At SpaceX, I couldn't stop getting sexually harassed | Hacker News Reader

At SpaceX, I couldn't stop getting sexually harassed

lioness.co

99 pointsonychomys157 comments

I already see comments downplaying this issue. Take a moment to acknowledge the series of events: 1) multiple women felt harassment at at work, 2) they reported it to the company (which can be hard) 3) the issues did not get fixed.

I hear about this pattern across companies and industries. It's awful. Quit systematically downplaying it. It's real and needs fixing.

I think the problem with this article is that it's very easy to (mis-) interpret as her exaggerating the scale of the problem.

"Some of the men who work at SpaceX [..] stare at women while they work"

That struck me as a rather odd thing to say.

"a fellow intern approached me in our intern housing and grabbed my butt"

That is definitely unacceptable, but if I understand things correctly, she was living together with other interns to save money. So that was her roommate, doing bad stuff in his free time. I'm not quite sure if SpaceX should manage their employee's life at that level.

"learn from our colonial past and incorporate indigenous expertise"

That sounds to me like a dog whistle for her subgroup of social justice warriors. In any case, my boss would also be pretty surprised if someone used that word choice for arguing their case.

Similarly, she mentions "very small group of women and nonbinary people" the latter of which seems hyperbolic to me because nonbinary people are rare in general, so it's not unexpected that they would be as rare at SpaceX as they are in overall society.

So while I agree with her statement in the abstract that SpaceX should have a better work culture, there's too many little oddities in that letter for me to agree with it.

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It appears the article URL changed while I was replying to it. But the new URL contains even more things that seem odd to me.

"I found my way through an abusive upbringing, leaving home at a young age, subsequent homelessness, and sexual assault in college"

That is horrible, but in the context of the letter I would be surprised if it will not affect how one experiences the world. It's easy for me to assume that people are acting in good faith if they do stupid things because I have never had any of those negative experiences. So the same people doing the same action might be interpreted as "stupid fun" by me and as "abuse" by her.

"I had to continue living in the residence with this man."

That sentence reads weird to me because I assume that SpaceX will not require you to live at any specific house. So based on my experience of the world, it should have been easy for her to move. I can fully understand if she wants that guy to move instead of her giving up the apartment, but then she should say so instead of claiming that it was impossible to move.

"Elon Musk’s behavior bears a remarkable similarity to the behavior of a sadistic and abusive man who had previously been part of my life."

I do feel sorry for this person, because she clearly had many bad things happen to her, which never happened to me. So maybe that's just me noticing how privileged I am. But if her goal is to push SpaceX towards objectively improving their work environment, I wonder if it would have been better to not mention this. Because like I said in my first comment, this makes it very easy to misinterpret her (probably valid) criticism as a personal vendetta.

"Intern housing" implies that the specific housing is provided or subsidized by SpaceX. Of course she's not forced to live there, but she would probably have to pay money to move. (And why shouldn't the person who assaulted her be the one to move?) It still doesn't seem to me that you are reading the article in good faith.

She wrote "I had to". You wrote "Of course she's not forced to". So in effect, you highlighted the same odd word choice as me. And in my opinion, "I have to" is very different from "I don't want to for financial reasons" or "I don't want to for fairness reasons".

And yes, I was trying to find examples for how this specific article could be misinterpreted in bad faith.

This comes across as a bad faith interpretation of the comment you’re replying to. I read it as providing additional context and a (slightly?) different perspective, not as an attempt at misrepresenting the article to push an agenda.

A serious response to the article would begin by acknowledging the strongest parts of the complaint.

If you actually want this to be how discussion works on this site, you need to make the point much more consistently than you do.

Seriously? You need to be told that?

Consistency is a red herring because it's outright impossible. We can't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.

If you see a post that ought to have had some moderation but hasn't, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Establishing the argument is the role of the article being linked to, not a job for every single commenter wishing to express an opinion. A serious response can always criticise the weak parts of any argument without having to guess which parts are considered stronger by others.

Or in the alternative, perhaps we should not have any discussion on this topic at all until SpaceX offers a formal response, at which point you can chastise everyone for failing to acknowledge BOTH the strongest parts of this article and the strongest parts of SpaceX's response.

What you're saying would be fine if topics all came up in a vacuum with no priors and could be treated and dissected interchangeably. But that's very much not the case. In the real world we have to deal with, the topic of sexual harassment has a long history. In the context of that history, a comment responding to a claim of sexual harassment by dismissively belittling it is breaking the HN guidelines—not just the one I mentioned above, but others too, like this one:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Not to mention:

"Eschew flamebait."

And I think we could add this one too:

"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."

I'm not saying people have to accept everything that gets said in every such article, but there's an art to addressing these things without blowing up the thread. Many of the comments in this thread are on the wrong side of that line.

That's a fine standard. I would, with some trepidation, dare to say that the article being linked to here egregiously fails that standard on all counts.

He's describing the standard for HN, not for all writing everywhere. People on HN have a bad habit of forgetting that most things on the Internet weren't written for HN. Blog post authors aren't obligated to satisfy any of our rules, but if you want to talk about a blog post here, you're obligated to follow all of them.

I don't disagree with any of that and, for what it's worth, speaking for myself, is completely self-evident.

My original point (such as it is) is only to note that no debate is one-sided and that if we are setting a high standard of discussion in the Hacker News guidelines, it should be respectful of all, not just the views of the article being linked to. If we are obligated to acknowledge the strongest parts of the complaint, then it seems fair to obligate equal acknowledgement of the strongest parts of any response/rebuttal/defence.

