I'm not so much shocked at the allegations here, but rather I'm shocked that we exist in a universe where these things are even possible. It is literally inconceivable to me to imagine a workplace like this. I can only barely imagine a living/housing environment like this (but then again, I was never in a frat, so maybe that's why?).
Talking about female coworkers? Sure, that happens.
Talk about sex at work? Sure. Not at my workplace, but ok.
Talk about rubbing one out because a coworker gave you boner? Eh.... O_o
Hell, my parents are still surprised to hear I can show up at whatever time in the morning and leave whenever I feel like it! That's what they consider outrageous.
It's funny you mention people from an older generation. My mother worked as a secretary at a law firm in the UK in the 1960s, where she met my father. When I mentioned to her that "60% of women in tech reported unwanted sexual advances" [1], she yawned (quite literally) and said, "Is that all?" It seems hard to imagine that this fiasco, Magic Leap from last week, Uber, etc, might actually be construed as "progress", but, well...
I wouldn't be surprised if a woman of average and above attractiveness don't get unwanted sexual advances every month, regardless of the industry, unless it is clearly indicated that they are married.
In that case the 60% figure seems spot on. Of course the issue here is what we define as a sexual advance. It wouldn't surprise me if some propositions to a date were miscategorized as sexual advances. Not that it makes the others OK.
Here's a question for you people directly in tech: do you think the other industries are better or worse in this regard? Has there been any studies or polls or anything even remotely scientific to study this?
Progress is that these things now make news. Because that's what's hopefully going to change the world. First there's publicity, then there's awareness, then there's change.
I just can't fathom how anyone working there could think this is acceptable. And why has it even been allowed to continue this long before without someone telling them to knock it off.
People can have sex if they want to(in theory no, on the workplace shouldn't be allowed so openly). BUT company that offer a bed/room for sex ? this seems to be too much.
Yeah it doesn't make sense makes it even more suspect. It's 2017 everyone knows this is a lawsuit waiting to happen and for a company to open themselves up to a lawsuit that they would HAVE to know is going to be coming seems suspect.
I don't know enough to have an opinion one way or the other but if any company behaves like this the deserve to be sued out of business and should be fined for stupidity.
This is the logical consequence of Peter Thiel's idea that you put bright (but often socially inept) high-school nerds directly into founding roles in companies. You end up with socially inept and socially inappropriate bosses who were never forced to conform to society's norms.
EDIT: I am not implying that Peter Thiel would condone this behavior.
I feel I have to defend myself here to some extent (being a now former Thiel Fellow), but I can fairly safely say that the ~20 other Thiel Fellows that I would call "friends" would never do anything close to this at their companies. While there are now over 120 fellows and I do not know them all, I bet there is one or at most a small handful that could fit your description, but I would say that of any group of similar size that you were to pick from a university.
I would definitely say I am socially awkward/inept, but I don't think that necessarily correlates with being socially maladapted/unaware of societies norms. The sort of "bro" culture that exemplifies UploadVR's, Uber, and many other "hot" tech companies right now is the culture that myself and most other high-school nerds that I knew rejected... we were not the popular kids that drank, had sex, and partied. I think all of this is a symptom of technology being a much more attractive jobspace for the general public (which includes a lot of "bros") compared to just for "nerds" that it was decades ago, and your conclusion is the exact opposite of this.
Granted it is an anecdote with a relatively small sample size, but I have not seen this sort of behavior/ideas from anyone who never went to college or dropped out, but I see it from plenty of folks in their late 20s/early 30s that never grew up from their college fraternity experiences.
I shouldn't have type-cast an entire group. Clearly you can be socially inept and yet be appropriate (I was more like that too). But I also started as an employee in smallish companies and moved to founding them.
I should also note that some never seem to "grow up" - appropriateness simply eludes them permanently. If you look at Uber you have a founder that could, in theory, be a grandfather but doesn't seem to have a sense of what society condones.
You're right ... it's a very clear extension of the frat-bro phenomenon. You don't need to defend Thiel as I wasn't attacking him. He was simply a convenient adjective since I thought most here would know about his fellowship program (and I had to apologize for stereotyping high school nerds in another sub-comment).
