Apple fires engineering manager for allegedly leaking information
theverge.com
theverge.com
There were headlines and outrage about her being placed on administrative leave by Apple recently. Reading the finer details, it turns out she requested to be placed on leave (From the article: "She was placed on administrative leave in early August while Apple investigated some of these concerns — a placement she says she requested as a last resort.")
She has a dedicated form on her website for press to fill out to request an interview with her. ( https://www.ashleygjovik.com/press.html )
She maintains a website called iWhistleblower ( https://www.iwhistleblower.org/ ) with details about past cases involving Apple and links encouraging people to report Apple information to different regulatory bodies.
Her personal website leads with "Apple Labor Advocacy" as well as "Public Health Advocacy" where she describes how she thinks there might be a toxic waste container somewhere on the property of her old 3rd-floor apartment. She believes it was causing her blood pressure and heart rate to change, according to monitors that she wore. She published photos of herself wearing a blood pressure monitoring cuff and her story here: https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apart...
While I fully agree that all allegations should be given due process and properly investigated, I get nervous when someone is visibly invested in building a personal brand on social media around being a victim. The story about the toxic waste apartment, the story about Apple's lawyers needing her work phone for an investigation, and the story about her alleged harassment at Apple all happened within the past 6 months. Her entire social media presence appears to be built around capitalizing on these stories.
Edit: I'm not arguing that she hasn't made the situation worse, I'm only arguing that her behavior doesn't excuse Apple's.
Sorry if I'm being insensitive but it just seems inappropriate to handle this via social media vs. going through internal mechanisms, and then escalate to local PD/LE. I mean I feel like if I was in a position to run a megacorp, I'd try to cultivate a culture of innovation and curiosity. If there are bad actors that are abusing other colleagues, I'd want to fire them (i.e. her alleged abuser) and do my best and make sure the abuser can't engage in any retributive behavior to the individual or anyone else (going even further than just the org) - even so far as to potentially recommend the incident be investigated by the police.
EDIT: I truly sympathize with her situation. It sucks to be bullied, abused, etc. I just don't feel like airing dirty laundry, even if it feels useful in the moment, is an effective way to force organizational change. I know of several cases against major banks that involved sexual harassment and I can't image the hammer of God force of nature damage the legal team at some of the megabanks would cause against this person (as an example), so you have to be realistic and careful. I just don't think in any professional capacity I'd ever say "wow my coworkers looked at my genatalia and I am extremely offended at this - isn't this terrible?" Yes, of course it is terrible. However, is the manner by which you are conducting your counter-offensive truly effective?
If you have cause, take notes, collect as much explicit documented evidence and then go to a lawyer. Airing out your dirty laundry will literally never end well and makes you radioactive in terms of future employment opportunities - except in this case, it's on the person - not the employer. Build your case, move slowly, strike - don't just start tweeting about your grievances. Am I crazy or what?
I don't give Apple the benefit of the doubt when their entire company culture is about secrecy and forcing decisions on its users.
Not really the same thing. She was an employee, and Apple was already willing to investigate the issue twice. She wasn't facing indifference, and "showing a controversy to the public" involved leaking confidential documents.
Firing someone who has become oppositional, doesn't seem to have any interest in "patching things up", discloses confidential information and trash talks you on Twitter? That seems perfectly reasonable. There's no point in keeping them on the pay roll.
Have you ever had to report misconduct of a higher-up to HR? HR exists first and foremost to protect the company and they're only helpful insofar as it's in the company's interest. And do you really think the police would be at all interested in getting involved in something like this?
And taking Apple, one of the most well-funded corporations in the world, to court? To spend years and large chunks of savings on litigation for the chance that someone will get a slap on the wrist?
Whew, I'm just saying - maybe people who don't have experience in this area should chill.
This is not true. There are good people in HR who actually believe what they say.
Ever heard of Edward Snowden? You think what he did was totally ineffective?
was this the plan all along?
> was this the plan all along? Would you say this about Larry Nassar's victims? (sadly, yes, when it was just the first few women, you probably would). I'd like you to reflect on this comment next time Blizzard's abusive culture is back the news and you're wondering why women abused in the workplace are turning to suicide over legal mediation.
You can choose to look away, but never again can you say "you didn't know."
And she's talking about unions and such on company Slack, come on now. Reckless lol. https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html
I've worked with people like this, they cause a silent rot within teams.
I mean look at this https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443 - totally benign feedback so that you don't sound like you're always asking a question (I've personally had this feedback given to me!) and immediately she skewers her boss as "sexist". Bad juju.
this reminds of that Google ethics researcher who was fired for sabotage and then built a big following on Twitter as a professional "victim of racism"
She is not a 'professional victim of racism.' She is a professional who was fired for raising ethical concerns around larger language models.
This is a clear mischaracterization of the reported events. Gebru, in her own statements on the subject, stated that she was fired for demanding to know the identities of peers who submitted critical feedback on her work through confidential HR channels. Leaving aside the question of whether those criticisms had merit, her being fired was a foregone conclusion of making such an ultimatum. No confidential peer feedback system can function if there is a possibility of reviewers being de-anonymized at the demand of sufficiently influential coworkers.