Again I think you'd be making a good point there except that it leaves out externalities like flamebait which have the power to overwhelm and destroy good discussion. Imagine a public debate in a theater. Does it make sense to consider your opponent's strongest arguments? Sure it does—but not if the theater is on fire. The first priority has to be to put out the fire, or to try to prevent fires in the first place.

It's so much more complicated even than that because (1) the debaters are often themselves the ones setting the place on fire as they make their points; (2) they're most often doing it unintentionally; (3) there's no agreement about what the solid points are and what the flames are; (4) anyone in the audience is free to add any new point or any blast of flames at any moment.

Now try to be a theater operator with the goal of having good debates, a happy audience, and not burning down.

I was responding to what was said at the time, which was ONLY that the post failed in "acknowledging the strongest parts of the complaint." No accusation of flamebait was raised when I provided my original response.

(And for what it's worth, I don't agree that the post qualifies as flamebait.)

We can certainly disagree about particular calls because they're matters of interpretation. What I was trying to explain is why your argument doesn't work in the general case; that (for me) is the more important point.

I wrote the original comment, but I found that very difficult here. In my opinion, there are only 2 really strong statements in the letter.

1. She feels sexually harassed and is upset that HR apparently did not agree with her, or at the very least they did not take the action that she wanted them to take.

2. She has strong personal feelings about Elon Musk and is comparing him to her own past abusive relationship. She also has a history of very negative experience with family and relationships.

I'm guessing you would have wanted to hear "she was sexually harassed" but the entire point of my comment was to argue that the step from "she feels harassed but HR did not agree" to "she was harassed and HR didn't act" was not convincing to me. In my opinion, the letter contains many other complaints that to me appear unrelated (such as the "colonial past and incorporate indigenous expertise" plan) which gives me the impression that the person writing it is likely to complain in general.

Also, please consider that I originally wrote this as a reply to a comment which said "I already see comments downplaying this issue. [..] Quit systematically downplaying it. It's real and needs fixing.". That's why I finished my comment with agreeing in the abstract, but not the specific letter. So my intention wasn't to dismiss the letter, but to argue that if her goal is to improve the situation, then this specific letter and its phrasing might not work as well as a different way of reporting the same facts.

I wonder if the fact that you can get fired easily in the USA has something to do with it. In some other countries an employer needs to build a serious dossier against you if they are to fire you.

It may be an unpopular view, but I don't believe we should attach ANY MERIT AT ALL to, as you said "women FELT" harassed. The only yard stick should be actual concrete actions of harassment, and those should be dealt with strongly and profesionally.

In this article she complains about guys prospecting for dating opportunities at company social events. Depending on the exact nature of such, it is likely poor form, but is it really sexual harassment?

Or her complaint that "men stare at women working".... what are women like royalty you have to stair at the ground lest you accidentally "stare"?

You cannot and should not punish anyone for using their goddamned eyes to look at anything in their surroundings anymore than you can or should punish thought crimes.

If it is really obnoxious staring, the mature thing is to confront it and make it clear. Beyond that I don't have a solution against people being assholes. I mean if a woman is bitchy to me in a way that doesn't cross the line of breaking company policy, there is nothing much I can do except manage the situation.

BUT: as soon as any real line has been crossed, consequences should get real.

But this woman has so many complaints that seem marginal, mixed with complaints that are very serious like inappropriate touching, that I think she probably burned her credibility.

I mean, if the same person kept coming in to HR with very marginal complains, someone looked at me and I didn't like it, someone asked if I would like to for lunxh and I said no and then nothing further happened... this stuff seriously dilutes and detracts from actual sexual misconduct.

I might agree that the "hurt feelings" framing is unhelpful to an outside observer, but the article mentions butts being grabbed, women getting bear-hugged without consent and people outright ignoring OP's request to "stay professional" while discussing work (at her house, no less). That's seriously toxic behavior and no one should be expected to put up with it. When a toxic, dysfunctional work culture is being enabled like that, even stuff that would usually be dismissed as "marginal" becomes relevant because it's just adding to a huge unaddressed problem.

"Lioness has listed an NFT artwork for auction in tandem with this story."

Wow, that's kind of tacky.

"Owning this NFT is a chance to own part of a story that will make waves and shift culture."

$26,585 reserve price? Really? https://foundation.app/@lioness/~/118513

Sounds like the latest version of GoFundMe, playing to the Cryptocurrency and NFT trend to cover living and lawyer costs.

To supplement your lowly apple project manager salary

6.9 ETH? Seems...Musky?

> Dismayed by the lack of an environmental plan, I created a plan that would bring SpaceX to full carbon neutrality by 2030. It contained a framework for a diverse and functional society that would learn from our colonial past and incorporate indigenous expertise. I brought this plan directly to Elon Musk, who dismissed it with an email that said: “We have wind and solar energy.”

Is it possible to make a rocket carbon neutral? I guess if you use hydrogen instead of RP1/methane? Follow up, how does a carbon neutrality plan fit together with a framework for a diverse and functional society that would learn from our colonial past and incorporate indigenous expertise?

> But the new buildings on the campus run on gas generators, and company funding is not being dedicated to reducing carbon emissions. While there are solar panels on campus, any attempts to make new buildings and infrastructure sustainable (LEED) are deprioritized in favor of expanding the factory as fast as possible.

Hard to tell what the real story is here -- you probably want high reliability power sources next to your rocket construction building. Attempting to shift some load over to solar panels, but assuring that you have the ability to go all gas power seems like a reasonable choice.

You can produce methane from water and carbon dioxide. Burning it is the reverse.

Burning synthetic methane is carbon neutral.

