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I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing
- pcthrowaway 3y agoI noticed this submission had become "dead" due to flagging, and retaliation for whistleblowing seems like exactly the type of thing that a coordinated group would try to bury. I vouched for it. I don't have feelings one way or another on who is being wronged, but I thought the information was well-presented and coherent, and deserves consideration without being flagged. If the other party believes this is inaccurate they should present their side here.
- Buttons840 3y agoThis reminds me of a paragraph I recently read on another blog: > I’ve been writing for a long time. In 2010, I started a blog, focused on the technology industry—topics included programming languages, organizational practices, and development methodologies—that reached a daily view count of about 8,000 (some days more, some days less) with several essays taking the #1 spot on Hacker News and Reddit (/r/programming). I quit that kind of writing for many reasons, but two merit mention. One: Silicon Valley people are, for lack of a better way to put it, precious about their reputations. My revelations of unethical and illegal business practices in the technology industry put me, literally, in physical danger. Two: since then, my work has become unnecessary. In 2013, my exposures of odious practices in a then-beloved sector of the economy were revelatory. Ten years later, tech chicanery surprises no one, and the relevant investigative work is being done with far more platform, access, and protection. The world no longer needs me to do that job. And thank God. Source: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/
- packetslave 3y agooh boy...
- repeekad 3y agoSeems it was flagged again, and then was unflagged again? How common are these kind of seemingly coordinated attempts to manipulate HN (assuming there is indeed nothing actually wrong with OP)?
- floatingatoll 3y agoThank you for doing so; it led me to see this post, and I appreciate that. I’ll vouch next time if I see it go back to [dead].
- pcthrowaway 3y agoYour time to shine. Or can we get a ruling/override @dang ?
- transRfagz 3y ago[dead]
- saulrh 3y agoIt's really telling that the frontpage post on the tech-industry forum about coordinated discrimination in the tech industry is being brigaded, yeah. Disappointing, too. I hope we learn what happened here and things are made better.
- transRfagz 3y ago[dead]
- transRfagz 3y ago[flagged]
- amatecha 3y agoGo cry about your bigoted, pathetic worldview elsewhere.
- transRfagz 3y ago[dead]
- desuforever 3y agothe subreddit which is coordinating these attacks are very blatant, endorsed even by the powermods
- jesterman 3y agoIt appears it was flagged again? I can't see it on the first 5 pages of the front pages of HN..
- AlbertCory 3y agoWithout taking any position on this post itself or flagging of it: flagging has just become abusive. It needs serious reform, @dang. I can't speak for the original rationale, but it seems like the intent must be to remove posts or comments that are clearly offensive on some semi-legal grounds (obscene, advocating violence, etc.) Now it's become just "I don't like this." There are many possible reforms, but off the top of my head, changing "flag" to be nothing but a suggestion to the mods might fix it. It would do nothing unless a mod agreed. And the flagger's id should be public and it should cost them something (karma points, maybe).
- cbtacy 3y agoReforming "flagging" to make it less open to abuse and brigading is obviously overdue.
- codehitchhiker 3y ago100% Flagging stuff because "I don't like this" "it's critical of me or my friend or something I like" should be punished
- TechBro8615 3y agoI flagged it because it's exhausting sociopolitical drivel that has nothing to do with tech. If the company discriminated against this person, then prove it in court. Nobody here has sufficient information to make a determination one way or another. And none of us has an obligation to take the author at their word.
- amatecha 3y agoIf you don't like it, don't read it. It's on-topic and worth discussing -- maybe not for you, but this story is absolutely not within the criteria of flagging, which is why despite people flagging it, the link remains and will continue to be present on the site.
- TechBro8615 3y agoIt's not really on topic. It's a personal grievance of the variety that anyone might have at their job. There's nothing about it that satisfies intellectual curiosity, and as demonstrated by the comments here, it's a topic likely to devolve into a flamewar. This shouldn't be surprising since it's impossible to make any argument from a logical basis. There is simply not enough information available from this one-sided blog post to have a meaningful discussion about it that isn't unfair to one side or the other.
