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Harassment at Apple: A personal perspective

• jaipilot747 10y ago
  Wow! To imagine that the culture at one of the best engineering teams in the world is this poisonous is shocking. I wonder if things would have played out differently if she had immediately addressed her supervisor's unnecessary defense. While this seems like the starting point for the harassment, my guess is that it was ingrained in the team all along and would have come out at one point or another. Not that that makes it any better. Truly horrible experience for anyone to go through and I hope she finds a better place to work in and can perhaps put this bitter experience to help others.
• nabaffyuc 10y ago
  This kind of stuff should serve as a warning to all tech companies: the only way you can avoid PR shitstorms is by not hiring women.
  • razakel 10y ago
    How about just not hiring assholes? If you must hire an asshole, keep them somewhere they can't do any damage to the culture.
    • PlugTunin 10y ago
      Agreed. Pity that being an asshole can't be determined through some sort of pre-employment screening process. Unfortunately, assholes are often quite adept at using their superficial charm to conceal their true identity.
    • adekok 10y ago
      It's easier than you'd think. The sad truth about assholes is everyone knows. Everyone knows who they are. Everyone knows what they're doing. Everyone knows that management is aware of the assholes, and chooses to do nothing.
  • lostboys67 10y ago
    No its have proper procedures and training for all mangers FFS its not rocket science.
  • sctb 10y ago
    We've banned this serial troll account.
• smsowmya 10y ago
  These things happen at most companies .. people get jealous and have different ways of dealing with it .. it's up to management to handle it well, but since no one talks about it, there is no management for it ..
  • qntty 10y ago
    Unfortunately it's a probably in many industries. I just read this article about the National Park Service yesterday https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/park-service-harassment/510680/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/park-ser...
  • evmar 10y ago
    Are you the author of the article? I'd like to apologize on the behalf of ... pretty much everyone, really, for all the stupid comments here that are focused on doubting your story. It sounds like an awful experience and I imagine all these people missing the point are compounding it. In my experience in the tech industry, these sorts of victim-blaming people are very vocal but also are a minority, and I am embarrassed that this comment section is full of them.
    • dang 10y ago
      There have indeed been a number of such comments, but by the time I saw the thread (I was traveling today, so missed it earlier), the community had weighed in more thoughtfully. The discussion now is genuinely not awful, and perhaps a notch better than we've seen in the past. It's a common pattern that shallow, knee-jerk reactions show up first (because some people's reflexive defenses get triggered quickly) while thoughtful, meaningful responses take longer to appear—for one thing because they simply take longer to write. This sometimes leads to a perception gap about the community. The majority of users here, probably the vast majority, are fair and considerate. But it takes a while for that to reveal itself—longer, unfortunately, than the time it takes the rapid internet readership to move on. Not sure what we can do about this.
    • smsowmya 10y ago
      thank you :-) i needed your empathy :-) my earlier attempts to respond sooner to your comment failed to get posted. :-/ i would have thought my saying that apple apologized would be enough of a reason to believe me, but i think they are just not thinking this through.
• lostboys67 10y ago
  The "No Meaningful Process" is shocking in a company of Apples size - in the UK they would get the book thrown at them at a tribunal for that. Sounds like Her boss and Hr failed I wonder if things Like brexit and Trump have made closet racists fell they can be more open
  • smsowmya 10y ago
    unfortunately yes ... and they don't think about consequences ...
  • alexmlamb2 10y ago
    "Sounds like Her boss and Hr failed I wonder if things Like brexit and Trump have made closet racists fell they can be more open" Yeah I'm sure they felled that way here.
  • dominotw 10y ago
    is there anything that not Trump's fault these days.
    • ad-hominem 10y ago
      No, Trump is literally ruining apple. He convinced steve that fruit cures cancer.
  • sctb 10y ago
    We're all trying to have as civil and substantive a discussion as we can here, and this is about as active as one can get in inviting an political flamewar. Please don't do this.
• therein 10y ago
  > But this resolution still seems incomplete. I was a productive employee at the company. While the company and its culture stood silently by, I have lost years of my life, career and happiness because of the racial and gender harassment I endured at work, it’s mishandling and the brutal aftermath. Definitely listing damages here. Likely preparing for a lawsuit with this phrasing.
  • PlugTunin 10y ago
    She's stating her opinion -- which is worth respecting -- of how the situation has impacted her life. Be careful reading into her motivation for doing so.
• error3 10y ago
  >> I also faced hostile remarks about Indian women being subservient and arranged marriages being forced on Indians for generations. Yes. But please, don't present it like the arranged marriages has stopped. It is quite often that young people in the bay area (of both genders) get destroyed, when they fall in love with an Indian women (or men), only to discover that the parents reject a marriage (to a non Indian). And arrange a marriage instead.
  • lclarkmichalek 10y ago
    What the fuck does that have to do with the article? GJ derailing
    • error3 10y ago
      She has stated that she has considered comments regarding arranged marriages as personal harassment. Well, maybe these comments were just comments on this practice, and how that particular part of Indian culture is ruining some lives around the area.
      • dang 10y ago
        That's such an extreme and off-topic stretch that we've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.
• nilved 10y ago
  Calling Apple one of the best engineering teams is little much, don't you think?
  • hrxn 10y ago
    Agree.. They got what they wished for. This is hiring for diversity in action. Apple is moving in the wrong direction, we'll see if they survive this.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • ergo14 10y ago
    It's "hacker news" ;-) It is always like this here.
  • wrboyce 10y ago
    You genuinely do not believe that Apple's engineering teams is "one of the best"? It is a pretty arbitrary measure, so where would you place them? Would they make your Top 10? Top 100?
  • gumby 10y ago
    > Calling Apple one of the best engineering teams is little much, don't you think? In a word, no. Yes they are a huge company and make a lot of boneheaded technical decisions, not all of which can be blamed on management/marketing (their web services are behind the curve, as is a lot of user-facing software). But at the same time a lot of their hardware work is amazing: their chip work, general hardware robustness, the fact that they are one of the largest phone mfrs with a unusually low hardware defect rate, and who has pulled some amazing rabbits out of hats (when the iPad was released its retail price was lower than the BOM of most alternatives). Their privacy engineering (secure enclave that protects your fingerprint data, determination to keep certain data in the terminal rather than the cloud) shows dedication and hard engineering. Though a lot of their apps are shambolic (iTunes, photos, etc) their drivers are typically quite solid and standards compliant (cough ignoring wifi, ahem), and Frankly they're willing to knife the baby (Windows suffers a lot due to their longstanding commitment to backwards compatibility). Yes, you can legitimately complain that the OSX scheduler still sucks, network stack is slow, or you can roll your eyes that their marketing pronouncements are ludicrous and their vocal fans somewhat creepy. But yes, they have one of the best engineering teams. Don't get hung up on they hype either way. It's like talking about Musk: fundamentally he's a complete bullshitter, but he did found a company that makes rockets fly into space. Apple are bullshitters, no question about it. But they also deliver.
• necessity 10y ago
  When the word "harassment" appears, there's an 80% chance it's bs. Thanks, sjws.
  • pavlov 10y ago
    When the word "SJW" appears, there's a 99.9% chance it's BS.
  • sctb 10y ago
    This account has been posting primarily uncivil or unsubstantive comments, and we ban accounts that proceed like this. Please (re-)read the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• pmlnr 10y ago
  Preamble: I'm not questioning or talking against the article at all, just making some notes. The problem seems to be real all around the world, which is yet another indicator that most societies are not ready for global market. The only thing I miss from the article: did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step. My additional notes: > Instead of helping me, HR embarked on a defensive and confrontational script. HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines. They will only look at what's best for the company and for it's business. There are no labor unions any more; those are the ones that would actually care about your wellbeing. > It is not reasonable to expect the victim to have the presence of mind to know how to tackle this problem. In certain situations it's very hard to make decisions, that is true, but this is not a seconds/minutes scenario, when you need to make immediate calls. When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone. > Until the investigation was completed, even my honesty was at stake. This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious. > harassment is one of the most brutal experiences women encounter in the workplace [...] Companies need to do far more than what they are doing right now to prevent women from eventually quitting. [...] The company needs to support and empower women to take a stand in these situations. [...] This includes considering women in these situations as people, rather than as pawns in the greater agenda of protecting the company’s legal liabilities. s/women/people Harassment get target _anyone_, it comes in all flavours. Please don't make harassment part of the gender wars. You can get harassed for having a foreign accent in the UK. ( In a country where English pronunciation differs from village to village. )
  • cdubzzz 10y ago
    > did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager? Maybe I misread something but it seems like this did not happen, yet this should always be the first step. How do you support this statement? It doesn't strike me as a given and you don't really back it up at all.
