>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her gender — a case she lost.
This paragraph is indicative of how terrible the NYTimes is with editorializing. They couldn't just report on one case with objective facts. Instead they decided to make it sound like this level of harassment is endemic to Silicon Valley (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) and the only evidence they provided was the Ellen Pao case where a jury decided she was wrong.
This completely devalues the entire article and puts it on par with political commentary.
A jury didn't decide she was wrong. That's not what juries do. A jury decided that they couldn't all unanimously agree beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was right. Just because a jury doesn't convict doesn't mean the problem didn't happen.
That case would have been decided under the "preponderance of evidence" standard, since it's a civil trial, not the "beyond reasonable doubt" standard (used for criminal trials) or the "beyond a shadow of a doubt" standard (which is exclusively for death penalty cases).
Oh. Am I wrong in believing that even for a civil trial, the jury must be heavily biased towards the defendant? Does California require jury unanimity to reach a decision in a civil case?
> A party must persuade you, by the evidence presented in court, that what he or she is required to prove is more likely to be true than not true. This is referred to as “the burden of proof.” After weighing all of the evidence, if you cannot decide that something is more likely to be true than not true, you must conclude that the party did not prove it. You should consider all the evidence, no matter which party produced the evidence.
so in Ellen Pao's case, she (and her lawyers) could not convince the jury that her claim was more likely true than not true. In other words, she argued her case and was not persuasive enough. I'm not a lawyer though, and I don't know if there is a requirement for Jury unanimity or just simple majority.
I am also not a lawyer, but a quick web search suggests that for civil cases in California, if 3/4s of the jury finds for the plaintiff, the plaintiff wins (ie, 9 of 12).
According to what I've read about the case, no, unanimity wasn't required. They needed a 75% consensus, apparently in either direction. (I think? This part was unclear to me.)
I'm curious, are you a man or a woman? I'm only asking because you cite your experience at 6 companies to support the assertion that this is not a widespread problem in SV. I assert that men would have a harder time detecting this problem.
I've been transitioning from male to female, starting 4 years ago. It was shocking to me when I started making friends with girls and listening to their stories. At first I didn't empathize and presented arguments such as, "they had best intentions" or "it was just a misunderstanding". After having friends and my mind/body being transformed by estrogen I began to understand and empathize with my female friends; I began to see similarities in the stories they told me and how others interacted with me. My point being that its quite surprising how different experience can be and how important it is to listen to how others experience the world.
Everyone experiences the world differently and it's important to take the time to understand how different or similar their experiences are.
> My point being that its quite surprising how different experience can be and how important it is to listen to how others experience the world.
That's advice that I would normally accept as good, like a Ben Franklin quote. But coming from you it strikes me as especially valuable, especially in light of current events.
My feed is full of women saying that this kind of stuff is not unique to Uber. What's apparently remarkable is that all of this happened to her in one year.
That's fine.. It just hurts NYT's article to lump Fowler and Pao together (BTW Pao case had nothing to do with sexual harrassment). IMO it would be a much stronger article if it just focused on Fowler.
Sure, we'll all sit down and stop engaging in the issue... Nothing to do here, this is entirely a non-male's problem!
Sarcasm aside, you're also not helping. Even if someone is off-base in their opinion or what they're writing, telling them to STFU is, in most cases, worse than their actual opinion.
> (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at)
Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me.
>Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences?
Putting aside the unjustified personal attack for a moment, even if they didn't tell me, they wouldn't need to for me to know these companies haven't had this problem. It was clear from the relatively high percentages of female engineers (20-30% for SV-centric companies, one as high as 40% that had branches in European countries with better female graduate ratios). More importantly, there was a very low rate of turnover and the turnover that was present matched that of the male employees.
>I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me.
So back to the personal attack. What specifically have I said that makes you think I wouldn't be a good person to talk to about a situation like this?
He's not wrong. 'hueving's comment history around here pushes an extreme-right-wing viewpoint that is cloaked in just enough civility to make the decent folks I know around here reconsider whether or not it's worth engaging with him. (Many don't, because it's exhausting to be alternative-facted to death.) I wouldn't expect a woman--or anyone--to tell me jack and/or shit if I was comfortable expressing worldviews that treat them the way 'hueving does. And it's not "hateful" to call out somebody whose hat is exactly that; 'DanBC (who is a fantastic poster around here) is not wrong to use the history of a poster to challenge his I-don't-see-it-so-it-doesn't-exist dismissals. As for "oddly specific," 'DanBC has been here longer than I have; you start recognizing names when the pattern of posts that make your gorge rise goes on as long as these have.
