> did she try to talk to her harassers directly before going to a manager?

There are a huge number of reasons why you should not be expected to do this. The harasser can be in a position of authority, for example. Even separately to that (and i understand this is a reducio argument, but..) would you ask an abuse victim to speak to their abuser? No, they go straight to the police.

> HR is not your friend; it's one of the stakeholders' defense lines.

This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.

> When you have weeks, months, in some cases, I think it is all right to expect decisions from anyone.

I report an assault. Do I suggest to the police how they should investigate and prosecute this assault? No. The victim reports the behaviour, but other parties should determine how to investigate and proceed with that report.

> This is embarrassing - but there are people out there who lie. Especially these days, with the problems of fake news, it's easy to get suspicious.

Sometimes, yes, people do lie, but each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.

In the (very unlikely) event of the victim being untruthful, the matter should be dropped, not blow back on the reporter -- or nobody will report real problems for fear of being unfairly punished themselves.

> s/women/people

This didn't need to be said. The author is talking about her experiences of harassment as a woman in technology. Yes, there are other problems that also need solving. This isn't the hill on which to make this point.

When you get attacked in the street, talking is the first thing you should do. When you are harassed by a teacher in class as well. You always need to talk to the person attacking you unless it's too dangerous to do so. It may fail, but if you don't do it, you basically give up your ability to act.

> This didn't need to be said

This does need to be said. There is a high focus on making everything about gender these days, and it's very detrimental. It makes people focusing on specifics, instead of global issues. Worst, it usually focus on fighting against something instead of empowering the victims, which needs to be done for long term results.

> each complaint of any nature should be treated confidentially so reports of abuses like this can be made without fear of repercussion.

That's actually very hard to do, but it's true it would be the ideal call.

What? Apparently, being untruthful about reporting harassment could result in the untruthful reporter being _unfairly_ punished?

Sounds like an all-win situation. Report harassment, true or not. If it helps your lot in life/work, great. If not, even if proven false, it gets dropped, non-consequentially. After all, it would be unfair to punish you...

This is not a problem that can realistically be fixed. An organization that's going to work for the best interests of employees cannot be paid by the company, nor can it report to the company or someone with whom the company has significant influence. That means unions.

> This is a problem that needs fixing, rather than a status quo that needs defending.

Ah, but it's not a gendered problem, and outside of gender laws, there's not much you can do to "fix" something nebulous like this in corporate America.

I did learn the hard way how to deal with it, which I think is mostly about attitude. I think part of your ordeal was that you had certain expectations from the people around you, and a lot of the grief was having those broken. So first of all, I guess you get a little more realistic (or disillusioned...) about workplace relationships, leadership and company policies. Sad as it may sound, loss of innocence and thicker skin will help the next time.

Second thing is to nip things in the bud and not let anything fester. At this point I will straight up confront anyone if I feel treated unfairly and not let it rest. More often than not this solves the situation. If not, I will move on. Life is too short to stick around and being miserable somewhere, as long as you have the freedom not to.

It sounds from your writing like you've already learned these lessons, but I just wanted to share my experiences.

I would guess a double digit percentage of jobs globally are abusive. A big chunk of which wouldn't even qualify as consensual employment - either through unpaid slave labor or misleading information about wages and work conditions.

There needs to be more transparency about employment and the people involved in them. I think we will eventually see something like LinkedIn but which provides both positive and negative feedback about people and doesn't require a user to sign up for a profile to exist.

There is a hard question as to where to draw the dividing line. Without robots, some jobs are just abusive - period. Many jobs lower the life expectancy of the workers, and I suppose the alternative would be (without robots) that no one does them. In the West we kind of get to firewall ourselves off from this, and we get to use, sell, or consume the product after all of the dirty work is done. At the minimum, reducing non-consensual employment will help push the true economic costs of produced goods closer to reality and eliminate the market forces which benefit non-consensual labor (basically cheating.)

In terms of adversarial work environments, which if not addressed can easily become mutually abusive, no matter what the policies of a company are, the fired workers are going to end up working somewhere else. A big company like Apple may be capable of implementing ideal processes and eliminate those workers, but what happens at the next company they show up in? Should an employment blacklist exist at the federal level, or should employers only allow known abusive employees just to work in isolation?

BTW, good article, kudos for publishing it, and you are correct to have those feelings.

I understand where you're coming from. But... there should be no need for one adult to educate another that bad behavior is unacceptable.

Hi! I know you enjoy punching me from behind when I'm doing my work, but could you please stop?

The larger issue is that (like most companies) actually doing anything is secondary to management politics. Protecting the bureaucracy is the #1 goal.

There are huge public awareness campaigns around all of these issues.

Everything I see in the media is that there are not only huge awareness campaigns, but that when something does happen, there are also huge outcries about it.