    • pmlnr 10y ago
• dep_b 10y ago
  Lots of down votes because of uncomfortable truth? I've seen this happen a few times and the only thing you need to do is honestly apply feminist values to all people without discriminating to start condemning it. It's like asking for respect for getting addicted to pills by pharmaceutical industries because that's a part of American culture. Maybe some criticism would be in place despite the "it's our culture" thing? But do not harass every Indian person you can find about it! I've had many fine coworkers from India working in the US or from India in the past and I can't imagine harassing them about this.
  • roflc0ptic 10y ago
    I would say it has downvotes because it's at best tangentially related and has some weird framing: it frames person A who gets feelings for person B as a victim when person B decides not to marry them. Arranged marriage seems pretty horrible, but in talking to an indian coworker recently, they commented that having to find your partner seemed pretty horrible to them. I really don't see any compelling parallels to pharmaceutical addiction. As someone who is neither religious nor inclined towards marriage, Baptist vs. Anabaptist seems like a more reasonable comparison.
    • chickenking 10y ago
      I think a lot of non-Indians have this impression that arranged marriage means forced marriage or child marriage. I was talking to a South Korean guy and he thought we (Indians) get married at a young age or something equally bad. When I told him how it happens in India, he remarked "thats how it happens in his country as well". Nowadays, we have matrimonial sites similar to your eHarmony. Guys/girls or their parents will create profiles and contact each other. If all their criteria match, guy will meet the girl, talk for some time and may say yes or no. Both the girl and the guy can say no. Nobody is forcing us. I know the next question will be how can you choose a life partner in 30 minutes. To me, marriage involves a lot of understanding and compromise from both the parties. I was talking to a 65+ year old American recently. He was talking about something called a "spark" when a guy/girl meet. If you have that spark, you go ahead in the relationship. I don't know if this "spark" is real, I saw a lot of girls in person after liking their profiles, but didn't like them (or they didn't like me) in person. I think at some point, our culture decided that interest of the society is bigger than personal freedom. They may have decided its better to find a partner this way rather than spending several years like in other cultures (I worked with an American who dated the same girl for 5 years and got divorced in 6 months). If you are going to say that such a lack of personal freedom is regressive, I don't feel that way. In America, you have the draft which to me means you loose the right to your body.
• hrxn 10y ago
  Where's the proof? More fake news stories, good job.
  • tdb7893 10y ago
    Is this sarcasm? Most of what she is talking about seems to be in person comments that she couldn't really record but anyway she is just talking about her experience and what she thinks could be done to improve the industry so I'm not sure proof on the specifics that happened to her are necessary
    • hrxn 10y ago
      Sarcasm? I wish. It's the sad truth. This is exactly the kind of story I expect on Medium, that's their clickbait, their MO to drive the traffic up. That's all you need to know about it. It's so predictable, I don't know if it's more funny or more sad, actually. And yes, I totally believe every single word of that story. Now that is sarcasm. Look at the choice of words. It's all there, all the buzzwords, all the expected jargon, signalling virtue and belonging to the tribe. People still don't realize this? Really?
  • sctb 10y ago
    This account has been posting primarily unsubstantive, inflammatory comments. We ban accounts that post this way, so please stop. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• kalleboo 10y ago
  > No one at the company took responsibility for anything other than protecting the company’s liability in case of a lawsuit The tech industry absolutely doesn't need unions /s
  • donatj 10y ago
    From my mothers similar experiences followed by her unions absolute refusal to help, in a word, no. They exist to parasitically take your money, forcibly take others who don't want to give and really offer very little in return other than more bureaucracy. Your much better off paying a lawyer than a union.
    • Chestofdraw 10y ago
      > They exist to parasitically take your money, forcibly take others who don't want to give and really offer very little in return other than more bureaucracy. If we look at historical facts rather than your mothers anecdotes this is incredibly far from the truth.
      • witty_username 10y ago
        I remember from a "Free To Choose" video that due to unions there was a huge amount of bureaucracy taking months to fire one worker in the government. Anyways, that's just another anecdote, what are the historical facts?
        • Chestofdraw 10y ago
          Unions have fought for and won such a huge amount of the workers rights we enjoy today that it would be a disservice to try and cover all of them in a comment. Google is your friend if you'd like to learn about the history of unions and labour movements.
          • witty_username 10y ago
            OK, I tried searching "worker rights due to union" and "union worker rights" and only found pages about unions protecting the right to associate. What should I input into Google?
• vezycash 10y ago
  I wonder why she didn't record everything - especially since both managers and HR were trying to gaslight her - making her doubt her sanity. If she'd gone to HR with recordings and they brushed aside her concerns then she'd have a much stronger case. Well as she said, a distressed mind doesn't think properly.
  • smsowmya 10y ago
    if i had the ability to be this clearheaded, we wouldn't be having this problem at all ..
    • mtrimpe 10y ago
      Having been through an eerily similar episode as what you describe (but then as an LGBT employee) I did have an almost perfect paper trail but it still didn't help. It takes an absolutely insane amount of energy to fight a huge company like this and even if you do everything right the chances are pretty good they'll wear you out first. Best of luck with your recovery! It's been a really tough few years for me and I can't think of much to say except that I empathize with you and perhaps recommend this book [1] which looking back lists a lot of things that helped me get over it. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-the-score https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...
      • notfitforwrk 10y ago
        Thanks for sharing the book. I am an employee of another big tech company currently going through similar process of HR not being very helpful despite raising grievance for last two months. The book is on point. With children and family, the fight is not worth the stress and permanent health impact.
        • smsowmya 10y ago
          i will agree. from unfortunate personal experience.
        • 10y ago
• jsmith0295 10y ago
  Wouldn't Apple's hiring policy likely mean that she was given the job on the basis of her race and gender? They have to be doing that in order to achieve the diversity numbers they're so happy to publish each year.
  • sctb 10y ago
    Users may have flagged this comment because you made a very controversial claim without any support. On Hacker News, the bar for substantiveness is higher in this situation because the site exists for civil, intellectually interesting discussion, and predictable flamewars are precisely opposite.
• thr55993 10y ago
  Is not this the default situation white straight male faces? For example I was accused of somehow being responsible for slavery, LGBT discrimination, anti-immigrant policies etc.. That was just a few days after I moved to US, I had zero influence on those things and I was immigrant myself. And my coworkers made racist jokes about Russia.
  • vikascoder 10y ago
    I dont think its about white males and brown females. Such behaviour in any corporate setting or any workplace setting is vile. No one has to go through harrassment of any kind and thats why big companies at least invest some time in setting up HR policies to prevent such kind of culture to develop but as we see its never perfect.
  • reitoei 10y ago
    > And my coworkers made racist jokes about Russia. Xenophobic jokes. Russia is not a race.
• tnones 10y ago
  I can't help but notice the contradiction. A man jumped to her defense, which was sexism, and then her co-workers got resentful, which she wanted to be defended from but wasn't, and that was sexism too. Somehow, we all need to display more empathy for her situation. I imagine there's a different side to this. Her coworkers noticed her getting treated differently and started teasing her about it, in a typical form of male ribbing on each other, in an attempt to equalize the status among the team. Rather than take this in stride and rolling with it, she clammed up and got offended, being used to a very different social style. The mistake was to see herself as the primary victim from day 1, rather than a beneficiary of unearned perks. The empathy she demands for herself she doesn't grant to others, and the reasonable and self-sufficient behavior she expects of everyone around her, she was unable to muster herself. So here's the long medium post where she is unable to dissociate her experience from her identity. A "personal perspective" that nevertheless puts up a list of changes necessary for supporting women and minorities. She also somehow concludes that despite management not seeming to care and not bothering to reply to her final letter, her experience was nevertheless instrumental in causing sweeping and highly visible changes in policy. Sorry but, being empowered by being uniquely protected is a contradiction. She opens "as a woman and minority" as if that's a liability, rather than the trump card she's actually playing it as. People who don't use that line still have problems, but they don't get to instruct others on how to solve them. If one of her white male co-workers had gotten bullied, I imagine we wouldn't be reading about it today, and she probably wouldn't have noticed either in her me-bubble.
  • morganvachon 10y ago
    > The mistake was to see herself as the primary victim from day 1... Except if you read the entire article, she says that she didn't at first see this as harassment, only as an embarrassing situation. It was only after the harassment and intimidation escalated that she looked back to see where it really began. > ...rather than a beneficiary of unearned perks. The empathy she demands for herself... Your entire post comes across as something one of her harassers would write in retaliation, and this in particular sticks out. If a woman doesn't want white knights to come to her rescue, that's her prerogative, not for you or anyone else to dictate, and it's certainly not a character flaw or an excuse for continued harassment and intimidation.
• RodericDay 10y ago
  > I can't help but notice the contradiction. A man jumped to her defense, which was sexism, and then her co-workers got resentful, which she wanted to be defended from but wasn't, and that was sexism too. Somehow, we all need to display more empathy for her situation. There's no contradiction. Sexism can express itself both in putting women down and in putting women in a pedestal. The rest of your comment is trash.
