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>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the v

• DanBC 10y ago
  > (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me.
  • golergka 10y ago
    > I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me. So you prefer preaching to the choir to trying to change someone's mind?
    • TorKlingberg 10y ago
      Are you saying victims of harassment have some duty to seek out and tell people who are unlikely to believe them or care?
      • Neliquat 10y ago
        If it clearly benefits current and future victims to be taken seriously and get any help they may need? Yes, in my opinion. But that is a much more personal ethics call.
        • st3v3r 10y ago
          Except telling someone like the OP who clearly is not the kind of person that would believe the victim or try to get any help, and instead launch into a cross examination isn't going to do that. All that's going to do is make the victim feel even worse, and possibly discourage her from getting help or reporting at all.
          • Consultant32452 10y ago
            The fundamental principle of the American justice system is that we should be skeptical of all claims of wrong-doing. The appropriate response to these claims is to ask for evidence and in its absence potentially educate the claimant on how to properly collect evidence. I'm sure there's a lot of legitimate claims out there, and most of them will not result in justice. However, rampant speculation based on Twitter anecdotes is never going to be helpful.
            • st3v3r 10y ago
              Except that's for the Justice System. Not normal people. The Justice System can take care of vetting evidence. Normal people are supposed to be supportive and stand up for those who come to them with stories like this one. And I'm sorry, but if someone comes to you and says that they've experienced the things in this story, and the first thing you do is ask for evidence, then you will be branded a monster, and rightfully so. You are telling that person, "I do not believe you; I think you are a liar." If someone comes to you with a story like this, you provide support to them. You console them. You ask them what you can do to help. You do not cross examine them, and make them feel terrible for coming to you.
              • Consultant32452 10y ago
                Different audiences. If you're a close friend or the HR person at the corporate office, then sure the first thing you do is console them. If you're the media or just general public, you ask for evidence before you socially/publicly crucify someone.
  • hueving 10y ago
    >Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? Putting aside the unjustified personal attack for a moment, even if they didn't tell me, they wouldn't need to for me to know these companies haven't had this problem. It was clear from the relatively high percentages of female engineers (20-30% for SV-centric companies, one as high as 40% that had branches in European countries with better female graduate ratios). More importantly, there was a very low rate of turnover and the turnover that was present matched that of the male employees. >I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me. So back to the personal attack. What specifically have I said that makes you think I wouldn't be a good person to talk to about a situation like this?
  • theWatcher37 10y ago
    What a hateful and oddly specific comment. "I've read your comments" Yeah, ok buddy
    • eropple 10y ago
      He's not wrong. 'hueving's comment history around here pushes an extreme-right-wing viewpoint that is cloaked in just enough civility to make the decent folks I know around here reconsider whether or not it's worth engaging with him. (Many don't, because it's exhausting to be alternative-facted to death.) I wouldn't expect a woman--or anyone--to tell me jack and/or shit if I was comfortable expressing worldviews that treat them the way 'hueving does. And it's not "hateful" to call out somebody whose hat is exactly that; 'DanBC (who is a fantastic poster around here) is not wrong to use the history of a poster to challenge his I-don't-see-it-so-it-doesn't-exist dismissals. As for "oddly specific," 'DanBC has been here longer than I have; you start recognizing names when the pattern of posts that make your gorge rise goes on as long as these have. But then, I spent a minute browsing your latest work, too, so I am not particularly surprised that in your post you choose to, as with most modern conservatives, attempt to call citing a reactionary's record "hate" when it is that reactionary's behavior that exemplifies it.
      • lovich 10y ago
        It's an aside from this conversation, but why do you put a ' in front of user names?
        • grzm 10y ago
          It's a way of denoting a user name, similar to how @ designates Twitter user names. I suspect ' is common on HN because ' designates a symbol in lisp.
          • eropple 10y ago
            I picked it up from 'tptacek, I think. @ didn't make sense, so...
          • 10y ago
• jordigh 10y ago
  > where a jury decided she was wrong. A jury didn't decide she was wrong. That's not what juries do. A jury decided that they couldn't all unanimously agree beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was right. Just because a jury doesn't convict doesn't mean the problem didn't happen. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/ellen-pao-and-the-sexism-you-cant-quite-prove.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/03/ellen-pao-and-t...
