Slashdot Mirror
HP CEO's Browsing History Used Against Him
theodp writes "Anything you browse can and will be used against you. An investigation of ousted HP CEO Mark Hurd's surfing history reportedly convinced the HP Board that Hurd had had a personal relationship with sexual harassment accuser Jodie Fisher, even if not sexual. Just the latest example of how HP 'work[s] together to create a culture of inclusion built on trust, respect and dignity for all.' The WSJ reported a person close to the investigation said Hurd had looked at clips from racy films featuring Ms. Fisher, a former actress, while someone 'familiar with Mr. Hurd's thinking' said he merely did a Google search of 10 minutes or so. One wonders how many more 'personal relationships' with Ms. Fisher the browser histories of HP's 304,000 worldwide employees might reveal. BTW, nice to see that Hurd has made it to HP's ex-CEO-Hall-of-Fame page."
bangedup.com
cracked.com
www.yzzerdd.com
naughtyceoassistants.com
google search: how to sexually harrass someone and not get caught
Living With a Nerd
Next time be really nice to IT
Or request your own internet connection, not going through proxies or anything
But better still, don't be a moron and look at anything NSFW (at least not intentionally) while at work
Funny story, my last company's proxy would prevent us from apt-get upgrade. Why? libsexy /o\
how long until
Anyone remember their previous board spying scandal? Must be a REAL fun place to work.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
HP died with Lew Platt. Carly Fiorina was a trainwreck. The HP Way is gone and done, and has been since the first layoffs just prior to 9/11.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
sexual harassment is pretty serious. one would think we should be more sympathetic to jodie fisher, not hurd
oh right, his browsing history was used against him. therefore, we should be sympathetic to him (rolls eyes)
if you are under investigation for something serious, investigators will investigate you, as they should. what is so dramatic or controversial about that?
why is the browser history angle supposed to be particularly inflammatory or peculiar? its just another avenue of investigation, as valid as any other. nothing big brother here, nothing amazing or new or even remarkable about this avenue of investigation
if this concept of using your browsing history against you bothers you, then delete your browsing history. end of drama
oh, and don't engage in sexual harassment. pffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have a feeling there is going to be a spike in searches for Jodie Fisher for a few days.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
sexual harassment is pretty serious. one would think we should be more sympathetic to jodie fisher, not hurd. oh right, his browsing history was used against him. therefore, we should be sympathetic to him (rolls eyes)
Pardon me if I'm sympathetic to neither since I know neither party nor do I know the exact circumstances. A woman making a sexual harassment claim should neither immediately receive sympathy nor suspicion. Likewise claims of spying or overstepping the bounds of what might be considered reasonable surveillance is not something anyone should automatically have a knee-jerk reaction to. The bias you are seeing is because you are on a geek message board not a feminist message board.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The linked page of former HP CEOs is one of the most pathetic web pages I've ever seen from a company of the stature of HP. The horrible, unflattering thumbnail-sized photos. The description of their careers, which basically amounts to "this person lived for a period of time and worked for HP." What the hell kind of company puts this material on their website?
... and then they built the supercollider.
can be used against you. There are a whole bunch of things I won't say on the net and a whole bunch of searches I won't do. In a sense I feel a whole lot less free because I know that, even if I'm not being specifically watched, it is easy to find anything I have ever done online and use it against me.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." attributed to Cardinal Richelieu
While the summary is full of sympathy for Hurd, implying that he was the wronged party in this situation (boggles the mind...), I have absolutely no sympathy for him. Ignoring the fact that he got a rather sizable golden handshake which would enable most people to retire in luxury, he was stupid. When you're in a management position, especially a senior management position (such as the CEO...), you have an obligation to not cross personal boundaries. Members of senior management should know better. It's inappropriate and it's the sort of thing that leads to trouble. Shockingly, it lead to trouble.
No sympathy. I have no clue if he was a good CEO or not, but he was a stupid one, that's for certain.