- jesterman 3y agoThis is an incredible piece. The fact that the 20% of the company laid off were all minority groups is absolutely insane. LinkedIn says they have at minimum 50 employees, meaning at least 10 people were laid off. Here is their LinkedIn post (linked on their website), https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058845122393755648/ https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7058845... " It is estimated that one in five transgender people will experience homelessness. Unfortunately, it's my turn. After six months of searching, I was not able to find a new role in time, and I have lost my home."
- wiredone 3y ago… but you have to ask - why can’t this person find a job? Surely not every employer is non-inclusive. There’s smells of a partial story all through this.
- Waterluvian 3y agoWhile it’s unrealistic to believe that every bad thing that happens to you is because of discrimination, being part of a commonly discriminated group has an effect of making everything harder. Lots of people struggle to find a job. Now imagine if on top of that, some additional percentage of jobs are off the table to begin with. In a way, this reminds me of climate change. You can’t usually point to any one event and definitively say “this was caused by discimination,” but you’re quite aware it’s happening overall.
- Manuel_D 3y agoSan Francisco and Seattle aren't exactly hotbeds of intolerance. The large-scale studies on discrimination in tech companies did find slight gender discrimination, in favor of women: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3672484
- Glawen 3y agoMy company has a goal of 35% women in executive position. The thing is that we are working in the industry, you know, factories and machines. This environment does not attract women, we barely have women engineers. That means that any women in engineering willing to take responsibility is fast tracked to management. This was the same at my previous employers.
- wiredone 3y agoHonestly, while I believe a lot of the perspective shared, there always seems to be a huge lack of objective assessment of options for these folks. In tech there are many incredibly high paying jobs - taking control over your situation has a low bar. if you don’t like your manager, taking the view that if you escalate a formal complaint to HR (in doing so lose all trust you manager and HR may have in you), you’ll be vindicated and live on happily ever after… it’s a fairytale. Go work somewhere that makes you happy. Leave toxic environments - it’s not your job to fix them/right wrongs. There are certainly real victims in these environments. There are also in my personal experience a lot of people who make noise/complain about immaterial incidents in the hope of claiming some group control over their situation or with some sense of justice around fixing things. This thrashing can create a toxic environment for those around in itself.
- glitchc 3y agoPeople should absolutely call out toxic work environments as just that. What's lacking is legislation protecting employee rights. Your approach is to cut and run, but ultimately people need to raise their voice for legislation to exist.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- saulrh 3y ago"Cut and run" doesn't work if you're on a visa, if you've already had to do that once or twice in the last couple years, or if you don't have enough of an emergency fund. It also doesn't work if you're not a tech worker - remember that discrimination affects HR reps and program managers and mechanical engineers and fabrication technicians and research scientists just as much as it affects SWEs.
- quadrifoliate 3y ago
- kbenson 3y ago> who asserted that Person A was “too aggressive” to succeed in the new role. Behaviors that were regularly rewarded in white, male peers, such as taking initiative to perform needed duties outside the scope of their role, were instead framed as negative indications of focus. > I provided written guidance to Ram, who was also my supervisor, on the ways in which this “vibes based” determination of inadequacy constituted sex bias and workplace discrimination, and asked him to please speak with Person A and HR jointly. To me, without any additional context, this seems like it might be people referring to different things with the same terminology. Management is not an area I would want someone to be aggressive, as in confrontational, in. But in business aggression, as in ambition, is often seen as positive. Aggressiveness is often used to describe both types of behavior, and I think it's easy for people to misinterpret what is trying to be communicated because of that. Is being confrontational a male trait? Is being ambitious? Perhaps one or both are, but certain positions work with those traits better than others, and if that's indeed part of what was being communicated, that may not be a matter of a male trait that's valued being devalued when expressed in a women as much as a trait being a bad fit for the position. I don't know it was actually meant or the full context in this situation, but as someone that has a coworker that is often confrontational, sometimes in disruptive ways, but also was interested in a management position, that's what came to mind when I read this. I do not believe his particular way of interacting with people would work well in a management position, and I could definitely see myself calling it "aggressive". That said, I do personally like this person and consider them a friend, I just don't think they would do well in a position such as that. Edit: I haven't completed the article, so the above is from reaching that point in the piece, and should be taken mostly as a general discussion point and not a specific assessment of an event in this article.