On a more opinionated note - making a demand like that displays critical lack of judgement in the important responsibility that all employees in supervisory roles have in ensuring a non-hostile working environment. Even if her intention was not to retaliate against her peers after determining their identities, it’s essential that people in positions of power do not take actions that even suggest that they are seeking to retaliate against less powerful peers. The importance of this principle is extreme to a healthy collaborative work environment. The fact that someone as intelligent as Gebru was surprised to be fired for making an ultimatum like this is itself surprising.
I don't know if you saw Jeff Dean's response, but here it is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f2kYWDXwhzYnq8ebVtuk9CqQ...
There was also a thread on reddit with her colleagues reactions https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/k77sxz/d_t...
BTW, I worked with TPUs on the hardware side, and the entire section about hardware power usage is just completely and totally wrong (I would have asked for the paper to be retracted if it was published, the errors are so large). As for the obvious flaws part, yeah, some of the flaws are obvious (and known to all practitioners of the art already), some are irrelevant but made to sound like they are existential crises, and some of the "flaws" are just per personal opionion about what she doesn't like.
Hopefully she can find some academic position from which to propound her opinions. However, I do think in her behavior, she excluced herself from future employment.
"are just per personal opinion about what she doesn't like."
The field of AI Ethics is an amalgam of computer science and moral philosophy. What do you think value judgements are? What are those "personal opinions" and things she "doesn't like" and why?
It seems you're using a lot of euphemisms to hide some very unpleasant truths about your world view.
I'm familiar with ethics in science; worked in biology for many years before concluding humanity isn't ready for gene modification.
It's pretty clear that her opinion space in ethics is just one view, and not a particularly representative one. I know other ethicists who are far more careful (Sara Hooker for one) and say things that have much more impact, through careful writing to make it clear they are showing a societally relevant position on ethics.
Generally speaking she does seem to have issues, but why wouldn't you discuss unions on a company Slack?
I don’t agree with her methods, but I do admire the commitment to doubling down.
This summary from her website doesn't make Apple sound all that terrible in my opinion:
> I raised issues about workplace safety in March, upon which Apple subjected me to a nonconsensual sexism investigation on my behalf. Then I faced retaliation from my managers, ER, & HR. I continued to raise my workplace safety concerns as well as my concerns about the employee relations processes at Apple. This led to a second, much larger investigation that I actually requested this time. However, before we could finish gathering & reviewing the evidence, Apple forced me onto indefinite paid administrative leave.
[1] https://foiaonline.gov/foiaonline/api/request/downloadFile/N... (PDF download)
Looking past her editorializing, the Apple communications she leaked aren't really unreasonable. She raised concerns about harassment, so Apple started an investigation. She then complains that the investigation was "nonconsensual", despite being the one to raise the concerns. She then requested a second investigation, which Apple started. The part about being placed on administrative leave is particularly confusing, because this article says that she requested to be placed on the administrative leave.
Her Tweets are hyper-dramatic. She calls her Employee Relations contacts "Employee Retaliation" and even insinuates that she thinks Apple might assault her at her home after they requested a meeting:
> Any bets if I get a literal knock on my physical door from #Apple today?
> Hey #Apple, "This feels a little like witness intimidation. I let @NLRB know." Love, Ashley
> Clutches panic button & Mace while still laying on floor pondering the brutality of U.S. capitalism...
Source: https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1436080433175818259
At the same time, she is giving these veiled threats to Apple while an investigation appears to be underway,
> .... also makes me wonder what would happen if I shared the incidents [redacted] investigated and said weren't "policy violations" like [redacted] [1]
I can see why Apple would want to part ways with that. It's standard for everyone to keep their mouths shut while an investigation is underway. If you don't understand and follow that contract then you're tainting the investigation.
[1] https://www.ashleygjovik.com/uploads/1/3/7/0/137008339/publi...
Self-help guru Tim Ferriss even copyrighted the phrase and made a big deal about publicizing a $10,000 seminar in his "Opening the Kimono" event in 2011: https://tim.blog/2011/04/12/opening-the-kimono/
Then the phrase quickly died, as it should have. Strange to hear an Apple manager using it, but I wouldn't assume they were implying anything or had ill intent.
Yes, I can imagine oblivious men repeating it if they did not realize it could be interpreted sexually. However you do deserve to be called out if you continue using it while feigning ignorance. Your response should simply be, "oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize the implications of this phrase. I'll stop using it." And if you can't do that then HR should get involved. It sounds like that is what was happening. Then she threatened to make her case more widely known and Apple decided, "alright, it's better if you're not employed here while you pursue that."
The phrase comes from Japanese<->American business relationships in the 70s through 90s. It is not sexist or racist. It literally means providing transparency to internal affairs.
> Strange to hear an Apple manager using it, but I wouldn't assume they were implying anything or had ill intent.
"Look, I will let you invest a million dollars in Apple if you will sort of open the kimono on Xerox Parc." -- Steve Jobs, Xerox Parc, 1979
Under the Xerox Parc kimono, he found a prototype of the modern computer mouse.
