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‘Misogynistic’ Apple hire is out hours after employees call for investigation
- prepend 5y agoIs this the book? Chaos Monkeys, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28259132 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28259132
- akalin 5y agoYes.
- gnicholas 5y agoWow apparently a NYT bestseller and NPR book of the year.
- hoka 5y agoBestseller in the publishing world is practically 'natural' in the food world.
- sp332 5y agoThere were 309 "NPR Best Books of the Year" in 2016. https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#view=covers&year=2016 https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#view=covers&year=2016 Here is the NYT review. It's not exactly glowing. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/business/dealbook/review-chaos-monkeys-is-a-guide-to-the-spirit-of-silicon-valley.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/business/dealbook/review-...
- prepend 5y agoIt seems the NYT review has an overall positive sentiment with statements like “irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.” It seems like there’s almost 300,000 books published in the US each year [0] so being on NPR’s list is pretty distinguished. So a better way would be to say it’s in the 99.9th percentile. [0] https://malwarwickonbooks.com/published-every-year/ https://malwarwickonbooks.com/published-every-year/
- Apocryphon 5y agoI wonder how it compares to The Accidental Billionaires, which was the basis for Sorkin's The Social Network.
- hoka 5y agoHow many murals or paintings of Steve Jobs are still on the Apple campus?
- umvi 5y agoCaltech cancelled Robert Millikan (the founder), so it wouldn't be unprecedented for Apple to cancel its founder(s) as well.
- hoka 5y agoI'll be happy if it happens, but I'm not holding my breath. Abuse is literally in their corporate DNA. I guess if his vitriol was universal, maybe that makes it more palatable than hate targeted at one group? What a world. And for the record, I'm not a fan of purity tests or waiting for Superman. Just because they haven't scrubbed Jobs doesn't mean they are unfit to have made this move.
- BalinKing 5y agoAnd Albert Ruddock (a donor and trustee, I think), to the point that they're renaming Ruddock House. Some of us are very unhappy about this decision, given that the name "Ruddock" has a much stronger association these days with the House than the person.
- TameAntelope 5y agoHow do you cancel someone who is already dead?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 5y ago> How do you cancel someone who is already dead? There’s thousands of years of “cancel culture” history of doing that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- diebeforei485 5y ago(1) It was interesting to see Apple employees organizing on Twitter. They don't really have any companywide chat or email lists, but some groups have a Slack (only for that group). (2) In the book he was comparing his pregnant British girlfriend to other women in the Bay Area, intended more to make her look good than others look bad. I don't think any malice was involved. (3) I hope he's getting some sort of severance, or hopefully he got a good signing bonus when he joined.
- jimmaswell 5y agoSeems like a bad path we're on where you can only have a job if you put forward exactly the right political or social views publically.
- semafour 5y agoBut doesn't that go both ways? It's a bad path if you are only allowed to post your thoughts on Twitter if you put forward exactly the right (according to you) political or social views publicly.
- jimmaswell 5y agoBoth are bad, yes.
- nobodyandproud 5y agoI mean, he wrote a book for the world to consume. This wasn’t a drunk tweet or post; nor some inappropriate if private email or message. I don’t have much sympathy for the fella.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- elliekelly 5y ago“She’s not like other girls” is a sexist thing to say and it isn’t a compliment. Even still, this: > Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit Is not really something that can be said “without malice” no matter the context.
- outside1234 5y agoWait, isn’t this the place where Steve Jobs was the founder? Don’t they still ritualistically tell every new hire that they will be lucky not to get fired?
- ivraatiems 5y agoI remember trying to read Chaos Monkeys because it sounded up my alley, and stopping a few chapters in because the author's tone, to be frank, made me think he was at least pretentious and at worst a psychopath. I'm not sure that's worth a firing from Apple, but based on the book, Popehat's rule of assholes* might be in play here. * Popehat's rule of assholes: From Popehat, https://twitter.com/popehat https://twitter.com/popehat, roughly stating "Assuming equal guilt, the system treats people who are assholes worse than people who are not." Edit to add: After reviewing his comments in parts of the book I didn't reach, and his apparent real-life behavior... yeah, no. Who would hire him?
