47 ms·

Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

• twblalock 10y ago
  If you are sexually harassed, and HR doesn't do anything about it, you should sue. Don't expect HR to change. If the stories in this article are true, and if the evidence is as strong as the article says it is, this is a slam-dunk case for sexual harassment, hostile work environment, retaliation, etc.
  • 0898 10y ago
    HR works for the organisation. It's not there to protect you. Source: work in the HR industry.
    • mc32 10y ago
      Yep. No fan of Ellen Pao, but it seems obvious HR did her no favors over at Kleiner Perkins.
    • twblalock 10y ago
      This is true, but I should point out that an organization with foresight would not permit harassment of employees, because the long-term cost of the lawsuits and bad publicity will be bad for the organization.
      • acjohnson55 10y ago
        But Uber's entire business plan is about flouting rules and sustainability so that they can become irreplaceable. The sad fact is that they're probably being entirely rational. What's right is often unprofitable, short-term and long-term. Unless they have a big exodus of talent or customers, even a report this embarrassing is unlikely to slow the juggernaut.
        • scott_karana 10y ago
          That's Uber's strategic focus publically, but HR is an internal department and could conceivably be different, just like how their Marketing team almost certainly doesn't flout (or at least emphasize) flouting of laws.
    • raverbashing 10y ago
      Working for the organization should also mean avoiding potential lawsuits
      • eloisant 10y ago
        Also working for the organization doesn't mean working for that specific middle manager who keeps harassing co-workers.
  • ForrestN 10y ago
    Second. The writer and the others should sue, not only to be compensated for their own injuries but to protect others who might be harassed as well.
    • josephlord 10y ago
      There are huge professional and personal costs to suing. She has done more by most to protect others by going public. Isn't her job to fix Uber via lawsuit.
      • azernik 10y ago
        Someone needs to do it. It's not any particular person's duty, and she has definitely gone above and beyond by writing this up, but it would be a great public service for someone to bring a (preferably class-action) lawsuit.
        • home_boi 10y ago
          > she has definitely gone above and beyond by writing this up I would hazard a guess and say that she is doing this to market her newly published book and newly created book club than. Not really altruistic, although it may have a positive effect.
  • brobinson 10y ago
    Does Uber require employees to sign an arbitration agreement when they join?
    • tubehouse 10y ago
      Yes
  • grey-area 10y ago
    Suing would have lots of negative consequences, and few upsides. It would take up months of time, be immensely frustrating, stressful and lead other employers to be wary of you in future (even if most wouldn't admit it). Your name would be dragged through the mud by Uber in an attempt to derail the case, and you'd become an online target for haters (as with Ellen Pao). All for some uncertain monetary reward. Who needs that kind of stress and hassle? Writing this article (which was superb in its incredulous anger) is a better way to get closure IMO, but this should be her decision alone.
    • j_s 10y ago
      Companies such as Uber will continue these destructive behaviors until they face genuine consequences that impact their bottom line. You have summarized a number of reasons why I would never ask anyone to volunteer to be the one to accomplish this. This entire episode will hopefully shine some light on the true difficulties that need to be overcome to promote STEM diversity.
      • grey-area 10y ago
        This could lead to genuine consequences, perhaps more than a lawsuit. Anyway, we shouldn't even be talking about what she is doing, how about the evil actions of Uber?
      • exolymph 10y ago
        > Companies such as Uber will continue these destructive behaviors until they face genuine consequences that impact their bottom line. Having a hard time recruiting is a serious consequence.
    • stickfigure 10y ago
      If this article catches public attention, Uber will attempt to bring these canons to bear anyway.
      • twblalock 10y ago
        It's currently the top story on The Verge.
  • JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    Or report the incident to your state labour commission.
  • jannettee 10y ago
    Uber's employment contract includes an agreement that you won't take them to court.
    • Herald_MJ 10y ago
      Is that legally enforceable?
      • eanzenberg 10y ago
        No.
      • emddudley 10y ago
        Of course not.
      • jannettee 10y ago
        I don't know, but it was certainly scary to see.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • CGamesPlay 10y ago
      So when you sue them, you also get fired, if you hadn't quit already. I am pretty confident you'd find a similar clause in any company's employment contract, but even if it wasn't there it would be a safe assumption that any lawsuit brought against a current employer would result in termination.
    • MBCook 10y ago
      Wild guess says that companies can't opt themselves out of sexual harassment laws with a simple clause in their contract.
  • bsder 10y ago
    Lawsuits cost enormous amounts of time and effort. A rich company has way more of both than you do.
  • wengachang 10y ago
    Her story is bullshit. Typical attention whore. Didn't get a jacket. Report to HR. Something happened that she interpreted. Report to HR. If the story is credible why wait for ONE year. Either SUE publicly or post messages publicly. I call bullshit. Pussy thirsty Betas on Hacker News will of course side with her. I think she is doing for attention for her book.
    • sctb 10y ago
      We've banned this account.
  • tyingq 10y ago
    Her choice to write about it might end up being a bigger incentive for change there than a lawsuit. She tells the story quite well. Probably an ideal story for some journalist(s) to pick up and expand on.
    • tyingq 10y ago
      For once, I appear to have guessed correctly :) Enough impact that Uber is now hiring Eric Holder as a lead investigator.
  • mandevil 10y ago
    Everyone is talking about why she didn't sue. Given the way the courts have ruled recently on binding arbitration, is it possible that she has no recourse to actual courts, just to arbiters? (She never says if such a clause was included in her employment contract, but I know that it has been included in the last two contracts that I signed.) Wouldn't that foreclose her opportunity to sue, and just to go into the much less favorable (for her) arbitration process?
  • danaliv 10y ago
    Suing is great and all, but do you have any idea how hard it is? How much work it is, and how financially and emotionally draining it is? You can't just call up a lawyer, tell them your story, and expect magic justice sprinkles to do the rest. There are retainers to pay, depositions to do, discovery... and the whole process is adversarial _by design_. It's a nightmare. Anyone who's willing to go through it is a goddamn superhero in my book.
• powera 10y ago
  IANAL, but this screams "you will win a lawsuit, and Uber is such a terrible company it's worth the considerable personal inconvenience to you that you should file the lawsuit".
• M_Grey 10y ago
  Just to add to what others have said... sue. Sue, and then don't be shocked when you end up as the primary plaintiff in a class action.
• moocow01 10y ago
  In all honesty if I were you I would sue them plain and simple. Partially to discourage this company behavior for the other employees remaining who Im sure continue to endure it. And partially as compensation for having to endure a lot of unethical and illegal work environment behaviors being endorsed by the company on the low. You really should seek being compensated for this for the good of everyone involved.
• kurthr 10y ago
  HR doesn't work for you, it works for the company.
  • ceejayoz 10y ago
    HR's failing pretty hard at protecting the company here, though.
  • tbarbugli 10y ago
    I am removing Uber app from my phone forever. I guess HR did not do a great job there.
  • notatoad 10y ago
    HR's job is to ensure that conflict gets resolved internally so it stays an HR problem and doesn't escalate to a legal or PR problem. HR has failed miserably in this instance, regardless of whose side you think they should be on.
    • lgleason 10y ago
      I've seen HR departments give severance in scenarios like this in exchange for legal gag order. It may not be ethical, but it is legal in many states and does happen. There is Karma, but that is another story.
• lgleason 10y ago
  HR is there to protect the company in the US. I've seen lots of people fired over things like this. If they had fired you they would have given you severance in exchange for a gag order given the circumstances. Under the Obama administration you might have seen more prosecution over things like this but not under Trump.
  • dexterdog 10y ago
    Because the Obama administration was so supportive of whistle blowers?
    • dexterdog 10y ago
      So, just downvote and move on with your ignorance intact? OK.
• jackweirdy 10y ago
  > The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that I was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making That's such a meaningless thing for an HR person to ask someone, that it clearly only serves to be patronising and hopefully stop them bringing problems up. I mean, how could you as an HR staffer possibly justify your inaction with an argument like that? "We didn't act on any of their complaints, as we noticed that in all the cases of harassment that they reported, they were the victim in all of them!"
  • HarryHirsch 10y ago
    HR serves to protect the company, you have to think in HR's shoes. If the complainant goes away and finds another job the problem is solved. Most harassment cases tend not to end up in court, usually the aggrieved party quits.
    • tfar 10y ago
      "HR serves to protect the company" That point comes up every time a bad-HR related post is placed here. However, isn't it very short sighted to consider silencing/removing the accusers a protection of the company. This results in a bad culture and bad PR about that culture in developer circles. Won't the reduced diversity and all that comes with it have bad effect on the company long term?
      • Chinjut 10y ago
        It may be short-sighted, but, frankly, most people and organizations in the world act in most contexts in short-sighted pursuit of their goals. Foolish, sure, and unethical in the case of HR departments, but nonetheless, the behavior one can expect from them.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      • vertex-four 10y ago
        Plus the lawsuits that should be brought... except that bringing a lawsuit on a sexual harassment case results in even more of the same shit in court, plus potential employers hearing about it.
• calcsam 10y ago
  In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment: relationships within a reporting chain are generally prohibited, for both legal, ethical, and practical reasons. Sex becoming part of the effective job description crosses both legal and ethical lines, and team effectiveness is hindered when people wonder whether someone is getting special treatment because they're sleeping with the boss. A manager propositioned a new employee on her first day on his team -- asking not just for a date but for sex. That's way over the line. Also, this isn't just a gendered thing -- Google the story of Keith Rabois resigning as COO of Square.
  • elmar 10y ago
    I am shocked, how is possible to get away with this toxic company culture.
    • davedx 10y ago
      Because they're "high performers". Screw Uber. Just delete that app and never use it.
      • u_wot_m8 10y ago
        I'd like the think that eventually karma will catch up with Uber. Hard to think of a single positive thing to say about the company.
        • sokoloff 10y ago
          Here's my positive thing. Taking a cab to the airport from my house in Cambridge, MA runs about $42 before tip, so call it $48 or so. An UberX costs $24.30 right now and UberPool costs $14.30 right now. Additionally, I can summon the ride more easily and get better feedback about the arrival time, giving me more confidence/less anxiety that I'll have a problem getting to the airport on time. As a consumer, by reducing my cost by 50-70% while providing a marginally better service, I can readily find one thing positive to say about the company.
• shill 10y ago
  Never trust HR.
• jmduke 10y ago
  I am struggling to think of something productive to contribute to this discussion, because this absolutely incensed me. In lieu of anything else: Susan deserves to be commended for her bravery in writing this.
  • tmuir 10y ago
    No shit. A story like this makes me realize that even with the "problems" I think I have at work, that get me all riled up, I have it made in the shade with lemonade compared to this woman's experience at Uber. I started reading the article with the view of "If it's really that bad, just quit. Burn that bridge with thermite, and never look back." I finished the article wishing there were more Susan J. Fowlers in the world.
  • kevinburke 10y ago
    If an Uber recruiter contacts you, bring this up and tell them their nonfunctioning HR department makes working for their company a non starter. If you work at Uber, quit, and/or contact the board and tell them that this behavior is unacceptable and the people responsible need to be fired. If the culture won't change, the CEO needs to be fired. If you work in tech, bring up this article with your manager or CEO and tell them that this behavior is unacceptable, opens the company up to ridiculous amounts of lawsuit risk, will hurt recruiting, depress morale, and that you will quit if harassment complaints aren't taken seriously.
