11 ms·

FT Person of the Year: Susan Fowler

345 points by olivermarks 9y ago

slowandlow 9y ago
She outed all the tech bros!! awesome.
- lucisferre 9y ago
  It's hard to know if you meant this fatuously or seriously, but it doesn't really add any substance to the discussion either way.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Hmm. Would Harvey Weinstein have blown up the way he did if Susan Fowler hadn’t moved first against Uber?
- deviationblue 9y ago
  Personally, I don't think Weinstein, and the after effects on other public figures, would have blown up to this level without Susan. Actually, going even further back, people like Ellen Pao and their stories have been consequential as well. I would say stories like Pao's cleared the way for Fowler. Not to be dramatic, but I think this example is very timely and appropriate for showing the impact of an uncensored internet. We can only guess whether impact like this will still be possible without net neutrality.
- jsmthrowaway 9y ago
  Not speaking dismissively of Susan's contribution, but I think so. Her story snowballed into a lot of shady shit going on at Uber, and Kalanick wasn't ousted as a direct result of her allegations. Weinstein himself kicked off a pattern of high-profile ousters based directly on the allegations. I think they're slightly different scenarios, and contributed culturally in their own way, and why she was one piece of a broader picture in Time instead of person of the year by her lonesome. (I realize the irony in my typing this, that I appear to be saying Weinstein was responsible for something a number of people would argue a woman started, but hey. That's not what I'm saying, and you get my point and what I'm trying to say.) Put another way, Susan didn't go after a high-profile leader directly. She went after systemic issues in a company. Weinstein, on the other hand, showed a lot of people that high-profile leaders are vulnerable to public attention, and that became a slightly different species of snowball. Both are cultural contributions.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    I wouldn't dismiss the butterfly effect so quickly. She was certainly early in this wave, and the cumulative inertia has to be part of why things ended up as they are.
    - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
      I don't. I think the allegations against Weinstein were severe enough that they could have stood alone, and didn't vastly benefit from the cultural change that Susan started with Uber. The point being made was that Weinstein might not have happened had Susan and Uber not happened, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Which is NOT to say I discount anything that did, which I'm guessing from voting I did not express clearly enough.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        The allegations against Weinstein are mostly years old though. Is it just coincidence they were raised in this current climate? Fowler's revelations contributed to an environment that made it easier to speak up. Edit: The reason I find Fowler somewhat unique is that her background, credentials, writing skills, etc, made her hard to dismiss. It was very believable, perhaps to some that might have tended to challenge similar stories. So it seemed to open a door for women that had similar stories, but not the same level of gravitas. It also primed the media to pay attention to this area.
        jsmthrowaway 9y ago
        Yes and no. People spoke up before Fowler; why are we hinging the culture on her? Something I think a lot of people are overlooking is that she was heard on a larger scale than anybody before her, but lionizing her as a result is actually disrespectful to the plethora of examples who came before her and were just unlucky (I guess?). I can think of a number of prominent examples within tech that didn't get any of the attention outside of tech, but I will not rehash them here. That, to me, indicates that something else shifted culturally to allow the Uber thing to help contribute to that environment. What is that? Was it the scale of Uber? Was it something about Fowler? Was it that the same power dynamics that suppressed revelations about Weinstein were starting to degrade within insular tech? I'm personally curious about it, and I don't think Fowler's blog post was solely responsible and folks should start making conclusions about cultural shifts, is my only point. Edit to your edit: Careful; you're lightly claiming that accusers before Fowler were unbelievable and easily dismissed.
- Joeboy 9y ago
  After the Time person of the year thing there was a bit of an online spat about who did and didn't get featured on the cover and who was most deserving of the credit. To me it seems a bit unseemly and unnecessary. I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017 I'm curious about the phenomenon. We had mass acceptance of horrifying behaviour. Switches flipped and what was dirty but tolerable became unacceptable. If we wish to replicate this process in other domains, it would be helpful to understand what happened.
    - DataWorker 9y ago
      more importantly if we wish to avoid replication in other domains it would be helpful if more people understood what happened. Our thoughts and culture are easily changed by those who know how to flip the right switches as you put it. This can work for or against any particular interest.
