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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

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.
AdieuToLogic 10y ago
Here is a haiku I wrote recently. As with any, it may not be applicable, relevant, well written, or discoverable: Do not fear mistakes. Fear instead those who hide them. They will consume you.
anonymous_anon 10y ago
Just for context, I'm a man, and I'm very sorry this happened to you. This is a problem in cultures all over the world, and as a species, we simply have to do better. I have two female relatives who work in tech and both of them have had experiences very similar to yours. Sadly, the younger of my two relatives has had this experience at more than 1 company. Your post highlights a critical issue: the near total lack of visible justice for the victims. So let me tell you about the invisible justice that gets meted out. This doesn't excuse what happened to you, but I want you to know that there are people who are trying to address this issue in a way that provides significant financial and professional consequences to the perpetrators. As a manager, it's far easier for me to quietly - dare I say silently - kill someone's career at the company by dead ending them than it is for me to ever do anything formal. With respect to HR, most managers have about as much power as the average employee, which is to say that we can just as quickly end up on the wrong side of the fence as the person being harassed. HR is not our friend either! Therefore, in the case of ordinary harassment, the best thing an employee can do is find a quiet way to put a manager on notice that something is wrong. Then a manager can start watching. We can proactively go through emails. We can start looking for bad behavior while the perpetrator has no idea, and we have the power to use quiet, offhand remarks to make the perpetrators paranoid. We can reassign employees to different work, and we can take work away from them that they really enjoy. I recently punished a loud-mouthed developer by taking him off a feature that he originated and giving it someone else. Yeah, his work was excellent, but it's always easy to find justifications once I know that I have to act. Men with sexist ideas about how the world should operate, or men who believe that bullying other employees is acceptable, need to understand a few things. When they just can't seem to get that promotion, and feel like they're constantly sand-bagged by their manager, it's very likely because their manager is doing invisible damage control. HR doesn't know. Their manager's manager doesn't know. They don't know, and even if they suspect, there's no way they can ever prove it because there's no paper trail. As a manager, I stop mentoring these guys for promotions and start teaching their well-behaved coworkers instead so that I have a nice slate of well-prepared employees for promotion season. Even though most of this is invisible, it's happening and it costs these men tens of thousands of dollars over the two and three years they spend waiting for promotions that never come. It's incredibly easy to take someone's excellent technical work and find fault with it for any number of reasons. Yes, this strategy uses some of the same tactics as the perpetrators, but I learned a long time ago that bullies and sexists don't care about rules. So why should I? Yeah, eventually a bully leaves and some of them get a higher salary elsewhere, but they don't get to leave with a better resume. They don't leave with that title. And make no mistake, their new employer figures them out pretty fast and the same thing happens.

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.

AdieuToLogic 10y ago

Here is a haiku I wrote recently. As with any, it may not be applicable, relevant, well written, or discoverable: Do not fear mistakes. Fear instead those who hide them. They will consume you.

anonymous_anon 10y ago

Just for context, I'm a man, and I'm very sorry this happened to you. This is a problem in cultures all over the world, and as a species, we simply have to do better. I have two female relatives who work in tech and both of them have had experiences very similar to yours. Sadly, the younger of my two relatives has had this experience at more than 1 company. Your post highlights a critical issue: the near total lack of visible justice for the victims. So let me tell you about the invisible justice that gets meted out. This doesn't excuse what happened to you, but I want you to know that there are people who are trying to address this issue in a way that provides significant financial and professional consequences to the perpetrators. As a manager, it's far easier for me to quietly - dare I say silently - kill someone's career at the company by dead ending them than it is for me to ever do anything formal. With respect to HR, most managers have about as much power as the average employee, which is to say that we can just as quickly end up on the wrong side of the fence as the person being harassed. HR is not our friend either! Therefore, in the case of ordinary harassment, the best thing an employee can do is find a quiet way to put a manager on notice that something is wrong. Then a manager can start watching. We can proactively go through emails. We can start looking for bad behavior while the perpetrator has no idea, and we have the power to use quiet, offhand remarks to make the perpetrators paranoid. We can reassign employees to different work, and we can take work away from them that they really enjoy. I recently punished a loud-mouthed developer by taking him off a feature that he originated and giving it someone else. Yeah, his work was excellent, but it's always easy to find justifications once I know that I have to act. Men with sexist ideas about how the world should operate, or men who believe that bullying other employees is acceptable, need to understand a few things. When they just can't seem to get that promotion, and feel like they're constantly sand-bagged by their manager, it's very likely because their manager is doing invisible damage control. HR doesn't know. Their manager's manager doesn't know. They don't know, and even if they suspect, there's no way they can ever prove it because there's no paper trail. As a manager, I stop mentoring these guys for promotions and start teaching their well-behaved coworkers instead so that I have a nice slate of well-prepared employees for promotion season. Even though most of this is invisible, it's happening and it costs these men tens of thousands of dollars over the two and three years they spend waiting for promotions that never come. It's incredibly easy to take someone's excellent technical work and find fault with it for any number of reasons. Yes, this strategy uses some of the same tactics as the perpetrators, but I learned a long time ago that bullies and sexists don't care about rules. So why should I? Yeah, eventually a bully leaves and some of them get a higher salary elsewhere, but they don't get to leave with a better resume. They don't leave with that title. And make no mistake, their new employer figures them out pretty fast and the same thing happens.