8 ms·

This person was Tweeting internal e-mails from Apple, complete with the footnote explaining that they were confidential and not to be shared outside of the comp

This person was Tweeting internal e-mails from Apple, complete with the footnote explaining that they were confidential and not to be shared outside of the company. Example here: https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1435421599826518025/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1435421599826518025/... There were headlines and outrage about her being placed on administrative leave by Apple recently. Reading the finer details, it turns out she requested to be placed on leave (From the article: "She was placed on administrative leave in early August while Apple investigated some of these concerns — a placement she says she requested as a last resort.") She has a dedicated form on her website for press to fill out to request an interview with her. ( https://www.ashleygjovik.com/press.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/press.html ) She maintains a website called iWhistleblower ( https://www.iwhistleblower.org/ https://www.iwhistleblower.org/ ) with details about past cases involving Apple and links encouraging people to report Apple information to different regulatory bodies. Her personal website leads with "Apple Labor Advocacy" as well as "Public Health Advocacy" where she describes how she thinks there might be a toxic waste container somewhere on the property of her old 3rd-floor apartment. She believes it was causing her blood pressure and heart rate to change, according to monitors that she wore. She published photos of herself wearing a blood pressure monitoring cuff and her story here: https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apartment-was-built-on-toxic-waste/ https://sfbayview.com/2021/03/i-thought-i-was-dying-my-apart... While I fully agree that all allegations should be given due process and properly investigated, I get nervous when someone is visibly invested in building a personal brand on social media around being a victim. The story about the toxic waste apartment, the story about Apple's lawyers needing her work phone for an investigation, and the story about her alleged harassment at Apple all happened within the past 6 months. Her entire social media presence appears to be built around capitalizing on these stories.

