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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

So why does this post then obfuscate these facts as 'an incident of sexual misconduct'? Why be so intentionally vague?

> About two weeks ago, DataCamp published a blog post outlining an incident of sexual misconduct at the company.

Could have been

> About two weeks ago, DataCamp published a blog post outlining an incident where one of DataCamp’s executives danced inappropriately and made uninvited physical contact with another employee

Forward-load the basic facts so we don't have to go down a rabbit hole.

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You're doing the same thing by using the euphemisms "danced inappropriately" and "made uninvited physical contact". Point being: it's not productive to litigate this stuff.

Hmm I think "an incident of sexual misconduct" is the euphemism and "danced inappropriately" and "made uninvited physical contact" are the plain-spoken explanations so interesting to hear your opposite opinion.

If someone told me "an incident of sexual misconduct" I'd then ask "ok... so what was it?" but if someone told me "made uninvited physical contact" I'd say "ah ok I understand."

I have had uninvited (and unwelcome) physical contact that took the form of handshakes, so obviously that language isn't shedding any real light. Those words could describe harassment, or they could describe aggravated sexual assault.

"made uninvited physical contact" - I don't know if a whole lot can be understood by that.

Someone giving the 2-cheek Euro kiss in North America could be 'uninvited' to many, surely.

So could someone swinging someone around on the dance-floor.

Maybe someone danced like Elvis (i.e. hips) and then put their arm around someone else and said something to them drunkenly.

Or maybe someone was 'grabbed' or 'groped' in a way that would obviously be totally out of bounds in any context.

There's definitely a range of possibilities here. I'm going to guess that if this is a serious incident, there was probably 'unacceptable groping' but maybe they should have phrased it as such - because 'unwanted touching' is, in and of itself possibly problematic, but there's a range of behaviours there, some of which don't rise to the level of really bad stuff like groping.

A reach into another humans space is always uninvited until it's explicitly not. Cultural norms and traditions can somewhat abstract that, but yes, even that is still a guess.

This occurred on a dance floor which seems to be useful context, but is a detail which TFA and other bloggers have called “victim blaming”.

There’s no amount of detail that can cast a fully revealing light onto something like this that happens out in a public space.

I used to think a video of the incident might explain what happened, and then you have cases like Convington where people can see remarkably different things happening in the same sequence of frames.

What amazes me is the tarnishing of the entire company and brand which stems from this kind of PR campaign being run against the company.

Is this Just Another angry Internet mob going after someone, and why is a private matter between two adults at an after hours workplace sponsored event turned into an existential crisis for the entire company?

If there was an assault, shouldn’t someone call the police? Everything else it seems is trial by the court of public opinion.

You want to believe this entire campaign isn’t the result of two people bumping into each other on the dance floor back in 2017, but in any case I’m still left wondering why the company itself has become the target.

If the statement said 'groped' instead of 'unwanted touching' - then we might infer maybe someone grabbed a woman's rear end or breasts - which is something entirely different from a 'rude dance move and sloppy kiss on the cheek', and also 100% out of bounds, no ambiguity.

If someone at a bar grabbed a woman's breast - well - I doubt the police would be involved, because it's just not something that rises to that level in most contexts, but it should not diminish the fact it's totally not right. There's no grey area there (if that's what happened).

If this was between two employees, especially if someone has power over the other (i.e. CEO / employee) then it's much tricker because of the nature of that power.

I think it's also different if 'some guy got drunk and seriously embarrassed himself' vs. 'a predatory CEO who gets girls drunk and gropes them'. It really could be either: people do stupid things sometimes. And some people are utter creep-shows.

The company can 'become a target' if there's consistent 'out of bounds behaviour' that's reported, and nobody is doing anything about it and/or covering it.

To be clear: I have no idea what happened, I'm not going to speculate, other than to articulate a range of possible issues.

I generally believe the victim/accuser, though details and context are always important.

What is everything you wrote if not rank speculation?

I don’t think it’s appropriate to articulate a range of possible issues at all — it reads like dark fiction, and IMO just perpetuates the story.

If there’s a larger story that is motivating these letter signers, I think it’s incumbent on them to articulate it... Yet even in failing spectacularly to do so, they can manage to drag the company through the mud.

>>> "There is no victim statement that I’m aware of"

+ Yes there are victim statements. There are two references to statements in the article.

>>> "and what is everything you wrote if not rank speculation?"

+ I'm barely 'speculating' - and then totally within the boundaries of the victim statement i.e. an incident employer/employee at a semi-work engagement with alcohol wherein someone's personal space was invaded on the dance floor. While that is not specific enough to understand exactly what happens, it's a fairly narrow range of possibilities.

>>> "I don’t think it’s appropriate to articulate a range of possible issues at all — it reads like dark fiction, and IMO just perpetuates the story."

+ I object to this. We know at last 'something happened' within a narrow range. This is not 'dark fiction' it's actually very specific reality.

>>> "If there’s a larger story that is motivating these letter signers, I think it’s incumbent on them to articulate it... Yet even in failing spectacularly to do so, they can manage to drag the company through the mud.""

