> The underlying reality is this is behavior that is seen when you have people with large amounts of wealth and power (and guess what, it happens to people of every gender!).
It happens to the 25% of employees in leadership positions that are women and the 75% that are men. How equitable!
> Susan Fowler should've had a union to complain to, instead of Uber's hostile HR department.
As a minority, you can't assume that a union rep is on your side. Especially if the complaint is against someone else at your company who is represented by the same union, if that person is more politically important (within the union) than you are, you're risking a lot - up to and including retaliatory termination of union membership[0] by speaking out. It's your word against theirs, and you're not the one hiring your representative, so you can't be sure that their incentive is to advocate your case to the bitter end, instead of to brush things under the rug.
If you want someone who has no conflict of interest to advocate your case, you need a lawyer, not HR or a union representative. At best, the latter will refer you to a lawyer (at which point they're not doing anything for you you couldn't do yourself). At worst, they will cost you your job, and possibly your career[1].
[0] Which, incidentally, is not protected by the same laws that protect retaliatory termination by employers.
[1] If you're in an industry that's represented by one single union, having your membership terminated means you should probably start looking for other career options.
> I think we can all agree existing unions need to be made more democratic. If your union rep isn't on your side, they should be replaceable.
The problem I'm talking relates to how people in the majority group can politically overpower those in the minority. "Making unions more democratic" doesn't fix that; democracy as a system is literally designed on the principle of the majority (or plurality), not the principle of the minority.
Just as an HR representative works for the company (not for you), a union representative serves the people who elected them as a group, not you individually. If you are a minority member, you can't assume that your representative has your best interests in mind. And, by definition, you don't have the political power to replace them.
It sucks at college too. Get sick for a week? You missed a few lectures that you now need to get notes for from someone, maybe missed a test that you have to schedule a make-up for with your professor, probably missed a TA help session that makes the upcoming assignment comprehensible, etc. All that times the 3-6 classes you're taking, good luck ever getting caught up. You get more time off as a student, but it's not really as flexible.
So much of our society punishes you for illness, and it's sad.
I think about this all the time, haha. I think right now my ideal higher education solution would be somewhere where all of the resources you need are online and you can go at your own pace, so if you need to take time off it's no big deal. Then you have a central location where your fellow students and professors/TAs/experts/whatever are there to help you learn and answer questions, not to lecture to a huge room where 75% of the people are on their phones.
> But this idea is under attack, and I'm surprised the tech community isn't speaking out more forcefully. Although many leading tech companies are now the incumbents, I hope we'll all remember that openness helped them achieve their great success. It could be disastrous for future startups if this were to change--openness is what made the recent wave of innovation happen.
Is it surprising? What organization is supposed to speak up? Tech workers don't have a union so nobody is lobbying for us in DC. We have to hope that enough huge companies and their leaders will act in the way we want and I don't exactly expect Zuckerberg and Thiel to represent me and my interests in Washington.
If there was a tech workers union, presumably it would cover employees at Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and many other companies they are not pro net neutrality. So it wouldn't even be in the self interest of the union to get into the battle.
It needs to be the consumers who speak up, and the businesses that would be negatively affected.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA), the biggest communications labor union, covers workers at Verizon and AT&T, but last time around they sided with AT&T and Comcast back in 2014.
I'd love to see more women in leadership, especially in software companies. I think lack of role models is a huge factor in why the percentage of women in tech is so low.
The scalper could "sell" their front-row ticket to someone else who buys a cheap nosebleed. Then they get in with the cheap seat and go sit at the better spot. Clumsy but it would work.
Nosebleed seat means a seat at the very back of the house. Because it is usually very high up, the idea is that the atmosphere is thin and it makes your nose bleed. Basically what the person is saying is that the fan can buy a very cheap ticket and exchange it for a much more expensive ticket that the scalper bought.
I think he's referring to a seat that is not a good seat. Normally called nosebleed seats because the altitude is so high it could make your nosebleed. I think.
This is one of many downsides of PDF ticketing. Fraudster buys a nosebleed, edits the PDF to fake a great seat. Ticket scans just fine at the door, since it has a legit barcode. (If the scanner displays the real section/row/seat for that barcode, the person working the door could cross-check it, but I've never seen that happen.)
Thanks for the article! I love going to concerts (actually I grabbed pre-sale tickets for Lady Gaga just last week) so I found it all super interesting.
It happens to the 25% of employees in leadership positions that are women and the 75% that are men. How equitable!