This article summarizes it well but I'd have to quote more than "fair use" allows:
http://gawker.com/5609386/heres-the-real-reason-hp-ceo-mark-hurd-was-fired
tl;dr Hurd was a goofus and tried to get intimate with a subordinate but backed off when it went nowhere, and probably did nothing illegal or immoral to Jodie Fischer or HP; the board just wanted to avoid publicity.
Futurist Traditionalism
sexual harassment is pretty serious. one would think we should be more sympathetic to jodie fisher, not hurd
I agree, sexual harassment is a very serious problem and should not be taken lightly. But could you present the evidence of sexual harassment? Larry Ellison said of it '"The H.P. board admits that it fully investigated the sexual harassment claims against Mark and found them to be utterly false." Furthermore the reason Hurd was fired appeared to be "numerous instances where [Hurd's love interest, Jodie Fisher] received compensation and/or expense reimbursement where there was not a legitimate business purpose, as well as numerous instances where inaccurate expense reports were submitted by Mark or on his behalf that intended to or had the effect of concealing Mark's personal relationship with the contractor." If that's true, misuse of company funds is also serious but not on the level of sexual harassment.
oh right, his browsing history was used against him. therefore, we should be sympathetic to him (rolls eyes)
My concern here -- and what I think the general readership thinks -- is that Hurd did some questionable things or possibly made some enemies and so they tried to dig up anything they could on them. When the sexual harassment charges didn't stick well enough, they used a company policy that everyone is guilty of: using company resources and time to google silly things or read tabloids or do things unrelated to work. "Racy" means "Mildly risque, exciting." So he visited some mildly risque sites?
Basically this looks to be a scenario where Hurd upset someone and they simply looked through his browsing history in order to find a reason to terminate him. Are they constantly searching through browsing histories of all 304,000 employees to find which employment they should terminate? No, they are not. You speak so highly of ethics regarding sexual harassment but what about the ethics of terminating the employment of just one person when he is no more guilty than thousands of other employees -- which you also have the means and option to investigate.
My work here is dung.
you would be correct to criticize bias either for or against hurd or fisher, if the case just broke
but we're into culpability territory now: would the guy fold so quickly and thoroughly if he were innocent?
so to see bias and sympathy for hurd, when his actions speak to guilt, and the case is winding down, is egregious on the part of slashdot's story summary. slashdot's story summary is less about hurd and fisher, and more about the completely unshocking and totally mundane use of browsing history against someone under serious suspicion. any slashdot geek worth his salt is well aware of the concept of browsing history as a liability. its a nonissue, for slashdot geeks, and so the spin in favor of hurd is just wrong
to see bias towards someone whose actions since the case broke seem beyond suspicious is bogus and i will criticize bias in favor of hurd, and i will openly suggest our sympathies should be for fisher, at this point in the case
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
..that if HP's quarterly earnings were spiking instead of tanking the board's "culture of inclusion" would be throwing him a party on a yacht rather than pursuing harassment charges in their own kangaroo court.
Sure, maybe he harassed her. But the company would wait stolidly for the verdict of a duly-appointed jury if he were profitable. This is just a way to get rid of him without drawing attention to the sagging stock price.
Much has been made saying that he had a non sexual relationship with the victim. Even the victim stated that she did not have a sexual relationship with him.
However, sexual harassment also includes his attempts to have such a relationship, and neither party talks about that issue. So the way the story plays in the press, you'd think he'd just filled out some bad expense reports and HP fired him for it. The press still hasn't seem to have tackled the angle about what did Hurd say or do, or how he may have tried to abuse his power in order to get sex from this woman.
under a shroud of secrecy, and never even tried to defend himself. he just completely and immediately crumbled and folded under the accusations, without the slightest hesitation. the actions of an innocent man? i don't think so
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Or does "Hurd" sound like "Turd" ?
That's why I have an OpenVPN tcp tunnel to my home server and browser history and cache are automatically cleared.