But then, I spent a minute browsing your latest work, too, so I am not particularly surprised that in your post you choose to, as with most modern conservatives, attempt to call citing a reactionary's record "hate" when it is that reactionary's behavior that exemplifies it.
>He's not wrong. 'hueving's comment history around here pushes an extreme-right-wing viewpoint
Feel free to link to any of my extreme right wing view points. I'll highlight a few of my beliefs that have been argued about recently here to save some time:
* I think unions that collectively bargain are a bad idea for software engineers because there is a wide variety in expertise and pay tied to a title fails to recognize that.
* I prefer market-based solutions to most problems because humans on a large scale don't seem to be that altruistic. (I.e. Attack CO2 with cap and trade rather than tons of regulations spread all over different industries)
* UBI as people suggest it ($10k-$20k per person annually) is currently ridiculously unsustainable in the US. People talk about it as if it's as simple as a policy decision but we would need to double our tax revenue to pay for it, which could easily cause a depression.
* All conservatives are not racists, idiots, bigots, whatever label. Stories and comments that perpetuate this idea are shallow and lack critical thought, so I will call them out for that.
* I don't think things like hiring quotas and "heads of diversity" will solve diversity issues when the supply of new graduates is so imbalanced. Hiring people based on gender/race will cause people to think they are only there to fill a checkbox and not because they are skilled.
These are pretty centrist viewpoints by US standards. I would like you to identify something you consider right wing extremism and link it.
>because it's exhausting to be alternative-facted to death
Is "alternative-facted" a new term for challenging viewpoints?
>make the decent folks I know around here reconsider whether or not it's worth engaging with him
Interesting for someone accusing me of being extreme right wing to use a play right out of Donald Trump's book. Provide a completely unprovable and unfalsifiable claim that gives the impression that "many people tell you these things".
I really don't see how personal attacks, or attaching pejorative labels to others (conservative, reactionary etc.) enhances your argument. It just makes it seem like you don't have a convincing counter-argument and need to resort to appeals to emotion / preaching to those who already agree with you. If you actually want to convince people who don't share your views, perhaps consider a different tactic.
And there's just something unsettling about going through someone's comment history to better 'target' your irrelevant personal attacks. I think it reveals more about you than it does about the person you're attacking.
If "conservative" is a pejorative--well, that's their own doing. I called myself a conservative for a very long time until it became obvious that American conservatism required of its adherents a level of misanthropy that I could not ever support. Hell, I worked for Republican congressional campaigns, twice!
But you seem to misapprehend me, and maybe that's my fault. I don't want to convince any extremist. My intention is to deny them the legitimacy of the chin-stroking, pince-nez-adjusting "thoughtfulness and reason" that they so earnestly adopt. Because that posture is very, very good at convincing the low-information reader that they are credible. They are not. The extreme right wing understands that this isn't about facts (but are happy to retreat to the sinecure of "what about your facts?!" when challenged), but about narratives. I will (and 'DanBC did) challenge 'hueving's narrative because his narrative doesn't make sense: of course he doesn't see it, those who experience it would have to be themselves reality-averse not to realize it would just be an invitation for a battery of well-actuallys and backhanded snipes. It's who he chooses to show himself as. He has no credibility when he leans on what he sees, and shouldn't.
As far as "going through someone's comment history": I'm a known quantity around here and I use my real name. Others may choose to use pseudonyms and that's fine, but their histories here are important for context. 'hueving I recognize by sight. The poster to whom I replied is not one I recognize, but he has comments blurfing about "liberals" literally on the first pace of his comment history. I'm not going to go digging, but I like knowing whether I'm dealing with somebody who's actually acting in good faith. He wasn't, and you can bet I'll call him on it.
DanBC sticks in my mind as a poster that I disagree with on most things. Can you tell me why he is a "fantastic poster"?
> is not wrong to use the history of a poster to challenge his I-don't-see-it-so-it-doesn't-exist dismissals
It is on the basis that DanBC has no idea how HN post history has to do with what that poster sees. It's just an Ad-hom.