Ashley's source for why this is offensive and my source for why it's not are the same (from her screenshot): https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/open-kimono.asp
Investopedia says the term is "offensive" but the only reason they cite is an NYT article from 1998:
> New York Times reporter Stephen Greenhouse became one of the first to draw broad attention to the term when he noted that marketers at Microsoft (MSFT) had embraced it. At the time, he did caution that the use of open kimono may have originally indicated a disrespectful attitude toward the Japanese businessmen who were buying American companies.
It wasn't even disrespectful because of race, it was because Japanese businessmen were buying lots of American companies and doing due diligence. Also, kimonos are worn by men, women, and children.
In reality, Investopedia is probably labeling it "offensive" for people like me who know it is not offensive, but are unaware that using it could lead to problems.
Edit: explain downvotes and don’t downvote just because you don’t like the perspective. Sure there are men’s kimonos but ask some random person on the street and ask who wears kimonos and men will not be the answer.
For the puritanical American mind it might be offensive to even imagine nudity, but other than that I really don't get it.
Look I don’t make American culture, I’m simply pointing out how a huge chunk of office workers will perceive it.
Anyway, I can tell people can see this perspective, but want to pretend it’s invalid because they don’t like it. those against what they call “cancel” culture then reacting to opinions they deem unpopular by downvoting shows they don’t care about the principal of what they call “cancel” culture in general but only care that what they are used to is being “cancelled”.
Has anyone tried googling the term to see what comes up? Many posts explaining or talking about why the term is problematic. People downvoting are trying to ignore facts they dislike, but that doesn’t make facts go away.
This even comes up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549563
On hacker news it may seem like there is little difference in opinion, but keep in mind hacker news readers are a fairy like minded subsample of the population.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/11/02/360479744...
If you play a word association game, having people say the first word or words that come to mind when they see the word “kimono” what do you think the top few will be?
My guess is that for an average American, the top three would be Japan, geisha and clothing.
What do you think most Americans would say? And what are your top three?
But yes, many people in america group "geisha" "oshiroi" and "kabuki" all sort of mix together into this image: https://geishakai.pl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/HANAFUSA-240...
I would be more than happily to be pulled up to HR if a coworker reported me for saying "open kimono" (not a phrase I would normally say). I'm sure HR would have a wonderful time talking to my lawyer.
Samurai also wear kimonos, as do priests and sumo wrestlers. Sure, the general public is uneducated but come on, this is reaching.
I seriously doubt most people even make the connection between geishas and kimonos. In fact, most people don't even mean kimono when they say kimono, they mean a vaguely asiatic thin robe, pretty popular in the 80s.
That also makes more sense for the expressions, since they are easy to open. An actual kimono takes 10 minutes to open, it's probably the least sexually suggestive garment in the world.
> “ In fact, most people don't even mean kimono when they say kimono, they mean a vaguely asiatic thin robe, pretty popular in the 80s”
The difficulty in understanding how most people would react to the phrase appears to be because you’re judging it based on your understanding of the term, not on what you yourself said is the general public’s understanding.
It's not implying in any way that women are prone to flashing, that women would be in any way inferior, or that actual women should open their actual kimonos. You are just using the image of a (supposedly) female garment.
Just like saying "like a kick in the balls" isn't sexist. It doesn't imply you want to kick men or anything like that.
They’re basically t-shirts. The cut differs on men and women as a function of fashion, suitability to body type, and some formal rules (e.g. wearing a family crest historically made it a different kimono subtype).
There was a period during the late 20th century where kimonos were only in fashion for women (men wore western styles except at weddings) but both historically and presently kimonos are for men and women. Random people on the street who say differently are probably just misinformed about a culture they don’t live in.
Tying it back to the phrase used… this cultural dissonance is why it’s generally difficult to import phrases/metaphors from foreign cultures: people simply misunderstand you.
If your mental image of a kimono wearer is a vulnerable Japanese woman, as it may be if you are an American that's still reverberating with echos of WW2 racism, then Ashley's disgust makes some sense.
Why does it sound problematic?
As others have already explained: it’s not an offensive phrase and kimonos are certainly not most commonly associated with women, so what’s your goal here?
What’s the point of trying to find offense?
You're right, the answer is likely to be "Japanese".
Nothing is objectively inoffensive. Whether something is or not depends on delivery and to whom it's delivered. Clearly "open kimono" does imply nakedness, so if you ask a person to be "open kimono" I can see how someone might be offended by that when just saying "be more open" would serve. I don't know the exact phrasing that this employee found offensive. It could just be a misunderstanding where a manager was saying they need to "open the kimono" on a product, such as by making an API that other people can use to easily interface it.
Apparently not.
There's almost 0 chance that managers at Apple got the colloquialism wrong and were using it in any sort of sexual or racist way. And if they were, Ashley would have surely brought it to light. This was not a misunderstanding.
What happened here is that Ashley thought the term sounded offensive enough to weaponize, and so she did.
From the Slack reaction emojis, and from our own sibling HN comments, we can tell other people also feel grossed out by the "open kimono" phrase. Particularly people who have never heard it before.
