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Apple employees petition demanding investigation into ‘misogynistic’ new hire

50 points by champagnepapi 5y ago

Calvin02 5y ago
Apple hiring a former Facebook ad products product manager, expanding its ads product suite, and expanding ads slots says more about how they see Facebook than the privacy changes they've made. Ads is a services market that is growing fast and as the phone market saturates, services will become more important for Apple. This will also help reduce the margin pressure on iPhone hardware.
- Traubenfuchs 5y ago
  How can anything ad related still be growing if most people either trained their brain to ignore/close ads instantly or use adblockers?
  - SirSourdough 5y ago
    Because good advertising still impacts you even if you “know to ignore it”, and there’s lots of ways to advertise to people that aren’t ads in the classic sense. I suspect that adblocker usage is also a lot lower than you expect, with a quick Google showing less than half of people worldwide using adblockers on desktop and adoption below 20% for mobile devices in the US. So there’s still a broad market to target.
    - jxramos 5y ago
      I discovered recently that eventually they catch you through persistence. Like YouTube ads, I was busy in another window and couldn't skip the add without interrupting something I was doing which couldn't be interrupted. So I wound up inadvertently listening to the ad, and they said some interesting stuff that make me pan back to the ad and watch it. Eventually ads catch you at an inopportune time, which is inopportune for you, but opportune for them.
sanity31415 5y ago
> His hiring “calls into question parts of our system of inclusion at Apple, including hiring panels, background checks, and our process to ensure our existing culture of inclusion is strong enough to withstand individuals who don’t share our inclusive values,” they write. So they want to exclude someone for having different opinions to them, in the name of inclusivity? Clown world.
- MyHypatia 5y ago
  I think the clown world is hiring someone who wrote: “Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.” It's especially ironic after an epidemic plague where 70% of health care workers are women. But I guess they're mostly useless baggage who are full of shit. Unlike this guy. See, he really understands how the world is and is just "telling it like it is". Let's trade all these useless women for shotgun shells, and hire people like this guy instead.
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    Yet I see companies like Cisco announcing mental health days for their utterly broken employees.
    - rasputnik6502 5y ago
      Brilliant, now we announce you take mental health break for a week. Let the whole company know how we care about you. What? Not accepting would be disgraceful, sorry I insist you take it and get better NOW.
  - kbelder 5y ago
    Yeah, he should have included Bay Area men in that assessment.
  - 5y ago
mgamache 5y ago
It's not like Apple is making money from misogynistic music or supports a regime that enforces female sterilization. As long as Apple employees to have a safe space from offensive ideas and people all is okay.
- zoeysaurusrex 5y ago
  So you think women should feel okay working alongside someone who thinks they are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit? It's not about safe spaces or offensive ideas. It's about enabling sexism and racism to freely propagate while telling minority groups that it isn't harmful despite past experience.
  - mgamache 5y ago
    I was just pointing out the myopic hypocrisy of the complaint. Also, women are not a minority group, but I would say that if he's hired to do a job at a company he should be held to the same standards as any other employee. If he acts in ways that are outside the standards set by the company he should be fired. If the company rules don't allow for sexism, there will be none enabled. I think pre-screening employees based on their speech is a road to nowhere. I don't know where the racism part came from did I miss that in the article?
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Women are a minority of workers at most tech firms.
      - mgamache 5y ago
        Right, men are a minority in many fields (like Biology) but you would not call them a 'minority' group.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        I would (and will!) definitely call men a minority in fields where men are the minority and face discrimination.
legostormtroopr 5y ago
This was buried in the article, but James Danmore is racist now. > notorious ex-Googler James Damore, who suggest this is because women and people of color lack the innate qualities needed to succeed in tech. It seems that people just keep tacking on “sins” to see what sticks to people’s reputations regardless of the facts. Was there anything in Danmores article that even mentioned people of color?
- mgamache 5y ago
  'notorious' is a Russell Conjugation unless it The Notorious B.I.G. https://tomdehnel.com/what-is-russell-conjugation/ https://tomdehnel.com/what-is-russell-conjugation/
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > lack the innate qualities needed to succeed in tech James Damore never said anything of the sort. He was concerned that women might feel excluded in an engineering-focused environment and be less likely to seek such a role because of the different aggregation of preferences and inclinations among women as opposed to men. He said zilch about quality or potential for success, or for that matter about any individual woman (as opposed to aggregate trends and their influence on 'big picture' stats).
- ceph_ 5y ago
  His doc repeatedly said programs that are aimed at a helping women and people of color should be ended. And that diversity of gender and race should not be a goal. I don't think it's a big leap.
  - rasputnik6502 5y ago
    Many years ago a big tech company opened a new office in my city and started recruiting developers at my university. They wanted to be fair and treat both sexes equally so they decided on male/female parity (at least 30% women). But on my year (computer science) there were just 3 gals vs 30 guys, but there were groups with even worse ratio. So the company hired all female students they could and then started looking outside. Even hired some girls from biology (qualifications weren't that important) because they had to fill in female positions, so then they could give offers to male programmers. Felt pretty bad, this was certainly one of such programs you mentioned
rasputnik6502 5y ago
Something bad is happening to companies, they become full of shit because of nothing. Isn't there a difference between expressing unpopular opinions and actually abusing or attacking people? Or thoughtcrime is becoming punishable? Someone is working hard on adding fuel to misogyny
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  Since when can you not judge a person on what they write in a published book? This isn’t “crime”, nobody is claiming it’s illegal. But it’s still sexist and flat out wrong to essentially say that most women are worthless, and it’s perfectly reasonable not to want to work with or for someone who demonstrates such sexist thinking and poor judgement.
  - rasputnik6502 5y ago
