Ex Google engineer claims she was harassed and “Google did nothing about it”

No sensible company is going to sue an alleged victim of sexual abuse whose only complaint is that allegations were not probably dealt with. It is more a fault of Google for not resolving the issue in a way that left her not feeling like she needed to leave.

And I am sorry but if you think this will result in some "war with women" then I fear for the IT industry. Professional conduct is what should be expected. It works for every other industry.

> If your point wasn't proven (=recognized by a court), then the company can ask for damages

This is so far off the mark it's ridiculous. US defamation law is much less friendly to plaintiffs compared to most European countries, especially the UK (for example). This may surprise you, but in the US, it is not enough for the plaintiff to prove that a defamatory statement is false. You have to also prove that the defendant knew the statement to be false, or you have to prove negligence by "clear and convincing evidence". This is for private plaintiffs, the standard for "public figures" is higher.

I can recognize the attitude that "if you can't prove it in court, then shut up", but there are always going to be a few really important things that you want to say that can't be proven in court. I'm not saying this is one of those times (it really isn't) but those times exist.

And I'm not taking sides on this particular case, just to be absolutely clear.

    > too many male's careers were broken by illegitimate 
    > morale accusations,

And how many "female's [sic]" careers were derailed by sexual harassment? And which is the greater injustice?

I don't know. That SV diva Marc Andreesen does it all the time, lashing against the old establishment on Twitter right and left, apparently with no bad consequences.

Next time, get your legal advice from lawyer friends, not "feminist friends".

Then:

1. Compile evidence in your existing job.

2. Find a new job

3. File a lawsuit.

That's how we manage things in a civilized society. It's precisely why we have a court system. We want:

1. For Google to follow standards we've agreed upon as a society. There are extremists on both sides for what constitutes harassment. We don't want them duking it out with vigilante violence (whether physical, as 100 years ago, or over Twitter, today).

2. There to be due process before action is taken. It's imperfect, but it's a lot better than going vigilante. For a company like Google, if there is a pattern of sexual harassment, with over 50,000 employees, at least some of them will have an open-and-shut case.

3. In the context of something like sexual harassment, the typical damages are set at a level where only a small minority need to win lawsuits before it is financially painful.

I don't care how bad things are at Google. The way to settle this is within the legal system.

By the way, HR's job is to protect the employer from liability. Going to HR is the last thing you want to do. HR will almost never do anything to help the employee -- that's sometimes seen as tantamount to admitting guilt. Once you go to HR, their primary strategy will be whatever minimizes liability. That's often something not great for the employee. A common strategy is to set you up to fail, destroy your credibility, and work you out of the company. If a lawsuit does come up, they can play the disgruntled worker card.

The way the system is set up, suing your former employer is your civic duty, and does a few things:

1. Applies financial pressure to fix the problem.

2. Is generally confidential, protecting both your reputation and your former employers'.

3. If you have a credible claim, rewards you financially for doing your civic duty.

Until you're ready to file a law suit, you want to act professionally at work, and play the role of a good employee. There is absolutely no upside to doing anything else -- whether to your career, or to your odds of winning a law suit. Think about it. You're on a jury. Case 1: There's a clear rockstar employee, who loves the work, and leaves because of alleged harassment. Case 2: An underperforming employee gets fired after bitching out their employer. They claim harassment. How does that bias you? You're upper management. You get similar claims. How do you behave? You're a future employer, co-worker, etc.

This stuff ain't rocket science. You're not in kindergarden anymore.

Hiding and sweeping under the rug is exactly the best way to manage something like this. In any conflict negotiation, you want to minimize value destroyed. Swept under rug == no reputations are ruined == minimum value is destroyed.

The way you sweep this under the rug is roughly:

* Victims file law suits. Unfortunately, not all do (but it is their civic duty).

* A portion of the law suits have settlements. A typical one might be a few million. The settlement includes a non-disclosure.

Perpetrator is punished in proportion to the level of crime, and has reason to stop. If you get hit 10% of the time, your expected cost per harassment might be a few hundred thousand. That's expensive.

A random selection of victims get big payouts, and a random selection get nothing at all. Damages are big enough to account for this ($5 million is far more than the damage in a single case, and is set to account for the cases lost or not filed). That's not perfect, but nothing at all is still better than less than nothing (which is what happens with public shaming).

