
Female engineer sues Tesla, describing a culture of 'pervasive harassment' - DrNuke
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/28/tesla-female-engineer-lawsuit-harassment-discrimination
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janywer
“Most of my clients come in and say, ‘human resources isn’t helping me.
They’re just protecting the company.’”

Once again, that is HR's job. They're not there to protect you, they are there
to protect the company from lawsuits.

~~~
empath75
Well. In the most cynical sense, yes, but in a properly functioning company,
those shouldn't be competing functions.

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meej
No. Organizations that protect employees do exist, they're called unions.

~~~
cholantesh
Unfortunately, it seems that the organizational culture in NA (and in South
Asia, from my friends and family that work there) is extremely union hostile.

~~~
meej
It is, though that wasn't always the case in the US; at their peak a third of
workers belonged to a union.

And it is unfortunate, because workers in strongly unionized industries enjoy
higher wages even if they do not belong to the union. The decline of unions in
the US has gone hand in hand with the rise in inequality. A lot of the jobs
that US politicians talk about bringing back were union jobs, but even if it
were possible to bring those jobs back, I don't think they're talking about
bringing back the unions.

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gdulli
> protected a repeat offender because he was a "high performer"

When will people realize that any definition of "performance" that excludes a
requirement to treat others with respect is uselessly narrow?

~~~
dkonofalski
When money stops being the driving motivation for the majority of people. As
long as brute capitalism is rewarded, you're going to see this type of
occurrence.

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nocomments
Currently, all chief executive positions are held by men at Tesla, and out of
more than 30 vice-presidents, only two are women, she added.

“It’s shocking in this day and age that this is still a fight we have to
have.” - Isn't this simple probability or law of numbers because your company
has less female employees. I work in a tech company which has healthy amount
of female employees and guess what we have lots of female executives too.

~~~
slurple
Women are promoted into management at much lower rates then men are in many
industries, which ends up in underrepresentation at the highest levels.

[https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/articles/7823-lecturing-
men-...](https://www.ellevatenetwork.com/articles/7823-lecturing-men-about-
diversity-doesn-t-work-this-does)

~~~
dkonofalski
Women also apply for management at lower rates, though. The whole ecosystem is
unbalanced and not in their favor.

~~~
contingencies
I wonder if flatter organizations with broader company decisions made through
collaborative online discussion (ie. not face to face) would help? Obviously
someone still has to make the call, but at least it lets people put their
reasoning out there without dealing with the inefficiencies of meetings and
the unequal opportunity they tend to entail for input.

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empath75
I'm glad she sued and stayed with the company. That takes guts. I hope all the
people who wanted those women to sue Uber are going to stand behind her when
the all the negative consequences of suing start coming her way.

~~~
jhgjklj
Just another thought. She moved from engineering(manufacturing) to purchase,
sound like not much opportunities available.

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sevensor
Manufacturing can be a pretty rough environment. The factory where I used to
work drew the line at porn, more or less, but casual racism, sexism, and all
the 'phobias were rampant. Our director of HR was let go for sexual
harassment.

Edit: Should clarify that the fact that this is normal for manufacturing in no
way excuses it, and I support this lawsuit.

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jhgjklj
Hypothesis thinking from first principles. In the department of manufacturing
the productivity is directly correlated with followup which is directly
correlated with insane work hours which suits men better than women which
correlates with hike.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> insane work hours which suits men better than women

My girlfriend earned 23 hours of overtime this week. I am on HN naked in bed
at noon on a Tuesday.

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Philipp__
Haha, man, you made my day! :)

