I'm still getting over a situation which occurred a month ago, and as it stands I will probably have to leave my job.
I hired a female contractor engineer (in the UK contractors are paid daily, supposed to be easy to hire/fire), my manager is also female. 2 weeks after the engineer started, I knew she wouldn't be able to stay in the team because her work was not good (she was spending a lot of time chatting around, and not producing good quality code). Everybody complains to me that my engineer is not performing well, but my manager makes me keep her. A month later my manager asks for a meeting with me, and says that my contractor has been complaining about micro-management, and that it can be seen as bullying or harassment. Because of that I leave for 2 weeks, and it takes another month to get rid of the contractor.
Learnings: I actually handled the situation very well, but I suffered a lot from the way my manager handled the situation. I have myself managed, hired and fired dozens of people in my career. Yet as soon as it was a girl, the rules of the game completely changed, and it didn't matter who was right or wrong. No matter how much I want to be inclusive and how much I want to give equal rights to everybody, other people (and even females) don't see it that way, and still want to make a distinction between sexes.
I'm male, I've been accused of sexual abuse, and it was thrown out because it became exceedingly clear that it never happened. That was extremely unpleasant to go through, and I'd rather never go through it again.
However, it hasn't had an ongoing effect on my relationships with women, just the one woman. I'm still more than happy to work with my coworkers regardless of their sex, and I'm more than happy to guide anyone who happens to fall under my leadership.
Anybody accused is first judged by the audience. A certain amount of guilt is assumed. That you let yourself into a potentially compromising situation, or you sought out the situation.
And I imagine the higher you are up a managerial chain, the higher the stakes are when you get accused.
There is a human cost, even if "nothing comes of it".
I imagine many of these managers are terrified of the ordeal, of lawyers, they don't know if the company will support them until a judgement is made or kick them to the curb. Of the effect it may have on their family, where they might already have strained relationships with their spouses.
They don't want to potentially risk it, because the power dynamics at play are not in their favour from the outset. The system is biased to find fault, rather than first determine if there was fault.
At the same time, we can't cut the authority of the system in any way - the people it protects, who genuinely need protection, often are already in a power imbalance of their own.
The fears are justified to an extent, but the simple truth it comes down to is... You're a manager. It is your responsibility to be responsible for those under you. If you can't be, then perhaps a management position is not appropriate for you. Perhaps you need to learn to thrive in a different role. Harsh, certainly, but as the environment stands, ignoring those under your care will only help to promote an environment where women are once again second-class citizens.
> The fears are justified to an extent, but the simple truth it comes down to is... You're a manager. It is your responsibility to be responsible for those under you.
A lot of people aren't squeaky clean paragons of virtue in everything they do in combination with being secure and confident in their position in the corporate hierarchy. So your suggestion seems to be boiling down to 'figure it out'. What is your fallback if the required behaviors are complicated or hard to figure out? Men-women relationships are fundamentally asymmetrical and unbalanced, and it is the case that most people are poor communicators.
There is an underlying theme to these conversations that everyone should have a basic expectation that they can come to work and enjoy a safe, respectful work environment. That applies to managers just as much as subordinates - if companies are going to act on accusations then they need very clear policy on how much evidence is needed to put a manager's career at risk.
Unless the state of the field is very clear, it isn't reasonable to tell the managers that their role is to put themselves at risk professionally and work it out as they go. The conversation needs to be more detailed about what, exactly, the managers are expected to do outside the formal frameworks and what level of evidence is needed for them to get into trouble.
> A lot of people aren't squeaky clean paragons of virtue in everything they do in combination with being secure and confident in their position in the corporate hierarchy.
Absolutely. It's why I tried to humanise the difficulty of the manager's position. Management is hard enough, without being hyper aware of a culture where actions of all kinds can be easily misconstrued. Hell, getting someone a coffee in the morning can be considered dangerous.
> So your suggestion seems to be boiling down to 'figure it out'.
I'm afraid I can't offer a suggestion for someone trying to figure things out.
All I can say is, if it becomes clear to you that you can't figure out, if you can't find the right balance and those fears are stopping you from doing part of your job, specifically leading women...
... Then maybe you shouldn't be, at least until you do work things out. If you're becoming a problem, and can't find any other solution, then it's probably best for everyone, including yourself, that you aren't in that situation anymore.
Don't take the stress, and don't hurt your colleagues.
I'm not a manager, but I eat lunch/dinner one on one with men far more than I eat lunch/dinner with women, and it's because I try not to be a creep. I try to manage bias and I try to be aware of when I might be doing something for a coworker just because she's female and pretty, and unfortunately that means that when it is actually genuinely appropriate to grab dinner together and talk about our work I second-guess myself. When it does happen, it's usually a more senior coworker taking the initiative first.
No idea how to stop doing it other than time and experience. If you've got tips, throw them out there.
Don't make it a dinner or drinks? Just meet and discuss work 1 on 1. That's the surest way to communicate the intentions of the meeting.