- bliteben 5y agoI mean, seems like he was striving for being notable as as an asshole. Seems very much like he looked up to Edward Abbey and Hunter S Thompson.
- MyHypatia 5y agoIf the company had let him stay, how should it respond to female employees who bring up "Hey, this person wrote that women are useless baggage and he's going to evaluate me, determine my salary, and career opportunities here. Why should I stay?" Should all the women just quit? What's the point in staying? If this were written about men instead, I don't think male employees would stick around to watch their compensation suffer.
- ivraatiems 5y agoThis is pretty much what just happened at Basecamp - the owners made it clear who they did and did not value as people, and the people they didn't value (just over a third of the company) quit.
- cudgy 5y agoHow do you then handle a worker that claims white men are inherently racist? Or a worker that posts red-headed men are ugly and stupid? Or a worker that claims almost ex-military people are ignorant and violent? Do all workers who are men and ex-military have the right to demand their removal?
- zadokshi 5y agoBack in my days, people were judged by the value their work could could bring to the company, rather than based subjective assessments of subjective moral standards. This makes me feel old. Do you think we will ever return to a world where a builder (for example) would be chosen based on their competence in being able to build a house rather than based upon some potential social media controversy one builder might trigger compared to the other one. Some people just want a nice house.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- CommieBobDole 5y agoBut a big part of just about anyone's work with the company is working effectively with other people, some of whom are women. To continue your builder analogy, this is sort of like if you were going to hire a builder and you found that most of his social media posts were about how much he enjoyed building substandard houses and overcharging his customers.
- SmellTheGlove 5y ago> Some people just want a nice house. And there are people who can just as competently build a house who happen to not be assholes!
- madhadron 5y agoAnd if the builder started making inappropriate comments about my wife or daughter, he would be immediately fired. Nothing new there.
- ryanwhitney 5y agoOutside of the main quote that keeps showing up, he was also fairly creepy writing about women he worked with. > Unlike most women at Facebook (or in the Bay Area, really) she knew how to dress; forties-style, form-fitting dresses from neck to knee were her mainstay. > There were few women one would call conventionally attractive at Facebook. The few there were rarely if ever dressed for work with their femininity on display in the form of dresses and heels > If her look was supposed to disarm me, she needed either more cleavage or more charm. Sounds like not someone you'd want around if you're a company that wants to make people feel at all safe and comfortable in an office.
- p1necone 5y agoYeah, this is not acceptable behaviour in a workplace, and hasn't been for a long time. Calling his termination "cancel culture" is just buying into right wing conspiracy theories.
- wallfacer4 5y agoIt's kinda sad seeing prominent VCs portraying it as "journalists throwing a hissy fit over someone who wasn't nice to them", when all you have to do is read direct quotes from his book to see why Apple employees might not want to work with him. example VC: https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1392675012281315328 https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1392675012281315328
- monocasa 5y agoLol, that tweet went private.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y agoThe only thing that should matter is: Can he do the job? Whether he wrote a book people get their panties twisted over does not appear to be a part of that job description. When did this concept become so controversial?
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- ARandomerDude 5y ago> At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted. Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for who they are has no place here. - Apple Sounds amazingly like: > This is an environment of welcoming, and you should just get the hell out of here. - Michael Scott
- p1necone 5y agoIn order to have a welcoming space you need to kick out people who are not themselves welcoming. Nobody is being hypocritical here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- HKH2 5y agoYou'll probably do very well at getting rid of people you obviously deem unwelcoming, but you're likely to welcome a lot of passive aggressive behavior unawares.
