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Surveillance company harassed female employees using its own facial recognition
- londons_explore 6y agoIt's time we started separating actions that are illegal from those which violate company policy. Illegal actions should be dealt with by the police and the courts. Apart from providing evidence, the company should stay out of things. Company policy violations should be dealt with by the company as they see fit, including no punishment at all, or even a bonus! In this case, the article criticizes the company for not sufficiently punishing people for their actions, when clearly it's a matter for law enforcement not the company.
- henriquez 6y agoDevil’s advocate, what about this conduct was criminal? It seems abhorrent to me, but most likely a civil matter.
- markstos 6y agoIn the United States, sexual harrassment is illegal. https://www.eeoc.gov/sexual-harassment https://www.eeoc.gov/sexual-harassment The parent wasn't claiming it definitely was, so much as expressing that the police and courts are appropriate parties to determine the legality, beyond what actions the company itself may take for violating internal policies.
- jahewson 6y agounlawful != illegal
- henriquez 6y agoSexual harassment is illegal, but the conduct described here doesn't sound _criminal._ The police are only relevant when it comes to enforcing criminal law. Workplace discrimination policies are typically enforced under the authority of a state or federal regulatory agency with _civil_ penalties (aka. getting sued into next Sunday). Many people see how problematic it is to increase the surface area of police enforcement, which carries the threat of physical violence. Is it really necessary to resolve workplace disputes with armed state agents?
- meheleventyone 6y agoIllegal actions are normally company policy violations as well though.
- argomo 6y agoThe average HR department is highly motivated to avoid lawsuits of this kind. Police departments, by contrast, have no liability if they get it wrong. Officers themselves are disproportionately male and have traditional/regressive upbringings (as demonstrated by the high prevalence of domestic abuse against officer spouses). Then too, we must consider the rights of the accused. Simply being arrested can be a huge life-altering event. Being docked pay or fired is more proportional to the size of the infraction. And society needs a gradient of responses: not every offense should consumer the resources of the police and the courts... that simply doesn't scale, and it's not a humane solution.
- zajio1am 6y agoFrom rights of the accused point it seems that handling these issues by police seems much better, as criminal justice have established rules to protect accused (e.g. including 'beyond a reasonable doubt' evidence level) that seems to be lacking in these extrajudicional punishments.
- argomo 6y agoI see your point, but we aren't talking criminal behavior here with criminal consequences and criminal standards of proof. Businesses can decide you are a liability and/or reputational risk without a jury.
- zajio1am 6y agoDepend on jurisdiction. In many countries there is no at-will employment and you need a legally valid reason and procedure to terminate someone's employment.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> llegal actions should be dealt with by the police and the courts. Apart from providing evidence, the company should stay out of things. Illegal actions often violate company policy. Indeed, there are often legal mandates that company policies must also effectively address illegal conduct or else the company will be liable for the conduct.
- jmull 6y agoThere’s no clear separating line, though. Generally, illegal things done while on the job or representing the company are also against company policy. I’m not sure how it could possibly be different. Companies should be able to develop policies about things that affect their business and employees, which obviously includes illegal behavior.
- tester34 6y agoWhat does it mean? >RawVerkadawgz
- chandra381 6y agoRaw-dogging is a slang term for unprotected sexual intercourse
- Lammy 6y ago> After the Slack incident was reported to HR, Verkada CEO Filip Kaliszan gave employees in the Slack channel a choice: leave the company or have their stock options reduced. Leave the company, or have slightly less of something already worth zero? What a “fuck you” non-response to those women.
- 0goel0 6y agoThis is objectively the wrong way to handle sexual harassment. It only benefits the company by reclaiming some of the options and the harassers who lose nothing (and hence learn nothing).
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- JoeAltmaier 6y agoAgreed. Years ago when I worked at Unisys, it was reported to HR that upon leaving an interview at our Training department the candidate overheard "We don't need any bitches working here!" and general laughter. That was Friday. On Monday morning that Training department didn't exist. All 6 employees dismissed instantly; the department functions farmed out to different groups. Some of those employees had worked there for a decade. But at a startup 10 years later, after interviewing a recent graduate from the local college I asked our VP Engineering if she was a fit. He replied "Did you see the guys around her? If I hired her, we'd get nothing done around here!" I was appalled. He later became an executive at Carbonite.
- Fnoord 6y agoNot sure I understand this correct. Those 6 people got fired for laughing at an inappropriate joke? Was it proven they all laughed? I'd focus on the leader/troublemaker. My aunt once accused me of laughing at my grandmother's funeral. I don't remember, but I certainly meant to only be respectful at the funeral.