Also: do you offer to mentor the "not pretty" females? That statement alone in your post shows a remarkable immaturity in you about women in the workplace.
> Don't make it a dinner or drinks? Just meet and discuss work 1 on 1. That's the surest way to communicate the intentions of the meeting.
The problem here is non-formal social opportunities that aren't meetings and don't take the place of meetings. If there's solid work-related content to discuss then of course you can meet with someone and discuss it, but that's not the same as grabbing dinner with someone when you're both working late and chattering about career-related stuff.
> Also: do you offer to mentor the "not pretty" females? That statement alone in your post shows a remarkable immaturity in you about women in the workplace.
Of course I do, I mentor anyone who asks to be mentored. Formal work relationships like mentoring aren't a problem because they're explicitly endorsed by the company and usually facilitated by a manager or initiated by the mentee. I worry that I'm being too condescending as a mentor because of implicit bias, or overcompensating in the direction of not giving enough help, but that's a different problem.
"Am I doing this because she's pretty?" is relevant to the conversation about this article because creepy behavior by men who are attracted to women seems to be a core complaint of professional women and a part of the #MeToo movement, and men are asked to be aware of their own biases and motivations and actions to try to fix this.
> The problem here is non-formal social opportunities that aren't meetings and don't take the place of meetings. If there's solid work-related content to discuss then of course you can meet with someone and discuss it, but that's not the same as grabbing dinner with someone when you're both working late and chattering about career-related stuff.
This is not female-vs-male problem. You will get the same kind of trouble when you smoke with colleagues while there is a non-smoker in the team, or when team member has kids and cannot stay late with you, or when there is a remote coworker, or just some people on the team enjoy watching football and some not.
Yes, you do need to think when and how you discuss work related stuff. And your friendly relations with someone on the team affect team dynamic.
Generalizing it to "working with women is harder" is plain wrong.
A female coworker of mine just recently shared with me that she was treated like this in her previous workplace. She felt alienated and as if she was some kind of harlot ready to ruin the lives of her male coworkers. She’s happy to not be in that workplace anymore.
That's funny how a comment thread in topics like this explodes into its own version of Me Too. The only "slight" difference is that MeToo talks about actual rape which happened, while this version is about "feeling uncomfortable while imagining things".
Nevertheless, I do have a certain empathy for the people who talk about their fears here. I have mine too. Again there is this small difference: while you fear that a certain accusation(which happens how often?) can ruin your carrier, I have a fear that your fear can ruin my carrier with >60% chance. Without possibility for me to get accused explicitly, leaving me no chance to defend myself.
While I'm taking a moment to feel your fears, can I ask you to do the same for mine?
This is not surprising. We are in a hyper-sensitive society now where many people are accused and lose their entire career and possibly marriage through the court of public opinion.
As a result, it would be smart of most men in these positions to either not mentor at all or always have someone else in the room. I wouldn't be surprised if companies started having everything recorded at some point.
The real problem is that false accusers won't face many repercussions compared to the accused. Some men accused are even found to have done nothing and it doesn't matter. People still believe they did something.
Based on the tenor this has already taken, I’m replying with a throwaway.
I have changed my behavior around women subordinates. It sucks, but that’s the reality. At this point I’m as concerned with the appearance of impropriety as I am false accusations. I know who I am and I trust myself. Everyone else? Not so much anymore.
The study is fine. It's reporting some statistics that I find believable. Statistics on men's worries, mind, not on occurrences of actual harm.
The reactions I'm seeing are... not helpful for the most part.
One reaction is that this is a horrible thing because it is unfair. I agree that it is an unfortunate part of our current reality. So is the possibility of being forced into uncomfortable situations, or more generally, being sexually harassed when you're a blameless woman in the workplace. I don't see a way of resolving that unfairness without any negative impact on blameless men.
We can certainly try to work together in good faith to minimize negative impact while creating positive change. But wailing and moaning about the balance of power tipping slightly away from us (I'm a white male) is not acting in good faith. It's just plain entitlement.
The #metoo movement's direct impact puts me at more risk than before. And I've taken advantage of my cultural immunity more than once in my life. I'm not proud of some things in my past, and I'm not free from the possibility of doing more things in the future. I have problematic biases and attitudes. But I'd rather live in, and have my kids grow up in, the sort of world that #metoo is leading us towards than the world that (I hope) we're leaving behind.
Besides, some of this abject fear over being accused of the things that we've actually done would be lessened if the patriarchal walls of silence and secrecy were torn down so we could all see what is actually happening in the world, rather than the whitewashed appearance of perfect honor and respect that we all pretend is real. I don't think my personal lapses would be judged too harshly if compared against reality. But they look pretty bad if compared to all the guys professing purity and innocence -- because we as a society have somehow fooled ourselves into believing them.
60% of male managers are nervous about mentoring women. What percentage of working women are nervous about what their male coworkers might do one at any point in the future?