    - ensignavenger 9y ago
      This seems so odd to me. In the circles I am most familiar with, such behavior has always been seen as reprehensible. I suppose there have always been rumors that such behavior was commonly accepted in Hollywood, and as it turns out, silicon valley doesn't seem too different. Well, I think Washington DC deserves to be on that list, too. I wonder how common it is for more "powerful" people in other circles to get away with this kind of malarky?
      - rsynnott 9y ago
        Most places that it's shown up are workplaces with powerful, almost untouchable figures (a TV star or a 'rockstar programmer' or a CEO or an elected representative, or, of course, a priest, going back a bit further), and defective or non-existent HR. I suspect it's less common in more normally-functioning workplaces, simply because people would feel safer in complaining to HR, and special accommodations for the predator would be less likely to be made. Also, of course, it was not exactly advertised that this was going on.
- whatok 9y ago
  Do not know about impact but Ronan Farrow's Weinstein story was published in October and put together over the course of a ten month investigation [0]. Susan Fowler's blog was posted in February. I'd imagine Farrow probably started on his story before the investigations started; especially since Weinstein was a well-known story. If Farrow's article was posted before Fowler's, I want to say that there would still be the same reaction. A lot of people had no idea about Fowler and Uber but people definitely know about Weinstein. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-ove...
  - joycey 9y ago
    I remember there was an episode on the podcast The Daily where Michael Barbaro interviewed a reporter who worked on the Harvey Weinstein story. I think they said that The New York Times had tried to pursue this story in the past, but they really wanted to make another push for it this year to expose the unreported stories of sexual harassment.
- untog 9y ago
  I don't think it's possible to know. There are so many cultural factors that led to where we are today that it's all but impossible to draw a straight line. No doubt Susan Fowler had an effect on that culture. So did the first female Presidential nominee losing to an incredibly unqualified man (before anyone starts, no, I'm not saying that sexism is the only reason she lost), as did the fact that Trump himself had numerous accusations against him that were all but dismissed in popular consciousness... I don't mean to diminish Fowler at all. But the moment we have arrived at is a huge collection of interconnected events, not a straight line from A, through B, to C.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    I wonder if Clinton didn't have certain associations - Bill, Weiner, Weinstein (the Clintons were warned about him and met with him after the election to make a show about the campaign, only to later feign shock and distance themselves), would those accusations against Trump have had more power? I know that's not your main point, it's just important to point out culpable people like the Clintons were instead of seeing them (or the campaign) as victims. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-wei... In late September, emails show, he was discussing a documentary television show he was working on with Hillary Clinton. He had long raised campaign cash for her, and her feminist credentials helped burnish his image — even though Tina Brown, the magazine editor, and Lena Dunham, the writer and actress, each say they had cautioned Mrs. Clinton’s aides about his treatment of women. Now, Mr. Weinstein exchanged questions about distribution rights for the show. “I am hopeful we can get a good price for this,” Robert Barnett, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer, replied. Two days later, Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, interrupted a vacation in Hawaii to field advice from Mr. Weinstein, according to the emails. The Wall Street Journal was reporting on turmoil at Amazon Studios, one of Mr. Weinstein’s business partners. He recommended an aggressive response that involved hiring some of his own team, including a libel lawyer who “makes sure everyone sticks to the right narrative,” Mr. Weinstein wrote. He added, “I’m happy to coordinate with whoever you’d like, as a friend of the court.” Mr. Bezos declined to comment.
    - 9y ago
- myth_drannon 9y ago
  From my understanding of US politics, once the Dems/Clintons were gone from the political scene it was open hunt on him, Fowler or not.
- Buldak 9y ago
  There's no way to know of course, but I'm more inclined to point to Trump as the impetus for America's reaction against sexual misconduct.
  - rsynnott 9y ago
    I think it might be stoking the fire now, but there wasn't really all that much of a response when allegations were made about Trump, either by voters or the media. It's really hard to see that as the jumping-off point. As a result of the current climate, indeed, Trump's allegations are being re-examined by the media.