This me, committing to try to avoid buying HP for some time to come. These kind of tactics are immature, reckless, and generally indicative of people who are not fit to be making informed decisions.
Those decisions are likewise reflected in the HP product line.
Unfortunately, that pretty much leaves nobody with likely reliable equipment.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
HP's board used a technique usually only employed by private dicks, called "pretexting", to round up all the private cell numbers of board numbers, so they could figure out who leaked a HP story to CNET. This was in '06:
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2006/09/71730
This company makes Intel look like shangra-la. Working for HP, even at the top levels, is akin to working for Uncle Joe Stalin in '43. They're gonna know who you are and where you live, who you talk to and if you like giving it hookers up the butt. Everything and more, for the HP paycheck.
Remind yourself of the company history and tactics when deciding on that new printer.
There needs to be a book on HP like Jackson' book on Intel:
http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Intel-Andrew-Powerful-Company/dp/052594141X
HP, Cisco, Intel - all of these are cultures of paranoia and spying. Much of it has been documented in books like the one above. Caveat emptor.
There's plenty of confusion about the basic definition of sexual harrassment. I've been a POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harrassment) trainer at my employer and I can tell you from hard experience - most people have no idea.
In broad strokes, then, here's what you need to know.
Most people think in terms of a "reasonable person" criteria. That's a relic of the past. When sexual harrassment first got major corp attention, the people in charge tended to apply common sense. They'd ask "Would a reasonable person consider this case to be sexual harrassment?" This seemed like a good approach and it did cover the basics. No reasonable person would disagree that "Sleep with me if you want this promotion" is harrassment.
The "reasonable person" standard, however, did not address the very wide middle ground. Are dirty jokes harrassing? If not occasionally, then how often? How many per day should be allowed? Should you be held responsible for being unintentially overheard? The "reasonable person" criteria failed to address all these at first blush.
Now, in my organization, we expected people to speak up for themselves. If someone felt harrassed and said "That makes me uncomfortable", then the person doing the harrassing action no longer had an excuse. Even if the harrasser felt that a "reasonble person" would not be harrassed by the situation, the harrasser now knew that their criteria was misused in re the person who made the complaint.
In practice, this meant that anyone could get away with anything (except the obvious aforementioned "sex for a job" situation I previously mentioned) until they were put on warning. Since it was up to the victim to issue the warning and since the victims frequently felt they were rendered powerless by the situation, warnings weren't issued. Bad manners continued to be displayed. Major harrassment incidents stopped but more subtle things that really do impact the bottom line (things like "a pervasive atmosphere of harrassment" or however you want to phrase it) continued unabated.
The "reasonable person" criteria had to be abandoned.
The new criteria is pretty simple. The victim defines the crime. If someone says something is sexual harrassment, it is.
The current situation, where *anything* is sexual harrassment if someone wants to feel they're being harrassed, results in lots of counter-intuitive weirdness. It seems crazy that if I stick up a calendar from a local sports team that has a picture of the cheerleaders on it, it's harrassment. That harrassment may not be in full flower but you better believe I'm going to be told to take it down before some super-sensitive idiot sees it and gets their feelings hurt.
As stupid as this seems, it actually works out better in practice. By "over-specifying" the defintion of sexual harrassment, the oppressive environments that were able to continue to exist under the "reasonable person" criteria are resolved. Yes, us old white men feel a bit put upon because we can't make dirty blonde jokes. But the upside is that the whole place works better and everyone can better contribute up to their potential.
Bottom line for people who don't work in big-corp type environments: the definition of "sexual harrassment" is much broader than seems reasonable. For practical reasons, learned the hard way over decades, the situation must be this way.
I don't like it. It offends my sense of justice. But I've seen it done both ways and in practice, the unreasonable, nanny-state version of sexual harrassment remediation just works better for everyone involved.
If you were working at a company and you found out that someone you worked with had been in some adult movies, wouldn't you be curious enough to google them and check it out? I sure as hell would.