And fuck that, what percentage have already experienced worse than what a male manager might realistically experience from a complaint about his behavior in a 1-1? And don't bother pulling out the "but what if absolutely nothing happened but the woman accused him unfairly and he lost his job and wife and kids and had to live under a bridge until he killed himself??!" unless you have some solid evidence that this happens more often than women get raped by acquaintances.
Or if you don't like that comparison, maybe look at the number of women who lose jobs or careers or get blacklisted as a result of someone else harassing them.
>And fuck that, what percentage have already experienced worse than what a male manager might realistically experience from a complaint about his behavior in a 1-1? And don't bother pulling out the "but what if absolutely nothing happened but the woman accused him unfairly and he lost his job and wife and kids and had to live under a bridge until he killed himself??!" unless you have some solid evidence that this happens more often than women get raped by acquaintances.
If the percentage of women that experienced problems were actually really low, and if rape basically didn't happen in the work place, how would that change the way we should have this discussion?
It sounds like you're saying women raped by acquaintances and women having problems in the work place are related. I've always interpreted it as they are acquaintances through friend groups, not necessarily through work. I guess it'd be interesting to see a study of what percentage the acquaintances are known through work explicitly, then maybe that could shed some light on where the tensions come from.
No, and I probably shouldn't have derailed it by mentioning rape. The point is that people react to the possibility of accusation by thinking up the most extreme scenarios. So I'm saying that if you're going to base it on extreme scenarios for men, you need to compare it to extreme scenarios for women -- which happen more often in practice, so can't be faulted for being more extreme.
It would be more useful to not use the extreme scenarios when working through this stuff. They're really bad, but rare, and so not all that relevant.
Sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination are real and urgent issues, but the path forward will not be lit by Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg and SurveyMonkey marketing material. She has no moral credibility.
Perhaps he's referring to "Donglegate": Two men talking among themselves make a joke about a dongle, a woman overhears and is offended, makes a post about it, and one of the men gets fired.
Could be. And that was unfortunate, at the same time, we're hardly talking about being fired for one random remark. The guys were making dick jokes while seated at a public conference, loudly enough to be heard by the people around them. I mean... you get that's offensive to lots of folks, right? AND she happened to be a social media personality who made them a target of a very public shaming (i.e. she was exercising power she already held, not some magical sexual harassment dust). AND the employer overreacted. AND... it happened five years ago! It's hardly like this is an epidemic thing justifying the paranoia in the headline above.
"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."
It isn't a good example. Damore wasn't "fired because of an offended woman". Regardless of what you think of Damore, that isn't close to accurate. We all need to be much more careful about facts than that.
Worse, that episode is a classic flamewar topic which ought not to be tossed into like a Molotov cocktail into some other inflammatory thread. The only effect will be to send the whole thing up in flames. This is the kind of thing that site guideline is written for.
> It isn't a good example. Damore wasn't "fired because of an offended woman". Regardless of what you think of Damore, that isn't close to accurate. We all need to be much more careful about facts than that.
I don't necessarily condone Damore's action (or Google's reaction, for that matter) but I'm incredulous that someone could suggest this is not accurate (well, except for the fact that it wasn't an individual woman). I'm interested to hear why you think this is inaccurate.
I also feel it's absurd to characterize it as flamebait. It's directly relevant to the question under discussion - why gender issues are making men feel uncomfortable in the workplace. That doesn't mean their discomfort is justified - maybe you agree, maybe you don't. But flagging these comments indicates you feel that noone is even *allowed to discuss it openly.
> well, except for the fact that it wasn't an individual woman
That's a big difference! As I said, we all need to take greater care about facts than that. Bringing in a classic flamewar topic, when it isn't strictly relevant, is like dropping a bomb in the thread. The site guidelines ask people particularly not to do that.
Generic flamewar topics are black holes that suck everything in, especially anything that drifts nearby. They need to be consciously resisted if we are not to rehearse the same flamewars over and over. Some people may want to do that, but it's off topic for Hacker News.
> It's directly relevant to the question under discussion
I don't agree. Perhaps it feels that way because "gender" plus "controversy", but the actual topic of this thread is distinct and remote from that. We need to make finer-grained, more precise distinctions, if we want to avoid a big fireball.
If you think the Damore discussion has been done to death, then fair enough, I can understand the moderation decision. As to whether it's irrelevant to the overall discussion, I can understand your viewpoint - the article was specifically about sexual harassment, not broader "gender sensitivity" issues.
I disagree, however, that it was a mischaracterization of, or irrelevant to, the specific comment I was responding to.
dang, did this thread get manually removed from Hacker News? It seems to have disappeared. If it was intentionally removed, I'm disappointed -- this seems like a really important discussion to have, regardless of how controversial it is.
It set off the flamewar detector. We sometimes turn that off when a discussion is substantive, rather than a flamewar. But in this case I have to agree with the software.
