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Apple places female engineering program manager on administrative leave after tweeting about sexism, harassment, and assault in the office (Up: Fired)
- Thread starter GoldenFlex
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I certainly agree with this. I don't know how anyone could look at Facebook alone and think that big tech are a bunch of benevolent technocrats. At absolute best, they're fine with releasing their creations onto the world and being completely apathetic toward the resultant destruction and suffering.
The percentage of the workforce that's full of creepers isn't as relevant as the positions these creepers hold within the corporate power structure. The company's best interests are essentially its stock price which continues to rise and rewards these higher ups disproportionately compared to their inferiors. The only harm comes from having bad PR like this thread which will blow over eventually, so from Apple's perspective things seem to be going fine.
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Yep, people will be upset and still preorder the new iPhone in a few months. It will take massive reporting and backlash for them to address abuse in their ranks it seems.
We keep hearing about different problems with worker's rights and abuses in US companies.
Why is this only handled internally with a company's HR? Why isn't there an external recourse for all these complaints? Are the labor laws in the US that bad? Does the Department of Labor do anything?
Why is this only handled internally with a company's HR? Why isn't there an external recourse for all these complaints? Are the labor laws in the US that bad? Does the Department of Labor do anything?
Yeah, basically at the end of the day as long as earnings stay up there isn't much of an incentive for a company to care about this type of situation beyond bad PR. Like seemingly 99% of corporate inclusivity, it only matters to the organization as long as its (a) good PR [and helps profits], (b) does not directly or indirectly harm profits, and (c) does not require deviating much from the status quo.
Apple or other companies may tell you that they give a shit about these issues, but at the end of the day they only want customers (and employees) to buy into the brand as 'one of the good guys' and ultimately purchase their products/services.
Well, the harm would be having a completely dysfunctional corporate culture that destroys/drives off talent in an industry with a talent shortage.
If I were a hypothetical, completely amoral CEO who couldn't care less about human rights or dignity and only cared about profit, I still can't imagine thinking it's a net positive to have 5% of my employees turn the company into a abusive hellhole, unless that 5% were somehow creating 95% of the value and everyone else was completely interchangeable.
Like I definitely see it with Amazon where they run warehouse workers into the ground because "they're all just interchangeable meat puppets anyway," but I just find it interesting that even tech companies have the same attitude when the terrible conditions don't even have a plausible link to output like slave-driving warehouse workers does.
I wonder if there's ever going to be a talent exodus from SV when workers finally realize that they can work at companies that aren't Wolf of Wall Street crossed with Revenge of the Nerds, but maybe money is priority #1 for both sides.
I remember seeing this as a retweet that someone posted the other day
I didn't know what to make of it. Frankly I thought she was a twitter comedian or something. How can you possibly even have guns or ammo in Apple''s offices? Surely she must have meant they threw around some Nerf darts?
However, it apparently wasn't a joke, and it wasn't nerf darts:
I'm not sure if that's really live ammo (shouldn't there be a longer protruding bullet from that large casing?) but I sure as hell wouldn't like seeing that on display in the office.
I didn't know what to make of it. Frankly I thought she was a twitter comedian or something. How can you possibly even have guns or ammo in Apple''s offices? Surely she must have meant they threw around some Nerf darts?
However, it apparently wasn't a joke, and it wasn't nerf darts:
I'm not sure if that's really live ammo (shouldn't there be a longer protruding bullet from that large casing?) but I sure as hell wouldn't like seeing that on display in the office.
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always the cringiest people in the office, hate all of this.
Yup. But that's the thing, as an industry they do a superb job of portraying themselves as fantasy-esque 'keepers of the light", lol.
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(lol @ Gloria Steinem)
Not to say you aren't going to see a Citibank commercial about the one time they hooked a poor family up with a fair mortgage or Exxon paying for a $250k commercial showing how they planted three trees last year.
But tech has been relentless about their PR for decades to the point you've got fans defending them off GP online. Meanwhile you have the usual boys club harassment shit, crushing the competition monopoly practices, etc. There's an additional layer of protection they work under because of that image which is why like you said shit like this would never fly where you or I work but here they are basically fucking firing her
Just some casual EAR violations as a side hustle, no biggie.
Smuggling and violating US embargoes??? This seems like a potentially bigger deal than "just" the harassment issues. What country could this be referring to?
This might be why she's actually on leave. That's…yeah. The harassment is obviously fucking terrible but this….the legal implications of this are bad
Smuggling and violating US embargoes??? This seems like a potentially bigger deal than "just" the harassment issues. What country could this be referring to?
The short version is yes things are that bad because a company can fire you long before any legal consequences happen. For example, here's the timeline for the National Labor Relations Board's complaints against Google:
September 2019 - Google fires 5 workers for trying to organize
December 2020 - the NRLB files a complaint on behalf of two of them, hearing is set for April 2021
May 2021 - Biden's new NRLB head adds the other three employees to the complaint
As far as I can tell, the legal proceedings are still ongoing since Google has filed documents denying the allegations as recently as this month. Over stuff that happened almost two years ago.
It's not about who's creating the value, it's about who's receiving it. The situation is a net positive for these people because they can have a grand old party at work with their buddies while getting huge compensation packages.
