Comment by tomasien | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomasien | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad they're flatly acknowledging the wrong doing on what compromised the majority of Julie's complaint.

As to her assertions that an engineer was keeping her out of the code if she wouldn't sleep with him, I've actually lost sleep trying to figure out how you'd handle that complaint. Where would the evidence trail be? Innocent until proven guilty but also wanting not to assume a women is lying about sexually harassed, how do you balance those two things? Given what we know about sexual harassment, it's a horrible idea to operate on the assumption the accuser is lying, but when it's just word vs. word, what do you do? Presume guilt? Can those two employees co-exist? Can you fire the accused even if there's no proof (and what proof would there be? Commit logs aren't much.)

Anyone have suggestions? Ideally you want to build a culture where this just would never come up and where nobody would tolerate it, but I just don't think that's ever going to be fool proof.

Actually I think commit logs in this case are good evidence. You can't just rewrite git history without having everyone in on it. It's not foolproof (the company could have mandated that everyone drop their local versions, or the branch with the reversions could have been shared by a small number of people who were willing to conspire), but it's very strong evidence I'd say.

Conversely it would be pretty easy to say "well this is the official repo" and ensure no one asks any further questions in a flurry of feux-outrage.

I think even then, the chances are pretty high that someone will go "oops, I accidentally merged back in the old version of the repo. Sorry guys". I've tried rewriting an entire repo before (to remove huge binary files) and even with a small team, it only takes one person out of the loop to bring everything back in.

Actually, I see what you're saying. Tell the investigator some cleaned version of the repo is the official one. That is a plausible way to get around it.

I still feel like it's less likely they were willing to throw a co-founder under the bus, but would go to such great lengths to protect "some engineer".

It doesn't even really have to be malicious so much as disinterested, which is how most of these types of workplace problems fester. People don't set out to actively create a caustic environment - they just don't want to be bothered with the tricky business of preventing one.

> You can't just rewrite git history without having everyone in on it.

umm...I've got something to tell you...

Please, explain. I acknowledged the ways I could think of that a widely shared git repo could have its history modified. I admit my knowledge of gits lowest levels is a bit murky, but I'd like to hear specifics if you have them.

No, you're totally right here. I think matdes skimmed over the critical "without having everyone in on it" part of your post.

You can't handle that retrospectively. That's what you need HR policies in place for pre-emptively; so that these frustrations can be channeled into a productive resolution.

It's like an airplane crash; it virtually always involves several failures along several points and only when all failures come together do you get into an irreparable situation.

Keep in mind that the irreparable situation in this case is Julie-Ann leaving, because even with the abuse clear HR support could still have easily prevented the issue from escalating.

What would appropriate HR policies be? The following is what I thought of, and rejected (note - I'm not a lawyer, I don't know any laws about HR, and most importantly: this is all highly hypothetical, I haven't even considered starting a company yet):

(1) forbid "workplace romance" - this is very against my philosophy of encouraging personal freedom, and I don't think I would want to work for a company that had this policy. Moreover, I don't think this would solve the problem - false allegations could still be made, and true allegations could still be denied.

(2) disciplining the one who makes the inappropriate action - this too has the "he said, she said" problem as above, and furthermore the appropriateness of the action is often determined not by the subject's action itself, but how the object perceives it.

The best policy that I can think of is: all employees are expected to act professionally in the workplace, and to not be affected by their emotions (if they can't manage that, they should take a day off). Workplace romances are discouraged, because they may result in hard feelings between employees, but if you think being with the person is worth risking your job, go for it. In case two people have a conflict unrelated to their work, they should handle it as adults. If they expect action from the employer, they should present concrete evidence (emails, code commits, phone call logs, voice recording of the conflict, ...).

I realise that this sounds a bit harsh and insensitive, but that's what would work for someone like me - in the rare instances where I disliked my coworkers, I put my feelings aside and consciously decided to give them "another chance" by recognising all the great work they do. What are your thoughts, and what kind of policy would you suggest/instantiate?

Well; there are tons of HR books with general advice and probably dozens about what you're discussing here.

The general consensus is that there is no right approach [1] but that there are a lot of best practices and no-brainers and that it seemed that very few of them were in place here.

As for my advice; there was just no escalation strategy at all here. HR is just like anything else with costs increasing exponentially the longer something goes undetected. That's why good HR isn't even so much about policy (although setting rules, no matter what they are, does help a lot,) but more about setting up structures so that you can resolve conflicts at an earlier stage.

[1] You can even see it in their statements where the first was the 'minimize legal risk' school of thought whereas the second was 'maximize empathy' kind of thinking.

I can't imagine that forbidding workplace romance outright is the answer since we spend most of our adult lives working and is one of the places we are likely to form a long lasting romantic relationship. Think about all the people you know in your life in a happy relationship. My experience has been that a non-trivial percent of those relationships involve people who met through work.