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, as sexism is undoubtedly a real issue in our society and our industry, but every other comment I read of yours makes it ever closer to a textbook case of a baseless accusation made to get back at someone you didn't like, and I'm ready to be conclusive about this. Do you realize how much this impacts all future cries for help from women being grossly mistreated because of their gender? My SO is going into engineering and it boils my blood to think how much people are willing to abuse the system until she can no longer be protected by it and we're back to the 1950's.

In a perfect world, where each and every one of us is aware of each and every culture around the world, this is true. Right now, we are in the middle of a process, where we encounter with culture we never dealt with before.

In some societies the boundaries for certain acts - such as personal space, physical contact, etc - is completely different to others.

Therefore I do believe talking could solve a small percentage of situations, which one considers harassment. ( Not the one in the article. )

The fact that you led with "No actually" instead, and ended by imputing a strawman ("everyone needs to automatically assume") gives your comment an absence-of-good-faith quality that we should all be striving to avoid on HN—particularly when the topic is divisive.

I tried to make sure I wasn't attacking anyone, but rather the ideas presented. I'll keep your guidance in mind if I find myself making such comments again.

Harassment situations like these can be difficult to talk about publicly for a number of reasons; respecting the privacy of all parties involved, readers' natural tendencies to issue a judgement, and so on. My take has always been that anonymized public stories like these are mostly as awareness raising not specific accusations - the emphasis is on the difficulty of the experience, not really trying to bring a specific person to justice (usually, of course there are exceptions). I do think that, if the reader is receptive, such stories are useful for helping to understand what this sort of thing looks like and what someone who is targeted by harassment is going through and perhaps provide suggestions to those who can help on how to help.

But as for placing guilt itself, I'd suggest that's not the business of stories like this or the business of those reading it. Even when you are in a position where it is your responsibility to address an issue of harassment, getting the story in a fair way is very difficult, and it's really unpleasant for everyone involved. Those who are responsible for others of course need to get over the discomfort of such discussions and work to resolve the issues, whether it's by correcting behavior or helping to explain misunderstandings, which can still be hurtful even if they are not meant to be.

It is unfortunate though understandable why many businesses take a handsoff position out of fear of legal reprecussions, since such actions just make the entire thing worse. Pretending it's not happening doesn't help anyone, whether it's based on a misunderstanding or not.

edit: changed onus to "responsibility of" since I cross posted mentally from a different discussion

Actually labor unions tend to protect people accused of sexual harassment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/06/nyregion/found-to-have-mis...

In fact they seem to be legally obligated to advocate for all union members, which would include the people doing harassing.

How do you support this statement? It doesn't strike me as a given and you don't really back it up at all.

If the situation is that bad, call the police, but that is an assault.

An example to back my "statement": https://www.gov.uk/how-to-resolve-neighbour-disputes/overvie... => 1.1.

It's also usually the logical thing adults do.

But does it target everyone _equally_ ? Of course not, far from it. This is why we pay attention to the groups that get targeted a lot.

> Please don't make harassment part of the gender wars.

Assuming that it isn't already.

LOL, wat?

Each and every case is unique, there is no equal in this.

I even gave an example, which has happened to me, to friends, to my wife equally...

Saying "it happens to everyone, it's not gendered" is ignorant at best.

From article above:

> yes, people disagree and are jerks. But they also tend to be much bigger, nastier jerks to women, people of color, and folks in other marginalized groups. Women and people of color can shrug off harassment too, of course, and often do. But they also tend to face more, and more vicious, attacks

"Women .. face more attacks" is what I mean by not equal. "More", meaning "not an equal amount".

Maybe I should have been more clear what I was doing, but considering I know what I was saying and so did the person I replied to, I feel it's fair to say that assuming I was being negative and not understanding the context is also on those who disagree with what I said. Especially considering the status of the post that says all this in the first place.

Basically, I stand by what my comment says (assuming everyone is lying is wrong), and those that disagree with me are wrong.

Maybe I should have explicitly called that out for those that weren't reading this comment in context, but the person I replied to knows what I said, and they were who I was replying to.

If you are against this comment, you should also report the original comment that said this as well. It's here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13192777

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3du1qm/e...

> Saying "target all harassment" is dismissing the very problems that the phrase is trying to draw attention to

the problem is harassment. not just women harassment, not just racial harassment. isn't it just as dismissive to say "focus on these kinds of harassment, everybody else will just have to wait because they can consider themselves lucky enough to even be white males"?

they key bit is "targeting harassment properly". of course dismissing is not proper handling.

Now, is he incorrect? If so, why?

And, if something is a serious issue, like HR motivations to build a case against you no matter what, then people should say it out loud.

I was asking questions and stating a few thing I made as mistakes - HR as someone to turn to -.