    You can judge as much as you want. But organizing a mob with pitchforks to attack the author and teach them a lesson is not exactly harmless. Or your 'judging' is more like 'lynching'
    - SirSourdough 5y ago
      Saying that a person shouldn’t be hired into a prominent position where they will likely manage women on the basis that that person has said women are worthless is nothing like lynching.
      - rasputnik6502 5y ago
        Not exactly lynching, not exactly calling, not exactly women, not exactly worthless. Likely to be abusive or hostile towards women because he did what? Any cases from the past? Or is the book title 'Mein Kampf'?
        dang 5y ago
        We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments. That's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
MyHypatia 5y ago
A person who wrote that Bay Area women are "soft", "weak" "useless baggage" that "should be traded for shotgun shells" should not be entrusted with a position where he evaluates other people's job performance.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  The article quotes one of those Bay Area woman in tech who finds her job and life "exhausting." A common affliction. Why are these strong Bay Area women so exhausted all the time?
  - SirSourdough 5y ago
    Are you implying that men in tech in the Bay Area don’t find their jobs exhausting? There are posts by men from the Bay Area talking about burn out on HN every day. Now imagine you are a woman in an industry dominated by men, a significant portion of whom make sly, lightly veiled sexist comments (like yours seems to be) all the time. Wouldn’t that make it even more exhausting than it is for the men?
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      Maybe they'd be less exhausted if they focused on doing their job instead of complaining about men. People with some level of capability aren't the ones worried about being considered weak or useless and whining in public about how they are exhausted as if twitter was some kind of personal pity party. But what do I know, I live in SoCal. Which, I've observed, has more high quality women per capita than the Bay Area. I think it's because of the beaches.
      - SirSourdough 5y ago
        So much for lightly veiled... I think this comment is a perfect example of why women feel the need to speak out against sexism. They wouldn’t need to “complain” if people like you would just listen.
      - 5y ago
fortran77 5y ago
Unlike his critics, I read his book. I enjoyed it. I'd hire him.
- meinfuhrer 5y ago
  I think many are too quick to crucify the guy after reading a few quotes. I mean, I can see how some of those comments may be construed as misogynistic, but I would need to read the whole book to understand the context, and I'll definitely not pass judgement before doing that.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Nice username btw
jollybean 5y ago
I'm generally wary of cancel culture, but I don't even understand how a person could even really say such a thing i.e. 'women are useless and full of crap' let alone publish it. Forget the bigotry ... just the lack of self awareness is pretty crazy. I don't like the infusion of Damore however, that's a different discussion, I wish people would stop crossing streams on such an important subject, full of nuance in every direction. This guy's statements are of a different kind than Damores.
- chubbyish 5y ago
  Well because he didn’t write that. He is comparing Bay Area women to the Eastern European woman he is dating. Now find me a woman who hasn’t ever generalized about a difference between men from different backgrounds in jest.
string 5y ago
I really despise the term "inclusivity". This guy seems like a prick but I wish companies would be honest about what they are doing. "Inclusivity" means getting everyone to subscribe to a narrow corporate worldview. "Diversity" is similar, it's not about diversity of thought or experience, but rather of immutable characteristics which have no inherent value. I was recently asked to participate in a "community diversity and inclusivity survey". Not one question was concerned with freedom of expression or diversity of thought. It seems immutable characteristics are of paramount importance, or rather cynically, perhaps just the optics of their proportions are a valuable commodity. In a corporate setting neither inclusivity or diversity are at all what they purport to be.
chubbyish 5y ago
As usual, it’s taken out of context. He is comparing Bay Area girls to a girl he was sleeping with whose family moved here from Russia when she was a teenager and who “had spent years backpacking through jobs in rougher parts of the world”. This is the reference to “worldliness”. Being raised in the Bay Area compared to the experience of a family descended from Russia is of course going to result in a different upbringing and personality. I don’t think this is hard to argue with unless you are naive to history and have not spoken to those who lives through 20th century Eastern Europe. Ironic, as the lack of “worldliness” that those refute, is the same quality that prevents them from appreciating the sentiment in the quote.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
doopy1 5y ago
I haven't read the book, but the excerpts to me looks like someone writing some dark shit in a certain voice to entertain a certain type of reader. I see how people can think this stuff is in poor taste, but not sure I like a world where someone's "creative writing" (successful mind you) becomes grounds for dismissal from a completely unrelated job.
jpseawell 5y ago
I’m curious if they would petition Steve Jobs today if he were alive.
dang 5y ago
Under normal circumstances we might turn the flags off on this story because it's an incremental development in an interesting new phenomenon (employee activism influencing corporate decisions—is that a neutral enough way to put it?). In principle, it's on topic, as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html makes clear. But this thread is so wretched that it deserves every stigma we've got. All: if you're posting to this site to smite enemies, you're abusing it. That's not what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for. Please review the guidelines and use the site as intended, lest it burn to a crisp. Scorched earth, as I've been trying to tell people here for years, is not interesting—nor is it in any of our interests. This forum is only valuable to any of us to the degree that it can remain interesting and unpredictable. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- nomdep 5y ago
  Off topic, but your relentless efforts to make this site civil, even when I’m sure all of us consider ourselves to be that, makes me think about Basecamp. A company’s internal chat should have a moderator or forbid off-topic (meaning work-related) discussions. Doing neither is naive. Basecamp was right
yohijiyamamoto 5y ago
We've reached a point where white women can cancel a Hispanic man for speaking facts that they don't like. The quote about East Palo Alto being a crime central hood was absolutely correct 10-15 years ago. Ask anyone who went to high school during that time. And they use that quote to fire him? Woke people gonna woke to make themselves feel better. They are evil: deny and reject reality to make themselves feel better.