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    There's no contradiction. Sexism can express itself both in putting women down and in putting women in a pedestal. There's no contradiction, if the witch had led an evil and improper life, she was guilty; if she had led a good and proper life, this too was a proof, for witches dissemble and try to appear especially virtuous. After the woman was put in prison: if she was afraid, this proved her guilt; if she was not afraid, this proved her guilt, for witches characteristically pretend innocence and wear a bold front. Or on hearing of a denunciation of witchcraft against her, she might seek flight or remain; if she ran, that proved her guilt; if she remained, the devil had detained her so she could not get away. From Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, the Cautio Criminalis ('prudence in criminal cases') in 1631.
    • RodericDay 10y ago
      I see you posting your libertarian stuff all over HN. I'm not very surprised you also think the real victims here are her coworkers, whom you are unironically trying to liken to prosecuted witches. You've turned this story about a woman being harassed at Apple into a story about her numerous anonymous male coworkers, and dudes at large, being targeted. It's fascinating.
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        When did I say the real victims were her coworkers? The fact that I think your reasoning is deeply flawed does not imply I hold what you believe to be the opposite view. Pointing out logical flaws in the reasoning of the inquisition doesn't make me a Satanist (or a libertarian, for that matter). (Hint: I'm neither a satanist nor a libertarian.)
• kriro 10y ago
  While not the perfect solution it seems like a lot of the mentioned issues (standardized communication channels, no conflict of interest) could be solved by installing work councils (I take it they are not wide spread in the US? They are standard in Germany): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_council
  • Xylakant 10y ago
    unions and work councils are fairly rare in the IT/startup sector in Germany. If they exist it's usually because it's the IT department of an old, established enterprise. The rate of union membership in anything that's IT related is comparatively low as well. Personally, I consider that a problem, because it leaves each employee to fight their own fight. But IT folks somehow tend to believe that they don't need any help (and then subsequently sign contracts with unlimited unpaid overtime because they don't know it's illegal).
    • mpweiher 10y ago
      Illegal contract clauses tend to be non-enforceable. So you can sign and then ignore.
      • Bartweiss 10y ago
        But the outcome of that depends largely on who's got the position they want. If a contract has an illegal non-compete, it's easy for an employee to sign and then ignore it. After all, the employer would have to find the violation, sue them, and risk summary dismissal. The employee wins just by having everyone give up. If a contract features unpaid overtime, though, the employee is working time and not getting paid. They can refuse the work, get fired, and then sue, or they can do the work and then sue for nonpayment. In either case, they need to win to come out ahead, which is a lengthy and uncertain process. Ignoring unenforceable provisions is only easy for someone who doesn't need a court decision to get a good outcome.
        • Xylakant 10y ago
• madengr 10y ago
  Sorry, Indians are not minorities in tech. Sheesh, my DSP class in grad school was 25 asians and 3 whites.
  • easuter 10y ago
    OP's milking that victim card for all it's worth.
    • SolaceQuantum 10y ago
      Why is this the victim card? It's an anecdote that one persons grad class is a certain way. How does this reflect on the demographics of the industry? I've been to many companies that are majority white male.
      • easuter 10y ago
        Opening the article with "as a woman and minority" in tech is exactly playing the victim card right up front. It has no weight on whether the supposed actions of her managers and colleagues were wrong, because they'd be wrong no matter who they did this to. And by your standards even the OP is "just an anecdote". We have no proof whatsoever that she was in fact mistreated.
    • sctb 10y ago
      Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      • easuter 10y ago
        When was I not civil? Also I did follow up on my original comment when prompted.
        • sctb 10y ago
• highCs 10y ago
  Whenever I'm dealing with something that is serious to me, I always clearly first state to myself 1) what I want and 2) what do I do if I don't get what I want. For example in this case, it could be: 1) Jack told me this and that and I consider this is inappropriate. I never want to be told that again in this company 2) I leave. What I do next is that I make sure I communicate clearly those two points to whoever I think should get me what I want. For example, in that case, I would go see my manager and say: "Jack told me this and that and I consider this is inappropriate. I never want to be told that again in this company. If it happens again, I quit. Have you understood? (wait for his answer) What will you do to make sure it doesn't happen anymore?" (it is important to ask if he has understood, it forces him to go right in the middle of the circle you just draw on the floor, that put him in your territory, right under your guns). Sometimes, you will have to apply 2). For example in this case, your manager would have to tell you something substantial about what he gonna do to stop that. If what he tells you is not substantial, tell him you are not satisfied and ask him again the same question: "what can you do to make sure it will stop?". Don't quit on that. Keep asking. Only apply 2) if he don't answer anymore. It's typically a situation where "you don't leave the shop until...". If your manager tells you to go see the HR department, tell him clearly again 2): "if I don't get what I want I will leave. Do you still want me to go see the HR department? Are you sure?". Apply pressure, at every step. Do not have a discussion. Don't discuss the problem with your manager. Don't talk. Ask your question and wait for an answer. If he want to discuss, make him understand you won't. It's crucial to apply 2) right away when you don't get what you want. I've found it's rarely the occasion to make a deal and make a compromise not so much because the deal is bad but because by doing so, they will start kidding you again. I'm super happy so far with the result of this method. I get fantastic results from my family, employers, friends, from everybody. At first, you will feel like a freak. Then you will notice the others won't think so much that you are a freak but will think you are a strong person they should not kid with. You end up being respected.
  • cr0sh 10y ago
    Great comment! Thank you for posting it, I found it useful and informative, and I am sure others have as well.
• sqldba 10y ago
  > I was getting preferential treatment because of my “cuteness factor” > Indian women being subservient I agree that these comments don't belong in the workplace. I have seen similar ones lead to people fired on the day and escorted to the door. Thankfully it's relatively rare but some places do take it very seriously. Apple was wrong. In Australia the law is clear and they've breached it. Take them to court and get your payout. It's annoying that the victim has to do that but it's possible. For other parts of the article I put myself in her shoes and didn't find management's treatment of her particularly different from how I (a male) would be treated after complaining about the actions of anyone else (male or female) in the workplace - which is why I don't. HR is ineffectual and the company is against you regardless of whomever is at fault. It just wants one or the other party gone so things can go back to normal, so if it's you versus five other people it's easier to fire and rehire one than five. > employers also have an obligation to handle the situation with empathy and integrity And this line stood out at me as being divorced from reality especially at a big company. I get it that we mostly want companies to be like this but I think it's also obvious that they're not. They are primarily profit motivated and we're lucky if they don't pollute the environment or commit atrocities in the process. You can look for smaller companies that do it, you can put it in your own company, but if you really felt Apple would be like that then it's being a little naive. I worked at one mid-size company that was acquired by a competitor who wanted to drive in the boot heel by firing the previous management in as embarrassing a way as possible. My boss was on the chopping block and had false charges levelled at him over email and summarily fired. He took it through the Australian workplace relations system to try to get some closure, until the government advised there's no law to prevent a company making anything up and firing you for it. He could have pursued defamation but that's also extremely difficult, long, and expensive, and he didn't have the money. It was at that point I grew up in my career and decided you really can't trust any company to look out for you. That's not how it works.
  • provost 10y ago
    > Apple was wrong. In Australia the law is clear and they've breached it. Take them to court and get your payout Is the OP in Australia?
    • 10y ago
• c0nfused 10y ago
  Its not a bad idea, but it flirts with unionization which is actively banned in many US states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Unionization is not banned in any state. Your link does not agree with your dishonest comment. Right to work laws simply prohibit collusion between unions and employers to prevent non-union workers from working. They are no different than other worker protection laws, e.g. the laws prohibiting Apple and Microsoft from forming an anti-poaching agreement.
    • ashark 10y ago
      Well, effective unions–those capable of overcoming the free rider problem–are banned, then. It's like banning all sports equipment but saying Baseball isn't banned, in that you can still get together and say you're playing baseball and go through some of the motions, kind-of, and perhaps even play some cup-ball and call it baseball.
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        I don't know what you mean by "free rider problem". Rather than buying negotiation services from a union, I simply negotiated my own employment agreement. Who am I "free riding" on? If I hack together my own IDE in emacs, am I somehow "free riding" on the people who sell commercial IDEs?
        • ashark 10y ago
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem (EDIT: to expand, this is the problem with voluntary associations when it comes to acting effectively toward their goals, and if you follow this general rabbit hole far enough, basically why government is a thing)
• tyingq 10y ago
  There's a curious lack of detail in this story. No direct quotes, or even reasonable level of detail to the accusations. For example: "One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism." I'm sure there's a way that a supervisor jumping to your defense could be sexist, but this isn't showing that, at all. "At a lunch with several other coworkers, one of these men ordered me to summon the waiter and pay the bill, in the tone of a command to someone inferior and subservient." Certainly odd behavior, but I'm not sure I would call it sexist. Arrogant for sure, but surely there's more context? To be clear, I'm not saying she's wrong, just that this story isn't helping me understand what she went through, or that it was particularly sexist, versus just hostile.