- dominotw 9y ago
  Would Susan Fowlers blog have blow up the same way if Uber handn't supported Trumps immigration ban.
dtf 9y ago
According to editor Lionel Barber, Fowler was up against the likes of Macron, Xi, MbS, Musk and Bezos. https://www.ft.com/content/7ab21e44-de85-11e7-8f9f-de1c2175f5ce https://www.ft.com/content/7ab21e44-de85-11e7-8f9f-de1c2175f...
- djroomba 9y ago
  Those guys basically rule the world politically or economically, and Susan won at the Financial Times. That doesnt seem right. The other people have a extraordinary larger impact on global economics and politics.
  - untog 9y ago
    They also ruled the world last year, and will rule the world next year. "Person of the Year" awards tend to highlight people that have had a particularly atypical effect in one particular year. They'd be pretty boring if they didn't. Another way to look at it: while Bezos has done plenty with Amazon in 2017, it's a continuation of what he was doing in 2016. And I suspect 2018 will continue this year. It's not that his achievements aren't notable, it's that they didn't dramatically change the course of this year's events, or inspire a dramatic change of direction. By comparison, 2017's awakening to sexual assault/discrimination claims is an absolutely huge deviation from existing patterns.
  - team_america 9y ago
    It's because of today's victim-hood culture. Achievements do not matter anymore. Merit is a lost concept. You get your achievements handed to you now by falling into protected groups and putting in the bare minimum effort. She wrote a blog post documenting her year at Uber, it's great she did that, but it not Financial Times worthy. Honestly, even on a social level, why not Terry Crews? He's the only man that spoke out. You'd think he'd win a victim point for being black. But then he loses a point for being a man. This whole victim-hood culture is ridiculous. Long gone are the days of the real heroes such as Martin Luther King jr.
  - danans 9y ago
    > The other people have a extraordinary larger impact on global economics and politics. That would only make sense if the primary criterion for selection were raw power. I don't know FT's criteria or the MO behind their Person of the Year designation. My hunch, however, is that it might be more nuanced, and they might be interested in people who stand up against established power, especially given the current sociopolitical climate.
LeoJiWoo 9y ago
Susan Fowler is a great person but this reeks of a clickbait agenda. She is important but Xi, Bezos,and Musk are radically changing the face of the world in a much much greater capacity. EDIT: Musk has the hyperloop, tesla, spacex. These are what I consider revolutionary technologies that could change the face of our global civilization. Bezos is eating the world with amazon, whole foods, and washington post. Amazon is leading so many new industries drone deliveries, cloud, and so many are cities are competing for hq2. What isn't amazon doing lately ? Xi is changing the face of silicon valley by making SV more like china which has huge global implications. I think Fowler is great, but she isn't on the same level.
- mikestew 9y ago
  Ya know, your comment might leave something to discuss had you left out the “clickbait” part. Instead it leaves me impulsively want to downvote. But, hey, happens to the best of us, so let’s move on. I suppose it depends on one’s gender to some degree. Musk is the epitome of “boys and their toys”, because nothing he’s done has had any impact on my life yet (well, except the oodles of dosh made off TSLA). Bezos? Eh, modern day Sam Walton that impacts the lives of more than a few, but in the end a retailer. But if you’re female, I could see how one might view the Fowler situation as “good, maybe I’ll have to put up with creepy men just a little less than I did last year.”
  - ghostcluster 9y ago
    OP's comment is exactly right, and I've noticed a trend in the Financial Times over the past several years to jump increasingly on social activism bandwagons. The way they've lionized Ellen Pao, for example, a figure who has turned exploitation of these bandwagons into a personal brand, has been incredibly frustrating to watch.
    - fred_is_fred 9y ago
      What Susan did and the other women and men who have come forward this year will have a massive impact on the business world and the types of people who read FT need to know about it. It will affect HR policies, compensation, career paths, job assignments, and the manager/employee relationship in general. Having your business outed as an "Uber" will destroy billions in shareholder value and may end up with you, the C-suite guy, getting canned, even if you're a "nice guy". You can be damned sure that all these C-level guys are reviewing policies and having internal discussions about this and making sure that they're not going to be next. New rockets and computer products come every year and have been since 1969. Wholesale cultural shifts in business are more rare, more impactful, and more complex.
itsmemattchung 9y ago
> Her father was a preacher, prison chaplain and at one stage a high school teacher. Ms Fowler never graduated from high school, instead working as a babysitter and ranch hand, and teaching herself in the local library. Lacking a formal education but determined to go to university, she submitted a list of books she had read as part of her college application > After winning a place at Arizona State University to study philosophy, she then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, earning a degree in physics. In her final year at Penn, she wrote a blog entitled “If Susan can learn physics, so can you”, explaining how she caught up despite having no secondary maths education. By the time she reached Uber at age 24, she was a physicist and computer scientist, and wrote her first book about software architecture while working at the company Damn. Very impressive.
