[temphn]

Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal.

There is nothing wrong with something "unrepentantly boyish", anything more than there is something wrong with women's only schools. Working class men don't go around apologizing for doing difficult construction jobs, white collar men need to stop apologizing for doing the difficult programming jobs.

This woman was in customer service. She was lucky to be put on the Facebook rocket ship. So too was Sheryl Sandberg, a nontechnical and obviously ultrapolitical operator, placed on third base as COO yet thinks she hit a triple. Both Losse and Sandberg consider themselves "women in tech". They're not. They're "women on tech", women carried on the backs of real technologists, male and female alike.

[pnmahoney]

I'm calling bull. Contributing to a company's success is NOT the exclusive purchase of programmers, nor (as some appear to conflate it) men who program.

And, to be clear, there is something unambiguously wrong for a male supervisor to roam the workplace trying to push lesser-ranked employees into sexual acts;

worse, for the behavior to go on long enough until SOMEONE (again, by your analysis, a 'woman on tech') thought it was worth fixing. Even if she had to use all that dreaded 'political operations-ing' to make it right.

[lucisferre]

Honestly when it comes to the subject of women's issues in frat boy tech cultures I've seen people on this site post (and vote up) some stupid f'ing shit, but you may have just won the triple crown with this absolute sexist entilted load of crap. I love how you ended it with "male and female" just so you could feel a bit better about yourself in the morning.

[temphn]

You can rant at heretical thoughts all you want. You offer no counterarguments other than pointing and screaming. I want you to recognize that the free speech of the internet means there are men who can and will offer different opinions about these matters. Anonymity means immunity from character assassination over a difference of opinion.

After all, who really has the power here? Isn't Sheryl Sandberg the billionaire, and those two engineers the ones whose careers were ruined?

[lucisferre]

You're plainly idiotic point of view isn't even remotely worth a cogent argument, but I've noticed that saying nothing to posts like yours around here is often taken by others as tacit agreement.

[taligent]

You can't possibly be serious.

One engineer propositions other employees for threesomes and the other calls a fellow employee a feminist and is aggressive towards her. In ANY organisation on this planet both would more than likely have been instantly dismissed.

It is grossly unprofessional to say the least.

[temphn]

You find her accusations plausible. Others may not. She certainly constructed an elaborate internal discourse out of this bearskin rug photo. And seemed proud of the fact that the engineers were demoted or reassigned without even having a chance to defend themselves.

Are false accusations or office politics of such an underhanded nature "grossly unprofessional"?

[pnmahoney]

You're really going all-in on this double standard thing, aren't you?

1. Credibility You're take as fact that the accusations are already false, and hence "grossly unprofessional". Which holds pretty much no water, since that this person is making a claim not just about her own knowledge (re: the aggression/harassment in question) but ALSO about what actually was also common knowledge at the time. Let's not leave out, either, that books of length probably don't lend themselves well to 100% fabricated accusations - least of all those which implicate small groups of people and mention them by name. So much for anonymity and character assassination, huh?

On the other hand, the recounted instance the author gives us is being falsely accused of being difficult to work with after a manager refuses to move past aggression.

2. Stated Accusation vs. Perception

"she seemed proud of the fact that the engineers were demoted or reassigned without even having a chance to defend themselves"

You're living in the world of 'seems', rather than the world of facts. Of course, facts can be fabricated, and we can prove that they are in fact false. No one is denying that.

That said, things stated _as facts_ (behavior specified, conversations recalled, timelines constructed, etc -- basically the stuff that makes up this piece and others like it) are going to be better than your world of made up accusations (the stuff that separates conspiracies like the one you're touting here from an actual story). Think _Loose Change_ vs. _All The President's Men_.

But as to the merits of what you've said, I don't know why she 'seemed proud' to you. Joining you - again, temporarily - in your world of impression, you'll find that she had _seemed_ pretty dejected and not the least bit upset that she had to go through her superiors to get anything done about it. The word might be something more like 'relieved'.

3. ASSUMPTIONS

You straight-up assert that these people didn't have the chance to defend themselves, and that's how they were fired. The truth, by your way of thinking, was something that was not let out because they did not have the chance to say it.

And, yet, you insist that others are ranting and, as you put it, 'pointing and screaming'. So let's work out the assumptions you're making, and who's doing any 'pointing'.

I'm not sure that those accused had the chance to defend themselves, that's something you have to admit from the account. But it's definitely not something you can - as you have here - straight-up assume. If that were the case, and these people were 100% innocent as you seem to believe, you can be sure they would have a book deal of their own; although I'm less sure if you wouldn't find some kind of duplicity or targeting then, either.

As well, the facts as given point against you: it's not a conspiracy against engineers. The person who was doing straight-up sexual harassment by her account was a senior supervisor/management or somesuch. It's not, as you put it, the two engineers that this evil woman and her billionaire female ally targeted.

Finally, let's not forget that the account also specifies that Cheryl Sandberg made a point of talking to all the females in the office to make sure things were right. Or could be made right, as was the case here. If you think that any of this points to a world in which the, say, 5% of women in the office lord over the politics and seek to find you and accuse you falsely so that you can be fired, well, no amount of bullshit-detection applied to your posts can save you.