Ah, you're talking about flagged comments. I was talking about the overall thread: https://hackernews.hn/item?id=19945514. I assumed that's what the GP was asking about.
I think he got fired because he called the entire category of female employees generally poor performers and less capable because they were not men and also questioned hiring practices to encourage hiring them. Is it okay if you pick other groups and claim this about them? Black people, Jewish, whatever. You need to treat people as individuals.
That's simply not true. I'm going to assume you are repeating things you've read in articles written by journalists, who I noticed lied repeatedly about the contents of Damore's memo. If you're curious about what it really says you can read it here:
For example, you say: "You need to treat people as individuals"
Damore agrees with you. He said:
"I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another member of their group (tribalism)."
and
"Many of these differences are small and there’s significant overlap between men and women, so you can’t say anything about an individual given these population level distributions."
You say:
I think he got fired because he called the entire category of female employees generally poor performers
But Damore said:
"Note, I’m not saying that all men differ from all women in the following ways or that these differences are “just.”
So he said the opposite of "the entire category", he explicitly said he was talking about statistical observations that aren't true in many cases.
He also had some not terribly pleasant truths to drop about men:
"This may lead to more male CEOs and geniuses, but also more homeless males and school dropouts. This has likely evolved because individual males can have many children and are biologically disposable."
Well, I disagree with that characterisation of the affair, but ultimately it’s irrelevant. He was literally fired for making people (in this case, women) uncomfortable.
Doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with the firing, but that was unquestionably the reason.
If you argue like that, that implies that every group is exactly the same on every possible metric. That seems improbable. Saying that Jewish people are more intelligent than others is common. Other comparisons don't fare so well.
Would be useful to see a list of companies with zero tolerance policies, a la no due process policies, then everyone's expectations would be set way beforehand, not to intermingle.
“Nerd” isn’t a gender-specific condition. Never has been, and never should be.
[Disclaimer: I am not a fan of the ongoing campaign to attach a largely consumerist “nerd” culture to basic technical competence. The two have little to do with each other.]
It didn't say they were uncomfortable hiring or promoting women, it said mentoring which implies a more personal relationship. Specific example from the article, which doesn't seem like bullshit:
nine times more likely to be hesitant to travel with a junior woman for work than a junior man, and six times more likely to be hesitant to have a work dinner with a junior woman than a junior man.
This is, unfortunately, a rational response to the current climate.
Why is it a rational response? I've travelled with female co-workers before, it's not as if the company made us share a bed. We were just two people travelling. I don't really understand how the "current climate" would make me rethink that.
Can you prove you didn’t proposition her during the trip? Remember, she doesn’t have to prove anything to be taken seriously. You, however, have to prove a negative and that’s very hard to do.
If you are gay, and your gay male coworker accuses you of something it looks worse than if you are a woman, and a gay male accuses you. So, yes, of course it is different. Look at this way, a compatible sexual couple is at higher risk of an accusation than non compatible sexual couple.
But a trustworthy employee won't do any of those things, no matter the gender. If you have an untrustworthy employee you have a whole other problem. They could accuse you of making a pass at them, or of stealing from them, bullying them... the list is endless really. I don't get the preoccupation with sexuality in that context.
Because there is a much greater surface area for misunderstanding when you are travelling with someone. E.g, I ask you to drop off my laptop at my office (no misunderstanding), I ask you to drop off my laptop at my hotel room (risk of misunderstanding).
Yup, it's still rational in that respect too; this sucks and the way to fix it seems to be at the organizational level. Make it not one on one meetings, and make it "public" record (transparent), and make the support systems for reporting abuse in either direction act on that public record.
> This is, unfortunately, a rational response to the current climate.
Yes! It is rational to have a fear response to the prospect of being held accountable. Because we have not had a culture of accountability, many men are not confident in their ability NOT to behave in a harmful manner, even if they do not intend to harm. That feeling of discomfort is from finally having to think about these things. I hope more men embrace that discomfort instead of resent it.
Many men aren’t confident that they would be able to prove that something didn’t occur. Many men aren’t confident that they would get a fair process. We saw what happened to Kavanaugh. Flimsy allegations from decades ago when the players were in high school, with no corroboration, even from a person who was the best friend of the accuser and present at the scene of the alleged event. Yet that was almost enough to destroy a judicial career.
Yep, I don't see why is this a problem, just act professionally, don't be a creep. I have mentored many programmers, both male and female and i have zero problems with either. There are some subtleties in dealing with the fairer sex such as different kind of encouragement, read between the line when they say they are tired, making sure that their understanding is correct etc... but generally it's the same for both sexes: respect them and their personal space.
There are some subtleties in dealing with the fairer sex such as different kind of encouragement, read between the line when they say they are tired, making sure that their understanding is correct etc...
That kind of generalization is exactly what can torpedo your career. Try putting those thoughts about the fairer sex in a memo or blog post and see what response you get.