- ktta 9y ago
  >“When I was younger, I used to think that my unconventional upbringing was a weakness, but over the past few years I’ve learnt to see it as one of my greatest strengths,” she says. “I never had a single thing handed to me, I had to fight for everything I wanted, like my education. When I was harassed and discriminated against, I fought as hard as I could — because I hadn’t gone through all of that, I hadn’t worked so hard my entire life, just to have someone take it away from me.”
  - myth_drannon 9y ago
    Just survival bias, for every fighter like her there are 99 others that fell through the cracks. Not everyone is born with such a strong will to succeed.
    - jonny_eh 9y ago
      What's the bias here? She seems to deserve all the positive attention she gets.
      - vailripper 9y ago
        Absolutely, but I think it can also be said that it's a pretty messed up system where it requires that will to succeed to have success.
greywolf 9y ago
more than deserved, she's definitely this year's hero
lerie82 9y ago
Meh.
- sctb 9y ago
  Most of your recent comments break the guidelines by being unsubstantive. Could you please stop and re-read them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
whatok 9y ago
Previous winner list: https://ig.ft.com/sites/person-of-the-year/ https://ig.ft.com/sites/person-of-the-year/
- V-eHGsd_ 9y ago
  what a strange list of people to join. I mean, I realize you have to contextualize these name in the time they were selected but, Trump, Spitzer, GWB, Rupert Murdoch, Kissinger.
  - whatok 9y ago
    Mohamed Bouazizi in 2011 is the only comparable in the list from what I can tell.
    - V-eHGsd_ 9y ago
      thankfully susan didn't have to set herself on fire :)
- dominotw 9y ago
  Only 2 other women. Merkel and Thatcher. Good see another woman on the list.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  > 2016 > Donald Trump Well, that certainly takes a lot of the prestige out of her winning...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
SadWebDeveloper 9y ago
I can't decide if this is good or sad.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mikekij 9y ago
Well deserved.
heedlessly2 9y ago
Side comment, but I started working for Uber recently. Someone on my FB friendslist unfriended me because of that. Irony was that she works at Palantir. Pot meets kettle

345 points by olivermarks 9y ago

slowandlow 9y ago

She outed all the tech bros!! awesome.

lucisferre 9y ago
It's hard to know if you meant this fatuously or seriously, but it doesn't really add any substance to the discussion either way.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Hmm. Would Harvey Weinstein have blown up the way he did if Susan Fowler hadn’t moved first against Uber?

deviationblue 9y ago
Personally, I don't think Weinstein, and the after effects on other public figures, would have blown up to this level without Susan. Actually, going even further back, people like Ellen Pao and their stories have been consequential as well. I would say stories like Pao's cleared the way for Fowler. Not to be dramatic, but I think this example is very timely and appropriate for showing the impact of an uncensored internet. We can only guess whether impact like this will still be possible without net neutrality.
jsmthrowaway 9y ago
Not speaking dismissively of Susan's contribution, but I think so. Her story snowballed into a lot of shady shit going on at Uber, and Kalanick wasn't ousted as a direct result of her allegations. Weinstein himself kicked off a pattern of high-profile ousters based directly on the allegations. I think they're slightly different scenarios, and contributed culturally in their own way, and why she was one piece of a broader picture in Time instead of person of the year by her lonesome. (I realize the irony in my typing this, that I appear to be saying Weinstein was responsible for something a number of people would argue a woman started, but hey. That's not what I'm saying, and you get my point and what I'm trying to say.) Put another way, Susan didn't go after a high-profile leader directly. She went after systemic issues in a company. Weinstein, on the other hand, showed a lot of people that high-profile leaders are vulnerable to public attention, and that became a slightly different species of snowball. Both are cultural contributions.