    • 1024core 10y ago
      > If an Uber recruiter contacts you, bring this up and tell them their nonfunctioning HR department makes working for their company a non starter. This. Companies don't change until there's a huge price to be paid for not changing. When top recruits start turning down Uber because of their sexist policies/politics, then Uber will be forced to change.
      • Paul-ish 10y ago
        In addition, the only people left at Uber will be people who think this behavior is acceptable. In that case, it will only be a matter of time before there is a lawsuit.
• phereford 10y ago
  Not to derail the whole premise of this article, but Susan's book looks great! Just bought it and can't wait to start reading it.
  • Rapzid 10y ago
    I'm going to look into it. I was shocked to see that Susan was a research assistant at UP until 2015 and now has a book out about production microservices. That's some carrier trajectory in two years.
• 40acres 10y ago
  Wow this is unbelievable, I know sexism is still very much real in the workplace but I'm floored it's this overt. And the incompetence shown by HR is baffling.
• kchoudhu 10y ago
  What the hell? Why isn't there a lawsuit yet? Everything is documented!
• GauntletWizard 10y ago
  Sue. Sue them for all they're worth. I was at Uber for six months, and I had enough - Mostly because of the blatant backstabbing and shell games managers were trying to play, rating their worst performers highly just long enough to get them transferred out, pointing out only the negative aspects of what their better workers were doing. There were some good people and some bad, but ultimately the culture was toxic, and the rampant sexism was just one (very large) part of it.
• anonfunction 10y ago
  I've always heard HR works for the company's interest first and foremost. Go to a lawyer first and have them communicate with the C-level execs. Although Uber sounds like it has a pretty toxic culture all the way up.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway_374 10y ago
  To show our solidarity against this kind of behaviour by corporate, we should all crowd fund your lawyer's fees and teach Uber a big fucking lesson really blow it out of the water. Really stick it to them. I'll happily begin contributions. edit: rather pathetic with all the male chauvanistic Uber engineers on here downvoting away.
  • cobookman 10y ago
    Why crowd fund. Given the author's story, if true there would be lots of lawyers lined up to take the case for a percentage of damages or for publicity. Especially if this turns class action.
    • throwaway_374 10y ago
      To send a message that she is not alone and we are collectively revolting against corporate HR abuse.
  • Kluny 10y ago
    Downvotes are anonymous, you have no way of knowing who's doing it. I think you're more likely being downvoted for the swearing and obvious fact that the author has no interest in suing as she has better things to do.
• tsunamifury 10y ago
  Everything I've heard about Uber from people who have joined is terrible. Train wreck of Human Resources, unprofessional conduct as par the course, terrible pay locked up in a nowhere in sight IPO. I honestly don't understand why people keep joining them.
  • twblalock 10y ago
    Where did you hear the pay is terrible? From what I've heard, it seems pretty normal for the industry, at least for software engineers.
    • tsunamifury 10y ago
      If you dig into the package, a lot of the value is locked up in unsellable shares. Vs immediately liquid RSUs of any public company.
      • twblalock 10y ago
        I'm referring to the cash salary only.
        • warent 10y ago
          tsunamifury said pay, not cash salary... There's more to pay than cash, especially for private companies.
        • traek 10y ago
          Comparing two offers where one is cash + liquid equity (the case at most major tech companies) and the other is the same amount of cash + equity in a company that has no near-term plans to IPO (the case at Uber), most people would consider the first offer to be worth more. Even if nominally the equity is worth the same in the both cases, liquidity is also valuable. (And the equity might not really be worth the same--companies have been forced to IPO at a valuation lower than their last round of funding.)
        • umanwizard 10y ago
• projektir 10y ago
  Wow, this is unreal. I could expect mistreatment at various companies, but something so overt? Thank you Susan for writing this. > "performance problems aren't always something that has to do with work, but sometimes can be about things outside of work or your personal life." Also, this seems many species of wrong. I don't really see why your personal life should have any relevance to a performance review.
  • tyingq 10y ago
    I read it as "outside of your work" and also "outside of your personal life". Which is even more perplexing. What a strange company all around.
• brad0 10y ago
  Geez, and here I was considering working at Uber. Thanks for posts like these.
• fermigier 10y ago
  What do you expect from a company that has been so many times on the wrong side of the law? http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-fine-chicago-idUSKBN15W03O http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-fine-chicago-idUSKBN1... http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/14/10772412/uber-fine-california-utility-driver-data http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/14/10772412/uber-fine-califor... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/09/uber-fined-800000-in-france-over-illegal-service/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/09/uber-fined-... http://time.com/4632430/taiwan-uber-fines/ http://time.com/4632430/taiwan-uber-fines/ http://economia.icaew.com/en/news/january-2017/uber-fined-20m-in-the-us-for-claims-of-misleading-drivers-over-earnings http://economia.icaew.com/en/news/january-2017/uber-fined-20... http://www.pcworld.com/article/2464520/rivalry-between-uber-and-lyft-gets-ugly.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2464520/rivalry-between-uber-... ...
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • mightykan 10y ago
    I honestly wonder how people here would react if a blog posts like this came out about a company that hasn’t necessarily been in the news for this many past bad behavior. Would we still condemn that company or would we blame the victim, as is the case usually?
    • ivraatiems 10y ago
      We've seen that with Github[1]. The debate on HN was much more lively and less one-sided[2], in that there were many more people trying to excuse what Github was doing or bring into question Horvath's story. Whether that's a good thing or not... [1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes-sexism-and-intimidation-behind-her-github-exit/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describe... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7408055
  • davesque 10y ago
    Was the first thing I thought about when I read this article.
• symlinkk 10y ago
  this is fucked up. why not sue? if everything in here is true, this is easy lawsuit money.
  • pvg 10y ago
    How much 'easy lawsuit money' have you collected? Or anyone you personally know?
    • symlinkk 10y ago
      admittedly, none. but this still seems like an open and shut case.
      • pvg 10y ago
        The operative phrase here is 'it seems'. Lawsuits don't just materialize out of nothing without time and significant costs, simply because you happen to be in the right.
      • weixiyen 10y ago
        not always, these things are normally drawn out and end up in settlements because HR could have done just enough to stay within the bounds of what is legal. Technically they did not fire her, only made her life difficult and perhaps did not take disciplinary action towards her manager. When she does sue, every employer she ever worked for will be subject to a subpeona, including her current employer, and it's really a drag for everyone involved, and emotionally taxing. This blog post is actually a worst-case scenario for Uber, because the cost of the settlement is nothing compared to the negative publicity. If she wanted to hurt Uber, this was actually a great way to go about it, and she should be commended for putting her own future job prospects at risk by going public with her name. It might encourage other people to speak up and eventually lead to a bigger lawsuit that can lead to punitive damages, which is an order of magnitude more costly for Uber than a settlement had she simply filed a lawsuit by herself.
  • BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    Suing would be a great idea but you're ignoring the downsides of a lawsuit. Uber has a lot of money, they could effectively drag it out for a very long time. Even worse, most of her proof is likely on some Uber computers / servers which could go "mysteriously" missing in which case she could be made out to be a liar through a court loss thus possibly making it harder to join another company because she's "that girl". Even if they can get it rushed through the count payment takes forever by which time she would likely owe a lot of money to a lawyer. Ideally she would sue, win quickly if the allegations are true, and move on. But when does that ever happen?
• curiousDog 10y ago
  Uber seems like one of the worst companies to work for right now. I don't understand why there are hordes of Google and Facebook engineers still leaving to work there. Is the pay really that good?
  • fullshark 10y ago
    Anecdotally the fact that the office is in SF is a major reason. I also think many later hires at those companies feel like they missed out on the early days and want to go to Uber.
• pvg 10y ago
  For all the people saying 'HR works for the company' and 'She should have sued!', I think you're underestimating how difficult that is to do. You're reading the account of a person who was clearly perfectly aware of her rights and how corporate workspaces operate. What would you actually do in their position? You leave work one evening, go home and google 'lawyer that will get me lots of money from my company and work for free while I'm out of a job using nothing but my certitude I will prevail to pay rent'? Nobody (statistically) does that. In the 99% case, you'd try to make it work and then you'd find another job. As it turned out.
  • moocow01 10y ago
    No - employee lawsuits are not that uncommon. The vast majority are settled before they see the inside of courtroom. The majority that do go to a courtroom go the employees way unfortunately for employers in frivolous cases. Talking to a labour law attorney to consult about your case is not that expensive - if you have an open and shut case most lawyers will want to work on a contingency fee anyways.
    • pvg 10y ago
      I'm happy to hear more about this, is this something you've personally done or represented someone in such a case? What steps should one take in such a situation, if you have experience in it?
      • moocow01 10y ago
        To some degree... my Uncle sued Fedex, his employer at the time, for unsafe working conditions about 10 years ago after being injured on the job. I'd actually call his lawsuit frivolous but he received a very large sum of money from it. About 5 years ago I used an attorney to communicate with my previous employer about a contract they had broken by not paying the agreed severance compensation. Im not sure why in this situation you would not consult with an attorney to explore your legal options? Consulting with an attorney and at least initially engaging in a legal discourse with your previous employer is really not that expensive and many times if you have a viable case the legal costs are paid only by a successful settlement. Im not sure what she has to lose here besides seeing if she can get a lawyer to take it on contingency and time documenting the damages. My honest guess is that IF she has documentation, having an attorney engage Uber would just result in some form of settlement to not have it go into court.
• bogomipz 10y ago
  This sounds like it has all the makings for a successful gender-discrimination class action suit. I would hope she and the rest of these women would consider it. Uber sounds like a pretty toxic environment.
• shruubi 10y ago
  As someone who is Australian and not American, if anything like this happened and HR failed in the trainwreck like manner that they did in this story, we have a government organisation that oversees and enforces workplace legislation. It seems insane to me that the only recourse you have after HR is basically "gather evidence and sue" which seems to be common advice in this thread.
  • cyberferret 10y ago
    True, as much as I sometimes hate the extra 'red tape' that the Australian Government puts upon businesses here, they do offer a pretty fair level of protection against employers abusing or unfairly treating employees. It is pretty hard for a business here to dismiss an employee without reasonable grounds that would stand up in court - which of course, if it got to that level, means that the whole story would have to come out, so a situation like the one in this thread would have meant Uber being in a world of hurt while all their dirty laundry was aired in a court.
  • revelation 10y ago
    You can't sue, there is likely a mandatory arbitration clause in the employment contract (because why not, it's free) and it applies to everything.
    • jannettee 10y ago
      Exactly, I saw this in my offer.
    • madeofpalk 10y ago
      Also not enforceable.
      • revelation 10y ago
        Well, I thought the same, then thought better of the kneejerk reaction and instead decided to learn something new today. And Google tells me that yes, even in cases of rape, courts have found them enforceable.
• sergiotapia 10y ago
  >On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. Totally normal behavior! Who hasn't spoken about their sex life the very first day of interactions? "Welcome to the team, we use Git for source control, all of our company knowledgebase is on Confluence, and I'm in an open sex relationship! See you at lunch!" I can't fathom what kind of weirdo does something like this, male or female.
