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The article doesn't discuss the seniority of the fired employees. It's very hard to distinguish between scapegoating and actually working to fix the problem wit

• macspoofing 9y ago
  >The problem is that there's a culture where sexual harassment isn't taken seriously Is there? I've seen people claim this but I haven't seen any evidence for it. I know Susan Fowler's account is used frequently as basis for that statement and though I don't doubt her sincerity and truthfulness, you can't just extrapolate her experience to the entire (global) company.
  • mavelikara 9y ago
    You stated: I haven't seen any evidence for it. In the very next sentence you offer one such evidence, and then go on to discredit it with you can't just extrapolate.
    • travmatt 9y ago
      The mental gymnastics of motivated reasoning is a wonder to behold.
    • macspoofing 9y ago
      >In the very next sentence you offer one such evidence, and then go on to discredit it with you can't just extrapolate. Right. Because in the first case we're talking about a systemic problem applying to a global company of 12,000 possibly spanning all levels of management as well as its polices and mandates. In the second case we're talking about a person's singular experience - which I've never disputed. The former is a much stronger statement than the latter so you cannot use the latter to prove the former.
      • stale2002 9y ago
        Were you really not aware of Uber's work culture issues? Uber's problems with work culture and hostility to women has been an open secret for years. I remember hearing rumors about it since 2014 at least. None of the recent allegations are surprising to anybody at all who has been aware of what it is like to work there.
  • mikeyouse 9y ago
    > Is there? I've seen people claim this but I haven't seen any evidence for it. As another point of evidence, they just fired 20 people for sexual harassment to address 215 separate claims before the separate outside report into the amount of sexual harassment in their company. Maybe they don't deserve your skepticism.
    • pfarnsworth 9y ago
      It wasn't just for sexual harrassment. It was for an conduct that they deemed inappropriate, like bullying, harrassment, etc.
  • _dark_matter_ 9y ago
    I mean... a quick google search will get you there. [0] Travis calls Uber "Boob-er" because it helps him (and other execs) pick up women [1] Sexual Harassment + Heavy drug use at the global all-hands [2] Company group, including CEO, visits escort bar in Seoul [3] More "survivor" stories ------------------------------------------------- [0] http://www.gq.com/story/uber-cab-confessions?currentPage=1 http://www.gq.com/story/uber-cab-confessions?currentPage=1 [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace-culture.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace... [2] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/27/uber-employees-visit-karaoke-escort-bar-in-seoul.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/27/uber-employees-visit-karaoke-... [3] https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-uber-survivor-c6d6541e632f https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-ub...
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    In a culture where sexual harassment is taken seriously, the firings happen one-at-a-time as things get reported. It doesn't fester until the media spotlight shines on the company's cultural problems, then result in an investigation as to why things got so bad.
  • bogomipz 9y ago
    >"Is there? I've seen people claim this but I haven't seen any evidence for it." Can you explain why you feel that 20 people being fired as a result of a company-wide investigation into to sexual harassment doesn't constitute evidence of a problem?
    • macspoofing 9y ago
      Because it's 20 people out 12,000 and I (we) have no idea what it is they were fired for exactly. We don't know the context, the exact infraction, and how it was dealt with initially. I can't even tell if that rate is high, average or low when compared with any other company of similar size who would create a special sexual-harassment probe to investigate itself.
      • bogomipz 9y ago
        >"Because it's 20 people out 12,000" What are you suggesting by this, that there is an acceptable margin for unacceptable behavior? >We don't know the context, the exact infraction, and how it was dealt with initially." We do know the context, the context was an investigation into sexual harassment conducted by an outside law firm. We know that 31 people are in counseling/training and another 7 were given warning as a result of the investigation. So by comparison the incidents with these 20 were determined to be serious enough that they warranted termination instead of counseling or a warning. >I can't even tell if that rate is high, average or low when compared with any other company of similar size who would create a special sexual-harassment probe to investigate itself." I think the fact that 58 people (20 + 31 + 7) needing to be addressed retroactively instead of proactively at the time of the complaint is a pretty good indication there might be a large problem.
      • walshemj 9y ago
        > 20 out of only 12,000 is a huge number
        • aokyler 9y ago
          12000/20 = 0.001666 .17% is not a huge number.
• tmh79 9y ago
  There are two "parts" of the investigation. More coming at a later date in the near future WRT high level leadership. Other publications like axios state that Emil (BD) and Thuan (CTO) will likely be shown the door.
• erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Um, it's not scapegoating if these people are harassing other employees. Scapegoating is when you hire underlings for projects that senior management was driving. No one forces you to harass another employee.
  • x0x0 9y ago
    Scapegoating isn't the right word, but ThrustVectoring is right. In 12k employees there will be some dicks who sexually harass. You fire them. The problem at Uber isn't some line level eng or line level management sexually harassed someone; it's that HR and the VP Eng and the CEO all tolerated it. So unless someone whose name goes in SEC filings gets fired, they aren't taking this seriously.
    • ghostly_s 9y ago
      To be perfectly clear, both of those things are problems. But one is a much bigger problem than he other.