  • foldr 10y ago
    >There's a curious lack of detail in this story. It's not curious at all. She's being careful not to identify specific individuals.
    • tyingq 10y ago
      A direct quote, or more detail would go a long way in helping others understand the situation. I don't see how either would identify specific individuals. In fact, she specifically says "her supervisor", which already calls out a specific individual. For example, the supervisor jumping to her defense. What did he say, exactly? Or failing that, what was the situation, how did he defend her? All we get is that he defended her, and she interpreted it as being sexist...sometime later.
      • foldr 10y ago
        I think you're missing the point of the article. She's helping us out by giving us a heads up about a problem in the industry. If you choose to disbelieve her, that's your prerogative. It's pointless to make a pretence of scrutinising the article when it's obviously impossible for her to prove beyond all doubt that her recollection of events is accurate. Just believe it or don't. Don't go asking "where's the proof??", as if you are expecting her to have videotape evidence for all of this.
• agentgt 10y ago
  This is a serious problem. My concern is people seem to think it only happens in previously (and still) male dominated fields. It happens everywhere. I think the woman that voice their concerns and challenges are more abundant in the tech industry probably because the industry is more progressive and generally more educated. Where I have seen ultra sexism has been in sales and finance. Extremely disturbing in your face sexism. Anecdotally the sexism in tech is sort of passive aggressive but the sexism in other industries is disturbingly direct (one could argue the subtle one being worse). My point is it is everywhere. I hope the tech industry fixes it and becomes the leader.
• fatdog 10y ago
  How is women dealing with harassment different than men dealing with other men who are just assholes? I've been in a number of companies where I've had to call out the behavior of a colleague with a manager because the alternative would have been knocking the guys teeth out. Nothing changes, except maybe a "talking to" by a manager or HR, and said asshole just presses against a different boundary. I have also found that men organize into a natural hierarchy pretty quickly, where women can miss those social cues, (or disregard them completely) and that can be extremely disruptive to team cohesion. Many women think nothing of finding the most powerful man in the organization they can and using him as a "friend" to undermine their direct manager. Male executives typically tell male versions of these climbers to get back in line, as it undermines the cohesion of their organizations. It's not like women are connecting with the most senior woman in the organization as a "friend," because those women got to where they were by not getting used as stepping stones. Firing a woman for insubordination risks sexism liability, but we fire men for that all the time. This is a more complex issue than just harassment and patriarchy and other bugbears. The workplace can change to accommodate women, but this complaint culture is anathema to doing business.
  • minikites 10y ago
    > How is women dealing with harassment different than men dealing with other men who are just assholes? In general, white men get their work attacked, women/minorities get their identity attacked, that's the difference.
    • fatdog 10y ago
      Maybe they just take it more personally when they have chosen to victimize their identity? A lot of white guys in startups recognize racial nepotism and can't call it out, so instead they go and start their own companies, or get politically isolated, quit, and go somewhere else. Maybe some of them vent frustrations on extreme subreddits and vote trump, but they aren't going to HR or the news over it.
    • belorn 10y ago
      Source? I suspect it would be hard to find even single cases of bullying without psychological elements. Intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation are not gender exclusive, and I would not categorize them as "the work" being attacked. For example, a person who identifies themselves as a successful professional might be bullied by someone who attack their work, but thats just an indirection. The attack is on the identity, and the work just happen to be the easiest attack vector in order to attack the identity of the person.
• PerilousD 10y ago
  HR works for the company. When you consider your moves keep in mind HR works for the company. You are not paying HR salaries. Get outside legal help and advice.
  • codazoda 10y ago
    Came here looking for this comment... "I approached my management when the situation escalated, who directed me to HR. Instead of helping me, HR embarked on a defensive and confrontational script. I felt cornered, unsafe and unsure of what to do next." It's HR's job to mitigate the risk to the company. They are not your friend, they are there to save the company from harm.
  • jdmichal 10y ago
    Yes. It is also perfectly reasonable for them to offer something, and then send out minutes that detail you rejecting it. This is simple legal CYA; it's not an attempt to be hostile.
  • JKCalhoun 10y ago
    Yep, HR are not your friend. They are there to smooth things over so that the company can continue to function, not to be your defender.
  • Ensorceled 10y ago
    This is a major point of the article: that this shouldn't be the case. You can disagree but just pointing out that this not the current situation is either missing the point of the article or begging the question.
• PerilousD 10y ago
  HR works for the company. When you consider your moves keep in mind HR works for the company. You are not paying HR salaries. Get outside legal help and advice.
• gumby 10y ago
  I am sorry to hear that the author went through this. Though I really like Apple and have friends both male and female who've worked there for many years, I also have heard it is a harder place towards women even than a place like Google. And some of its structural elements make that harder to fix (if there even is an effort to fix it, which I have no idea about either way). It's also quite hard to be public about this (I know someone who recently left Apple for similar reasons but won't discuss it publicly).
• rm_dash_rf 10y ago
  Thank you for sharing your story. Sounds like a very toxic environment.
• kutkloon7 10y ago
  Very well put. I find it very annoying when people declare something to be racist. Racism is the idea that some races are superior or inferior. Unless you literally declare that some races are superior or inferior, what you say is not racist. I do agree that some things might imply that you think some races are inferior, but by declaring something racist, you state that the author has that specific idea and is trying to convey it. However, people usually see any non-positive comment about a cultural minority as racist (e.g. "Black people eat a lot of chicken.").
  • burkaman 10y ago
    What word would you prefer? How would you describe the comment "Black people eat a lot of chicken"? Also, FYI, most (all?) dictionaries disagree with you on the definition of racism. > the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • mistermann 10y ago
      That may be the dictionary definition, but it is no longer the generally accepted definition in my experience.
      • burkaman 10y ago
        We have very different experiences then. But again, what word would be better? Is there anything notable about the statement "Black people eat a lot of chicken"? What adjective should we use?
        • mistermann 10y ago
          Well, it's a stereotype, that a lot of people find offensive, depending on who they are talking to of course.
• dominotw 10y ago
  >woman and minority in tech its a bit of stretch to call Indians a minority in tech, if anything we are vastly over-represented by any standard.
  • dragonmum 10y ago
    > we are vastly over-represented by any standard. Population India in 2013 : 1.3 billion Number of Indians in the technology sector = ? Lets be generous and say that all Indians in the USA work in the tech sector. That would be 2 million. Then lets be even more generous and add the entire population of Bangalore, 4 million as tech workers. 6E6/1.3E9 = 0.4 percent. That's a simple standard showing that you are a minority and under-represented on a global level.
    • Helmet 10y ago
      Considering the entire population of India is an absurd premise when discussing Asian-Indian representation in the US tech sector. Asian-Indians make up about 1% of the US population - I don't know how many work in tech in the USA, but I can guarantee you it's a greater share than 1%.
      • GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
        > I can guarantee you it's a greater share than 1% What's that have to do with not being a minority?
        • dominotw 10y ago
          'minority in tech' <-- phrase in question.
          • smsowmya 10y ago
            woman = minority
  • heisenbit 10y ago
• analyst74 10y ago
  For anyone new to office politics, or have not experienced hostile politics before, keep those in mind: - Make sure to have some real friends at work. No, someone you work with everyday is not necessarily a real friend, you have to make real connections with them, so they are willing to defend and support you when things get tough. - Be observant and empathetic, so you can notice problems when they first arise, and resolve them before they escalate. This is hard for engineers, as we focus on computers most of the time and don't get to practice the skills of empathy a lot. - Be strong. Sometimes escalations do happen, and now you have one or more people dislike you and try to make your life hard. You need to be emotionally strong to withstand their attacks, and keep a clear mind to figure out a way to defeat them or at least reach a ceasefire. Sadly, politics happen all the time when inter-personal interactions happen, not necessarily the result of one shady colleague with agendas. This could happen to anyone, although sadly more often to minorities, because it's harder to hide the fact that we are outsiders.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • guitarbill 10y ago
    Note: This comment is not based on the article, but my personal experience (in the UK - if that matters) Honestly, having a third party involved has worked well. Sometimes, misunderstandings linger and fester, and then even the most innocuous things can be construed wrongly. A third party (a good manager is ideal) saying either "you're being too sensitive" or "no, they were out of line, i'll talk to them" helps. I don't know of anybody who's refused to iron out issues, and I firmly believe most people are decent enough to help. But at the end of the day, you don't have to like everybody you work with, as long as there's respect from both parties. That's being professional. If respect isn't there, either you or your manager is going to have to make a call sooner or later. For better or worse, this is probably going to come down to team dynamics, as teams that work well together are very valuable. This might suck, but I've never seen racism or sexism being the dominant effect in a small team (<8) of people who know each other - a lot of caveats, at least there's hope. I guess it helps if it's "just" a job to you. Normally, I'd simply start looking for a job elsewhere, but if I was at Apple, I'd want to stay there.
