Comment by program_whiz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by program_whiz | Hacker News Reader

Sorry but this doesn't seem like harassment to me. Read his email without projecting any tone, it sounds totally reasonable. Your mentor also wasn't being sexist, he was suggesting you not start a startup by discarding the most passionate team member who helped write the prize-winning software.

I'm not seeing the "you're a woman and I'm threatening you" anywhere. "By the way I designed cool t-shirts, you want one?" and "Lets not have any bad vibes due to this", doesn't sound like "Do what I want or I'll kill you."

Maybe the guy is selfish, and intensely trying to "make it" (sounds like a young over-eager tech guy), but he's not threatening to attack or "victimizing" due to sexist views imo.

If someone disagrees, please provide one shred of evidence. As best I can make out its summarized with the big-text quote midway through:

"He didn’t use all caps. He didn’t swear. He didn’t yell. All he did was calmly… threaten. Subtly… insinuate. And distance himself from reality, little by little."

I'm not impressed, the bar has been raised for claims of harassment and victimization. If you had spent your whole weekend working around the clock on a project that won the prize on your own code, only to be told your dreams were now crushed because you "weren't a good fit", you'd probably be begging to find a way to hold onto the tickets or the project as well, whether your boss was male or female.

[Edit] And also, the mentors, the coordinators, the others in the posts all seem to agree that this isn't harassment. This really points to an issue with hackathons in general. You have people contributing to a "startup", then getting tickets to an expo, all without any contracts, just some verbal agreements -- these type of disagreements are bound to happen.

> I'm not impressed, the bar has been raised for claims of harassment and victimization

This attitude really frustrates me. This isn't a court of law, the man in question isn't accused of a crime, and his name is even withheld so his reputation is not at stake. She is under no obligation to turn over evidence for the public to sift through. And just because she doesn't have some smoking-gun "I'll kill you!" email doesn't mean there wasn't harassment going on. He refused to take "no" for an answer, and she says she felt unsafe being in the same room as him. She's not doing this as revenge against him, or she would have given his name. She's not doing this because she's bitter about losing the competition because she won. Why can't we, even for a moment, believe this woman when she says "I don't feel safe" ?

> If you had spent your whole weekend working around the clock on a project that won the prize on your own code, only to be told your dreams were now crushed because you "weren't a good fit", you'd probably be begging to find a way to hold onto the tickets or the project as well

From the Techstars FAQ: "Whether or not you continue to work on the idea with some or all of your team is completely up to you. Approximately 25% of Techstars Startup Weekend participants continue working on their idea with all of their team". What she did wasn't unusual, in fact it's what the majority of participants do.

> She's not doing this as revenge against him, or she would have given his name. She's not doing this because she's bitter about losing the competition because she won. Why can't we, even for a moment, believe this woman when she says "I don't feel safe" ?

If she felt unsafe why didn't she just get a restraining order? Unless, of course, there wasn't adequate evidence to get one in the first place.

That's not how restraining orders work, it generally applies to things like direct death threats or physical altercations. They also take a long time to put in place and is a pretty extreme step to take. Instead she fired him from her startup, is that so unreasonable?

> That's not how restraining orders work, it generally applies to things like direct death threats or physical altercations.

So, actual harassment?

> Instead she fired him from her startup, is that so unreasonable?

I think this is where the mentor talked about "karma biting back." She had these facts beforehand:

1) Mark is socially-inept and an asshole

2) Mark invested time and energy into the project

3) there were no legal contracts

Is "firing" Mark (with no "smoking gun" event/email) and expecting him to bend over so reasonable? This really seems like IP theft with the OP hiding behind "harassment."

There are many things which aren't death threats or physical altercations which are harassment.

I would certainly feel uncomfortable receiving those messages in the situation as described in the article.

Mark volunteered time into a project. Let's frame this as an open source project where you can also volunteer.

* Person X is in charge of a group and has an idea for a coding project

* Person Y decides to volunteer some coding time

* Person X, with full authority to do so ends, the purely voluntary relationship

* Person Y now decides that they are a co-founder and has equal rights and starts demanding compensation for the project that doesn't exist but could potentially exist in the future. They also continue to fire off emails becoming more demanding after it's made clear that the relationship has been terminated.

Were this an open source project people would think what the contributor is doing is insane. That's clearly harassment. If I fire someone on a Friday and they show up on a Monday saying that they have a right to the company's future earnings and oh, by the way, do you want this t-shirt I made about the company, I'm going to call the police.

When joining an opensource project, there is a license and you - as contributor - are transferring the IP ownership from you to the project through the license agreement. Following that, you can kick off anyone at any time from a project. However, that someone can fork the project and continue on his own. Even in for-profit projects, this happen: see the Arduino's drama as an example.

