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According to the article 5 different VC firms representing 40% of the voting shares asked him to resign today. Kalanick still controls the majority of voting sh
by kevinburke 9y ago
According to the article 5 different VC firms representing 40% of the voting shares asked him to resign today. Kalanick still controls the majority of voting shares and a board seat.
Most of Kalanick's trouble started with Susan Fowler speaking out. Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace. Many of their reports may not be as clear cut as Mrs. Fowler's.
- blazespin 9y agoPlease investigate, not necessarily believe. Innocent til proven guilty still has some place in this world.. That being said, kudos to anyone courageous enough to speak the truth even at the risk of vilification.
- joshuamorton 9y agoBelieve. Do not take action against individuals without investigation, but at organization levels, take measures as though the complaints are true.
- devoply 9y ago> Believe That's sounds like giving accusers too much power, especially if it leads to firing. It's not as if people don't lie.
- smt88 9y agoAccusers are unlikely to abuse this power in the workplace because it harms them, too. It's embarassing, stigmatizing, and often leads to conflicts with the friends of the aggressor.
- joshuamorton 9y ago>Do not take action against individuals without investigation He says on the same line.
- odonnellryan 9y ago"I believe you" is a common thing people say. That's what OP means I'm sure.
- ingenuous2 9y agoI think more appropriate would be to limit the scope of belief to the complainant. Treat them as a person; acknowledge they have experienced something traumatic. Do not believe every word anyone says as the absolute truth of an event. Evidence, corroboration, attempts to be objective -- these are all the rights of the accused. Believe the complainant but do not assume they are correct. Our memories are the movies based on real events.
- Cogito 9y agoNo that's ridiculous. Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith. If you assume them true then you would act as if the investigation has already taken place, and determined that they are true. If you're going to act like that why would you need an investigation? If complaints or concerns are raised in good faith then you have no need to mistrust the representation and instead can look to the facts and context of the situation. Believing someone is not important, understanding the sequence of events that led to them speaking up is.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- abritinthebay 9y agoYou literally just said "believe" because that's exactly what assuming the complaints are made in good faith is
- Cogito 9y agoI replied down thread to a similar point you made - I think you are redefining "believe" to the point where it loses value. Responding as if someone is acting in good faith means that - you believe that - they believe that - they are true On the other hand, if you believe someone it means that - you believe that - they are true Using "believe" to mean the first situation only makes everyone's meaning less clear.
- abritinthebay 9y agoAs I said in response: I don't really care what HN thinks about the term: the experts in the field recommended it. That should give you pause when you claim (incorrectly) that a such a narrow usage of language is correct.
- camelite 9y agoAs speakers of English, we ARE the experts in the field, and the vast majority of us don't agree with you.
- abritinthebay 9y agoInvestigating starts with belief. You don't have to assume truth, just believe they mean their account, you assume good faith. Believe them and allow that belief to start the process of uncovering what the truth is. There's a reason Listen & Believe is a thing and it's not because anyone is saying "you should have unquestioned faith in what someone says".
- Cogito 9y agoI'm not sure what you mean here by belief, but it seems like a redefinition that causes the word to lose value. "Believe" has always implied to me "understands to be true". How can I believe anything based only on the words of a single person? (Except trivial things like believing that they said something to you) I have primarily heard the phrase "listen and believe" used by people who think it is impossible for certain kinds of people to understand the experiences of other kinds of people. Following that argument, the claim is that if you assert an experience I am not capable of understanding then I must accept it, for I have no grounds to refute it. This has always seemed like unquestioned faith to me, for I think any argument should be able to stand on it's own merit. Maybe I am missing some nuance to the argument, or perhaps there is more going on, but in any case 'believe' seems to be the wrong word.
- abritinthebay 9y agoshrug I'm using the usage that social and case workers use when they talk about believing victims. So... frankly, I don't really care what HN thinks of the usage. Note, again, that nothing you said is counter to the "good faith" usage. You're assuming they are speaking the truth as they see it. That's all. That's how any investigation that involves eye witness testimony works. It's also the recommended practice for improving reporting and investigation so, again, don't really care what HN thinks about the term: the experts in the field recommended it.