I can't speak about the rest of the case, but evidence of harassment or a personal relationship this is not.
This guy. Right here. Nailed it. MPU.
More simply just a list of all their CEOs? I guess that comment was simply meant to be catty and I'm over thinking it.
No sig for you!!
How does your morals matter?
How is someone looking at NSFW content worse than someone reading /. ? Does it somehow mean that the person is working even less because it's also amoral to you? ./ is not so bad because to many of us it can be work related at least a little. But my argument still stands. Either you are allowed to browse the 'net for non-strictly work content or not, content should not matter.
Maybe
I don't suppose that anyone has considered the possibility that this story and others like it are the result of a concerted effort by Mr. Hurd (and his rather influential allies) to rehabilitate his image by smearing his accuser? I mean, it's not like the method is unheard of (cf. practically every rape trial) or that misconduct by the executives of companies large and small, sexual and otherwise, is exactly a rarity. Moreover, there's a pretty vast disparity in the ability of these two individuals to pump their version of events in the tech and financial press.
I'm also going to guess that, given the immense liability risks involved, that the HP board probably based their decision on more than just Hurd's browser history.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
pay me $4e7 to go away, and you can call me anything you want...
I probably won't even bother to sue you on any actionable counts of slander, since I'll be busy snorting blow off three hookers' asses on my yacht.
bloody small-minded peons.
(incidentally, has anyone summed up what HP has paid this slimebag? Was it worth it?)
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Carly used to preach "character and capability" dogma BS during her tenure. It's interesting how that CEO list is sorted in order starting with the most character and capability. --edfardos
This isn't really a good omen for the rest of us, is it? You can work as hard as you like, but the minute you decided to do something that isn't intensely work related, your boss comes down on you like a pile of bricks. And all you were doing was checking out prices on eBay and DubLi for something in your 5 minute break you get per hour.
The first is that HP does a nice job of tracking you. In fact, in general, ALL of Corporate America does this. The important part of that, is that HR is typically given access to the data. That way, if the company needs/wants to fire you, almost ALWAYS, they have SOMETHING to base it on.
The second is that all should realize that Hurd was not fired for Sex harassment. He was fired because ppl on the board wanted him out and did not have the courage to simply fire him.
Third, that is DAMN scary that Sexual harassment can be looking up public information about somebody. Would I, or anybody else, watch that kind of info on an somebody in a public position, esp. an actress? Hell yah. Even the HR would have done that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
um, if I were employing somebody, and there was indication that they may have an ... interesting ... history on the internet, I think it would be remiss of me NOT to know what my customers and business associates may find there. If they are representing the company, their online persona is part of that representation.
Many employees worry about WebSense and other logging apps but in my experience, those apps aren't what gets you in to trouble. I've never seen an investigation start with the logs...but I have seen a couple of senior execs fall after the board started an inquiry in to some internal financial issues and the investigators found porn on the execs computers. As soon as they find out they go pull the web logs and then things spiral. So often these logs aren't really the target of the investigators, but if they're looking for something else they sure can hang you. Like I said, I've seen a few people get taken down for things like this when the actual investigation found they did nothing wrong.
So be careful. Don't be an idiot. Don't be the CEO looking at porn at work when you can do it at home. It just doesn't make sense. What's sad is I'm sure some of these guys look at porn at work because their wife gets mad at home. Nice job honey. :)
Browsing history is a horrible way to determine anything. You don't know exactly how someone got to a particular page, you can only surmise. Also, if I clicked on a video and then immediately closed it, my browsing history would still say I "watched" the video. Even if the video downloaded fully, it's no guarantee that he watched it. Quite frequently, I'll pause a video to allow it to download fully before I begin watching it. My browsing history has no concept of whether or not I watched it fully or watched 2 seconds and then closed it.
IANAL... But I play one on
For those interested, the movie in question was called "H P Lovecraft" but due to a virus was replaced with some sort of cephalopod-related porn movie.