  • exolymph 10y ago
    > I can't fathom what kind of weirdo does something like this, male or female. People who get off on violating other people's boundaries.
    • TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
      Or who can get away with it.
  • kevinburke 10y ago
    I would guess that this happens more often than you imagine. Women often don't share stories like this for fear of retribution at their current company or future companies, or because they think you won't believe them. In addition NDA's are often a condition of receiving severance. Most women in Silicon Valley have had experiences similar to those mentioned in the article (HR disbelief, multiple women reporting same man to no effect, retaliation, legal threats, &c, &c). The OP probably declined a severance package to write this.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      Well, it sounds like she quit, wasn't fired/laid off, so a severence package probably doesn't apply (although if the rumors about how bad Uber is to work at are true, perhaps they do offer severance packages to those quitting...).
• jacquesm 10y ago
  What's with all the 'this is unbelievable' comments here? This is absolutely believable, Uber has pretty much made it their standard to break the laws where-ever they can, why should work place conduct be any different? In for a penny, in for a pound. You'd never hear something even close to this from Stripe or some other company run by upstanding folks. Fish rots from the head.
  • minimaxir 10y ago
    If anything, OP's subsequent employment by Stripe is a very strong endorsement for the workplace culture of the company.
    • jacquesm 10y ago
      I actually used Stripe as an example before I realized that's where she had moved to so consider that a double endorsement, it's not like I have any dog in that particular race but I know some people that work there and without fault they report working there is a dream come true. The brothers have something good going there and I'll bet that when the dust settles Uber will be part of that dust and Stripe will have IPO'd or similar (possibly even this year). This is how it's done: https://stripe.com/code-of-conduct https://stripe.com/code-of-conduct
      • btown 10y ago
        I wish I shared your optimism that HR practices had anything to do with IPO pricing...
        • jacquesm 10y ago
          At some level they are linked. Uber will have to learn to play within existing frameworks. Key Nordic proverb: "Pissing in your pants keeps you warm only for so long". In other words, using your funds raised to make up for shortcomings elsewhere in the organization will sooner or later come to and end.
• cbanek 10y ago
  I wish I could say this isn't happening all the time at many more companies in a less obvious way. Other than being straight up propositioned for sex, most of this other stuff has happened to me too. And I don't work at Uber.
• rosiesherry 10y ago
  Another reason not to support Uber. People need to stop using services from companies with behaviour like this.
• dkarapetyan 10y ago
  Susan is ~an industry veteran~ a somewhat experienced engineer and her interactions with HR are typical of what I've seen so I would have expected her to know how things would play out. In my experience HR is never there to protect the employees. HR is there to make sure the company doesn't get into any hot legal waters. Most of the time the easiest way to do that is to just suppress any wrongdoing and sideline whoever is being wronged. That's exactly how things played out in her story. Once again solidifying my opinion of HR being a company instead of an employee protector. If you see any wrongdoing then just get a lawyer. Never go to HR. Edit: Folks are right. She is not an industry veteran. Incorrect assumption on my part.
  • Rapzid 10y ago
    I wouldn't qualify her as an industry veteran. This is not how things would have played out at a lot of the risk-adverse companies I have worked for. I'm sure it does at some places and it's no surprise to hear this about Uber TBH. Being just a couple years out of college, I'm not sure why you would expect her to understand all the shity ways the world can work.
    • diziet 10y ago
      I am not sure why this post was down-voted, but the first statement is correct -- the author of the post is early in her career and is not an industry veteran. She has about 2 years of working experience, and does not qualify as an industry veteran.
    • jitl 10y ago
      What qualifications does Susan lack that would make her an "industry veteran" in your eyes?
      • diziet 10y ago
        I would say that to be called an 'industry veteran', a minimum threshold of 5 years of work experience in that industry is a reasonable qualification.
      • 10y ago
• warent 10y ago
  I've been questioning the legitimacy of Uber recently, and this cemented my understanding of how they operate. I'm taking my business to Lyft from now on
• logandavis 10y ago
  By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning. A friend of mine was actually warned off by her software engineer father. I've heard stories from friends who've worked there that corroborate Susan's tales of infighting teams and inexplicable reorganizations due to high-level backstabbing. The one woman I know who works there wants out. Susan is a high-profile and credible source; hopefully her post takes Uber's work culture issues from "open secret" to "problem that has public consequences for the company". The CEO should crack down and take serious steps towards addressing this problem - not just for PR, but because his company is seriously suffering as a result of these issues. Unfortunately for Uber, from what I've heard, Travis is part of the problem as far as Game-of-Thrones internal politics and backstabbing goes. His "move fast and break things" persona sounds like a poor model for subordinates. Between that and the company's relative external success, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anything internal to get better any time soon. Until it does, I simply hope that my acquaintances at Uber find somewhere less shitty to work.
  • csharpminor 10y ago
    Anecdotally speaking, I've noticed that Uber has become a dirty word among my friends. For example, someone using Uber will generally just say that they're calling a car rather than naming the service. Lyft doesn't have the same stigma. It should be concerning to management that the company's ethos is repelling customers. Edit: Management should be far more concerned that Uber is allegedly an environment that systematically enables sexual harassment and discrimination against women.
    • AsyncAwait 10y ago
      Isn't that due to the perception that they broke the recent anti-Trump taxi strike, rather than their internal work culture?
• allengeorge 10y ago
  This sounds like such a broken, toxic environment. Although it's painful and the outcome is unclear, I really hope she sues. We have to publicly shame behavior like this and make it known that it's completely unacceptable.
• Mz 10y ago
  I am really, really happy to see this as the top story on the front page of HN and to see the top comments currently here. It speaks well of HN.
• lloydde 10y ago
  While I agree with the statements that HR works for the company, when things are working the interests of the company and employees should align. I appreciate that too often this isn't how HR operates, but I don’t think anyone wants to be misconstrued as implying that Ms. Fowler didn't understand how HR works or that she didn't take all appropriate actions. > I wanted to stay on the team ... > it was genuinely in the company's best interest to have me on that team I read this and the rest of the article as a testiment to Ms. Fowler's work ethic and commitment to her employer and fellow employees. > I was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making This is the most disgusting abuse described in the article. Not only did the organization completely fail Ms. Fowler and all employees, but the HR professionals participated in the physiological abuse.
  • crestedtazo 10y ago
    My thoughts exactly. Thank you for your comment, I really enjoyed it.
• Upvoter33 10y ago
  Thanks to the author for writing this - it'd be so easy just to move on and try to forget about it. And thanks to the other HN readers for their thoughtful comments as well.
• save_ferris 10y ago
  Stories like this are so enraging, and yet far too common today. My partner went through a somewhat similar experience at a Big 4 accounting firm a while back. She tried to request an internal transfer to get away from a sexist, toxic environment only to have her managers destroy her credibility in the organization and ruin her career chances there. Sure, suing is an option here, but one that Uber calculates is absolutely worth the risk. Lawsuits like this aren't punishment to billion-dollar companies, they're factored into the cost of doing business. It can take years to sue a company under these circumstances, and depending on the situation, it could do more harm to one's reputation and career down the road. Most lack the energy to relive those experiences in a law office or courtroom while trying to move on with their lives. Lawsuits may provide financial compensation to those who've had to deal with these atrocious situations, but it's not going to solve the underlying problem.
  • azernik 10y ago
    When they come with court orders and injunctions mandating changes of behavior (and not just financial compensation) they can indeed solve the underlying problems.
• ejlangev 10y ago
  Nothing really surprising here though. Tech (and the world) has always had a problem with sexism. Uber is particularly egregious but given the long history of quotes from the CEO is it any surprise that this is their culture? Writing was on the wall the whole time. Just to add something to the torrent of links already in these comments http://observer.com/2016/02/ubers-10-worst-actions-threats-lies-sexism-shady-business-deals/ http://observer.com/2016/02/ubers-10-worst-actions-threats-l....
  • projektir 10y ago
    I would say this is pretty surprising. Tech may have a problem with representation, but there's a very big difference between something as overt as this, and, for instance, not being able to find candidates from diverse backgrounds. We should never lump the two together. I guess it's not surprising that this happened at Uber, though.
• anon_uber_eng 10y ago
  Jeez this sucks. Everything that happened was so completely unacceptable. I really hope people are held accountable for this stuff. This kind of behavior isn't new and shouldn't be normal. The Infrastructure group specifically has is known for this politicking and bad culture. I work elsewhere, and though it isn't as bad, agree there is a big management problem at play. I'm sorry you couldn't find a team that supported you. Thank you Susan for writing all this.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• ladytron 10y ago
  I'm surprised they kept her around so long. I am wondering why they just didn't bring her in, transfer her to a new team, and tell her she was no longer "a good cultural fit" with the team. In a at will:right to work state that is a totally legal way to fire a high performing employee (I think). It's almost like they enjoyed watching her complain. Glad she got out.
• rejschaap 10y ago
  I wish Susan a lot of success at Stripe. Just ordered her book and deleted the Uber app.
• fasouto 10y ago
  Thanks Susan for writing this. We should send this link to Uber recruiters every time they approach us.
• bsaul 10y ago
  Clearly there's a problem in that company, but maybe some woman working in the US could answer to me : why isn't just answering to the first mail " sorry, not interested" then keep working there not an option ? to me, the term "harassment" means repetitive, morally painful actions from a boss to his employee. Obviously the guy has a huge problem with his sex life, but why report to HR instantly , instead of trying to see if the problem is that big and can't be solved by a person to person conversation, like grown up, first ? EDIT : i'm not trying to be a jerk, and justify the behavior of that guy. I'd just like some woman working in tech in the US to explain to me what's wrong in my scenario.
  • exolymph 10y ago
    Would you be okay with it if you started a new job and your boss instantly propositioned you?
    • bsaul 10y ago
      Of course not, but i'll just tell her / him i'm not interested, and see if the person's keep insisting and make my life at work miserable, or if he's just a desperate person having a very bad day... There are many reason why someone would be a pain to work with honestly. I could imagine someone insisting on people going to drink after work being a pita for a muslim for example, or a guy talking all the time about politics and having different views than myself, etc, etc. But it seems like sex is handled extremely differently than the rest, and i'd like to understand if, in practice, there are reason for that (other than the subject itself being extremely sensitive in the US compared to some european countries, for example).
      • mattdeboard 10y ago
        That's because your boss propositioning you for sex _is_ different than your boss talking to you about politics. It says something about the culture of the company that a manager feels unfettered to ask his direct reports for sex so boldly, i.e. without fear of consequence. I'm shocked you do not see this.
      • 10y ago
• scurvy 10y ago
  What is Uber doing with 150 SRE's? Wow talk about bloat. The rest of the story is horrible to hear, too.
  • merb 10y ago
    ignoring messages that a database server is nearly out of space. and loosing nearly all database servers after ignoring the message and then telling that the database is bad and they switched to mysql? well it wasn't just that, they also did wierd things with a relation database and they still do with mysql. I'm not sure but actually keeping the database servers happy should be the no 1 job of an SRE team, since the data is the most important thing to any company.