    • bigdickrick 9y ago
      This is ridiculous and definitely a false dichotomy. I know HN has a hard-on for Uber at the moment, but comments like this are just pure pitchforking. To be clear, I don't condone nor intend to downplay sexual assault at workplaces, nor do I doubt Susan Fowler's account one iota. However, there hasn't been any tangible evidence so far that the dismissal of Susan Fowler's sexual harassment stemmed from a board-level executive or Kalanick himself. All I remember vaguely was an article that was popular on HN that came out after Fowler's account, claiming that such a culture must stem directly from the uppermost echelons of management. Again, to reiterate I don't doubt that Fowler's complaints were ignored by management. My contention is that everyone on HN won't satisfied with anything short of Kalanick's dismissal, when even Susan herself didn't claim that people on the same level as a board-level executive or Kalanick himself were aware of the situation. Middle management, yes. Kalanick-level, no. Imagine if this happened at Walt Disney or Facebook. I don't think it would be reasonable to ask Zuckerberg to step down if a similar blog post came out about Facebook.
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• deleted 9y ago
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• kbenson 9y ago
  > The article doesn't discuss the seniority of the fired employees. It's very hard to distinguish between scapegoating and actually working to fix the problem without that information. It's probably important to consider that even with those numbers, you wouldn't know whether it was scapegoating or not. All they would do would be to allow you to make assumptions, which is more about your preconceptions of what you think they should find than the facts. > The problem with Uber isn't that some employees engage in sexual harassment. The problem is that there's a culture where sexual harassment isn't taken seriously, is tolerated if the perpetrators are "high performing"... See, this may be true, but we don't know this. The point of an investigation is to find this out. Since the investigation in question here is internal, and I'd hazard that most of us don't necessarily harbor any hope that an entirely truthful response will come out of it (I for one wouldn't really expect that from a company I thought was more responsible than Uber), but that doesn't mean we should act like probabilities (and probabilities that are rooted in human behavior that is understood to any statistical degree by almost anyone in my opinion), we should be careful about the certainty we represent those outcomes. In other words, it's all a big swirling mess of hearsay at this point. The problem could be fairly localized but widely publicized, or much more widespread as you state. We don't really know.
  • moomin 9y ago
    Sooner or later you've gotta decide who to believe. The person with nothing to gain by reporting it, or the company with everything to gain by denying it. Besides, it isn't hearsay, the allegations have been made by some of the victims. Hearsay is something else.
    • kbenson 9y ago
      I didn't say it was hearsay. I didn't say I didn't believe the people reporting the problems. I'm just noting that there's a lot of room between "some employees were harassing others, largely unknown to most management" and "there's a pervasive culture of harassment that goes all the way to the top, and includes much of management". And I can fully believe everyone reporting problems believes they are right while withholding judgment as to whether their interpretation of their situations, which were generally highly emotional and formed during extreme stress, is entirely consistent with reality once the other side has a chance to state their case. We should always get both sides. Humans aren't very good at representing stressful situations with other humans objectively.
• moomin 9y ago
  The real question is: did senior people in HR have to walk? If they did, you can feel reasonably confident their replacements won't repeat their behaviours. I'll remind everyone that we're talking about an HR department that repeatedly lied to its employees and did their damndest to shield bad people. If that isn't fixed, you can be guaranteed it'll happen again, whether or not another Fowler decides to do the world a solid and go public.
  • TokenDiversity 9y ago
    You bring an important point which raises another point- who enabled/let HR do this? And what happened to them? HR doesn't exist in isolation and I've known big firms' HRs to be trigger happy as long as they can justify it.
    • grandalf 9y ago
      Right. This is the core problem. Most people who wind up in HR are rule-followers who are acutely aware of the legal risks associated with harassment culture.
    • rdxm 9y ago
      >> who enabled HR please tell me this is a joke right? you can't possibly be asking that question seriously..
      • tankenmate 9y ago
        HR is a business function, and the business is run by executives, so unless the HR function is run day to day by the CEO then HR needs to be enabled by someone. The HR function in a company the size of Uber is a deliberate structure that is guided by business goals set by the executive team, the executive team gives the HR function the authority within the framework (policy, implicit and explicit direction) provided. If the story is true that HR dissembled and protected staff who were blatantly breaking the law then it is very reasonable to ask "who enabled HR?" [EDIT] minor grammar fix
• linkregister 9y ago
  Wouldn't scapegoats file wrongful termination suits? Seems like a hell of a risk for illegitimate firings.
  • dopamean 9y ago
    I think the point OP is making is that you can fire 20 developers who are guilty of sexual harassment in some form but that even though they are guilty of that there should be people above them who essentially permitted their behavior and let it go unchecked who should also be fired. If you believe, like OP does, that the problem at Uber isn't individual cases of sexual harassment but an institutional passivity towards it then someone higher up really needs to be held accountable as well.
  • theptip 9y ago
    The suggestion is not that those who were fired did nothing wrong. It's that they are being made to take the fall to shield higher-ups who also have done things wrong.
    • linkregister 9y ago
      The suggestion is actually, just that. That is the literal meaning of "scapegoat" in English: one who is wrongfully taking the blame for another. The other responder, dopamean, answered the question considering that context.
      • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
        Yeah, that was my fault for making it unclear. They're guilty of sexual harassment, but scapegoats for the culture that gave them free reign for so long.
• elgenie 9y ago
  Says the article: "The company didn’t name the employees who were let go. Some of the people fired were senior executives, according to the person." Note that firing senior employees also doesn't imply that scapegoating isn't going on. If senior HR executives were perfectly in tune with the will of their bosses and then fell on their swords, there's no reason to suspect that the next crop of HR executives will not get the same cultural messages. These sort of scandals persist because that 'proving' and then cementing the perception that the problem is solved to outsiders is very difficult.