Just an example,if a male coworker said he is tired and he needs to take a leave, I can ask what's wrong and arrange for longer leave if needed. For the other sex, better ask no questions.
But then I live in Asia, things might be different than in America/Europe.
Given that our shared culture seems quite committed to labeling all men as "unfair", I'd think that the converse description "the fairer sex" is only... well, fair, y'know.
Maybe, but English is not my native language so it doesn't matter here.
Fun fact: The word for 'woman' in my country is derived from '婦' - 女 (“woman”) + 帚 (“broom”), so even calling them that way is kinda male chauvinist already.
I think the point is that you may indeed have a problem, despite your best intentions. Nobody knows what will offend or make another person uncomfortable these days. Sure, there are standard things that everyone agrees is wrong. But entirely innocent conduct can be misinterpreted, people project their own biases and assumptions into those interpretations, etc. In the MeToo era, that can be enough to destroy a career.
Seriously, don't be a dick is pretty easy to understand. I've met so many brilliant female engineers that I can't imagine what toxic bullshit causes people to think this way.
The problem is the extreme power imbalance, where any woman you interact with can snap her fingers and destroy your life/career.
Let me put it this way: It's incredibly rare that a bear attacks a human. But pretty much everyone will still avoid a bear if they can. This has nothing to do with "don't piss off the bear and you'll be fine" and everything to do with "if that bear does decide to attack you, you are completely defenseless".
> The problem is the extreme power imbalance, where any woman you interact with can snap her fingers and destroy your life/career.
Sorry, can you actually name a human being who had his "life/career" destroyed by a metaphorical snap of the finger? I mean, good grief, you have to dig like crazy to even find evidence of a false accusation.
I mean, sure, it happens, in the same sense that sure, you might get hit by a truck. Where does this outrageous paranoia come from? The horrifying thing is that you aren't alone -- half this topic is men posting about how terrible shrews are lurking in the bushes about to steal their careers. And... there are no shrews to be seen.
A charitable read of GP means it might not necessarily be an intentional false accusation.
A simple misunderstanding of a truly collegial touch, an off the cuff remark, a glance, a gesture - all completely normal otherwise and often spontaneous - and you can find yourself on the defensive.
And given social media and the virality of outrage (see Jon Ronson's So You've Been Publicly Shamed, or go Google Johnny Depp and Amber Heard for an example of how he said she said testimony is reported as "Big if true") it's clear that the paranoia stems from the disproportionate reputational damage in the court of public opinion, not the accusation itself.
Which is accurately reflected in the headline as "discomfort" - having to highly self-regulate your words and actions is, by definition, uncomfortable.
Not that it can't and shouldn't be done. But to follow your analogy of getting hit by a truck then mentoring women is like playing a never-ending round of Frogger.
The logic of your comment makes sense, but what in actual reality would be the difficulty level of this hypothetical game of Frogger? Maybe you have different stats than I do, but it seems like it's one where a single truck crosses the screen every minute or two.
So yeah, the game is endless. You'll never escape the possibility of jumping in front of the truck and getting squashed flat.
As someone who has been written up at a prior job for nebulously "being creepy" it would be nice to be able to see the trucks coming. For most things that are against the rules in the workplace, there are a list of things you shouldn't do, and you can avoid trouble by simply not doing them. In my case, nobody in HR would tell me what not to do, even though I asked repeatedly. It was just "we got complaints that you were making women feel uncomfortable so please stop doing whatever you were doing." When pressed for examples, none were forthcoming. How is that actionable? How am I responsible for what is inside the thoughts of other people I work with?
I'm now very careful with my interactions with women at work. No 1:1 meetings, all conversation must be strictly work related, no walking the same direction, avoid eye contact as much as possible, etc. It's a total minefield and you need to minimize how much you walk through it, especially if you have a great job.
How would you deal with real cases of sexual harassment of women then?
When it comes to that, it seems to be that the statistics show that real sexual harassment happens more often then the scenario you are describing. How would you handle this, so it is reduced or eliminated?
This was the original power imbalance, and it can't be forgotten.
Generally a pendulum swings many time before finding equilibrium, I think we're just in that process right now.
I don't have an answer, because the alternative is shitty men taking advantage of the situation and preying on women, and in turn women avoiding men.
Don't mistake my comment as calling woman liars or defending sexual misconduct on men's part. I'm simply analyzing the rational for men not wanting to be alone with women in the work place.
If you analyze it a bit more, you don't find it irrational though?
What would be the motivation of a woman to falsify accusations of someone mentoring her? How often does this actually happen? Wouldn't accusing someone also jeopardize her career prospect? Etc.
I fully understand the response of men not wanting to be alone with women in the workplace, but I can't agree that it's rationale, reasonable and justified. We're all human, and unreasonable feelings of fears and worries is something we all suffer from. That said, the current feelings seem mostly irrational to me, and appear to be put forward by fear mongers.
