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It doesn't appear he has "changed". He has an Amazon link directly to his book prominently as the first item in his Twitter profile. Would you want to work wit

by mdeeks 5y ago

It doesn't appear he has "changed". He has an Amazon link directly to his book prominently as the first item in his Twitter profile. Would you want to work with someone who considers you "useless baggage" because of how you were born? More importantly, would you want to work under someone who thinks you're useless baggage no matter what you do?

smoldesu 5y ago
As long as that commentary doesn't interfere with his work life... I guess that would be fine. If everything we ever said on the internet was traced back to our name, we'd all have some pretty embarrassing blemishes. That's because failure is a part of learning, and social media has ultimately removed all of the nuance from failure. Instead of helping people up, we're more interested in kicking them while they're down for a little extra virtue to signal. We're all guilty of this to some degree: it's really just the human condition being exacerbated through the lens of the internet. This guy sounds like a dick, but he doesn't sound like he's done anything wrong in this situation either. He had appropriate motivation to perform well in his position, and if Apple's human resources are worth their salt they'd be monitoring his performance very closely for the first month or two.
- kemayo 5y ago
  The problem with someone being a dick is when you're hiring them for a role with any sort of authority, particularly if their dickishness is in any way directed at specific groups. I think there's a fairly reasonable concern that if he was in any sort of role with authority he couldn't be trusted to fairly deal with women. Sure, lots of people have biases and are probably unfair. But this one wrote a NYT bestselling book where he loudly talked about his biases, and doesn't seem to have become contrite. HR complaints were very much guaranteed once this became known.
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    Related, The No Asshole Rule: https://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surviving/dp/1600245854 https://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surv... People don't compartmentalize anywhere near as well as some of the assumptions in this thread, and someone who is an asshole in private is going to be an asshole on the job. The "if it doesn't affect him doing his job" comments are either naive or completely disingenuous.
- igetspam 5y ago
  Nope. To repeat something I said in a not entirely dissimilar discussion: I'm not gonna let Nazis into my car club because we have a single common shared interest. They're Nazis. I'm also not gonna work with die hard mysogynists because they're mysogynists. Great engineers who are shitty people are shitty people first and they can go right back to gutter they crawled out of. Don't compare blemishes to prideful hate. The stupid things I've said, the hurtful things, they are not the things I want to publish and stand firm on. They are mistakes for which I feel regret. If I glorified my abhorrent behavior, you'd be right to shun me.
  - ibarea23 5y ago
    But forever? We gotta give people the opportunity to change. The book is gross, but SV is gross and sexist a lot of the time - and much more so in the past. So IDK maybe some human sacrifice is worth it to change the culture - but I'm always confused because a lot of the folks clamoring for heads on stuff like this are also pro things like restorative justice (which I am super pro). So no d bags, but maybe if you were a d bag at some point it should be possible to redeem yourself?
MikeUt 5y ago
> considers you "useless baggage" because of how you were born? He considers people useless baggage because of how they were born? What are you basing this claim on?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  > “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.” - His book.
  - MikeUt 5y ago
    > British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who would end up a useful ally in that postapocalypse, doing whatever work—be it carpentry, animal husbandry, or a shotgun blast to someone’s back—required doing. - Also his book. So it's obvious both descriptions were written from experience, not gender-based prejudice. But even without this passage, your quote only proves he has a low opinion of "most women in the Bay Area" - that does not translate to most women everywhere, and certainly not to all women. Summarizing it as "considers people useless due to being born female" is a misreading so blatant I can only call it a lie.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
      Why include the word "women" at all, though? Replace it with "jews" or "gays" and see how it reads. The fact that he chose to single out Bay Area women, specially, implies he doesn't hold men to the same standard. If I were a woman working for Apple who didn't happen to be into carpentry or animal husbandry, I really wouldn't want to work for this guy.
      - MikeUt 5y ago
        > Why include the word "women" at all, though? Because that description was specifically to highlight how different his then-girlfriend was from them. > Replace it with "jews" or "gays" and see how it reads. "Most gays in the Bay Area are lame, but my current boyfriend is great." - seems fine?

