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Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

678 points by qzervaas 10y ago

kuyan 10y ago
This is the third post on this topic that's made the front page: [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022
- sanderjd 10y ago
  Why wouldn't there be lots of stories about this on the front page? It is big news about a major player in the exact target market of this site. It is also actionable to the audience here: this story may affect the decisions of many current and potentially future Uber employees.
  - Gargoyle 10y ago
    Not just Uber, if this story stays high profile it could affect Uber's IPO and thus bring major cultural changes to many, many other startups in reaction. Which would likely be a good thing.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    Relax, kuyan didn't provide any opinions with these links. It wasn't necessarily a complaint.
    - distances 10y ago
      Yep, I thought of it as "find out more here" kind of collection.
    - sanderjd 10y ago
      I didn't mean to be un-relaxed, but I see that I may have been re-stating the obvious.
jen729w 10y ago
When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it's all PR.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  You are assuming that the allegations are true. From what I've heard, it seems plausible that the alleged culture may exist at this company. But I don't take allegations to be true simply because they have been made - as is, in my opinion and in the opinion of the legal system of the United States, the correct perspective.
  - forrestthewoods 10y ago
    The allegations are trivially falsifiable. Did multiple women report the same person for harassment? Were multiple accusers told that it was his first offense? If the answer is yes then heads should roll. Why were reporters of harassment falsely told it was the accused harasser's first offense? Good question. There are several possible answers. Some more malicious than others. But they all end with several high level someone's losing their head.
    - aisofteng 10y ago
      If the allegations are true, yes, heads should roll. Why are there no examples of this wealth of evidence that has been claimed to exist?
      - enraged_camel 10y ago
        I think what the parent is implying is that it would be career suicide for anyone to make such serious accusations unless they have considerable evidence to back them up. I mean let's face it: Susan doesn't stand to gain much from publicly accusing her former employer of harboring and shielding sexual harassers, but she has a lot to lose. Heck, she probably has hurt her employment prospects quite a bit, since many future employers will label her as a "troublemaker" and refuse to hire her. My guess: Susan has hard evidence that she can use if Uber comes after her with a defamation lawsuit. Otherwise Uber management wouldn't bother with this investigation (not to mention publicly announce that there is an investigation).
chickenfries 10y ago
More like "Uber Announces it Will Investigate Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee"
- linkregister 10y ago
  Yes, there hasn't been any verifiable action other than the press release. Then again, it's a weekend.
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Amazing how bad PR can get a company to start investigating things. They should probably also investigate the total incompetence of their disgusting HR department.
blazespin 10y ago
The problem is that men misconstrue the natural social and friendly tendency of most women as sexual advances. There needs to be more education in this respect with men. Just because a woman is chatty and willing to collaborate doesn't mean she wants to sleep with you. I know that sounds sexist, but honestly, I think women just are naturally or at least culturally (does the difference matter in this case, really?) more social and teaching that to immature men would cut off 80% of these situations.
- chickenfries 10y ago
  If you read the original blog post, you'll see your comments have nothing to do with what actually happened.
- lardo 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
- packetized 10y ago
  The problem is that there seems to be a terrible, unbelievably toxic culture pervading nearly every department at Uber. Also, "I know that sounds sexist" is a fucking terrible caveat.
  - linuxkerneldev 10y ago
    > The problem is that there seems to be a terrible, unbelievably toxic culture pervading nearly every department at Uber. I wonder if such things are limited to Uber or more widespread than we believe it to be. I have a fear that these incidents are more common than I believe them to be and that because we have our heads down and focusing on an end-goal, we don't notice that some of our colleagues are being traumatized by people we admire/put in positions of power.
    - packetized 10y ago
      They are definitely not limited to Uber, but I'd also surmise that they're just as prevalent (if not more so) outside of tech/startups in the Bay Area.
dkarapetyan 10y ago
I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change. From anecdotal evidence I feel like nothing really changes. It's mostly people in some bubble that get really upset and then a week later everyone forgets what exactly they were upset about.
- linkregister 10y ago
  The Uber CEO did withdraw from the U.S. President's economic council after widespread outcry from a vocal portion of customers and a high proportion of employees. This is not an example of a major change, but it did demonstrate that Uber is responsive to public opinion.
  - rajathagasthya 10y ago
    I think it's fair to say that Uber only takes corrective actions only when there is public outrage. Otherwise, breaking the laws and unethical behavior is all well and good.
- adekok 10y ago
  > I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change Underlying personality disorders are a relatively constant percentage of society. Barring near-universal awareness of these disorders and how to counteract them, no, nothing will change until human nature changes.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I wonder how much impact this will have. If they will discipline and fire people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed, or if they will make a lot of noise about investigation and saying how terrible they feel and not have anything change. Someone here once asked me how I differentiated between a corporation run by people and a corporation structured as an institution. In the latter there are processes put in place that bind the people in the corporation to specific rules and constraints, and the consequences of not following the rules is well defined and not up to interpretation. An example of that would be a sexual harassment protocol that would be activated by making a claim to the protocol director. That position would typically report to the general counsel or the CEO. That director would have 30 days from the time of the report to capture statements from all of the named parties, copies of all company email from all named parties, and any chat session transcripts. The protocol director would then have another 30 days to seek out any corroborating information from people likely to be affected and then would provide the CEO (or General Counsel) with a report on whether or not harassment was deemed to occur. If it had, they would be required to remove from management responsibility the perpetrator on a first offense, and to separate from the company on a second offense. There would be no consideration for their "performance" against their goals. Its all very mechanical, there isn't a lot of leeway for misinterpretation and the punishment is fixed without recourse. Of course there are similar punishments doled out to protocol enforcers should they attempt to mitigate the protocol. Institutions are interlocking processes and regulations which insure the proper functioning and survival of the institution in the face of imperfect people being in charge of executing the institution's mission. Corporations of people run on loyalty, friendship, and leverage. In such a corporation, justice is only found the exercise of friendship or leverage. And greater friendship or greater leverage can steer the result regardless of its merits.
- justonepost 10y ago
  It will have impact. It won't move the needle 100% across the industry, but I can see a 5% movement. Well done Susan if she doesn't sue.
  - ygjb 10y ago
    Why "if she doesn't sue"? Assuming she is giving an honest accounting, and has the evidence to back it, why shouldn't she be compensated for shedding the light on the shitty practices of the company that shielded her, and a number of other folks that need to be held accountable for their abuse.
gkoberger 10y ago
One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is not your friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to protect you. It's to protect the company.
- godzillabrennus 10y ago
  This. HR is there to protect the company and not to help employees. They have to justify their salary somehow. If they ask you to sign something it is usually not in your interest to do what they ask.
  - jstandard 10y ago
    This is a bit hyperbolic, please take a step back and consider if you would actually say "you have to justify your salary somehow" in person to folks in your company's HR department. HR does protect the company, but it also helps employees tremendously. I've had several beneficial experiences with Human Resources folks. One company setting a bad example is no reason to dump on an entire profession.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- kevinburke 10y ago
  I guess to some degree "protecting the company" involves implementing procedures that protect the company from losing a class action lawsuit and damaging their ability to recruit engineers, right?
  - thewhitetulip 10y ago
    not in their short sighted world, shortsightedness like this is the major reason why companies stagnate and refuse to innovate, they don't want to touch their cash cow
  - tehlike 10y ago
    it also depends on what the projected cost of class action lawsuit. My understanding is, it's usually a fraction of what it could have been. it's mostly anectodal, though (reading news online, etc).
sychophant 10y ago