- lehi 5y ago"This is the same guy who flipped out several years ago when I said that child-free people have lives equal in value to parents, then chased me across multiple platforms posting that I was 'a barren bitch' or similar. Other women have similar stories. He's a monster, basically." — https://twitter.com/moorehn/status/1392528812047544321 https://twitter.com/moorehn/status/1392528812047544321
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- snapetom 5y agoAs with Reddit's Aimee Challenor controversy, I can't see why the hiring company did not do a simple google search of the candidate before moving forward in the hiring process. In both cases, the hiring process is either broken if they did not bother to search, or they did search and the company initially did not care. The later, bowing to employee pressure and backtracking, would be spineless.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoWhat would a Google search have revealed? As far as I can tell ("antonio garcia martinez before:2021"), neither he nor his book faced any significant controversy until today.
- williamsmj 5y agoHere he is being told to his face that his writing is "very misogynistic" by Kara Swisher in 2016: https://www.vox.com/2016/8/9/12415696/antonio-garcia-martinez-chaos-monkeys-recode-decode-podcast-transcript https://www.vox.com/2016/8/9/12415696/antonio-garcia-martine.... This wasn't a secret, which is why it was so easy for these Apple employees to assemble a lot of quotes at short notice.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y agoIt certainly wasn't a secret that he wrote the book! But "very misogynistic" is only one part of a long and not particularly hostile interview. If you stumbled upon this interview without the benefit of today's context, would you really be able to conclude the guy's permanently unemployable?
- williamsmj 5y agoTwo things come across in that interview alone. He seems temperamentally totally unsuitable to being a manager at a mainstream tech company. Bluntly, he seems like an asshole. Possibly the kind of asshole certain people find funny. But an asshole. To that extent, I'm surprised he got an offer. Possibly he's very good at pretending not to be an asshole in job interviews. Secondly, the quote from his book in that interview is exactly the kind of thing that, yes, makes you unhireable for management jobs at mainstream tech companies. Hiring people who not only believe that stuff but say it in public, on the record is an insanely big risk. The first female or non-white report who had a bad experience with him would find it extremely easy to sue Apple for discrimination or hostile work environment or whatever and they would win, and Exhibit A would be that quote. That quote alone is such an obvious and insoluble problem that I can only assume Apple HR is trying right now to figure out why none of this was caught before the offer. He wouldn't have gotten to the onsite if someone had been paying attention. He's not unemployable. He's not been cancelled. He's a fabulously wealthy public figure. He'll be fine. He'll probably write a book about this experience. And no one has to work for him. Everybody wins.
- exolymph 5y agoThread with more comments that got flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27134993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27134993 Remember not to blame dang, y'all, it's due to users who are tired of culture war. I disagree with their views on acceptable discourse topics for HN, but it's nothing nefarious.
- ryanwhitney 5y agoLooks like this one as well now.
- visarga 5y agoWas he a recent hire at Apple?
- pseudalopex 5y agoHe started last week apparently.[1] [1] https://www.axios.com/apple-severs-ties-with-antonio-garcia-martinez-c099fc67-de5d-4a2d-8b46-d29448dcab84.html https://www.axios.com/apple-severs-ties-with-antonio-garcia-...
- georgewsinger 5y agoHere's a video of Antonio García Martínez actually explaining his book (dated 4 years ago): https://youtu.be/KE0pIKV5Mlc https://youtu.be/KE0pIKV5Mlc The YouTube comments on this video seem stuck in time (4 years ago) before our current "PC" era. They're largely positive and have nothing to do with political commentary; e.g. the top two comments: > This was one of the best interviews I have heard from TWIST. I've never listened to a single boring one but holy crap Antonio was such a pleasure to listen to. and > Love the insight; “radical candidness is endearing long term” > At a visceral level, we respect the strength & stamina it takes to “suspend disbelief.” > Excellent piece Jason. I'm sure we can find some salacious quotes from this guy's book, but how many people in the latest cancel mob will take the time to read them in their full context before rushing to judgment? (I'm not rushing to judgment either way, but it does strike me that there's a good chance this guy is a blunt person who has some interesting things to say, perhaps some of it rough around the edges and offensive).