atombender 5y ago
Regardless of whether these complaints have merit or not, I never understood people who crap on their employer in public using social media. It's one thing to have a complaint (or several) you bring up internally through the right channels, it's something else entirely to run a continuous campaign of shaming a company that you currently work for. How anyone can go to work at a company every day while also actively working against it is beyond me — not to mention how her relationships with her colleagues are impacted by her tweeting. She calls herself a whistleblower, but was also tweeting about issues that were still under internal investigation at the time, and which was confidential. That's absolutely the wrong way to go about things.
knaik94 5y ago
Her personal beliefs aren't something that changes how Apple handled this situation. Edit: I'm not arguing that she hasn't made the situation worse, I'm only arguing that her behavior doesn't excuse Apple's.
- Aunche 5y ago
  They do if most of our knowledge of how Apple handled this situation comes from her accounts.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Firing people that actively stir controversy and attract bad press to the corp in question seems obviously like the logical thing to do. This individual clearly desires to advance their personal situation and cultivate controversy almost explicitly at the expense of their employer. Sorry if I'm being insensitive but it just seems inappropriate to handle this via social media vs. going through internal mechanisms, and then escalate to local PD/LE. I mean I feel like if I was in a position to run a megacorp, I'd try to cultivate a culture of innovation and curiosity. If there are bad actors that are abusing other colleagues, I'd want to fire them (i.e. her alleged abuser) and do my best and make sure the abuser can't engage in any retributive behavior to the individual or anyone else (going even further than just the org) - even so far as to potentially recommend the incident be investigated by the police. EDIT: I truly sympathize with her situation. It sucks to be bullied, abused, etc. I just don't feel like airing dirty laundry, even if it feels useful in the moment, is an effective way to force organizational change. I know of several cases against major banks that involved sexual harassment and I can't image the hammer of God force of nature damage the legal team at some of the megabanks would cause against this person (as an example), so you have to be realistic and careful. I just don't think in any professional capacity I'd ever say "wow my coworkers looked at my genatalia and I am extremely offended at this - isn't this terrible?" Yes, of course it is terrible. However, is the manner by which you are conducting your counter-offensive truly effective? If you have cause, take notes, collect as much explicit documented evidence and then go to a lawyer. Airing out your dirty laundry will literally never end well and makes you radioactive in terms of future employment opportunities - except in this case, it's on the person - not the employer. Build your case, move slowly, strike - don't just start tweeting about your grievances. Am I crazy or what?
deleted 5y ago
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deleted 5y ago
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fnord77 5y ago
still, she's going to get a fat settlement from apple. was this the plan all along?
- cdprojektdead 5y ago
  Is that accurate? I don't think victims of discrimination actually make from such settlements, especially compared to the salaried positions of their abusers, measured against loss of income from blacklisting and lasting damages from abuse. I think the myth of "big discrimination payout" is designed specifically to pre-emptively discredit whistleblowers (especially survivors of sexual/emotional abuse). > was this the plan all along? Would you say this about Larry Nassar's victims? (sadly, yes, when it was just the first few women, you probably would). I'd like you to reflect on this comment next time Blizzard's abusive culture is back the news and you're wondering why women abused in the workplace are turning to suicide over legal mediation. You can choose to look away, but never again can you say "you didn't know."
  - fnord77 5y ago
    you're comparing the victims of child molestation to an engineer who worked at-will for a company and got fired for leaking things? wow
sergiotapia 5y ago
This mirrors how I feel about this. I've just learned about this today from this HN post, and the first thing I did was check out her feed and websites for something like that. It's weird isn't it? She has this whole persona/business built around this Apple thing. And she's talking about unions and such on company Slack, come on now. Reckless lol. https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html I've worked with people like this, they cause a silent rot within teams. I mean look at this https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443 https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443 - totally benign feedback so that you don't sound like you're always asking a question (I've personally had this feedback given to me!) and immediately she skewers her boss as "sexist". Bad juju.
- andyxor 5y ago
  as they say in eastern europe "Don't spit in the well you drink from" this reminds of that Google ethics researcher who was fired for sabotage and then built a big following on Twitter as a professional "victim of racism"
  - whymauri 5y ago
    Timnit had a large following before she got fired. Especially for us who work in the field. She is not a 'professional victim of racism.' She is a professional who was fired for raising ethical concerns around larger language models.
    - dodobirdlord 5y ago
      > She is a professional who was fired for raising ethical concerns around larger language models. This is a clear mischaracterization of the reported events. Gebru, in her own statements on the subject, stated that she was fired for demanding to know the identities of peers who submitted critical feedback on her work through confidential HR channels. Leaving aside the question of whether those criticisms had merit, her being fired was a foregone conclusion of making such an ultimatum. No confidential peer feedback system can function if there is a possibility of reviewers being de-anonymized at the demand of sufficiently influential coworkers. On a more opinionated note - making a demand like that displays critical lack of judgement in the important responsibility that all employees in supervisory roles have in ensuring a non-hostile working environment. Even if her intention was not to retaliate against her peers after determining their identities, it’s essential that people in positions of power do not take actions that even suggest that they are seeking to retaliate against less powerful peers. The importance of this principle is extreme to a healthy collaborative work environment. The fact that someone as intelligent as Gebru was surprised to be fired for making an ultimatum like this is itself surprising.