That's cool, guess the full cycle carbon footprint is dependent on what you use to power the water + co2 -> methane process.

If they use natural gas (methane) to make electricity to make synthetic methane, I will cry

They need to be able to do it on Mars, so the only options are solar or nuclear power.

I'm sure that was included in the plan. It's a perfect application for solar power.

One of the reasons SpaceX decided to use methane to fuel their next rocket is that it can be synthesized on Mars from the ambient CO2.

It sounds like they are going to develop and use that capability here on earth and then export it to Mars.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1470519292651352070

I'll give my 2 cents as a male.

Touching someone's butt or invading personal space without permission is wrong.

I never dated a girl from work, but if I was interested in someone, I'll wait for the girl to initiate the encounter. Why?

Now it seems that even trying to flirt could be interpreted as harassing.

I wonder if it will end up like that eventually. Women will be the ones to pursue the encounter because males will be too afraid of crossing a line

I would be very very cautious about any sort of relationship with anyone that you are working with. Any sort of denunciation makes the front page, and that can kill a career right quick.

Go to a bar. Or a reading group. Or Tinder. Far less likely for something bad to happen.

Conversely I would never enter a relationship with someone I met at a bar, or that uses Tinder.

Work seems like a far better place to meet a partner, you get to know who they are without the haste of the other mediums you mentioned.

I know a couple that met on LinkedIn. That contains most of the information you'd actually care about (vs. "I like pizza"). But crucially, she approached him.

I met my ex on a stock trading discord. Similarly she approached me. Online seems a better place to meet people, I just don't think tinder attracts the quality of people I'm interested in given the apps focus on hookups.

It’s a bad idea to date at work regardless. Hardly anything worse than a breakup with someone you sit next to at work.

The problems with making advances in the workplace are that it’s really not the place for it and if you’re going to do it you better be certain it’s in an appropriate way and that they feel comfortable rejecting your advances. Since those are hard things to be certain about it’s probably better to avoid it entirely at work.

Blah blah blah. The data shows that nearly 1 in 4 couples met at work.

Why are you being rude?

I don’t see how that changes what I said.

Taking some statistic about where people met doesn’t invalidate what I’ve said.

Does it tell you if the 1/4 actually began by asking the other out during a meeting?

I’ve dated someone at work, but our relationship started outside of work and we didn’t work in the same department.

It changes what you said because with your comment you are essentially invalidating one fourth of all relationships that exist. In a world where it's already hard enough to meet people.

I don’t understand how it invalidates any relationship.

It can be true that’s it not a great idea to ask someone out at work in many circumstances and that many people first meet their partner at work.

You've got the wool pulled over your eyes. "Work" is just a social construct. "Coworkers" is just a euphemism for "human beings". We have a thing called flirting that allows people to signal attraction without grabbing each other's tits and ass. Let people love each other and forget the hail-corporate "work romance is bad for business" propaganda.

Then how do hierarchical and time-demanding professions like medicine and law ever result in marriage? Is it your view that a surgeon doing 24-hour back-to-back shifts should remain celibate if he didn't find someone in his first semester at medical school?

>I wonder if it will end up like that eventually. Women will be the ones to pursue the encounter because males will be too afraid of crossing a line

No there will always be men willing to tread the line; some will fail and other will succeed. Food for thought from Zizek:

>A tension between rights and prohibitions determines heterosexual seduction in our politically correct times. Or, to put it differently, there is no seduction which cannot at some point be construed as intrusion or harassment because there will always be a point when one has to expose oneself and ‘make a pass’. But, of course, seduction doesn’t involve incorrect harassment throughout. When you make a pass, you expose yourself to the Other (the potential partner), and her reaction will determine whether what you just did was harassment or a successful act of seduction. There is no way to tell in advance what her response will be (which is why assertive women often despise ‘weak’ men, who fear to take the necessary risk). This holds even more in our pc times: the pc prohibitions are rules which, in one way or another, are to be violated in the seduction process. Isn’t the seducer’s art to accomplish the violation in such a way that, afterwards, by its acceptance, any suggestion of harassment has disappeared?

Trying to flirt can certainly be interpreted as harassing in the wrong context. If someone has never so much as said anything to you that wasn't strictly work-related or banal small talk, flirting with them is not likely to go over well.

In a different situation, where you and this person have been chatting, bantering about silly things, etc., they might be open to casual flirtation, since it's now not just coming out of left field... and you could still be wrong about how it will be received.

Been there, done that, apologized immediately and we both moved on from it to stay friends.

But that's the difference: realizing that you did something unwelcome and genuinely apologizing for it. Most reasonable people will be accepting of that behavior.

there is also a vast breadth of harassment types that are in between asking someone out and physically touching someone and its all sexual harassment.

I've seen highly male environments redefine the bar of acceptable behavior on the fly before and its not pretty, the female targets have no way of getting it recognized let alone shutdown.

its a culture problem. The team needs to have that culture drummed in from the beginning, its one reason why enforced quota's actually do help a large amount. when its not an unnaturally large number of males its a hell of a lot harder for the culture to "reset" its bar of acceptable behavior.

> Now it seems that even trying to flirt could be interpreted as harassing.

It always HAS been harassing.

It is only after 40 years of victims' complaints being minimized, mocked, and dismissed is it finally starting to barely take hold that this is not OK.

Flirting is literally sexualizing the work environment. Joking with someone is not sexualizing, but joking with them as an attempt to gain favor to date and subsequently fuck them is.

