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Comment by beenpoor | Hacker News Reader

Seriously ? All for asking her on a date ? I don't see any harassment or any kind of quid pro quo. Mistakes happen all the time.

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He wasted the time of a potential employee, and made her feel very uncomfortable with unprofessional behavior. Plus, he admitted that what he was doing was wrong - presumably against company policy, as well as in general being a shitty thing to do.

From a pure "what's good for the company" consideration alone, at the very least someone from HR needs to have another talk to him about what's acceptable or not - he could be driving away other potential employees, and setting the company up for lawsuits.

Its not a mistake, he admits in the email that what he's doing is not OK.

@pavel_lishin - You bring an important point and after thinking about it, I agree with you. For company's sake, HR should be involved to caution him.

What's wrong with what he suggested? The only active measure he proposed is telling the guy's bosses. Surely that's appropriate for a mistake. The rest is just stuff to keep in mind in the event that it turns out not to be a mistake.

I'll take the risk of being buried along with beenpoor, but I should point out that asking someone out once is not harassment. Harassment is asking them out repeatedly after being turned down (i.e. it is known to be unwelcome).

Not making any excuses for what interviewer guy did at all, that was still pretty slimy.

You can assume that potential employees will find dating questions to be unwelcome.

The behaviour is harassment even though it's a single contact because of that assumption.

s/You can/Anyone with two brain cells to rub together will naturally/

So making sexual advances in a professional setting is A-OK, as long as you only do it once per person?

Of course not. If the way you ask people out on dates involves overt sexual advances, that's definitely not an appropriate way to do it in the workplace.

It's not sexual advances.

It's not in a professional setting.

Not saying that what he did is OK (it's not) but let's keep our facts straight.

It's making an advance for the eventual goal of sex. How is that not a sexual advance? How is an email chain between interviewee and interviewer, discussing your interview results, not a professional setting?

People go to GREAT lengths for the "eventual goal of sex" all the time without it being labeled a sexual advance, including striking up what may seem like friendly conversation even though you may never have the slightest idea that their end game was actually to screw you (among many other things). Arguably the majority of anything that people do is for the eventual goal of sex.

The e-mail "later that evening" was not discussing the interview results. It was a later email, presumably on his own.

    People go to GREAT lengths for the "eventual goal of sex"

Like get married

Sexual advances? Did we all miss something?

@pyrocat - You are making assumptions here that there was any quid pro quo involved. She was already rejected for the job. And then she was asked on a date. What was unethical and unprofessional was that he did it while being in a position of an interviewer.

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