  • scurvy 10y ago
    Asking why Twitter is so bloated gets 300 upvotes, but asking why Uber SRE is so bloated gets downvoted? My, what a fickle crowd HN is. My assumption was that Uber SRE's played roles similar to Google SRE's. If that's not the case, someone can please say so instead of just downvoting? If you lump all ops people (DBA, sysadmin, network, storage) into the SRE term then 150 isn't huge. But if it's mainly sysadmin and devops, that's really high for a company that's mainly in the cloud.
    • euphoria83 10y ago
      I think your latter guess is correct. SRE@Uber = Ops + DevOps + DBA + DCOps + ... . I spoke with their recruiter recently.
• afarrell 10y ago
  I wonder if it would be a red flag for an engineer to continue to work at Uber for more than 6 months after this post comes out since it would signal that they either: 1) Approve of the culture there and don't see a reason to leave. 2) Aren't able to find another place to work.
  • cstejerean 10y ago
    Or 3) are waiting for the 1 year vesting cliff.
  • hamburglar 10y ago
    Are you kidding me? Expecting others to hang a huge decision like a job change on a single issue like this and punishing them for not deciding the same way you would is absurd.
• jannettee 10y ago
  I had a couple of job offers, one was for Uber. I was super excited about the opportunity but I spoke with one of their engineers (former) and he warned me off accepting the offer - said it was a toxic, sexist workplace and said he would not recommend women to work there. Needless to say I declined.
• BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  I may have experienced a little bit of sexual harassment in my youth when working at a local McDonald's but, being a guy, it was the only time and I was able to put a stop to be rather quickly. However, being in software engineering for the past 12 years, I have seen the sexual harassment of several women all of which never saw a proper resolution. For instance I worked at a small company that was later bought by a larger company. One of the women I worked with was propositioned by our boss. She reported him to HR and the next day HR scheduled a meeting with her, HR, the CEO and her boss that propositioned her. They told her that her boss denied it then proceeded to ask her for the next half an hour why she was lying and why she wanted to damage his career. She left for the rest of the day in tears. Over half of his team, including me, left within the month. It was disgusting. During my exit interview I made sure to cite it along with his frequent trips to our area where, when she wasn't there, would pick up her photo of her and her boyfriend and just stare at it along with his fraudulent billing of clients. Nothing ever happened to him, he just got moved into another group because his team got too small. It's really disheartening to hear story after story about this and even witnessing it yourself. I can't imagine what it's like to be on the receiving end. I worry about this not only because of it being a bad thing but I also have two daughters and it fills me with dread, after what I've seen, what they may go through. What can be done to stop such toxicity? Do we need stronger laws? Are there groups for women who can turn to?
  • jacquesm 10y ago
    > sexual women Unfortunate typo there.
    • BinaryIdiot 10y ago
      Oops. Thanks!
  • pm24601 10y ago
    Maybe we as men got to let the women know we have their back? Defend them when they are not around? Don't stay silent? I don't know for certain either.
  • csours 10y ago
• Gargoyle 10y ago
  This is getting fast attention far beyond the tech crowd. There could be some serious fallout for Uber (well-deserved if the story is true).
• Nemant 10y ago
  You should name every single person involved
• unityByFreedom 10y ago
  > When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering Holy *. How long until Uber reports this as fake news? Jose Moran, move over. Tech companies have a new scandal. Edit: Ok ok, HN doesn't like the jab at Tesla..
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• alper 10y ago
  This is not exclusive to Uber. By now I'd say that most companies with skewed diversity statistics likely are toxic and dysfunctional.
• sna1l 10y ago
  I think this proves that HR should be fundamentally separate from a company. The incentives are setup for a company's HR division to try and maximize success for the company. Just like the NFL and NBA have player's associations, HR should be managed by external companies, or at least separated by function (supporting employees vs management). Companies would still be paying the HR teams, so incentives wouldn't be optimal, but seems like it would be a step in the right direction.
  • curuinor 10y ago
    Player's associations aren't companies, they're unions. They do union things in the unioniest way and do a pretty alright job.
  • gtirloni 10y ago
    By ensuring unethical/illegal behavior doesn't go unaddressed, HR is working to maximize success for the company. With that in mind, it's in the company's best interest to have HR be a core department with proper training, funding and oversight. The arguments frequently rehashed on HN about "HR is not there to help" only make sense in dysfunctional companies (which there's a lot of, unfortunately). Moving HR to a separate organization, outside the company, won't help with that.
• soneca 10y ago
  In São Paulo, where I live, taxi apps appeared a couple of years before Uber entering the market. It took the market by storm, so every single cab had to be in at least one the two major apps (Easytaxi and 99taxi). It was easy, fast and safe to call a cab anytime. But it was still expensive. Uber came with its black cars. No one bothered. But Uber came with UberX and then Uber pool. It was a revolution, 50% cheaper. It exploded. The taxi market was/is dominated by corruption, with its medallions monopoly. Capitalism worked. But capitalism dont stop working when Uber is winning. Now the taxi apps, specially the rebranded 99, that was the clear winner in the taxi apps fight raised hundreds of millions with the chinese and is ready to fight Uber. They now have regular taxi, a 30% discount taxi (that usually matches Uber price) and a Uber-like service with common people cars, all in the same app. My social network mostly went back to using taxi, now that the price matches, because SP is not an easy city to transit. Uber drivers rely 100% on Waze/Google Maps. This ofyen leads to errors. Taxi drivers who drive around for years, sometimes decades are more reliable. My point being: I dont believe in karma, but capitalism is a bitch. If you are that arrogant to mismanage that bad your resources when you are winning, when the market forces strike back, you wont be strong enough to stand on your feet.
  • m0zzie 10y ago
    We are seeing the exact same thing here in Australia. An app called GoCatch which was a taxis-only app for around 5 years but moved into the ride share market last year. It used to be very difficult to get one of their cars in Sydney, but now I can get one most times I try. Many people seem to like the idea of a locally-owned company versus the tax-dodging (in their eyes) juggernaut from overseas.
    • rstuart4133 10y ago
      So GoCatch works well now? I must give it another go. There is very little price difference between Taxi's and Uber here, and recently the Taxi companies have changed their tune from "it's all so unfair" to "we can and will adapt and compete". Interesting times ...
      • 10y ago
• joeld42 10y ago
  Just to be another anecdotal data point, I am a white male iOS engineer with tons of experience on top-grossing apps. I live a few miles from Uber's new building in Oakland. But I would never consider working for them because of stories like this and others. This kind of behavior doesn't just cost them good hires among women and minorities. Having a toxic culture makes it hard to hire any decent people, and if only toxic people will agree to work there, it will just perpetuate things. Maybe they don't care now, they're growing, they're sitting on big piles of cash, they can afford to be assholes if they want. Our culture regrettably gives them that option, even rewards for it sometimes. But companies ossify as they grow, disruptors become entrenched and it takes a long, long time to shake a reputation like this. They've created a new market but they're not entitled to it forever.
• uber_031917 10y ago
  Uber employee here. This was a disheartening story to read to say the least. I hope that she sues as her case is abundantly clear and the response by HR and the management chain was absolutely unacceptable. If what happened is true, they should be held accountable. Unfortunately, from my perspective, Uber has a track record of lack of accountability when it comes to leadership/managers. Pretty much everyone I know at Uber believes that Josh Mohrer [1] and Emil Michael [2] should have been fired. It's probably fair to say both are generally regarded as being high performers, but what they did was extremely damaging to the reputation of the company and the fact they weren't held accountable only worsens that reputation. I think that generally Uber is a positive influence in the world. It has created work opportunities for millions essentially out of thin air has fundamentally changed how people think about transportation in cities for the better. Uber is certainly disruptive and its methods and behavior have been brash at times which has often resulted in a disproportionate amount of scrutiny, both deserved (comments and actions targeting journalists, sexism) and otherwise ("support" of Trump, #deleteuber, and surge price "gouging"). For me, Uber is still a place filled with many talented people working on interesting, challenging problems. But a story like this is a tough pill to swallow. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-25/colleagues-defend-ubers-emil-michael https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-25/colleague... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/uber-said-to-investigate-new-york-manager-who-tracked-journalist https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/uber-said...
  • mtanski 10y ago
    > I think that generally Uber is a positive influence in the world I'm pretty sure you can replace Uber in that sentence with "ride sharing".
  • tptacek 10y ago
    So don't swallow it! Spit it back out at them. Uber is entirely dependent on the goodwill of its engineers. They're irreplaceable. Uber's financial situation is such that they're absolutely required to execute. They cannot afford organized employee protests and will cave to them like an overripe grape trying to hold up a cinderblock. People like you could be running the table there. Why not hold them to account? What's the worst thing that happens? It doesn't work out and you eventually switch jobs. But the best case outcome? You get to work on exciting, important problems for a company that is accountable to its team and their prevailing beliefs and principles. That sounds pretty awesome to me.
• necessity 10y ago
  Everything is sexual harassment now jesus fucking christ. Uber is making so many SJWs pissed lately that it gives me more and more joy to use it.
  • jacquesm 10y ago
    Being propositioned for sex on your first day is about as qualified as it gets when it comes to sexual harassment. Do fuck off.
• kbenson 10y ago
  The saddest thing about this to me is that she decided to stay for so long, and let the incidents stack up. I'm not sure if that's indicative of her personality, or what women in the industry have come to expect, and thus have a much higher tolerance for bullshit of this caliber. Unfortunately, from the repeated stories we hear I suspect it's the latter, and that's fucking tragic.
  • FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    Sadly, this is par for the course for many women in tech and finance fields, and America in general right now. Look no further than our president for evidence of tacit approval of this behavior. I learned how to "bro" at a young age as I went to an all boys super preppy high school. Even though I'm a minority, I'm one of the "good ones" <sic>, so they feel comoftable not speaking in pc terms to me. The things I've heard are so disturbing and disgusting that .... Why should I even continue this sentence when we have a tremendous defender of women's rights in the White House. There is no greater advocate of gender equality than the President. He's the least sexist person I've ever met and the best deal maker on advancing the cause, without parallel.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      Wow, that's a jarring shift to heavy sarcasm that would be solidly in Poe's law territory without your first statement. > so they feel comfortable not speaking in pc terms to me. I think Donald Glover covered that fairly well in the first episode of Atlanta in the Flo Rida scene (both of them), but I'm not really one to judge the accuracy... (why is it so hard to find clips of that show?)
  • mathgenius 10y ago
    The older we get the less we put up with bullshit, the more we trust our own intuition about when it's time to get out. Unfortunately this only comes (at least for me) after many painful experiences. (Nothing like what OP has had to endure tho.)
• kevinburke 10y ago
  Mike Isaac (reporter for the New York Times) is collecting more stories of harassment & toxic work environment at Uber: https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/833445850130944000 https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/833445850130944000
  • brudgers 10y ago
    One of the things that this article got me thinking about is how much less effective that model is. Sure, some Sunday from now, maybe there's a NYT expose that reaches a national audience. Before that happens, the NYT reporters will reach out to Uber senior management for comment and give it time to compose some hollow PR about how seriously it takes the matter and that will run alongside the actual stories of problems. Here we get the raw unvarnished story of someone effected and people can make their own conclusions. There's no middle man trying to make a buck and the making a buck is why NYT it's 'maybe there's an NYT expose.' Lawyers, advertisers, and other more important news all are considerations at editorial board meetings. Lots of stories get spiked.