Although European (EU mainstream) countries are far from perfect in this, legal restraints make it much harder for ambulance chasers to make fortunes by publicly exaggerating allegations, and employment law means that there are proper remedies at reasonable cost which means that companies are not exposed to excessive risks from ordinary human behaviour. (I might add that we don't suffer so much from kneejerk Protestant fundamentalism, but I think that's a sideshow.)
Interestingly, when I had to do the training in the UK, our (US) trainer was quite clued up on UK law, and commented that a number of the overbearing rules that get applied in the US would be rejected by employment tribunals in the UK as unreasonable grounds for dismissal ("you guys are lucky").
Bottom line: your comments may well be correct for the US as it is, but are a sad commentary on the US legal profession and the relationships inside US companies.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
HP printers are already shitty, so I guess 1 out of 3 isn't that bad.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
We have a rather attractive female co-worker who had supposedly done some nude modelling. The jackasses in my department was all a-drool about it, and trying to figure out her "modelling name"
Having actually talked to the lady in question a few times on and off myself, she was actually a nice person. It was easy for many to make the "office decoration" assumption because of her attractiveness and attire, but she really was one nicer people in the office and was always free with a smile, a hello, and sometimes conversation. It really bothered me to see my co-workers spreading that sorta thing around the office, and that type of behaviour was actually one of the reasons I left that particular company.
If you find out your co-worker had been in "adult" movies or whatever, is that going to change your view of him/her as a person? Are you still going to be able to look that person in the eye? Personally, I would have been happier to think of my co-worker as the genuinely nice person who always had a smile and polite hello for her co-workers, rather than what others seemed to make her out to be.
It is the year 2010.
People are going to want to browse the web at work. Lets accept that.
If you want to do more than check your personal email or buy a book ON A BREAK, buy a smart phone or buy a laptop. Then pay the fee for your OWN wireless connection for these devices.
If you don't want to pay for these things then you should reconsider using company internet connections and company equipment to surf to places you don't want the company to know where you have been.
With modern networking software all any network administrator has to do is literally to click 2-3 links to see EVERYWHERE you've been on the internet.
The can also see almost all of the content you've looked at unless it is behind https via a password and login.
Interesting and insightful stuff, there.
So basically, the real story is that some CEO asked a hot employee (which happened to be an ex porn actress) if she was willing to have a relationship with him, she agreed at first, used him and his money, until he realized he was being used and put a stop to it.
Then the girl sued him for sexual harassment in order to get more money, and he was fired.
Isn't that whole story ridiculous? That guy, be him an evil CEO with plenty of money, did nothing wrong here.
There is, I regret to say but know from long experience, incredibly insightful advice in the parent post.
Does it have to be proven that they were ever even in the same place at the same time?
Yet another reason for sexbots.
When someone can be dragged through the stress and time-wasting of an investigation even when the initial complaint is clearly nonsense and has even been identified as such by everyone but the "person" bringing the allegation.
I have been told flat out by HR that harrassment complaints can be made "For any reason whatsoever" and once made they trigger the entire process, and will always be in your record. Even when the complainant has absolutely no grounds whatsoever for their complaint, and even when the written complaint itself contains absolutely nothing that the policy lists as grounds for a complaint.
I know because this happened to me. The problem is that almost all people are too stupid and weak to manage the kind of process you describe. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I apologize, but with all due respect, it clearly has corrupted you, based on your defense of the completely totalitarian worldview of sexual harrasment policy and law that has become our reality in the US.
Since you managed to turn a sexual harrassment talk into pro-public-union talk, I'm gonna call you on that.
I never understood this. Public union is a way for workers to organize against... well, the taxpayer, which is other people like themselves. A way for one to pull more benefits than their peers.
The gaping 3 trillion hole in unfunded pension obligations is the result of that. You have created a system where it is difficult to reward skill and easy to abuse - I cringe every time I hear about another "public servant" converting five years' worth of vacation to pay in his last year so he can retire with 150k a year at 45 and then get another cushy government job for another round of pay.
yawn
It has happened to me, too. I volunteered to be a trainer in this area specifically because I have been placed on official warning for sexual harrassment. I know how it can hurt an innocent who is accused.