- ketzu 3y ago> people referring to different things with the same terminology. Management is not an area I would want someone to be aggressive, as in confrontational, in. But in business aggression, as in ambition, is often seen as positive. My understanding was that the author refers to "peers" as males in the same role, i.e., the arguments are made differently for people not based on their role, but based on their sex. They even reference specific arguments applied in opposite ways in the part you cite.
- transRfagz 3y ago[dead]
- amatecha 3y agoThis is really well-written. Thank you for shining the light on this and sharing it with the community. Sorry you and your colleagues were subjected to this unfair treatment. <3
- nurettin 3y agoA person who knows what they are doing versus someone who has difficulties learning the given tasks have two very subjective views of the workplace situation. One is at the mercy of their colleagues, constantly and rightfully interrupted to correct their mistakes, while the other is chugging away in the zone. We need the viewpoints of both levels of expertise to make sure that there is a whistle to blow.
- lelandbatey 3y agoYou are directly implying that there is no way to know whether the person writing this blog post is "someone who needs constant correction" or if they're a high performer who's "in the zone". based on that, I do not think you read the parent article. The person in question was just promoted for their excellent performance, and had written performance reviews giving high marks. They spoke up, and then were quickly let go. The company then went on to fire exclusively minority groups in their layoffs. If those are the facts of the matter, then we really do NOT need the perspective from someone "in the zone" to make a judgement here.
- nurettin 3y agoI don't understand how this logic works. So many high profile whistleblower cases (deutscebank, volskwagen, cia) happened because a high profile employee put their career at risk, but I get an annoyed self-contradictory response using quotes and caps. Disappointing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- wintogreen74 3y agoThis workplace sounds like a scary environment; this person presents themselves as someone who takes a lot of effort to try and make happy. Frankly it sounds exhausting. I don't get it; I manage 15-20 people and this stuff never comes up. They're visibly quite a diverse group and the rest of it has just never has been an issue, or any of my concern. I advocate for them against their goals and desires and have never considered their personal positions/beliefs/values/identity from a positive or negative perspective. This isn't because I'm some sort of amazing manager, it's because I'm lazy. It seems like so much extra work to discriminate against in these situations.
- eyelidlessness 3y agoI’m not in a position to evaluate your management, but I do think it’s important to point out that you and/or your org may have biases which make it harder for you to see issues, and which may discourage people from raising concerns. Discrimination is only extra work if it’s a conscious goal, and it’s easy to miss if your effort avoidance signals the bias as “normal”. It’s entirely possible you’re totally unbiased and your self described laziness is warranted. But it’s at least as likely somewhere on the spectrum of not enough of a problem for people to risk rocking the boat.
- lliamander 3y agoUnconscious bias is a completely overblown concept, and some of the science that supports it (such as Implicit Association Tests) is hogwash. Note that I am not saying that we do not have cognitive biases (in the general sense of the term) or blind spots, but the idea that people are systematically biased against certain racial or other identity groups in ways they are not aware of just isn't well supported.
