[mililani]

Not true. My sister won a LARGE (over half a million dollars) sexual harassment lawsuit against her employer. In fact, it wasn't an ongoing thing but one incident and the way HR handled this incident. After she left the company, she went back to school and got a job afterwards at a large hospital. She hasn't ever had problems finding employment even though her name is easily Googeable and shows that she won a large settlement against her previous employer.

[emcrazyone]

If everything you state is true, then your sister is the exception to the norm. My wife works in HR and pretty much everything mentioned above is true. There is a very large, fortune-5, company going through a name & blame game with another very large supplier over an ignition switch problem and the PIP process mentioned above is what I've seen too. HR folks are not your friends.

[mililani]

I'm not contesting that HR is not your friends. I'm contesting nearly everything else that was said.

[Ecio78]

Actually it seems you are contesting point 2 and 3 of the 5 that were listed, or you think the others are wrong too?

[kelukelugames]

Yes, in many incidences finding another job is not impacted. But if you are in a city with only a handful of tech start ups then chances are you won't work for another one any time soon. I imagine more HN readers work at tech start-ups than hospitals.

As for winning cases and payout sums: your anecdotal data point is your sister. My source is the EEOC. Each field offices investigates hundreds of claims per year but only a few are accepted. The odds of an individual claim being winnable is small.

Winning half a million dollars also sounds made up. According to the legal award limits it is not possible. Then again IANAL.

http://www.eeoc.gov/employers/remedies.cfm

[mililani]

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/May/10/bz/FP7...

enough said.