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>For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're devel

>For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're developing for ourselves.

empressplay 11y ago
Generally when there's a termination it's because there's a pattern, not a one-off thing. Edit: People who get fired want to believe that they did one "stupid" thing and it was "unfair" they were fired. Hiring a new person and training them up isn't exactly cheap, easy or straightforward. I realise there are exceptions but logic would tend to suggest that in most cases businesses don't fire people for one-off mistakes.
- afandian 11y ago
  Going by the way the rules were applied in the (somewhat mysterious original post) there's no reason to believe the rules are applied in this way.
  - empressplay 11y ago
    The perspective of the post is from the person who was let go though. And I don't think that from their perspective they're lying or obfuscating, but perspective is a curious thing: it's different from person to person, and by necessity it favours the person who has it.
  - ebola1717 11y ago
    Firing employees for minor things is bad for morale & causes high turnover. Especially in software, a company wouldn't want to fire engineers arbitrarily, since it's hard to train new ones & transfer an engineer's knowledge of the codebase. That makes me really doubt his claim that this was "like jaywalking."
    - empressplay 11y ago
      Especially if they're shown the door immediately and thus aren't available to train up their replacement. You lose domain knowledge and have to rely on a co-worker or manager to train up a new employee which isn't ideal.
- metaphorm 11y ago
  did you read the linked Quora post? it pretty explicitly details that Facebook has a whole list of zero-tolerance "violations" that they will fire you for doing even once, without warning.
  - empressplay 11y ago
    Legally they need to be "zero-tolerance" policies in order to restrict people's ability to contest firings. But in practice it's expensive to hire people, so while zero-tolerance policies are used to terminate people, it's typically not their first offence (unless another employee has an actionable case related to the employee's behaviour.)
    - SeanDav 11y ago
      In the Quora article, there is a reply by an existing Facebook senior manager, who confirms the zero tolerance policy, even stating that people get fired at Facebook for accidentally breaking a policy they were either not aware of, or had forgotten about. Facebook really do apply the policy that ignorance of the law (rules) is not an excuse.
  - ceejayoz 11y ago
    It claims Facebook has a bunch of zero-tolerance violations, but in the same sentence it states that commenting on clothes might be reported (which is very different from a zero-tolerance policy, and quite possibly intended to indicate that "loving the slutty tank top" still counts as sexual harassment even if it doesn't involve touching). Meanwhile, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11224057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11224057 claims they have only one zero-tolerance policy, accessing user data. It seems at least as credible as an anonymous Quora post.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    I suggest understanding Geller Mann amnesia effect. It's very true of Internet comments, especially about tech companies. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” ― Michael Crichton
- forgottenpass 11y ago
  Generally when there's a termination it's because there's a pattern, not a one-off thing. Every system will contain components that can be reductivly described to sound on-the-face silly (like complimenting someone's clothing getting reported as harassment). The soundness of such a system relies on how closely tied the correction for that silliness is the expression of the silliness. For example, there was a post on reddit recently about a proposed anti-bestiality law that would outlaw animal husbandry. Of course the easy hand-wave acceptance of this is that cops and prosecutors would exercise their discretion in such a way that this wouldn't be a problem for farmers. But that's still a broken system. And should be mitigated if not fixed as closely to the source of the problem as possible. It's hard to see how the animial husbandry example could backfire, but imagine it's the CFAA which is more murky and politically charged. Or there were a zero-tolerance policy in place. Additionally, having clothing compliments in the class of things reported raises suspicion on an otherwise innocuous action. Basically EVERYTHING that happens at an office can be done in a way to harass someone, but treating one subset with more scrutiny like this raises the baseline apprehension around that activity.
geofft 11y ago