I'm curious if something like tinder could be used to solve the question of how workplace romances could begin without exposing the company to issues.

Basically, a tinder like system would allow employees to opt in or out of the possibility of workplace romance. Someone that isn't interested in any unwanted advances at work would swipe no to everyone and therefore any advance would be an unwanted advance. On the other hand, swiping yes to someone is acknowledgement that you are open to a workplace romance and that you acknowledge the risks of making an advance and you have clear responsibilities on how to handle it like an adult and in a way that absolves the company of responsibility.

Furthermore, if this system were managed by the company, they would have records of opting in from both parties. Any advances outside those recorded by the system, would clearly indicate who is to blame.

There may be some unintended consequences here, but this seems at least to be a better system than the status quo.

Maybe Tinder can try to pivot into a tool for human resources departments?

This is interesting because it helps address the problem of how do you know an advance is unwelcome without doing something that could be considered an advance. It avoids the awkwardness of having to ask that question "are you open to advances?" before actually making an advance. However, relationships are formed over time, and romantic and sexual relationships are often serendipitous. It's up to each party to communicate effectively and unambiguously if misunderstandings are to be avoided. Using this kind of app/service/record-keeping sounds just as interesting/desirable/sexy as having to ask that question point blank (that is not at all). Is there really much difference between "Would you like to go out with me?" and "Can I ask you to go out with me?"

> Any advances outside those recorded by the system, would clearly indicate who is to blame

But the question remains, who is to blame? In my opinion, mature adults should be able to calmly handle both rejection and an unwelcome advance. In my opinion, it's the person who's handling it worse at the workplace (being annoying, obnoxious, ...) and whose work is more affected who is to blame, at least from the perspective of the employer.

Anyhow, I don't think this would work - Tinder works on the premise that you're swiping strangers left and right, so you're not that affected by rejection... If you swipe yes someone you know, and you don't get a match, you know you've been swiped no, so the rejection must still be handled maturely...

Interesting idea, but who would manage it? Seems very CYA / legalistic, such that only huge, bureaucratic companies would be "uncool" enough to have such a system.

What you're essentially proposing is, "All employees have to declare whether or not they are sexually available to every other employee."

It's demeaning, unprofessional, and a legal nightmare that this would be part of the terms of employment!

It also gets consent totally wrong. The onus shouldn't be on employees to explicitly swipe, "No: I do not want to be subjected to sexual and romantic advances at work." That has to be the default.

Plus, are managers involved? If your boss swipes "yes" and you swipe "no", how are you to know that won't bias their evaluation and treatment of you?

And when someone swipes "yes", what are they swiping "yes" to? Being flirted with? Being asked out on a date? Being propositioned for sex? Are you proposing that "Hey, she swiped yes" stands up as a refutation of any sexual harassment claims?

Etc. etc.

Think it through, man -- this would astronomically increase workplace drama and legal woes, not reduce them.

Look, I was just proposing a thought experiment to foster the beginning of a discussion. The raw idea I proposed was just that, raw, with the goal that others may see the merit in it and explore where a derivative solution may better maximize overall benefits for society.

It's hard for Americans to consider the merits of workplace romance because it's been hammered into them for 20-30 years now that it's always wrong all the time. Having worked professionally on 3 continents, the American approach would be picked apart by many foreigners as easily as you picked apart my proposal.

Truth be told, in the US we're at a local maxima once you consider that alternative solutions may do a better job of increasing lifetime happiness (i.e. there is a non-trivial chance that your ideal partner(s) is/are someone you work with). It's hard to recognize the situation here as a local maxima if you've never had the opportunity to work in a culture where you could date people with whom you work.

And how, exactly, do you conclude that I'm American? Or that I've not worked professionally on three continents?

Cool assumptions, bro.

And why propose a thought experiment if you're just going to dismiss criticism as a reflection of the critic's nationality, instead of evaluating them on their own merits?

You didn't address a single counterpoint I made; it sounds like you're not interested in a "thought experiment" so much as proposing your idea and then not hearing any criticism.

Lacking evidence, you ignore all the allegations and do the same thing you always do when you have two employees who can't work together: see if they can be assigned to different projects, and if not, decide which one of them you want to keep based on their value to the company.

Wouldn't the evidence be in the commit logs? It's customary in most places to explain what you changed and maybe why, it's not unusual to have a reference to a bug or story or case or something, likewise there is usually a product owner who knows about it.

Even if it's just pure cowboy style with a "fixed some stuff" like comment, the context of the change can be looked at. Honestly, this claim seemed like the most tangible one made. I'd say 1 of two things should happen regarding it, either someone else needs to get their walking papers or a pretty substantial apology is owed.

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