Thanks!