- ryandrake 3y ago> this person presents themselves as someone who takes a lot of effort to try and make happy. Frankly it sounds exhausting. Your comment reminds me of the Ashley Gjovik story that made the rounds on HN a few times. She was reportedly a project manager at Apple, but reading through her billion-word blog[1], it seems she spent all of her time as an activist filing complaints to regulators and fighting literally everyone and everything in the company. I don't understand how people can keep their actual job performance satisfactory when they're so busy filing complaints and appeals and appeals to appeals and meeting with lawyers all day. Truly, it must be exhausting for them, too. 1: https://www.ashleygjovik.com/apple-legal-battle.html https://www.ashleygjovik.com/apple-legal-battle.html
- throwawaylinux 3y agoI've worked with a couple of people in tech who were very worker solidarity, unionize, labor movement, discrimination everywhere, etc. They must have been tiring for management to work with. And I go in to bat for my colleagues, and it has not always made me popular with management and executives, but there are better and worse ways of approaching things. If you are unwilling to accept that a decision has been made for a reason other than discrimination, bullying, or retaliation, it's no longer a good faith dialogue. Expecting other parties to continue talking and negotiating as though it were, whether or not they are guilty of these things, is silly. That's the point where you need a lawyer, or an exit plan, or to read through a lot of statute and case law, or all of the above. By all means try to get them to keep talking and collect evidence, but the fact they don't want to deal with you any more isn't exactly evidence of anything by itself. I'm not saying this person is wrong or did the wrong thing. I really don't have enough information. But this is a company that investigated their co-founder and CTO and kicked him out for harassing two trans employees, more than half their "leadership team" appear to be minorities or women, they have hired several trans people including at least one who got spectacular performance reviews and was being promoted. On its face I would have to entertain the idea that they are not engaged in wide scale discrimination of anybody who is not a straight white male. This is also quite a serious step for the person to make, whether or not there are legal ramifications (and I hope they got very good advice about breaking their NDA). But what would an employer think about hiring this person after reading this? What would be the best outcome for them? The worst?
- lliamander 3y ago> I'm not saying this person is wrong or did the wrong thing. I really don't have enough information. Despite what other people may claim about why this story was previously flagged, this is probably why: we don't have enough information to know for sure this story is the truth, but people are going to come armed with their own presuppositions and argue about it anyway. > On its face I would have to entertain the idea that they are not engaged in wide scale discrimination of anybody who is not a straight white male. Not to mention that, as per the blog post, other employees close to the matter disagreed with OP's interpretation. Still doesn't mean the OP is wrong, but hopefully at least some of the people who responded to the article favorably will reserve some doubts.
- codehitchhiker 3y ago[flagged]
- TinkersW 3y agoAuthor doesn't present any evidence to back up claims that I saw. I don't understand why people make posts like this and don't back it up with exact and specific instances?
- bmarquez 3y agoWith the reference to comparing her employer to Alex Jones, I think the author is trying to sway the court of public opinion. I hope the author has some hard evidence like emails or voice recordings that she's saving for a lawsuit.
- amatecha 3y agoI mean, at most employers you literally can't publicly share any material produced on a work computer or context, unless you feel like being sued (for violating a non-disclosure agreement). When it comes to law-violating stuff, of course in that case the NDA won't apply to sharing stuff with law enforcement etc. .. but that doesn't mean the stuff can be shared publicly (unless it becomes part of a public court case of course). It's not all that easy to blow the whistle on something and "provide receipts" to the general public (unless you don't mind having lawsuits filed against you I guess). This is why you generally give such people the benefit of the doubt -- they basically have no other option but to make their case as fairly and reasonably as they can, while still protecting themselves to at least some basic degree. If it really came to it, the claims _can_ be verified, for example in a court case, where the process of discovery would reveal all the HR records and whatever else.
- nostromo 3y agoI think Washington’s banning of nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreements is going to hurt victims more than anyone. It’s one’s primary bargaining chip when suing a former employer that has wronged an employee. Taking that away means more people will not get compensation when they should.
