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.
Know where it's not a fairytale? Unionized workplaces. Source: I know several people who work at such places—raising all sorts of issues and having them addressed reasonably-fairly is downright normal at them, and a manager trying to retaliate for that kind of thing is likely in for a bad time.
Mostly I saw things like rampant sexual harassment and nepotism at every level. Anyone who so much as squeaked about things being wrong saw management and the union reps team up to screw the person for fucking with the status quo. Heck, at my last job like that, they were cousins/roommates.
Unionized workplaces can be just as toxic as any other workplace.
One of the reasons people in power can behave so terribly towards specific groups is because they can't "just leave" like you suggest. You think the bully's going to choose the strongest person as a victim?
I try to pay the favor forward by speaking out and supporting folks who are treated badly by shitty leadership whenever I can.
You're not there to make the world a better place, to belong to a family, to improve anything. Just do your job and go back to your life at the end of the day. When you're off work, do your best to forget about it. In fact, always prepare yourself for interviews, so leaving your current job it is easier when the time comes, and it always comes.
This detachment always served as protection from toxic workplaces, and I worked in a few of them. Don't let anyone fool you that it will harm your career, the only thing that will harm your career is not putting effort to learn skills that are in demand.
Speak for yourself. I do want to make the world a better place and I'm fortunate enough to have a job where I do that. It's rewarding; my life has purpose during working hours.
Not to mention that not everyone has the luxury of being able to move around easily.
Be the change you want to be. Everyone just says "leave" but what if you have no where to go, and inversely, if everyone is just leaving, then there is no incentive for organizations to change.
You can argue its "futile" but the truth is, its not, these things compound, the more people do it, the less it can be swept up and hidden away. Real change is thousands and thousands of people doing small things to increment in a better direction. Its not always easy, but its the right thing to do. Thats how as a society can do better.
The idea of shifting it to "some other person" is why I think we have some of the issues today with reform and general societal polarization: everyone wants someone else to fix the problems
I guarantee you that will change in about 10 years, if not sooner.
Ironically, as a collective bargaining unit we have the most negotiating power right now — when we don’t need it.
It seems foreign to us in the US, but being an employee should be no different than a tenant at a nice apartment building: both types of corporations extract value from the individual. Both find a way to make profit. However, as a tenant you have some legal rights (Europeans would still laugh at them in comparison). As a tenant you’re legally entitled to some basic day-to-day guarantees (though maybe not always in practice): a light breaks, plumber is needed, common areas kept in order, tenant disputes? A landlord has to fix that. I’m not saying a corporation needs to hold our hand, but it absolutely should be responsible for providing a comfortable environment, work-life balance, etc.
It’s really not too crazy to demand the bare minimum from our jobs, considering how much of our lives are spent working on them.
I know I'll get HR involved, they will help me.
You now have two problems with work.
Unless your goal is to get someone fired, I've never seen HR getting involved to be a positive action.
I'm biased, my wife works in HR but I've heard multiple stories from her where she helped solve problems by acting as an intermediate and deescalating the situation.
One of the major impetus of HR is to comply with laws regarding discrimination and ensure that the company doesn't engage in behaviours that would result in them being either liable or having a PR problem. This means solving those kind of issues and that sometimes involve batting for the employee with the executive team because they know that it's in the best interest of the company.
In this specific case, OP is a manager and passing up the chains issues that have been signaled to her. In a well functioning organization, this is absolutely the correct response and it's part and parcel of a manager's job. Involving HR early with a clear solution to deescalate and improve the situation (as described by the first case from OP) is great because this is what's best for the company. If the employee had transferred to the new team there would have been no basis for a lawsuit.
So, she did exactly what she was hired for.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
90% of the submissions from people sharing their experience with a company/product here would fall under that description as well (and many of those are upvoted because they seem useful)
That dude who interned at repl.it a while back and posted about a mildly bad experience was upvoted to the front page for over a day. people had their pitchforks out.
I think we should maintain higher standards of evidence before getting our pitchforks out, but at the same time, we should let people have their platform if people find it discussion-worthy. In the case of Repl.it or the 1000s of posts of people being shadowbanned from big tech without explanation, we let people have their say, and we let the platform help them where possible. The HN algorithmic spotlight is usually pretty fair with illuminating all sides when they present themselves here.
The submission here is extremely detailed and well-written, and makes a great case. There are multiple claims made which, were they misleading or inaccurate, the other party could discredit quite easily.
But instead of doing that, we're seeing the post repeatedly get flagged.
There could be other reasons this is happening, and I assume many, like myself, are withholding judgment.
But the silence from Rune, and dialogue suppression tactics by mystery parties honestly just make me more inclined to believe there is at least a grain of truth in the original submission.
I hope the author has some hard evidence like emails or voice recordings that she's saving for a lawsuit.
> 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.
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.
In any case, I was trying to keep it abstract because I wasn't trying to be pro or con about this article, but instead make a point about communication, which is an interest of mine.
"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.
I hope the author ran this by a lawyer licensed in the State of Washington before publishing this.
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.
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.
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.
This person sounds like a very valuable addition to any team.
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: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."
> Approximately 20% of the company was laid off, and to the best of my knowledge 100% of them were members of historically marginalized groups. Women, people of color, queer folks, and multiple people on disability and even maternity leave were specifically and disproportionately targeted. In the aftermath I could not find even one single person who did not belong to a protected class.
So bear in mind that this is very expansive group of people. This is not referring to "minority groups" as the parent comment wrote (women are the majority of the population). The author did not provide the denominator - that is, how many people at the company fit this group of people she's referring to - so it's hard to discern any significant discrimination without that piece of information. San Francisco and Seattle (where Rune labs and the author are located, respectively) are very diverse places, so it's not inconceivable that most of the company is comprised of "minority groups". A quick glance at the company's page shows that these "minority groups" comprise about 2/3rds of its leadership [1].
Furthermore, I don't think the author understands the term "protected class" [2]. Race, age, religion, gender, and disability are all protected classes, workplace discrimination on the basis of these is illegal. Everyone belongs to several protected classes (age, race, and gender, at minimum), so I'm not sure what she means when she writes, "I could not find even one single person who did not belong to a protected class".
1. https://runelabs.io/about-us
2. https://www.archives.gov/eeo/terminology.html#:~:text=Protec....
Combine that with the current tech market being on a downswing and it's not unreasonable that this would take a while to find a new place.
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.
Then two very good friends of mine graduated, they were both black, they were both French citizens from the French islands, they both graduated as electronics engineers within the top 10% of their class, they were well-spoken, and pretty much serious model students. The average time to find a class for people who graduated in their major was less than 2 months. One of my friend found a job in 6 months, the other in 5 months. Both of them had a starting salary that was more than 40% lower than the average salary of the other students in my university graduating in the same major.
That's when I discovered that discrimination still exists and that it has tremendous impact. So, it doesn't surprise me at all that being transgendered makes finding a job significantly harder.
Who demands extensive requirements docs in <100 person startups? Who organizes ERGs in that context? Who spends all their time obsessing over process, planning, and identity instead of actually building stuff?
It's amazing they had a job this long.
weird
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.
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).
Flagging stuff because "I don't like this" "it's critical of me or my friend or something I like" should be punished
> 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.
Unnervingly, it sometimes resembles the zeal reserved for traditional religions.