I see nothing wrong with the manager's behavior. Given: ------ - The manager indirectly fished for mutual sexual interest with a subordinate. - Managers and subordinates engage in workplace relationships across the country and the world. They all start with a "proposition" of one kind or another. Only when a manager is shown to abuse their power in support of a personal agenda should there be damages imposed. Not simply for an expression of interest. - The subordinate reported the manager. The manager appears to then have ceased any further activity that could have been offensive to the subordinate. - Simply discussing one's sex life with an employee - regardless of the employee's interpretation - is not sexual harassment. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Fowler approached attorneys over this and was rebuffed - which is precisely why she's shame-blogging about her incident. - This is another case of a woman who is not attracted to someone who shows interest in her making sure that she lets the world know how offended and injured she is. Her subsequent discussions with other employees who warn her of retaliatory consequences are just that. Workplace gossip. - I'm not sympathetic, I don't this should be legislated against. I think human beings should have the right to express interest. If this kind of mentality is promoted, as you all wish to promote it, we'll live in a world where those who are simply seen as undesirable being automatically engaged in harassment. :)
- tomlock 10y ago
  >Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.
  - reddytowns 10y ago
    How does this contradict what the parent poster said?
sschueller 10y ago
With Travis at the helm is anyone surprised? Don't expect anything to happen unless it has to because of more bad PR.
LordHumungous 10y ago
In case I needed another reason to hate Uber.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. That's a hell of a claim since this is a "typical corporate America" type of problem.
- farnsworth 10y ago
  Well there are some typical corporate American companies that have this problem. But I would argue that (almost?) all tech companies have this problem.
  - tangue 10y ago
    Typical business problem around the world.
  - kevhsu 10y ago
    What corporate American companies don't have this problem?
  - matt_wulfeck 10y ago
    What?? Everywhere I worked a screenshot like what she's describing would get you fired. Over office chat even?? It's not even hearsay. Someone can bring up the exact chat history.
    - ygjb 10y ago
      That's great! It sounds like you have worked at places that follow the rules. Please don't use your personal observations to discount the growing collection of evidence that this sort of thing is happening at tech companies around the world, and not just in the bay area.
      - pitaj 10y ago
        Is there a centralized repository of this evidence? If not, maybe that would be a good thing to create as a reference.
debt 10y ago
Uber having a terrible year in PR.
- whatever_dude 10y ago
  I tend to believe that more often than not, you reap what you sow.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
Please reach out to your state labour commissioner. Here are some numbers for California [1] and New York [2]. [1] http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm [2] https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language-access.shtm https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language-access.shtm
searealist 10y ago
I have a hard time believing HR really behaved the way they are portrayed in that article. They really claimed that if she elected to stay in her current department she should expect to receive a negative review from the boss she rejected for a sexual relationship? This is just too much. And for someone as savvy and with as large an internet presence as the author, I can't imagine she would accept this resolution. The crowd is quick to crucify Uber here, but we have seen similar claims before that have turned out to be false or exaggerated greatly. It's also suspicious that the claimant tends to only last in jobs for a median of 6 months before moving on and has just released a book. This deserves a full investigation and we will have to wait and see what evidence surfaces.
- justonepost 10y ago
  It's easy to believe. The thinking HR probably was expressing that Susan couldn't expect positive reviews just because she had a valid harassment complaint. You have to look at HR as CYA for the company. Looking at it any other way is naive.
  - searealist 10y ago
    > The thinking HR probably was expressing that Susan couldn't expect positive reviews just because she had a valid harassment complaint. That's very different than what the author claimed. But even so, why would HR even go there? It makes no sense.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sjg007 10y ago
  Citations needed.
  - aisofteng 10y ago
    Citations not needed. There are allegations, nothing more. If this happened to me, I would find the moral import of the matter significant to the point that it would not occur to me to use it to plug my book. This may well be an endemic issue at this company, and it does seem that these sorts of situations do in fact exist in some places, but so far there is only one person's story's and without proof.
sjg007 10y ago
In California your employer is required to keep a personnel file. Get a lawyer. They are the pros. Don't leave it to a blog post, this is way more important.
thinkloop 10y ago
These are allegations by one party against another with zero data either way, why is everyone on the anti-uber bandwagon.
- gravyboat 10y ago
  Probably because a good number of people have worked for SF startups and seen this behavior first hand.
  - tiglilly329 10y ago
    That doesn't excuse all the guilty-until-proven-innocent pitchforking going on right now.
    - tomlock 10y ago
      You should abandon your throwaway and talk to some of your lady friends in tech about their experiences. See for yourself if their anecdotes build up into something approaching quantitative - and ask them if anything was ever done about their complaints - or if they even felt safe enough to complain to the people they ought to feel safe around.
      - tiglilly329 10y ago
        What's your point? That harassment occurs frequently and is often mishandled? I never disputed that.
        tomlock 10y ago
        Understood. You should get your lady friends in tech to read the comments you posted on a throwaway. Do you think they'll feel safer around you?
        throwawaymaroon 10y ago
        yich. pointing out that we're an audience without legal standing, playing with pitchforks, is not harassment or condoning harassment.
aisofteng 10y ago
> If they will discipline and fire people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed You're assuming that that allegations are true. They have been neither proven nor corroborated, and the author advertises her book in her post. Edit: This comment has gone strongly negative in the matter of minutes. I offered no opinion and only stated fact; either there is vote manipulation on HN, or at least some portion of the HN user base does not abide by the community guidelines.
- Gatsky 10y ago
  It is valid to point out that the allegations are not corroborated. To suggest that the author invented a sexual harassment fantasy to advertise her book is however quite crazy.
  - aisofteng 10y ago
    It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened. I'm not implying that's what this is, because I have no verifiable knowledge of the sitauations. I was pointing out a (possibly chance) correlation that should give pause. That is not "crazy". If the alleged events happened to me, I would find it serious enough of an issue that it would not occur to me to advertise my book when writing about it; conflating a moral stance with a moneymaking one makes no sense to me. Calling the idea of not judging until proof has been presented "crazy" is what is crazy. The allegations may well be true; if they are, there should be severe consequences. As it stands, though, all we have is one person's story, containing a self advertisement but no examples of supposedly recorded proof.
    - cstejerean 10y ago
      She was not advertising her book. She used her book as an example to substantiate her claim that her transfer was blocked for bullshit reasons. Seems perfectly appropriate to me.
      - aisofteng 10y ago
thenewregiment2 10y ago
"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." Me Kalanick. Ah the damn pattern. Boycott Uber now?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 10y ago
I'm dismayed that articles about sexual harassment in tech often bring up the Ellen Pao case. Her claims were rejected because the jury found that her claims weren't believable, and if you look at the evidence that was presented in the case, I don't think this is an unreasonable conclusion. If the accusations in this case are true (and, according to the original blog post, there should be plenty of paper trail to back them up), then bringing up the Ellen Pao case does a disservice to Susan Fowler. It would be like bringing up the UVA gang rape case during a discussion of a real case of sexual assault.
chx 10y ago
Yeah, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said it was the first time the issue had come to his attention, yeah. And we are to believe this. Yeah.
euphoria83 10y ago
These events could not have happened without the CEO himself setting an example and establishing an unwritten policy in the company about how to deal with such issues. It is not a matter of one person or team or manager or event. The series of events establish a pattern. The investigation will just be an eye-wash, with a gentle firing of a low level HR executive and some new internal policies that will be disregarded immediately.
siliconc0w 10y ago