blamazon 5y ago
This whole affair seems like a one way ticket out of ‘traditional’ corporate employment for life, so I’d say Ashley would be smart to be setting up alternative revenue streams—-media appearances, book deals, etc. I don’t agree with her methods, but I do admire the commitment to doubling down.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  She's got a huge website[1] organizing every tweet, every hashtag, every document, every bit of media attention adjacent to this story. Regardless of what you think of the topic itself, you have to admire the single-minded focus on media exposure and self-amplification. This is an exceptional, master-level ability to get people talking about yourself. I'm kind of in awe. 1: https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html
  - Teever 5y ago
    They say that Apple only hires the most dedicated people.
- tayistay 5y ago
  She’s attending law school: https://law.scu.edu/news/ashley-gjovik-jd-22-quoted-in-the-the-new-york-times-responding-to-apples-plans-for-employees-to-return-to-the-office-this-fall/ https://law.scu.edu/news/ashley-gjovik-jd-22-quoted-in-the-t...
unityByFreedom 5y ago
Here is her NLRB complaint [1]. It seems fine to me if she wants to get her story out via her own site or press or whatever. It can be hard to "go viral" and you have to put a lot of effort behind it. That said, making yourself a public figure can be tough too, so I hope she's ready with facts. This summary from her website doesn't make Apple sound all that terrible in my opinion: > I raised issues about workplace safety in March, upon which Apple subjected me to a nonconsensual sexism investigation on my behalf. Then I faced retaliation from my managers, ER, & HR. I continued to raise my workplace safety concerns as well as my concerns about the employee relations processes at Apple. This led to a second, much larger investigation that I actually requested this time. However, before we could finish gathering & reviewing the evidence, Apple forced me onto indefinite paid administrative leave. [1] https://foiaonline.gov/foiaonline/api/request/downloadFile/NLRB-2021-001319%20Final%20Records.pdf/758bfad6-3292-4eee-b41f-c75336faa1e2 https://foiaonline.gov/foiaonline/api/request/downloadFile/N... (PDF download)
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > This summary from her website doesn't make Apple sound all that terrible in my opinion: Looking past her editorializing, the Apple communications she leaked aren't really unreasonable. She raised concerns about harassment, so Apple started an investigation. She then complains that the investigation was "nonconsensual", despite being the one to raise the concerns. She then requested a second investigation, which Apple started. The part about being placed on administrative leave is particularly confusing, because this article says that she requested to be placed on the administrative leave. Her Tweets are hyper-dramatic. She calls her Employee Relations contacts "Employee Retaliation" and even insinuates that she thinks Apple might assault her at her home after they requested a meeting: > Any bets if I get a literal knock on my physical door from #Apple today? > Hey #Apple, "This feels a little like witness intimidation. I let @NLRB know." Love, Ashley > Clutches panic button & Mace while still laying on floor pondering the brutality of U.S. capitalism... Source: https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1436080433175818259 https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1436080433175818259
  - unityByFreedom 5y ago
serial_dev 5y ago
This is one tweet that I saw on Twitter that looked actually bad https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1426014545202479108 https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1426014545202479108 > Her entire social media presence appears to be built around capitalizing on these stories Or, she is focused on shedding light on bad behavior of others and she was actually bullied and picked on by some twats at Apple and she wants consequences? So in the end, I don't understand why it would be a problem to create a website for news coverage and tweet highlights. If she feels she's been wronged, it's okay to fight back, even if she was employed by Apple. What's wrong with that? On this site, people always say "bad Apple" ("bad Google", etc) behaving badly and abusing its power. Yet, when an employee comes out with complaints, we pretend it is not okay to complain about your employer? I don't know who is in the wrong here, we have seen both dramatic employees that take offense in everything innocent, but we have also seen corporations covering up bullying and abusive behavior. Which one is it in this case? I don't know yet, I bet you don't either.
- 4887d30omd8 5y ago
  From what I understand, there were a few such tickets created for multiple people on that team. “Make X’s life hell”. It’s at best a poorly thought out joke, but it is worth mentioning that this ticket was not isolated to her.
  - tayistay 5y ago
    How about the one where they filled a whiteboard with nasty nicknames for her?
  - serial_dev 5y ago
    Well, that definitely puts this into a different perspective... I see how at some of my former companies we would have made such joke tickets for each other. It's really hard to tell who is right from the outside, considering all parties might take things out of context. Just as a personal comment, that is why am the most boring person ever with my coworkers. (Assuming you are right) Is it really worth writing a "joke" ticket like this when it might come back in 6 years and you'll be painted as the bullies of Apple?
hhjj 5y ago
About footnote, claiming is not the same than telling truth. A lot of corporations are making their own "laws" (warranty stickers, abusive contract clauses, anti-piracy disclaimers, etc.) and they are keeping them even when they know it's total lies. Authorities also take what corporations tell them as granted truth. So even if the odds are in favor of corporations being right (corps are usually a lot of people), don't fall in that kind of trap especially when it favors the corporation or if there are facts casting doubts. -- This is my personal view not necessarily the view of my employer. I may be POTUS too. I may or may not think Apple is right. You owe me $100 if you read that sentence.
tayistay 5y ago
As I understand it, the footnote about confidentiality does not supersede state law that employees may discuss their mistreatment publicly.