It would be terrible to be in the situation that the author of the letter describes, but I'm genuinely curious what any company can do? They should probably confidentially interview the people involved, but if the other party denies it, what do you do then? And given the incident described is sexual assault, shouldn't the police be the first avenue explored, not HR? If there is no independent evidence either way, it makes sense for HR to ensure the people involved don't work or live together - but who do you move if you have no evidence? Moving the person initiating the complaint could easily be described as "punishment" in hindsight - maybe you would have to move both people involved to new work assignments? But then you can still be criticised because one person got a "better" re-assignment then the other, based on post-hoc performance My point is not that SpaceX handles these situations as well as they can be handled (I have no idea if they do), just that even if people and companies try and do the right thing, they can and will still be criticised. That is NOT a reason for them not to try.

" Some of the men who work at SpaceX hug women without consent, stare at women while they work, and interpret every company-related social event as an opportunity to date (or hit on) women in the office. I saw one woman pressured into dancing with a male colleague in front of other male employees. "

I was with her for the butt grabbing incident but that part sounds absolutely insane. Either you have blatant sexism incidents, or you don't, and then you resort to spin random stuff into a drama.

Of course in every "slightly less professional settings" there are annoying people with have annoying behavior such as being insisting to dance. But that's not "rampant misogyny" ffs.

Add to that the whole environmental thing when you work at a rocket compagny, and sending a message directly to elon musk shows a level of entitlement that lightyears (pun intended) over the top for a random employee

"While there are solar panels on campus, any attempts to make new buildings and infrastructure sustainable (LEED) are deprioritized in favor of expanding the factory as fast as possible."

No kidding. Even if the compagny had positive cash flow you'd have to fight for it, but now you make a drama while the compagny is still running on investor's money. You're just not fit for a corporate environement...

> I was with her for the butt grabbing incident but that part sounds absolutely insane. Either you have blatant sexism incidents, or you don't, and then you resort to spin random stuff into a drama.

Huh. To me it all sounds like sexual harassment, further details reinforcing the point, devoid of anything sounding so insane that I'd doubt everything else, but instead reasonable grievances reinforcing that it is a toxic environment for women. In fact, I'd be somewhat surprised if the details in the description were not accurate. And even if the last statement was "and the coffee was terrible, tasted like corn candy," it would not lead me to say, "aha! So this is all BS!" That would be a fallacious argument (A is reasonable, but B is nuts, so A&B are false.) I would not dismiss the accusations, they are too serious, nor would I ever sympathize with or try to frame sexual harassers as victims of slander.

How many clues exactly so you need to conclude she's overacting to normal vaguely annoying behaviors in semi professional settings (except the butt grabbing) and globally playing the victim card ?

She is offended to literally everythin fashionable these days on the offense scale (sexisme, racisme/colonialism and evironmentalism), and literally comparing Elon Musk to her father who sexually assaulted her in her full letter..

I (a hetero male) have been sexually harassed by a woman in the workplace. What you call "normally vaguely annoying behaviors" I called "being stared at like I was a piece of meat."

It's neither fun nor funny.

Im pretty sure its horrible (not kidding). Im also pretty sure it doesnt qualify your entire workplace as "rampant misandry" and im not 100% convinced (but i may be wrong if you actually tried to solve the problem in other ways) it requires the intervention of HR.

Thankfully being looked at is not sexual assault.

After reading this article you are given the choice to work with this person, do you say yes or no?

Yes, I'd take work at Apple and work with her. Why wouldn't I? Oh, right, because I'd be fearful of being accused of sexual harassment, right? I have no such fear because I haven't ever experienced those kinds of "misunderstandings," I am not a predator, and I am mature enough to control myself while at work. I'm also not needy, so I don't need to use the workplace to find romance. I respect my colleagues, even the ones I really don't care for, and I show them I respect them with my respectful behavior and by never objectifying them. Other people are ends in themselves, even the very attractive ones, not a means to my solving loneliness or getting off. If a colleague has a grievance, I listen to them and show them I understand rather than dismissing, avoiding, demeaning or attacking them.

You want a medal for being a non-predatory normal decent person ? That's not the point

It's great for you you've lived your life without these kind of "misunderstanding" but fake or overblown (intentionally or not by the 'victim' btw) harassement accusations exist more than you seem to think and it's always coming from the same pattern of people. With time you learn to not ship on the 'victim' bandwagon too quickly and regognize the patterns.

I'd have never thought i'd come to say something like that when I was younger..

I suppose you believe it is easy to come forward once demeaned, that there is some temptation of some benefit or just to get attention at the expense of the reputation of decent, enlightened men being totally normal and merely cast in a false light. But I strongly suspect the exaggeration you interpret does not exist. It isn't possible to accidentally sexually harass. Sexual harassment is very common, false accusations of same is less so. Also common when someone does something wrong, denial, and then downplaying it's severity. And if you haven't noticed, women praise and defend enlightened men. So what you believe simply isn't credible.

> " Some of the men who work at SpaceX hug women without consent, stare at women while they work, and interpret every company-related social event as an opportunity to date (or hit on) women in the office. I saw one woman pressured into dancing with a male colleague in front of other male employees. "

Ummm if you keep on reading on, she is also describing someone feeling her out, also refusing to stop forcing touching despite being told to stop and keeping the relationship strictly professional.

None of that is ok, and should be dealt with.

That said she comes across idealistic and bit naive, HR is not to protect the (R)esources its there to protect the company's interest. Green initiatives and carbon neutral initiatives for a business that is struggling to stay afloat even with gov subsidiaries is not going to pay any attention to carbon neutrality beyond PR stunts.

Often these people will seek problems, but then use them for their advantage when they happen. It's the same with people who seek fights, often they'll seek a fight in order to end up on top (in their heads).