The founders are far from socially-inept nerds. Perhaps relevant in some cases, but not at all here. I think that the average socially-inept-nerd company culture may be better than what this lawsuit implies existed at Upload.
This kind of behavior has been reported at many startups. Venture capitalists have apparently made an implicit analysis that the risk of settling a lawsuit is cheaper than adult supervision and an experienced HR department. The free market has spoken.
I would say there is tons to learn about this. For one, if your startup starts to grow, don't do what the people in this story did. Try to make your workplace culture have a modicum of decency.
As tptacek is fond of saying, HN shouldn't try to be all things to all people. There are an infinite number of issues that classify as important but are beyond the scope of HN's charter.
I'm more shocked by the puritanical reactions here, it's something I'd expect from Saudi Arabia, not silicon valley.
We're all fine with ping pong tables and other forms of entertainment that aren't work related, so I don't buy the "professional environment" bullshit. But somehow sex, or just talking about sex in an office has become taboo.
Instead of being open and progressive it's back to code words and using the disabled toilet.
1.Sex is not ping pong. It is much more personal and intimate. There is a reason sex in public is an offense and playing ping pong in public is not. It is not yet another way to blow off some steam. It can come with baggage. It does not belong in a professional environment like an office. Go have sex at home, at a hotel, at a friend's place or in a sex dungeon (if that's your scene).
2.Talk about sex at work with someone who doesn't mind it or infront of someone who doesn't mind it. Personally I am not interested in hearing about your bondage fetishes or your "conquests". Be respectful of other's wishes. If you talk about your sexual life or someone else's in front of people who do mind that creates an uncomfortable working environment.
3. If you say sex is allowed in the office who's to say what kind of sex allowed vs. not allowed? There are infinite fetishes from the mundane to the unbelievable. If you are saying, but well sex in office isn't going to happen in an open setting but in a closed room so what does it matter what fetish is being enacted, well then my friend don't be cheap, just rent a hotel room for those activities instead of asking your employer to provide you with a sex room to indulge your sexual needs. Next you'll ask them to provide you with "companions", after all your employer did provide that ping pong table right?
4. Now you may say well the "puritanical" attitudes of your coworkers creates an uncomfortable work environment for you so how about they conform to your social beliefs? Well you see the majority dictates the social norms. It is a fact of life whether you think it is fair or not. Till a majority's attitude towards openly LGBTQ work colleagues hadn't shifted towards acceptability, having them as colleagues was uncomfortable for people. Then the majority attitude changed and it became acceptable.
Now the LGBTQ community worked hard to change that mindset and my friend in our democracy you too have that option to change people's minds.
But till you have changed a majority's mind you are stuck with our rules. Deal with it.
Believe it or not, but there indeed exists, even in liberal San Francisco, a certain crowd of prudish men and women who categorize sexual intercourse differently from ping-pong, even though both are technically physical activities that can be entertaining.
Ladies and gentlemen, an example of someone who doesn't understand the relevance of established social norms!
You really don't understand the difference between ping-pong and sex?
Either you really like ping-pong, or you really don't like sex.. ;-)
Listen, you may have somewhat of an academic point here, but you're ignoring the fact that way more people - men and women - would be uncomfortable with open discussion of co-workers' sexual activities, much less knowing or condoning that it happens in the workplace, than having a ping pong table in the break room.
Is this a good or a bad thing? it actually doesn't matter, because it is what it is. It is a social norm.
Can it be changed? Sure, maybe.. But you will only present yourself poorly if you think that telling people their concerns don't matter, or are "bullshit" is the way to change this.
> Is this a good or a bad thing? it actually doesn't matter, because it is what it is. It is a social norm.
So basically "that's how we've always done things". That's a terrible justification for anything, particularly anything to do with sex and it's history of persecution. It wasn't long ago that being openly gay went against the social norms.
> Can it be changed? Sure, maybe.. But you will only present yourself poorly if you think that telling people their concerns don't matter, or are "bullshit" is the way to change this.