The obvious conclusion is that the phrase just doesn't pass the vibe check in 2021, and no additional research is required. It sounds kind of old and maybe a little racist or sexist, so anyone that uses it needs to be called out, so we can erase this uncomfortable phrase from the tech lexicon. Problem solved?
The real problem is that adopting such a niggardly view of workplace language leads to precisely the type of in-group/out-group division and discrimination that people like Ashley claim to be fighting against. Of course, if it works, she ends up in the in-group with power because she knows the rules. The in-group is then free to exclude other cultures because they're seen as crude or offensive or somehow "less than" the enlightened rule makers of civil society.
That sounds more like jumping to conclusions than objectivity. We're not going to know the truth on either side of this. The facts are, she felt harmed, reported it, started an investigation, threatened to publicize some details, and was let go.
> What happened here is that Ashley thought the term sounded offensive enough to weaponize, and so she did.
You think she pretended to be offended in order to raise a stink publicly, thereby risking her job over a false claim? That doesn't pass the smell test for me. More likely is she truthfully felt wronged, wanted it made right, and overstepped herself a bit along the way.
> The real problem is that adopting such a niggardly view of workplace language leads to precisely the type of in-group/out-group division and discrimination that people like Ashley claim to be fighting against. Of course, if it works, she ends up in the in-group with power because she knows the rules. The in-group is then free to exclude other cultures because they're seen as crude or offensive or somehow "less than" the enlightened rule makers of civil society.
Not everything's a conspiracy. Quit looking at the world in black and white. People are complex.
Cause some may say you haven't passed the vibe check either, as far back as 1999 and at least as recent as 2011.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...
It sounds kind of old and maybe a little racist, so should we call you out on your usage?
I don't agree, but others might not agree of your classification of the open kinomo phrase either.
You're asking all the right questions.
Lately, it seems that the only thing that matters is passing the vibe check.
Things that surprisingly pass the vibe check:
* "long time no see" or "no can do" -- making fun of broken English (particularly Chinese and Native American)
* "got gypped" -- clearly insulting toward gypsies
* criticism from the "peanut gallery" -- that's a reference to poor seating for black people during the Vaudeville era, which is super racist by any standard
Things that unsurprisingly don't pass the vibe check but should if people were more educated:
* "jimmies" for sprinkles has a pop culture reputation for being racist and people have corrected me for saying it, but actually ice cream sprinkles were just invented by a guy named James
* "niggardly" shares no root with its racist homophone
* "那个" is a filler word that chinese speakers need to be careful with because of the same racist homophone
I get that language is always evolving and the vibe check does matter to lots of people, so I try to accommodate the sensibilities of the masses.
I know that "niggardly" is so uncommon these days that it practically is a racist dog whistle (though it really shouldn't be), so I wouldn't use it in daily speech.
But I also think it would be a shame if all the interesting turns of phrase that have stuck around over the years are intentionally censored and removed until we have nothing but bland language without metaphor or history or anything that could possibly cause offense.
"Opening the kimono" is certainly not a phrase worth censoring. I think you could make a good faith argument that trying to censor it is actually a reflection of racist and sexist American stereotypes about Japanese people.
The purpose of political correctness is to go mad. Its whole point is to control others.
I really don't understand why it would be offensive. Is it because kimonos are (originally) an "ethnic" (i.e. non-American) thing? Or is it related to the American panic about nudity?
The one that gets me the most is someone taking the phrase "Chinese wall" as being offensive. The phrase means a hard separation of business units in some companies, such as analysts evaluating companies and investment banking units trying to win business from those companies.
I always took it to mean "Well, there is one country that's rather famous for having an incredibly extensive barrier that serves to separate 2 areas." I literally have no understanding of how this could even be considered racist, if anything it's praising an incredible human feat and using it metaphorically.
> Her entire social media presence appears to be built around capitalizing on these stories
Or, she is focused on shedding light on bad behavior of others and she was actually bullied and picked on by some twats at Apple and she wants consequences?
So in the end, I don't understand why it would be a problem to create a website for news coverage and tweet highlights. If she feels she's been wronged, it's okay to fight back, even if she was employed by Apple. What's wrong with that?
On this site, people always say "bad Apple" ("bad Google", etc) behaving badly and abusing its power. Yet, when an employee comes out with complaints, we pretend it is not okay to complain about your employer?
I don't know who is in the wrong here, we have seen both dramatic employees that take offense in everything innocent, but we have also seen corporations covering up bullying and abusive behavior. Which one is it in this case? I don't know yet, I bet you don't either.
It's really hard to tell who is right from the outside, considering all parties might take things out of context.
Just as a personal comment, that is why am the most boring person ever with my coworkers. (Assuming you are right) Is it really worth writing a "joke" ticket like this when it might come back in 6 years and you'll be painted as the bullies of Apple?
I'm sure her old team is dismayed to see her lying about it now.
