8 ms·

Does anyone have any more specific information aside from "widespread sexism"? It would be good to know exactly what is prompting this walkout, and exactly what

by yosito 5y ago

Does anyone have any more specific information aside from "widespread sexism"? It would be good to know exactly what is prompting this walkout, and exactly what changes they're hoping to achieve with it.

jonchang 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841
FanaHOVA 5y ago
Some extracts from the lawsuit: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-...
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  > The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says. Wild
  - xbar 5y ago
    It really is the element in the complaint that stands out. First, pay and promotion discrimination are widespread and are less shocking. Acceptable? No. I like DFEH's authority to go hard after companies to get this addressed, but I somehow shrug and say "Let the lawsuit parade begin. Ok, Blizzrad can go first." Second, some of the anecdotes in the Blizzard complaint come off as problematic but not shocking. "Cube crawls" which seem like "get drunk at work" parties that led to sexual harassment: getting drunk at work is a management-stupid recipe for trouble. DFEH Lawsuit worth? Less obvious. Third, the named executive who was a creep comes off as a problem for that creep. He was let go quietly and management didn't otherwise change. It's hard to tell if this is worse than average for creep executives. Lawsuit worthy by DFEH? Unlikely on its own: management acted to address the issue. But the suicide. The victim was exploited, harassed, and abused as an employee. The complaint insinuates that her traveling coworker had demeaning sex toys on hand. It's not obvious if she was the intended subject of the coworker toys, but it is implied. Her suicide seems to have been preventable and, therefore, tragic. More than anything else it suggests that the other elements of the complaint led her to a feeling of hopelessness in her work environment. It is not a stretch to imagine that she was not alone in that feeling as a result of that environment. RIP, victim. The lawsuit will bring insufficient justice for you and negligible peace for your family. Perhaps it will begin some broader change.
- ozarkerD 5y ago
  Absolute degeneracy. I don’t understand how a professional workplace could devolve to this. I have trouble talking about non work matters for more than a few minutes, How do things get this far?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    > How do things get this far? The tone at the top.
  - tstrimple 5y ago
    How does it happen? There are still people throughout this thread downplaying this and making it seem like it's not a big deal. People have been bringing up the issues of sexual harassment in our industry, but folks like James Damore have a lot of support in believing it's just that women are just less interested in technology and don't suffer from any discrimination. You've got literal incels on this site threatening violence and getting support for blaming their problems on feminism. The signs of this behavior are everywhere and women (in particular) have been talking about it for ages. Why has it been so easy to write them off? Efforts to stop these sorts of environments will get companies labeled as "going woke". To me this Activision / Blizzard situation is inevitable when so many of our communities are willfully blind to these behaviors and have been for decades. What isn't being reported on?
  - tpmx 5y ago
    The money, and the kind of people it attracts.
s5300 5y ago
Yeah, just Google Blizzard Activision court case files/summary Pretty fucked situation
__s 5y ago
https://www.polygon.com/22595703/activision-blizzard-employee-protest-walk-out-lawsuit https://www.polygon.com/22595703/activision-blizzard-employe... quotes demands verbatim
pmarreck 5y ago
Honest question: Guys often "rib" each other, it's part of the culture among males. When you throw women into the mix and they get "ribbed" (perhaps for being "one of the guys," as it were) does this often become sexual harassment? Perhaps the culture of "ribbing" needs to go away for everyone, or at least from the workplace, but it has always been the case for me that a close friend or acquaintance typically only "ribs" you when they know you know they're not being serious. (That is why the definition of ribbing is "good-natured teasing".) Of course, the danger there is misinterpretation (perhaps with self-fulfilling negative expectations primed by media, but I digress) I may be biased, I spent 4 years in the military where ribbing was literally CONSTANT (it was worse than anyplace else I've worked) and the women there really had to have a thick skin. (I'm also 49 years old and a lot has changed.) Note: Some of the claims made here go far beyond "ribbing". I'm not talking about those.
- underseacables 5y ago
  I think it’s just important for everyone to recognize the new paradigm: make no comments about your coworkers whatsoever, do not complement, do not ask about their personal life, do not talk about politics, because the only safe thing to do is to be as robotic as possible.
  - andrewzah 5y ago
    How hard is it to not make inappropriate comments about someone or their body? It's -exceedingly- easy to not be a creepy dick to one's coworkers and fellow human beings. One only has to act like a robot if they have zero social awareness or tact.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      I would agree that this is easy, but I did run into a weird edge case. First to be clear, I would never comment on anybody's body or clothes, especially not in the workplace. This is not to comply with some rule, I wouldn't have the urge to do that in the first place. It's weird and unneeded. Anyway, the edge case. My female coworker is very passionate about making custom dresses. One day, on the day before our country's Queen's Day, she comes to work in an absolute master piece of a custom dress, dedicated to the festivities to come. The quality of that dress, the attention to detail, was out of this world. All custom made. She walks over to a group of devs (five men, one is me) and basically presents the dress, yet without saying a word. And now comes the awful thing. By chance, all of us had one of those mandatory "ethical workplace" trainings the day before. And this literal example, some guy commenting on a dress was used as an example of an absolute no-go. Which sounds reasonable to me, in every context but this one. I had a strong urge to compliment her on her skill and the incredible result of her tireless effort. Surely, she worked on this forever, and this was to be a proud moment of display. But we all kept our mouth shut, and picked the safe side of things. She left defeated, perhaps humiliated. I know, it's a very uncommon situation, but the dynamic is interesting. In the gray zone area, most people would prefer to better be safe than sorry. Which almost every time is best anyway, but not this time. I'll end with an aspect much more common. Feedback, as in professional feedback. Recently a study showed that VCs are far less critical towards female founders compared to male ones. Males would get very direct, sometimes harsh, and detailed negative feedback, whilst women would get the far less usable vague sugar-coated version of it. Supposedly, out of fear. It shows hyper tensions, paranoia. If that gets out of hand, women and other minorities will be treated as radio-active objects, which is in nobody's interest. The way I see it, really bad men (subject of article), cause this distrustful relation between perfectly good people.