- tambp94201 3y agoMy read: Person A was potentially discriminated against, which combined with the previous incident of discrimination understandably got the author's hackles raised. Person B may have been fired for any number of reasons, very few of which are any of the author's business. I've had to fire people who were viewed as great by their peers because they were browsing illegal porn at work, or because they sexually harassed a coworker, or they flagrantly and dangerously violated InfoSec policy, or they were observed not once but twice shooting up heroin in the work locker room. HR isn't going to share any of those reasons with nosy coworkers, and the person who was fired is also unlikely to admit to it. After that it sounds like the author made themselves a completely unbearable coworker. ~50 person startups have code quality issues, bad documentation, lack of formal processes, etc, almost as a rule. If the author was making as big of a stink as it sounds like they were about it, they were demonstrably doing their job poorly. While their involvement in championing person A may have absolutely factored into the decision to lay them off, so could their (potentially) inappropriate prying into the decision about person B, or their general unwillingness to help the startup meet their ship dates. Or the company could've done layoffs purely based on project need, compensation, and role redundancy (how companies are supposed to do layoffs), and the first 90% of the article could've been irrelevant to the decision.
- xchip 3y agoIf you are hiring people that later need to be fired for doing porn, heroin, sexual harassment,... Maybe the problem is not them.
- dudul 3y agoHow do you filter for porn addiction during your interview process?
- lliamander 3y agoWhat a wild assertion. For many of these problems, the only way you might know ahead of time is if you did a really extensive background check. Such a process would mostly be a waste. It's perfectly reasonable and fair to hire people, provide clear standards of conduct, and fire those who fail the standard.
- renlo 3y agoI sincerely can not discern whether this is satire or reality.
- water554 3y agoAuthor would be well served to spend some relaxing days on the beach
- camdenlock 3y agoThe amount of time and energy some people are willing to spend furiously spinning webs of utter nonsense is... impressive. Unnervingly, it sometimes resembles the zeal reserved for traditional religions.
- nyanpasu64 3y agoOne observation is that retaliation against morally-driven whistleblowers on better-connected groups, is that it takes a form similar to complex trauma, resulting in gaslighting, repeatedly lying and contradicting actions and memories, to the point of creating self-doubt, questioning whether what you experienced or the stories being fed are true, and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness to follow your morals and effect change. I don't know whether it's personally worthwhile to fight against perceived wrongs when (her and myself) facing health and gender discrimination, somehow create legal or social changes to prevent future incidents, or just do the minimum to stay financially afloat (if possible) and with whatever leftover money try to support individual friends I care about.
- imtemplain 3y ago[dead]
- SanjayMehta 3y agoFTA: "I provided written guidance to Ram, who was also my supervisor" This person sounds like a very valuable addition to any team.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago>Normally, my NDA would prohibit me from disclosing this, but as I will demonstrate in this article, it is a contributing factor to the retaliatory actions taken against me and thus covered under Washington State labor protection laws. I hope the author ran this by a lawyer licensed in the State of Washington before publishing this.
- davidguetta 3y ago"[I] also surfaced feedback that had been shared with me by my own engineering teams regarding ways in which Rune Lab’s technology was insufficient for clinical use." "In each instance, I escalated this feedback to the appropriate members of the senior leadership team, and where appropriate, proposed refactors of common pain points. Synthesizing, evaluating, and sharing this feedback is a crucial component of any TPM’s day-to-day responsibilities. Yet many of my peers expressed fear of raising this feedback themselves, and were grateful that I was willing to do so for them." Yeah, it's not just about the discrimination. If you start opposing leadership in their compagny decisions, wether you are justified or not doesn't matter, you're not going to last long in the compagny anyway. If you disagree with your boss, leave, don't fight it because you don't have the power.
- pcthrowaway 3y agoWe only have the worker protections we have because at some point people chose to take a stand rather than just change jobs because it was easier.
- davidguetta 3y agoOk for discriminations.. but criticiszing internal procedures being annoying about it and raising concerns all the timebhas nothing to do with worker protection.. you are just being a weight for the managements and just not worth the money
- asherah 3y ago[flagged]
- cbtacy 3y agoBingo