    • moultano 10y ago
      The upside is that you get a professional team of fact checkers evaluating the claims. This allows (for instance) people to come forward anonymously but still credibly.
    • nthcxd 10y ago
      I get where you are coming from but here is no such thing as perfectly objective account or opinion. Whatever second-hand experience you gather will be colored by agenda and biases of the people conveying those messages to you. Given that, I would be more comfortable with having a _relatively_ reliable source that I can vet via reputation and prior experience. It still doesn't mean I would just take that as a ground truth. But it's a significant difference between that and just having a bunch of anonymous eyewitness accounts. Taking anything anybody says online seriously IS where fake news come from.
  • azernik 10y ago
    Hopefully he can turn the story around fast enough to get in while public attention is focused here.
• rmason 10y ago
  Never ever take a problem to HR. HR represents the company's viewpoint at all times, not yours ever. You will never get a satisfactory resolution. HR exists solely to help 'manage' the work force. Most companies that I've worked at it does a very poor job of it. Someday the HR department will get replaced by software, in my opinion the sooner the better.
• ben_olive 10y ago
  HR fucked up and the manager should not have talked to her that way. Absolutely agree. I believe she has grounds to sue if she wishes. Now, I think it's easy to take this type of situations and overeact. The behavior Susan described is not appropriate. That said, I think there is a trend to classify any romantic behavior or advances as sexual assault and innpapropriate behavior. Nowadays I would have a very hard time asking a girl out at work. Is it really that crazy that you might meet a girl/guy you might want to date at work? I have had 2 girls ask me out at work in the past 3 years. Both times I just wasn't interested and politely declined. No big deal. I have also had girls approach me in professional settings such as conferences and ask me for my number and invite me for drinks. Come on people, we are human, we are attracted to each other and it's ok to approach other people as long as we are respectful and have some common sense. Let's not pretend we are robots. I think the pendulum is swinging too much to the other side at the moment. It's easy to just generalyze and overeact. The opinion I just expressed would be considered very controversial nowadays and I would not dare to utter it in my office. People overeacted to drugs in the 80s and initiated a "drug war" that resulted in 1000s of people to be incarcerated for no good reason and billions of dollars wasted. Let's try to learn something from the past.
  • kenferry 10y ago
    Did you read the whole article? It sounds like you're only reacting to the first incident. And yes, anyone in your management chain making moves on you is 100% inappropriate. There's a power relationship there. Most companies have explicit guidelines about things like this.
    • ben_olive 10y ago
      I did, and I agree that it was completely inapropriate. They mishandled the situation repeatedly and I agree with most of what she is complaining about - apart from the leather jacket thing. I'm reacting to some of the conversation going on here (very much a torch and picthfork crowd for some threads).
      • jonathankoren 10y ago
• freyr 10y ago
  > "or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that." I fully believe that her manager sexually harassed her and should have faced much harsher consequences, but it's almost inconceivable that HR would frame her options this way. No doubt she feared retribution, but did HR really tell her to expect it? It's hard to know what to make of specifics like these, when words get paraphrased. In any case, the manager's behavior and HR's response were inexcusable.
  • cjbprime 10y ago
    Please try to get better at conceiving things, it's important. This is totally plausible given the rest of the extremely credible account.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • freyr 10y ago
      > Please try to get better at conceiving things, it's important. Snotty replies probably don't have the effect you intend. The author was brave to write this, and the article is important. My negative post was probably unwarranted, but it was only meant as stylistic criticism, not to cast doubt on her credibility. There are several quotes that seem paraphrased in a way that benefits her point of view. Another example: her manager says he won't order the women's jackets because they cost "a little more than the men's jackets." Did he really say they cost a little more? Or did he say they cost more? People rarely add superfluous adjectives that weaken their own argument. This probably seems like I'm nitpicking, and I am. Maybe her manager really did say they'd only cost "a little bit more," and maybe HR suggested the idea that her manager would probably give her a bad review. I don't know. But if not, my point is this: if you're writing as damning an account as this, you can afford to write it neutrally, particularly when a sentence that begins with "He said...", "They said...", etc. It will actually come off stronger.
• oculusthrift 10y ago
  i'm not doubting her story but seems strange she cant keep a job for long. 6 months at plaid and 4 months at her next company? Then only 1 year at Uber?
• mariojv 10y ago
  Thank you for writing this. I hope that you're happy in your new position. It's important that people speak out against sexism and harassment like this in publicly visible ways. I look forward to reading your book on microservices.
• mark_l_watson 10y ago
  IANAL, but isn't the described behavior by HR and the management very much illegal? I thought there were laws in place to protect workers. I hope Susan Fowler has a wonderful career.
  • josephlord 10y ago
    Speeding is illegal too, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
• bootload 10y ago
  "When I joined Uber, the organization I was part of was over 25% women. By the time I was trying to transfer to another eng organization, this number had dropped down to less than 6%. Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn't transfer were quitting or preparing to quit." Uber is bleeding engineers to other startups. Will the replacements be of the same calibre?
• hcho3 10y ago
  Just deleted Uber from my phone. Is there a good alternative to Ubereats?
  • revscat 10y ago
    Grubhub.
  • wengachang 10y ago
    As if you matter!! Hahahahha. Uber has 10 Billion dollars or more in funding. They can buy food for your 50 generations.
  • superduper22 10y ago
    Postmates
  • codezero 10y ago
    What area? Sprig is good in Bay Area.
  • amyjess 10y ago
    Eat24 is my favorite. DoorDash is pretty good too, but they're a bit expensive.
• msIntern 10y ago
  its just a coincidence she has a book coming out she wants to sell and that she has never held a job more than 1 year. (6 months, 4 months, longest = 1 year).
  • cjhanks 10y ago
    Good point, if true.
• medius 10y ago
  Uber is such a shit company. My wife is a software engineer and I can't even imagine her having to deal with anything like this.
• joering2 10y ago
  > Uber was a pretty good-sized company at that time, and I had pretty standard expectations of how they would handle situations like this. I expected that I would report him to HR, they would handle the situation appropriately, and then life would go on - unfortunately, things played out quite a bit differently. It is my time to thank Hacker News because how many times I read it here rule number one: HR is not there to help you with your issues, but rather to determine how your issues could negatively affect the company PR image and company itself. The don't care about yoy or how to help you out - they care how to make it so that company doesn's suffer because of whatever you going through - weather fair to you or not. So thank you guys and I'm quite suprised someone like Susan did not know that.
• akras14 10y ago
  1282 points in 2 hours and it's NOT at the top of Hacker News?
  • grzm 10y ago
    It's probably attracted a lot of flags and set off the overheated discussion detector, both of which will push down a submission.
  • purple-again 10y ago
    It was at the top for like 2 hours already. It's at number 2 right now.
• caconym_ 10y ago
  Bald-faced lying seems to be the name of the game in HR. My first significant encounter with any HR organization ended up with me catching them in a lie trying to manipulate me into signing something (I never did sign it). I was astonished by how ready and willing they apparently were to try this strategy on me. It was a good learning experience, in retrospect, and I'm glad that I did not fall for it. This was at a company that generally treated me alright and was staffed with generally reasonable people, so I can't imagine the Kafkaesque nightmare that it must be to work at a notoriously chaotic, evil company like Uber, especially as a woman (which I am not). The lesson, as so many other people in this thread have already said, is that HR is not looking out for you. Keep your own counsel and get everything in writing, and prepare for their attempts to bully and gaslight you into a marginalized position.
• jordigh 10y ago
  > how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others What the ever-loving fuck. They're talking about programming computers. HR at the company actually hinted that your ethnic background or gender can make you better at computers?
  • adrienne 10y ago
    Why wouldn't they? I'm pretty sure a majority of Hacker News commenters believe that bullshit, too, and many of them are quite happy to say it here over and over again.
• wengachang 10y ago
  >>>>He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him So that was Susan's interpretation? Did he say "Come, let's have sex babe". Boo Fucking Hoo. It takes two to tango. Why did he reach out to you? What was the sexual message? Post it. I don't think someone working at Uber would say "come let's have sex". If the story is credible, then why HR did not take any action. I call bullshit. Maybe you are an old hag who partied through the school and now does not get any attention and goes around town claiming sexual harassment. Do you think the "Betas" on hacker news care about you? Most of them are busy dreaming and masturbating to you. Post the chat publicly instead of making accusations. Also, why post it now after ONE year? Is that because you have book coming out and need publicity? Typical women.
• kentucky100 10y ago
  Sounds horrible. I do wonder if this post would have come out if uber was using stripe for payments.
• cjhanks 10y ago
  'I pointed out that I was publishing a book with O'Reilly, speaking at major tech conferences, and doing all of the things that you're supposed to do to have an "upward career trajectory", but they said it didn't matter and I needed to prove myself as an engineer.' Maybe that's why she didn't get a promotion. Personally, I have had colleagues attempt similar things. When they embark on these external endeavors they have significantly reduced quality work in their primary job. Obviously I don't know this author and I don't work at Uber.
  • joshu 10y ago
    Having external recognition including speaking and writing can be part of the promotion requirements. They were certainly in mine when I was at Yahoo.
  • SwellJoe 10y ago
    That's a bizarre and backward way to look at it. In a growth company, employees provide value in a lot of indirect, but important, ways. Having employees speak at conferences is a very common recruiting tactic; often, good people are at conferences, and when they hear about a great company to work for with smart people who give good talks, they want to work there, too. Books are similar. Reading Site Reliability Engineering makes me want to work at Google (even though I know I really don't want to work at Google). Good people bring in more good people, and good people are enthusiastic and do cool things outside of work. The author is probably someone I'd want to work with, based on her enthusiasm for her job and her obviously effective time management (I wrote a technical book once, and it took a year longer than I'd planned). The people who convinced someone like her to leave a place are people I definitely wouldn't want to work with.
    • cjhanks 10y ago
      I suppose my in my life I have found people with ~20 months of real-world experience who write books about technical topics in domains which are well understood... are kind of problematic. Sure, sending out your experts with 5+ years experience in a specific field is great evangelism. But that's not what's being discussed here.
• male_no_30122 10y ago
  A blog post like this gets so much attention where is the fucking evidence? I am a male from Iran having spent more than half of my life here and worked in Silicon Valley long enough to be considered an easy target for labels like terrorist and misogynist simultaneously (finally I'm beginning to believe it, how slow of me.) I have to say there is more and more similarities between the two with each passing day, with very little substance and meaning behind those concepts, just a vague feeling of unfairness, a thread to our identity and a powerful tool to control and manipulate and not on behalf of the proclaimed victims of course. Why should YC or VCs give more money to females founders, blacks and hispanics? [1] [2] Are we not pawns in an ugly game of moral superiority and virtue played out by those looking to profit from our moral outrage and fear? [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/2017-yc-annual-letter http://blog.samaltman.com/2017-yc-annual-letter (much high acceptance rate for those demographics) [2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/winnie-grabs-2-5-million-for-its-directory-of-family-friendly-places/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/winnie-grabs-2-5-million-f... (a publication about babies raises 2.5MM, female founders, having worked at places like Google and Twitter gets you a free pass with VCs if you're a woman? Homebrew Capital: Well her, she must be special not her male-counter-parts. What is special and investment-worthy about this publication and those founders, and not just adding an uptick in their portfolio's founder ratio? Hey look we got two female founders in one round!)