""" > Abuse disguised as a joke happens when abusers make comments about you that they want other people to believe are funny, but you know they are threats and put-downs in disguise. They’re sick personal jokes between the two of you. Only you know the real story behind his “humor” so friends may wonder why you cry or become so upset when he teases and jokes... Abusers tend to use sarcastic humor and make fun of other people – but they rarely if ever poke fun at themselves. """
Strange how confident you are in accusing her of lying. Almost like you have this strategy down to a science. Can't imagine why.
A lot of corporations are making their own "laws" (warranty stickers, abusive contract clauses, anti-piracy disclaimers, etc.) and they are keeping them even when they know it's total lies.
Authorities also take what corporations tell them as granted truth.
So even if the odds are in favor of corporations being right (corps are usually a lot of people), don't fall in that kind of trap especially when it favors the corporation or if there are facts casting doubts.
-- This is my personal view not necessarily the view of my employer. I may be POTUS too. I may or may not think Apple is right. You owe me $100 if you read that sentence.
It's one thing to have a complaint (or several) you bring up internally through the right channels, it's something else entirely to run a continuous campaign of shaming a company that you currently work for. How anyone can go to work at a company every day while also actively working against it is beyond me — not to mention how her relationships with her colleagues are impacted by her tweeting.
She calls herself a whistleblower, but was also tweeting about issues that were still under internal investigation at the time, and which was confidential. That's absolutely the wrong way to go about things.
https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443
This is one of those prickly things where about half the population takes one side and the other half takes the other side.
I, personally, would greatly appreciate my boss giving me advice on how to improve the tone of my delivery during presentations.
I wouldn't call it tone-policing.
I wouldn't complain to HR about it.
And I certainly wouldn't put it on Twitter for the world to see.
Bananas.
-----------
Update: I just saw the piece on her website where she tweets "Here's me catching my #Apple officemate randomly looking at rifle specs".
The tweet: https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1426572384736202758
(Astonishingly, she thinks it's okay to take a creep-shot of a colleague's computer screen and post it on Twitter.)
Ashley "caught" her officemate doing something naughty, y'all.
She's a professional snitch.
Aussie women are going to have trouble at Apple.
Ashley (or ally's of hers) have been spamming updates to this slow motion career implosion on HN for the past few months, to try and paint Apple as some misogynistic dystopia and most of the posts have been flagged.
One wonders with so much distaste for capitalism why she didn’t take a more lucrative position with the politburo where employment standards are so much better.
Yet when it comes to her listening to someone else's feedback (not sounding as if she's asking questions when she's not during a presentation) that's tone-policing and she can't tolerate it.
So much hypocrisy.
The implication in the replies that no one from Texas has a valid opinion certainly says a lot about her communication style though.
But taking a photo of an employee’s screen and posting it on the internet is way over the line.
You see that when she refuses to consider the opinion of someone who was born in a certain place. You also see that when she implies that her coworker is breaking company policy and creating a safety issue- if that was actually the case why would you wait 6 years, when no one can prove or disprove the accusation? It seems like she wasn't actually concerned about the safety issue, she was more concerned about collecting a critical mass of "receipts" before she publicly disclosed her alleged victimhood.
I assume certain actual gun nuts are nuts about those kinds of guns just like some car enthusiasts are enthusiasts about old impractical cars?
I'd even say unprofessional. Not that it would make her any better, but if she'd been professional she'd taken it quietly to management or police and they could have ignored it edit: making it less embarrassing for them and less hurting for the colleague even if she was dumb.
She is the kind of person who should make anyone feel uncomfortable at work.
Who knows what else she doesn't like and will capture and post publicly on internet?
BTW: this seriously reminds me about PyconGate where someone who had just posted a d#ck joke on Twitter herself got two others fired because she thought she overheard them saying something between themselves that could be construed as a similar joke.
"What we do not support was how she reported the conduct. Her decision to tweet the comments and photographs of the people who made the comments crossed the line. Publicly shaming the offenders – and bystanders – was not the appropriate way to handle the situation"
It was also pointed out she had previously made jokes about male genitalia on twitter (from her work account) a few days before, which obviously (in internet rules) makes her a hypocrite.
I can't find her on linkedin (she probably is unemployable now)but there is a statement attributed to her after she was fired (https://allthingsd.com/20130327/fired-sendgrid-developer-eva...)
Anyway, all of this is just leading to the point that we're going to need to find a new term, sort of like "peter and the wolf" where a person abuses the virality of social media, in combination with stereotyping, confirmation bias and willingly incorrect analysis of situations, to attempt to take down other people illegitimately. Oh wait. That's just cancelling cancel culture.
For everyone who bitches about tech recruiting, I wish they would at least give some empathy to this point of view.
In Apple's case, they did make the mistake of this bad hire, and I bet the amount of time, effort, and negative publicity they've had to deal with, not to mention how this kind of toxic behavior just kills morale at organizations, is orders of magnitude worse than with an average employee. During the period I was a manager, I hated how the majority of my attention, work stress and time was devoted to handling a toxic individual, as opposed to all my other employees who were working hard to make the team better.
And to be clear, my judgement of this person as an individual I would loath having to work with literally has nothing to do with others' descriptions of her, it solely has to do with her own words that she has published.