50 points by champagnepapi 5y ago

Apple hiring a former Facebook ad products product manager, expanding its ads product suite, and expanding ads slots says more about how they see Facebook than the privacy changes they've made. Ads is a services market that is growing fast and as the phone market saturates, services will become more important for Apple. This will also help reduce the margin pressure on iPhone hardware.

Traubenfuchs 5y ago
How can anything ad related still be growing if most people either trained their brain to ignore/close ads instantly or use adblockers?
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  Because good advertising still impacts you even if you “know to ignore it”, and there’s lots of ways to advertise to people that aren’t ads in the classic sense. I suspect that adblocker usage is also a lot lower than you expect, with a quick Google showing less than half of people worldwide using adblockers on desktop and adoption below 20% for mobile devices in the US. So there’s still a broad market to target.
  - jxramos 5y ago
    I discovered recently that eventually they catch you through persistence. Like YouTube ads, I was busy in another window and couldn't skip the add without interrupting something I was doing which couldn't be interrupted. So I wound up inadvertently listening to the ad, and they said some interesting stuff that make me pan back to the ad and watch it. Eventually ads catch you at an inopportune time, which is inopportune for you, but opportune for them.

sanity31415 5y ago

> His hiring “calls into question parts of our system of inclusion at Apple, including hiring panels, background checks, and our process to ensure our existing culture of inclusion is strong enough to withstand individuals who don’t share our inclusive values,” they write. So they want to exclude someone for having different opinions to them, in the name of inclusivity? Clown world.

MyHypatia 5y ago
I think the clown world is hiring someone who wrote: “Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.” It's especially ironic after an epidemic plague where 70% of health care workers are women. But I guess they're mostly useless baggage who are full of shit. Unlike this guy. See, he really understands how the world is and is just "telling it like it is". Let's trade all these useless women for shotgun shells, and hire people like this guy instead.
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  Yet I see companies like Cisco announcing mental health days for their utterly broken employees.
  - rasputnik6502 5y ago
    Brilliant, now we announce you take mental health break for a week. Let the whole company know how we care about you. What? Not accepting would be disgraceful, sorry I insist you take it and get better NOW.
- kbelder 5y ago
  Yeah, he should have included Bay Area men in that assessment.
- 5y ago

mgamache 5y ago

It's not like Apple is making money from misogynistic music or supports a regime that enforces female sterilization. As long as Apple employees to have a safe space from offensive ideas and people all is okay.