• CIPHERSTONE 10y ago
  How typical, HR that doesn't give a shit about the employees. And if you are in HR and reading this, and crying tears right now over this comment, tough shit. I don't care.
  • pc86 10y ago
    They're not.
  • dang 10y ago
    I don't doubt that you have reason to say this based on experience, but if you want to comment on HN, please give us the reason and experience part, not the rant. Comments here should improve the level of discussion, not degrade it further.
• chmike 10y ago
  My brother, as a manager of a big team in Belgium, had once to face a complain to the HR about he harassing a secretary. The reaction of the company was immediate, and in my opinion the right one. They contracted a specialize company to investigate, collect the facts and present their conclusions. The conclusions would be sent at the same time to the alleged victim, the HR and the manager. In this case the conclusion was that there was no harassment according to legal definition. These argumented conclusions would have been presented to a trial as reference if any party would want to contest them. The company performing the audit is specialized in it. So they can recognize a real harassment from an abusive claim. They also have no interest in the company. It is in the interest of the company to call them to get a leverage to apply whatever measure they would find appropriate. If the victim is an employee, and he/she would consider the reaction inappropriate and abusive, he/she could complain to a tribunal. Today, a company that is not reacting like that (diligent an investigation by an independent party) to a harassment complain would be considered a priori suspect or would be consider to have failed complying to its duty because it is their responsibility to do so.
  • dominotw 10y ago
    github was widely panned for doing the same exact thing.
  • wpietri 10y ago
    I think that is a good start, but we should be aware of the flaws in an approach like this. I had friends at a company with serious security breach. There was a hullabaloo, all sort of important people in the company upset and questioning whether they should fire the head of tech. To calm the waters, the head of finance hired an outside firm to investigate. All good, right? Here, the head of finance liked the head of tech and trusted him. The outside firm, knowing who buttered their bread, fished around for clues on how the report was supposed to land. And as expected, the report was, "some flaws, a couple of dumb mistakes, but basically sound." From the same facts, a hostile auditor could have come to the opposite conclusion, that the dumb mistakes were indicative of deep flaws and the whole company was put needlessly at risk. Specialized audit companies have to get paid. They claim to be neutral parties, but they have an inherent conflict of interest. If you choose the right one, you can get a better result than an internal investigation. But you can also choose one that serves the interests of whoever's paying the bills.
• module0000 10y ago
  > I also eventually received an apology from the company and got time off to deal with my stress. I'm not sure how I feel(as an AAPL shareholder) about this. I invest in the company, and they are spending(albeit a tiny portion in the grand scheme of things) my money to pay you...so you can deal with your stress? Really? I understand bereavement leave, sick leave, and FMLA....but stress? What happened to businesses existing to do business, not give out warm and fuzzy vibes? Maybe I'm jaded, but my last jobs were the military, more military, contracting for the military, and ending with military(all in IT). Stress happens, but I didn't let my team down by bowing out from stress, and "disgust" sums up how I feel reading about others doing it.
  • riskneural 10y ago
    This is where the EU view of a company having its customers, its shareholders, and its employees as stakeholders all having rights makes a difference. If your view is shareholder primacy, that only the shareholder matters, then you end up with a very different system. Do we really all need to live as if we were in the military? Don't people go to war so others can live in peace?
  • joshuacc 10y ago
    According to the story as presented in the article, failures of Apple's official representatives (managers & HR) were among the causes of her intense stress and depression. Attempting to fix the problems they caused seems like the least they could do.
  • Asooka 10y ago
    And how often did your team make fun of you, deride you on the job or act in an uncivil manner toward you in general? Stress is a real thing - when it builds up and you're not a tough military guy, you can't just suck it up. And even tough military guys do end up with severe stress, it's not called PTSD for "chin up and walk it off". Think about it again - AAPL are also paying two shitheads to insult female employees and lower productivity. These are your money being thrown away to kick out a productive employee who was hired using your money.
    • 10y ago
• FilterSweep 10y ago
  > I had never before encountered this kind of visceral hatred This comment rang some bells for me. Have a friend from the Netherlands who was in undergrad with me, and one day in confidence he told me one of the things he didn't understand most in America is how someone can harbor, and actively maintain, such a passionate hatred for someone they aren't intimately involved with. While this hatred is most definitely present in other first world nations, I can't avoid the fact that he is correct and far more pervasive in America. It doesn't make much sense to me.
  • clifanatic 10y ago
    > I had never before encountered this kind of visceral hatred You should try being a white man on the internet.
    • sctb 10y ago
      We've asked you too many times to please not inject inflammation without substance into the threads: it's indistinguishable from trolling, no matter how you meant it. We've banned this account, but we're happy to unban accounts that email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe will only post within the guidelines in the future.
      • clifanatic 10y ago
        Good job proving my point.
  • pfarnsworth 10y ago
    I think this is simply just ignorance on your part and the part of your friend. People all around the world are full of hate. Most countries are still relatively homogenous. Any country where you see some mixing, you'll see the same hate. The Middle East is too easy of an example. Germany, France, etc have a lot of overt hate. The hate in Ireland between the Protestants and the Catholics was very real and they're the same race and culture.
    • 10y ago
• tps5 10y ago
  I think commenters who are reacting negatively to this story are reacting to the vocabulary rather than the story. Obviously I'm not a witness, but I tend to believe that these events took place more or less as the author describes them. At the same time, words like "sexism" and phrases like "as a minority..." are a big turn-off to some readers, myself included. This isn't because I don't believe in racism/sexism/xenophobia, it's because we're never going to be able to agree on definitions for those terms and so they end up being almost useless as descriptors. I would put this in almost literary terms: I don't want events to be described, I want them to be recounted. This is also how I feel about movies and literature: I want novels/screenplays that "show rather than tell." I don't want to be told how to think about an event, I just want it to be presented to me. I also believe that categorizing your personal experiences in terms of broader social phenomena is a mistake. In my opinion, this kind of thinking leads to generalization and tends to obscure the actual events that took place and the actors involved. All that aside, absolute sympathy to the author here. It's incomprehensible to me that people can behave like this, but sadly they do.
  • coldtea 10y ago
    >Obviously I'm not a witness, but I tend to believe that these events took place more or less as the author describes them. Why, though? Because people don't lie, exaggerate, or have strange ideas of what others are doing to them?
    • pc86 10y ago
      It's called the benefit of the doubt. You're free to believe one person is telling the truth and one person is lying, or that both people are telling what they believe happened, or whatever, but making that decision before getting both/all sides of a story is not the best way to get the facts. Just like someone shouldn't read this woman's story and say that everyone above her at Apple should be fired, you also shouldn't read it and say that she's obviously just too sensitive or lying.
      • coldtea 10y ago
        >It's called the benefit of the doubt. Shouldn't that benefit extend to the other sides of the stories? What happened to the "Auditur et altera pars" (hearing the other side) before assuming anything and awarding the benefit to just the one you've heard?
• donatj 10y ago
  There is a mental trap I have personally fallen into I will dub the "Friendliness Trap" where you start to incorrectly think of someone you work closely with as your close friend due to the forced proximity and "friendly" interaction. This can foster inappropriate workplace behavior your brain justifies as OK. For instance friendly teasing, sometimes even started by the person themselves (e.g. "Oh, you know us [blanks], good at [blank]") can be taken way too far. People wrongly get the sense that something is OK because the person doesn't complain or laughs along and it can escalate to the point of full on harassment and your brain still thinks "[person] is my buddy, it's OK". I think it's partially human nature and wanting to fit in. The person being teased doesn't want to come off adversarial, the person teasing thinks it's "their joke". I realized long ago simply don't tease people at work. They are not around you by choice. Don't assume people at work are friends in the way your drinking buddies are friends. You honestly have no idea how they really feel about it until it's too late, save it for your friends who are around you by choice.
  • smsowmya 10y ago
    I agree. But it can also develop over a period of time. And there is a difference between being friendly and being hostile - this was the latter.
  • wiz21c 10y ago
    I'd add : why do you need to tease in the first place ? There's no reason to do that.
    • mistermann 10y ago
      Humans do a lot of things that have "no reason".
    • orbitur 10y ago
      I will never, ever defend anything like that in the workplace, but some people consider teasing and joking to relationship building. There's no reason for a lot of human interactions that are ultimately good for a subgroup's social bonds.
    • 10y ago
• mikebay 10y ago
  I think we should also talk how Apple is harassing people who use they products. Also apple's NSA connections would be nice to hear more.. Or just how they remove apps in AppStore.. Too many reasons. Only money matters anymore. People cannot be happy in they work anymore or bosses proud of they companies. All today's big companies are built with swet and tears mostly.