Lower level positions are inherently more interchangeable due to the nature of the work, so those people are out of luck. Also, from Apple's perspective, Steve Jobs being an abusive asshole has paid off tremendously in the form of being the richest company ever.
I think a big part of the problem is that having a FAANG company on your resume is a huge boost to employability so there's even more of an incentive for them to have higher turnover. Amazon in particular is known to be a shitty place to work at even for developers. Last time I checked they're still using stack ranking, which is a terrible management system that pretty much every other major company has stopped doing.
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Yep, one of my college friends got a job there after graduation, 5 years later he is now the most senior person on his team because everyone has fled the toxic work environment with that Amazon Endorsement on their resume. He keeps trying but gets sucked back in 😬
I mean, Amazon is known to be toxic but staying at a tech company for 5 years is a pretty long time when the average churn for an engineer is 2.5 years.
Bully culture seems to be off the chain across all of the computer industry. The fuck is wrong with us?
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yeah he's been needing to leave for a while. Sounds like he might FINALLY be leaving soon 🤞
Shared this with my friend who works at Apple and she said this happens to her everywhere. She mentioned how she interviewed for another company and aced the technical portion but she got the opposite of smile more. They told her she was too nice and basically questioned why she wasn't a male archetype.
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Hopefully people remember this stuff when the next flashy device comes up for preorder. The more that comes out the worse this company seems jfc
Aye, unfortunately you'll still get people posting "My new M1 MBA is the best laptop ever made!" or "The new iPhone is just soooo sexy!" and turning a completely blind eye to all of this, and if put on the spot they'll happily take having cool luxury tech gadgets over people being treated with basic human dignity and respect.
This lady's story is horrendous. It's mindboggling how any company could allow this sort of shit to take place. I could almost see how it could happen at a tiny tech startup where the HR department is non-existent but Apple is a huge org and should (but obviously doesn't) have robust policies in place to prevent employees being harassed and abused.
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Yep, my current team is the most women I've ever encountered in tech at a company before. Previously I would have 1 random person who might not stick around, but at this company we have I want to say about half the team are women which is surprising (in a good way).
Unfortunately the bigger the company it seems the easier it is for stuff like this to happen since they can all just... blend in and fall into the melting pot.
I think that's probably true in tech companies but I'm not entirely sure it's true in all corporate cultures. Maybe it's because other, more established or traditional businesses (I'm thinking finance here as that's my industry) are a bit more risk-averse and tend to make sure that they don't leave themselves wide open to costly lawsuits - not that these industries don't have serious problems with bullying, harassment and mistreatment of employees, of course. It feels like tech companies are still a bit like the Wild West though, or are just a bit less mature. There's also the fact that these jobs tend to be in extremely high demand so there's a never-ending conveyor belt of fresh meat to be fed into the grinder.
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yeah, believe its referencing this article she published in March
...is she saying they literally poisoned her?? Holy shit
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Ashley Gjovik exposes the influence of a powerful corporation against the need for accountability and public safety on her journey to save her life. The challenges she encounters are ongoing for many people in the Bay Area, and they may not even know it yet. Her single victory has been the fight...
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Unless I missed something in that article, it has nothing to do with Apple (?)yeah, believe its referencing this article she published in March
I thought I was dying: My apartment was built on toxic waste
Ashley Gjovik exposes the influence of a powerful corporation against the need for accountability and public safety on her journey to save her life. The challenges she encounters are ongoing for many people in the Bay Area, and they may not even know it yet. Her single victory has been the fight...
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The connection is what Vox will be working on is my guess. They must be related because this is the first item on her timeline of the Apple events.
I am sorry but something is not right here. Look at her job description in that article from 5 months ago, and her job description as described in the tweets. How do these co exist? Again, unless I am missing something, e.g her Apple job was years ago.
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her apple job just ended last week (technically still going but shes on forced "leave")
But in the article that she wrote 5 months ago she describes herself as a law student (?)
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In that article she said she was a law student while working a job as a program manager (that job being apple)
Ah found it now, I only saw the description in the end of the article that omits the program manager part.
Holy fuck Apple. Like the first thing to do is find every person who was involved, from the POSs who made her life awful, to the HR who offered no help, fire them publicly and throw them under the bus.
Jesus this is awful. Obviously leadership needs to change at the top of so many of these ppl can be hired by the company and never fired for their behavior.
Jesus this is awful. Obviously leadership needs to change at the top of so many of these ppl can be hired by the company and never fired for their behavior.
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That's terrible and a huge invasion of privacy.
Apparently Apple encourages employees to link their personal and work accounts. Which is all kinds of awful. Work accounts should stay on work machines, and vice versa.
What a fucking mess.
Apparently Apple encourages employees to link their personal and work accounts. Which is all kinds of awful. Work accounts should stay on work machines, and vice versa.
What a fucking mess.
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Yep, my work "encourages" people to link their work account to their phone to get emails and what not on the go. Heeeeeellll no. Get me a company phone if its that important.
Fucking hell. Some people definitely need to be fired but criminal investigations seem necessary for a lot of this stuff. Just mind blowing how disgusting this stuff is.