However, I also know that without a process to investigate, the damage is worse. If someone is going to accuse me falsely, I'm screwed no matter how baseless the accusation. At that point, there's no way to un-ring the bell. So which, then, is the better outcome? Having a process by which I can be exonerated, even though it technically appears on my record for 7 years (after which it is expunged)? Or simply be fired, straightaway, by some management official who's afraid that the accuser is going to make more trouble?
Would you rather defer to some management official with the power to say (immediately, at the initial complaint filing) "This complaint has no merit and is dismissed. Everybody get back to work."?
If you give any management official that level of power, then you're also giving them the power to allow their buddies to engage in obvious sexual harrassment without fear; the power to force a legitimate victim seek justice from outside, a ridiculous and dishonorable thing that results in "stress and time-wasting" for the victim.
Given the alternatives, I think that having a formal process is better. Checks and balances, y'know.
As for my "corruption" - you clearly misunderstand. I don't like things the way they are. I've said in other posts that it offends my sense of justice. I'm just saying that this is the way it is and, as painful as it might be, it's workable.
It's far from ideal. But it's workable.
Well, that's a whole 'nother subject. But since it has come up...
I think public unions are great mostly because they aren't really unions. Federal employee unions cannot strike. If a union can't strike, it's not really a union. It's a hired mouthpiece that provides structure for forcing management officials to listen to workers and agree on work rules.
A union that can't strike can make trouble, to be sure. But it can't cripple an organization the way the big private industry unions can. I think that federal worker unions strike a near-perfect balance of power between "doing the job" and "protecting the workers". Unionized federal workers are far, far less a public evil (if you think unions are evil, that is) than auto industry unions, for example.
Federal unions aren't organized against the U.S. population. That's just silly theoretical thinking. They are organized, like all unions, to put the brakes on management officials who want to be assholes just because they have a little authority. Fighting against that isn't fighting against the taxpayers in general; it's fighting for truth, justice and the American way. :-)
Then again, all the above is just my opinion and you're certainly welcome to yours.
But where you go really off-track is when you start quoting numbers. The unfunded pension obligations are no more unfunded than Social Security and are actually in better shape. And unlike SS, federal pensions are a self-correcting problem over the long term. The old Civil Service Retirement System ceased taking in new members over 25 years ago. Once those people are all retired, a process that will be mostly complete in 10 years, the unfunded pension obligations you're worried about will fade away. All younger employees under the Federal Employee Retirement System will be far less of a drain on the Treasury when they retire.
As for the "converting five years worth of vacation to pay in his last year so he can retire with 150k a year at 45 and then get another cushy government job", it's tough to know where to start.
--- No one has five years of vacation to convert. We're limited to 240 hours, max. We use it or lose it every year and can only carry over 240 hours.
--- The vacation time doesn't convert to cash. It converts to time in service which only marginally bumps up retirement pay.
--- Almost nobody retires with a $150K a year pension. Except for inside the beltway, executives, and high-level managers, employees who actually earn $150K a year are pretty damn rare. Their pensions are quite a bit less than that.
--- Almost nobody retires at 45. The only way to do that is to lose your job to a reduction in force. You can, depending on the situation, sometimes take early retirement what that happens. But if you take early retirement before age 55, you get hit with big penalties that reduce your pension.
--- Finally, "another government job" is mostly fiction. Except for military retirees who go to work on the civilian side, this sort of double-dipping requires the retiree repay their retirement fund from the previous job. Almost no one does that. No one can afford to.
In times past, the rules were different and some less overstated version of your complaints would have had minimal merit. Today, though, your complaints and impressions of the way things work in the public sector are about 30 years out of date.
are in control (even if just partial.) Sorry, but that is the attitude of all totalitarians - It is OK for ME to use an unjust process because I am righteous. (I sometimes believe that too, but no one will put me in power ;-)
You appear to admit this when you basically said that since you could not beat them, you joined them. Yes, you became the oppressor, or at least one of their tools. Happens all the time. (Has happened to me as well by the way.) Consider Milgram, etc.
