Absolute BS. She sent an email to the entire company about this "incident", which I'll include here (names redacted).<p>> 8:53:41 AM Person1: so am I the only one who thinks of the Bed Intruder auto-tune song everytime Person2 warns us of undisclosed persons in the building?<p>> 8:54:47 AM Person3: hide yo wife?<p>> 8:54:57 AM Person1: and yo kids<p>> 8:56:02 AM Person3: well, you're not any more<p>> 8:56:13 AM Person1: #winning<p>> 9:02:13 AM Person5: hilarious. Now the song is stuck in my head!<p>> 9:08:08 AM Person4: -_-<p>> 9:09:43 AM Person4: No<p>> 9:11:10 AM Person4: Could do without having songs referencing sexual assault mentioned.<p>> 9:12:04 AM Person1: fair enough<p>> 9:13:39 AM Person4: Especially joking about it. -_-<p>> 9:18:25 AM Person4: Does not exactly endear me to working during the day when the first thing I see is someone joking about rape in work chat.<p>> 9:18:46 AM Person1: my appologies<p>> 9:33:18 AM Person4: It's completely unacceptable, and creates a very toxic atmosphere.<p>> 9:36:45 AM Person1: obviously that wasn't my intention. it won't happen again.<p>> 9:37:24 AM Person4: Compounded by the fact I am the only woman in the [org], and I have several guys joking about it as
well, in work chat.<p>> 9:37:32 AM Person4: It would be unacceptable even if that weren't the case.<p>And then claims to still not feel safe coming back to work after taking a month off due to PTSD from the above incident.<p>There is undoubtedly sexism in the tech industry, and we should all strive towards eliminating it. This, however, is stirring up drama in response to a joke made in poor taste.
The time that I worked at Apple was brutally hard work. If we're talking about work environment, I think many people reading that article have no concept of how difficult a job it is, how high are the expectations, and how many hours the average engineer is putting in there.<p>This is a <i>very difficult job</i> which can be extremely stressful for a long duration of time. As a society we tend to laud grueling hard work rather than recognize that it's probably the worst aspect of the work environment by far.<p>As far as TFA goes... it appears to be reporting on "leaked" emails telling a one-sided narrative with no attempt to validate the claims. Not to diminish the claims being made, but I think this is technically called "storytelling".<p>Taking it a face value though, it seems tame in comparison to other 'scandals'. I simply do not expect that people will constantly remain professional. They will need to blow off steam, and sometimes the way they do that will not be fully inclusive, or necessarily politically correct. Yes, sometimes men actually complain about their wives at work -- this is not shocking to me. I don't like that employee complaints seem to be poorly handled; all employees should be valued and listened to at least.<p>None of what I read in TFA I really understand to be a hostile work environment, as the term is defined. Is "toxic" supposed to be a new term to describe feeling uncomfortable or not getting the promotion you wanted? Apple's work environment is certainly extreme, but I think for reasons very much apart from gender.
I'm risking a lot here...<p>Apple employee here:<p>I only want to provide context. None of us want a toxic environment. We, at Apple, pride ourselves on the fact that we are accepting of all backgrounds, nationalities, genders, religions. I, personally, have struggled with ensuring a diverse set of folks on my team or all backgrounds. We love the fact that we're helping to lead the industry with regard to diversity. And "Danielle's" case is unfortunate.<p>Danielle is of course an alias to protect the original identity. And I sincerely thank Mic for doing so. In an internal chat, someone made a reference to the "Hide Your Kids Hide Your Wife" meme about something technical. But this wasn't the intention of the sender. Danielle, a gay transgender male, explained that this was an inappropriate reference, the offender apologized immediately and said that this comment was not to make fun of rape.<p>Danielle in this case had a unique set of circumstances that made her especially sensitive to this kind of comment. And we should all be careful about what we say. And I completely agree with her that this kind of content has no place at Apple.<p>This thread was meant to be forwarded to Tim Cook, but was accidentally sent to a large internal group. This is how it was leaked.<p>I wish Mic would release the full emails with names redacted so that you all would see what was actually said.<p>The lesson here is: think about what you're saying. Sexual assault destroys humans.
Is it just me or is this ultra-political correctness a new and intresting phenomenon? I'm really interested to watch where it's all going.<p>Pretty much all jokes are going to offend somebody. You can't ask people to smile, comment on thier clothes or belongings. You can't interact causally in the workplace at all.<p>Perhaps we'll see workplaces where all communication is in writing and on topic.<p>Do we want our workplaces where people gather together as friends as they work, or do we want our workplace relationships to be strictly professional?<p>I think I would prefer to work in a culture where, if you don't like the people you work with, you go find a new job. You don't complain, you get over it or you leave.<p>(Because even telling me my jokes are offensive is a form of harassment itself.)<p>I don't want to work in an office where I can't make friends, tell jokes, or laugh and enjoy life. Life is too short to sit in a room full of people you dont' know, don't like, or don't care about.
Why are most of these articles about harassment in the office associated with American companies? Are women from other countries afraid to speak about this? Or are American women just overreacting?<p>In this specific case I understand that insinuating a rape scenario — which by the way is not against women but <i>"everybody"</i> — in a work environment is bad, but without knowing what other toxic comments or behavior happened in the same department where this woman was working, I cannot sympathize. Knowing how sensitive are people nowadays (specially in the United States) I wouldn't be surprised if the previous comments were things like <i>"Man, did you see [female name]'s dress today? It's so ugly"</i>. They are probably worse than this, but again, without knowing the alleged previous incidents I cannot sympathize with this specific woman.<p>Also, why did she quit? Why not stay and fight for the rights of her other female co-workers? If what I understand from this story is correct, the other women do not report these incidents either because they are afraid of retaliation, or because they learned how to take (or ignore?) a <i>(very stupid)</i> joke.<p>EDIT: On a side note, imagine if the genders were switched. If the people making the bad <i>"joke"</i> were women, and the person reporting the incident was a man. He could have reported this to the CEO but do you think the story would have been published in this website or other? I don't think so. I am glad to have worked remotely for several years, to avoid these incidents with my co-workers.