- theptip 6y agoLook up the “shocking rule” principle from Horowitz’s “What you do is who you are”. Sometimes you need to take a dramatic action to make it clear what your culture is (or what you want it to be). It’s perhaps unfair to one of those 6 who was hypothetically just being polite and pretending to laugh along. But you can bet the rest of the org got the message loud and clear. Sadly with entrenched -isms like sexism, it seems to require a drastic action like this to really make a change in org culture. It’s really hard to “make the company less sexist” if there is an entrenched bias among employees. And you may just need to fire a bunch of otherwise good people to get rid of it.
- CaptainZapp 6y ago"In a statement emailed to The Verge, a Verkada spokesperson said: “Verkada does not tolerate sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior. This isolated incident was investigated and all individuals involved were disciplined accordingly." So, it was investigated by deleting the evidence? Stellar company!
- bronson 6y agoThe perpetrators still have their jobs and the women they harassed still have to work with them. It seems Verkada actually does tolerate sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.
- jimmaswell 6y agoThis is a sad example of needless extremism where anything short of the nuclear option just isn't good enough.
- CaptainZapp 6y agoWe may disagree here, but this is such egregious behavior that I, for one, only see the nuclear option for such a case. But as long the money roles in investors don't give a shit.
- chandra381 6y agoNeedless extremism? Tell me, if something similar happened in your company, or god forbid, to somebody on your team, what would you like to happen?
- jimmaswell 6y agoThey got the biggest financial penalty in the history of the company apparently, and I'm sure more actions not mentioned here.
- andyroid 6y ago
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- throwaway0a5e 6y agoSo a company that sells to an industry that is primarily a blue collar boys club hires sales associates for culture fit (with the industry they are selling into) and then acts surprised when they abuse internal resources for amusement and make wisecracks that are wildly out of line for most white collar business environments. The company is just acting shocked about the gambling to appease the public. Everyone knew something like this was bound to happen eventually. The cultures just aren't compatible.
- faitswulff 6y agoPainting blue collar workers as inherently sexist is classist. There are plenty of blue collar workers who are respectful human beings.
- fhood 6y agoExactly, what "class" they were should have nothing to do with it, they should have been fired and that should have been the end of it.
- delecti 6y agoNot to mention the reverse; there are plenty of very public stories about very sexist white collar workplaces.
- justinclift 6y agoAlso, nurses are apparently extremely "out there" culture wise. Source: several friends (mostly female, some male) who are nurses. Their environments sound deeply toxic, and super political.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoEveryone who's ever worked blue collar knows exactly what I mean. These people aren't any more racist or sexist or whatever than anyone else. They're just willing to crack jokes about a hell of a lot of stuff that would make most white collar employees cringe. In a blue collar work place welders are dumb, electricians are gay, jokes about wives and girlfriends are fair game and a suction cup didlo is a tool of endless comedic potential, not a HR disaster waiting to happen. And the overwhelming majority of the time nobody takes any of that seriously or gets offended by any of it. It's just how the culture is.
- corobo 6y agoIf anyone ever needs a solid example of how sexism is just swept under a rug this company's response is perfect for that
- haunter 6y agoSo they can't even stop not abusing it inside the company but they also sure have to give the technology to the governments and everyone...
- raxxorrax 6y agoWell, if I worked for a surveillance company, I would expect my co-workers to be dubious at least. I wonder why they use slack to post images. What went wrong when employees were trained on handling personal data? Would they also post images of clients on a slack channel? This paints a clear picture. There should not be a place in anything IT that regularly handles confidential information. This might have been the sales team, but especially in their industry it should be dogmatically condemned. Trust is key in security and sadly the industry has become a shame for anything remotely connected to tech and nobody gets any safer here. edit: "sales athletes" - talent: talking shit?
- soco 6y agoIf there's a common thread in all these IT security oriented companies stories, is that they'll abuse their power. By mistake or by business plan, covertly or in the open, it just seems to keep on happening... We are talking on one hand about software development ethics and codes of conduct, and on the other hand... all this flaming mess.
- walrus01 6y agoThis is something like the 30th or 40th time I've seen a documented instance of toxic "bro" culture in sales/marketing groups. I think there is a lot to be said for the business plan concept of intentionally NOT hiring "sales" people who come from a traditional sales/marketing background. Have a compelling product and website marketing material about it that doesn't require outbound sales efforts to go hunt down the customers. My personal theory is that aggressive outbound sales attracts the sort of personality that may be more likely to engage in many possible manners of outlandish behaviour. Yes, you might be leaving some money on the table, but you'll also have a better corporate culture as a whole.
