
BetterWorks and CEO sued by ex-employee for alleged sexually suggestive assault - janober
https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/betterworks-duggan-kim-assault-sexual-manner-lawsuit
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danso
Sad to see this story flagged off the front page less than an hour later.
BetterWorks is a Silicon Valley startup that has substantial VC investment and
it is facing a major lawsuit that threatens its business/existence. But
because it involves a systematic coverup of sexual assault and harassment,
rather than a data/engineering/security problems, it's not "news"?

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ben174
I was also surprised to see how quickly this one dropped off the front page.
It was up for maybe 10 minutes, gaining very quick momentum, and then suddenly
disappeared.

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davidu
The only thing worse than this accusation is the alleged coverup. Holy smokes.

Also, a certain irony is that it stands in contrast to the entire point of
this company.

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danso
Based on the evidentiary claims made in the allegation, it also seems to be
one of the more unambiguous cases involving Silicon Valley. The victim did
everything in her power to avoid, deter, and afterwards, document the attack,
including calling for help during/immediately after the attack, and filing a
formal report to the "VP of People Operations" the morning after.

In addition to actual witnesses of the event and her formal HR complaint, the
report notes that the CEO sent out a company-wide email apologizing for his
behavior. So this wasn't something that anyone in the company could be
ignorant of, or dismiss as idle gossip.

That no one apparently chose to speak up publicly -- about this incident or
any of the other past allegations of improper culture/behavior, until the
lawsuit at hand -- is some indication of the institutional barriers that
victims face. If this kind of attack could be kept quiet, think of the less
obviously egregious incidents of harassment that victims feel powerless to
report.

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twobyfour
This is horrific. The description of the assault made me so uncomfortable I
had trouble finishing reading the article.

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tylerjdurden
This was a terrifying, sickening read. The comments by the head of People
Operations (re: "cattiness", "cool girl") remind me a lot of Fowler's
description of Uber HR.

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andreasgonewild
Assholes take notice, this wave of transparency and collective action is only
going to increase in strength moving forward; either turn on a dime or find
another world to live in.

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ben174
I interviewed with BetterWorks last year for _four_ rounds of onsite
interviews. This is _in addition_ to a couple rounds of phone interviews and a
quite extensive homework assignment. Everything seemed to be going well, but
they ultimately ended up passing on me with absolutely no explanation.

They seemed like a professional place and I didn't observe much out of the
usual regarding professionalism, but I can't pretend I wasn't a bit soured by
investing so much time and not getting an explanation on why they passed.

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jrubinovitz
Your comment seems to be 100% independent of this accusation.

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ben174
Indeed. Just sharing my experience with them.

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justboxing
> Duggan allegedly told a female employee who complained about the lack of
> gender diversity on the sales staff that she should “tell recruiting we need
> to hire more boobies.”

This made me cringe. (I'm a dude).