Not saying uber is right or wrong but part of the problem is there aren't any sane rules of what is and isn't sexual harassment - there is mostly just vague case law and public opinion so things are treated 'case by case'. I was told by a HR department that if someone overheard you and misconstrued what you said it still could be harassment even if they don't report to the person talking. No one could agree what was and wasn't harassment when people in the meeting posed several real-life scenarios. I tried to basically explain the ridiculousness and lack of clarity of what they were saying but felt the extreme discomfort in the room and stopped. You basically have the option of abstaining entirely from any comment or remark that could resemble anything sexual to anyone within physical or digital earshot or be at risk to an uncertain and unwritten standard. Treat everyone as formless blobs of raceless genderless biological matter or else. This is a impossible when when jobs become the majority of people's lives and part of their identity. Sex is a crucial part of human identity and denying it's existence generally isn't healthy behavior or even practical.
- louwrentius 10y ago
  You want to make it sound like it's vague what sexual harassment really is. But your boss stating he wants to have sex with you, I think that's quite a clear-cut case.
  - smhost 10y ago
    It's really not though. The problem only exists because our society has an unhealthy attitude about sex. If we all had a perfectly healthy attitude about sex, the mere admission of the fact that someone feels sexually attracted to someone else would be a nonissue. But the world isn't ideal, and there's a whole host of misogyny, fear, taboos, antiquated traditions, and stupid people. So we have a problem. Your boss stating that he wants to have sex with you is stupid, unethical, and unprofessional. It's not clear that it's sexual harassment, unless he was told to stop yet continued anyway.
    - Nitramp 10y ago
      > Your boss stating that he wants to have sex with you is stupid, unethical, and unprofessional. It's not clear that it's sexual harassment, unless he was told to stop yet continued anyway. Your boss by definition is in a position of power over you. If they date you (let alone ask for sex in this manner!), they can be seen as exploiting their power over you, or you being treated differently in return for sex. That just doesn't work. It's always unethical, regardless of consent of the employee (who might also be too afraid to say no).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
abandonliberty 10y ago
Is there any physical/electronic evidence?
- abandonliberty 10y ago
  It is popular in the USA right now to silence rational, evidence based discussions. Now more than ever it is of vital importance that we stick to values of relying on open dialogue, reason, and facts. If these values only apply when they are convenient and comfortable for you then they aren't your values, but instead a rhetorical tool you abuse. As a community of above-average intelligence and reason, I am disappointed to see hacker news commenters abuse their power to silence requests for evidence. If you approach things objectively you must always seek evidence. Given the libel risks, there must be some evidence. Perhaps it's not getting released at this stage to strengthen her legal position. In this case the evidence shared thus far is character-based. That doesn't obviate the need or prevent the ability to have a rational, logical discussion about evidence. Please, go ahead and silence this post as well. Show me how badly you deserve your current political situation and fractured nation. If this community behaves this way, I don't have much hope for the world. Our democracy and the world needs people committed to reason, evidence, and open dialogue. The choice is yours.
  - xenadu02 10y ago
    Here's the thing: If you had ever taken even a few minutes to sit down with women who work in our industry and asked them if anything like this has ever happened to them you would learn it is extremely common. You would also learn that women rarely get the benefit of the doubt in these situations and are often punished or eventually forced out of the company. Women don't talk about it because jerks immediately start screaming "WHERES THE EVIDENCE?!?!?!?!". As far as anyone can tell she has no interest in pursuing a legal case; in that sense this is just like the NFL national anthem controversy. No matter how blandly and inoffensively someone behaves there will be assholes at the ready to condemn them for speaking out about anything in any form whatsoever. Susan kept her head down, tried to do good work, then left for another job. She has made the absolutely minimum of an issue out of this as it is possible to make. Try this thought experiment: assume the original story was written by a man and was identical except for the sexual harassment part. The same tales of toxic work culture. The same stories about managers protecting fiefdoms, undermining each other, and withholding information. The same story about being denied a transfer so this person could serve as a "feather in the cap" of the manager denying the transfer. Would you still be out here claiming it is the end of civil society that everyone isn't demanding evidence before rushing to judgement? Hint: we've had these kinds of stories show up before with male authors and the answer is no, people aren't so demanding. Only people who experience sexual harassment are held to this double-standard. Nothing about what Susan posted seems far-fetched or out of the ordinary. HR exists to protect the company from you, not to help you or ensure justice is served. Telling people this is someone's first offense is likely to diffuse the situation and ensure no one files any pesky complaints with commissions nor hires a lawyer. Playing games with performance reviews is par for the course. Anyone who complains is viewed as a troublemaker. This happens on a daily basis in most companies in the USA. Of course I don't believe you (or the rest of your compatriots) posting here are acting in good faith. If she shared screenshots and emails you'd just claim they were faked. How exactly she is supposed to gather evidence (when CA is a two-party state, so recording the conversations secretly would be illegal) is never explained.
edoloughlin 10y ago
Headline should read 'Uber Ignored Female Employee's Claims of Sexual Harassment Until She Quit, Wrote About It And Got It Picked Up On High Profile Site'
uwnigga 10y ago
Why is everyone ignoring that she could be attention whore and Uber did nothing wrong to keep her employed. If she made false claims, I wish Uber sues her ass.
bflesch 10y ago
I find it disconcerning that they did regular performance reviews, and she aparrently scored very highly on them. But later those ratings were discounted by some "hidden" factor. Why would I waste time on performance reviews when I'm not openly giving feedback to the employee? How can an organization efficiently distribute team members based on metrics derived from performance reviews when there is such an impactful but undocumented component of the review?
- zatkin 10y ago
  I think that the "undocumented component" is undocumented for the very same reason that companies have an undocumented component with technical interviews - they're trying not to get themselves into a potential legal situation.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    That's not what I got out of it at all. My take on it was that the "undocumented component" was made up after the fact, as a retroactively fabricated excuse to remove her eligibility to transfer teams. The same situation happens all the time in a gender-neutral way in the form of raises and promotions that are promised but then fail to materialize, with some new excuse being created out of thin air. Also, my company very explicitly does not have an undocumented component to technical interviews, as that could open up all sorts of legal liability. The interviewers write up their feedback and the feedback is then evaluated by a neutral hiring committee who never met the interviewee in question. Keeping the paper trail of 100% of the information that went into the hiring decision is the best defense against possible discrimination claims.
random_upvoter 10y ago
As a meta, it seems to be an infallible rule of Hacker News that any discussion about the relationship between men and women turns into an angry painful mess in no time. Maybe we should look into this anger itself rather than draw all sorts of conclusions from cases of which we don't know half of what really happened.
- adekok 10y ago
  It's similar to conversations between conservatives and liberals. Both groups have implicit assumptions about how the world works. They have implicit value judgements, in preferring one thing versus another. Conversation almost never describes these implicit assumptions. As a result, each side ends up thinking that the other side is stupid, obtuse, biased, etc. Getting to the underlying biases is hard. As evidence, see any number of newspaper headlines, including this one: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-trump-us-military-attack-yemen-civilians-women-children-dead-a7553121.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-t... Ignoring the Trump bit, the headline says "kills 30 civilians, including 10 women and children" Now, try to prove that the male / female victims were treated equally. And, that there is no implicit bias in male / female relationships. I'm not saying that such bias is good, bad, or ugly. I'm saying it exists. And it underlies a lot of conversations, without anyone realizing it. Which goes a long way to explaining why things end up as you pointed out.
  - RileyKyeden 10y ago
    I think in a lot of cases it's more that: 1: We know the assumptions. 2: We know the differences are often intractable (I will never relent on full LGBTQ equality, for example) 3: We can't just split off and do our own thing because we need each other for civilization to function, so we have to deal with them. Some of us can avoid dealing with it by moving to the city/suburbs/exurbs where there's more unity, but that just postpones dealing with the problems we ran from. Eventually, elections happen, and you realize putting 50-5000 miles between you and that person who finally motivated you to leave didn't actually resolve your conflicts.
  - danaliv 10y ago
cancancan 10y ago
Let there be a lesson, always use a prostitute. If you want kids, rent a womb.
- tomlock 10y ago
  I hope you don't "use" one. Sex workers deserve better.
  - cancancan 10y ago
    You're right, I don't "use" them. I fuck them. That's the service they offer. Sorry if I burst someone's bubble so they feel the need to flag my comment, but not everyone is a Victorian prude in denial of human nature.