• tankerdude 10y ago
  I don't know about you guys, but I've been to sexual harassment training. What Susan documented could be translated to tens of millions in fines and damages. If it's this egregious, it's could be much, much, higher.
• minimaxir 10y ago
  Travis Kalanick's response: https://twitter.com/travisk/status/833480964315557888 https://twitter.com/travisk/status/833480964315557888 > 1/ What's described here is abhorrent & against everything we believe in. Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired. > 2/ I've instructed our CHRO Liane to conduct an urgent investigation. There can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber.
  • YPCrumble 10y ago
    It's a shame that he condones harassment until it reaches the top of hacker news.
    • nostrademons 10y ago
      It's also going viral on Facebook and getting picked up by media; I've had 4 Facebook friends share it in the last couple hours, and my wife (not in tech) was just reading it.
      • aioprisan 10y ago
        It's now on CNN, CNBC, the New York Times, and pretty much everywhere else.
      • azernik 10y ago
        True virality was achieved when a non-techie friend shared the Jezebel write-up.
    • blazespin 10y ago
      Maybe that's why he hired a new CHRO.
  • beambot 10y ago
    How about independent investigation?
    • bergeoisie 10y ago
• mroudpisogynist 10y ago
  Now I want to use Uber even more.
• syswsi 10y ago
  I'm curious if it's actually worth keeping high performing people on your company if they create a lot of internal conflict and employee turnover. Have there been studies that have looked into this? Are there HR tools that track this? This situation reminds me of the Jeremy Clarkson Effect (https://blog.vanillaforums.com/help/how-to/dealing-with-toxic-community-member/ https://blog.vanillaforums.com/help/how-to/dealing-with-toxi...) where you keep people on board because they are high performers/popular until the point where the amount of damage they cause versus value they provide is too high and must let them go. If, for example, you lose 5 good tech people because of one amazing tech person, is it still worth to have that one amazing person? I feel like if you could quantify something like this, it would be easier to get rid of toxic people.
  • bpicolo 10y ago
    It's absolutely not worth it. The 10x engineer is an engineer who helps make everyone around them better. A toxic employee is not that person.
  • bkirkby 10y ago
    maybe not an exact match, but the "dark triad" traits are shown to be effective for individual career progress, but negatively correlated to organizational performance. Harvard Business Review did an article ("Why Bad Guys Win at Work") about a few relevant pieces of research in this vein: https://hbr.org/2015/11/why-bad-guys-win-at-work https://hbr.org/2015/11/why-bad-guys-win-at-work
• mendelk 10y ago
  Uber CEO responded in this article[0]: > I have just read Susan Fowler's blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber -- and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired. [0] http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/19/14664474/uber-sexism-allegations http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/19/14664474/uber-sexism-alleg...
  • mathgenius 10y ago
    > It's the first time this has come to my attention the guy must be asleep at the wheel.
    • Kurtz79 10y ago
      It is at least a mildly sane response.
• neom 10y ago
  Uber CEO: https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/833470379154931714 https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/833470379154931714
• fred_is_fred 10y ago
  Say this three times in the mirror before you report anything: "HR exists to protect the company". Yes it's shitty and unfortunate, but I wouldn't expect much from them. Edit: Hit enter too soon, but does anyone have a better solution that going to HR? I've seen it several times that this is the outcome, manager protected, employee shunned or moved. In one case the employee was given 12 months of severance if she agreed not to sue, nothing was done to the manager.
• aioprisan 10y ago
  This is yet another reason why I would never work for Uber and will be deleting my Uber account. There's a reason why Uber has one the worst reputations as tech companies go and here we have clear, documented proof of it.
• mdlcc 10y ago
  Delete your account: https://help.uber.com/h/24010fe7-7a67-4ee5-9938-c734000b144a https://help.uber.com/h/24010fe7-7a67-4ee5-9938-c734000b144a
• kposehn 10y ago
  Uber team member here. While I can't speak to OP's post about her particular Org, I can say that the one I'm in (marketing) is very much non-toxic and a wonderful place to work. I'm profoundly sad she had such a bad experience and hope she is much happier now.
• asah 10y ago
  There aren't enough upvotes in the world for writing this. Susan, you're a hero. reader note: Susan is pretty famous in SRE circles: it's doubly gutsy for her to write this. PS I'm a guy and a valley veteran.
• mtw 10y ago
  Who here is surprised? The CEO is a proud arrogant son of a b*tch, sexist, supports Trump. His whole team treats drivers like dirt or disposable "resources". The whole attitude then gets adopted by management. What I find surprising is people being surprised or trying to understand these kind of reports. Or why people try to get a job at Uber. Maybe they want to find a reason why they are still taking Uber. Yes Uber is innovative and cheaper, but you are encouraging a company with exploitative practices.
• male_no_30122 10y ago
  A blog post like this gets so much attention where is the fucking evidence? I am a male from Iran having spent more than half of my life here and worked in Silicon Valley long enough to be considered an easy target for labels like terrorist and misogynist simultaneously (finally I'm beginning to believe it, how slow of me.) I have to say there is more and more similarities between the two with each passing day, with very little substance and meaning behind those concepts, just a vague feeling of unfairness, a thread to our identity and a powerful tool to control and manipulate and not on behalf of the proclaimed victims of course. Why should YC or VCs give more money to females founders, blacks and hispanics? [1] [2] Are we not pawns in an ugly game of moral superiority and virtue played out by those looking to profit from our moral outrage and fear? [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/2017-yc-annual-letter http://blog.samaltman.com/2017-yc-annual-letter (much high acceptance rate for those demographics) [2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/winnie-grabs-2-5-million-f.. https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/winnie-grabs-2-5-million-f.... (a publication about babies raises 2.5MM, female founders, having worked at places like Google and Twitter gets you a free pass with VCs if you're a woman? Homebrew Capital: Well her, she must be special not her male-counter-parts. What is special and investment-worthy about this publication and those founders, and not just adding an uptick in their portfolio's founder ratio? Hey look we got two female founders in one round!
  • sctb 10y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly reposting its flagged comments.
• KirinDave 10y ago
  It's quite unfortunate that it requires someone to take a huge public risk to bring attention to this, despite the fact we all live around it every day. Many companies have this problem. Everyday we can make it better, make it less prevalent, and change how management, engineering, designing, hiring, recruiting, and socialization are done. Nothing is going to change if all that comes of this is folks hemming and hawing on chat forums. Not much will even change if you decide that this is the final straw to delete Uber. What will make a change is if you go to work on Tuesday and ask your HR rep, "What is the protocol for this?" Make sure they have it in writing. At a small company? Ask the founder to make sure this is covered. Make sure that everyone agrees that these actions cannot go unpunished because people are "high" performers.
• mirimir 10y ago
  OK, so I had no clue who Susan Fowler was. And now I am impressed: https://fledglingphysicist.com/2013/12/12/if-susan-can-learn-physics-so-can-you/ https://fledglingphysicist.com/2013/12/12/if-susan-can-learn... https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/13/so-you-want-to-learn-physics https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/13/so-you-want-to-l...
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• rand000 10y ago
  Not surprising for a company who's internal motto has been, "drivers get paid, riders get laid."
• rand000 10y ago
  Not surprising for a company whose internal motto has been, "drivers get paid, riders get laid."
• uber_burner 10y ago
  Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I started as an engineer at Uber about 7 months ago and sadly none of this surprises me. I feel for Ms. Fowler and seeing this gives me even greater motivation to leave. I can't speak for the rest of the organization but can say that Uber's engineering org has a lot of assholes like the ones Ms. Fowler describes. My negative experience doesn't compare to Ms. Fowler's, but what I've seen basically boils down to: 1) Senior engineers and managers who lack anything approaching maturity. A lot of toxic personalities have been promoted into positions of seniority because they were at some point considered high performers. Many managers and senior engineers are concerned mainly with expanding their influence over improving the organization, helping those with less experience or — god forbid — actually getting anything done. 2) Diseased work culture. 60-hour work weeks seen as normal and encouraged as an enactment of Uber's "Always Be Hustling" cultural value. Tons of drinking, sometimes forced on you by your manager or your manager's manager. Too many unhappy, burnt out people fearful of negative performance reviews. 3) A lot of this stems from our CEO, Travis Kalanick, being profoundly out of touch. He's constitutionally incapable of acknowledging the company's real problems (toxic culture, massive unprofitability, drivers who hate us to name a few). There are some fantastic engineers and plenty of good people at Uber, but the company rewards the bad eggs far too often and it's killing us from within.
• rdtsc 10y ago
  > I was then told that I had to make a choice: (i) I could either go and find another team and then never have to interact with this man again, or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that. Holy shit. There are terrible people who make into positions of power and then abuse it. But it is whole other layer of horribleness when there is institutional corruption and evil which encourages and protects that. With a nice little bonus of blackmail on the top -- "you'll get bad reviews if you stay, be careful". It is humiliating to have that happen to someone, then the humiliation and hurt triples when you realize the system that you hoped is there to fix the problem and stand behind you is helping the perpetrator. I have seen some really good programmers, if the 10x myth was true, it certainly was true for them. But I wouldn't bat an eye kicking them out in cases like this.
• mikejones85 10y ago
  It's easy to blame Uber given their track records. I don't disagree that Uber should have fired that manager and let that be the end of the story. However, from the upper management's perspective, it was probably difficult for Uber to let go an experienced manager because of a complaint from a relatively new employee. Her LinkedIn profile tells me that she's also quite inexperienced. Please correct me if I'm wrong: Am I the only one who picked up the signal that the storyteller was an alpha female and a drama queen? Really would love to hear different perspectives on this.
  • moises_silva 10y ago
    Wow, I'm in genuine disbelief of what makes you call drama queen a woman that was so clearly sexually harassed? comments over chat from her manager telling her about his sexual life is something he should just let go? hearing stories of other women going thru the same? she should just 'grow a pair' and let it go? And then you condone what management does because it is a difficult decision to let go a performant manager, so you're going to ignore evidence (screen shots of the sexual harassment, and, apparently not the first time either)?? Holy cow, if you think that's ok and management had a "hard" choice, then we live in parallel universes. If you want to argue she's lying, fine, we have no proof other than her word so far, but if we're going to discuss the article content, how is that not harassment and how does she end up as a drama queen?
• jacquesm 10y ago
  Mainstream media are picking up this story now: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/19/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-says-orders-urgent-investigation-after-allegation-of-harassment-gender-bias-at-company.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/19/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-says...
• misingnoglic 10y ago
  I've never been so happy to have been rejected by a company before.
• damosneeze 10y ago
  Interesting to note that Uber has scheduled an "Uber Women in Engineering & Leadership Conference". I noticed this last year, and it was supposed to happen in November 2016. They bumped it to February 2017, before bumping it again to December 2017. Coincidence? https://www.meetup.com/UberEvents/events/230301225/ https://www.meetup.com/UberEvents/events/230301225/
• princetontiger 10y ago
  HR is fucking useless.