atombender 5y ago

Regardless of whether these complaints have merit or not, I never understood people who crap on their employer in public using social media. It's one thing to have a complaint (or several) you bring up internally through the right channels, it's something else entirely to run a continuous campaign of shaming a company that you currently work for. How anyone can go to work at a company every day while also actively working against it is beyond me — not to mention how her relationships with her colleagues are impacted by her tweeting. She calls herself a whistleblower, but was also tweeting about issues that were still under internal investigation at the time, and which was confidential. That's absolutely the wrong way to go about things.

knaik94 5y ago

Her personal beliefs aren't something that changes how Apple handled this situation. Edit: I'm not arguing that she hasn't made the situation worse, I'm only arguing that her behavior doesn't excuse Apple's.

Aunche 5y ago
They do if most of our knowledge of how Apple handled this situation comes from her accounts.
arthurcolle 5y ago
Firing people that actively stir controversy and attract bad press to the corp in question seems obviously like the logical thing to do. This individual clearly desires to advance their personal situation and cultivate controversy almost explicitly at the expense of their employer. Sorry if I'm being insensitive but it just seems inappropriate to handle this via social media vs. going through internal mechanisms, and then escalate to local PD/LE. I mean I feel like if I was in a position to run a megacorp, I'd try to cultivate a culture of innovation and curiosity. If there are bad actors that are abusing other colleagues, I'd want to fire them (i.e. her alleged abuser) and do my best and make sure the abuser can't engage in any retributive behavior to the individual or anyone else (going even further than just the org) - even so far as to potentially recommend the incident be investigated by the police. EDIT: I truly sympathize with her situation. It sucks to be bullied, abused, etc. I just don't feel like airing dirty laundry, even if it feels useful in the moment, is an effective way to force organizational change. I know of several cases against major banks that involved sexual harassment and I can't image the hammer of God force of nature damage the legal team at some of the megabanks would cause against this person (as an example), so you have to be realistic and careful. I just don't think in any professional capacity I'd ever say "wow my coworkers looked at my genatalia and I am extremely offended at this - isn't this terrible?" Yes, of course it is terrible. However, is the manner by which you are conducting your counter-offensive truly effective? If you have cause, take notes, collect as much explicit documented evidence and then go to a lawyer. Airing out your dirty laundry will literally never end well and makes you radioactive in terms of future employment opportunities - except in this case, it's on the person - not the employer. Build your case, move slowly, strike - don't just start tweeting about your grievances. Am I crazy or what?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fnord77 5y ago

still, she's going to get a fat settlement from apple. was this the plan all along?

cdprojektdead 5y ago
Is that accurate? I don't think victims of discrimination actually make from such settlements, especially compared to the salaried positions of their abusers, measured against loss of income from blacklisting and lasting damages from abuse. I think the myth of "big discrimination payout" is designed specifically to pre-emptively discredit whistleblowers (especially survivors of sexual/emotional abuse). > was this the plan all along? Would you say this about Larry Nassar's victims? (sadly, yes, when it was just the first few women, you probably would). I'd like you to reflect on this comment next time Blizzard's abusive culture is back the news and you're wondering why women abused in the workplace are turning to suicide over legal mediation. You can choose to look away, but never again can you say "you didn't know."
- fnord77 5y ago
  you're comparing the victims of child molestation to an engineer who worked at-will for a company and got fired for leaking things? wow

sergiotapia 5y ago

This mirrors how I feel about this. I've just learned about this today from this HN post, and the first thing I did was check out her feed and websites for something like that. It's weird isn't it? She has this whole persona/business built around this Apple thing. And she's talking about unions and such on company Slack, come on now. Reckless lol. https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html I've worked with people like this, they cause a silent rot within teams. I mean look at this https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443 https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1422380335703101443 - totally benign feedback so that you don't sound like you're always asking a question (I've personally had this feedback given to me!) and immediately she skewers her boss as "sexist". Bad juju.

andyxor 5y ago
as they say in eastern europe "Don't spit in the well you drink from" this reminds of that Google ethics researcher who was fired for sabotage and then built a big following on Twitter as a professional "victim of racism"
- whymauri 5y ago
  Timnit had a large following before she got fired. Especially for us who work in the field. She is not a 'professional victim of racism.' She is a professional who was fired for raising ethical concerns around larger language models.
  - dodobirdlord 5y ago
    > She is a professional who was fired for raising ethical concerns around larger language models. This is a clear mischaracterization of the reported events. Gebru, in her own statements on the subject, stated that she was fired for demanding to know the identities of peers who submitted critical feedback on her work through confidential HR channels. Leaving aside the question of whether those criticisms had merit, her being fired was a foregone conclusion of making such an ultimatum. No confidential peer feedback system can function if there is a possibility of reviewers being de-anonymized at the demand of sufficiently influential coworkers. On a more opinionated note - making a demand like that displays critical lack of judgement in the important responsibility that all employees in supervisory roles have in ensuring a non-hostile working environment. Even if her intention was not to retaliate against her peers after determining their identities, it’s essential that people in positions of power do not take actions that even suggest that they are seeking to retaliate against less powerful peers. The importance of this principle is extreme to a healthy collaborative work environment. The fact that someone as intelligent as Gebru was surprised to be fired for making an ultimatum like this is itself surprising.

blamazon 5y ago

This whole affair seems like a one way ticket out of ‘traditional’ corporate employment for life, so I’d say Ashley would be smart to be setting up alternative revenue streams—-media appearances, book deals, etc. I don’t agree with her methods, but I do admire the commitment to doubling down.

ryandrake 5y ago
She's got a huge website[1] organizing every tweet, every hashtag, every document, every bit of media attention adjacent to this story. Regardless of what you think of the topic itself, you have to admire the single-minded focus on media exposure and self-amplification. This is an exceptional, master-level ability to get people talking about yourself. I'm kind of in awe. 1: https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/ashleys-apple-story.html
- Teever 5y ago
  They say that Apple only hires the most dedicated people.
tayistay 5y ago
She’s attending law school: https://law.scu.edu/news/ashley-gjovik-jd-22-quoted-in-the-the-new-york-times-responding-to-apples-plans-for-employees-to-return-to-the-office-this-fall/ https://law.scu.edu/news/ashley-gjovik-jd-22-quoted-in-the-t...