• pfarnsworth 10y ago
  I'm sure that working in most companies in the Valley and in a heavily-male-skewed environment such as tech, there's STILL a lot of harassment and sexism, both explicit and implicit, and this has to be eradicated. It sickens me that women can't come to the workplace and just be treated like an equal. I've work with many intelligent women who are more intelligent and successful that I ever will be, and they deserve to be in positions of leadership just as much as any male. However, this is definitely a story that I would like to hear from the other side before taking as absolute gospel. The tone of the blog post leads to a lot of skepticism in me about the veracity of the events. She accuses her supervisor of sexism for standing up for her, and then basically accuses Apple of sexism for doing nothing. The contradiction is glaring, and she throws around these words pretty thoughtlessly without thinking how it reflects on the believability of her story. Another pet peeve of mine is that she conflates misogyny with sexism. People can be sexist without being misogynists. Many men and women are sexist. It's largely cultural. Very few are misogynists but they are sickening and scary, and need to be eradicated by any means necessary. > I approached my management when the situation escalated, who directed me to HR. This here is the part of the article where my skepticism starts to increase. Where is her story about what happened when she contacted her supervisor, or her management chain. Did she not seek help or advice from the supervisor who was ready to help her? There's a lot that was handwaved over that requires explanation. Without understanding what her supervisor did, who defended her previously, I can't understand what happened. The supervisor and direct manager are the ones who are best suited to deal with this problem directly, especially if it's between coworkers. On a side note, I don't blame the blog post author for thinking that HR would help. I've been in a situation where I had to talk with HR about my direct manager, and they weren't too enthusiastic to help, and I had to fight my own battles essentially. However, I'm a lot better equipped to fight those battles than the blogger because I'm argumentative and stubborn, and most other people, male and female, aren't as motivated. > My HR representative was simply unfriendly after I gave feedback about her being unduly confrontational with me. I think this is an interesting comment from the author. It seems like she doesn't have a high EQ, and doesn't know how to interact with people to get the things that she wants or needs. Her HR rep is the most immediate person who would help her navigate this situation, and she apparently pissed her HR rep off. That wasn't smart and speaks a lot to her EQ, and might explain a lot more about the back story here. She could get better help from her HR rep without pissing him or her off, but she didn't do it or didn't know how to do it. > While I never heard back in person, I do believe that it likely triggered some of the following actions by the company. This was laughable, and also reflected poorly on the author. The idea that a single complaint about workplace harassment would trigger this is ridiculous, and the fact she is taking credit for any changes at Apple also reflects on her EQ.
• e40 10y ago
  However, a group of other male coworkers who resented the attention I received started directing inappropriate and misogynistic remarks towards me. That statement totally reminds me of accounts I've read of conservatives and how they feel about minorities get special treatment. I just find it really interesting that groups in power react this way while they are still in power. It's a very, very foreign thing to me and I don't understand the source of it, but there is very clearly a common thread of this running through our world right now.
  • edblarney 10y ago
    It would not be foreign to you if it happened to you directly. It's not entirely unreasonable that a loser manager fawns over a hot girl on the team, and gets special favours. It happens all the time with gender removed - i.e. the 'suck up' gets the treats. And more perniciously - it's entirely possible the guys may have a legit point (I'm not implying they do, but indicating that it's a possibility), though obviously not expressed well. People are crazy. My ex girlfriend got a job working in Montreal, for a 'vaping' company, working in the back. She's drop dead hot. I told her - there is absolutely no way they are going to keep her in the office, she'll be promoted to sales instantly. She did not believe me, but I was right. Within a a few weeks she was outside-sales. The management there is kind of greasy, like guidos at a sweaty gym. They fawned over her, and she definitely had very special status. Favours. The other staff were super jealous. Understandably so. Anyhow, it never came to lawsuits, but the second I knew she was going to work with those greaseballs, I knew there would be trouble. It's human nature. When gender/race gets involved, we start to apply different words. I just think people should grow the f* up and just behave responsibly, but also to be a little bit tolerant of weird behaviour now and then.
    • sctb 10y ago
      It's not up to HN's standards of civility to call names like you have (especially some of those ones), so users were right to flag this comment. The standard is higher in controversial or heated threads, by the way, because incivility in small doses tends to snowball quickly.
• hobnobber21 10y ago
  When given a request, she refused to do it, and then complained of harassment because she was the one asked to do the task. Is she always on edge like that? Notice that she seems to be the one to stir up controversy in her meetings. Why is that? Here is the problem. She's an outsider. Outsiders, no matter what makes them an outsider, will always be treated differently. While she thinks she's a special case, and Apple must be a bad place to work, it should be noted that Tim Cook is an openly gay male who rose to the position of CEO. As it so often is, we hear one side of a story but never the other. There are millions of stories in the naked city and this is only one of them and it's one-sided. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the saying goes.
• edblarney 10y ago
  "there was no harassment according to legal definition. " He's extremely lucky. In Canada, and in a growing number of jurisdictions - there is 'harassment' so long as the victim feels as if there was. If a girl feels harassed - then that's it. Guilty. It's a deep breach of our fundamental rights, in that crimes should be determined objectively, and not subject to the whims and feelings of a victim. Obviously, this is a complex problem, and a lot of actual harassment does take place and it needs to be dealt with. But so many authorities screw it one way or the other: by ignoring it, or handing out wicked penalties in knee-jerk righteous fear. The Github case, in particular is pernicious: the CEO lost his job after trying to reasonably handle supposed harassment case, when there was absolutely no indication of it even happening. Ironically, this girl, Julie Horvath - is a pariah and a terrible example for women - is now working at Apple. Ellen Pao comes to mind as perfectly the wrong candidate in any way be representing 'women's rights' at work. The movement needs better leaders/examples. It also blows my mind that things like this go on - after the girl in this article complained, the other people on the team should have just shut up about it. I mean - there's 'ribbing' and 'fun' but when someone is really hurt by it ... you just stop man. Get on with your jobs. Also - I'm not sure the 'ask the waitress for the cheque' is really a form of harassment. It's just weird. It seems as this poor girl really has a case, that said, there's two sides to every story. I guess we should take her word at face value, but it would be helpful to hear about it from other voices. Pettiness, vindictiveness, and the intersection of 'crude, boorish behaviour' with 'easily offended victims' can sometimes conflate to create bad situations that might seem like harassment (and often really is), but is really about another set of infantile behaviours altogether.
  • dkn 10y ago
    R v Elliott is an interesting case. It contradicts what you are saying in general, but it also shows that the courts imposed strict conditions on a suspected harassment case which severely harmed the defendant's work life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Elliott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Elliott
    • graeme 10y ago
      That case raises the more general issue of banning suspects or convicted criminals from the internet. Courts commonly impose it. When such sentences first arose, the internet was marginal enough that it wasn't vital. And most judges now could probably live a tolerably normal life with an internet ban. But if anyone on HN got banned from the internet, that would be tantamount to "banned from work", and much else. I haven't seen much discussion about overuse of these order though.
• Humdeee 10y ago
  If I was back at the start of my career, I would of dismissed this article and told the author to "toughen up". After all, what's a bit of ribbing among co-workers? Surely she's just being overly-sensitive. Until I had the (mis)pleasure of working with a truly toxic co-worker did my mindset completely change on the issue of bullying, intimidation, and hostility in the workplace. He was a senior guy, decent at his job. But how he was able to change the dynamic of multiple teams was very offsetting. Communication declined, as people didn't want to go near the team that had the guy that was insulting them everytime on a whim. Workplace politics were on the rise. The common denominator was this guy was involved with every issue. Management stayed quiet and attempted to push it under the rug for a bit, but eventually they had to take notice. It was so relieving to walk in one day to him cleaning out his desk. I remember locking eyes with him one last time and giving him a final unspoken send off with a stern glare. He turned the corner and I never saw him again. My co-workers and myself went out for lunch as a celebration. The amount of relief was incredible. It was like starting fresh again. Back to the article, I still can't say I fully understand what this woman went through. But just having a taste of how off-putting 1 toxic employee can be really opened my eyes. I can't fathom having multiple employees or even a manager with that type of behavior. I won't comment on gender or racial issues. Being stressed from work is okay. Some jobs have more stress than others, and at higher frequencies. But being stressed from the people at work is needless stress that compounds on top of the regular work stress that we all accept to some degree when entering a job or role.
