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I also read his post about wanting to do something else, so I was very surprised when I heard that he had gotten a job at Uber. I think that Kalanick made the

by ogezi 10y ago

I also read his post about wanting to do something else, so I was very surprised when I heard that he had gotten a job at Uber. I think that Kalanick made the right decision by asking him to resign. They can't afford to have any more controversies surrounding them especially at this time. I hope all that has happened at Uber can overall make the tech industry better for everyone.

kaspm 10y ago
It's great that Kalanick moved quickly but between this and the other incidents, I don't think it's going to be enough. Kalanick himself may have to resign. Given a good competitor in Lyft and the relatively low barrier to entry on the core business, it will be difficult to weather this storm.
- ogezi 10y ago
  I think that after some time people will forget about this. I read an article [1] today about how the anger that a lot of people feel towards Uber right now will not be enough to push them through the discomfort of moving to smaller competitors like Lyft. it's great that Susan Fowler spoke out but it's gonna take more (a much bigger problem) to cause Kalanick to resign (or be pushed out by the board). [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/why-uber-probably-never-will-reform-itself-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-uber-probably-never-will-...
  - kaspm 10y ago
    I suspect the hits will keep coming [1] [1] https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-uber-survivor-c6d6541e632f#.n2hpo0pws https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-ub...
  - ProAm 10y ago
    > I think that after some time people will forget about this. Except that it seems to come up every 8 months or so with Uber, so there's a constant reminder of what kind of company it is.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  Lyft is a great competitor to Uber, and I use it more myself, but the businesses have grown very different in the past couple years. Uber is very international while Lyft is only in the US, Uber has all of these side businesses beside transportation like UberEATS, which is the most reliable food delivery service in my experience. I've been thinking about the two like: Uber is building the transit infrastructure, and Lyft is building the best personal transportation experience.
Arizhel 10y ago
I disagree. On the face of it, this totally reeks of scapegoating. Uber has many allegations right now that its current culture tolerates harassment, meaning that current employees (including managers most notably) are alleged to have committed harassment while at Uber. This guy is accused of harassment not at Uber (according to the article), but at a previous job at Google. There's no mention of any allegations of harassing behavior at Uber. So maybe he did harass someone at Google, or maybe he didn't and someone bad-mouthed him. If Uber intends to clean up its culture, shouldn't they be first looking at people who have recently been accused of harassment, such as Susan Fowler's first boss, and can those people first? Instead, they find some guy who's been bad-mouthed by a prior employer (which isn't unusual when a company or manager is mad that someone left), and sack him to try to appease everyone and show that they're "doing something".
- foobiekr 10y ago
  Well, obviously it is scapegoating. It's interesting to see this move-before-being-fired thing that happens in the valley quite often as a sort of mirror image of the issues the Catholic church had to deal with for years. It would be interesting to know if the investors at Uber knew about his issues regardless of whether Uber did. They tend to be better connected.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Low-hanging fruit. Generally, it's far easier to get rid of someone for lying ("You lied about about your reasons for leaving your previous company, it seems") than to prove novel allegations against them.
  - softawre 10y ago
    Right. You can sack anybody for anything of course, but convincing the HR department there is low liability for a lawsuit is another thing.
- ASinclair 10y ago
  I don't think they sacked him to look like they're "doing something". How could his subordinates have any confidence the culture would change when he's been accused of the exact problem behavior they're trying to fix?
fictioncircle 10y ago
> Uber execs found out about the situation after Recode informed them of the chain of events between Singhal and the search giant this week. > Indeed. According to multiple sources and internal notes read to me, after discussing the claims of an alleged encounter between Singhal and a female employee first with former Google HR head Laszlo Bock and also Google CEO Sundar Pichai in late 2015, he denied those claims at the time. He also apparently stated a number of times that there were two sides to every story. > To be clear, Singhal’s dispute with Google has nothing to do with that situation or the recent lawsuit that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has waged against Uber’s Otto division. The part that worries me about "perfect storms" like this when two competitors are in multiple disputes (both legal and in the marketplace) is it is a convenient time to leak information that will remove key players from the other company and it does appear that Recode got the information from someone who likely is currently a Google employee. I'm not saying this time it is false but I have seen that pattern play out before where accusations from a previous employer who is a competitor for the current employer get "released" to ruin someone's reputation at a critical juncture. Although, in that case it wasn't sexual harassment but the same principle applies imo. I'd like to see something more verifiable than a business competitor's employee acted as a source for a news article. It is like trusting someone's enemy to be honest rather than slip the knife into their back. If that is the standard of evidence we are using to destroy people's careers, it is a lower bar than I'd like.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  I seem to me that Recode started investigating Uber, and uncovered this.
  - fictioncircle 10y ago
    That might be and it might be my life experience biasing my opinion. I just came away with the impression Recode started to investigate and got spoonfed a line of attack against a commercial competitor. To me, the chain of events seems to be, Recode goes to sources at Google for dirt on ex-Google employees at Uber, gets fed exactly what it would take to get an employee that is valuable to Uber terminated. Often, information that is leaked benefits the leaker in some way from their point of view. Deepthroat leaked as part of a plan to advance his career which is quite similar to Uber's culture of getting other people to fall so you can advance as well. There are just too many odd angles to this that imply it might have been motivated by something other than a genuine commitment to see justice done that I think some greater level of evidence should be expected before you convict someone in the court of public opinion.