- sctb 10y ago
  This is a deeply uncivil comment, and if you post like this again we have to ban your account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
hueving 10y ago
>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her gender — a case she lost. This paragraph is indicative of how terrible the NYTimes is with editorializing. They couldn't just report on one case with objective facts. Instead they decided to make it sound like this level of harassment is endemic to Silicon Valley (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) and the only evidence they provided was the Ellen Pao case where a jury decided she was wrong. This completely devalues the entire article and puts it on par with political commentary.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me.
  - golergka 10y ago
    > I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me. So you prefer preaching to the choir to trying to change someone's mind?
    - TorKlingberg 10y ago
      Are you saying victims of harassment have some duty to seek out and tell people who are unlikely to believe them or care?
      - Neliquat 10y ago
        If it clearly benefits current and future victims to be taken seriously and get any help they may need? Yes, in my opinion. But that is a much more personal ethics call.
mcculley 10y ago
It's very common that startups have such issues. You've got a bunch of younger inexperienced managers and an inexperienced HR department. What I don't understand is, why don't investors compel such valuable startups to get experienced HR? Do they calculate that the lawsuits will cost less than outsourcing HR or otherwise getting adult supervision? Or are they just blind to it?
- baloneyman 10y ago
  I think startup is a pretty generous term for the growth stage that Uber was in at the time
  - mcculley 10y ago
    I agree in that I think startup is a vague term. I think what is important is that it's a young company funded by external investment, not organic growth. Why don't investors care about such issues enough to be proactive?
meerita 10y ago
After reading the entire blog post, and also reading that the CEO is concerned, I want heads rolling. Specially those who were involved from HR, managers. I think it will centrate the people on doing their job, not doing anything aside from this. What a bad image UBER is getting for toxic "high performers".
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  I'm worried that the head of HR will be fired as a scapegoat or something, when they were never empowered to truly deal with issues like this in the first place, and that such policy will continue. If the company culture is toxic to begin with, and "high performers" are retained at all cost, firing one head of HR makes no difference if, afterwards, HR is still not going to be empowered with truly addressing these issues.
  - meerita 10y ago
    The head of HR wasn't reported, that's what I believe it happen. That's why now it is on duty. I think this has happen in middleground, not the highest spheres. Well, the CTO is involved, and as manager, he had to work on that matter from day 1. The CTO will not be kicked, of course, but it tells you how much the company will do with this.
hatsunearu 10y ago
I just find the whole leather jacket incident incredibly baffling. It's just a few hundred bucks. Is Uber that short of cash? It's ridiculous.
- Taylor_OD 10y ago
  They need that money to keep subsidizing my flat rate rides.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  It's only baffling until you realize that it really just is horrible, blatant sexism of the worst kind. That entire department had turned so corrosively sexist (going from 24 to 3% women) that it needed to finish the job and get the rest of the women out by making it plain that they weren't welcome. We're talking about the people in power here being so horribly sexist that they have to force the women out in order to feel comfortable being themselves. Any company that cares one inkling about diversity will go out of its way to make minorities feel comfortable. We're dealing with the opposite situation here: A department actively working to drive out diversity.
  - xanderjanz 10y ago
    Thats not how I read it. They tried to push out the last few women, while scheming to keep them? Why hire them in the first place? I take it at face value, Oblivious Employees/Managers thought that not paying extra for women's jackets was equality.
    - sudosteph 10y ago
      > Why hire them in the first place? Because they were qualified applicants and the hiring manager wanted to not get sued for blatant hiring discrimination? These folks clearly don't deserve to be taken at face value. Otherwise the "Everyone is getting jackets" could have been properly taken at value to mean that everyone, including women were getting them. So we're past believing them at face value now, great. So why did they really make this an issue? Probably some combination of: 1. Someone was playing politics and wanted a head pat for saving money (conversely, they did not want to reprimanded for going over-budget). 2. Women are often perceived as less assertive, so they thought they would be less likely to raise a stink over a "minor issue" like a free jacket. (The really pessimistic side of me says someone thought "Women don't wear leather jackets anyhow, it's not stylish enough. Why spend money on something they won't use?") I don't for one second believe they actually thought "equality" came into play at all.
solarengineer 10y ago
The book "Corporate Confidential" is a must read.
ilamont 10y ago
Crisis PR 101. Announce an investigation, "discipline" a few anonymous people or fire the most egregious offender, announce a new code of conduct, and then hope the furor blows over in a week or two. But nothing will really change if this is part of the ingrained culture at Uber. Fish rots from the head, as someone noted in yesterday's thread.
overcast 10y ago
Why does everything involved with UBER, sound like it's run by some type of frat house?
- settsu 10y ago
  My theory, as a casual observer and not speaking from experience (aside from having been a 20-something white male), is going straight from college to founding a company with m/billions at stake has the tendency to breed and feed unhealthy perspectives. Not always, not inherently, and certainly not irreparably, but ostensibly more often than not for the SV unicorns.
bsclifton 10y ago
One of the criteria for being a high performer needs to be: being a decent human being and treating other people with the respect they deserve
babelsquid 10y ago
Why does Thuan Pham get a free pass on what happens under his supervision? He joined Uber as CTO two years before Fowler's hiring.
brudgers 10y ago
As I commented last night[1], the New York Times has cast Fowler's experience as a he-said-she-said story. Unfortunately I was not pessimistic enough: 1. The New York Times spiked the most damning part of Fowler's story: that HR was actively involved in supporting the behavior. 2. It down plays Fowler's specific experience as typical for the industry and marginalizes it by bringing Pao's story into Fowler's narrative. Pao's experience was radically different, if for no other reason than Fowler is a rank and file employee of the most typical kind, an engineer. Pao is an executive. It also brought all the irrlevant ambiguities surrounding Pao's executive actions at Reddit into the mix. 3. It repeats nearly all of Uber's public response verbatim rather than linking to it as it does with Fowler's article. Fowler's story gets one paragraph (or two if the one sentence paragraph about going to work for Stripe counts). The same amount is devoted to Pao. Uber's PR gets the bulk of the article with no critical analysis. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159
- Tloewald 10y ago
  I'm curious as to whether you're complaining about the story. What do you mean by "spiked"? The coverage seems fair and open-ended
  - brudgers 10y ago
    Fowler's statement describes ongoing and systematic patterns of discrimination, retribution and harassment against and of women and its facilitation by the human resource department. The headline leads with Uber's damage control message and ignores the most serious part of Fowler's description.
    - Terretta 10y ago
      In case you're still following, another Uber engineer's voice: https://medium.com/@hadrad1000/reflecting-on-susan-fowlers-reflections-e2dccb374b47 https://medium.com/@hadrad1000/reflecting-on-susan-fowlers-r...
      - 10y ago
epynonymous 10y ago
i have been a long time uber user, up until their sale in china to didi taxi, and it was a beautiful service here. since then, i have deleted their app just because it was taken over by some useless shell company in beijing. but what is happening lately with all the accusations about uber, the trump immigration executive order and how uber profited off that, some uber ban in some city, etc. it all seems quite methodical and targeted. do not think it's lyft of all people, that would be too obvious, maybe it's like the secret brotherhood of the knights or something. who aside from lyft/taxis would gain the most from uber collapsing? (not that they're anywhere close to collapsing). i guess there are probably a lot of haters out there since they've been really at the top. personally i've given up on uber, but mostly because their service essentially is being killed by didi taxi in china.
st3v3r 10y ago
I will believe it when I see it. I have no confidence that anything will actually change, and that anyone other than a token fall guy will be fired.
acjohnson55 10y ago
Interesting that Arianna Huffington is taking a personal hand in this investigation, given that her former Chief of Staff and Managing Editor at HuffPost, Jimmy Soni, was dogged by similar allegations: http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was-investigated-for-sexual-1626614104 http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was-investigate.... This is a mess. They need a fully independent investigator.
twfarland 10y ago
With that evidence, the CEO should not only fire the creeps involved, but name and shame them. Incredibly damaging, not just for PR reasons, but for missing out on talented people and allowing toxicity.
spooterspooter 10y ago
I'm unable to read the article due to a paywall.