Problem is, when you're seriously being mistreated and then you call wolf in the same sentence when there are no wolves, you definitely deserve further analysis.

This girl has some problems. The person who grabbed her butt have problems too. But of all the text she managed to write here, it is nearly entirely her problem.

Sounds like sexual immaturity on the part of the male employees. It’s weird that people look for romantic partners at work. But then again, if you work for spaceX, you probably don’t have many opportunities to look for a woman outside of work because of the demanding hours.

Grabbing someone's butt is looking for romantic partner?

Some people lack the emotional maturity and respect for other human beings.

Is it really that weird?

I know a number of couples that got together through work

When you spend so much time at work it's no surprise that interactions that could lead to relationships happen at those hours.

Of course I'm not advocating for sexual harassment in any way. I think that the immaturity usually happens as the inability to accept a negative answer and back off

It sounds like you and parent are talking about two different things. I read they're saying it's weird to look for sexual hookups at work, not that it's weird to find an actual life partner through work.

They said romantic partners, which could be both.

Isn't the first one usually the precursor to the second?

I mean I might be totally wrong and the US is much more puritan than I think it to be, but here in Europe, people usually first start doing the fun things and then later figure out if their character and life situation is compatible for a long-term relationship.

True, that's very typical in the USA! Still, I think it can make things pretty complicated with work colleagues, with people you have to see all the time and can't easily cut off without having to actually leave your job. As for me, I don't experience sexual attraction before an emotional bond, which is atypical. With that, take my perspective with a grain of salt

> Is it really that weird?

Let's be decisive about this. Yes, it is weird, and not just weird, also unethical, even if your job takes all your time, leaving no time for social life, and you're really really lonely, or you really really like someone, it is still weird. It is saying, "I work here, so I am entitled to engage in activity for which I was not hired, has nothing whatsoever to do with the work yet I will be paid while I do it because I do it on company time, as well as, at the very least distracting, if not disturbing, harassing, and threatening coworkers."

That said, it is also a really bad idea if you care about the job, but I expect anyone who engages in that activity could not care less about the job. There is an idiom that applies here, "don't shit where you eat."

it's not weird at all for feelings of attraction between people who see each other every day to form, and for one or both of them to pursue a romantic relationship as a result. this happened many many times in both of our lineages such that we were born and exist today, because humans are social creatures and at some point we evolved beyond just raping each other to procreate.

now obviously, offices aren't purely social spaces, you are there to get work done. but what kind of office do you work at where nobody interacts in any way that isn't 100% related to accomplishing work tasks? what makes seeking out a romantic partner at work "weird" compared to seeking out a friendship? (assuming rejection, etc. is handled gracefully—obviously, there's always risk in asking someone out.)

(disclaimer: met my wife-to-be at work. (disclaimer: said work was at Walmart, between programming jobs.))

Congratulations, honestly, and there's nothing wrong with working at WalMart, so the context is unnecessary. But here's the thing: you both violated your employment contract with WalMart, which I doubt explicitly forbids it, but it is exceedingly unlikely your job was ever intended to include romance, to literally pay you to meet and romance your future wife, or vice versa. That's why it is clearly unethical, and obviously many have succumbed to this moral hazard and unsurprisingly incorrectly believe it is appropriate behavior. What you do when you're not working is your business. What you do while working for your employer is their business. Either you made your romance WalMart's business, or you have deceived and stolen wages from WalMart.

I think one of Kant's categorical imperatives may make this clearer: "act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”

Imagine you have 100 employees working for you and your business is competitive. How many coupled romances initiated among them while at work would you tolerate on your dime? If your answer is not "50," then we have a problem, whether it is psychological egoism, narcissism, or just run-of-the-mill hypocrisy. And if your answer is "50," it is likely your business won't be able to compete for tolerating your employees screwing around at work, because you're just paying them not to work. I doubt that could be profitable.

thank you, but this worldview has little connection to reality. people date at work all the time. people date at work at Walmart all the time. if you want to date someone and either of you is in a position of power over the other, they move one of you to a different department. at another Walmart I worked at years ago, a CSM (cashier manager basically) wanted to date the general manager, so she had to quit, because there was no way to make that work while remaining ethical.

where does this idea you have that when you clock in for the day, you somehow shed your humanity and become a personality-less labor-husk, for the duration of the day, until clock-out time, come from? I have made tons of friends at work, both from doing work with them and shooting the shit in-between. this is how my wife-to-be and I met, by doing work together, chatting all the while, and realizing we shared a lot of values and that we should probably be dating. I have never been in a work environment where something like this was explicitly nor implicitly forbidden, because that would be an insane job for crazy people. your perspective is entirely foreign to me, and, judging by my above post's score, many other people as well.

People steal all the time. People murder, happens every single day. By your judgement, theft and murder is ok, because it happens all the time. This analogy neatly destroys your argument, because it doesn't matter how many people do something, the popularity of an activity does not determine if it is "ok."

And refraining from romantic pursuit while working does not remotely remove one's humanity. It is simply maturity that permits restraint. In fact, humanity requires empathy. Try to empathize with someone who is trying to work. Let's say you're trying to work, and someone you must work closely with is making advances towards you and you're not interested. Does that make work a lot easier? Imagine the same situation, but your advances are not wanted... still have to work with them, but now it is going to be far less comfortable.

If you can't see how insane it would be if everyone behaved this way, I just don't know how to persuade you that it is wrong. Because if it is wrong for everyone to behave this way, it is wrong for a single individual to behave this way.

this is the most amusing trolling I've seen in a long time. I appreciate it.

