I know I mention this a lot on HN, but also read Corporate Confidential to understand how American Corporations and HR really works.

But I'm male, and have literally never been harassed at work over anything (not gender, age, race, religion, sexual orientation, facial hair, choice of editor... nothing), so what do I know?

Does he? Is "facing consequences" the only way for someone to learn?

If I "faced consequences" for every stupid thing I've done in my life time I'd probably have spent the last 30 years in jail. Because at the age of 42, I've done a ton of dumb, inappropriate and just plain stupid things in my life.

Most of the time, someone has explained to me that what I did was wrong and I was able to learn from it and change my behavior. And look at me today - gainfully employed since I was 14, happily married, three children.

These zero tolerance policies of "facing consequences" for any infraction don't benefit society at all. There is no true binary decision of, Bad Behavior = Punishment, Good Behavior = No Punishment. Bad behavior can be challenged, forgiven and forgotten without having to ruin someone's career over it.

Repeated bad behavior, on the other hand... Of course you need to escalate at that point.

It's worth noting that neither we nor the original interviewee know whether this is repeated bad behavior or not. It might've been a one-time slip-up, or he might be serially abusing his position. We can't know, but his boss can and probably does. Go ahead and report to the folks who are in a position to make an intelligent decision.

No. Most people learn the basic lesson of not hitting job candidates up for dates (and other related ethical issues) either during orientation in their first job or--even before that--when learning about the harm caused by abuses of power.

> Repeated bad behavior, on the other hand... Of course you need to escalate at that point.

From reddit OP's description, it seems likely that the interviewer has done this sort of thing before.

The way you framed this as a “PR liability” suggests you don’t think there’s anything wrong here, it’s just a question of dollars and cents to the company’s bottom line. That’s exactly the kind of sociopathy that is the problem.

You have to stop and decide that there is a moral and values problem, and that these things matter more than a few bucks. If the company has values around this, it will make sure people have training around what is not acceptable behaviour. It will not pass out cards, 10x engineers get a green card, 5x engineers get a yellow card, 1x engineers get a red card.

Everyone will get the same message about what the company values, and steps--I will not say what those steps are, maybe training should have happened before this incident, maybe coaching should happen afterwards, maybe firing is not necessary--and steps will be taken to ensure that everyone in the company acts in accordance with the company’s values.

Guard against this possibility is remarkably easy: Nobody hits on job applicants. If you are interviewing people, it is your duty to know this, and your company’s duty to ensure that you know this.

Either that, or you had better have one hell of a documented paper trail explaining how they were good enough to interview, but not good enough to hire, and explaining why the person you ended up hiring was clearly superior.

In my experience, any company with the kind of process that can defend itself against such lawsuits wouldn’t permit an employee to expose them to the lawsuit in the first place.

If one of their managers has read this, I’m sure they’re horrified.

There's a side conversation here that I'm sort of interested in. There is a certain moral obligation to protecting the company you work for and not putting it under risk with thing like discrimination-based non-hires -- but why should sociopathic lawyers get to decide what risks are actually there or not? It's immoral some of the things many companies do in all legality, risk-free. You won't stir up an internet shit storm for every one of them, even if you can get a few. Not so long ago the behavior this woman reported would have not been cause for such outrage and moralizing displayed on this page. What changed in humans since then? I really don't think we've gotten all that more moral. I'd say instead what changed is the sociopathic lawyers became even more powerful, and saw a great and endless revenue stream for themselves by making it easy to destroy people and businesses for these very basic and human drives, faux pas mistakes at worst.

Context is important. Asking a stranger out for a date at a bar has a worst case scenario of hearing "no". Asking someone out whom you just rejected for a job listing has a very, very different worst case scenario.

For fuck's sake, did I really have to just spell that out?

> why should sociopathic lawyers get to decide what risks are actually there or not?

Sociopathic or not, employment lawyers have a lot to say about liability and risk for business because they know the relevant laws very well and know how to make persuasive arguments in court for corner cases where precedent isn't entirely clear.

Again, did I actually have to spell that out for you?

I don't have an inherent problem with coworkers asking each other out on dates, or within a professional context in general, but doing it in an interview is beyond stupid.

Just because someone is good at their jobs shouldn't excuse inappropriate behavior. It lessens everyone else on the team and those seeking employment. Look at professional sports just because they're 10x ers should they get away with their transgressions. Or, because they are so good should they be held to higher standards.

Do not want. Do not need. GTFO

The guy wasn't abusing his power. He was being a fucking weirdo, after rejecting her for a job. So that power dynamic was over. Now he's being very unprofessional, weird, creepy, and a whole bunch of other things.

Also outrage culture, we're talking about a culture where someone got fired for making jokes about "forking" another guys repo and big dongles in a private conversation. Then the person who got him fired then got fired for having her companies web site DDoS'd off the internet. That's just one of many not quite right things that's happened in our culture.