I am very much in agreement that all are innocent until proven guilty, that the public opinion shouldn't be used as a court of law, and that due process must be followed and respected. That said, I'm still happily mentoring women, and respectfully engaging them at work, and I won't let myself fall prey to these irrational fears.
So there haven’t been false accusations? Women have never threatened superiors with unmerited claims? Given the potential for a single false claim to destroy a career, the prudent thing is to avoid situations where such claims could even be plausible. There are more than a few stories of people using false sexual harassment claims to win settlements from companies.
If you are a manager or executive, it’s a real risk that you’ll get dragged through the mud by a false accusation. In a world we’re he-said she-said is biased towards “believing women,” it would be prudent to avoid close professional relationships with women. Literally decades later it can come back to bite you. Remember that while the man may “hire and promote fairly,” not all people necessarily act honestly and “fairly” can be very subjective. Just an accusation can torpedo a career.
Acting like “it’s bullshit” is to ignore the litigious society in which we operate.
It is complicated for sure. I think though, overall, there is over exageration of the risk. What's the probability? If it's so low you're more likely to die in the next 30 days then have it happen to you for example, then it's pretty irrational of a response from the managers surveyed.
Now, I don't know the statistics, I think we need some to know if we're being absurd and irrationally afraid or not.
Similarly, we also need to remember the flip side, many of these interactions used too and still are real risks to women as they can get harassed and abused as well. Again, statistics might help.
Either statistic is hard to find though, because ground truth is difficult and most cases don't necessarily get recorded or even mentioned.
Hopefully, we slowly figure all this out and how to balance it all.
I've mentored hundreds of people. As someone who does not think of themselves as a creep, I've had many scenarios where a misinterpretation could make the mentee/employee/student think I was a creep even if I had good intentions. For many of those people, it was the first time they met me so it was probably not clear to them immediately whether I was being creepy or just had an awkward moment. So I think real life is not so straightforward sometimes.
Maybe some specific examples would help. Somebody came in to ask for advice about whether they should be more aggressive in some work situation. I thought about it and remember some advice that a colleague had applied effectively. The advice was widely praised. I said the same advice word-by-word, but after saying it, realized that this advice only works when said by a woman to another woman (the advice itself was something about being empowered as a woman). It sounded a bit awkward / patronizing when coming from me. This person then later complained to another person that I gave a sexist suggestion. Nothing happened of it, but it was really uncomfortable and had they spread it on social media in a bad light, that would have hurt my reputation.
In another case, a subordinate and I were already at slightly adversarial terms (a bit of loss in trust, but nothing too serious at that time). I could tell they were attentively looking to find what I was saying to be erroneous. I had to be particularly careful in those meetings, and had to constantly respond to accusations like "why did you agree with [male]'s idea when I had proposed the same idea a month ago and you rejected it" (when it was obviously a more complex situation and the context for the proposed idea were different). But had I been a bit more casual in our meetings, I am pretty sure she would have found something to complain about loudly.
Basically, "don't be a creep" is not enough and oversimplifies things. You can not be a creep, yet still get into a bad situation if someone else interprets you as a creep, especially in a situation where the relationship is not a strong trusted one. You often have to meet and advise people who don't know your intentions, and an awkward mis-step can be problematic. That's just the unfortunate reality.
You used a question mark, but it's not clear that you were asking a sincere question. Actually, the way you phrased it ("I assume") suggests otherwise. So do your ideologically charged comment elsewhere in the thread and the hostile "Are you ok" bit here.
If someone wants to share that she's a woman, that's up to her. Abruptly challenging another user personally about that is usually a bad-faith move in online conversations—especially on a divisive topic like this one, where people are primed to post aggressively. Since you didn't explain why you were asking, all the reader can do is pattern-match, and we know how comments like that tend to pattern-match in flamewars.
If you meant it in good faith, there's a simple fix: include enough information for the reader—not to mention the person you're asking—to be able to feel that.
I've been careful not to accuse you. That's why I said "it's not clear", "suggests", "usually", "prone", "enough information", "pattern match", "good faith", and "simple fix".
If you're participating in this thread in good faith, what could be easier to make clear? Unfortunately, some internet commenters specialize in posting aggressively while staying inside the line of plausible deniability. That's abuse, so moderators have to do something—but moderation is guesswork, and there's no way to guess perfectly. If I guessed wrong, I'll be happy to correct the error. But if I guessed wrong, why do you up the ante with each reply? That doesn't help clear things up.
That was a description, not an accusation. If you can think of a more accurate phrase to describe when someone cuts abruptly to a bald personal question without clarifying why, or establishing good faith, while hinting ("I assume") that they don't mean it neutrally—I'd be happy to edit my description. It's hard to find precise language for these things.
> So you’re accusing me of something I didn’t intend just because I didn’t ask my question in the way you would have liked
Even if you had asked your question "in HN's way" it would not have been liked. The polite veneer is just that ... a veneer. HN including its moderator has their own ideological bias (for example, there is a bias towards plant-based diets) and they will downvote or flag posts they don't agree with it, no matter how nice you phrase it.