- jpttsn 9y agoMaybe you meant to post this on Soical Worker News?
- kevinburke 9y agoInnocent until proven guilty is a great standard for criminal trials but probably not for the workplace, where people who report harassment are usually taking an incredible career risk by doing so.
- tehlike 9y agoon the flip side of this, at-will employment is a reason a company could take immediate action without having to investigate.
- paganel 9y agoPeople can also be very manipulative. Following down this path (i.e. "believing that the accuser is right even before the investigation starts") will only lead to less women being hired for relevant positions. Here's a relevant scenario: I'm a man, I hold a managerial position and I have to choose between hiring another man or a woman as a one of my direct-reports. Let's say both contenders have the same qualifications, they're both equally fit for the job, but then, I, as a manager, start thinking that if I hire the woman she will then possibly think of filing a sexual harassment complaint down the line in order to take my job. Remember the "believe" part, which means that the sexual complaint doesn't even need to be backed by anything real, because most of the times after the complaint has been made public the damage is already done for me, as a male manager, no matter what the investigation finds (if it manages to find anything). So I choose the man over the woman as my direct-report.
- Mandatum 9y agoTrust, but verify
- venture_lol 9y agoGeneral observations from experience: A well-run company will have proper procedures, processes in place to deal with work place issues. Management and all staff will also be required to take training on a continuous basis. Professionally managed organizations don't walk around "believing" this or that or spouting off "innocent until proven guilty" and such :)
- hueving 9y ago>Management and all staff will also be required to take training on a continuous basis. This is miserable. Unless the definition of sexual harassment changes every 6 months, you should not be forcing employees to retake these training sessions.
- nf05papsjfVbc 9y agoOften they are a means of having something to which they can point and say "we were doing our very best to create a safe environment". It's more of "ammo in case of lawsuit" than actual useful training. It may also be to just follow regulations in some places where they ought to have at least X hours/minutes of training on compliance related matters per year/month etc.
- creepydata 9y agoPeople (hopefully) won't get practice on reporting and handling harassment claims. It's good to have a refresher training to both remind employees of the process as well as a gesture to show they are still taking the issue seriously.
- r00fus 9y agoWe are required to take ethics training like this yearly. Simply doubling that frequency may be justified due to Uber's history.
- ruleabidinguser 9y agoIs that a passive (maybe it's not passive) aggressive smiley face? In a paragraph talking about what it means to be professional?
- awwwwsmwry 9y agoWomen should stay at home and raise kids... you don't really need women in the economy or politics, nor do they need it to be happy.
- sctb 9y agoWe'll ban the main account as well as this one if you continue to use throwaways to violate the guidelines.
- Cheesegrits 9y agoUber's business model reminds me of Zapp Brannigan. Fry: "I heard one time you single-handedly defeated a horde of rampaging somethings in the something something system" Brannigan: "Killbots? A trifle. It was simply a matter of outsmarting them." Fry: "Wow, I never would've thought of that." Brannigan: "You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down. Kif, show them the medal I won."
- sanbor 9y agoHere is the clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowPka21BNc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowPka21BNc
- sundvor 9y agoA business culture flows from the top. Reading Susan J Fowler's account told me the whole company must be toxic, for such abhorrent behaviour to be condoned of.
- SamUK96 9y agoIt is to my knowledge that the problems have been around from the start, but you haven't noticed it. I'm pushed to think that the "media" didn't report on it too much because the problems were economic. But as an average media company, that story doesn't sell, it doesn't interest the average reader, so they don't report it that much. Then the sexual harrasment scandal surfaced and _that_ is when the media jumped on board, because everybody loves getting political and hearing about scandals and feminism and all those kind of controversial topics. If anything, the scandal damaged Uber's public image, but that is a superficial problem in proportion to their disasterous funding model and general financials.
- macspoofing 9y ago>Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace This meme is often repeated in context of sexual harrassment (workplace or otherwise). How do you square that with the fact that women are as capable of laying and misleading as men are? How do you square that with "innocent until proven guilty" when accusation are leveled against another individual or company.