Ah, the rare and elusive straw man encapsulated ad hominem, the shameless final and ineffective defense of egoists, narcissists and misogynists everywhere, because everyone knows feigning being amused while falsely characterizing sound argument is an effective tactic, which it is if your goal is to fail to persuade by employing fallacy while simultaneously revealing deep anxiety. How's that for a troll? You're welcome.

It's definitely not weird. It's quite common and normal.

It takes some social awareness to know when it's appropriate and when it isn't. A lot of people lack that level of social awareness and for them the best plan is to avoid such situations.

But it's still common, and it's still not weird.

No, it absolutely is weird, but also unethical. Sure, people do it, but it is still weird and unethical, and I don't care how socially aware you believe you are or how comfortable you are doing it. Also, common? Sure, but not in the sense you mean. You mean it is prevalent. Of course I have not worked everywhere, but I disagree. I'd say it is less than a tenth of a percent of individuals like yourself that would engage in romance while working. Such a small percentage doesn't make it prevalent, instead that makes it an exception.

I suppose if your office romance doesn't work out, you're perfectly comfortable with that outcome and move on to other coworkers like the office is your personal brunch buffet. You can meet people pretty much anywhere, but the one place that it is tasteless to romantically socialize is the place you are being paid to work. You see, normal mentally healthy people don't need to find romance at work, though they're socially aware enough to do so, they simply don't need to because they probably don't have such minuscule prospects. Mentally healthy individuals will not, by and large, need to take advantage of having such a captive audience as a colleague or coworker or staff that is stuck at work, working. What is far more prevalent, thank goodness, is that most don't treat their boss's office like a singles bar. In all honesty, your post is the creepiest thing I've read all week. What if what you interpret as social awareness is instead a deficit of self-awareness or oblivion? Because if you behave this way, you are completely unaware of or simply do not care how others feel. It's probably the former, which you probably hide with the latter. You don't know, so you you'll tend to say you don't care.

Other behavior that is not OK? Even when you're not working, it's really not ok to try to romance someone who is working. People do it, but it sucks. Even a little harmless flirting with a cashier you think is cute is less than ideal behavior. I refer again to the captive audience part. Try romancing someone who can get away from you, if they wish, without jeopardizing their job.

Like at a bar. Can you find romance in a bar or singles mixer instead? Because I guarantee you any innocent bystanders to your romantic prowess would prefer it occured anywhere but where they work. But you would know that if you're socially aware.

Man, you need to realize this is your own personal view. Most people doesn't find it weird or unethical. And what makes you think that only "mentally healthy individuals" share this world view with you? Your harsh answers make it sound like you are the one with emotional issues.

Yes, in my own personal view, inappropriate behavior, i.e. any behavior that is not covered by an employment contract, while on the clock is unethical. I don't take issue with your choice to engage in unethical behavior, so long as it doesn't affect me or victimizes anyone. Even if you're not victimizing coworkers, which is unclear, you're still victimizing your employer.

Since you raise the subject, getting paid for it is one of the best things about taking a shit at work.

"Boss makes a dollar I make a dime. That's why I poop on company time!" -- Eugene Debs

Please don't do this here.

Let's be decisive about this. Yes, it is weird, and not just weird, also unethical, even if your job takes all your time, leaving no time for taking a shit, and you really really need to go badly, or you really really have a stomachache, it is still weird. It is saying, "I work here, so I am entitled to engage in activity for which I was not hired, has nothing whatsoever to do with the work yet I will be paid while I do it because I do it on company time, as well as, at the very least distracting, if not disturbing, harassing, and threatening coworkers with the smell and noises."

I can be equally decisive in saying it is absolutely not weird. Until very recently it was pretty much one of the most normal things in the world. Various other commenters have posted sources that the workplace is (and has been for a long time) one of the most common places for couples to meet. Humans are social creatures, we always have and likely always will socialize at work, even if it's not in our job description.

Let's say everyone in the world thinks it's ok to steal. Let's say stealing became so prevalent, it was normal and common. Would this make stealing ethical?

Weird is a poor descriptor. In the case of entitlement to take time on your employer's clock to engage in activity for which you were not hired to perform is simply and unabashedly unethical. It is stealing, no matter how many do it, it is still stealing.

But there is another angle that also makes it unethical, and that is that your romantic focus at work is necessarily a captive of their workplace. It would be different under different circumstances, such as meeting someone at a social gathering and turning on the charm for romantic interest, because they're not going to lose their job nor create a toxic work environment should they rebuff your advances. When you target a romantic interest in the workplace, you are taking advantage of the others' inability to choose not to be romanced.

Is it imperative to you that you be permitted indulge your entitlement to behave this way at work? Can't you do it instead somewhere, anywhere else?

It's the exact opposite of weird. Tons of people still end up in relationships with people they initially hit it off with at work, despite a well-publicized increase in risk and efforts at shifting norms so we think it's "weird".

It may be a lot of things—including ill-advised—but it's not weird.

Why is looking for a romantic partner where you do most of your socializing weird?

my rationale is the odds of a relationship not working out are substantially higher than it will. Also, there is a relatively low chance I will still want to see my ex after a breakup. So I try my hardest not to see my coworkers as romantic options. It’s not easy, but I feel like it helps keep things professional in the workplace.

Because some people can't fathom being paid to do a thing they like, hence "work" is a thing one has to do to enable the things they like to do. This is very sad, but not because these people, but because people have to do things they don't like at all, just to exist.

Then, there is this arbitrary line in the sand between work and things like volunteering.