> I spent a minute browsing your latest work, too
> as with most modern conservatives
Is your own profile fair game then too? Whatever I dislike about you past comments I can dredge up randomly to harass you with whenever you make a comment I don't like?
It's why I use it; also, because my motivation for quoting usernames was that people had dumb usernames, like "the", that I was mistakenly evaluating in sentence context. :)
You definitely can't use @username on HN; many (most?) HN commenters don't have @username on Twitter. I'm @tqbf on Twitter, not @tptacek.
If it clearly benefits current and future victims to be taken seriously and get any help they may need? Yes, in my opinion. But that is a much more personal ethics call.
Except telling someone like the OP who clearly is not the kind of person that would believe the victim or try to get any help, and instead launch into a cross examination isn't going to do that. All that's going to do is make the victim feel even worse, and possibly discourage her from getting help or reporting at all.
The fundamental principle of the American justice system is that we should be skeptical of all claims of wrong-doing. The appropriate response to these claims is to ask for evidence and in its absence potentially educate the claimant on how to properly collect evidence. I'm sure there's a lot of legitimate claims out there, and most of them will not result in justice. However, rampant speculation based on Twitter anecdotes is never going to be helpful.
Except that's for the Justice System. Not normal people. The Justice System can take care of vetting evidence. Normal people are supposed to be supportive and stand up for those who come to them with stories like this one.
And I'm sorry, but if someone comes to you and says that they've experienced the things in this story, and the first thing you do is ask for evidence, then you will be branded a monster, and rightfully so. You are telling that person, "I do not believe you; I think you are a liar." If someone comes to you with a story like this, you provide support to them. You console them. You ask them what you can do to help. You do not cross examine them, and make them feel terrible for coming to you.
Different audiences. If you're a close friend or the HR person at the corporate office, then sure the first thing you do is console them. If you're the media or just general public, you ask for evidence before you socially/publicly crucify someone.
Except this kind of behavior is endemic to the industry. Just about every woman I know in the industry has a story similar to this. All over Twitter, women are sharing their similar stories.
Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It means you haven't paid attention.
Mild sexism is endemic to a portion of our industry. But I honestly have not previously encountered allegations on the level of "my boss propositioned me on my first day and HR said they wouldn't do anything".
I would like to pay attention: we can't improve this problem unless we pay attention. If you would be willing to point me to a few examples of people making similar claims, I will commit to reading through them and trying to raise awareness of the issue within my own company.
>I would like to pay attention: we can't improve this problem unless we pay attention.
What's this "we" business? Who's "we"?
I don't know about you, but I'm an engineer. I am neither a manager, nor an executive, nor an HR goon. I accept no responsibility for the actions of people in those positions. Especially those useless HR people. We engineers are nothing more than low-level lackeys, rank-and-file employees who have zero power except to quit.
> I don't know about you, but I'm an engineer. I am neither a manager, nor an executive, nor an HR goon.
Guess what? I'm also an engineer. (My official title is "Architect".) I do not manage anyone. I am not an executive. I do not work with the nice, helpful folks in HR.
But I DO take responsibility for the overall behavior of my organization. I do not bear that responsibility alone, but along with the rest of the people I work with. "If it's broken, fix it!" is fundamentally an engineer's credo. "It's not my job" is a pretty poor excuse.
> We engineers are nothing more than low-level lackeys, rank-and-file employees who have zero power except to quit.
Wow. Maybe you need to find a new job. That's not how engineers are treated where I work. Sure, we don't get everything we ever ask for -- but our concerns are taken seriously. And one of our concerns is to create a working environment that is at least minimally acceptable. I may be male, but if I discovered that my company was harboring behavior like Susan Fowler describes, I would take it to HR. If the actions continued, I would report it to the CEO or the board. If that failed I would quit. And I'll never have to do any of those things because plenty of other people I work with would behave the same way and that kind of abuse would never be tolerated.
This paragraph is indicative of how terrible the NYTimes is with editorializing. They couldn't just report on one case with objective facts. Instead they decided to make it sound like this level of harassment is endemic to Silicon Valley (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) and the only evidence they provided was the Ellen Pao case where a jury decided she was wrong.
This completely devalues the entire article and puts it on par with political commentary.