Unfortunately what happens in real life is the other guy gets the power, and then abuses it. (Bush vs. Obama, Clinton vs. Bush, in either direction, as an example.)
I am not against a process. I am against a process that is fundamentally totalitarian, in that "The new criteria is pretty simple. The victim defines the crime. If someone says something is sexual harrassment, it is.." in your own words.
Once you defend this, you have thrown justice, and yes reasonableness, out the window. That is why I say you have been corrupted by the process, because you defend the above quote, and the resulting system. It is like allowing divide by 0, or 1=2 in a math proof. Once you allow that, you can prove anything.
My objection is that you defend something that simply destroys the entire concept of justice. A just process must be based on something much more like what a "reasonable" person thinks (consider the idea of a jury of one's peers). I am not claiming such a system is perfect, or infallible. But it is far, far better than the status quo that you support.
I also think you can not have it both ways - if you do not like the way things are you should argue and work to change the system, otherwise if you defend the way things are - as you do - then you are supporting the status quo. Which stinks.
You sound like you used to be a reasonable person, before the conditions at your job and the sexual harrasment regime corrupted you. Try to get out, if you still can.
You clearly take a principled stand on these issues.
It's also clear that sexual harassment in large-organization workplaces is mitigated against, in this time, in the U.S., via means that are not highly principled.
On these things, I hope we can agree.
I believe there are subtleties, complications, and procedural matters you don't understand. If you did, you'd understand that things aren't as bad as I've made them sound. Yes, "the victim defines the crime" is still true but it's not engraved in stone; fake victims who make false accusations almost always wind up being found out.
As a trainer, though, I think I do something valuable by helping people understand how things work and how to avoid getting ground up in a process that they can easily avoid. I also believe I help keep things a little less crazy by reminding the powers-that-be that they should pay some attention to reason; those principles eventually come back to bite them. I've repeatedly argued that the "reasonableness" criteria should be inserted into the investigation process earlier. In training sessions, I've repeatedly covered the history of sexual harassment so that people understand that things weren't always this way.
But these subtle efforts are clearly insufficient and I've long since given up on actually changing things. This culture is imposed from above after various court decisions create a perceived need. While I can try to help people stay sane, my efforts aren't going to really change anything.
I'm looking forward to retirement, actually. As much as I love my job (and I really do love my primary work), I'm looking forward to doing something different. My freedom is just a short span of years away.
If any of the things that I plan to do after retirement turns out to be unexpectedly profitable, I figure my attitude toward my employees and sexual harassment issues will be quite a bit more human, reasonable, and grounded in simple respect than the ambiguously irritating world I now move in. At least, I certainly hope so.
Dear Mr. Coward:
We have considered your request and have come to the conclusion that the white, yellow, and brown tones provided by your proposed inkjet ink components would not provide a sufficient color gamut for home or office printing, particularly on the most common print medium of white paper.
Please feel free to share any other ideas you may have in the future and we will consider them.
Sincerely,
HP Printer Division
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
This is a very interesting case. I'd like to have a look at those "racy clips" for myself so I can, um, decide how I feel about the matter.
Signed,
Any guy, anywhere
--
Toro
He wasn't fired because of sexual harassment or because he loaded risque pics on his work machine.
Rather, he was fired because the board did not trust him anymore. Part of that erosion of trust was that he hired someone with such a risque past to act as a "face" of HP at high-profile events. The search history was just proof that he was aware of her past. By themselves the pics/video were not enough to get him (or probably most managers) fired. Maybe if they repeatedly subjected subordinates or coworkers to them.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's not about inclusion and fairness: It is about power and control. Doesn't look much to me like Hurd was included -- except in the people getting the boot.