I have a well paying job as a swe for a company. I also volunteer for my sailing clubs for various things. I get paid in both cases. For my swe job via moneis and other perks. For my sailing clubs by providing some services today, so someone else can go sailing and they'll do the same next week. Still work, different pay.

While I'd personally feel uneasy asking out a co-worker and never have, I don't think it's weird as long as there's no power/authority dynamic (even than I don't think it's an absolute per se), it even used to be a dominant location where couples met [0]. Still ranks relatively high, above elementary and secondary school. It's a more delicate situation as you shouldn't be really flirting with coworkers or disrespectful of boundaries, but asking one with whom there's a good relationship and possibly mutual attraction isn't really weird.

FWIW, I'm not commenting on this article where there's no respect for boundaries and dismissive HR, but the blanket statement.

0: https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_et_al_Disinterm...

Yeah, I'd never date at work, but it really is a problem that nearly 100% of the typical American's time is now spent in environments where sexual advances are inappropriate. The beneficiary of this situation is Tinder et al, but what they have created is a wasteland.

sexual advances have always been inappropriate at work.

Inappropriate yes, but the big difference is they are no longer tolerated. In the old days the worst a guy might expect is getting slapped on the face or maybe an aside from the boss telling them to knock it off. These days you get fired and blacklisted. The stakes are much higher.

This seems like a positive to me?

I didn't mean to come across like this is a bad thing. I was just pointing out that the world has changed and not everybody has realized it yet.

I would agree with that if we could change one phrase in the parent post: If instead of saying "It" (with "sexual advances" being the antecedent), the post had said "sexual harassment", I'd have been on board.

This sounds like nitpicking but it isn't. People use "advances" and "harassment" as synonyms. They should not be.

What about school?

I'm not just talking about disrespect. Disrespect is bad in almost almost all contexts.

Because, I have to be clear: Asking someone on a date is a sexual advance.

Nobody is getting fired for asking someone if they want to go out for drinks after work. The people who got fired are the ones who couldn't take "no" for an answer and got weird/creepy about it.

I think Andrew Cuomo would disagree. Granted, he's a political target.

Cuomo's alleged behavior goes well beyond asking an employee out for drinks.

Last I heard, people were going after him for sending jocular texts about "mingle mamas" going to Las Vegas, and asking a staffer if she'd ever consider a relationship with an older man. He wasn't exactly Comrade Beria.

If you stand by the door asking every woman who walks by if they'd like to go out with you (no, I'm not making this up. It actually happened in college), I'd say that's a bad idea and not going to end well.

If you see someone who's attractive and you managed to strike up a few conversations with them and it seems that they like you, then I'd say that asking them out is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

On the contrary, it is a pretty effective tactic that ends well for many people.

The variation I am more familiar with is going around a party and telling people strangers you have a condom that is going to expire and you don't want to waste it. I know a few people who have gotten laid this way.

Not all environments are safe spaces where sexual advances are inappropriate, nor should they be. People should however be polite and take no for an answer.

It's not something I'd do, but I admit that it's a more amusing approach and I could see it being effective.

Charitably, their point is that we all work too much.

That's a big part of it. And that the sphere of "professionalism" has expanded too far outside of work, even when you're not actually working.

Isn't "at work" the #1 top place where couples meet in real life?

(Used to be for the 1970s generation, now it's "through friends" and then "at work")

https://www.bustle.com/p/the-most-popular-ways-people-are-me...

I think the empirical change you find there is a direct consequence of what I'm talking about.

Sure. That doesn't change the surrounding factors that make this situation more likely.

Sexual advances should be inappropriate in most places? I think at least half of the population (and hopefully most of the remainder) would disagree that proscribing sexual advances from shared places without an expectation of such has a _negative_ effect?

Your sentence has a lot of negatives so I'm not sure what you're exactly trying to say but I don't think there are that many people that are happy with the state of dating and coupling right now, except perhaps very attractive heterosexual men.

Yeah that wasn’t very clear. I was trying to say that I think most women probably don’t share GPs view.

Most women don’t have an enjoyable experience of being approached because too many of the men approaching them do not meet their attractiveness bar. You’ll find that many women who say “don’t hit on women at the gym” won’t mind at all if George Clooney does it.

Not sure what you're trying to imply with this comment. Outside of the workplace, I don't think anyone considers it inappropriate to get chatting with someone (read: NOT a coworker, especially not one you have power over) and later ask them out on a date. This happens probably millions of times in various settings every single night.

Ok. Say it's a Python conference and you've never met them before.

That seems a lot like a work event, where people are there in a professional capacity.

That's the convention now. But before that battle got fought, you might have thought it was a hobby. Like the local under-35s $LIGHT_RECREATIONAL_SPORT meetup, which people treat as a recurring singles event.

> It’s weird that people look for romantic partners at work.

My sister met both her current and former partner at work. It's more common than it might seem.

From build reliability engineer and mission integration engineer to... program manager?

The best program managers I've worked with have been the ones with highly technical backgrounds.

>> From build reliability engineer and mission integration engineer to... program manager?

Looks like:

2017 intern at SpaceX

2019 full time at SpaceX

2021 PM at Apple

Yeah it seems rather quick. OTOH if SpaceX works people as hard as some claim, she might have the equivalent of 5-10 years at some companies ;-)

Buddy of mine went from EE Major, test engineer, to PM

...

The number of harassment at any company should be 0. You may not have meant it this way, but your comment makes it sound as if the goal should be to keep harassment down to some average number.

And crimes rates should be 0. We should also have infinite food and drink. People shouldn't get ill. Etc. Etc. Most people would rather deal with reality then criticize from an impossible dream world standard.