That's quite untrue, as anyone can see by looking at how we moderated this thread. Thoughtful comments on both sides of the issue are fine. Unsubstantive flamebait, and so on, is not fine. This is all just standard application of the site guidelines: https://hackernews.hn/newsguidelines.html. The word "polite", btw, is not one we rely on.
The leap to plant-based diets is... interplanetary, but it's a great example of how people construct their image of moderators, or the community. It's always a mosaic of things the observer ran across and didn't like. Since people dislike different things, they construct different images.
I'm afraid it's completely true. As moderators you really need to decide on your positions with much more rigor and systematisation. I enjoy reading Hacker News but its biased moderation is by far the most regrettable part of the experience.
In this thread you have decided that James Damore's very name is something you hate so much that mentioning it should be hidden - a classic problem with the definition of the term "flamebait". To see this, can you create a page on this site that gives a non-circular definition of flamebait? The only obvious definition I can find is "a topic that encourages angry responses" but actually using this definition would allow any tiny minority to ban topics at will, simply by posting angry responses to mentions of them (exactly what's happened here). "Unsubstantive flamebait" is an even more useless term - you can't define that in any way that wouldn't be 90% your own personal opinions projected back at you. One man's unsubstantive flamebait is another man's pithy observation, after all.
For a site to claim it encourages intellectual curiosity it must be resistant to manipulation by small minorities, but that in turn requires policing of tone and not opinion. That won't be possible at the moment because a big part of creating trustworthy moderation is rigorously separating personal opinions from moderation decisions.
In this thread your own highly debatable views on gender relations and James Damore are clearly dominating the discussion. Even things you view as incontrovertible fact are not actually facts, they're debatable opinions. For instance you claim he wasn't fired because of an "offended woman" although this article literally is headlined
"YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki explains why the ‘Google memo’ author had to be fired"
"Wojcicki was part of the team at Google that decided to fire Damore"
and talks about her feelings of offence and hurt at what he wrote. There are many other such articles specifically naming Wojcicki as a major force in the decision to terminate Damore.
Clearly, when it comes to what Damore said and what happened afterwards, there's enough scope for debate that any reasonably neutral moderator would step back and stay uninvolved as long as the conversation remains polite. Hacker News is clearly failing this standard.
I know how easy it is for things to seem this way. And I'm happy to admit being wrong on mistaken moderation. But I don't think any of this comes close. L'affaire Damore is what the HN guidelines call a "classic flamewar topic". The effect of dropping one of these into unrelated or marginally-related threads is well understood: it turns them into the same ball of fire that it did the last N times it came up. That's why pg added that guideline 10+ years ago.
When someone does that, we have two options: moderate it or let it burn. Who wants the latter? Only those who are eager to vent indignation and/or smite enemies, and though they tend to post a lot, those are not the users HN is for. HN is for curious readers, and curious readers find repetition boring. They thrive on diffs. In this case the diff was a new survey of male managers—that was the interesting part.
This is bog-standard HN moderation. You can't derive my "views on gender relations" from that. No matter how convincing the derivation feels, it's an illusion that springs up when moderation calls go the wrong way, relative to one's own views. It always feels like that. Were you on the opposite side, you'd have the opposite image. Indeed some people indeed do. This shows up when you say "James Damore's very name is something you hate". How could you know that? You can't. (FWIW, I don't hate either James Damore or his name.)
As for "rigorously separating personal opinions from moderation decisions", I'm far from perfect at that but can at least claim to have had a lot of practice. I'd be happy to receive further instruction from anyone more skilled at it than I am. There's a bit of a burden of proof there, though. People tend to invoke such phrases less out of passion for impartiality and more because the refs made a call against their side. It always feels like the mods are against you in that case.
p.s. The Wojcicki thing strikes me as stretching thin indeed. That entire business was a large institutional and media fooforah, not the merely personal sort of conflict that was alluded to upthread ("if you inadvertently offend a women and they complain"). Leaping to Damore was a classic flamewar tangent, precisely what leads to angry tape loops and nothing else.
Unfortunately this is the nature of moderated communities. And of course unmoderated communities tend to attract trolls and extremists. I don't think this is a solved problem yet.
This is going to sound weird, but I think it makes sense: this would be a more compelling statement if instead you added that you’ve also given negative feedback to women, put women on PIPs, denied them promotions, or fired women for incompetence.
This is going to sound weird, but I think it makes sense: this would be a more compelling statement if instead you added that you’ve also given negative feedback to women, put women on PIPs, denied them promotions, or fired women for incompetence.
It doesn't sound weird at all to me, but it is telling that you think the issue is women filing complaints for negative feedback versus women getting harassed in the workplace.
