The HN guidelines explicitly ask you not to post downvote complaints, so please don't. It's tedious.
A reasonable thing to do when you get downvoted is to reflect on why your comment might have merited that. If you don't want to do that work, fine; but please don't channel that unwillingness into off-topic commentary.
Not sure why the downvotes either. I have personally witnessed a man in the office be fired for "sexual harassment" shortly after escalating an accounting audit issue. It is the easiest corporate weapon to use, and the default assumption is you are guilty. Even easier against awkward men who people love to hate.
> One accusation of ill-doing on my part and my life is essentially over.
This flies in the face of of...well, just about everything, in most industrialized countries. Serial sexual harassers get away with it for a long time and men who out-and-out assault women do to; somewhere almost certainly north of 50% (NARAL says 90%) of rapes go unreported and of those something like a quarter are ever brought to trial. Being fired--maybe--doesn't make your life "essentially over", and (in the US and the parts of Europe I'm familiar with) there's nothing that can be disclosed to a future employer to say "hey, that dude's a creep" without opening the former employer up to potential danger.
And to be crystal clear, everything I just said is a bug, not a feature. Sexual predators in the workplace, most of whom are male, by and large get away with it. It's why the last couple weeks of dudes not getting away with it are so notable. Fearing the same is temporarily-embarrassed-millionaire silliness projected into a new realm, nothing more.
It _might_ slide off me if someone accused me of something. But I really wouldn't put that to the test; at the same time. If you can mitigate the risk then why wouldn't you?
And again, the female perspective (that I could be abusive, hurtful or a rapist) is certainly enough to dissuade "alone time" for them, _especially_ if I, as a man, were able to get away with things like you were suggesting.
On this, I think you and I are in agreement. I've never managed women (had women managers, though), and thinking through how to square that circle is something that I'd probably want to talk to my director about. Not because of fear of consequences for me, but to provide the best environment for my coworkers.
Apparently you are an admin here. Sorry, I didn't realize you were representing me as well. I'll make sure to avoid the topic from now on, it doesn't rime with PC. I'll make sure to only debate in agreement.
As a small counter to your post though, I've read some articles recently talking about the importance of general social networking and one on one mentoring in some professions with the point being made that if men in power in these professions adopt a stance of not being alone with women, this could impact women's ability to progress professionally compared to their male peers. I think it's important that if you adopt such a stance, and are in a position of power, that you find ways to mitigate the unintended effect it may have on women.
I actually have a male friend who was accused of harassment by a female subordinate that was later decided in his favor. Being gay, happily married, and from what I know of him a very good employee and boss, surely helped his case. After this incident he stopped all outside of work one on one meetings, but he did so with both men and women so no one is adversely impacted by his choice.
I would agree that it might be a disadvantage for women, but conversely I would just make an effort to ensure there was _someone_ else with us, male or female. So instead of drinks 1:1 outside work, or a 1:1 meeting, It would instead be three people which mitigates both parties liability.
I am a senior engineer, not a manager, but if I were a manager one on ones would be necessary, I would attempt to have HR in each 1:1 as an ass-saving measure anyway.
But then again, I believe I would be a poor manager so I don't wish it on anybody.
As an aside, it's always nice to hear someone who recognizes they aren't a good fit to be a manager. I'm not sure I would be good at it either but it seems that even people who very obviously don't have the personality for it tend to jump at the opportunity.
I speak from experience from being around vindictive people.
That doesn't sound realistic, for a couple of reasons:
1. 1:1 meetings between a manager and their staff happen on a regular basis, e.g., weekly. If HR had to attend each of these meetings, they'd never get their own work done. (HR's job is to cover the company's ass, not yours.)
2. If your employee walks into your office for a 1:1 meeting and finds someone from HR there, they'll freak out because they'll think they're about to be fired. (That's a typical situation where managers call HR for backup.)
If losing a couple of imaginary internet points is all it takes to retract your comments... how strongly do you hold those opinions in the first place?
Downvotes just mean disagreement. If more people disagree than agree with you, well, welcome to the ghosted text. But so what? It just means that your opinion is a minority opinion amongst the people who cared enough to click one way or the other.
But. While I might be a minority with these beliefs, shouldn't people be offering me counter-arguments instead of downvoting? It feels bad to not have a dialog. "You're wrong imo" is not a very useful reply; and that's all you get with downvotes.
The stupid thing is that it just takes one person disagreeing in order to grey out your text - that's an HN fault, not a human fault.
> shouldn't people be offering me counter-arguments instead of downvoting?
Probably, but there's a lot of things people should be doing which they don't do.