BetterWorks and CEO sued by ex-employee for alleged sexually suggestive assault | Hacker News Reader

BetterWorks and CEO sued by ex-employee for alleged sexually suggestive assault

techcrunch.com

40 pointsjanober12 comments

Sad to see this story flagged off the front page less than an hour later. BetterWorks is a Silicon Valley startup that has substantial VC investment and it is facing a major lawsuit that threatens its business/existence. But because it involves a systematic coverup of sexual assault and harassment, rather than a data/engineering/security problems, it's not "news"?

I was also surprised to see how quickly this one dropped off the front page. It was up for maybe 10 minutes, gaining very quick momentum, and then suddenly disappeared.

The only thing worse than this accusation is the alleged coverup. Holy smokes.

Also, a certain irony is that it stands in contrast to the entire point of this company.

Yeah - the fact that the head of People Operations attributed these complaints to "cattiness" and told the victim that she should try to be a "cool girl" was stunning to me.

I guess the adage "HR is there to protect the company, not _you_" deserves repeating...

Based on the evidentiary claims made in the allegation, it also seems to be one of the more unambiguous cases involving Silicon Valley. The victim did everything in her power to avoid, deter, and afterwards, document the attack, including calling for help during/immediately after the attack, and filing a formal report to the "VP of People Operations" the morning after.

In addition to actual witnesses of the event and her formal HR complaint, the report notes that the CEO sent out a company-wide email apologizing for his behavior. So this wasn't something that anyone in the company could be ignorant of, or dismiss as idle gossip.

That no one apparently chose to speak up publicly -- about this incident or any of the other past allegations of improper culture/behavior, until the lawsuit at hand -- is some indication of the institutional barriers that victims face. If this kind of attack could be kept quiet, think of the less obviously egregious incidents of harassment that victims feel powerless to report.

This is horrific. The description of the assault made me so uncomfortable I had trouble finishing reading the article.

This was a terrifying, sickening read. The comments by the head of People Operations (re: "cattiness", "cool girl") remind me a lot of Fowler's description of Uber HR.

Assholes take notice, this wave of transparency and collective action is only going to increase in strength moving forward; either turn on a dime or find another world to live in.

I interviewed with BetterWorks last year for four rounds of onsite interviews. This is in addition to a couple rounds of phone interviews and a quite extensive homework assignment. Everything seemed to be going well, but they ultimately ended up passing on me with absolutely no explanation.

They seemed like a professional place and I didn't observe much out of the usual regarding professionalism, but I can't pretend I wasn't a bit soured by investing so much time and not getting an explanation on why they passed.

Your comment seems to be 100% independent of this accusation.

Indeed. Just sharing my experience with them.

> Duggan allegedly told a female employee who complained about the lack of gender diversity on the sales staff that she should “tell recruiting we need to hire more boobies.”

This made me cringe. (I'm a dude).

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