- fhood 6y agoI don't think that is fair. It may be true but it isn't fair, and to me, the proper response is to have an absolute zero tolerance policy on this sort of thing. If you are harassing women or really anybody at your workplace you should be fired, and the employer should make it extremely clear that that is their policy. I don't think you should exclude someone from the hiring pool because they have a background in the job they want to do.
- 8ytecoder 6y agoYeah, I have seen it too. I have lost the number of times I have had negative interactions with someone only to realise they work in sales. This is not going to 100% accurate but just how I see the parallels between bully/victim culture from high school transforming into workplace. Sales adds value but is also highly rent seeking. The pay for sales executives is no way in proportion to the contribution of you look at it holistically. Because they bring in the “actual” dollars, sales get paid a lot more than the engineers and product people who build the actual product.
- daniellarusso 6y agoMy current employer is wanting to have a Slack costume party this week. Only the sales team has shown any enthusiasm for participating.
- Chris2048 6y agoSo, the main question: why does a sales director have access to the security cameras? The culture, behaviour etc aside, that's the question I'd be asking this company.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago>why does a sales director have access to the security cameras? So he can show off a real world use case to people who might buy it. He obviously can't be showing off client's installations.
- xnyan 6y agoSo, you have a test setup. In addition to violating the privacy of the employee, I assume you could see the employee workstation and whatever information of an actual client that may be on screen.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoI never said there weren't other ways to accomplish the same goal.
- michaelt 6y agoProbably easier to make the sale if you demonstrate a relaxed, unconcerned attitude towards camera privacy - "Of course your employees won't mind being spied on, ours don't!"
- Nextgrid 6y agoPresumably to demonstrate the product? I guess they have to "pinky swear" they'll only lookup people with their consent, but there was nothing technically preventing them from looking up anyone. On a similar note, I had a UK credit referencing agency salesman contact me and try to sell me their product; as part of the sales pitch he gave me credentials to their web UI and encouraged me to try it out; on there I saw their other leads' credit reports (including mine, which was empty as expected) and their trial attempts at looking up other companies, and had the possibility to look up any company or individual as long as I pinky-promised I had their consent, and even if I did have their consent, that data would still be exposed to anyone else having access to this demo account.
- grafelic 6y ago> Verkada board chairman Hans Robertson has said publicly that he intentionally hired a team of “sales athletes,” and Verkada’s strategy is to “make the culture really fun.” Surveillance is not fun, it is serious business and doesn't deserve a "fun" culture. I guess from a surveilor business' point of view it is a rather effective way to numb the inner critic of your employees.
- raxxorrax 6y agoSurveillance should not be a business at all because violations are always intrinsic to the application.
- klmadfejno 6y agoI don't have any particular knowledge of this company (although at a glance, I probably hate them?). But at a glance I think people don't have a good sense for sales. I've seen maybe a dozen small-mid size company sales operations. Many sales cultures are pretty insane. Many hires don't have much experience or just kind of end up in sales. Sales groups tend to be run extremely competitively against themselves, with high compensation that would likely surprise outsiders, especially for people with no paper credentials that say they're skilled. It's common to find yourself with a bunch of 20 year olds suddenly being told their gods gift and it's not really that surprising when they go cocky with their power, not unlike tech bros in similar situations. edit: Just to be clear, that's not an excuse for any of the behaviors discussed
- faitswulff 6y agoI would ask "why are they surveilling their own employees? Why don't they have responsible, limited access to the technology?" but then I think if they had any issues with doing so they probably wouldn't be in the business in the first place.
- klmadfejno 6y agoI mean let's not make it more complex than it needs to be. It happened because they're assholes.
- pwinnski 6y agoI wonder how long it will be before the company changes its name as a result of the bad reputation from this incident. Any surveillance company, scratch that, any company run by Filip Kaliszan should not be in business. Any company with Hans Robertson on the board should be avoided. They really shouldn't be able to change the company name to hide their guilt. They should be seeking other lines of work, out of the surveillance industry forever. People worry about a culture that doesn't seem to allow for grace, but this is the sort of case that seems appropriate. There's no real recognition of fault here, and the affected women are still forced to work alongside their harassers. Horrific!
- ReptileMan 6y ago>I wonder how long it will be before the company changes its name as a result of the bad reputation from this incident. Never. People and organizations that purchase that kind of software just don't give a fuck.
- pwinnski 6y agoI wish I disagreed, but I suspect you're right.
