Comment by picks_at_nits | Hacker News Reader

Comment by picks_at_nits | Hacker News Reader

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If he’s interviewing, then that is his actual job. If he’s hitting on people while representing the company in any context, e.g. at conferences, that is his actual job.

The way you framed this as a “PR liability” suggests you don’t think there’s anything wrong here, it’s just a question of dollars and cents to the company’s bottom line. That’s exactly the kind of sociopathy that is the problem.

You have to stop and decide that there is a moral and values problem, and that these things matter more than a few bucks. If the company has values around this, it will make sure people have training around what is not acceptable behaviour. It will not pass out cards, 10x engineers get a green card, 5x engineers get a yellow card, 1x engineers get a red card.

Everyone will get the same message about what the company values, and steps--I will not say what those steps are, maybe training should have happened before this incident, maybe coaching should happen afterwards, maybe firing is not necessary--and steps will be taken to ensure that everyone in the company acts in accordance with the company’s values.

Also, my sociopathic HR lawyers says that if you decline to hire someone, and then any one of your employees hit on them, you are exposing your company to a lawsuit alleging that they were qualified, but you elected not to hire them to pave the ay for hitting on them without any repercussions, e.g. embarrassment if they turn you down and tell all your colleagues that you hit on them.

Guard against this possibility is remarkably easy: Nobody hits on job applicants. If you are interviewing people, it is your duty to know this, and your company’s duty to ensure that you know this.

Either that, or you had better have one hell of a documented paper trail explaining how they were good enough to interview, but not good enough to hire, and explaining why the person you ended up hiring was clearly superior.

In my experience, any company with the kind of process that can defend itself against such lawsuits wouldn’t permit an employee to expose them to the lawsuit in the first place.

If one of their managers has read this, I’m sure they’re horrified.

You're right I don't see anything wrong with the situation as presented. It's funny, guy has some balls to ask for a date after that. I'll agree he was pretty stupid about it. But I see all the time much stupider advances that actually get accepted instead of rejected. I'd say forgive and forget but I don't see anything to forgive. Asking for a date is how you get dates, even if the context for asking is unusual. I'd like for shy men to still be able to hear the worst thing that'll happen is "she'll say 'lol no, loser'", but now the worst thing that can happen is she'll be so offended she'll throw a fit and publicly name you and destroy your career. Thankfully that hasn't happened here yet. "This made me feel upset. How should I handle this, random internet people?" is a reasonable way to approach this if you don't already have a philosophy that says "chill out and move on".

There's a side conversation here that I'm sort of interested in. There is a certain moral obligation to protecting the company you work for and not putting it under risk with thing like discrimination-based non-hires -- but why should sociopathic lawyers get to decide what risks are actually there or not? It's immoral some of the things many companies do in all legality, risk-free. You won't stir up an internet shit storm for every one of them, even if you can get a few. Not so long ago the behavior this woman reported would have not been cause for such outrage and moralizing displayed on this page. What changed in humans since then? I really don't think we've gotten all that more moral. I'd say instead what changed is the sociopathic lawyers became even more powerful, and saw a great and endless revenue stream for themselves by making it easy to destroy people and businesses for these very basic and human drives, faux pas mistakes at worst.

Your argument seems to be, "If only I would appreciate how good this is for him, I would stop worrying about whether his choices are toxic for anyone else." Am I missing some relevant nuänce?

I don't think that's it. One should worry about toxic choices. I just don't think a culture of asking people out is toxic. Something I do find toxic is an environment of conformity that imagines itself so fragile that it overreacts to the slightest deviation from what those in power say as if it were an existential threat.

> I'd like for shy men to still be able to hear the worst thing that'll happen is "she'll say 'lol no, loser'", but now the worst thing that can happen is she'll be so offended she'll throw a fit and publicly name you and destroy your career.

Context is important. Asking a stranger out for a date at a bar has a worst case scenario of hearing "no". Asking someone out whom you just rejected for a job listing has a very, very different worst case scenario.

For fuck's sake, did I really have to just spell that out?

> why should sociopathic lawyers get to decide what risks are actually there or not?

Sociopathic or not, employment lawyers have a lot to say about liability and risk for business because they know the relevant laws very well and know how to make persuasive arguments in court for corner cases where precedent isn't entirely clear.

Again, did I actually have to spell that out for you?

It's worth adding, too: aside from the legal liability angle, what about what the invitation to a romantic encounter does to that applicant for the rest of the interview? Now the rest of the interview, from her perspective, is all about that dude's romantic interest in her, and no longer a professional encounter. It's all downhill from there. If she gets hired, how can she possibly work without the pressure of thinking that her job or advancement depends on her response to that guy's advances? If she doesn't get hired, how can she possibly think she was fairly treated?

I don't have an inherent problem with coworkers asking each other out on dates, or within a professional context in general, but doing it in an interview is beyond stupid.

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