zoeysaurusrex 5y ago
So you think women should feel okay working alongside someone who thinks they are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit? It's not about safe spaces or offensive ideas. It's about enabling sexism and racism to freely propagate while telling minority groups that it isn't harmful despite past experience.
- mgamache 5y ago
  I was just pointing out the myopic hypocrisy of the complaint. Also, women are not a minority group, but I would say that if he's hired to do a job at a company he should be held to the same standards as any other employee. If he acts in ways that are outside the standards set by the company he should be fired. If the company rules don't allow for sexism, there will be none enabled. I think pre-screening employees based on their speech is a road to nowhere. I don't know where the racism part came from did I miss that in the article?
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Women are a minority of workers at most tech firms.
    - mgamache 5y ago
      Right, men are a minority in many fields (like Biology) but you would not call them a 'minority' group.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        I would (and will!) definitely call men a minority in fields where men are the minority and face discrimination.

legostormtroopr 5y ago

This was buried in the article, but James Danmore is racist now. > notorious ex-Googler James Damore, who suggest this is because women and people of color lack the innate qualities needed to succeed in tech. It seems that people just keep tacking on “sins” to see what sticks to people’s reputations regardless of the facts. Was there anything in Danmores article that even mentioned people of color?

mgamache 5y ago
'notorious' is a Russell Conjugation unless it The Notorious B.I.G. https://tomdehnel.com/what-is-russell-conjugation/ https://tomdehnel.com/what-is-russell-conjugation/
zozbot234 5y ago
> lack the innate qualities needed to succeed in tech James Damore never said anything of the sort. He was concerned that women might feel excluded in an engineering-focused environment and be less likely to seek such a role because of the different aggregation of preferences and inclinations among women as opposed to men. He said zilch about quality or potential for success, or for that matter about any individual woman (as opposed to aggregate trends and their influence on 'big picture' stats).
ceph_ 5y ago
His doc repeatedly said programs that are aimed at a helping women and people of color should be ended. And that diversity of gender and race should not be a goal. I don't think it's a big leap.
- rasputnik6502 5y ago
  Many years ago a big tech company opened a new office in my city and started recruiting developers at my university. They wanted to be fair and treat both sexes equally so they decided on male/female parity (at least 30% women). But on my year (computer science) there were just 3 gals vs 30 guys, but there were groups with even worse ratio. So the company hired all female students they could and then started looking outside. Even hired some girls from biology (qualifications weren't that important) because they had to fill in female positions, so then they could give offers to male programmers. Felt pretty bad, this was certainly one of such programs you mentioned

rasputnik6502 5y ago

Something bad is happening to companies, they become full of shit because of nothing. Isn't there a difference between expressing unpopular opinions and actually abusing or attacking people? Or thoughtcrime is becoming punishable? Someone is working hard on adding fuel to misogyny

SirSourdough 5y ago
Since when can you not judge a person on what they write in a published book? This isn’t “crime”, nobody is claiming it’s illegal. But it’s still sexist and flat out wrong to essentially say that most women are worthless, and it’s perfectly reasonable not to want to work with or for someone who demonstrates such sexist thinking and poor judgement.
- rasputnik6502 5y ago
  You can judge as much as you want. But organizing a mob with pitchforks to attack the author and teach them a lesson is not exactly harmless. Or your 'judging' is more like 'lynching'
  - SirSourdough 5y ago
    Saying that a person shouldn’t be hired into a prominent position where they will likely manage women on the basis that that person has said women are worthless is nothing like lynching.
    - rasputnik6502 5y ago
      Not exactly lynching, not exactly calling, not exactly women, not exactly worthless. Likely to be abusive or hostile towards women because he did what? Any cases from the past? Or is the book title 'Mein Kampf'?
      - dang 5y ago
        We've banned this account for posting flamewar comments. That's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

MyHypatia 5y ago

A person who wrote that Bay Area women are "soft", "weak" "useless baggage" that "should be traded for shotgun shells" should not be entrusted with a position where he evaluates other people's job performance.