I've witnessed this in a startup I was peripherally involved with and know the founder quite well. The lead science guy had serious narcissism issues and he was seriously slowing them down by making every meeting about himself, constantly angling for more power and being unreasonable. When they finally fired him after an especially dumb maneuver, it was like the sun has come up after a dark night. Processes suddenly "just worked", juniors were taking over responsibilities and growing quickly into their roles, and the whole team got along much better. They made much better progress without him.
Definitely not sympathizing with her, though. She brought this on herself, 100%. Constantly campaigning against your employer, in a very public forum to boot, is eventually going to draw their ire. She had a very generous title and salary for what looked like limited experience in the field and it seemed they were paying for her to obtain an unrelated J.D. Very generous, I’d say.
If you keep biting the hand that feeds you, eventually the hand - and the food - gets withdrawn.
A bit tangential, but I’ve never understood why people stay in jobs they can’t stand to the point where they self implode like this. I’m sure there were other teams, other roles at Apple in which she could have found herself.
I know a guy who worked on their internal security team (investigating leaks, etc.) and the access they have into employee's digital lives is legitimately terrifying.
We need better protections around "tech worker" user data & its ownership. Apple shouldn't be able to keep your personal iCloud data indefinitely just because you worked for them, but they can, and it's totally legal.
If you want a personal phone, they’ll give you a significant discount to buy one, but the ones they give away are clearly meant for work use. Anyone who just clicks through an agreement like that without reading it at least once is a bloody fool.
I find it hard to see the implicit sexism in this. Truth be told, if I heard the phrase around the workplace and someone took issue with it I'd probably be internally rolling my eyes.
Am I different from the average person? Do other people have an automatic, internal and visceral reaction to such locutions that I'm lacking?
The investopedia page is rather coy,
> There are conflicting etymologies for this phrase, but the one closest to its current business connotation is the idea of Japanese people loosening their kimonos to relax at home, much like loosening a tie. [1]
Women in Japan haven't exactly enjoyed equal status in the western sense and there is a boat load of subjugation that probably went into coming up with this phrase. The worst example is probably the use of "comfort women" [2] by the Japanese army in WW II. These women were enslaved for sex.
So of course a woman would find this offensive, particularly when directed at her, since if you know any history it is easy to imagine this phrase originating from "open your kimono and have sex with me." I can also imagine oblivious men in tech repeating it if they didn't "get it" at first because they had heard other men use the phrase without realizing its origin. However you do deserve to be called out if you continue using it while feigning ignorance. Your response should simply be, "oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize the implications of this phrase. I'll stop using it." And if you can't do that then HR should get involved.
It's a fascinating phrase, perhaps not least because nobody knows where it comes from but somehow people also seem to know that it's innocuous or know that it's sexist.
> Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, notably used the expression in 1979 during a visit to Xerox Parc. He reportedly said: “Look, I will let you invest a million dollars in Apple if you will sort of open the kimono on Xerox Parc.” This memorable expression and meeting apparently led to him discovering the mouse, and Apple subsequently launching the first commercial mouse. [1]
In that context it seems fine to me. He's talking about a product. Now, clearly, "open the kimono" means to bare something naked. If you ask a person to be more "open kimono" as a way of asking them to be more open, I think that crosses a line. And, maybe if you suggest someone go "open kimono" on their work, that could be received offensively while not being intended that way. So, context matters. I'd probably steer clear of it entirely though.
Agreed, it's a bizarre phrase probably best left unused.
It’s totally valid that you don’t have the reaction to this that others do, and i think it’s just important that when people say “this language is demeaning and hurtful to me” that we acknowledge that as valid too.
1) "Drop the pants" doesn't offend me 2) I don't know why it's assumed kimono is a reference to a garment exclusively worn by women and certainly the etymology of the phrase is not clear that it pertains at all to Geisha's or "comfort women"
The best evidence I can find online suggests its a reference from feudal Japan where one could prove one wasn't harbouring any weapons.
However, I do agree that when someone says, "this language is demeaning and hurtful to me", that you should at least reflect internally on whether that's a valid position for them to hold and if so change your own behaviour to cease using a certain phrase.
The bit that stumps me, and I mean I'm totally flummoxed here, is what do I do when I fundamentally disagree with someone else about the implicit sexism or bias of an expression? What if it's something as innocuous as "low-hanging fruit", and, a colleague is offended by that?
EDIT: Actually, I just had a reaction to this, which is when someone else polices my phrasing, I feel misrepresented and attacked. Especially when there exists enough ambiguity that it would be impossible to determine whether there was intent or some hitherto unearthed entrenched bias in my choice of words. So now we're in a circular argument. I feel victimised, and they feel victimised.
Oh gosh, now I'm having flashbacks of past toxic relationships.
It seems like a strong possibility to me. If someone told me something I was saying offended them, I'd stop using it in their presence and would reconsider using it in general. It's just common courtesy and in this case it's easy to see how someone could interpret it as a sexualized phrase even if you didn't intend it that way. In short, that's not a hill worth dying on, online or IRL.
In this case you ask at least one 3rd party, maybe more. Some of your mentors should be similar to the person who feels victimized, in this case a woman. So do that in real life where you know them, not online.