by yosito 5y ago

jonchang 5y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27922841

FanaHOVA 5y ago

Some extracts from the lawsuit: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-blizzard-sued-by-california-over-frat-boy-culture https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-...

colinmhayes 5y ago
> The suit also points to a female Activision employee who took her own life while on a company trip with her male supervisor. The employee had been subjected to intense sexual harassment prior to her death, including having nude photos passed around at a company holiday party, the complaint says. Wild
- xbar 5y ago
  It really is the element in the complaint that stands out. First, pay and promotion discrimination are widespread and are less shocking. Acceptable? No. I like DFEH's authority to go hard after companies to get this addressed, but I somehow shrug and say "Let the lawsuit parade begin. Ok, Blizzrad can go first." Second, some of the anecdotes in the Blizzard complaint come off as problematic but not shocking. "Cube crawls" which seem like "get drunk at work" parties that led to sexual harassment: getting drunk at work is a management-stupid recipe for trouble. DFEH Lawsuit worth? Less obvious. Third, the named executive who was a creep comes off as a problem for that creep. He was let go quietly and management didn't otherwise change. It's hard to tell if this is worse than average for creep executives. Lawsuit worthy by DFEH? Unlikely on its own: management acted to address the issue. But the suicide. The victim was exploited, harassed, and abused as an employee. The complaint insinuates that her traveling coworker had demeaning sex toys on hand. It's not obvious if she was the intended subject of the coworker toys, but it is implied. Her suicide seems to have been preventable and, therefore, tragic. More than anything else it suggests that the other elements of the complaint led her to a feeling of hopelessness in her work environment. It is not a stretch to imagine that she was not alone in that feeling as a result of that environment. RIP, victim. The lawsuit will bring insufficient justice for you and negligible peace for your family. Perhaps it will begin some broader change.
ozarkerD 5y ago
Absolute degeneracy. I don’t understand how a professional workplace could devolve to this. I have trouble talking about non work matters for more than a few minutes, How do things get this far?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > How do things get this far? The tone at the top.
- tstrimple 5y ago
  How does it happen? There are still people throughout this thread downplaying this and making it seem like it's not a big deal. People have been bringing up the issues of sexual harassment in our industry, but folks like James Damore have a lot of support in believing it's just that women are just less interested in technology and don't suffer from any discrimination. You've got literal incels on this site threatening violence and getting support for blaming their problems on feminism. The signs of this behavior are everywhere and women (in particular) have been talking about it for ages. Why has it been so easy to write them off? Efforts to stop these sorts of environments will get companies labeled as "going woke". To me this Activision / Blizzard situation is inevitable when so many of our communities are willfully blind to these behaviors and have been for decades. What isn't being reported on?
- tpmx 5y ago
  The money, and the kind of people it attracts.