That seems like a deep (but possibly unintentional) misunderstanding. There are, of course, situations where you find someone who doesn't work with you nor are you friends with, and repeatedly tell them that you like their clothes, and they clearly aren't taking it as a compliment, and you persist, and that is unequivocally harassment. Technically, that consists of "telling a coworker that you like their clothes", but that's not what makes it harassment. Of course, someone who didn't have a solid grasp of what harassment is (or worse, wanted to convince themselves that their harassment didn't count) would portray it that way. Consider the following paragraph: "Facebook has 0 tolerance policy on many fronts. For instance, on security: using an account you're not authorized to use can be reported as a security incident, said the training video. And so, a lot of security auditing which, paradoxically, is strongly encouraged among employees, is a terminable offense."
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >someone who didn't have a solid grasp of what harassment is (or worse, wanted to convince themselves that their harassment didn't count) would portray it that way. And sometimes attention-seekers will convince themselves that something they hear, even if it isn't directed at or to them, is harassment, and try to use it to harm other people. Like the Adria Richards thing. No worries though. Eventually these types will find themselves working solely with each other, in some sort of bureaucratic-HR-dystopia, which requires explicit permission before anyone can speak to anyone else.
  - geofft 11y ago
    Have you talked to anyone of "those types" about their workplace? I can assure you that working in such an environment is not a dystopia, although it only works by making sure that people who do think it's a dystopia are kept far away (they're a bad culture fit).
SeanDav 11y ago
I used to work at a multi-national bank, with very strict rules on sexual harassment. It was widely understood that a male should never be alone with a female with no potential witnesses around. This included getting into a lift (elevator) with a single female occupant. I doubt this was official policy but was one of those unwritten rules. Interesting link: https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/27043/why-some-male-members-congress-wont-be-alone-with-female-staffers https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/27043/why-some-male-member...
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Yeah, it really sucks that so many of their male colleagues sexually harasssed people so many times in the past (and continue to do so today) that it's an entirely believable accusation. Nice work Bankers and Congressmen.
CocaKoala 11y ago
I agree; it's absolutely a shame that people need to be explicitly told that harassment can take the form of compliments, and that saying something nice about somebody does not give you a free pass about the content of your statement. I'm not sure this is something we're developing, though; I'm pretty sure society has been this way for a while. If anything, it's good that it's being explicitly spelled out, because hopefully that means the improper behaviours will start to extinguish.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >saying something nice about somebody does not give you a free pass about the content of your statement. And sometimes people really do think you're wearing a nice shirt and want to tell you that.
  - CocaKoala 11y ago
    I didn't see your response for a long time. "That's a nice shirt, I really like it!" vs. "Hey, that shirt looks good on you now, but I bet it would better on the floor of my bedroom!" are two ways to say that you like somebody's shirt. One is a workplace appropriate compliment, one is obviously not. A policy like "even complimenting your coworker's clothes can be reported as harassment" isn't some trap designed to catch you and punish you for the act of being friendly. It's a policy that's designed to defang institutionalized harassment that persists under the guise of being friendly; by couching sexual come-ons or derogatory remarks ("I always like the shirts you wear, they're by far the best part of having you work here" is a compliment for the shirt, and an insult to the person wearing it) in the form of a back-handed compliment, disgusting people can then claim that they're being punished when all they wanted to do is be nice. If you still don't understand my point, please let me know and I'll try to explain it further (:
pkaye 11y ago
Zero tolerance policies come into place when the fault for one person's action is placed on another entity. You see the same thing with the education system in the US. Something is done to one kid by another kid at school and the school district is sued. So the school district implement draconian policies to mitigate the risks. Same thing happened to places of employment.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
It's the one we deserve.
GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
There's a huge difference between 'I like your clothes' when it means "that's a good look for you" and 'I like your clothes' when it means "they'd look better on the floor next to my bed" and 'I like your clothes' when it means "I realize that you have asked me many times to stop this unwanted attention, but I also realize that you don't really mean it and don't you realize that I am really a Nice Guy".
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  And apparently you can be fired for any of the three.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    I find that difficult to believe.