[exit]

so you take her account of their behavior at face value?

the article makes it sound like sandberg did too and quietly "made things happen" on the strength of that.

that should legitimately concern men in tech.

[lucisferre]

My god, you're right! There is a witch-hunt for men going on by the women invading our industry. Its high time for us to stand up to it.

[exit]

you should be pretty worried if hyperbolic mischaracterization is the best response you have to someones argument.

women have privileges too. women abusing their presumed status as victum in conflicts with men is a very real phenomena.

[taligent]

I have to agree with you there. This post is every bad stereotype of IT workers rolled into one. In addition to the borderline misogyny is the dismissive attitude towards those not in IT.

As someone who has been in IT for 20+ years programming is SIMPLE compared to trying to get groups of people to work towards (and want to work towards) a common goal.

[niete]

We are all ever so impressed with how progressive you are.

[geon]

> Mark Zuckerberg and those engineers made this customer service representative a millionaire. She repays them by trashing them in the Wall Street Journal.

If you mean she was paid in shares that turned out very valuable years later, thhen she has absolutely no reason to be grateful for them. The only reason she was not paid in cash was that the value of Facebook was uncertain. It could be a success, or it could flop. As with any stock market deals it was a gamble, and she was lucky.

Also, she was apaid employee. She would not have been hired if she didn't contribute to the success of the company. Therefore she made "those engineers" millionaries just as much.

[temphn]

  Therefore she made "those engineers" millionaries just as 
  much.

No. All contributions aren't equal. It takes someone special to write HipHop to compile PHP into C++. Engineers can (and do) do customer service in a pinch, customer service reps can't do engineering.

Doug Edwards, Google Employee 59, is more self-consciously reflective about this, recognizing explicitly in his biography that the company would have become successful if he weren't there. Losse and Sandberg only pat themselves on the back about hobbling the careers of engineers for their sins, real or imagined. If Losse could turn her own drunken donning of a bearskin rug into some bizarre cause for resentment, who knows what innocuous remark could have gotten transmogrified into cause for demotion or transfer of some hapless, apolitical engineer.

[apl]

  > No. All contributions aren't equal. It takes someone
  > special to write HipHop to compile PHP into C++.
  > Engineers can (and do) do customer service in a pinch,
  > customer service reps can't do engineering.

The sheer hubris on display here makes me gag.

[temphn]

Is this statement true or false: Engineers can do customer service, but customer service reps can't do engineering.

You don't have to point this out as an engineer unless dealing with someone who doesn't realize how relatively incapable they are, like Losse.

[geon]

Obviously you need to adjust for the difference in salaries. If they still aren't equal, that is not a very well run company. I realize it is naive to epect every salary to be exactly fair, but if the engineers are contributing signifficantly more per salary dollar, they are getting screwed.

[vamsee]

Wow. Is this the attitude that people in SV usually have/tolerate towards women? No wonder there are so many complaints. Somehow 'doing difficult programming jobs' entitles you to act shabbily towards women? And somehow she needs to be thankful for all this? Wow, just wow.

[agateform]

While its true that the majority of people in tech jobs or dangerous working class jobs are man, I understand why some people see misogyny when you wrote "white collar men need to stop apologizing for doing the difficult programming jobs" because it can come across as woman not being capable and not doing those difficult jobs...

With that said... It still surprises me that people in HN are quickly to point out misogyny but completely misses the man bashing, "boyish" shaming misandry from this article.

The article was not just sexist but also generally demeaning or condescending.

"...my first day at Facebook, the young, plain-looking guys in T-shirts..." "...woman in the office—an administrative assistant—was more animated, smiling toothily as she welcomed me in...."

The bad types of feminists seems to think that all man have power and/or privileges and are oppressors of woman and woman are always the oppressed victims with no privilege or power. The following quotes made her seem like she might be this type of feminist.

"...slight mocking disapproval that was my new colleagues' default tone in response to anything that resisted their power...."

"...Facebook album that Monday I was struck by the loaded nature of the image, ripe for interpretation, in which Mark appeared to be commanding a female employee to submit..."

"...photo was taken and posted on Facebook is that it didn't occur to anyone in the office that there was anything wrong with it, or that it revealed something unattractive about the culture of Facebook."

"...As Mark wrote on his business card with boyish hubris, "I'm CEO, bitch." The image of me in the bearskin was saying that power wasn't something to be questioned; it was something to collect and brandish..."

IIRC the "I'm CEO, bitch." business cards had to do with developers not becoming CEO of the company and not making as much money from their own creation.

"When I met Sheryl, the first thing I said was that she had really good skin," Mark continued, "and she does," he said, gesturing toward Sheryl, whose face had an admittedly creamy tone.

Was Mark talking about the actual skin or that she had good thick skin? It's pretty ironic if this is criticism of Mark considering she writes about peoples appearances in a condescending way.

[kaonashi]

No offense, but that comes off as extremely conceited.

[lclarkmichalek]

Yes, usually any misogyny on hacker news is at least concealed behind pseudo rational arguments.

[sp332]

"unrepentantly boyish" is OK in certain places. Like, a boys' school, or a strip club or something. Our society has decided that work should not be one of those places, and we've enshrined that in law.

[agateform]

What laws? Could you please define "unrepentantly boyish"?