Which military are you talking about? The US military has a longstanding sexual assault problem.

It destroys the accuser -- I don't want to hire a liability. She may make a similar accusation at my company.

It destroys the accused -- again, I don't want to hire a liability. He may harass someone at my company.

Quite frankly, in a situation like this, I personally wouldn't take a risk hiring either of them. I have a lot of job candidates, and there's no reason to take a risk. Googling someone before you hire them is universal, and a news story like this basically kills careers forever.

It also hurts the employer -- I don't want to work for for a company where this stuff happens -- but much less so.

I'm 95% sure sure that "tries to talk to me" means "approaches me and tries to have a conversation", not "asks me if I have the time".

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9165486

No, it doesn't. If you had scanned the woman up and down very slowly as she walked towards you, then offered a creepy smile saying "hi" then yes I would most certainly call that threatening behavior.

No one here is claiming you can't talk to women.

Medium.com did

I hesitate to call this site journalism. Top news on their front page right now:

What to Take on Your Bikepacking Trip

Man Beaten While Boozing in Washington Square

The Bay Area Is Full of Skinny People

Unruly Patron Gets Booted From Bar, Returns and Shoots Out Window

and the equal chance (opportunity) of progression

How exactly would you achieve that balance? Rejecting good male candidates in favor or worse female ones? Creating make-believe positions for women?

If the percentage of females working in IT reflects the percentage of females with IT studies or interested in IT, I don't see a problem. Or at least I don't see a problem in the workspace. Maybe it's a problem of education, but I'm not sure even if this is the case or just a simple matter of different preferences between men and woman.

Equal chances != perfect employee ratio. You can clearly see this in other fields, as shown by @imaginenore. I'm all for equal opportunity, but imho framing the real problem as "the gender percentage" brings wrong solutions.

I sometimes think men and women need to be careful for what they wish for. Right now Programming is portrayed glamorous. People saw the Social network and said wow that's cool. They hear about how fun and stimulating it is to get the opportunity to work at Google. They hear about college dropouts making billions.

That all might be somewhat true now, but will change. I don't see unions making any headway into the industry, and when the bubble bursts--why do I have a feeling the industry will go back to people staring into monitors, complaining about pay--long hours, vitamin D deficiency, and Coding will go back to Programming?

(I hope this doesn't happen. I have met too many homeless former programmers that were hot in the 80's-90's)

You've missed the point. Women WANT to do SME. They are spending years at university, going through the lower stages of employment, making it to a certain point and then leaving the industry.

And bringing up the straw man of "feminists" hardly adds to the conversation.

Yes you do.

This point has come up on HN so many times that anyone continuing to repeat it is at best willfully ignorant, but probably deceitful.

A simple websearch [boilermaker women] shows you're wrong with plenty of sites calling for more female boilermalers.

I am not a boilermaker. I work in technology, and I can actually do things to fix this. So can you.

I agree to a point. I think the general rules of thumb would be more along the lines of, "don't flatter someone in a suggestive or inappropriate way". Some people work very hard on their appearance. I would go so far as to say it (their looks) is, to a large extent, who they are. That's not to say they are necessarily shallow people either. They find pleasure and take pride in keeping up with their looks and overall aesthetic. So if you're out and meet someone who might be a friend of a friend / co-worker, or a co-worker from another department who you may not have met before, if they look like they've gone above and beyond to look good, they more often than not will appreciate the compliments. If you don't look like you've put all that effort into your looks (which is not to say you purposefully try to look ugly) more often than not you will not receive those compliments.

After further reflection, in some sick perverted way, I can see how some people might interpret all forms of flattery / compliment as having some ulterior motive or inextricably linked to a man's desire to conquer or take advantage of females.

I just see compliments and flattery (if done right) as an attempt by one human to bring a little joy to another human's day by saying something nice to them. Why does it have to be more than that? Even if you're not family or close friends. If you're with a group of people and you think someone has gone above and beyond to put themselves together for the evening, I see no harm in that.

That's what I thought too, now I'm not so sure:

"If you are a strange man trying to talk to me on my way to or from work, when I am commuting alone, you are a harasser, pure and simple."

Your wording suggests there's a universally accepted standard of what exactly constitutes harassment. As noted in comments below, courts tend to disagree. Personally, I believe that one radfem with agenda and no real proof should not be able to ruin careers and lives by twitter.