>For instance, on harassment: telling a coworker of either gender that you like their clothes can be reported as harassment What a terrible society we're developing for ourselves.

empressplay 11y ago

Generally when there's a termination it's because there's a pattern, not a one-off thing. Edit: People who get fired want to believe that they did one "stupid" thing and it was "unfair" they were fired. Hiring a new person and training them up isn't exactly cheap, easy or straightforward. I realise there are exceptions but logic would tend to suggest that in most cases businesses don't fire people for one-off mistakes.

afandian 11y ago
Going by the way the rules were applied in the (somewhat mysterious original post) there's no reason to believe the rules are applied in this way.
- empressplay 11y ago
  The perspective of the post is from the person who was let go though. And I don't think that from their perspective they're lying or obfuscating, but perspective is a curious thing: it's different from person to person, and by necessity it favours the person who has it.
- ebola1717 11y ago
  Firing employees for minor things is bad for morale & causes high turnover. Especially in software, a company wouldn't want to fire engineers arbitrarily, since it's hard to train new ones & transfer an engineer's knowledge of the codebase. That makes me really doubt his claim that this was "like jaywalking."
  - empressplay 11y ago
    Especially if they're shown the door immediately and thus aren't available to train up their replacement. You lose domain knowledge and have to rely on a co-worker or manager to train up a new employee which isn't ideal.
metaphorm 11y ago
did you read the linked Quora post? it pretty explicitly details that Facebook has a whole list of zero-tolerance "violations" that they will fire you for doing even once, without warning.
- empressplay 11y ago
  Legally they need to be "zero-tolerance" policies in order to restrict people's ability to contest firings. But in practice it's expensive to hire people, so while zero-tolerance policies are used to terminate people, it's typically not their first offence (unless another employee has an actionable case related to the employee's behaviour.)
  - SeanDav 11y ago
    In the Quora article, there is a reply by an existing Facebook senior manager, who confirms the zero tolerance policy, even stating that people get fired at Facebook for accidentally breaking a policy they were either not aware of, or had forgotten about. Facebook really do apply the policy that ignorance of the law (rules) is not an excuse.
- ceejayoz 11y ago
  It claims Facebook has a bunch of zero-tolerance violations, but in the same sentence it states that commenting on clothes might be reported (which is very different from a zero-tolerance policy, and quite possibly intended to indicate that "loving the slutty tank top" still counts as sexual harassment even if it doesn't involve touching). Meanwhile, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11224057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11224057 claims they have only one zero-tolerance policy, accessing user data. It seems at least as credible as an anonymous Quora post.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  I suggest understanding Geller Mann amnesia effect. It's very true of Internet comments, especially about tech companies. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” ― Michael Crichton
forgottenpass 11y ago
Generally when there's a termination it's because there's a pattern, not a one-off thing. Every system will contain components that can be reductivly described to sound on-the-face silly (like complimenting someone's clothing getting reported as harassment). The soundness of such a system relies on how closely tied the correction for that silliness is the expression of the silliness. For example, there was a post on reddit recently about a proposed anti-bestiality law that would outlaw animal husbandry. Of course the easy hand-wave acceptance of this is that cops and prosecutors would exercise their discretion in such a way that this wouldn't be a problem for farmers. But that's still a broken system. And should be mitigated if not fixed as closely to the source of the problem as possible. It's hard to see how the animial husbandry example could backfire, but imagine it's the CFAA which is more murky and politically charged. Or there were a zero-tolerance policy in place. Additionally, having clothing compliments in the class of things reported raises suspicion on an otherwise innocuous action. Basically EVERYTHING that happens at an office can be done in a way to harass someone, but treating one subset with more scrutiny like this raises the baseline apprehension around that activity.