I think there's some fear in the back of everyone's mind, because they hear about their friend/coworker being accused of harassment, and they can't believe that they're that type of person. But many people are. That's the reality. All we can do is try and change the reality.
So 60% of male managers admit they aren't good managers. Good. Step aside then, and let others more capable than you have a chance to prove themselves.
No. Real world is not that simple. Certain things are only considered harass between man and woman, but not between same sex. For example, asking to meet (drink, sports, etc.) after work. So there's a choice between either "ignore" or "harass".
Yes, you don't have to do these, but some people just like buddyhood kind of binding more than others.
That's a problem for the managers to solve, and they can solve it by reducing the number of business dinners they do with men, if they can't figure out a good way to do business dinners with women. The work hours and the options for dining near the office might mean that it's too difficult to have a work dinner that isn't too cozy, and if it is, so be it. It's entirely their responsibility to have management practices that aren't sexist.
No, the ideal is an open and transparent workplace, where you can go to dinner with anybody and not worry about getting in trouble, because there are casual enough places to eat, where you don't feel like you're on a date when you have dinner with someone there, unless you're Mike Pence. And where that isn't available, you find another activity for mentorship besides a work dinner. If your suburban office park only has one dining place nearby and it has candles, do a work lunch instead, with food you brought.
There needs to be a shift towards environments that are appropriate for meetings between people who are likely to have sexual tension between them, as well as meetings between those who aren't. Otherwise any time someone starts a new mentorship activity, they'll have to think it through, and that in itself is going to bring up questions that aren't appropriate in the workplace. For example: "Should I take Joe to the bowling alley with me alone? Will he worry that I'm going to compliment him on how strong his arms are? If I drink will it feel awkward for him if he doesn't drink?" I think it's better to skip all that and just keep it professional.
Ok, now let's say that I am a normal person, who is also dealing with another normal person, and both of us are able to easily navigate these hypothetical situations while also not being extremely professional?
Then go ahead? If there isn't a problem, and you both know there isn't a problem, then... there isn't a problem?
I may be missing your point. If you mean that two men shouldn't have to stop meeting at a bar when they're both comfortable with it, simply because there's a woman on the team who wouldn't be comfortable in the same situation, well... let's say your team has a habit of meeting at a Brazilian steakhouse to make important decisions. Then you hire Dave's brother Jerry, who is a strict ethical vegetarian. Don't you think it might be a decent idea to pick a different restaurant? Jerry swears he's willing to come along to the steakhouse and bring his own food, though you notice he looks pretty queasy and never touches his food the whole time you're there.
Or maybe you think it's fine if he quit if he's so uncomfortable, your team just isn't right for women oops I mean vegetarians and they'd be better off working somewhere else.
My point here is that there are these people out there called "normal individuals", who are able to navigate social situations without being extremely robotically formal.
If you are the kind of person who does not have to social skills and awareness to navigate these kinds of normal social interactions, with other normal humans beings, then fine, silo yourself off, metaphorically with extremely impersonally relationships with others in which you act 100% "professionally" all the time with the people who you spend half of your waking life with.
But the rest of us are able to handle such situations easily.
Why would a billionaire business person feel “ignored”? Why does that person feel the need to speak for other persons whose experiences are most probably alien to her?
The more people who hear your message, the more people can actively ignore your message. While her chances of being ignored by everyone go down, the number of people who will ignore her goes up.
Alternative headline: 60% of males rethinking how they interact with women after decades because protests broke through and raised consciousness. Change isn't comfortable, it's not supposed to be. It's only supposed to be just.
This goes for technical skills and moral ones too. You feel bad until you're better.
Regardless of skill or experience, they seem to be getting promoted over other more qualified individuals, anyway. At least that's what I've noticed in my places of work over the last four years. I'd hate to tell you how many of those places went under as it's all anecdotal. I am however getting a little put out by people around me not getting promoted on merit, but on optics.
Parden? I'm talking about people getting promoted into positions they aren't qualified for and sinking companies. I really don't care about your sex, race or who you like to invite into bed. I'd rather be on a winning team.
I hired a female contractor engineer (in the UK contractors are paid daily, supposed to be easy to hire/fire), my manager is also female. 2 weeks after the engineer started, I knew she wouldn't be able to stay in the team because her work was not good (she was spending a lot of time chatting around, and not producing good quality code). Everybody complains to me that my engineer is not performing well, but my manager makes me keep her. A month later my manager asks for a meeting with me, and says that my contractor has been complaining about micro-management, and that it can be seen as bullying or harassment. Because of that I leave for 2 weeks, and it takes another month to get rid of the contractor.
Learnings: I actually handled the situation very well, but I suffered a lot from the way my manager handled the situation. I have myself managed, hired and fired dozens of people in my career. Yet as soon as it was a girl, the rules of the game completely changed, and it didn't matter who was right or wrong. No matter how much I want to be inclusive and how much I want to give equal rights to everybody, other people (and even females) don't see it that way, and still want to make a distinction between sexes.