What concerns? I don't see anyone listing concerns or discussing the consequences of being more open about sex in the workplace, just a lot of statements that you can't or shouldn't do it.
It's not my place to educate you about why existing social norms should at least matter to you, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, so I'll let you learn those lessons on your own.
Also comparing sex in the workplace with gay persecution makes you look like an idiot. Sorry to be so blunt, but that's a completely unreasonable comparison. Are you going to compare it to slavery next?
He doesn't understand because he's a complete _tablua rasa_ --- ignorant of all history and society. Not realizing that sex comes with a lot of baggage and that consequences of sex are dramatically different for a man than a woman.
Or maybe he's just from one of those foreign cultures in which you just can't get a good ping-pong game in unless you're willing to put a ring on it, or at least pay for a nice dinner.
> He doesn't understand because he's a complete _tablua rasa_ --- ignorant of all history and society.
It's a good technique to evaluate of your poisition is rational or not, you should try it sometime. "That's how it's always been done" is an awful argument for anything.
> For example, male employees stated how they were sexually aroused by female employees and how it was hard to concentrate and be productive when all they could think about was having sex with them.
> The suit also claims that the company paid male employees more despite sharing the same roles and responsibilities.
This is horrible and illegal in a lot of ways. And what were management thinking? How can anyone be productive at work with such a toxic environment? I would just be ashamed of working in such a place. And that is part of the problem, employees that do not fit in the company "culture" usually leave or are fired. So the toxic environment gets perpetuated.
I work in a company with a lot of diversity, and I like it. We have only a few female developers, as there is not so much female software engineers graduating from university, but we have better parity in all other roles. We have people from a lot of different nations, and English is our shared language even that is the native tongue for just a few. I like the open, friendly environment where people get the respect they deserve. It boosts productivity and collaboration. I wouldn't like it any other way.
Wow. No nuance or subtlety at all. Sounds like one of those over the top training videos, where you think, "well, sure, harassment happens, but it's not that blunt and that out in the open."
Assuming it can be corroborated well enough, I would guess a very large verdict or settlement. Sounds like a hellish place to work.
Lack of separation between personal and professional life. One of the things Silicon Valley companies have been working on doing for a while is blurring the lines between work and not work.
I respect TechCrunch's decision to not publish the plaintiff's name in the primary portion of their article. It's easy to look up for those who have a reason to search for it, but it's not necessary to the discussion, and could potentially alleviate some of the social backlash (or at least issues) associated with going to court. Employees with legitimate legal gripes against their employers don't need to face additional barriers (such as social stigma) to legal action.
I don't understand why it even happens. With all high-profile cases in the last few years, can people hold it for a while? Or everybody is hiring 19 year old boys who physiologically can't?
I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that young college students and/or recent graduates building startups and hitting it big with VC funding.
It's effectively giving kids that haven't grown up a large sum of money.
Even so, do these VCs not install any kind of adult supervision when they put their money on the line? Sure, they don't want to just bring in their own CEO, but a little bit of guidance along the lines of "this is a fucking workplace, not somewhere for you to play out your immature sexual power fantasies and jeopardise my money" would go a long way.
Until they have a chance to answer the complaint, we should probably reserve judgement. However, if even 10% of this is true - I can't comprehend how anyone would think this was a culture that would work in 2017.
I'm genuinely interested in knowing the answer to this question: What makes someone stay in a job after they've been asked to clean up a room where they found underwear and opened condom packets? Especially if the top honcho was allegedly engaged in such behavior. There is no chance the situation is going to get better no matter who you complained to. get out now!
That's exactly what I was pondering after reading the lawsuit.
I mean, being told to be the 'mommy' of the male workers, not being supplied with equipment in contrary to the others, having to hear directly of mentions to threesomes and disapproval of sexual appearance, being kicked out of your room for your boss to have sex with someone in it, being ostracized by not using drugs at work.
Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction so I would not doubt that is true, I am just having great difficulty to understand how such scenario would be feasible. I mean, how could someone continue to work in a place like this for almost a year?