  • metaphorm 10y ago
    it was a civil suit, not a criminal trial. Ellen Pao was the plaintiff. The jury determined she didn't make a convincing case.
    • jordigh 10y ago
      Oh. Am I wrong in believing that even for a civil trial, the jury must be heavily biased towards the defendant? Does California require jury unanimity to reach a decision in a civil case?
      • metaphorm 10y ago
        according to this https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/200/200.html https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/200/200.h... the burden of proof is > A party must persuade you, by the evidence presented in court, that what he or she is required to prove is more likely to be true than not true. This is referred to as “the burden of proof.” After weighing all of the evidence, if you cannot decide that something is more likely to be true than not true, you must conclude that the party did not prove it. You should consider all the evidence, no matter which party produced the evidence. so in Ellen Pao's case, she (and her lawyers) could not convince the jury that her claim was more likely true than not true. In other words, she argued her case and was not persuasive enough. I'm not a lawyer though, and I don't know if there is a requirement for Jury unanimity or just simple majority.
        • aetherson 10y ago
• macrael 10y ago
  My feed is full of women saying that this kind of stuff is not unique to Uber. What's apparently remarkable is that all of this happened to her in one year.
  • eanzenberg 10y ago
    That's fine.. It just hurts NYT's article to lump Fowler and Pao together (BTW Pao case had nothing to do with sexual harrassment). IMO it would be a much stronger article if it just focused on Fowler.
• st3v3r 10y ago
  Except this kind of behavior is endemic to the industry. Just about every woman I know in the industry has a story similar to this. All over Twitter, women are sharing their similar stories. Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It means you haven't paid attention.
  • mcherm 10y ago
    Mild sexism is endemic to a portion of our industry. But I honestly have not previously encountered allegations on the level of "my boss propositioned me on my first day and HR said they wouldn't do anything". I would like to pay attention: we can't improve this problem unless we pay attention. If you would be willing to point me to a few examples of people making similar claims, I will commit to reading through them and trying to raise awareness of the issue within my own company.
    • Arizhel 10y ago
      >I would like to pay attention: we can't improve this problem unless we pay attention. What's this "we" business? Who's "we"? I don't know about you, but I'm an engineer. I am neither a manager, nor an executive, nor an HR goon. I accept no responsibility for the actions of people in those positions. Especially those useless HR people. We engineers are nothing more than low-level lackeys, rank-and-file employees who have zero power except to quit.
      • st3v3r 10y ago
        And that attitude makes you part of the problem.
        • Arizhel 10y ago
          Ok, fine. Please tell me exactly what I can do to help, and make sure it doesn't get me fired. Your turn. Let me guess; you don't have an answer, just your snide, pithy response.
      • 10y ago
• deleted 10y ago
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• asciimo 10y ago
  I'm curious, are you a man or a woman? I'm only asking because you cite your experience at 6 companies to support the assertion that this is not a widespread problem in SV. I assert that men would have a harder time detecting this problem.
  • ghthor 10y ago
    I've been transitioning from male to female, starting 4 years ago. It was shocking to me when I started making friends with girls and listening to their stories. At first I didn't empathize and presented arguments such as, "they had best intentions" or "it was just a misunderstanding". After having friends and my mind/body being transformed by estrogen I began to understand and empathize with my female friends; I began to see similarities in the stories they told me and how others interacted with me. My point being that its quite surprising how different experience can be and how important it is to listen to how others experience the world. Everyone experiences the world differently and it's important to take the time to understand how different or similar their experiences are.
    • asciimo 10y ago
      Thank you for sharing your rare perspective. > My point being that its quite surprising how different experience can be and how important it is to listen to how others experience the world. That's advice that I would normally accept as good, like a Ben Franklin quote. But coming from you it strikes me as especially valuable, especially in light of current events.
• cbtacy 10y ago
  Let me guess.... You're male, yeah? Sit down and be quiet please - you're not helping.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • Ixiaus 10y ago
    Sure, we'll all sit down and stop engaging in the issue... Nothing to do here, this is entirely a non-male's problem! Sarcasm aside, you're also not helping. Even if someone is off-base in their opinion or what they're writing, telling them to STFU is, in most cases, worse than their actual opinion.