SamReidHughes 5y ago
The article quotes one of those Bay Area woman in tech who finds her job and life "exhausting." A common affliction. Why are these strong Bay Area women so exhausted all the time?
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  Are you implying that men in tech in the Bay Area don’t find their jobs exhausting? There are posts by men from the Bay Area talking about burn out on HN every day. Now imagine you are a woman in an industry dominated by men, a significant portion of whom make sly, lightly veiled sexist comments (like yours seems to be) all the time. Wouldn’t that make it even more exhausting than it is for the men?
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    Maybe they'd be less exhausted if they focused on doing their job instead of complaining about men. People with some level of capability aren't the ones worried about being considered weak or useless and whining in public about how they are exhausted as if twitter was some kind of personal pity party. But what do I know, I live in SoCal. Which, I've observed, has more high quality women per capita than the Bay Area. I think it's because of the beaches.
    - SirSourdough 5y ago
      So much for lightly veiled... I think this comment is a perfect example of why women feel the need to speak out against sexism. They wouldn’t need to “complain” if people like you would just listen.
    - 5y ago

fortran77 5y ago

Unlike his critics, I read his book. I enjoyed it. I'd hire him.

meinfuhrer 5y ago
I think many are too quick to crucify the guy after reading a few quotes. I mean, I can see how some of those comments may be construed as misogynistic, but I would need to read the whole book to understand the context, and I'll definitely not pass judgement before doing that.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Nice username btw

jollybean 5y ago

I'm generally wary of cancel culture, but I don't even understand how a person could even really say such a thing i.e. 'women are useless and full of crap' let alone publish it. Forget the bigotry ... just the lack of self awareness is pretty crazy. I don't like the infusion of Damore however, that's a different discussion, I wish people would stop crossing streams on such an important subject, full of nuance in every direction. This guy's statements are of a different kind than Damores.

chubbyish 5y ago
Well because he didn’t write that. He is comparing Bay Area women to the Eastern European woman he is dating. Now find me a woman who hasn’t ever generalized about a difference between men from different backgrounds in jest.

string 5y ago

I really despise the term "inclusivity". This guy seems like a prick but I wish companies would be honest about what they are doing. "Inclusivity" means getting everyone to subscribe to a narrow corporate worldview. "Diversity" is similar, it's not about diversity of thought or experience, but rather of immutable characteristics which have no inherent value. I was recently asked to participate in a "community diversity and inclusivity survey". Not one question was concerned with freedom of expression or diversity of thought. It seems immutable characteristics are of paramount importance, or rather cynically, perhaps just the optics of their proportions are a valuable commodity. In a corporate setting neither inclusivity or diversity are at all what they purport to be.

chubbyish 5y ago

As usual, it’s taken out of context. He is comparing Bay Area girls to a girl he was sleeping with whose family moved here from Russia when she was a teenager and who “had spent years backpacking through jobs in rougher parts of the world”. This is the reference to “worldliness”. Being raised in the Bay Area compared to the experience of a family descended from Russia is of course going to result in a different upbringing and personality. I don’t think this is hard to argue with unless you are naive to history and have not spoken to those who lives through 20th century Eastern Europe. Ironic, as the lack of “worldliness” that those refute, is the same quality that prevents them from appreciating the sentiment in the quote.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

doopy1 5y ago

I haven't read the book, but the excerpts to me looks like someone writing some dark shit in a certain voice to entertain a certain type of reader. I see how people can think this stuff is in poor taste, but not sure I like a world where someone's "creative writing" (successful mind you) becomes grounds for dismissal from a completely unrelated job.

jpseawell 5y ago

I’m curious if they would petition Steve Jobs today if he were alive.

dang 5y ago

Under normal circumstances we might turn the flags off on this story because it's an incremental development in an interesting new phenomenon (employee activism influencing corporate decisions—is that a neutral enough way to put it?). In principle, it's on topic, as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html makes clear. But this thread is so wretched that it deserves every stigma we've got. All: if you're posting to this site to smite enemies, you're abusing it. That's not what HN is for, and it destroys what it is for. Please review the guidelines and use the site as intended, lest it burn to a crisp. Scorched earth, as I've been trying to tell people here for years, is not interesting—nor is it in any of our interests. This forum is only valuable to any of us to the degree that it can remain interesting and unpredictable. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

nomdep 5y ago
Off topic, but your relentless efforts to make this site civil, even when I’m sure all of us consider ourselves to be that, makes me think about Basecamp. A company’s internal chat should have a moderator or forbid off-topic (meaning work-related) discussions. Doing neither is naive. Basecamp was right

yohijiyamamoto 5y ago

We've reached a point where white women can cancel a Hispanic man for speaking facts that they don't like. The quote about East Palo Alto being a crime central hood was absolutely correct 10-15 years ago. Ask anyone who went to high school during that time. And they use that quote to fire him? Woke people gonna woke to make themselves feel better. They are evil: deny and reject reality to make themselves feel better.