Using HN primarily for political and ideological battle is an abuse of this site. We ban accounts that do this, especially when we ask them to stop and they keep right at it.
Lol, I just checked UploadVR's website and a popup window used for collecting email has following:
> GET HOOKED UP
I'm not gonna even expect the accused to clean up their acts. Only way they will learn, and teach other younger ones not to copy their acts, is for the investors to hammer this down hard.
They only understand the all mighty dollars so they need to be dealt with accordingly.
I think if a company like this was in the show Silicon Valley it would be badly received because it would be too out there and unrealistic even for that show.
Funny story: Dan Lyons, a writer for Silicon Valley and the author of the book Disrupted, about his experiences working at the high tech startup HubSpot, said that he had pitched many things that he personally saw during his time there. He was frequently shot down because they seemed too far outside reality.
As mentioned on TechCrunch, Greg Gopman (dude who wrote the incredibly tone-deaf anti-homeless piece that went viral a few years back) is named in the lawsuit.
What sort of professional would even want to work at a company with an office "smush room"? Before the issues of discrimination and harassment come up, the smell of the place must be appalling.
Were the employees made aware of the culture during the hiring process?
Discrimination is illegal, but the idea of a "culture notice" that could be used to pre-emptively counter that seems interesting. How would that work in practice? Would it be a clause on the employment contract?
"Section 13. Culture.
The company has a Fuck Room ("the Room").
No one ever got fired for joining a co-founder in the Room."
What you're probably thinking of here are certain workplaces where sexually explicit material or discussion is inherent to the work -- say, a porn studio -- and an employment contract might include a disclaimer to that effect. Even that wouldn't preempt a lawsuit over sexual harassment in the workplace, though; it'd merely raise the bar.
Actually I know that contracts can't override the law. I was just trying to make a joke about the grandparent poster's strange use of the word "culture" in this context.
I think perhaps you haven't read the legal complaint in the article. This isn't a culture fit issue. Read the legal document and imagine your mother working there.
"If your executive team is mostly white guys I'm staying away too"
Um, what? Why does the race or ethnicity of the exec team have anything to do with anything? Insert any race into that sentence. Completely ridiculous. This guy is a nutball, and so is the company culture.
"If your executive team is mostly white guys [which indicates that you're mining from the same labor pool as everyone else, and shows you're not willing to do basic legwork,] I'm staying away too."
Yes, but if one must have sex in the workplace, I would rather it be in a designated area than, say, on my desk. I want to know what surfaces genitals have been pressed against and where, with a reasonable degree of confidence, they haven't.
I'm not even hung up about the sex at all, if it's consensual you do you and or whomever you like, but it's a matter of hygiene.
One shouldn't must have sex in office. So simple no ?
If you are reserve a room for sex, you(boss) are simply saying to all your employees that they can do whatever they wants in office and imho is not good for culture neither.
If people are going to be assholes anyway, might as well have a designated swastika room too, right? A company isn't required to fulfill the every desire of their employees.
I merely stated that were sex in the workplace to be considered inevitable, and it probably should be, that it would be preferable not to just let it be had anywhere. I never insisted that any company be required to do anything.
Also, it's weird that of all the things you could have compared sex to, you picked "being an asshole" and, apparently, racism.
Why would sex in the workplace be considered "inevitable"? Is watching March Madness or Game of Thrones likewise inevitable and thus a good employer should furnish a rec room with HD TV? Perhaps some do. But many others assert that they provide fair working hours and wages to their employees which allow employees plenty of time to go home (and even take vacation days) to enjoy such recreation, rather than have it be a distracting accessory to the workplace.
>Is watching March Madness or Game of Thrones likewise inevitable and thus a good employer should furnish a rec room with HD TV?
Sexual intercourse is a fundamental human drive, whereas watching television is not. That said, many employers do, in fact, have HDTVs in a breakroom or somewhere similar.
Despite it being banned in every workplace in the western world, sex at work is commonplace. When people want to do it, they're going to do it - that's what makes it inevitable.
That's a great example of a double standard. Unlike sex there are obvious negative health effects and DoS for non-participants, yet the most I've seen a company do is put up a passive aggressive poster or send a strongly worded email from HR. Without the threat of sexual harassment lawsuits they trust us to be self policing adults.