- post_break 9y agoHe didn't say that women don't lie about harassment, just that they are taken more seriously. Similar to rape claims.
- macspoofing 9y agoNo. Nobody argues sexual harrassment claims shouldn't be taken seriously. Nobody argues rape claims shouldn't be taken seriously. Nobody. That's not what OP argued. It's a common meme to argue that claims of sexual harrassment and sexual assult should be assumed to be true. That's insane. It upends our entire notion of Justice.
- harmegido 9y agoNobody says they don't take these things seriously, but an glance at the data will show you that many don't actually take them seriously.
- macspoofing 9y agoYou're moving the goalposts in this discussion. We're talking about doing away with long held ideas of what Justice means.
- kevinburke 9y agoThe required burden of proof can and should be much lower in the workplace. Sure everyone is capable of lying but P(harassment occurred | report of harassment) is much greater than P(harassment did not occur | report of harassment).
- efuquen 9y agoIf you go to a police station and report a murder do you think they'll a) investigate your claim or b) ignore you? That is the sort of belief we're talking about, a serious investigation with the assumption the person reporting it is not lying. The investigation itself could of course result in not sufficient evidence being found. It's really not that complicated.
- kevinburke 9y agoNot sure who "we" is but far too frequently at tech companies, harassment allegations are ignored. For that matter prominent men sometimes admit to harassment and are acquitted anyway.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoAlso, people fired for making complaints. That has the nice property that it's illegal, the whistleblower can get compensated, but only if they already have the means to wage a legal battle.
- aeturnum 9y agoThere have long been reports from various minority communities in the United States and elsewhere of crime reports being ignored entirely or not taken seriously. Alternatively, look at the public scrutiny of police shootings. However you personally feel about them, there is a section of the population that sees them as a miscarriage of justice that is playing out in the public square. People look at the extremely low (non-existent?) conviction rate of officers and see either a police force operating without consequences or a remarkably well-mantained and well-monitored police force. Obviously there should be an investigation, but history tells us that it is very easy to fool ourselves into believing we've done a "fair" investigation which will not look fair to outsiders or victims. No malice is necessary, but it is frequently endemic anyway.
- dgfgfdagasdfgfa 9y agoHarrassment is often entirely one person's word against another. Many of these cases are decided by who the jury believes, if the case even makes it to court—because, remember, most victims don't press charges. Investigations don't help much in these cases. The pressure isn't to find (often non-existent) evidence, it is to commit to the shitty process of trying to get people to care about you a painful part of your life.
- ryanx435 9y ago> Please believe women when they report harassment in the workplace. Many of their reports may not be as clear cut as Mrs. Fowler's. no evidence? no problem. guilty until proven innocent based on the gender of the accuser.
- metaphorm 9y agoThe Susan Fowler article greatly accelerated this process and drew a huge amount of (deserved) media attention. However, Uber has a long history of bad behavior in many different ways. The internal culture being rotten was known-about-but-not-talked-about for a long time, and their history of legally gray and unethical business practices was already a major specter on the company's public image.
- Mz 9y agoPlease believe women when they report harassment in the workplace One of the problems with this unilateral statement is that if this becomes the new norm, then women can just level accusations and be believed. Men get fired or have other consequences. It is never a good idea to have a policy of sweepingly and uncritically believing some category of people over another. That is actually the problem we currently have, only it is generally white men who get believed, no matter what they say, while women and poc get ignored, dismissed, etc. Consider how poorly that is currently serving women and poc and maybe stop to wonder if you would want to be on the receiving end of that. Your remarks make it clear that you have enormous privilege and you imagine you cannot lose that advantage. Consider the possibility of losing it. Just as a thought experiment. Your smugness is deeply rooted in your assumption that you will always be privileged. And I don't even know where to begin here in telling you how sick and twisted that is. In a weird way, it deeply reinforces the current sick system. And if you did get your way, you could well lose the thing you currently cannot imagine losing. I am not for having a Lord of the Flies social order and simply shuffling around who the default victims are. I would like to treat everyone better, not simply make the current victims the next generation of abusive tyrants.