s5300 5y ago

Yeah, just Google Blizzard Activision court case files/summary Pretty fucked situation

__s 5y ago

https://www.polygon.com/22595703/activision-blizzard-employee-protest-walk-out-lawsuit https://www.polygon.com/22595703/activision-blizzard-employe... quotes demands verbatim

pmarreck 5y ago

Honest question: Guys often "rib" each other, it's part of the culture among males. When you throw women into the mix and they get "ribbed" (perhaps for being "one of the guys," as it were) does this often become sexual harassment? Perhaps the culture of "ribbing" needs to go away for everyone, or at least from the workplace, but it has always been the case for me that a close friend or acquaintance typically only "ribs" you when they know you know they're not being serious. (That is why the definition of ribbing is "good-natured teasing".) Of course, the danger there is misinterpretation (perhaps with self-fulfilling negative expectations primed by media, but I digress) I may be biased, I spent 4 years in the military where ribbing was literally CONSTANT (it was worse than anyplace else I've worked) and the women there really had to have a thick skin. (I'm also 49 years old and a lot has changed.) Note: Some of the claims made here go far beyond "ribbing". I'm not talking about those.

underseacables 5y ago
I think it’s just important for everyone to recognize the new paradigm: make no comments about your coworkers whatsoever, do not complement, do not ask about their personal life, do not talk about politics, because the only safe thing to do is to be as robotic as possible.
- andrewzah 5y ago
  How hard is it to not make inappropriate comments about someone or their body? It's -exceedingly- easy to not be a creepy dick to one's coworkers and fellow human beings. One only has to act like a robot if they have zero social awareness or tact.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    I would agree that this is easy, but I did run into a weird edge case. First to be clear, I would never comment on anybody's body or clothes, especially not in the workplace. This is not to comply with some rule, I wouldn't have the urge to do that in the first place. It's weird and unneeded. Anyway, the edge case. My female coworker is very passionate about making custom dresses. One day, on the day before our country's Queen's Day, she comes to work in an absolute master piece of a custom dress, dedicated to the festivities to come. The quality of that dress, the attention to detail, was out of this world. All custom made. She walks over to a group of devs (five men, one is me) and basically presents the dress, yet without saying a word. And now comes the awful thing. By chance, all of us had one of those mandatory "ethical workplace" trainings the day before. And this literal example, some guy commenting on a dress was used as an example of an absolute no-go. Which sounds reasonable to me, in every context but this one. I had a strong urge to compliment her on her skill and the incredible result of her tireless effort. Surely, she worked on this forever, and this was to be a proud moment of display. But we all kept our mouth shut, and picked the safe side of things. She left defeated, perhaps humiliated. I know, it's a very uncommon situation, but the dynamic is interesting. In the gray zone area, most people would prefer to better be safe than sorry. Which almost every time is best anyway, but not this time. I'll end with an aspect much more common. Feedback, as in professional feedback. Recently a study showed that VCs are far less critical towards female founders compared to male ones. Males would get very direct, sometimes harsh, and detailed negative feedback, whilst women would get the far less usable vague sugar-coated version of it. Supposedly, out of fear. It shows hyper tensions, paranoia. If that gets out of hand, women and other minorities will be treated as radio-active objects, which is in nobody's interest. The way I see it, really bad men (subject of article), cause this distrustful relation between perfectly good people.