It sucks that things like this still happen. I've seen or heard about a few stories like this and it's heartbreaking to think that the industry I love can cause such pain to people. Worse still is the thought that these incidents punish everyone, from the women who are turned away to other, less risky fields, to the managers who struggle to find competent female hires, to the other men who get unfairly tarred for just being in the same gender.
I understand it's tempting to say "but this might be made up!" - yes, it might. We don't have any facts and we should be cautious not to use it as an excuse for a witch hunt. But would you be surprised if it was true? Put-money-on-it surprised? If not, that's problem enough. These things happen and we know it.
The thing that gets me is that theoretically HN is a place for people who aren't satisfied with "oh well, that's how it goes", who instead disrupt and innovate, who find novel solutions to problems nobody thought solvable (or even worth solving), and who change the world for the better in the process. Where's that spirit now? Surely we can find a way to make things like this less frequent or less damaging?