by ogezi 10y ago

kaspm 10y ago

It's great that Kalanick moved quickly but between this and the other incidents, I don't think it's going to be enough. Kalanick himself may have to resign. Given a good competitor in Lyft and the relatively low barrier to entry on the core business, it will be difficult to weather this storm.

ogezi 10y ago
I think that after some time people will forget about this. I read an article [1] today about how the anger that a lot of people feel towards Uber right now will not be enough to push them through the discomfort of moving to smaller competitors like Lyft. it's great that Susan Fowler spoke out but it's gonna take more (a much bigger problem) to cause Kalanick to resign (or be pushed out by the board). [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/why-uber-probably-never-will-reform-itself-2017-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/why-uber-probably-never-will-...
- kaspm 10y ago
  I suspect the hits will keep coming [1] [1] https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-uber-survivor-c6d6541e632f#.n2hpo0pws https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-ub...
- ProAm 10y ago
  > I think that after some time people will forget about this. Except that it seems to come up every 8 months or so with Uber, so there's a constant reminder of what kind of company it is.
tedmiston 10y ago
Lyft is a great competitor to Uber, and I use it more myself, but the businesses have grown very different in the past couple years. Uber is very international while Lyft is only in the US, Uber has all of these side businesses beside transportation like UberEATS, which is the most reliable food delivery service in my experience. I've been thinking about the two like: Uber is building the transit infrastructure, and Lyft is building the best personal transportation experience.

Arizhel 10y ago

I disagree. On the face of it, this totally reeks of scapegoating. Uber has many allegations right now that its current culture tolerates harassment, meaning that current employees (including managers most notably) are alleged to have committed harassment while at Uber. This guy is accused of harassment not at Uber (according to the article), but at a previous job at Google. There's no mention of any allegations of harassing behavior at Uber. So maybe he did harass someone at Google, or maybe he didn't and someone bad-mouthed him. If Uber intends to clean up its culture, shouldn't they be first looking at people who have recently been accused of harassment, such as Susan Fowler's first boss, and can those people first? Instead, they find some guy who's been bad-mouthed by a prior employer (which isn't unusual when a company or manager is mad that someone left), and sack him to try to appease everyone and show that they're "doing something".

foobiekr 10y ago
Well, obviously it is scapegoating. It's interesting to see this move-before-being-fired thing that happens in the valley quite often as a sort of mirror image of the issues the Catholic church had to deal with for years. It would be interesting to know if the investors at Uber knew about his issues regardless of whether Uber did. They tend to be better connected.
kafkaesq 10y ago
Low-hanging fruit. Generally, it's far easier to get rid of someone for lying ("You lied about about your reasons for leaving your previous company, it seems") than to prove novel allegations against them.
- softawre 10y ago
  Right. You can sack anybody for anything of course, but convincing the HR department there is low liability for a lawsuit is another thing.
ASinclair 10y ago
I don't think they sacked him to look like they're "doing something". How could his subordinates have any confidence the culture would change when he's been accused of the exact problem behavior they're trying to fix?

fictioncircle 10y ago

> Uber execs found out about the situation after Recode informed them of the chain of events between Singhal and the search giant this week. > Indeed. According to multiple sources and internal notes read to me, after discussing the claims of an alleged encounter between Singhal and a female employee first with former Google HR head Laszlo Bock and also Google CEO Sundar Pichai in late 2015, he denied those claims at the time. He also apparently stated a number of times that there were two sides to every story. > To be clear, Singhal’s dispute with Google has nothing to do with that situation or the recent lawsuit that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has waged against Uber’s Otto division. The part that worries me about "perfect storms" like this when two competitors are in multiple disputes (both legal and in the marketplace) is it is a convenient time to leak information that will remove key players from the other company and it does appear that Recode got the information from someone who likely is currently a Google employee. I'm not saying this time it is false but I have seen that pattern play out before where accusations from a previous employer who is a competitor for the current employer get "released" to ruin someone's reputation at a critical juncture. Although, in that case it wasn't sexual harassment but the same principle applies imo. I'd like to see something more verifiable than a business competitor's employee acted as a source for a news article. It is like trusting someone's enemy to be honest rather than slip the knife into their back. If that is the standard of evidence we are using to destroy people's careers, it is a lower bar than I'd like.

TorKlingberg 10y ago
I seem to me that Recode started investigating Uber, and uncovered this.
- fictioncircle 10y ago
  That might be and it might be my life experience biasing my opinion. I just came away with the impression Recode started to investigate and got spoonfed a line of attack against a commercial competitor. To me, the chain of events seems to be, Recode goes to sources at Google for dirt on ex-Google employees at Uber, gets fed exactly what it would take to get an employee that is valuable to Uber terminated. Often, information that is leaked benefits the leaker in some way from their point of view. Deepthroat leaked as part of a plan to advance his career which is quite similar to Uber's culture of getting other people to fall so you can advance as well. There are just too many odd angles to this that imply it might have been motivated by something other than a genuine commitment to see justice done that I think some greater level of evidence should be expected before you convict someone in the court of public opinion.