We are not talking about a culture where someone got fired for "forking" jokes. That may be the culture, but it's completely unrelated to the issue being discussed here.

Very unlikely for a start up that'll you'll interview again for a different position. They would just offer you the other position. Also very unlikely is a rejection turned into acceptance.

"We are not talking about a culture where someone got fired for "forking" jokes. That may be the culture, but it's completely unrelated to the issue being discussed here."

That is exactly what the person was talking about and this thread is very much the same. A bunch of people outraged because they should be.

Personally, I'm not outraged because I "should be." I'm mildly annoyed at the person in question, and I'm outraged at all the people coming out of the woodwork to defend him.

It's not that they never change their minds, it's more that they usually don't. Especially after telling someone officially they're rejected. If a company rejected me then phoned me up two days later saying they changed their minds I wouldn't look too favourably on them.

"I'm mildly annoyed at the person in question, and I'm outraged at all the people coming out of the woodwork to defend him."

Personally I just think he's a weirdo who's clearly not that smart. But I've seen some people call him a "sexual criminal". I'm like WTF! That's a bit extreme. That's the sort of thing the outrage culture is describing.

It has nothing to do with normality, just potential.

I haven't seen "sexual criminal" but rest assured that I'd object as strongly to that as I object to all the people defending this guy.

Not saying it could never happen, but it tends to leave your company a prisoner. You can't lose the superstar, but you can't attract other top-level talent because the superstar is toxic, which leaves you even more dependent on the superstar...

I hire and value engineers that elevate those around them to 10x.

And this behavior lowers people, not elevates. So no, that person is not a valuable asset. He's the very definition of a liability.

The person is clearly a liability, it's still possible he's an asset. In simple business terms you have a guy who'll get you sued for 1 million but will make you 10 million. That person while a douche is still a valuable asset. Chances of that ever being the case or anyone ever choosing to keep a known douche about is another thing.

The point was more that I value a person's ability to lift those around them much higher than their abilities to outperform them. It's hard to scale one person. But one person who can help scale an entire team is infinitely more valuable.

> In simple business terms you have a guy who'll get you sued for 1 million but will make you 10 million.

He's not a liability because of potential lawsuits. He's a liability because he brings the team down (antics like this do have a huge impact on the rest of the team).

It seems like while trying to dislike 10x you fundamentally want 10x. All those things are in my opinion what 10x is, they bring 10x more value to the team. Some may be 10x because they literally code faster and better, or they could be 10x because their code helps other people also code faster (I suspect the two are pretty well linked), or they could just be the leader who gives them more confidence to do stuff, etc.

10x may or may not be a myth. I don't think it is, I just don't think it's someone who codes 10x faster than everyone else. I think they just make the entire team better. I also think someone who is 10x one place isn't always going to be 10x in another team due to team dynamics. I.E. the team also makes them better.

> He's a liability because he brings the team down (antics like this do have a huge impact on the rest of the team).

While I get what you mean, I don't see how the team fits in to this. It's not like it was at a team event, team were involved. They most likely will never know this happened. This could just literally be a once off weird thing the guy does while being a cool guy just as much as it could be that he's an around weirdo who does weird things and is constantly belittling people.

It's not unheard off. Personal Anecdote: I've known a friend, who keeps the most obnoxious programmer around at his company because he wrote the core money making algorithm by himself and is the only one who understands it. The ceo actively protects other employees from this programmer, but won't fire him because they need him more than anyone else at the company.

You can write documentation on something and still have it be very hard to understand to the point where other developers can't understand.

Say it's a start up in the first two years of doing business. You're going to rewrite a stable money making functionality just because one guy wouldn't document the code? That's just plain stupid.

Also a smart programmer wouldn't have to reverse engineer the code, THEY GOT THE CODE. Also who says you're going to find a smart programmer? You've burnt your bridge before you've crossed it.

Some people are that special as shown by multiple companies doing this in multiple sectors. Life isn't fair, it doesn't work the way you think it should, it just keeps on rolling with people generally taking the safest option for them to succeed.

It seems like for those folks, the most important thing is to be irreplacable. They like being needed, they like being a key person in the operation, more than they like money or doing a good job.

Anyone who wants to own some part of the business that thoroughly is a liability.

What scenario are you envisioning where she might need to save the 15 seconds it would take to dial from the contacts app?

Edit, removed sarcasm

Call me soft hearted, I guess.

From a pure "what's good for the company" consideration alone, at the very least someone from HR needs to have another talk to him about what's acceptable or not - he could be driving away other potential employees, and setting the company up for lawsuits.

Not making any excuses for what interviewer guy did at all, that was still pretty slimy.

The behaviour is harassment even though it's a single contact because of that assumption.

It's not in a professional setting.

Not saying that what he did is OK (it's not) but let's keep our facts straight.

The e-mail "later that evening" was not discussing the interview results. It was a later email, presumably on his own.

    People go to GREAT lengths for the "eventual goal of sex"