Sure..the thing I don't understand is why she didn't go to a lawyer? That would have been the next logical step for me. At least 1 person should get to prison if there is enough evidence collected by multiple women.
I used to have this attitude until I heard harassment stories from two close personal friends in the last year. It's really hard to come forward, especially if you're early in your career and struggled to get any job in the first place.
Apart from potentially being difficult emotionally there are tons of negative outcomes that could come from taking the legal route
Here's a list of potential negative outcomes of lawyering up:
* getting terminated (remember, at-will employment)
* getting blacklisted by other teams at your current employer
* getting blacklisted by potential future employers. Court cases are often public and in some industries companies are forced to make ongoing litigation public
* having your weird texts, emails, personal life and sexual history being dragged out in a public court case
* losing and still having to pay all those lawyer fees
* winning but not getting any meaningful compensation
* getting harassed on twitter/wherever by the alt-right/gamergate crowd.
Yes, people should be getting in trouble but it's a prisoners dilemma where each individual victim is not incentiviced to do anything.
I just came from a different thread on HN, where highly compensated software developers were afraid to even point out to their managers that what they were suggesting was a bad idea for the company. People literally fearing for their jobs, because they want to do their jobs well and not just blindly follow orders that will be costly to their employer.
So you can imagine how many multiples of that it is when you're trying to rock the boat on harassment.
> Here's a list of potential negative outcomes of lawyering up
Aren't most of these potential negative outcomes of suing, not lawyering up?
Having a conversation with a lawyer who specializes in employment law to get a temperature-check on your specific situation (does it qualify as harassment, what are your options, what are likely outcomes of exercising these options given precedent case law, etc) will not result in "having your weird texts, emails, personal life and sexual history being dragged out in a public court case".
Even if you do sue, most lawsuits (especially discrimination ones) are settled out of court, without lascivious details being made public.
> Aren't most of these potential negative outcomes of suing, not lawyering up?
You're kind-of right, but suing only has teeth if you're prepared to go to court and not bluffing. Engaging a lawyer without suing is just going to cost you money. All of the things I said still suck if you're going through depositions, even if everything isn't being made public. Imagine having to sit in a room full of lawyers and explain why you replied 'haha' to an inappropriate text instead of "I'm forwarding this to HR right now."
You'd have to be at a pretty high level for a future employer to do a public records search on you (not to be confused with a background check), thus the compensation you would receive for a retaliatory firing would likely be in the millions (or tens of millions) of dollars as it is often based on lost income and has a punitive component. You'd likely never have to work again.
Many employers of mine have done background checks on me prior to extending an offer. And there's this hip things the kiddos are using called "Duck Duck Go".
Well this individual did those first two things. I think damage has been done to the company already even if litigation wasn't involved. Sadly a lot of companies only get the message when they need pay damages. I get the impression that money doesn't seem to much of a concern for this company however.
A friend of mine experienced a somewhat worse level of harassment at her job. She lawyered up and quickly received an offer for a non-trivial silver parachute, and a mutual non-disparagement agreement on her way out the door.
Seemed like a fine solution, but it soon became evident that she had, in fact, been blacklisted: 18 months passed before anybody would even give her an interview, and that was only after deciding to change industries altogether. That silver parachute was, in hindsight, wholly inadequate compensation. Meanwhile her harasser has continued his career with no repercussions whatsoever.
When these problems are cultural / institutional, the threat of a lawsuit will neither benefit the victim nor effect any real change. Takes something more sustained and substantial than that.
Blacklisting employees for reasons like this is unbelievably crazy illegal, just so everyone knows. I strongly encourage anyone with knowledge of or possessing any such blacklists to blow the whistle on this, hard.
It's not necessarily really a blacklist, but when the court case comes up when the employer googles your name... companies like to claim to be pro-equality since they get good press for it, but they're not actually going to put that to any sort of test. Much easier to hire somebody who's not proven themselves willing to stand up for their rights.
It sounds like it was settled before anything went to court, so it's unclear that anything would even come up in a Google search. And yet employers are still finding out somehow.
Oh yeah, it's not remotely legal by any standard whatsoever. The problem is that it's virtually impossible to prove.
In my friend's case, she was at the director level of a large publicly-traded company. Particularly as you approach the top of the that kind of corporate hierarchy, the world becomes very small, and good-old-boy dynamics start to dominate. There's no formal blacklist, of course -- just the opportunity to meet your frenemy from her previous employer down at the bar, where he can confidentially warn you to "watch out for that one: she's a troublemaker". Nothing more needs to be said, and certainly nothing needs to be written.
I suspect that hiring decisions at lower levels will be both more process-driven and better-documented, so it might be more possible to prove the existence of blacklists there (even if it's still far from easy). But near the top of the pyramid, I have great trouble seeing how the punitive legal action can realistically be used to break up the good-old-boy network.
