[throwawaylinux]

I've worked with a couple of people in tech who were very worker solidarity, unionize, labor movement, discrimination everywhere, etc.

They must have been tiring for management to work with. And I go in to bat for my colleagues, and it has not always made me popular with management and executives, but there are better and worse ways of approaching things.

If you are unwilling to accept that a decision has been made for a reason other than discrimination, bullying, or retaliation, it's no longer a good faith dialogue. Expecting other parties to continue talking and negotiating as though it were, whether or not they are guilty of these things, is silly. That's the point where you need a lawyer, or an exit plan, or to read through a lot of statute and case law, or all of the above. By all means try to get them to keep talking and collect evidence, but the fact they don't want to deal with you any more isn't exactly evidence of anything by itself.

I'm not saying this person is wrong or did the wrong thing. I really don't have enough information. But this is a company that investigated their co-founder and CTO and kicked him out for harassing two trans employees, more than half their "leadership team" appear to be minorities or women, they have hired several trans people including at least one who got spectacular performance reviews and was being promoted. On its face I would have to entertain the idea that they are not engaged in wide scale discrimination of anybody who is not a straight white male.

This is also quite a serious step for the person to make, whether or not there are legal ramifications (and I hope they got very good advice about breaking their NDA). But what would an employer think about hiring this person after reading this? What would be the best outcome for them? The worst?

[lliamander]

> I'm not saying this person is wrong or did the wrong thing. I really don't have enough information.

Despite what other people may claim about why this story was previously flagged, this is probably why: we don't have enough information to know for sure this story is the truth, but people are going to come armed with their own presuppositions and argue about it anyway.

> On its face I would have to entertain the idea that they are not engaged in wide scale discrimination of anybody who is not a straight white male.

Not to mention that, as per the blog post, other employees close to the matter disagreed with OP's interpretation. Still doesn't mean the OP is wrong, but hopefully at least some of the people who responded to the article favorably will reserve some doubts.

[pcthrowaway]

I don't think that's enough reason to be flagged.

90% of the submissions from people sharing their experience with a company/product here would fall under that description as well (and many of those are upvoted because they seem useful)

That dude who interned at repl.it a while back and posted about a mildly bad experience was upvoted to the front page for over a day. people had their pitchforks out.

I think we should maintain higher standards of evidence before getting our pitchforks out, but at the same time, we should let people have their platform if people find it discussion-worthy. In the case of Repl.it or the 1000s of posts of people being shadowbanned from big tech without explanation, we let people have their say, and we let the platform help them where possible. The HN algorithmic spotlight is usually pretty fair with illuminating all sides when they present themselves here.

The submission here is extremely detailed and well-written, and makes a great case. There are multiple claims made which, were they misleading or inaccurate, the other party could discredit quite easily.

But instead of doing that, we're seeing the post repeatedly get flagged.

There could be other reasons this is happening, and I assume many, like myself, are withholding judgment.

But the silence from Rune, and dialogue suppression tactics by mystery parties honestly just make me more inclined to believe there is at least a grain of truth in the original submission.

[lliamander]

I agree that this a perfectly on-topic post and worthy of discussion (in part because it was well written). I was just countering the claim/insuation that people were flagging the story because of their own prejudice against trans people (or whatever).

> But the silence from Rune, and dialogue suppression tactics by mystery parties honestly just make me more inclined to believe there is at least a grain of truth in the original submission.

Hypothetically, if Rune was in the right and the OP had seriously misrepresented the situation, what would be the right thing for Rune to do?

[pcthrowaway]

They could point out the inaccuracies or misrepresentations. For example, the claim that 20% of the staff were let go, but 100% of the laid off folk were "of historically marginalized groups. Women, people of color, queer folks, and multiple people on disability and even maternity leave"

They could respond with information. Maybe this is a broad enough group and their workforce is unusually diverse, and 90% of their workforce fits that description. If their layoff cohort was remotely representative of their demographics in the first place, this would be fine, but it really doesn't sound like it.

For example, the claim that they laid off people on maternity leave. Did their 20% company-wide layoff comprise 20% of their staff which was on maternity leave (in other words "sure, we laid off 2 people on maternity leave, but another 8 of our employees are actually on maternity leave, and they didn't get laid off").

Or was this overall inaccurate? ("actually our layoff cohort contained groups of people who are underrepresented in tech, but also groups of people who are overrepresented in tech. Protected statuses were not a factor in our layoff decisions").

Perhaps they fucked up and realize they did discriminate based on protected class, and can only dig the hole deeper by responding now.

[lliamander]

> the claim that 20% of the staff were let go, but 100% of the laid off folk were "of historically marginalized groups. Women, people of color, queer folks, and multiple people on disability and even maternity leave"

Even if that claim is true, it's far from sufficient to assert discrimination is at play:

- Disparate impact != discrimination. IIRC, the idea that disparate impact could be penalized without explicit intent to discriminate was a judicial fabrication that contradicts the plain text of the Civil Rights Act.

- There are so many ways one could qualify as belonging to a "historically marginalized group". That's not really unrealistic to think that something like this could happen by chance.

- Sounds like the author's own marginal status wasn't a driving factor in being fired or even a barrier to promotion. If anything it sounds like the problem was retaliation, not discrimination.

- There does appear to be a decent amount of demographic diversity at the leadership level. It doesn't seem likely that they would have a plan to get rid of minority employees simply because of their minority status.

Whether as an individual or a company there plenty of reasons to hold your tongue admist public controversy. That doesn't mean the company is making the right move by being silent, but interpreting that silence as guilt seems unwise.

[gregw2]

When someone is suing you, even wrongly (in your view), responding in public is very rarely the legally recommended appropriate thing to do.

I don’t think there is any compelling argument to be made from Ram’s silence.