Well, I'm not a labor law expert, but in the state of New York, it is mandated for all employers to follow these posting requirements, which include a multilingual-document from the NY State Division of Human Rights regarding state discrimination and human rights laws:
SO what's the distinguishing feature that makes a car ok but not the office? Is it the proximity to you or something about the office? Does the car being in the company parking lot make a difference?
How is going going to a car around the corner fundamentally different to a sex room in the office?
If it was just general allegations about sexual behaviour at the workplace, I would be a bit skeptical. However when they provide concrete factual examples, it seems somewhat unlikely that it would be completely made up.
With this (edit: and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14346174) you're recreating the very dynamic on HN itself that stories like this describe happening in the workplace, which leave so many of us shaking our heads in disbelief. I don't mean the disbelief of 'that never happens' but the disbelief of 'who does this'. No, it is not "perfectly normal". It's gross and beyond the pale.
Since we just had a whole conversation with you about bad HN comments and the very next day you come out with this, I've banned this account.
If you work in the US, you are describing what lawyers will call a 'hostile workplace' when your employers are, based on your description alone, successfully sued for discrimination.
This is not perfectly normal in any professional setting. More and more often, it has real professional and legal consequences.
I would say hiring strippers and escorts for office parties is not "perfectly normal". I don't think that there would really need to be any other representation for that to be viewed negatively.
If your office has a place to sleep, your company is probably taking advantage of you. If it's renting strippers, it's probably a pretty misogynist culture, as well.
Sounds like an exhausting and terrible place to work, frankly.
I am not sure why everyone should feel comfortable with everyone else's choices. Do people think everyone should like the movie that most people are going for ?
How people feel is irrelevant; but based on federal law, the US Constitution, whatever local laws there may be & decades of judicial precedent, what you describe would expose any US employer to an enormous amount of liability. Its not normal or legal--& it can be very expensive.
If it's consensual and everyone is an adult, I don't see the problem. No different than everyone having sex in the meditation room at a coworking space (true story!).
But harassment and abuse? Do not pass go. Go directly to court and liquidation.
Sex in the workplace that other people are aware of is not unlikely to be (or be part of, along with other things in the workplace that would be normal absent the sex happening alongside them) harassment.
Unless the sex is a bona fide part of the core business function, rather than an extra-curricular workplace activity.
There's a whole lot of difference between two colleagues consensually sneaking off to have sex and having a fucking designated sex room in the office for everyone to see.
You clearly never understood the phrase 'hostile work environment'.
Otherwise, leave consenting adults to themselves if they're discrete.
There is NOTHING discreet about what you are suggesting. "Oh, excuse us while we go fuck in the designated fucking place at work while y'all keep working. Be right back for the next meeting in 20 minutes."
That is the exact opposite of discreetness and discretion.
> Just because it's the workplace doesn't mean you can't have sex there
Sorry but what on earth is wrong with you ?
Having sex at the workplace is both an Occupational Health & Safety and a Sexual Harassment issue. It is completely and utterly unacceptable in any normal workplace and in most countries it is illegal. The idea that it is part of a company's culture and therefore something people should just tolerate is downright offensive.
Sure, in the way that peeing all over the walls is a bodily function. It's a bodily function that's allowed at home (if you must), but not allowed in the office.
In California, managers of a company are legally liable for sexual harassment if they know it was occurring and didn't take appropriate action. I'll have to look back at my training notes ... yep, pretty sure just simply having a sex room in the office qualifies as promoting a hostile work environment.
Presumably, female non-employees (likely, though not necessarily exclusively, prostitutes), at least if that room is consistent with all the other allegations of sex involving male employees at company events.
Talking about female coworkers? Sure, that happens.
Talk about sex at work? Sure. Not at my workplace, but ok.
Talk about rubbing one out because a coworker gave you boner? Eh.... O_o
Hell, my parents are still surprised to hear I can show up at whatever time in the morning and leave whenever I feel like it! That's what they consider outrageous.