• DelaneyM 10y ago
  I hate stories like this, because there's such an easy solution: hire more women. Nobody should ever have to work with a single-gender reporting tree; in the five or so steps between each individual contributor and the CTO there should be at least one woman. It's not an impossible, or even implausible, goal. Throw a little money at it and widen the funnel, and you'll find plenty of absolutely incredible women. It's even self-perpetuating - each woman brings a network of peers to the table and makes further recruiting that much easier. But that first hire is a doozy... I've turned down jobs in the valley before because I'd be the only woman in my org (it was only a tie-breaking factor, but a big one.)
  • macintux 10y ago
    Given how poorly she was treated by women in HR, and how many women left Uber per her statistics, I don't think "hire more women" sounds like a solution to their ills.
    • DelaneyM 10y ago
      A woman in HR is still in HR, she's responsible for protecting the company from employees (and not the other way around). A woman as her boss' boss is responsible for the health & effectiveness of the team, and is likely to be far more aware of the impact these sorts of things have on cohesion and morale.
      • macintux 10y ago
        To be clear, more women in management is a positive. I just don't think it's sufficient.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  Why would anyone expect Uber to be anything BUT a sexist rathole of a place to work?
• euphoria83 10y ago
  I have generally been skeptical about joining Uber. I was in the job market a couple of months back and was always apprehensive when interacting with their HR. I have received recruiting mails from them indicating that I would be lucky to work at Uber, instead of the opposite tone in general. Uber is probably losing many potential employees due to this. There is no answer to the retort that Uber is successful. If that was the only guiding light for humanity, then we should just be living as savages surviving on who can punch the hardest.
• jeevand 10y ago
  https://medium.com/@smsowmya/harassment-at-apple-my-perspective-ea0168e15002#.1rx8vvcxp https://medium.com/@smsowmya/harassment-at-apple-my-perspect... For all the delete Uber folks do you also throw your iPhones?
• LargeCompanies 10y ago
  Uber is the worst company even to its customers that have the unpleasantries in having to deal with any customer service issue. My uber got hacked and some jerk took a supposed $1k ride in London on my dime. As soon as I found out I wanted to cancel my account but uber didn't allow users to cancel their accounts. I had to send an email and wait. Also they know about the hack and blamed the users for letting their accounts being hacked via not having a crazy strong password. They need to burn to the ground .... run by total greedy douchebag pigs!
• AlexCoventry 10y ago
  Since this is a clear-cut case of sexual harassment by a company with very deep pockets, Ms Fowler must have talked to a lawyer, and the lawyer OK'd the OP. Does that indicate anything about how the case is going? Such as that the settlement negotiations are at an impasse?
• candiodari 10y ago
  "The ramifications of these political games were significant: projects were abandoned left and right, OKRs were changed multiple times each quarter, nobody knew what our organizational priorities would be one day to the next, and very little ever got done. We all lived under fear that our teams would be dissolved, there would be another re-org, and we'd have to start on yet another new project with an impossible deadline. It was an organization in complete, unrelenting chaos." With the exception of a startup that was on the verge of failing, this is every organisation I've ever worked for. Including two of the big silicon valley giants (one who got cut down to size after 2000, one that's still big). I wonder if the underlying reason is the same. I must say I've also reported people to HR, and I have regretted EVERY interaction with HR I've ever had. Initiated by me or otherwise. My attitude to meeting HR now is that there's 2 options: schmooze and snooze (as in have "a good meeting in which there is one and only one accomplishment: agreement between both parties that no other meetings are necessary"), or please contact my lawyer at ... (And I do wonder if women's experiences are the same. WTF)
• blazespin 10y ago
  Now you know why Uber paid so much money for Otto. It's the only way they would ever get that talent.
• blazespin 10y ago
  Part of the problem is that men frequently misconstrue a women's natural instinct for being social and friendly as a sexual overture, usually this is because they're so used to other men being so unfriendly.
  • potluckyears 10y ago
    Part of the problem is thinking that women have a natural instinct for being social and friendly. Attributing characteristics stereotypically associated with a particular gender to "natural instincts" is part of why women get such a bad rap in technical fields.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • kevinnk 10y ago
    That's incredibly sexist.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• bitmapbrother 10y ago
  What a despicable company. Change is happening not because a change was needed, but because it's generating negative press. Everyone in HR and management that participated in these lies and behavior needs to be fired. That's how you fix the problem.
• uladzislau 10y ago
  The hiring process at Uber already raises some red flags - so if you're not blind and totally ignorant you'll get the cue and glimpse of the company culture and your potential future there.
• gautamsomani 10y ago
  Uber is taking action: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/uber-sexual-harassment-investigation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/uber-sexual-hara...
• jheriko 10y ago
  This is almost difficult to believe. Almost. I always really struggle to imagine these sorts of things happening in a large, organised way. Allowing this sort of thing to go on in your business should be an enormous risk. It amounts to a conspiracy, and its hard to believe that any one employee with the interests of the business at heart would allow it to continue, much less that very many people in a group would, and its extremely difficult to swallow that someone on the level of CTO would fob this sort of thing off rather than crapping their pants and lighting fires up under arses to get it investigated and fixed. The other part I find hard to believe is that anyone, let alone large numbers of people can put up with this sort of treatment at work for so long without taking very serious action. I don't mean going to HR, or reporting it to X, Y or Z organisation or authority - I mean really, seriously decisive action - e.g. force some director/owner to pay attention personally, and provide them evidence, and record how it goes in case they are part of the problem - however that ends you are in a very strong position to proceed, with the wrong outcome quit and /do the right thing/ and continue to pursue it for the sake of others - with the correct outcome the problem is solved. I'll concede that eventually in this retelling there are more serious efforts, but its not far enough, fast enough - and I struggle to believe that "working with smart people" or any other such thing would make up for it. At the same time its all horribly believable... One reason being that its happening in Silicon Valley, and more generally the USA. Compared to my experiences of the UK and Europe, workers rights in the US are terrible, discrimination is rife and the legal system very strongly favours the privileged and wealthy. Don't get me wrong we have our problems of discrimination and poor workplaces too... but, especially for office workers and professionals, there are lots of incentives for employees and employers to put a stop to it, and they generally carry a very low risk. Another reason its believable is that when you don't feel safe, have to make expenditure and/or rely on your income for survival I can appreciate not wanting to rock the boat with your employer. I think that is a very selfish and stupid attitude, especially when others will suffer for your inaction, but I can appreciate why people take such positions. However, all that being said there is something here that really irks me. I've been in situations with horrible employers before and I've blabbed about it to the press, and you know what I did? I had evidence, and I published that evidence with my complaints. The author talks about having evidence in their retelling of events, yet doesn't provide it alongside. I'm not sure I'd ever feel comfortable attacking anyone for anything without some evidence - maybe she just didn't think to keep it personally and left it in a work mailbox (an engineer being /that/ sloppy though? hard to swallow still). Its nice to see other people coming forward and backing the claims up... but I'm still left with a niggling doubt because of this. There is always the possibility that people will try and abuse discrimination claims for financial gain... its not reasonable to discount that possibility without some evidence to the contrary (i.e that the claims are valid) - as much as its more social acceptable to not raise this issue. Maybe I'm weird, but that first response from HR would have been given a response offering /one/ chance to get it right without any indication that its a single chance (threats are dumb), followed by a notification of my intent to expose their behaviour publically (again no threat, just polite notice). Some copy of the e-mail thread with a select personal details blocked out in black would be posted on the internet that evening... definitely not days, weeks or months later - after the fact. Still, I'm more inclined to believe it, the way the story is so casually told as if the blog post is to satisfy people asking questions needing the same story to be told, to save time on answering them personally, and not to expose bad behaviour is ... well ... its just sad, but its believable. The impression I get is that the author doesn't really appreciate just how unacceptable this sort of thing is, and is resigned to having to live with it... :(
• thetruthseeker1 10y ago
  I think part of the problem is giving too much power to middle management in tech, which I think is unnecessary and many companies like google have tried to obviate this problem.
• KerrickStaley 10y ago
  I work at Lyft, and although I'm in different shoes (SW male), I really can't see this happening and HR/management stonewalling the complaints. We don't tolerate harassment, and we stand up for each other. I know I try to. [1] I honestly don't understand how Uber attracts talent. Lyft and Uber both work on really interesting problems. [2] The difference is that Uber are, well, the sort of people Travis Kalanick would hire. [3] Lyft is smaller, sure, but we're growing at a very rapid tick (and smaller means there's more for each engineer to do). And though people generally view Lyft as being undifferentiated from Uber, I think we can positively say that we provide a better user experience in many ways, in spite of being a much smaller outfit. And again: we're growing. Fast. Bottom line: if you're looking at a job at Uber, consider applying to Lyft :) It'll be worth your time. [1] "Uplift others" and "Be yourself" are two of our four core values. [2] I joined Lyft after leaving a job at Google and rejecting offers from AirBnB and Dropbox, and I'm 100% confident I would do the same thing over again. Working at Lyft is fun—and impactful. [3] Not to say that they're all bad people; I have lots of friends that work there. But there's a dramatic cultural difference between the two companies, and that culture is driven by the leadership. So the "median" employee at Lyft will be very different from the median at Uber. P.S. So clearly I'm a little biased on this subject :) Take with a grain of salt.
  • nilved 10y ago
    A thread about workplace sexual harassment is hardly an appropriate place to plug your company.
    • stocktech 10y ago
      As someone outside of the valley, the comparison is helpful.
  • crestedtazo 10y ago
    Can I ask why you believe sexual harassment is an appropriate platform for self-advertisement?
• zilchers 10y ago
  Is there an official response from Uber on this?
• giis 10y ago
  Looks like she is fine with coworkers. Managers(and HR) are the main culprits. I wonder what's the background of these managers? Are they came from Google/FB or other startups? Did they behaved same manner in their previous orgs?
• george_ciobanu 10y ago
  Susan, thank you for sharing and please accept a virtual hug to help you shake the experience. I'm amazed you were this patient with such ridiculous behavior.
• grandalf 10y ago
  People are quick to point the finger at Uber's management, culture, etc. But after reading through Susan's reflections, the core problem seems to be in the HR department. Allowing repeat offenses like Susan describes exposes Uber (as well as individual managers) to significant legal liability (in CA and NY, and possibly elsewhere). Any qualified HR person knows and understands these liabilities and makes a very strong case to top management that proper conduct must be enforced. Susan, you are probably entitled to legal remedies for what you went through because the offender had already been warned. The manager in question (and his manager) will also be subject to direct penalties under California law. If you don't do it for yourself, do it for the many other women who will suffer through the same indignities and might not be as empowered as you were to take action.
• patricius 10y ago
  Whenever I hear about a case of a woman being harassed at work, I can't help but wonder how I would react in a similar situation. I am male and I have never experienced workplace harrassment, but if a female co-worker started writing things like those in the story I can't imagine that it would annoy me the slightest. If she was attractive, I would probably be flattered. If it _did_ annoy me, I would ask the person to stop and if that didn't help, I might contact her husband as retaliation. Is it a female-thing to take these sort of situations so seriously, or maybe a personality trait?
  • critiqjo 10y ago
    It _is_ a personality trait that you are talking about alright --- your personality trait, that is. So, thanks for sharing your views, patricius.