  • Bartweiss 10y ago
    Honestly, I think many of the dismissive reactions to these things have a similar basis. It can look like people excusing this behavior, but I think in many cases they've just never seen this behavior. If the worst you've seen at work is friendly teasing and maybe some racy language, it's easy to assume that's what happened and someone is overreacting. If you've seen someone truly corrosive, that assumption changes. There's a world of difference between teasing and toxicity, even if the person doing it is careful enough to use language that could fall into either category. I can only imagine the frustration of writing down someone's comments and thinking "that doesn't look so bad on paper" when context made it clear (often to everyone present) that the exchange was terrible. And on a related note, I think companies that handle these things poorly have misunderstood their incentives. Yes, avoiding lawsuits is important to them, and yes, I can even see why they wouldn't admit there was a problem. But to not take action is terrible - as your story indicates, a sufficiently toxic employee can destroy the functioning of an entire team. Burying an incident may be easy, but it's not a good business choice when you're going to lose good, valuable staff over the issue. (I believe The Dilbert Principle suggested this was the single most important thing a manager could do: make sure this kind of hostility never, ever persisted on a team.)
• jeffbush 10y ago
  This seems negligent on the part of HR (as well as genuinely awful). In California, all managers are required by law to take three hours of sexual harassment training every other year. One thing that stood out to me is that there is no need to make a formal harassment claim: when anyone mentions they have experienced harassment to a manager, even in a private conversation, the manager is required to report it and investigate. If the employee says they want to keep the conversation in confidence, the manager is supposed to say they can't do that. If a manager doesn't follow up, they can be personally liable. Several companies I've been at also have a mandatory "managers and the law" training class. I didn't talk to anyone for several days after taking it. :) IANAL, but my understanding is that one job of HR is to protect the company. One reason they investigate is to produce evidence that could be used in the event of a lawsuit to prove they took the allegation seriously. Trying to argue with the employee that it didn't happen would put them in a really bad position if they were sued, because it could be used to demonstrate a hostile work environment. I've seen complaints happen a few times in my career (not involving me directly), and, in those cases, HR took it gravely seriously. They talked to everyone involved and documented the crap out of it. Most of the people I've met in HR seem to genuinely care. I disagree with advice that HR should not be trusted, but my advice for someone who is in a situation where they are uncomfortable is to document everything. Keep emails of all interactions with your manager and HR and send follow up email to summarize conversations you had in person.
  • cardiffspaceman 10y ago
    Appearing to genuinely care is a good pose for someone who has to collect interviews. I'm sure journalists have to fake concern to get the information they want. These HR people have to be empathetic so they succeed at getting the interviews. It doesn't have to go farther than that. I agree that when events occur, people should make their own records.
    • jeffbush 10y ago
      "Appearing to genuinely care" is different than being empathetic. The former implies the person doesn't really care, the latter is by definition concern for another person. My comment on HR people caring was a more general statement on my interactions with HR in a variety of situations. As a manager, I often see both sides of HR/employee interactions.
• shoefly 10y ago
  I read the entire article and this is my take: this writer worked with an extreme bulley. The bulley was a ringleader. And potentially psycho. This isn't about sexism, racism, etc. This is about a ringleader selecting a victim to prey upon for the sole purpose of causing pain.
  • smsowmya 10y ago
    I didn't even work with him directly - he was just there and decided to pick on me, yes. And yes, that was the gist of the experience.
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• vander_elst 10y ago
  HR has the function of protecting the company from the employees, workers council or similar structures have the function of protecting the employees from the company. All the companies should have one.
• KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
  What was she doing at Apple that she felt in the minority as an Indian?
• fred_is_fred 10y ago
  Always remember: HR IS THERE TO PROTECT THE COMPANY. NOT YOU.
  • dang 10y ago
    Please don't use all caps for emphasis. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• scoreponok 10y ago
  I was sympathetic to her plight up until the 'personal impact' part. It seems to me that the author is using hyperbole when describing her physical/emotional impact on herself and her family to gain some form of sympathy from her audience. With statements like this: >This strife has shattered all of our lives like nothing else before. Based on this statement it seems to me the author and her family have yet to face any real travesty. There are varying degrees of severity in harassment and to me this case seems mild to moderate and not in any way a cause for the health effects described. I also believe it also offers some insight into character and possible extreme sensitivity to perceived injustices/slights. I also agree with other posters here in regards to only getting one side of the story, much context is missing.
  • yedava 10y ago
    The reason why our society has such a poor understanding of mental health is because we demand a "real travesty" as a cause of mental illness. Unless there is one, the default assumption is that people are making it up. This is a dangerous belief that harms people.
    • guitarbill 10y ago
      I think what scoreponok is trying to say is at the end of the day, it's just a job. There is a lot of suffering and trauma in the world. Even though I don't want to try and quantify either of those for different events, there's probably a difference between say being affected by a natural disaster and issues at work. After all, work != life. Note that this obviously don't mean the issue is to be trivialised. After all, we can't do anything about natural disasters, but we can do something about racism or sexism, etc. and we should. Edit: I picked natural disasters, because the quote "This strife has shattered all of our lives like nothing else before" could also apply to such an event. Other examples I can think of include illness, stalking, and war/PTSD. To be honest, I find it hard to think of working for Apple and going to war having the same effect. Although if the article is accurate, the comparison might be, too - worth thinking about.
      • 10y ago
• zepto 10y ago
  What a terrible experience. I like that she points out the conflicts of interest, wherein the legal structures in which companies are embedded so clearly work against a good solution to the problem. However I think when she says: "corrective actions for any violations have to be significant enough to be a deterrent to such behaviors in the future. There also needs to be some accountability for these actions" She is taking on the same position as these legal structures - I.e. that retribution or punishment is an important part of the equation, and I think this is counter to the rest of her argument. Men raised in a sexist society can't be individually held responsible for acting in the way they have seen people acting around them as though these are intentional crimes against women. Massive career damage needs to be taken off the table as the first consequence for all sides of this. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be a great deal of accountability - but it needs to be something closer to restorative justice - where those involved can understand each other rather than remain embattled.
• enragedliberal 10y ago
  I really doubt guys who are scared to say girls get laid. But that's just my opinion.
  • ljf 10y ago
    It's not about being scared - it's about not infantilising others. Sure some people (male and female) might not mind 'girl' - but other do and a growing number of people are aware of that. Thinking of others isn't about being scared of offending people, it's about being thoughtful.
  • sctb 10y ago
    Please don't create new accounts just to violate the guidelines. Not only do we ban the throwaway (as we have), but we ban the main account as well. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194008 and marked it off-topic.
  • vertex-four 10y ago
    Trust me, guys who listen to what women say, respect their opinions, and make some form of effort to show that respect, get laid. Regularly. Male feminists are hard to find, and people like dating people who share their political beliefs.
    • stcredzero 10y ago
      Not what I have seen. Men who are confident, powerful, happy, and successful get laid. In certain places, those in power are left-leaning, and so the confident, powerful, happy, and successful men are espousing left-leaning ideologies to signal their worthiness and virtue. However, if you conduct an experiment and have a hetero identifying but poor, weak, and uncertain man claim that he's a feminist, you'll find that such men are called to question and attacked. You can reverse the polarity on the above and come up with an analogous situation for right-leaning contexts. Ideology is used more often as a bludgeon in our ape-like dominance struggles far more often than it's used as a tool of thought. The way most people use it, most of the time, it might as well be an arm-band or a flag.
• smokeyj 10y ago
  Something doesn't add up. There's usually one or two jerks in a group. They have to be dealt with. When it's the whole group systematically harassing you about your race and gender.. well, you're probably a blogger on Medium. > As a woman and minority in tech, I have also often felt like a lone barometer in gauging the importance of a lot of issues around gender, race and culture. Starting the article about how you've always been a victim > One day, one of my supervisors jumped to my defense at a team event, in an awkward display of sexism. The gesture was unnecessary, so I was taken aback Your manager sees you floundering and tries to help you out > However, a group of other male coworkers who resented the attention I received Whaaaat??? Is this middle school? Okay, let's start dropping names. > I started having major sleep disturbances, endocrine issues, and depressive symptoms (crying spells, anger outbursts, chronic fatigue, gastrointestinal problems) This sounds extreme and possibly symptomatic of other psychological factors at play.
• mathattack 10y ago
  I approached my management when the situation escalated, who directed me to HR. Instead of helping me, HR embarked on a defensive and confrontational script. For better or worse, HR is there to protect the company, not the employee. This is why many times they report in through legal. It's not fair, but it's the way companies work.
  • pc86 10y ago
    Why isn't it fair? Can you imagine an HR department that advocated for an individual employee if their needs directly contradicted the needs of the larger organization?
• Girlang 10y ago
  This is horrible! I will never buy Apple products again.
