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Comment by 0xcafefood | Hacker News Reader

Had a manager at one job tell me explicitly that they gave an interview to a candidate but knew it wouldn't move forward to a hire since they wanted to hire a woman. I felt gross hearing and knowing that but it was said and not written so there was nothing I could do about it. And I probably would've gotten fired for raising an issue even if I did have that in writing.

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By you sharing you have added some good to a bad situation.

Question for this sort of situation: could you send an email to "confirm the case" to your boss and your boss'boss for this? They would need to respond and get this in writing. At that point, if they fire you they will have a big problem, if they don't hire the person, they will still have a big problem.

I understand that it creates a whole set of bad situations, so just asking what's the theoretical appropriate way to handle this

No. Don't do this unless you have a backup job, or can survive fine for a while on unemployment. If you do want to report the behavior, report the pertinent details to the EEOC (or whatever is equivalent for your country).

Wouldn't the company be in big trouble if they fired you after that email?

They could just not respond at all to the email. They could say the person receiving it didn't understand what the email was asking so deleted it. They could say that the managers never made any such statements and thought the employee (who they would also say had other performance or HR issues) was trying to entrap them, and that they fired the employee for the alleged entrapment.

Document and report. Don't try to catch someone unless you're advised to do so by a lawyer or law enforcement or the like.

Oh sure, I implied to sue only if a response was received

Why go through all the trouble when they could just make you quit?

Perhaps you could build a case for constructive dismissal if you document everything including the sexism email

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