If you and I have started a project together, and I haven't signed an IP ownership transfer (to you, the project, the company) - I am entitled to the full ownership of the intellectual rights of my work. Regardless if I get paid or not (even when I get paid, every company will ask you to sign a separate agreement where you transfer ownership of produced IP). So if I get "fired" - and I haven't signed any agreement - you are in trouble. Because from now on, /your/ project IP will always have the legal liability that at some point I can come back and claim it's mine. See Facebook and many other cases, where they worked on a project without clear initial paperwork - it's a very expensive mistake.

Here's my take. You can say you "feel" a certain way under any circumstance, heck I could say your comment feels threatening to me right now! The reason you need hard evidence and can't just believe anything anyone says as proof is because in this case its matters of IP assignment and livelihood. I think I'd feel victimized if I was fired because my boss thought I was "harassing", even if there was no proof.

Who is the real victim? Obviously, we want to believe the woman who wrote the article, but bear in mind, her harassment is limited to a few text messages and emails.

On the other hand, our "villain" in this story has lost his coding, opportunities, and ideas that he contributed because he "wasn't a good fit".

One person has "gained" from the situation, although they claim to "feel" threatened, despite dubious proof. The other has had actual physical loss in the situation, and you're asking why can't we just believe her? What if the ideas he contributed turn out to make billions, is she still the victim for putting up with a few emails, and is he still just some victimizer for trying to stay involved?

Another reason we need to raise the bar is that believing these claims "on face" makes it all to easy to steal IP and exploit bosses/employees using harassment claims. I'm not saying that's what the article's author is doing, but it is a good reason to be skeptical (so prove to me you didn't just take this guy's work and claim you're the victim).

Honestly, I don't understand why people seem to care so much more about the IP issue than the alleged harassment and the lack of concern on the part of mentors about said harassment. Even if he was unfairly removed from the project (which I don't concede), his behavior is not acceptable, and mentors reactions to her claims are callous and inappropriate.

> despite dubious proof

Again, this is not a court of law, she isn't obligated to give the public proof that she was being harassed.

> What if the ideas he contributed turn out to make billions

He contributed a mock website and logo: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15587336

This is exactly how I felt too; nowhere in his responses do I see any form or sexual harassment. Sure, the person is a little intense and doesn't seem to get the hint, but this isn't at all related to gender. There's absolutely no reason to pull gender into this at all.

At what point does the line blur between needing special treatment because you're a different gender and equality?

Edit: after rereading the article I realize my comment might've been a bit knee-jerky. However, I do feel the author puts emphasis on the gender of the people referenced in the story. Above all the line "I considered: what would a male CEO do in this situation?" feels like a forced focus on gender. But I concede; the article focusses on harassment in general, not sexual, mea culpa.

Nowhere does the author claim this was sexual harassment, simply that it was harassment. It uses the word "sexism" once, and "sexist" twice, in both cases referring to the condescending response of mentors and others to her complaints about this person.

> At what point does the line blur between needing special treatment because you're a different gender and equality?

Well, as I read this piece she's describing potentially abusive behavior, but not gender related. I read it as a shitstorm of over-intense personalities with optimistic dreams of being the next big thing creating an awful environment for eachother. Somebody of either gender could have a bitter ex-teammate who wants to undercut them.

So I read this as a criticism of the atmosphere of hackathons rather than a women-in-tech issue.

Now, the philosophical question is whether this distinction means I agree or disagree with the author.

It isn't claiming to be sexual Harassment, but Harassment in general. This story would be equally awful it it happened to a man. However, a man wouldn't have to think about his personal safety as much by attending the event they won. So the result of the Harassment plays out differently for each gender.

> a man wouldn't have to think about his personal safety as much by attending the event they won.

Can you elaborate?

A man generally is not at the same disadvantage physically should someone decide to attack or overpower them. Even if things were uncomfortable they could reasonably expect to defend themselves.

<deleted, because a sibling commenter asked the same question, word for word>

> a man wouldn't have to think about his personal safety as much by attending the event they won

This is a part I'm not sure to understand. You were supposed to hold a booth in a summit, which I assume was in a public setting. Surely, this should have been a serious deterrent on any physical assault. If despite this your partner started threatening you, wouldn't it have been possible to get the security to step in?

At the end of the article, the author talks about how this is just harassment and that it's not necessarily sexual.

> Tech harassment — and harassment in general — isn’t just sexual. Sometimes it’s stalking. Sometimes it’s bullying. Sometimes it’s intimidation. I know too many people who’ve been impacted by workplace harassment related to their gender, sexual orientation, appearance, race, and more. No matter what form harassment takes, and no matter where it happens, we need to do better.

The only time where she's frustrated about sexism taking place is when she brings up how her opinion was discarded by this rude team member:

> As project leader, I worked hard to keep us on track, but he veered off course: obsessing over winning, arguing irrelevant details, and challenging everything. When male mentors stepped in and unknowingly made suggestions identical to mine, Mark instantly flipped to agreement.

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