  • mathw 10y ago
    Your comment pretty much sums up the prevailing misogynist attitude that gives rise to the kind of workplace culture Susan Fowler is describing. > if that didn't help, I might contact her husband as a retaliation I honestly can't believe you wrote that. If it was an exact replica of the scenario with the genders reversed, the husband probably wouldn't mind anyway (well, maybe would be bothered by the inappropriateness of it, but open relationships are open relationships and you can't assume the husband would think that it was a bad thing because you don't know what his idea of relationship ethics is), but your response to workplace harrassment would be to harrass their spouse instead? Not to go through HR? On a purely practical level, can you imagine working on that person's team after you'd done something like that? > Is it a female-thing to take these sort of situations so seriously, or maybe a personality trait? Okay. Imagine that you turn up somewhere to work. You've got your tech skills and your experience and you're all ready to go. Then your manager's initial interactions with you makes it quite clear that she views you as a prospective sexual partner. She's not got to know you first, you've not had time to demonstrate your professional capabilities to her, she's just propositioning you out of the blue. Would you really not find this problematic? Please bear in mind, being female in US and British culture can be pretty unpleasant at times, with a continued attitude held by a lot of men that it's perfectly okay to proposition strangers in the street in loud voices, or shout suggestive comments at them, or demand "just a smile, love" or a conversation like it's their right to have a conversation with you, or that you _owe_ them a conversation. Imagine you're a woman in the tech industry, where women are chronically under-represented. For you or me, as men, we might find such an incident as this slightly novel and interesting. If we've spent our _entire lives_ dealing with unwanted and unsolicited sexual advances and comments and innuendo, with media representations of our gender as little more than objects of male desire, and then we get such comments, can't you imagine that we might just feel a _little bit fed up_? FTR I'm a gay white cisgender male living in England, so I'm still doing this on 'easy mode'. I've encountered almost zero homophobic behaviour in the workplace, for which I'm very grateful. But I've also always worked in companies which made explicit statements about supporting equality and diversity, and in a country in which it was made illegal before I started my professional life to discriminate on the grounds of sexuality. I've not had to test that legislation, but at least it is there, and we also don't have at-will employment.
• _pmf_ 10y ago
  Repeat after me: HR is not on your side
• hunglee2 10y ago
  An understated issue in this account the role of HR - not only in Uber, but across business in general. For too long they have played the role of employee advocate when in truth they are - and can only ever be - an instrument of the corporation. A modern reworking of unionisation may be the only answer - a p2p network, focused on employee welfare, independent of company interest.
• OOPMan 10y ago
  This blog post has further confirmed something I've thought for a long time. Avoid working at companies with HR departments. In order to have an HR department a company has to be big enough to support a population of what I like to call "floaters". No, I'm not referring to those visual artifacts... No, I'm not referring to people who aren't attached to teams... I am referring to turds, of course. Furthermore, the larger the HR department the more likely there is to be a turd infestation of horrific proportions.
• koolba 10y ago
  Combining this article and Conway's law[1] makes for some very odd software being developed at Uber. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law
• YourInGroup 10y ago
  > I pointed out that I was publishing a book with O'Reilly, speaking at major tech conferences, and doing all of the things that you're supposed to do to have an "upward career trajectory", but they said it didn't matter and I needed to prove myself as an engineer" That's funny bit
• projektfu 10y ago
  What shocks me is the talented engineers still putting in hard work for the benefit of this system that they all hate. Companies blackball employees all the time, but the employees are happy to go the extra mile for an antisocial management structure and a megalomaniac boss? What's wrong with you people?
  • jetcata 10y ago
    My guess is that they really do enjoy the other parts of their job and even the company itself, and are really sad about the bad parts that are making life difficult. That coupled with a hope that things might get better.. Everyone has a different breaking point when it comes to these things. Maybe you just want to stick it out until the first year cliff when it comes to your RSUs so at least you have something to show for the below-market salary you agreed to. It sucks that you have to suffer through this crap but sometimes the potential financial upside you might be able to hold onto is worth a little more pain.
• sidcool 10y ago
  What a shitty HR. Fire the bastards
  • battlebot 10y ago
    First off, I'm a man and I haven't fared a whole lot better over the years. You never go to HR for any reason. I once had an absentee manager whom the entire team complained about. Why the hell the company even protected that asshat is a mystery to me, but they backed him to the hilt while basically censuring all of us. That's not as bad as sexual harassment, but the state some of these companies are in and yet they still manage to operate! And this is why so many working people are stressed to the max and basically just don't give a shit anymore.
• dodyg 10y ago
  This is 2017. How bloody hard is it to treat everybody the same and with respect?
• miesman 10y ago
  After 35 years working as an engineer one of the main things I've learned is that HR is there to protect the company from its employees. Sorry if that sounds cynical but it really is the bottom line. Even still, the fact that HR was unable to step in and even mitigate the destructive behavior (let alone doing the right thing) really speaks to the culture and ineptness of Uber's HR.
• alexashka 10y ago
  "I went home and cried that day, because even aside from impacts to my salary and bonuses, it did have real-world consequences - significant consequences that my management chain was very well aware of. I was enrolled in a Stanford CS graduate program, sponsored by Uber" This deserves to be all caps, and in bold. Ambitious people tend to eat shit sandwiches until they are either immune to them, or realize there's more to life. She pointed out that the number of women at Uber was dwindling - women are smart, they take the 'more to life' route oftentimes. It's just life playing itself out - as long as people are willing to eat shit, for money, like Susan did for a whole year - Ubers are going to be around. No amount of blogging about it is going to help - if you're willing to eat them shit sandwiches, someone out there is going to make em for you :)
• MrAwesomeSauce 10y ago
  This is the third most popular story in Hacker News of all time [1], and I couldn't be happier. This can't have been easy to write but the more posts like this, the more likely people who suffer the same issues at their workplace will share their experiences. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=all https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page...
  • smcl 10y ago
    Yet in under a day it's off the front page despite >900 comments and >3700 points. The post was interesting and shocking ... and I have (anecdotal) memories of less-popular stories sticking around far longer. Weird
    • MrAwesomeSauce 10y ago
      Yeah I was thinking the same thing, there was another post discussing the same topic which also picked up traction fast and after a day it seemed buried and gone. Very bizarre.
• varelse 10y ago
  Ya know, it's not like this was some dude who asked a co-worker out, got turned down, and that was the end of it. Nope, this is full-on sexual harassment enabled by HR that went so far as to ambiguously punish the victim. Every time I think the 21st century is finally here, $h!+ like this happens. The guy should have been terminated immediately once she produced the chat logs. The end. Even from a pure cold-blooded business perspective, if he's showing such poor judgment in this area, god only knows what kind of engineering decisions he's making and how they'll come back to haunt down the road. Also, fire all of Uber's HR implicated in this nonsense. Sure, they're there to protect the company, they failed here, and they'll just fail again.
• OliverJones 10y ago
  Hmm. This kind of stuff is not usually isolated. It's clear from Ms. Fowler's article that it wasn't isolated in her case. It seems likely that a large company that treats trusted headquarters employees like this article described may also have ethical lapses in the way they treat field people. Mistreatment makes people angry. In the waning days of the late unlamented Eastern Airlines, the airplane mechanics were angry. If you ride in an airplane maintained by angry people, you're placing great trust in their professionalism. You're trusting the line workers to leave their anger in their lockers. In the same way, if you get into a car driven by an angry person, you're trusting that person to put his anger in the glove box. I'm sure most of Uber's drivers do that. But isn't worker satisfaction a critical success factor for a business like Ubers?
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• foobared 10y ago
  ssss
• thomasvillain 10y ago
  There are reasons for hiding this. There are also reasons for lying. When you purport to have a slam dunk case of harassment and retaliation, but wait until you want to get press for your book — you lose some (but not all) credibility. Just know that having investigated a lot of these stories, very few turn up credible.
• FigmentEngine 10y ago
  its not a great statement for humanity whatever truth does come out. Why people focus on HR when if this is true then the issue is a failed company culture. No amount of great HR can fix bad culture - thats sits with the founder, board and management - and every other employee who turns a blind eye. if it is true, is the company worth or even possible to save? Changing their name wont fix the culture.
• wyclif 10y ago
  The very first thing that occurred to me upon reading this account of harassment is that the "high performer" deflection is complete and utter bullshit, and should be called out loudly for what it is. I don't care of you're Thomas Edison, James Watson, or Nikola Tesla. Sending sexually-oriented messages to women in your workplace ever, let alone the first day that person is on board, is completely unacceptable and any "bro" who thinks it's OK ought to be subject to a zero-tolerance policy.
• yuhong 10y ago
  Personally, I don't dislike sexual harassment laws as much as employment anti-discrimination laws, but I do question whether they are really needed.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• mankash666 10y ago
  Why doesn't she sue Uber. By law, emails under litigation are required to be retained, so the evidence must exist. As a guy, I've faced a different type of harassment, but have made it a point to maintain a clear electronic trail within and outside the company in case the company retaliate if and when I complain
• stefek99 10y ago
  How can one be so untactful and 'proposition' via text chat? Someone may take screenshots and go to HR... Weird.
• jganetsk 10y ago
  Don't ever talk to HR in a situation like this. HR is there for only one reason: to protect the company, NOT to protect you. If anything like this happens to you, lawyer up. Immediately.
• owly 10y ago
  Just another reason to delete uber. I highly encourage victims of sexual harassment who aren't making progress to follow The Intercept's recent article on tweeting anonymously. Out your company and harasser. https://theintercept.com/2017/02/20/how-to-run-a-rogue-government-twitter-account-with-an-anonymous-email-address-and-a-burner-phone/ https://theintercept.com/2017/02/20/how-to-run-a-rogue-gover...
• popironi 10y ago
  We are part of a team consisting of highly efficient developers and hackers. Upgrade University Grades Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Line, Skype Hack Delete unwanted online Pictures and Videos on any website Remove Criminal Records Hack bank accounts Apps hacking MasterCard, Paypal, Bitcoin, WU, Money Gram with untraceable credit on it etc. We also develop hacked facebook, twitter, instagram, yahoo, gmail passwords etc. We do custom software and web development in php, java, asp.net etc. We have 100% records from our client as well as highest repeat hire rate. our work speak for ourselves, we provide a perfect software solution to all clients. We believe in mutual growing with client and hence we work as a technology partner and consultant for our clients. Contact us raphaelnunezhacks@gmail.com
• kakarot 10y ago
  This is disgusting. I really hope Uber is an outlier, and not the norm, when it comes to this level of sexist elitism. If I had to deal with that kind of harassment and backwards pressure at work as a woman I would probably end most work days trying not to either cry or quit. That manager should have been fired on the very first offense Susan reported. "Don't proposition your colleagues for sex, especially on company comms, ESPECIALLY on the day she starts her job" is an implicit rule that doesn't need explaining. How isn't this lawsuit material? Are the employment contracts really that binding?
• whitemale 10y ago
  > I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR. Instead of just telling the guy never to make such a proposal again. > this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me You might as well call it gang rape. Sure it's one of the most idiotic ways to talk to women, however it's nowhere near a level that deserves to be called harassment, it also only happened once. I remember watching a video where a guy tapped a woman on the shoulder and people will calling it sexual assault. It's a real shame that everything has to be about sex and race nowadays, I would rather talk about the rest of the article where she talks about corruption inside the company.