Comment by ben_olive | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_olive | Hacker News Reader

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HR fucked up and the manager should not have talked to her that way. Absolutely agree. I believe she has grounds to sue if she wishes.

Now, I think it's easy to take this type of situations and overeact. The behavior Susan described is not appropriate. That said, I think there is a trend to classify any romantic behavior or advances as sexual assault and innpapropriate behavior. Nowadays I would have a very hard time asking a girl out at work. Is it really that crazy that you might meet a girl/guy you might want to date at work?

I have had 2 girls ask me out at work in the past 3 years. Both times I just wasn't interested and politely declined. No big deal. I have also had girls approach me in professional settings such as conferences and ask me for my number and invite me for drinks. Come on people, we are human, we are attracted to each other and it's ok to approach other people as long as we are respectful and have some common sense. Let's not pretend we are robots.

I think the pendulum is swinging too much to the other side at the moment. It's easy to just generalyze and overeact. The opinion I just expressed would be considered very controversial nowadays and I would not dare to utter it in my office. People overeacted to drugs in the 80s and initiated a "drug war" that resulted in 1000s of people to be incarcerated for no good reason and billions of dollars wasted. Let's try to learn something from the past.

If you'll take a moment to reread the entire article, you'll see that she did not in fact overreact --- in fact, if anything, she underreacted, staying on long after the incident you're commenting on, working exclusively with management to resolve her problems, and leaving the company only after gross mistreatment both in employee reviews and by HR.

Could you perhaps try giving the article another read and let us know if you still think this critique you've offered was worth writing?

How about this: we listen to both sides before making a judgment.

I'm not saying she overeacted. Please read what I wrote. They fucked up repeatedly and she would have grounds to sue. But this is annectodal evidence, let's not try to generalyze and draw overarching conclusions from this.

To me this post shows how fucked up Uber is right now, let's not try to make generalyzations about the rest of the industry from this.

That's the point of the post: how fucked up Uber is. The author still works in the industry, at Stripe.

I am pretty evenhanded about such things and my comments and blog posts reflect that. The article does not at all describe "oh, no big, people date at work" at all.

Comments like this one are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

"Is it really that crazy that you might meet a girl/guy you might want to date at work?"

Yeah it's really, really crazy if you are in the position of authority over whomever you are harassing. It's still a huge problem even if you have the other person's consent. Uber HR is a real shitshow for not even realizing the basic fact that this is not just bad for the employee but is colossally hurting the company's interest too. I have worked in companies in third world countries and don't think this level of hostility and lack of principle is even present there.

Did you read the whole article? It sounds like you're only reacting to the first incident.

And yes, anyone in your management chain making moves on you is 100% inappropriate. There's a power relationship there. Most companies have explicit guidelines about things like this.

I did, and I agree that it was completely inapropriate. They mishandled the situation repeatedly and I agree with most of what she is complaining about - apart from the leather jacket thing.

I'm reacting to some of the conversation going on here (very much a torch and picthfork crowd for some threads).

The leaather jacket thing is textbook exclusionary.

To wrap it up as "equality" is insulting. A real stand for equality is saying everyone gets one, or no one gets one. The cost thing is obvious canard. All it takes is one email to sales to saying, "I'm looking to buy 50 men's jackets and 2 women's jackets. The website is giving me a deal on the men's, but not the women's. I want the same deal on the women's. Otherwise I'm backing out of the whole sale."

Even then you're just penny pitching. How much of a deal could this have been? $50 at most? Get that out of petty cash.

If you work with someone for a period and get to know them well then maybe asking them out might be ok. But straight up asking the new employee for sex never is.

You're taking your own minor inconvenience and raising it to the level of living day-in-day-out sexual harassment near-millions of women are subject to.

The pendulum has not swung too far when a new hire is propositioned for sex. This example is far more typical than your social awkwardness.

I'm not denying that there are many people that are subjected to sexual harassment.

My own minor inconvenience? my social awkwardness? Not sure why you are immediately resorting to painting a picture of me of an entitled male. please discuss the actual issues. I'm not attacking susan in any way and I agree with most of what she said

It's wrong for a manager to put a direct report in a position where they have to reject their manager in a personal context.

All that other shit about general situations with workplace relationships really doesn't have anything to do with anything.

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