678 points by qzervaas 10y ago

kuyan 10y ago

This is the third post on this topic that's made the front page: [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022

sanderjd 10y ago
Why wouldn't there be lots of stories about this on the front page? It is big news about a major player in the exact target market of this site. It is also actionable to the audience here: this story may affect the decisions of many current and potentially future Uber employees.
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  Not just Uber, if this story stays high profile it could affect Uber's IPO and thus bring major cultural changes to many, many other startups in reaction. Which would likely be a good thing.
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  Relax, kuyan didn't provide any opinions with these links. It wasn't necessarily a complaint.
  - distances 10y ago
    Yep, I thought of it as "find out more here" kind of collection.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    I didn't mean to be un-relaxed, but I see that I may have been re-stating the obvious.

jen729w 10y ago

When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it's all PR.

aisofteng 10y ago
You are assuming that the allegations are true. From what I've heard, it seems plausible that the alleged culture may exist at this company. But I don't take allegations to be true simply because they have been made - as is, in my opinion and in the opinion of the legal system of the United States, the correct perspective.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  The allegations are trivially falsifiable. Did multiple women report the same person for harassment? Were multiple accusers told that it was his first offense? If the answer is yes then heads should roll. Why were reporters of harassment falsely told it was the accused harasser's first offense? Good question. There are several possible answers. Some more malicious than others. But they all end with several high level someone's losing their head.
  - aisofteng 10y ago
    If the allegations are true, yes, heads should roll. Why are there no examples of this wealth of evidence that has been claimed to exist?
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      I think what the parent is implying is that it would be career suicide for anyone to make such serious accusations unless they have considerable evidence to back them up. I mean let's face it: Susan doesn't stand to gain much from publicly accusing her former employer of harboring and shielding sexual harassers, but she has a lot to lose. Heck, she probably has hurt her employment prospects quite a bit, since many future employers will label her as a "troublemaker" and refuse to hire her. My guess: Susan has hard evidence that she can use if Uber comes after her with a defamation lawsuit. Otherwise Uber management wouldn't bother with this investigation (not to mention publicly announce that there is an investigation).

chickenfries 10y ago

More like "Uber Announces it Will Investigate Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee"

linkregister 10y ago
Yes, there hasn't been any verifiable action other than the press release. Then again, it's a weekend.

bitmapbrother 10y ago

Amazing how bad PR can get a company to start investigating things. They should probably also investigate the total incompetence of their disgusting HR department.

blazespin 10y ago

The problem is that men misconstrue the natural social and friendly tendency of most women as sexual advances. There needs to be more education in this respect with men. Just because a woman is chatty and willing to collaborate doesn't mean she wants to sleep with you. I know that sounds sexist, but honestly, I think women just are naturally or at least culturally (does the difference matter in this case, really?) more social and teaching that to immature men would cut off 80% of these situations.

chickenfries 10y ago
If you read the original blog post, you'll see your comments have nothing to do with what actually happened.
lardo 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors
packetized 10y ago
The problem is that there seems to be a terrible, unbelievably toxic culture pervading nearly every department at Uber. Also, "I know that sounds sexist" is a fucking terrible caveat.
- linuxkerneldev 10y ago
  > The problem is that there seems to be a terrible, unbelievably toxic culture pervading nearly every department at Uber. I wonder if such things are limited to Uber or more widespread than we believe it to be. I have a fear that these incidents are more common than I believe them to be and that because we have our heads down and focusing on an end-goal, we don't notice that some of our colleagues are being traumatized by people we admire/put in positions of power.
  - packetized 10y ago
    They are definitely not limited to Uber, but I'd also surmise that they're just as prevalent (if not more so) outside of tech/startups in the Bay Area.

dkarapetyan 10y ago

I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change. From anecdotal evidence I feel like nothing really changes. It's mostly people in some bubble that get really upset and then a week later everyone forgets what exactly they were upset about.

linkregister 10y ago
The Uber CEO did withdraw from the U.S. President's economic council after widespread outcry from a vocal portion of customers and a high proportion of employees. This is not an example of a major change, but it did demonstrate that Uber is responsive to public opinion.
- rajathagasthya 10y ago
  I think it's fair to say that Uber only takes corrective actions only when there is public outrage. Otherwise, breaking the laws and unethical behavior is all well and good.
adekok 10y ago
> I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change Underlying personality disorders are a relatively constant percentage of society. Barring near-universal awareness of these disorders and how to counteract them, no, nothing will change until human nature changes.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I wonder how much impact this will have. If they will discipline and fire people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed, or if they will make a lot of noise about investigation and saying how terrible they feel and not have anything change. Someone here once asked me how I differentiated between a corporation run by people and a corporation structured as an institution. In the latter there are processes put in place that bind the people in the corporation to specific rules and constraints, and the consequences of not following the rules is well defined and not up to interpretation. An example of that would be a sexual harassment protocol that would be activated by making a claim to the protocol director. That position would typically report to the general counsel or the CEO. That director would have 30 days from the time of the report to capture statements from all of the named parties, copies of all company email from all named parties, and any chat session transcripts. The protocol director would then have another 30 days to seek out any corroborating information from people likely to be affected and then would provide the CEO (or General Counsel) with a report on whether or not harassment was deemed to occur. If it had, they would be required to remove from management responsibility the perpetrator on a first offense, and to separate from the company on a second offense. There would be no consideration for their "performance" against their goals. Its all very mechanical, there isn't a lot of leeway for misinterpretation and the punishment is fixed without recourse. Of course there are similar punishments doled out to protocol enforcers should they attempt to mitigate the protocol. Institutions are interlocking processes and regulations which insure the proper functioning and survival of the institution in the face of imperfect people being in charge of executing the institution's mission. Corporations of people run on loyalty, friendship, and leverage. In such a corporation, justice is only found the exercise of friendship or leverage. And greater friendship or greater leverage can steer the result regardless of its merits.

justonepost 10y ago
It will have impact. It won't move the needle 100% across the industry, but I can see a 5% movement. Well done Susan if she doesn't sue.
- ygjb 10y ago
  Why "if she doesn't sue"? Assuming she is giving an honest accounting, and has the evidence to back it, why shouldn't she be compensated for shedding the light on the shitty practices of the company that shielded her, and a number of other folks that need to be held accountable for their abuse.

gkoberger 10y ago

One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is not your friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to protect you. It's to protect the company.

godzillabrennus 10y ago
This. HR is there to protect the company and not to help employees. They have to justify their salary somehow. If they ask you to sign something it is usually not in your interest to do what they ask.
- jstandard 10y ago
  This is a bit hyperbolic, please take a step back and consider if you would actually say "you have to justify your salary somehow" in person to folks in your company's HR department. HR does protect the company, but it also helps employees tremendously. I've had several beneficial experiences with Human Resources folks. One company setting a bad example is no reason to dump on an entire profession.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kevinburke 10y ago
I guess to some degree "protecting the company" involves implementing procedures that protect the company from losing a class action lawsuit and damaging their ability to recruit engineers, right?
- thewhitetulip 10y ago
  not in their short sighted world, shortsightedness like this is the major reason why companies stagnate and refuse to innovate, they don't want to touch their cash cow
- tehlike 10y ago
  it also depends on what the projected cost of class action lawsuit. My understanding is, it's usually a fraction of what it could have been. it's mostly anectodal, though (reading news online, etc).

sychophant 10y ago

I see nothing wrong with the manager's behavior. Given: ------ - The manager indirectly fished for mutual sexual interest with a subordinate. - Managers and subordinates engage in workplace relationships across the country and the world. They all start with a "proposition" of one kind or another. Only when a manager is shown to abuse their power in support of a personal agenda should there be damages imposed. Not simply for an expression of interest. - The subordinate reported the manager. The manager appears to then have ceased any further activity that could have been offensive to the subordinate. - Simply discussing one's sex life with an employee - regardless of the employee's interpretation - is not sexual harassment. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Fowler approached attorneys over this and was rebuffed - which is precisely why she's shame-blogging about her incident. - This is another case of a woman who is not attracted to someone who shows interest in her making sure that she lets the world know how offended and injured she is. Her subsequent discussions with other employees who warn her of retaliatory consequences are just that. Workplace gossip. - I'm not sympathetic, I don't this should be legislated against. I think human beings should have the right to express interest. If this kind of mentality is promoted, as you all wish to promote it, we'll live in a world where those who are simply seen as undesirable being automatically engaged in harassment. :)

tomlock 10y ago
>Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.
- reddytowns 10y ago
  How does this contradict what the parent poster said?

sschueller 10y ago

With Travis at the helm is anyone surprised? Don't expect anything to happen unless it has to because of more bad PR.

