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Comment by bronson | Hacker News Reader

The perpetrators still have their jobs and the women they harassed still have to work with them.

It seems Verkada actually does tolerate sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.

This is a sad example of needless extremism where anything short of the nuclear option just isn't good enough.

This is a company which had high-level employees use their own product to take pictures of women who worked for them, privately shared those images on a corporate network, attached sexually explicit captions to the images, then deleted the evidence when shit hit the fan.

Literally just one of these transgressions is a fireable offense at most other companies.

"nuclear" implies indiscrimiately devastating (lots of collateral damage), not just out of proportion, so losing a job, while painful in the moment, isn't a "nuclear option" for this sort of sexual malice that instills real doubt and insecurity in victims and divides employees and customers otherwise. a lawsuit and an arrest might be closer to that extreme. or at the extreme, a lynching (in no way advocating that of course).

hyperbole has the exact extremist effect you're railing against, which is indeed needless.

with that said, a demotion, an unpaid furlough, or pay cut may be part of a more reasonable consequence, giving the offenders a chance to reflect and grow (and eventually return to their prior status), rather than throwing them into a potentially negative cycle.

You think getting fired for violations is the nuclear option? Then what do you call involving law enforcement?

Needless extremism? Tell me, if something similar happened in your company, or god forbid, to somebody on your team, what would you like to happen?

They got the biggest financial penalty in the history of the company apparently, and I'm sure more actions not mentioned here.

That says nothing without knowledge about the next largest financial penalty. It could just as well be the _first_ financial penalty dealt in the history of the company.

> and I'm sure more actions not mentioned here.

Why are you sure? Especially given their weak response so far?

We may disagree here, but this is such egregious behavior that I, for one, only see the nuclear option for such a case.

But as long the money roles in investors don't give a shit.

Sharing secret photos of co-workers and making lewd comments about them is a nuclear behavior.

Not a day goes by on here where I don't read ten comments reminding everyone that employment is a mutual contract that can be terminated by either party at any time. So I'll say to you what those people say: you can always just get a new job, one where sexism is tolerated.

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