> What if it's something as innocuous as "low-hanging fruit", and, a colleague is offended by that?
Haha, that's pretty funny and apt. Lead with that when you ask for advice on this.
> I feel victimised, and they feel victimised.
That's also fine. You deserve to have your concerns heard. When someone else is the first to raise a concern with you, it's necessary to listen to them first. Then when they indicate they feel understood (you can ask them directly), you can follow with your concern.
Good news, you're on the right track. Acknowledging that there is a problem is the first step. Many people don't get there.
If you're introspective, get some self help books. John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus [1] can open doors to understanding the opposite sex, even if you don't agree with everything he writes. The crux of the problem is we all assume everyone wants the same thing, and we do, but we prioritize things differently. So, people spend a lot of time giving what they want to receive because that's what they want. Then we feel empty and spent.
It's like if I like coffee and you like milk. I keep gifting you coffee and you keep gifting me milk. Neither of us "feel whole" from these transactions. The gifts don't feel thoughtful to the recipient. Meanwhile, we think we have everything we want, yet we know something's missing and we can't figure it out.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IHZ91T6/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
“Open the kimono” in the context of who the primary wearers are comes off as crass and not fit for the workplace
Its context here is business settings in America. So I was wrong I saying random person on the street, I should have said random American office worker.
Anyway, it’s rather satisfying that those against what they call “cancel” culture react to opinions they deem unpopular by downvoting, it shows they don’t care about the principal of what they call “cancel” culture in general but only care that what they are used to is being “cancelled”.
I’ll whole grant you that said in Japanese in Japan the phrase could be okay, I have no idea about that.
Has anyone tried googling the term to see what comes up? Many posts explaining or talking about why the term is problematic. People downvoting are trying to ignore facts they dislike, but that doesn’t make facts go away.
This even comes up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549563
I haven’t discussed cancel culture, nor downvoted anything. Not that that’s even related to each other.
The fact of the matter is that the phrase does not denigrate Japanese culture, it is completely gender agnostic and is not an innuendo. That’s objectively true.
So either it’s the American phobia of even pretending that other cultures exist, or it’s the equally American phobia of nudity. Even in a figure of speech.
The top google results show it’s taken by many to be a sexist term.
I mean, you can find Google results that can affirm almost any opinion, but that doesn’t make your argument here any less silly than it already is.
> Is this really a common thing people do? Take nude photos and leave them in the phone?
> It amazes me that people take photos of themselves naked. They will be leaked eventually.
I mean, I expected victim-blaming here on this site, but to the degree to feign surprise that people use the devices they own and control to live lives that include a sexual dimension is a new level of ridiculousness.
I don't have a strong moral objection to using personal computing devices in that manner, but I think many people are nervous about the risks.
The thing is, if someone has nudes of you on their phone, there's a non-zero chance those nudes will end up on the Internet. Maybe you like your odds, but plenty of people dont.
Damn near every person I've ever met in my age group who has used a smartphone or computer has used it for every aspect of their personal lives to include the sexual parts of their lives. There is an expectation of privacy that average folks have on their devices. It's where they search for their most sensitive medical information, search for relationship advice, watch porn, and explore their curiosities without censorship.
I'm not sure where you are finding these puritan self-censoring non-techies who treat their devices as open books, but I've certainly never met them.
If you have naked pictures of yourself on your corporate phone that’s 100% your fault.
Wow, you (and plenty of other people) seem awfully defensive at the idea that not every social group shares the same norms as the groups you belong to. I wasn't even making a normative claim (or at least not a very strong one) just a personal observation.
I agree that smartphones are intensely personal devices, and that people should have a reasonable expectation of privacy. But there's more to be concerned about than just what corporations or governments can do by following the rules. I would say the average person who doesn't take nudes might be just as concerned about an angry ex, or "hackers", or just accidentally bringing them up while they show someone pictures of their new house (or whatever) as they are about Apple or the USG.
They might not even have a specified threat model, they might just really nervous about the idea of those pictures being shared forever on the internet.
There must thousands of other reasons someone could take nude photos of themselves on devices they assume only them has access to.
i personally find the claims weird and have never seen it anywhere. my experience is that some employees choose to use company devices as personal devices. or personal accounts as company accounts, etc.
again, the way things are today, i don't expect many apple employees to come forward and tell us the way things are.
All work IM and emails you send are recorded.
Every URL you visit from your work machine is logged using NTLM auth discovered user name.
Think about all that information and what your employer could take out of context.
Keep your work and personal life separate regardless of the company.
Perhaps it’s a new policy, thought I, but that turned out not to be the case either. Both old and new employees routinely kept life at home separate from life at work, because presumably they see the benefits of that.
I’ve got a personal phone, and I’ve got 5 or 6 work phones/I-devices. I’ve got a personal apple-ID which still uses @mac.com, and I’ve got several @icloud.com accounts I use for testing.
The company I work for made it outright clear that while I could unlock my privately owned phone for business access, they would take complete control of it and install monitoring software in order to protect company data. I would have lost any pretense of privacy if I signed up to that without getting myself a second, non-business, phone. I didn't sign up since it just would have reduced my free time even more, but I know plenty of people with separate business and private phones.