LordHumungous 10y ago

In case I needed another reason to hate Uber.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. That's a hell of a claim since this is a "typical corporate America" type of problem.

farnsworth 10y ago
Well there are some typical corporate American companies that have this problem. But I would argue that (almost?) all tech companies have this problem.
- tangue 10y ago
  Typical business problem around the world.
- kevhsu 10y ago
  What corporate American companies don't have this problem?
- matt_wulfeck 10y ago
  What?? Everywhere I worked a screenshot like what she's describing would get you fired. Over office chat even?? It's not even hearsay. Someone can bring up the exact chat history.
  - ygjb 10y ago
    That's great! It sounds like you have worked at places that follow the rules. Please don't use your personal observations to discount the growing collection of evidence that this sort of thing is happening at tech companies around the world, and not just in the bay area.
    - pitaj 10y ago
      Is there a centralized repository of this evidence? If not, maybe that would be a good thing to create as a reference.

debt 10y ago

Uber having a terrible year in PR.

whatever_dude 10y ago
I tend to believe that more often than not, you reap what you sow.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

Please reach out to your state labour commissioner. Here are some numbers for California [1] and New York [2]. [1] http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm [2] https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language-access.shtm https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language-access.shtm

searealist 10y ago

I have a hard time believing HR really behaved the way they are portrayed in that article. They really claimed that if she elected to stay in her current department she should expect to receive a negative review from the boss she rejected for a sexual relationship? This is just too much. And for someone as savvy and with as large an internet presence as the author, I can't imagine she would accept this resolution. The crowd is quick to crucify Uber here, but we have seen similar claims before that have turned out to be false or exaggerated greatly. It's also suspicious that the claimant tends to only last in jobs for a median of 6 months before moving on and has just released a book. This deserves a full investigation and we will have to wait and see what evidence surfaces.

justonepost 10y ago
It's easy to believe. The thinking HR probably was expressing that Susan couldn't expect positive reviews just because she had a valid harassment complaint. You have to look at HR as CYA for the company. Looking at it any other way is naive.
- searealist 10y ago
  > The thinking HR probably was expressing that Susan couldn't expect positive reviews just because she had a valid harassment complaint. That's very different than what the author claimed. But even so, why would HR even go there? It makes no sense.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sjg007 10y ago
Citations needed.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  Citations not needed. There are allegations, nothing more. If this happened to me, I would find the moral import of the matter significant to the point that it would not occur to me to use it to plug my book. This may well be an endemic issue at this company, and it does seem that these sorts of situations do in fact exist in some places, but so far there is only one person's story's and without proof.

sjg007 10y ago

In California your employer is required to keep a personnel file. Get a lawyer. They are the pros. Don't leave it to a blog post, this is way more important.

thinkloop 10y ago

These are allegations by one party against another with zero data either way, why is everyone on the anti-uber bandwagon.

gravyboat 10y ago
Probably because a good number of people have worked for SF startups and seen this behavior first hand.
- tiglilly329 10y ago
  That doesn't excuse all the guilty-until-proven-innocent pitchforking going on right now.
  - tomlock 10y ago
    You should abandon your throwaway and talk to some of your lady friends in tech about their experiences. See for yourself if their anecdotes build up into something approaching quantitative - and ask them if anything was ever done about their complaints - or if they even felt safe enough to complain to the people they ought to feel safe around.
    - tiglilly329 10y ago
      What's your point? That harassment occurs frequently and is often mishandled? I never disputed that.
      - tomlock 10y ago
        Understood. You should get your lady friends in tech to read the comments you posted on a throwaway. Do you think they'll feel safer around you?
        throwawaymaroon 10y ago
        yich. pointing out that we're an audience without legal standing, playing with pitchforks, is not harassment or condoning harassment.

aisofteng 10y ago

> If they will discipline and fire people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed You're assuming that that allegations are true. They have been neither proven nor corroborated, and the author advertises her book in her post. Edit: This comment has gone strongly negative in the matter of minutes. I offered no opinion and only stated fact; either there is vote manipulation on HN, or at least some portion of the HN user base does not abide by the community guidelines.

Gatsky 10y ago
It is valid to point out that the allegations are not corroborated. To suggest that the author invented a sexual harassment fantasy to advertise her book is however quite crazy.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  It wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened. I'm not implying that's what this is, because I have no verifiable knowledge of the sitauations. I was pointing out a (possibly chance) correlation that should give pause. That is not "crazy". If the alleged events happened to me, I would find it serious enough of an issue that it would not occur to me to advertise my book when writing about it; conflating a moral stance with a moneymaking one makes no sense to me. Calling the idea of not judging until proof has been presented "crazy" is what is crazy. The allegations may well be true; if they are, there should be severe consequences. As it stands, though, all we have is one person's story, containing a self advertisement but no examples of supposedly recorded proof.
  - cstejerean 10y ago
    She was not advertising her book. She used her book as an example to substantiate her claim that her transfer was blocked for bullshit reasons. Seems perfectly appropriate to me.
    - aisofteng 10y ago

thenewregiment2 10y ago

"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." Me Kalanick. Ah the damn pattern. Boycott Uber now?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

hn_throwaway_99 10y ago

I'm dismayed that articles about sexual harassment in tech often bring up the Ellen Pao case. Her claims were rejected because the jury found that her claims weren't believable, and if you look at the evidence that was presented in the case, I don't think this is an unreasonable conclusion. If the accusations in this case are true (and, according to the original blog post, there should be plenty of paper trail to back them up), then bringing up the Ellen Pao case does a disservice to Susan Fowler. It would be like bringing up the UVA gang rape case during a discussion of a real case of sexual assault.

chx 10y ago

Yeah, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said it was the first time the issue had come to his attention, yeah. And we are to believe this. Yeah.

euphoria83 10y ago

These events could not have happened without the CEO himself setting an example and establishing an unwritten policy in the company about how to deal with such issues. It is not a matter of one person or team or manager or event. The series of events establish a pattern. The investigation will just be an eye-wash, with a gentle firing of a low level HR executive and some new internal policies that will be disregarded immediately.

siliconc0w 10y ago

Not saying uber is right or wrong but part of the problem is there aren't any sane rules of what is and isn't sexual harassment - there is mostly just vague case law and public opinion so things are treated 'case by case'. I was told by a HR department that if someone overheard you and misconstrued what you said it still could be harassment even if they don't report to the person talking. No one could agree what was and wasn't harassment when people in the meeting posed several real-life scenarios. I tried to basically explain the ridiculousness and lack of clarity of what they were saying but felt the extreme discomfort in the room and stopped. You basically have the option of abstaining entirely from any comment or remark that could resemble anything sexual to anyone within physical or digital earshot or be at risk to an uncertain and unwritten standard. Treat everyone as formless blobs of raceless genderless biological matter or else. This is a impossible when when jobs become the majority of people's lives and part of their identity. Sex is a crucial part of human identity and denying it's existence generally isn't healthy behavior or even practical.