• garino 10y ago
  in this era of exaggerated claims to gain victimhood points and outright hoaxes to prove whatever "-ism" causes the most damage, the author's unsubstantiated claims make her come off as a narcissistic liar more than anything why did she stay there? why didn't she contact an outside attorney? it takes all of 15 seconds of googling to figure out what to do in this situation -- document & lawyer up. no, this comes across as someone who wants sympathy points for claims that have no evidence behind them sorry, not buying it
• heisenbit 10y ago
  There are many articles describing bullying and harassment. This is one worth reading as it - does not put blame for handling it on any single person or function. - illustrates systemic dysfunction. Normal incentives work against handling the abuse claim - HR tries to protect company, managers caught in conflict of interest - points out the result of management not acting clearly. The person bullied feels taking on more responsibility of navigating the mess. As the person has no effective control this add more distress. - shows the manager dilemma when supporting minority (in whatever sense) in a naive way. The person standing out stands out even more. Dammed if you do and probably dammed if you don't. - even in an environment where the bullied person is receiving widespread support from others at times (scene at the table where other were speaking up) long running and extreme stress does damage. - few understand that the problems often only show up months later as it is typical for PTSD It is very difficult to say what can be done to prevent this. It is obvious that management is making the wrong decisions but why? I believe the author is on something with the conflict of interest. I would add avoidance of conflict - they are empowered to handle it but shy away. Then there is inability to handle bullies by a lot of them - trying to be even handed since this is the normal mode when one side is obviously overstepping (similar to press-Trump relationship). What could be done by companies? Specialized people/services dealing with that sort of behavior may be one. Making sure management is well grounded in values and knows how to decide in these conflict of interest cases may help a little too. What can one do to be prepared? Not being weak is probably the best preparation. Ability to fight and win or to pack and run is key to be able to force a resolution. What to do when caught in it? These days I think getting external help early. Covering two sides: The psychological one (therapist with first hand experience of psychopathic people and stress management, possibly PTSD) and legal advice. Full disclosure: Could tell a similar sad tale.
• warcher 10y ago
  I tell a lot of younger developers this, because it's an important truth that will never, ever be spoken aloud. The sole role of Human Resources is to protect the company from liability, either through lawsuits or labor law compliance. Occasionally managers will abdicate their duty and delegate parts of hiring authority to a section of the company with no understanding of what they do and no accountability for getting it wrong, but that's not as common as you think. Most hiring just gets rubber stamped by HR, not driven by them. That's all. They're a cost center with no authority beyond saying "this kid is gonna cost us a lot of money if we don't get rid of them"-- either by being a harasser or by being the litigious type (to HR, they're actually the same thing). If you're expecting them to intercede on your behalf with your manager without something being obviously out of control, ie lawsuit-worthy, you're gonna have a hard time.
  • wiz21c 10y ago
    spot on. HR is there to make sure you abide. The funny thing is that they usually don't understand that themselves (some people don't think about why they do their job besides getting money/cars/holidays). Things seem to be different in non-profit/non-compete companies though.
  • pdeuchler 10y ago
    Really good point. Also remember everything HR sees will be viewed through a cautionary, and oftentimes adversarial, legal lens... since at the end of the day that is how their performance is measured.
• yarou 10y ago
  The H1B visa system needs to be overhauled or done away with entirely. It's truly sickening to see how we as a society tolerate indentured servitude in the 21st century. Companies use the system to purposefully depress wages. It needs to end.
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• hasbroslasher 10y ago
  > I don't believe you can prove anything Go do some math proofs and report back
  • Sacho 10y ago
    Math proofs rely on arbitrarily chosen axioms; tps5 describes a similarly arbitrary approach to reasoning, e.g.: > Someone might say "I know she is lying because she used this term which liars always use plus I read this story about a woman making up harassment charges to elicit sympathy." Using a mathematical approach, maybe they started from an axiom that liars use specific terms which out them as such. Then after several theorems and lemmas, they managed to establish what that specific term is. Without the guarantees given by the axiom, all the knowledge they managed to build upon it is dubious. The problem with axioms is that they fall outside of the "purity" of maths - they're basically "something a bunch of people agree on". When you scale that to billions of people, it tends to fall apart(also evidenced in maths, where there's lots of questions which set of axioms to use as the foundation for a specific branch). Very mushy.
    • hasbroslasher 10y ago
      Meant that as a joke, mate. Humor isn't known for traveling well on the web.
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  • dang 10y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194581 and marked it off-topic.
• euphoria83 10y ago
  The response of the company to create a case where they want to discredit the complainant is fairly standard. They want to protect themselves. Unless there is someone at the top that takes these matter seriously on a personal level and has communicated it to his subordinates, senior management in general only pays lip service to taking such matters seriously. These are complex matters and every one wants to get on with their work, rather than deal with the problem. Tim Cook, I would expect, would have sent the message about taking such matters seriously. It seems like someone between him and the victim decided to add his "personal expertise" to this case and mishandled it completely.
• pconner 10y ago
  > I don't mean to discount your experience, but honestly I don't feel like this is the whole story. Found the most HN comment I'll see all day.
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  • dang 10y ago
    Please don't do this here. Even if you correctly interpreted that comment, the fact that some people litter in the town square doesn't mean you should too. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13196109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13196109 and marked it off-topic.
• orsenthil 10y ago
  I appreciate her command over the language, and also feel sorry for problems she encountered. Will I judge that Apple has a culture of Harassment and Tech Industry has a culture of harassment from this medium article? Definitely No. I would be foolish to judge so from hearing the arguments from a single party.
• p94ka 10y ago
  Why has this article completely disappeared from the site? I've paged through hundreds of articles starting at the front page, and it simply does not appear.
• ghurtado 10y ago
  > This is an indicator of the bubble you're living in And your comment is the epitome of another very common bubble: the language police / SJW bubble. You come across as if you think that censoring strangers on the internet (for what is actually the most common usage of a most common English word) is actually going to bring about some positive change in the issue of sexism. And you do it with the utmost arrogance, as if you were the messiah of equality. If you talked to people like that in real life, noone would give you the time of day. I know I wouldn't. > It might be worth taking a step back and asking yourself what other things you consider normal might actually be disrespectful. Have you ever tried this yourself?
  • dang 10y ago
    That commenter shouldn't have overstepped the civility line like that, but that doesn't mean you get to flout it altogether in reply. On the contrary, when replying to a bad comment, we need to be more civil, not less. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13194224 and marked it off-topic.
• mistermann 10y ago
  Wowza, maybe they do have a problem. I'm not sure I agree with all of the complaints there but it does seem they have at least some genuine issues that should be addressed. Just being completely honest, this reinforces my general opinion to be very cautious around females, avoiding it where possible is probably a wise idea.
  • foldr 10y ago
    Being honest about your sexism doesn't make it any better.
    • mistermann 10y ago
      I dunno, to me it's more of a generational problem than a gender one, I'm just advocating keeping a safe distance from one of the most lethal weapons until society regains some sense of sanity.
      • digler999 10y ago
        I think you an adrienne need to have a talk
        • adrienne 10y ago
          What makes you think i want to talk to someone who has gross opinions about women? Fuck that. Got better things to do. (It's pretty clear you're implying that i'm a man-hater or some similar sexist bullshit. I have no idea what your problem is with me, but whatever.)
          • digler999 10y ago
            absolutely not. I made pro-feminist stances in this thread and recommended you to help deconstruct his sexist notions.
            • 10y ago
• yuhong 10y ago
  Harassment laws are probably not as bad as anti-discrimination laws, but I do question whether they are really needed. I remember this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11666857
• Nomentatus 10y ago
  I can't be certain whether this affected this particular case at all, but note that Northern Indian English isn't American or British English. The vocabulary is similar (not in fact identical), but emphasis of all kinds is handled entirely differently. In fact, oppositely. In Hindi and Northern Indian English PAUSES show emphasis, whereas increases in volume (for a given word) are syntactically determined and have absolutely no semantic meaning or significance whatsoever. In American English, pauses are almost always mechanically/syntactically determined and carry no meaning, but increasing the volume for a given word shows emphasis. This EASILY leads to extreme and sudden misunderstandings in both directions, as each side sees very obvious sarcasm and emphasis where none was intended. They're both sure they're right and that they are speaking the same language, but outside of print, these are two separate languages. Since it's more recent, the Northern Indian English vocabulary has a cleaner logic, so personally if I had to chose just one, I'd go with that, but that's neither here nor there. Long years ago, I attended a lecture by, I believe, the first scholar to experimentally demonstrate this and publish it; and the recorded examples of ordinary real-life interactions (not staged) taking place in British businesses that he used to illustrate the lecture were extremely striking; in fact very explosive. In case this seems like something anyone would notice - in fact it's beneath notice. Similarly, the semantic use of tones in Chinese was denied by scholars there for something like hundreds of years, before finally being acknowledged. Language is handled unconsciously for the most part.
• pineapplesauce 10y ago
  this is an interesting perspective on tech and women in tech.
• Reese1379 10y ago
  It would be interesting hearing the other side of the argument before passing judgement. "business conduct policy" http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/0x0x443008/5f38b1e6-2f9c-4518-b691-13a29ac90501/business_conduct_policy.pdf http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/0x0x443008/5f38b...