geofft 11y ago

That seems like a deep (but possibly unintentional) misunderstanding. There are, of course, situations where you find someone who doesn't work with you nor are you friends with, and repeatedly tell them that you like their clothes, and they clearly aren't taking it as a compliment, and you persist, and that is unequivocally harassment. Technically, that consists of "telling a coworker that you like their clothes", but that's not what makes it harassment. Of course, someone who didn't have a solid grasp of what harassment is (or worse, wanted to convince themselves that their harassment didn't count) would portray it that way. Consider the following paragraph: "Facebook has 0 tolerance policy on many fronts. For instance, on security: using an account you're not authorized to use can be reported as a security incident, said the training video. And so, a lot of security auditing which, paradoxically, is strongly encouraged among employees, is a terminable offense."

forgetsusername 11y ago
>someone who didn't have a solid grasp of what harassment is (or worse, wanted to convince themselves that their harassment didn't count) would portray it that way. And sometimes attention-seekers will convince themselves that something they hear, even if it isn't directed at or to them, is harassment, and try to use it to harm other people. Like the Adria Richards thing. No worries though. Eventually these types will find themselves working solely with each other, in some sort of bureaucratic-HR-dystopia, which requires explicit permission before anyone can speak to anyone else.
- geofft 11y ago
  Have you talked to anyone of "those types" about their workplace? I can assure you that working in such an environment is not a dystopia, although it only works by making sure that people who do think it's a dystopia are kept far away (they're a bad culture fit).

SeanDav 11y ago

I used to work at a multi-national bank, with very strict rules on sexual harassment. It was widely understood that a male should never be alone with a female with no potential witnesses around. This included getting into a lift (elevator) with a single female occupant. I doubt this was official policy but was one of those unwritten rules. Interesting link: https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/27043/why-some-male-members-congress-wont-be-alone-with-female-staffers https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/27043/why-some-male-member...

ZeroGravitas 11y ago
Yeah, it really sucks that so many of their male colleagues sexually harasssed people so many times in the past (and continue to do so today) that it's an entirely believable accusation. Nice work Bankers and Congressmen.

CocaKoala 11y ago

I agree; it's absolutely a shame that people need to be explicitly told that harassment can take the form of compliments, and that saying something nice about somebody does not give you a free pass about the content of your statement. I'm not sure this is something we're developing, though; I'm pretty sure society has been this way for a while. If anything, it's good that it's being explicitly spelled out, because hopefully that means the improper behaviours will start to extinguish.

forgetsusername 11y ago
>saying something nice about somebody does not give you a free pass about the content of your statement. And sometimes people really do think you're wearing a nice shirt and want to tell you that.
- CocaKoala 11y ago
  I didn't see your response for a long time. "That's a nice shirt, I really like it!" vs. "Hey, that shirt looks good on you now, but I bet it would better on the floor of my bedroom!" are two ways to say that you like somebody's shirt. One is a workplace appropriate compliment, one is obviously not. A policy like "even complimenting your coworker's clothes can be reported as harassment" isn't some trap designed to catch you and punish you for the act of being friendly. It's a policy that's designed to defang institutionalized harassment that persists under the guise of being friendly; by couching sexual come-ons or derogatory remarks ("I always like the shirts you wear, they're by far the best part of having you work here" is a compliment for the shirt, and an insult to the person wearing it) in the form of a back-handed compliment, disgusting people can then claim that they're being punished when all they wanted to do is be nice. If you still don't understand my point, please let me know and I'll try to explain it further (:

pkaye 11y ago

Zero tolerance policies come into place when the fault for one person's action is placed on another entity. You see the same thing with the education system in the US. Something is done to one kid by another kid at school and the school district is sued. So the school district implement draconian policies to mitigate the risks. Same thing happened to places of employment.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago

It's the one we deserve.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago

There's a huge difference between 'I like your clothes' when it means "that's a good look for you" and 'I like your clothes' when it means "they'd look better on the floor next to my bed" and 'I like your clothes' when it means "I realize that you have asked me many times to stop this unwanted attention, but I also realize that you don't really mean it and don't you realize that I am really a Nice Guy".

forgetsusername 11y ago
And apparently you can be fired for any of the three.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  I find that difficult to believe.