louwrentius 10y ago
You want to make it sound like it's vague what sexual harassment really is. But your boss stating he wants to have sex with you, I think that's quite a clear-cut case.
- smhost 10y ago
  It's really not though. The problem only exists because our society has an unhealthy attitude about sex. If we all had a perfectly healthy attitude about sex, the mere admission of the fact that someone feels sexually attracted to someone else would be a nonissue. But the world isn't ideal, and there's a whole host of misogyny, fear, taboos, antiquated traditions, and stupid people. So we have a problem. Your boss stating that he wants to have sex with you is stupid, unethical, and unprofessional. It's not clear that it's sexual harassment, unless he was told to stop yet continued anyway.
  - Nitramp 10y ago
    > Your boss stating that he wants to have sex with you is stupid, unethical, and unprofessional. It's not clear that it's sexual harassment, unless he was told to stop yet continued anyway. Your boss by definition is in a position of power over you. If they date you (let alone ask for sex in this manner!), they can be seen as exploiting their power over you, or you being treated differently in return for sex. That just doesn't work. It's always unethical, regardless of consent of the employee (who might also be too afraid to say no).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

abandonliberty 10y ago

Is there any physical/electronic evidence?

abandonliberty 10y ago
It is popular in the USA right now to silence rational, evidence based discussions. Now more than ever it is of vital importance that we stick to values of relying on open dialogue, reason, and facts. If these values only apply when they are convenient and comfortable for you then they aren't your values, but instead a rhetorical tool you abuse. As a community of above-average intelligence and reason, I am disappointed to see hacker news commenters abuse their power to silence requests for evidence. If you approach things objectively you must always seek evidence. Given the libel risks, there must be some evidence. Perhaps it's not getting released at this stage to strengthen her legal position. In this case the evidence shared thus far is character-based. That doesn't obviate the need or prevent the ability to have a rational, logical discussion about evidence. Please, go ahead and silence this post as well. Show me how badly you deserve your current political situation and fractured nation. If this community behaves this way, I don't have much hope for the world. Our democracy and the world needs people committed to reason, evidence, and open dialogue. The choice is yours.
- xenadu02 10y ago
  Here's the thing: If you had ever taken even a few minutes to sit down with women who work in our industry and asked them if anything like this has ever happened to them you would learn it is extremely common. You would also learn that women rarely get the benefit of the doubt in these situations and are often punished or eventually forced out of the company. Women don't talk about it because jerks immediately start screaming "WHERES THE EVIDENCE?!?!?!?!". As far as anyone can tell she has no interest in pursuing a legal case; in that sense this is just like the NFL national anthem controversy. No matter how blandly and inoffensively someone behaves there will be assholes at the ready to condemn them for speaking out about anything in any form whatsoever. Susan kept her head down, tried to do good work, then left for another job. She has made the absolutely minimum of an issue out of this as it is possible to make. Try this thought experiment: assume the original story was written by a man and was identical except for the sexual harassment part. The same tales of toxic work culture. The same stories about managers protecting fiefdoms, undermining each other, and withholding information. The same story about being denied a transfer so this person could serve as a "feather in the cap" of the manager denying the transfer. Would you still be out here claiming it is the end of civil society that everyone isn't demanding evidence before rushing to judgement? Hint: we've had these kinds of stories show up before with male authors and the answer is no, people aren't so demanding. Only people who experience sexual harassment are held to this double-standard. Nothing about what Susan posted seems far-fetched or out of the ordinary. HR exists to protect the company from you, not to help you or ensure justice is served. Telling people this is someone's first offense is likely to diffuse the situation and ensure no one files any pesky complaints with commissions nor hires a lawyer. Playing games with performance reviews is par for the course. Anyone who complains is viewed as a troublemaker. This happens on a daily basis in most companies in the USA. Of course I don't believe you (or the rest of your compatriots) posting here are acting in good faith. If she shared screenshots and emails you'd just claim they were faked. How exactly she is supposed to gather evidence (when CA is a two-party state, so recording the conversations secretly would be illegal) is never explained.

edoloughlin 10y ago

Headline should read 'Uber Ignored Female Employee's Claims of Sexual Harassment Until She Quit, Wrote About It And Got It Picked Up On High Profile Site'

uwnigga 10y ago

Why is everyone ignoring that she could be attention whore and Uber did nothing wrong to keep her employed. If she made false claims, I wish Uber sues her ass.

bflesch 10y ago

I find it disconcerning that they did regular performance reviews, and she aparrently scored very highly on them. But later those ratings were discounted by some "hidden" factor. Why would I waste time on performance reviews when I'm not openly giving feedback to the employee? How can an organization efficiently distribute team members based on metrics derived from performance reviews when there is such an impactful but undocumented component of the review?

zatkin 10y ago
I think that the "undocumented component" is undocumented for the very same reason that companies have an undocumented component with technical interviews - they're trying not to get themselves into a potential legal situation.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  That's not what I got out of it at all. My take on it was that the "undocumented component" was made up after the fact, as a retroactively fabricated excuse to remove her eligibility to transfer teams. The same situation happens all the time in a gender-neutral way in the form of raises and promotions that are promised but then fail to materialize, with some new excuse being created out of thin air. Also, my company very explicitly does not have an undocumented component to technical interviews, as that could open up all sorts of legal liability. The interviewers write up their feedback and the feedback is then evaluated by a neutral hiring committee who never met the interviewee in question. Keeping the paper trail of 100% of the information that went into the hiring decision is the best defense against possible discrimination claims.

random_upvoter 10y ago

As a meta, it seems to be an infallible rule of Hacker News that any discussion about the relationship between men and women turns into an angry painful mess in no time. Maybe we should look into this anger itself rather than draw all sorts of conclusions from cases of which we don't know half of what really happened.

adekok 10y ago
It's similar to conversations between conservatives and liberals. Both groups have implicit assumptions about how the world works. They have implicit value judgements, in preferring one thing versus another. Conversation almost never describes these implicit assumptions. As a result, each side ends up thinking that the other side is stupid, obtuse, biased, etc. Getting to the underlying biases is hard. As evidence, see any number of newspaper headlines, including this one: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-trump-us-military-attack-yemen-civilians-women-children-dead-a7553121.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-t... Ignoring the Trump bit, the headline says "kills 30 civilians, including 10 women and children" Now, try to prove that the male / female victims were treated equally. And, that there is no implicit bias in male / female relationships. I'm not saying that such bias is good, bad, or ugly. I'm saying it exists. And it underlies a lot of conversations, without anyone realizing it. Which goes a long way to explaining why things end up as you pointed out.
- RileyKyeden 10y ago
  I think in a lot of cases it's more that: 1: We know the assumptions. 2: We know the differences are often intractable (I will never relent on full LGBTQ equality, for example) 3: We can't just split off and do our own thing because we need each other for civilization to function, so we have to deal with them. Some of us can avoid dealing with it by moving to the city/suburbs/exurbs where there's more unity, but that just postpones dealing with the problems we ran from. Eventually, elections happen, and you realize putting 50-5000 miles between you and that person who finally motivated you to leave didn't actually resolve your conflicts.
- danaliv 10y ago

cancancan 10y ago

Let there be a lesson, always use a prostitute. If you want kids, rent a womb.

tomlock 10y ago
I hope you don't "use" one. Sex workers deserve better.
- cancancan 10y ago
  You're right, I don't "use" them. I fuck them. That's the service they offer. Sorry if I burst someone's bubble so they feel the need to flag my comment, but not everyone is a Victorian prude in denial of human nature.
sctb 10y ago
This is a deeply uncivil comment, and if you post like this again we have to ban your account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

hueving 10y ago

>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her gender — a case she lost. This paragraph is indicative of how terrible the NYTimes is with editorializing. They couldn't just report on one case with objective facts. Instead they decided to make it sound like this level of harassment is endemic to Silicon Valley (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) and the only evidence they provided was the Ellen Pao case where a jury decided she was wrong. This completely devalues the entire article and puts it on par with political commentary.