by mdeeks 5y ago

smoldesu 5y ago

As long as that commentary doesn't interfere with his work life... I guess that would be fine. If everything we ever said on the internet was traced back to our name, we'd all have some pretty embarrassing blemishes. That's because failure is a part of learning, and social media has ultimately removed all of the nuance from failure. Instead of helping people up, we're more interested in kicking them while they're down for a little extra virtue to signal. We're all guilty of this to some degree: it's really just the human condition being exacerbated through the lens of the internet. This guy sounds like a dick, but he doesn't sound like he's done anything wrong in this situation either. He had appropriate motivation to perform well in his position, and if Apple's human resources are worth their salt they'd be monitoring his performance very closely for the first month or two.

kemayo 5y ago
The problem with someone being a dick is when you're hiring them for a role with any sort of authority, particularly if their dickishness is in any way directed at specific groups. I think there's a fairly reasonable concern that if he was in any sort of role with authority he couldn't be trusted to fairly deal with women. Sure, lots of people have biases and are probably unfair. But this one wrote a NYT bestselling book where he loudly talked about his biases, and doesn't seem to have become contrite. HR complaints were very much guaranteed once this became known.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Related, The No Asshole Rule: https://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surviving/dp/1600245854 https://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surv... People don't compartmentalize anywhere near as well as some of the assumptions in this thread, and someone who is an asshole in private is going to be an asshole on the job. The "if it doesn't affect him doing his job" comments are either naive or completely disingenuous.
igetspam 5y ago
Nope. To repeat something I said in a not entirely dissimilar discussion: I'm not gonna let Nazis into my car club because we have a single common shared interest. They're Nazis. I'm also not gonna work with die hard mysogynists because they're mysogynists. Great engineers who are shitty people are shitty people first and they can go right back to gutter they crawled out of. Don't compare blemishes to prideful hate. The stupid things I've said, the hurtful things, they are not the things I want to publish and stand firm on. They are mistakes for which I feel regret. If I glorified my abhorrent behavior, you'd be right to shun me.
- ibarea23 5y ago
  But forever? We gotta give people the opportunity to change. The book is gross, but SV is gross and sexist a lot of the time - and much more so in the past. So IDK maybe some human sacrifice is worth it to change the culture - but I'm always confused because a lot of the folks clamoring for heads on stuff like this are also pro things like restorative justice (which I am super pro). So no d bags, but maybe if you were a d bag at some point it should be possible to redeem yourself?

MikeUt 5y ago

> considers you "useless baggage" because of how you were born? He considers people useless baggage because of how they were born? What are you basing this claim on?

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
> “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.” - His book.
- MikeUt 5y ago
  > British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who would end up a useful ally in that postapocalypse, doing whatever work—be it carpentry, animal husbandry, or a shotgun blast to someone’s back—required doing. - Also his book. So it's obvious both descriptions were written from experience, not gender-based prejudice. But even without this passage, your quote only proves he has a low opinion of "most women in the Bay Area" - that does not translate to most women everywhere, and certainly not to all women. Summarizing it as "considers people useless due to being born female" is a misreading so blatant I can only call it a lie.
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    Why include the word "women" at all, though? Replace it with "jews" or "gays" and see how it reads. The fact that he chose to single out Bay Area women, specially, implies he doesn't hold men to the same standard. If I were a woman working for Apple who didn't happen to be into carpentry or animal husbandry, I really wouldn't want to work for this guy.
    - MikeUt 5y ago
      > Why include the word "women" at all, though? Because that description was specifically to highlight how different his then-girlfriend was from them. > Replace it with "jews" or "gays" and see how it reads. "Most gays in the Bay Area are lame, but my current boyfriend is great." - seems fine?