The harasser is just the tip of the tire fire

Content warning: Harassment and sexism.

Another note: I reflect light like the moon at night I’m so pale, so I’m writing about my experiences as a relatively privileged person in tech. Black people and people of colour have these problems and more.

ONWARD!

Sexual harassment in tech is back in the news. A man who used his words and actions to make women feel uncomfortable in tech has been caught. He’s written his apology, which is worthless if he doesn’t go away forever.

Seriously, sexual harassers, racists, homophobes, and all you other human tire fires: nothing says “Sorry” quite like going away permanently. You had your chance, you blew it, and unless all of your victims welcome you back

• unanimously

AND

• without being compelled to do so:

GO

AWAY.

DON’T

COME

BACK.

One person can not make up for the code that didn’t get written, the threat modelling that didn’t get done, the outreach not performed, the usability studies that got left out, the fundraising opportunities missed, and the human misery that got inflicted on many people. There’s not a 10x engineer rockstar in the world who can dig himself out from the hole that sexual harassment bores into an organisation.

There’s another group that isn’t being widely discussed. I’m here to write about the enablers and bystanders. They need to make amends too. They don’t have the damage of whatever it is that is driving the guy who has to remind every woman he’s attracted to sexually that nothing they contribute to tech matters as much as whether he wants to screw them. I’m not excusing thinking with your genitals, people. I’m pointing out that the bystanders start out with some sort of sense of what’s appropriate, and fail to use it. If they’re a man, they get listened to. If they speak up, they’re less likely to be fired. Yet they remain silent.

It’s unlikely that you didn’t know, guys. Coddled abusers get bolder and more obvious as time goes by. We see you.

I reserve a special amount of ire for the HR people. Not only should you start out with the basic decency filter between your gonads and your vocal cords, it’s your job to know about these things. Granted, he who pays the piper calls the tune, and your time is paid for by a company that would rather have complaints swept under the rug, but that won’t work any more. Harassment is:

• illegal
• disruptive
• bad for PR

…and looks even worse when you try to cover it up. Seriously, people, read some news. Read a book. Sooner or later the whisper network that women in tech use to avoid being harassed, drugged, assaulted, and subverted becomes a soapbox. The organisations who act immediately hold on to good reputations. The rest, well — do you want to be Uber instead? It’s your job as a professional to tell your client when they’re being reckless. If you’re an HR person covering up harassment, you’re as incompetent as a defence attorney telling an axe murderer client that bringing a hatchet into the courtroom and petting it while staring at the jury is just fine. It should be *that obvious* to you.

Women, how much of this sounds familiar?

• After years of nonsense, you take a deep breath and, with more respect than is due to the clown car running the show, you put in the most diplomatic of terms the fact that harassment is interfering with the organisation’s mission, and it’s wrong anyway. In response, your dedication to the cause/product/organisation/tech in general is questioned.
• Your coworkers see, and are silent.
• For extra fun, your next discussion with management or HR contains words like “abrasive”, “emotional”, “hysterical” and suggestions to “be more positive” and “focus on the work”. This is maddening because, despite the torrent of indignities big and small you’ve faced at this organisation, you still manage to do your job.
• Your colleagues see, and are silent.
• If the harasser gets suspended or faces any sort of consequences, HR punishes you too. Even if he doesn’t get punished, you’re going to catch hell. Maybe they link it directly to your reporting of harassment. They might attribute everything in the whisper network to you personally “spreading rumours”. Maybe after years of good reviews and pay rises, they claim that you’re incompetent. You’ve got concrete evidence that your work is good in the form of good press, good code, a growing community, happy customers, and more funding, but that is ignored. You might be put on a “Performance Improvement Plan.” If you point out that the harasser didn’t do good work, and you’ve got the receipts to prove it, you’re accused of trying to divert attention from your own sins that suddenly and retroactively came into being ~***mysteriously***~ after you spoke up about discrimination.
• People you thought you could trust see this, and are silent.
• You’re either fired or you’ve had enough. This is where HR really shines. After years of being paid less for your work, you haven’t been able to save up enough money to survive on while you look for another job. You might be paying off student loans because while not even graduating high school is a requirement for a 10x rockstar who can’t keep his hands to himself, you had to get a college degree to be taken seriously. You have to choose between paying rent and signing an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). The harasser is not bound by any such agreement. Your job search may even be sabotaged by management and the harasser.
• More witnesses, more silence.
• That same HR person who wrote the NDA might even say your name, on record, to the press. Your former coworkers may harass your current employer. You still don’t have the money to fight back.
• The harasser is eventually exposed, and you finally get messages saying that you were right, and how terrible your treatment was. While it’s never too late to say sorry, it is annoying that these people didn’t form a critical mass of support when it could have made a difference.
• People who should be making public, grovelling apologies are instead silent.
• The harasser comes crawling back into the community, and people with the power to prevent this are still silent. People who paid for an investigation that found that this person is a PHYSICAL THREAT to people are silent.

The whole process is full of gas-lighting. For raising objections to something that is CLEARLY BAD, the people you worked hard for tell you that you’re crazy, wrong, and bad while supporting someone who is harming them. They should be thanking you, but they do the opposite.

So save your private words of sympathy. This is what I expect from you:

• Don’t be a bystander. Want to be one of the “good guys”? Then risk something. Speak up early and often. Don’t make the women do the work for you. Worried about getting fired? Suck it up. Do the right thing.
• Support a code of conduct for your organisation and any events you attend. Send a signal that dissuades assholes from joining your project in the first place. It’s healthier for everyone. Watch “Assholes are Killing Your Project”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZSli7QW4rg and read “The No Asshole Rule” https://hbr.org/2007/03/why-i-wrote-the-no-asshole-rule — both have abundant citations about the concrete harm being done to your company.
• Read about unconscious bias. Know why “abrasive” and “hysterical” are off-limits when describing women you work with. If you’ve allowed harassment and ASSAULT to go on for years, you don’t get to criticise the tone in which you’re addressed. You should count yourself lucky that colourful analogies that would make a drill sergeant blush are not being screamed into a bullhorn that is pointed right at your eardrums.

Women should watch out for this one word in their reviews

• Go to an ally skills workshop. Pay to host one. https://frameshiftconsulting.com/ally-skills-workshop/
• If you’re in HR, you need to do better. If you’re asked to cover up criminal behaviour, refuse. Every drug in a drink, every woman who leaves tech because of that guy, and every project that fails because the person who did the best work left — that’s all on your shoulders. You fail professionally when you punish the victim. You fail as a human being. You just fail.
• Stop making victims sign NDAs. They aren’t the ones who did anything wrong. The things you want them to stay silent about happened on your watch. You brought the abusive person into their life. Own your role in this. In fact, treat the harasser with half the contempt you reserve for their victims, and you’ll be well on your way to ensuring that they don’t emerge again and harm more people.
• Think this is all so very complicated? Good news! You can hire women! You can put them in management. They can explain things to you. You can find women everywhere because THEY MAKE UP HALF OF HUMANITY.
• Seek out people who have been harassed and HIRE THEM. Being ejected from your community for doing the right thing takes an emotional toll on top of the harassment. Sometimes it feels worse. It allows the harasser to define you as a victim, as opposed to someone with skills and valuable insights. It discourages people from acting on basic human decency. Welcome people back. If you’re a leader of any competence whatsoever, you want people with integrity and guts on your team.

Do the right thing, and do it publicly. Then do it again. If more people do it, it gets easier.