DanBC 10y ago
> (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at) Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me.
- golergka 10y ago
  > I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me. So you prefer preaching to the choir to trying to change someone's mind?
  - TorKlingberg 10y ago
    Are you saying victims of harassment have some duty to seek out and tell people who are unlikely to believe them or care?
    - Neliquat 10y ago
      If it clearly benefits current and future victims to be taken seriously and get any help they may need? Yes, in my opinion. But that is a much more personal ethics call.

mcculley 10y ago

It's very common that startups have such issues. You've got a bunch of younger inexperienced managers and an inexperienced HR department. What I don't understand is, why don't investors compel such valuable startups to get experienced HR? Do they calculate that the lawsuits will cost less than outsourcing HR or otherwise getting adult supervision? Or are they just blind to it?

baloneyman 10y ago
I think startup is a pretty generous term for the growth stage that Uber was in at the time
- mcculley 10y ago
  I agree in that I think startup is a vague term. I think what is important is that it's a young company funded by external investment, not organic growth. Why don't investors care about such issues enough to be proactive?

meerita 10y ago

After reading the entire blog post, and also reading that the CEO is concerned, I want heads rolling. Specially those who were involved from HR, managers. I think it will centrate the people on doing their job, not doing anything aside from this. What a bad image UBER is getting for toxic "high performers".

CydeWeys 10y ago
I'm worried that the head of HR will be fired as a scapegoat or something, when they were never empowered to truly deal with issues like this in the first place, and that such policy will continue. If the company culture is toxic to begin with, and "high performers" are retained at all cost, firing one head of HR makes no difference if, afterwards, HR is still not going to be empowered with truly addressing these issues.
- meerita 10y ago
  The head of HR wasn't reported, that's what I believe it happen. That's why now it is on duty. I think this has happen in middleground, not the highest spheres. Well, the CTO is involved, and as manager, he had to work on that matter from day 1. The CTO will not be kicked, of course, but it tells you how much the company will do with this.

hatsunearu 10y ago

I just find the whole leather jacket incident incredibly baffling. It's just a few hundred bucks. Is Uber that short of cash? It's ridiculous.

Taylor_OD 10y ago
They need that money to keep subsidizing my flat rate rides.
CydeWeys 10y ago
It's only baffling until you realize that it really just is horrible, blatant sexism of the worst kind. That entire department had turned so corrosively sexist (going from 24 to 3% women) that it needed to finish the job and get the rest of the women out by making it plain that they weren't welcome. We're talking about the people in power here being so horribly sexist that they have to force the women out in order to feel comfortable being themselves. Any company that cares one inkling about diversity will go out of its way to make minorities feel comfortable. We're dealing with the opposite situation here: A department actively working to drive out diversity.
- xanderjanz 10y ago
  Thats not how I read it. They tried to push out the last few women, while scheming to keep them? Why hire them in the first place? I take it at face value, Oblivious Employees/Managers thought that not paying extra for women's jackets was equality.
  - sudosteph 10y ago
    > Why hire them in the first place? Because they were qualified applicants and the hiring manager wanted to not get sued for blatant hiring discrimination? These folks clearly don't deserve to be taken at face value. Otherwise the "Everyone is getting jackets" could have been properly taken at value to mean that everyone, including women were getting them. So we're past believing them at face value now, great. So why did they really make this an issue? Probably some combination of: 1. Someone was playing politics and wanted a head pat for saving money (conversely, they did not want to reprimanded for going over-budget). 2. Women are often perceived as less assertive, so they thought they would be less likely to raise a stink over a "minor issue" like a free jacket. (The really pessimistic side of me says someone thought "Women don't wear leather jackets anyhow, it's not stylish enough. Why spend money on something they won't use?") I don't for one second believe they actually thought "equality" came into play at all.

solarengineer 10y ago

The book "Corporate Confidential" is a must read.

ilamont 10y ago

Crisis PR 101. Announce an investigation, "discipline" a few anonymous people or fire the most egregious offender, announce a new code of conduct, and then hope the furor blows over in a week or two. But nothing will really change if this is part of the ingrained culture at Uber. Fish rots from the head, as someone noted in yesterday's thread.

overcast 10y ago

Why does everything involved with UBER, sound like it's run by some type of frat house?

settsu 10y ago
My theory, as a casual observer and not speaking from experience (aside from having been a 20-something white male), is going straight from college to founding a company with m/billions at stake has the tendency to breed and feed unhealthy perspectives. Not always, not inherently, and certainly not irreparably, but ostensibly more often than not for the SV unicorns.

bsclifton 10y ago

One of the criteria for being a high performer needs to be: being a decent human being and treating other people with the respect they deserve

babelsquid 10y ago

Why does Thuan Pham get a free pass on what happens under his supervision? He joined Uber as CTO two years before Fowler's hiring.

brudgers 10y ago

As I commented last night[1], the New York Times has cast Fowler's experience as a he-said-she-said story. Unfortunately I was not pessimistic enough: 1. The New York Times spiked the most damning part of Fowler's story: that HR was actively involved in supporting the behavior. 2. It down plays Fowler's specific experience as typical for the industry and marginalizes it by bringing Pao's story into Fowler's narrative. Pao's experience was radically different, if for no other reason than Fowler is a rank and file employee of the most typical kind, an engineer. Pao is an executive. It also brought all the irrlevant ambiguities surrounding Pao's executive actions at Reddit into the mix. 3. It repeats nearly all of Uber's public response verbatim rather than linking to it as it does with Fowler's article. Fowler's story gets one paragraph (or two if the one sentence paragraph about going to work for Stripe counts). The same amount is devoted to Pao. Uber's PR gets the bulk of the article with no critical analysis. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159

Tloewald 10y ago
I'm curious as to whether you're complaining about the story. What do you mean by "spiked"? The coverage seems fair and open-ended
- brudgers 10y ago
  Fowler's statement describes ongoing and systematic patterns of discrimination, retribution and harassment against and of women and its facilitation by the human resource department. The headline leads with Uber's damage control message and ignores the most serious part of Fowler's description.
  - Terretta 10y ago
    In case you're still following, another Uber engineer's voice: https://medium.com/@hadrad1000/reflecting-on-susan-fowlers-reflections-e2dccb374b47 https://medium.com/@hadrad1000/reflecting-on-susan-fowlers-r...
    - 10y ago

epynonymous 10y ago

i have been a long time uber user, up until their sale in china to didi taxi, and it was a beautiful service here. since then, i have deleted their app just because it was taken over by some useless shell company in beijing. but what is happening lately with all the accusations about uber, the trump immigration executive order and how uber profited off that, some uber ban in some city, etc. it all seems quite methodical and targeted. do not think it's lyft of all people, that would be too obvious, maybe it's like the secret brotherhood of the knights or something. who aside from lyft/taxis would gain the most from uber collapsing? (not that they're anywhere close to collapsing). i guess there are probably a lot of haters out there since they've been really at the top. personally i've given up on uber, but mostly because their service essentially is being killed by didi taxi in china.

st3v3r 10y ago

I will believe it when I see it. I have no confidence that anything will actually change, and that anyone other than a token fall guy will be fired.

acjohnson55 10y ago

Interesting that Arianna Huffington is taking a personal hand in this investigation, given that her former Chief of Staff and Managing Editor at HuffPost, Jimmy Soni, was dogged by similar allegations: http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was-investigated-for-sexual-1626614104 http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was-investigate.... This is a mess. They need a fully independent investigator.

twfarland 10y ago

With that evidence, the CEO should not only fire the creeps involved, but name and shame them. Incredibly damaging, not just for PR reasons, but for missing out on talented people and allowing toxicity.

spooterspooter 10y ago

I'm unable to read the article due to a paywall.