- wallfacer4 5y agoPlenty of women in tech did read it, and thought it was pretty sexist: https://huyenchip.com/2019/03/11/silicon-valley-misogyny.html https://huyenchip.com/2019/03/11/silicon-valley-misogyny.htm... https://openheroines.org/tell-me-about-your-books-and-i-will-tell-you-how-sexist-your-industry-is-a-review-for-chaos-19b480ae6a62 https://openheroines.org/tell-me-about-your-books-and-i-will...
- williamsmj 5y ago"Though I haven't read his work ... how many people in the latest cancel mob will take the time to read his book"?
- georgewsinger 5y agoNice dunk, except I'm not accusing someone of heresy/trying to get them fired.
- williamsmj 5y agoMore of a layup than a dunk. The people trying to get him fired have read his stuff. They quote from it extensively in the open letter: https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-hiring-antonio-garcia-martinez-chaos-monkeys-facebook https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/12/22432909/apple-petition-h.... Your claim about the mob not reading his stuff applies to you, the person citing hearsay from YouTube comments (!!!). It demonstrably does not apply to the people who got him fired.
- dheera 5y ago> Shortly after the petition began circulating internally at Apple, Martínez’s Slack account was deactivated. With Apple's level of secrecy I'm very surprised they use Slack instead of some in-house tool.
- cudgy 5y ago“At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace …” By excluding people that write passages in books outside of work that we don’t like.
- HKH2 5y agoYou've forgotten the paradox of tolerance: you decide which tolerance is the right kind of tolerance, so you only tolerate the things you already agree with.
- motohagiography 5y agoI'd suggest Popper's Paraphrase needs some deeper thought, as today it has been reduced to people trying to end arguments by yelling "KARL POPPER!" at people who step out of line.
- HKH2 5y agoIt's a bit late for that now. The next step is deplatforming anyone open about their politics. Maybe that'll be good after all.
- elliekelly 5y agoThe tax rate is politics. Foreign policy is politics. Government spending is politics. Denigrating women is not politics.
- HKH2 5y agoWhat you're doing is not political at all, right?
- jessaustin 5y agoDenigrating women is not politics. You might not care about politics, but politics cares about you.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- motohagiography 5y agoThere's a rule in politics and senior roles where your job is to not be the news. Apple didn't have a choice in this case. This guy's book was irritating, and it sounds like he crossed some personal lines outside of it. Examples of how awful other managers everywhere are guilty of the same and much worse don't justify anything he might have done to someone either. However, mobs cynically and disingenuously exploit this "don't be the news" convention. They're the stopped clock that found a vulnerability to leverage on this particular day and his conceits handed them the scalp they were looking for. He made himself the perfect straw man. So, Point: mob, but I don't think there is any moral high ground in this story. The real issue is it looks like Apple has fair weather leadership, and it has made their brand vulnerable to scandal. They're at a stage where a single well timed joke or meme could wipe out billions in market cap. I like their products and a lot of what they do for privacy and security, but this episode suggests their leadership is misreading the zeitgeist and has lost sight of where growth comes from. It's not fun to defend personalities I don't like, but they're only principles when it's hard to apply them.
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- notaspecialist 5y agoI remember reading some of a book about the psychology of pushing people into the far-(right|left) camps. It went something along the lines of "if you reject them, it crystalizes their opinions as being right". It offered advice on how to make them feel heard, and ways to guide them back towards a more mainstream opinion. I can see why the environment is so polarised.
- jgalt212 5y agoI dunno, I mean once this guy wrote this book, he should have known he was burning all bridges to corporate America (or at least the woke portion). It's amazing that Apple even hired him in the first place. Maybe he was helping to hit a POC target. The upshot is people are being held to account for public speech, and you have to be an idiot to not differentiate along the spectrum of private thoughts, private speech, and public speech.