
60% of male managers now say they’re uncomfortable mentoring women - tuananh
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/60percent-of-male-managers-now-say-theyre-uncomfortable-mentoring-women.html
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945514](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19945514)

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rowathay
I agree that #MeToo has gone too far and in fact has been weaponized. One
example from my own recent experience:

I was a manager of a software development and innovation team at a well-known
nonprofit research institute. I hired a fairly junior developer who happened
to be female. As it turns out, she took the job just as a stepping stone to
another, arguably more prestigious team in my institute. She basically punted
on her responsibilities, ignored specific requests and tasks, lied constantly
about her progress, demanded that we pay for her art education out of our
project budget, and generally did little but get coffee and chat with people
on the team she wanted to jump to. Meanwhile I frequently had to clean up her
messes and fix what little code she managed to write, at significant personal
cost.

After doing all the things a supportive manager should - praising her
publicly, coming up with plans to improve performance, being quite encouraging
and supportive in our 1-on-1s, and giving her specific warnings about her
behavior and performance - it finally came time to fire her. She went
literally crying to my boss, who then told me we couldn’t fire her, because we
might get sued for sexism, or something. Despite the fact that I treated her
with utmost respect and superhuman patience. But since my workplace was raging
with #MeToo consciousness (as evidenced on our Slack channels daily, and
elsewhere), she got away with it and in fact got exactly what she wanted all
along.

“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually
degenerates into a racket.” - Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time

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slimscsi
I’ll probably get a lot of hate for this, but if a guy did the same thing,
there is a good change he would be praised for “career hacking”, and working
the system to his advantage. Spending time with the other team would be good
communication skills and going after what he wanted.

I know the specific of _this_ situation don’t math my response 100% But there
absolutely is a double standard at play in the industry.

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rowathay
There’s certainly a kernel of truth to what you’re saying, but as you point
out, this situation adds lying, malfeasance, and dereliction of duty to the
mix.

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nabla9
I suspect that this is a side effect from American litigation culture.

In most countries successfully suing a company leads to compensation that is
relative to the damages and harm done, you don't get a jackpot.

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mogadsheu
One potential remedy: turn the camera on, with consent of course. Audio
optional.

It puts a damper on trust, but at least it helps reduce risk for both parties
if there are genuine concerns.

