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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

In the legal profession which is prestige driven, relationship based, artificially supply constrained and very lucrative, you would fear for your career over most else especially if you're lower on the totem pole.

This creates a perverse set of incentives to hide all misbehavior even if you're a victim of it.

So I don't know where you're getting this idea that lawyers would automatically defend themselves in those kinds of situations when the incentives are heavily weighted towards ignoring the situations and moving on.

As a software engineer in the tech industry though (especially at a place like Google), you can tell your employer to fuck off and you can find a new high-paying job tomorrow.

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I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying that "lawyers would automatically defend themselves" if they were harassed. Harassment gets buried in the legal profession for the same reasons it gets buried everywhere.

My point is that the Overton window is in a different place: whether it's okay for supervisors to date underlings, with all the problems that causes, is a settled debate in law as well as most of the rest of corporate America (it's not). Tech seems out of the mainstream to me in still entertaining the idea that it's okay.

Thanks for the clarification, because that's not what I got from your original comment.

I actually didn't consider it from that perspective e.g. it's a settled debate in other professions but a seemingly recurring debate in tech. That's an interesting point you raise and I think it's a valid one.

> As a software engineer in the tech industry though (especially at a place like Google), you can tell your employer to fuck off and you can find a new high-paying job tomorrow.

A white or asian man can do that, sure. But that's not necessarily true for women and other marginalized groups in the tech industry. Especially if this means they won't get a reference from their current employer.

Many tech companies that I know actually huge preference to "marginalized" group. I don't know if it is still done but Microsoft used to have a reputation that they would call females in for a second interview as long as the first wasn't terrible.

It's rather dehumanizing to refer to woman as "females". Please don't do that.

Sorry, not my first language

You have a valid point, but I think the "especially at a place like Google" part is relevant in my comment.

If you're a software engineer, woman, and at Google, you'll obviously still face challenges but getting hired is less likely to be one of them. That's a powerful wind in a person's back when standing up to a company - especially when others are willing to band together with you (because the others can easily find new jobs too). It's a compounding effect.

I presume the dynamic is far different in law or investment banking even if you're highly skilled in the respective industry.

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