unityByFreedom 5y ago

Here is her NLRB complaint [1]. It seems fine to me if she wants to get her story out via her own site or press or whatever. It can be hard to "go viral" and you have to put a lot of effort behind it. That said, making yourself a public figure can be tough too, so I hope she's ready with facts. This summary from her website doesn't make Apple sound all that terrible in my opinion: > I raised issues about workplace safety in March, upon which Apple subjected me to a nonconsensual sexism investigation on my behalf. Then I faced retaliation from my managers, ER, & HR. I continued to raise my workplace safety concerns as well as my concerns about the employee relations processes at Apple. This led to a second, much larger investigation that I actually requested this time. However, before we could finish gathering & reviewing the evidence, Apple forced me onto indefinite paid administrative leave. [1] https://foiaonline.gov/foiaonline/api/request/downloadFile/NLRB-2021-001319%20Final%20Records.pdf/758bfad6-3292-4eee-b41f-c75336faa1e2 https://foiaonline.gov/foiaonline/api/request/downloadFile/N... (PDF download)

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> This summary from her website doesn't make Apple sound all that terrible in my opinion: Looking past her editorializing, the Apple communications she leaked aren't really unreasonable. She raised concerns about harassment, so Apple started an investigation. She then complains that the investigation was "nonconsensual", despite being the one to raise the concerns. She then requested a second investigation, which Apple started. The part about being placed on administrative leave is particularly confusing, because this article says that she requested to be placed on the administrative leave. Her Tweets are hyper-dramatic. She calls her Employee Relations contacts "Employee Retaliation" and even insinuates that she thinks Apple might assault her at her home after they requested a meeting: > Any bets if I get a literal knock on my physical door from #Apple today? > Hey #Apple, "This feels a little like witness intimidation. I let @NLRB know." Love, Ashley > Clutches panic button & Mace while still laying on floor pondering the brutality of U.S. capitalism... Source: https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1436080433175818259 https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1436080433175818259
- unityByFreedom 5y ago

serial_dev 5y ago

This is one tweet that I saw on Twitter that looked actually bad https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1426014545202479108 https://twitter.com/ashleygjovik/status/1426014545202479108 > Her entire social media presence appears to be built around capitalizing on these stories Or, she is focused on shedding light on bad behavior of others and she was actually bullied and picked on by some twats at Apple and she wants consequences? So in the end, I don't understand why it would be a problem to create a website for news coverage and tweet highlights. If she feels she's been wronged, it's okay to fight back, even if she was employed by Apple. What's wrong with that? On this site, people always say "bad Apple" ("bad Google", etc) behaving badly and abusing its power. Yet, when an employee comes out with complaints, we pretend it is not okay to complain about your employer? I don't know who is in the wrong here, we have seen both dramatic employees that take offense in everything innocent, but we have also seen corporations covering up bullying and abusive behavior. Which one is it in this case? I don't know yet, I bet you don't either.

4887d30omd8 5y ago
From what I understand, there were a few such tickets created for multiple people on that team. “Make X’s life hell”. It’s at best a poorly thought out joke, but it is worth mentioning that this ticket was not isolated to her.
- tayistay 5y ago
  How about the one where they filled a whiteboard with nasty nicknames for her?
- serial_dev 5y ago
  Well, that definitely puts this into a different perspective... I see how at some of my former companies we would have made such joke tickets for each other. It's really hard to tell who is right from the outside, considering all parties might take things out of context. Just as a personal comment, that is why am the most boring person ever with my coworkers. (Assuming you are right) Is it really worth writing a "joke" ticket like this when it might come back in 6 years and you'll be painted as the bullies of Apple?

hhjj 5y ago

About footnote, claiming is not the same than telling truth. A lot of corporations are making their own "laws" (warranty stickers, abusive contract clauses, anti-piracy disclaimers, etc.) and they are keeping them even when they know it's total lies. Authorities also take what corporations tell them as granted truth. So even if the odds are in favor of corporations being right (corps are usually a lot of people), don't fall in that kind of trap especially when it favors the corporation or if there are facts casting doubts. -- This is my personal view not necessarily the view of my employer. I may be POTUS too. I may or may not think Apple is right. You owe me $100 if you read that sentence.

tayistay 5y ago

As I understand it, the footnote about confidentiality does not supersede state law that employees may discuss their mistreatment publicly.