Seeing this play out has actually changed my mind on the necessity of having gender quotas for management and boards. Previously I'd been opposed on vaguely libertarian grounds; now I see it as the only practical way of disrupting the good-old-boy networks that genuinely do a lot of harm. (Society is genuinely damaged -- depriving itself of so much talent -- by systematic bias against women).
I believe that blacklisting is something that happens in cases like this, and I wonder how it gets coordinated. Especially when there's no public record of a court case. Simply that every time her previous employer was called for a reference, they gave her an unflattering one? Or is it more proactive, like some sort of list that's known in the HR world of certain industries?
Employers aren't supposed to call previous employers for references unless you OK it first, and many employers have explicit policies to not give references because of the potential for being sued.
Of course, it does happen, in various ways. The way to find out is to find a sympathetic recruiter (or, a "recruiter" who's really your friend), and have them call for a reference for you. There's good fodder for a lawsuit here.
I think what Fowler did was very brave and perhaps far more impactful than hiring a lawyer.
This is hitting all the major news outlets, the CEO and the board are already promising "urgent" investigative action. And, oh yeah, a company valued at multi-billions is about to be hit with publicity which they will pay dearly for as #deleteuber starts trending again, at a time when angry people are sick of reading about the latest Trump zinger.
In the best case scenario a lawyer would have gotten her a modest pay out in exchange for shutting up, far more likely however would be a disappointing outcome and blacklisting.
Also, at the start of the week's news cycle... I don't know if she has any malice, but if one wants to metaphorically burn a company down, it's good timing. Also it's President's Day, so Dolan Trump will probably be want his day off instead of making headlines.
It may seem hard to understand why one wouldn't go to a lawyer, but think about this:
Consider that the people who are wronged in these situations didn't set themselves those days to be harassed. Now they should not only stand what's been done to them, but also drop everything they were doing that day to sue? I think there's an understandable tradeoff that people go thru in those circumstance. They push the issue as seems appropriate in term of benefit/time. Where that line lies depends on the situation, the people involved and how much they enjoy spending their time litigating instead of doing XYZ other thing.
Lots of people don't even bother going through the hurdle of reporting to HR, being interviewed, being questioned, being doubted, having to spend hours or days handling the issue, instead of doing their work. Bringing that to the next level: not many people desire to spend their time suing instead of doing whatever it is they'd rather do with their time.
Arguably, issues should be pursued to educate and deter. But up until which point? I think you'll agree that it's understandable why someone would choose that reporting to HR was enough and suing wasn't worth the trouble.
I agree with everybody who's pointing out the time, effort, and cost of suing. In this case, I think consulting a lawyer to negotiate a severance agreement might have worked well, but that would have essentially negated her ability to write this blow post. I'm glad she chose to write the post as a service to the tech community rather than seek a big payout.
A union representative is the next logical step. They will be able to represent you anonymously at first, and bring a collective action against the perpetrator if there have been multiple incidents against multiple victims.
If you wish to take it to court yourself, then they may also be able to provide you with or help you find an appropriate lawyer for the case.
> A union representative is the next logical step.
Unions can have benefits sometimes, but handling issues related to harassment is not one.
> They will be able to represent you anonymously at first, and bring a collective action against the perpetrator if there have been multiple incidents against multiple victims.
Or, if the perpetrator is a peer but holds a position of power within the union, they may simply decide to ignore you, as HR did in this case.
If you speak out against the union rep's decision (such as by writing a blog post like this), and the union's charter has a clause prohibiting public opposition to the union (which is legal and very common), then you could get your membership terminated. This not only means you lose your current job, but you could effectively get blacklisted across the industry if there are no non-union shops. Unlike shared employer blacklists, which are illegal, this is perfectly legal because the union isn't sharing a blacklist - they just so happen to have a monopoly on hiring and also have the legal right to refuse you membership.
Ironically, it would be illegal for the company to fire you in this position, but unions have far fewer restrictions on whether or not they can deny or terminate membership, even in retaliation.
> Why representing members at grievance hearings is a union bread and butter issue
In theory. And disciplining or terminating employees who expose the company to well-documented, open-and-shut lawsuits is an HR bread and butter issue. Yet here we are.
If you really want someone who will be legally bound to represent you without conflict of interest, and with legal protection against retaliation, you want a lawyer, not a union rep. And you can do that with or without a union. (And employment attorneys already operate on contingency for most straightforward cases like these).
Obviously it varies, but in my experience it's "Here's a list of lawyers we have vetted and consider to be qualified in matters relating to employment". Sometimes it's "We'll also pay for an hour of their time for an initial consultation".
Remember what happened to Ellen Pao and Julie Ann Horvath? Remember what happened to the number of women who came forward saying that Trump sexually harassed them?
Saying "sue" is easy if you're not the one that has to deal with the fallout from it. Several months if not years dragged through the courts, having to relive the experience. Being blacklisted from the industry and unable to find a job. Constant harassment from frog trolls who seem to pop up every time a woman tries to assert that she's a human being.