Anonymous throwaway. I believe that more context for the rape joke is warranted.<p>At Apple, it's important to cover confidential materials when undisclosed persons are present. An employee wrote that this process reminded them of the viral song Bed Intruder [1]: "hide yo wife, hide yo kids."<p>"Danielle" objected to the joke because the song references sexual assault. The person apologized and promised to not let it happen again.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_Intruder_Song" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_Intruder_Song</a>
Problems like this can happen in any company and this includes Apple as well. Since Apple is one of the biggest Tech companies people are going to make a big deal about it.<p>But it is a big failure if managers/management fail to take actions. The immediate manager should be fired in this case since he or she failed to take any action or involve HR or upper management
Reading stuff like this always feels weird to me. I'm the founder of a 30+ year company and, to my knowledge, this has never happened at my company. It's possible it happened and no one told me, but given my position, I would think it would eventually come around to me (I'm the COO now).<p>I have to wonder if behavior like this follows from bad leadership. I'm not saying Tim Cook, given the case of Apple, but middle managers. I just cannot believe that a person above the woman in TFA didn't know about this, and just let it ride, because it was just "boys being boys" or some BS like that.<p>I can tell you if I ever saw or heard of anyone doing this in my company, I would crack down very quick and hard. But more than that, I think the people we have lead by example and I just can't believe anyone would ever do something like TFA outlines.
> Fed up, the woman quit her job at Apple, trading her position at one of the world's most iconic companies in favor of a job riding a bicycle.<p>At least it has a happy ending.
>>> "But this rape joke was the final straw: The next day, Danielle escalated her complaint about the offense to the very top: Apple CEO Tim Cook."<p>That isn't the route. In such a large organization, even a very very good and proper one, such issues are not to be accelerated to the CEO. If you have thousands, tens of thousands of employees, then complaints like this will and should be a daily issue (not always a rape joke, but similarly serious complaints). That's why you have HR and legal departments.<p>And the next day? Workplace complaints take days or weeks to evaluate. Do not ever expect answers on the order of a day. In a really horrific situation you can ask your immediate supervisors for help, such as by transferring the alleged offenders elsewhere temporary, but do not ever expect heads to roll by next business day. The more serious the complaint, the more time one must expect before action is taken.
It's like the penny-arcade d<i></i>kwolf joke over again. Or the spiderwoman crawling pose.<p>From the article feels like they were joking about everyone getting raped, including men.<p>Anyway, rape is a serious crime, no doubt about that and the joke might have crossed a line.<p>But were do we draw a line by getting offended or not? These lines are pushed further out every time and sometimes limiting freedoms.<p>Also, men can be sexist, that's true, but we are still in a position where women have an advantage, a powerful tool to call out someone being sexist and inconsiderate and get that said person into trouble and brand him so his future prospects are completely destroyed.<p>Is being offended about a joke enough to cripple someones future and life?<p>Looks like men always have to be extra careful about what they say and what they do. I wonder when this whole gender gap won't spill over to become from a male dominant society to a female dominant one.<p>It's hard to find equal grounds apparently.
"The running joke is Foxconn has nothing on Apple."<p>Because joking about modern day slavery is so much better! <i>Especially</i> when they're your slaves.
It's almost hard to read the comments on here.<p>"It's a stressful environment---people have to blow off steam."<p>"Is X comment really that offensive?"<p>"Joking around is important to office culture."<p>"The real damage is punishing people who said the offensive thing when he/she didn't mean anything by it."<p>It's really not that complicated. Act professionally at work. Working at a job isn't easy, but part of the responsibility of work is to _act_ professionally, and delivering genius code doesn't give anyone a pass to act unprofessionally. When you feel an impulse to talk or joke about physical appearance, politics, religion, sex, gender, rape, racial issues, nationality/ethnicity, etc., just hold your tongue! Or write it in a little book and save it for when you're at the bar with friends. If you do say something, and inevitably get that little "I shouldn't have said that" prickle in the back of your brain---simply immediately apologize and move on! If you don't get that prickle, and a co-worker or manager says something, just take it at face value that what you said was not professional, because professional actions never raise the possibility of personal offense. That is the bare minimum you are required to do.<p>If you're a little more social justice oriented, you might even become aware of the ways women and minorities are treated unfairly, and take special actions to fix this. Take notice the next time you're in YAAMM -- "yet another all male meeting" -- and think about whether there are any women who could contribute but were not invited. If you hear a good idea, give credit to the originator when you repeat it. It's actually not that hard.
If someone, of either gender, whom I was hiring as a designer, went into "advanced learning theory and the use of metaphor and semiotics along with the theoretical foundations of design patterns," my response would be to consider them non-technical and not hire them.<p>And "technical," for a designer, means CSS, JavaScript, HTML, and similar.<p>Most of the examples in the article seemed baked.
I know three ex-Apple employees, they all describe it as akin to the film Office Space.<p>My theory is that the whole point of the new UFO campus is to jolt the working environment out of the 1980's. Sort of like replacing, rather than updating, the Mac Classic OS, in a way.<p>[am I getting downvoted for knowing people who worked at Apple, or for having a theory?]
Rape jokes certainly are not appropriate and should not be so common, but that language is toxic?
Side note: women are always wanting to be more "equal" with men. Maybe they were talking about it so much as a twisted way to include her.