+ Now this I think is 'speculative dark fiction'. There's no reason to assume that people are creating some false narrative when it seems clear that materially, 'something happened' and that there seems to be at least some kind of minor 'cover up'.

FYI - it's very easy to understand why some people would want to 'drag a company into the mud' - there's no crazy speculation required: they believe (rightly or wrongly) that some bad stuff is happening. Now - I don't know if there is bad stuff happening, or if there are cover ups, or what happened at 'the incident' in question, or other things. But it's very easy to see how groups of people just take one side or the other and get upset about it.

So, there was no point in calling the police because of what happened, but it is okay to make this into an existential crisis for the company?

Yes, it's definitely possible for there to be outrage when either police weren't called, even if there was not something illegal. I'm not saying there should be - because we don't know exactly the situation - I'm saying it's surely possible.

There's a whole range of behaviours that are totally unwarranted and unprofessional, and yet at the same time legal.

A manager who likes to get drunk get 'get a little grabby' or who likes to sleep with all of this staff, or who hands out his number to a lot of female staffers, or who trades sexual favours for promotions, who arbitrarily hires women based on their perceived attraction/datability, or who makes crude statements - this is toxic - this person needs to go.

FYI I'm not talking about 'someone who did something embarrassing once'. Obviously, there are also a range of inappropriate things which don't reach the threshold of outrage.

In this specific context it's hard to say, because there's a lot of grey. We'd have to have a lot of information which we are not privy to (maybe thankfully). It could be a small thing or a consistently toxic thing. Maybe the mob is legit angry, or maybe there's just an inflation/misinterpretation of the situation. We don't know.

Only because you've made an assumption about what uninvited physical contact means.

He is directly quoting the original blogpost's description by using that terminology, and he is responding to a post with the relevant link. That is the actual original description of the incident. It's not his own personal summary.

> "Specifically, in October 2017, at an informal employee gathering at a bar after a week-long company offsite, one of DataCamp’s executives danced inappropriately and made uninvited physical contact with another employee while on the dance floor."

I know he is. But the summary he's quoting is from the company, DataCamp, not the person who wrote this blog, and yet his criticism is direct at the blogger/instructor.

> So why does this post then obfuscate these facts as 'an incident of sexual misconduct'?

Because she's not talking about the misconduct, but about the response to the misconduct.

One of the reasons she's not talking about the misconduct is because misogynists will seek to relitigate the orginal event with the predictable victim-blaming concern-trolling.

This is extremely important. There are three elements here.

1) The actual incident.

2) The need for instructors to persuade DataCamp to make a response.

3) The response itself. (3a: the noindex tag)

#1 is very bad on its own, but #2 and #3 are its own problems and the ones being highlighted in recent discussions. (and provide more context for #1)

While all this is very probably true, there’s also the possibility that it actually really is about the nail (so to speak). I can easily imagine that people have been burned before by being assured that the “nail” is not the problem, and initially believing it. This, I think, is why many people want to hear some amount of detail. Not too much, just enough to make it seem plausible to them. Which shouldn’t be too much to ask, and if someone refuses, that’s a bad sign.

All the detail has already been shared, by the very many people within the org talking to senior management.

This is what people always say in these threads: don't talk about it in public until you've tried to deal with it in private. Well, they did try, and they got fired.

> All the detail has already been shared, by the very many people within the org talking to senior management.

True, but it was not adequately summarized in the article which is the topic of discussion, and this was the issue discussed in this subthread.

> This is what people always say in these threads: don't talk about it in public until you've tried to deal with it in private.

That’s not what I meant, or what anyone else in this subthread meant. I have no idea what you’re responding to.

One of the “fired” has come forward with a clarification to state he was a shite employee for 7-8m before being let go. It wasn’t until the NDA that he piped up about the incident. Maybe he’s dragged other former employers online before. Regardless, wouldn’t be surprised if the company got smart and frontloaded NDAs at the beginning of employment instead of the end.

Because this is HR approved language and they are apparently firing anyone that doesn’t toe the line.

https://dhavide.github.io/a-note-to-our-commuity-on-building...

Can DataCamp fire instructors, though? My understanding was that DataCamp instructors signed a contract allowing DataCamp to use their material for a given span of time (and that this did not make them DataCamp employees)

Since these people are asking others not to watch DataCamp courses, it would seem to me that their shot at actually making more courses for DataCamp has been forfeit anyway, so what can DataCamp really do against them?

The perpetrator is a DataCamp executive not an instructor.

I was talking more about 'people being fired for not using HR-approved language' as a justification for why people were being so coy around what exactly happened.

I feel your frustration, but you answered your own question(s) above. Sometimes people just struggle to write succinctly and clearly. If you feel particularly strongly about this, politely written feedback on the author's comment section might be useful?

Perhaps, it sounds vague because it's new for you and many other readers outside data science community or at least R community. There's been so much written and tweeted about this in past few weeks. So probably that's why the Author could have thought to avoid redundancy and kept it brief.

I think it's to avoid people being dismissive about it. If you are vague, people can't comment saying you are making a big fuss out of a childish behavior and say that we all have important work to do.

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