Yes, it must be 0, but people are people. You get 10 000 employees, probably some 7-8 000 of them are men, so the remaining 2 000 women will receive a lot of crap. Proportionally more than if the split was 50/50, so SpaceX needs to adjust for that.

Same is true in areas dominated by women, if you are the only guy in a group of female nurses you will almost certainly receive the most physically draining work the whole time for the same pay. You will also hear a lot of sexist jokes about men, and quite likely receive potentially unwanted sexual attention.

Zero-tolerance policies are their own form of hell.

Issues should be reasonably and earnestly managed. At some point, noise, misinterpretations, and false reports will emerge and form a floor.

One strives toward but does not insist upon ideals.

What stops the victims from secretly recording such incidents? Modern mic recorders are microscopic.

It’s illegal in some places.

Specifically, it's illegal in Florida, where the offenses allegedly occurred. Florida is what's called a "two-party consent" state, meaning that it's illegal to record any non-public conversation (phone call, in-person, Zoom, etc.) without explicit consent from all parties involved. Other states allow single-party consent in some or all circumstances.

Also California is two-party.

Why on earth does it matter? That recording can be used in many ways, anonymously or not, in a court or in an informal investigation. You don't even have to use it, and if you don't use it, it simply doesn't exist.

Or as grounds for terminating your employment. Or as evidence in a criminal trial against you. Or in a civil lawsuit against you. Or to discredit you for breaking the law. The only beneficial way it could be used is in the court of public opinion.

All of that may happen if you're careless. And, BTW, you're already being recorded all the time or occasionally by security cameras, your phone and various hardware.

> Why on earth does it matter? That recording can be used in many ways, anonymously or not, in a court or in an informal investigation. You don't even have to use it, and if you don't use it, it simply doesn't exist.

That's not my understanding. Courts don't allow hearsay or evidence without someone certifying for its accuracy, and for good reason. Think of deepfakes for a recent example of why, although this rule far far predates them. And in this specific case where many of us live, California Penal Code 630 says: [1]

> (d) Except as proof in an action or prosecution for violation of this section, evidence obtained as a result of eavesdropping upon or recording a confidential communication in violation of this section is not admissible in any judicial, administrative, legislative, or other proceeding.

So basically if you obtain a recording of someone doing something illegal without getting that person's consent, the recording can be used against you but explicitly can't be used against them.

I view this as an unjust law that protects the powerful at the expense of the powerless. I have a friend whose manager basically said "you should change careers because you're a girl". She might have been able to do something about it if not for this law...

[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....

How do you know when one of your coworkers is about to grab your chest? Would they just have to have the mic running every moment they're at work?

I'm not presenting this as a realistic option (most of us aren't cool enough to walk around with freedesktop computers running), but there is the excellent JACK Timemachine[1], a long long long longstanding app which is just a big green button. Hit the button & it saves the last n (ex: 5) seconds of audio to file & continues recording until you hit the button again.

This gives you the ability to keep a mic running while dumping most of the audio, & but still be able to save things that have just happened on need.

It's an app I've wanted to make use of a bunch. A lot of company's I've worked at will try to quote noteable/funny/intersting things people say, & this would be a neat version. Same sort of idea would work in other places, like a gaming guild; we have one dude build a whole web soundboard with various things people had said anyone could pull up, well over a decade ago now; making that board would have been way easier with JACK-TM. Or, like, sometimes if there's a cute quote in a show or movie I'm watching, it'd be fun to be able to easily pull the sample. Or just, if I missed what someone said, this would be a possible tool to go re-review. Or, alas, if being harassed, being able to grab that recent clip. This is some old as dirt software; always seemed interesting.

I am not a lawyer, I have no official legal advice to give. States like Florida with two-party consent laws make trying to record offenses against yourself, make recording legal & safety issues enormously complicated (See ACLU Florida's page on recording the police[2] for some specific treatment of the matter, showing it's complexity). But JACK-Timemachine feels like a sensible middle-ground. There's some buffering in ephemeral memory, but no recording, until one hits the button. That one can record after the fact, if one's suffering illegal/discriminatory/harassing treatment, feels like a necessary defense one certainly ought be allowed. Let me re-iterate that as far as I know there's no basis in law that actually makes it clear JACK-Timemachine is legal for use in two-party consent states (but it feels like it necessarily ought to be to me).

[1] http://plugin.org.uk/timemachine/

[2] https://www.aclufl.org/en/know-your-rights/right-record-poli...

I assume when this happens, that coworker isn't silent. You can strike a conversation and get him to say something on record. Edit: and if you're concerned with running the mic all the time, then yes, you can run it all the time at no cost - see what 30 bucks buys you on Amazon.

This article is blatantly following the same bland pattern. It doesn't take an ML Engineer to know why women in EU, AUS and whatever similar country have disparate pattern of complaints when it comes to this category. After all, these countries are very much similar to USA in terms of dating culture, culture of inappropriateness, legality, efficiency of law and order, etc.

I feel like giving up on US-feminism. Look at the comments of HN, reading transcripts after transcripts of women detailing their stories at the courts and on internet, courts dismissing the case with "but this is not harassment at all!" and embarrassingly saying myself the same.

And then I have to feel guilty myself for just being a male with phrases like "bro culture", "scrotes", "casual misogyny", "masculinity, ew!" and so on. There is a separate book when it comes to workplace jargon.

When I see many careers ending dead on track in my personal life, Reddit, 4chan and Quora...

Edit: proofreading

Modern feminism has been poisoned. But that doesn't mean feminism isn't still a great goal to work towards.

Sadly most people don't realise what's poison and what is not. And there's a whole lot of poison out there.

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