- chandra381 6y agoI think after this their reputation is toast.. absolutely nobody will want to work there.
- bluntfang 6y agoUnfortunately the people who don't have much of a choice will work there and be unable to leave because missing a paycheck means possible eviction.
- chandra381 6y agoUnfortunately too true
- aaron695 6y agoAnyone who reads an article on The Verge and thinks they truly understand what actually happened internally is an awful person that I hope never has responsibility over other human beings. There is nothing in this article that might help you understand what happened. There is nothing in the articles it is based on. To judge just on this information makes you a bad person who likes to hurt others.
- chandra381 6y agoSounds like you work at Verkada lmaooo
- thinkingemote 6y ago1/10 you really need to put more effort into this. There is nothing in your comment that might help people understand what happened except abuse. So, to be charitable, if you were trying to help people to steer people to new understanding, this fails as there's nothing in your comment that is of any positive or encouraging value.
- driverdan 6y agoOriginal source: https://ipvm.com/reports/verkada-culture https://ipvm.com/reports/verkada-culture All of the bro's involved in that Slack chat should have been immediately fired. No form of sexual harassment should be tolerated.
- everdrive 6y ago“Face match… find me a squirt,” What exactly is a squirt?
- notdang 6y agoIn Mexico it's a soda drink. Very popular for mixing with alcohol. http://grupopenafiel.com.mx/bebida/squirt/ http://grupopenafiel.com.mx/bebida/squirt/
- randycupertino 6y agoIn the context of the slack channel name "raw dawgz" which is intercourse without protection, squirt in this context is probably referencing male ejaculation.
- kelvin0 6y agoIt's almost a universal law, if there's a loophole or way to do something the 'wrong' way, someone, somewhere will find a way to abuse it.
- nipponese 6y agoOff the topic, props to Slack for making sure deleted channels stay deleted!
- jiveturkey 6y agonot really. you can configure your paid account to record all history permanently. this isn't a case of props at all. just a case of tier-locked features.
- LatteLazy 6y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace
- BuildTheRobots 6y ago> “This investigation found that one person was responsible for instigating the incident and nine other members of the team were part of the Slack channel. By the time we became aware of it, the Slack channel had been deleted; we attempted to recover it but were unable to... I find this slightly worrying. We use the free tier of slack (which in itself is a bone of contention), one of the big problems being that there's only a 10,000 message history available to users so useful information quite often drops out of view. That said, Slack have specific admin tools to deal with harassment and bullying. Even on the free tier it's possible to contact them and ask for this history, even if it's been deleted by a user and even if it's past the 10,000 limit. The fact they can't get the chat log strikes me as suspicious.
- Mandatum 6y agoMy guess is they did an edit then delete, or it was deleted more than X months ago. This level of logging is really expensive and likely only enabled on Enterprise tiers.
- BuildTheRobots 6y agoI'm almost certain it's not. In the UK I'd assume there's GDPR requirements that mean they need to keep track of it. I also contacted them a couple of years ago after we had a bullying issue and no history of it; Slack confirmed that they had the history and that they could give it to us, but as it would be PMs, they'd have to inform every member of the workspace when they did.
- Consultant32452 6y agoI'm apparently old and a quick Google search wasn't helpful. What does "find me a a squirt" mean? And how could this person have known that "find me a squirt" would return an employee?
- randycupertino 6y agoIn the context of the slack channel name being "raw dawgz" which refers to intercourse without protection, squirt in this context is probably referencing male ejaculation.
- jiveturkey 6y ago> I imposed the largest financial penalty in our company’s history on the instigator $0 in zero-valued stock options? I guess technically that is likely the truthfully largest penalty ever because it's unlikely that they have ever imposed any financial penalty on any employee. Or, they do have a policy of imposing financial penalties on employees ... I don't know which is worse. That said, the zero tolerance being advocated here is not helpful. Based on the story alone, it's not as if the women involved were directly being harassed/assaulted. This is more a case of locker room banter. It's actually lucky this happened in the way it did (ie, with evidence) so that it could be nipped in the bud before possibly escalating. OTOH, Verkada could have and should have done much better than what they did. It doesn't even amount to a slap on the wrist. Does anyone even believe that the discipline amounted to more than "don't get caught next time"? Laughable. An event like this, for a company like, isn't simply an internal matter. There are predictable public-facing repercussions. They have a lot more space between "nothing" (their response) and firing. Well, the CEO has essentially no proper experience in real companies; only the ones he founded. But, he seems like a smart guy and should know better than this.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]