The only surprising thing would be if apple wasn't just as upfront about the complete lack of privacy involved with a company phone.
Pro-tip: don't take a picture of your tickly parts on a device that is one mis-click away from sharing to your entire team.
And don't freak out when you have to turn over your phone, untouched, if it's required for legal retention. In fact, retention policy is part of the mandatory training -- she knew what might happen with that device, but just ignored it.
She lied about being doxxed on Blind.
She asked for paid leave and claimed it was forced on her.
She asked for an exit package spanning 18 months covering her entire salary, RSU value, and benefits to leave.
She clearly doesn't have a lawyer, so I'd guess all of her claims are entirely baseless.
She is a classic cow and belongs on kiwifarms.
Before posting a comment you see the forum guidelines that includes: "No trolling plans. We are not an autistic Illuminati. If you embarrass yourself or the forum trying to troll, we will ridicule you."
The subject of laughter is called a "cow" because it provides laughter i.e. "milk" through his/her action on the internet. The term cow is used regardless of gender, sex, age, etc.
The irony is: she's a law student graduating next year...
How terrifying.
The adult way to handle this would be to complain internally, and it it fails go public once, and then move on to either discuss it in good faith with Apple or litigation.
What would Apple have to win with her? Looking at the Twitter stream I feel like no matter what they do, it will never be enough. So firing her is the only possible avenue. At this stage the price of litigation is probably less than the reputational costs in the long run.
The whole episode about her boobs is mesmerizing. I’m not saying the attitude of Apple sort of enticing their employees to use to personal accounts is not problematic. But even my horny self would think twice about sending a nude using my work phone. And if I did, I suppose I would come back to my senses eventually and delete those. She’s a grown up, work at a tech company, and has heard of fappening.
Interesting. Trichloroethene.
The whole area has numerous superfund sites, all which have buildings constructed on them.
After reading that not only is massively polluted locations that have no plans to clean up common in the US, but also fair game to build upon, it brings up a whole new level of questioning corporate ethics.
July 2, 2021
In a heavy redacted email she was exposed to a substance and want to know "what chemicals & at what levels, for future cancer monitoring, etc." It made me curios what she was exposed too.
July 20, 2021.
Here I think she is accusing someone from apple of smuggling and "violating of the US embargo & sanctions against <redacted>" I assume is Iran by the length of the redacted text.
July 28, 2021.
She wants to transfer to ER and is refused 42 times. If she would have been transferred to ER she would have publish every complaint she investigated and used everything for here own lawsuit and her own cause.
July 29, 2021
Long email were she is unhappy with the investigation and what the conclusion of each investigation to be sorted by area of the law to route them to different lawyers. In the list we get toxic tort but no details.
I think any health issue that she will have in the future would result in a lawsuit against apple.
Aug 6th, 2021
Long list of articles were she was mentioned and tweets. She talks about Apple not doing exposure testing but nothing else regarding the chemicals.
August 14th 2021
Post a picture of a colleagues office with 5 bottles of alcohol and 3 bullet cases with the tip (the bullet) removed and 1 old musket ammunition. Not one of the items is live ammunition but she say it is live ammunition.
She took a picture of a colleague looking at a rifle specs. At this point it would not amaze me if she requested the colleague to show here the gun specs and took the picture and used it against him.
She complains that she is "constantly attacked" with Nerf guns and dodgeballs by here colleagues and mentions the rifle and bullets post trying to make a connection. She also says she has PTSD from past violence. She post a mail exchange were it is clear everyone is having fun even here but now she uses that to make a point of violence and danger.
"I do feel like it's me against three 13 year old boys a lot of the time. I think I just need to out mischief them - hide or boobytrap their toys maybe" - mail from the exchange with here boss. Sorry I don't see the PTSD inducing horrors in here email. In this email she understands that everything is a joke and even participates in the joke by wanting to set boobytraps on there toys. If we would apply the same logic that she apply then she is a domestic terrorist trying to set up IEDs at Apple.
She complains on twitter more about the nerf gun war but says nothing in the emails and even participates in the nerf gun war.
We find out that she has a "2015 - Assault & Battery" folder that she shared with Apple last month and she is furious that the ER team don't want to investigate anything before 2017.
For some reason she is challenging NorthropGrumman (3rd largest weapons manuf in the world)
She complains about physical safety and when here boss give here some good advice about physical safety she uses that against him.
Every interaction with here colleagues is used against Apple and said colleague.
Mr. Bullet -that what she called one of the guys had a ticket named "Make Ashley's Life a Living Hell" in 2015. I am amazed how she hold on to it for years and complained about it now.
So from 2015 until now, every interaction with here colleagues was documented and now it is used against them. Everything is overdramatized. If you would blur out Apple from here tweets you would think that she works for some drug cartel.
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
Not sure if she stepped outside the bounds of concerted activity though.
- how many Apple employees looked at Ashley's boobs in Apple's permanent evidence locker
- what the reason for each occurence
- what their names and titles
- 0
- N/A
- N/A