- tyingq 9y ago
  I wouldn't dismiss the butterfly effect so quickly. She was certainly early in this wave, and the cumulative inertia has to be part of why things ended up as they are.
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    I don't. I think the allegations against Weinstein were severe enough that they could have stood alone, and didn't vastly benefit from the cultural change that Susan started with Uber. The point being made was that Weinstein might not have happened had Susan and Uber not happened, and I'm not sure I agree with that. Which is NOT to say I discount anything that did, which I'm guessing from voting I did not express clearly enough.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      The allegations against Weinstein are mostly years old though. Is it just coincidence they were raised in this current climate? Fowler's revelations contributed to an environment that made it easier to speak up. Edit: The reason I find Fowler somewhat unique is that her background, credentials, writing skills, etc, made her hard to dismiss. It was very believable, perhaps to some that might have tended to challenge similar stories. So it seemed to open a door for women that had similar stories, but not the same level of gravitas. It also primed the media to pay attention to this area.
      - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
        Yes and no. People spoke up before Fowler; why are we hinging the culture on her? Something I think a lot of people are overlooking is that she was heard on a larger scale than anybody before her, but lionizing her as a result is actually disrespectful to the plethora of examples who came before her and were just unlucky (I guess?). I can think of a number of prominent examples within tech that didn't get any of the attention outside of tech, but I will not rehash them here. That, to me, indicates that something else shifted culturally to allow the Uber thing to help contribute to that environment. What is that? Was it the scale of Uber? Was it something about Fowler? Was it that the same power dynamics that suppressed revelations about Weinstein were starting to degrade within insular tech? I'm personally curious about it, and I don't think Fowler's blog post was solely responsible and folks should start making conclusions about cultural shifts, is my only point. Edit to your edit: Careful; you're lightly claiming that accusers before Fowler were unbelievable and easily dismissed.
Joeboy 9y ago
After the Time person of the year thing there was a bit of an online spat about who did and didn't get featured on the cover and who was most deserving of the credit. To me it seems a bit unseemly and unnecessary. I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > I don't think any of these people themselves are jostling for the position of most heroic person of 2017 I'm curious about the phenomenon. We had mass acceptance of horrifying behaviour. Switches flipped and what was dirty but tolerable became unacceptable. If we wish to replicate this process in other domains, it would be helpful to understand what happened.
  - DataWorker 9y ago
    more importantly if we wish to avoid replication in other domains it would be helpful if more people understood what happened. Our thoughts and culture are easily changed by those who know how to flip the right switches as you put it. This can work for or against any particular interest.
  - ensignavenger 9y ago
    This seems so odd to me. In the circles I am most familiar with, such behavior has always been seen as reprehensible. I suppose there have always been rumors that such behavior was commonly accepted in Hollywood, and as it turns out, silicon valley doesn't seem too different. Well, I think Washington DC deserves to be on that list, too. I wonder how common it is for more "powerful" people in other circles to get away with this kind of malarky?
    - rsynnott 9y ago
      Most places that it's shown up are workplaces with powerful, almost untouchable figures (a TV star or a 'rockstar programmer' or a CEO or an elected representative, or, of course, a priest, going back a bit further), and defective or non-existent HR. I suspect it's less common in more normally-functioning workplaces, simply because people would feel safer in complaining to HR, and special accommodations for the predator would be less likely to be made. Also, of course, it was not exactly advertised that this was going on.
whatok 9y ago
Do not know about impact but Ronan Farrow's Weinstein story was published in October and put together over the course of a ten month investigation [0]. Susan Fowler's blog was posted in February. I'd imagine Farrow probably started on his story before the investigations started; especially since Weinstein was a well-known story. If Farrow's article was posted before Fowler's, I want to say that there would still be the same reaction. A lot of people had no idea about Fowler and Uber but people definitely know about Weinstein. [0] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-overtures-to-sexual-assault-harvey-weinsteins-accusers-tell-their-stories https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-ove...
- joycey 9y ago
  I remember there was an episode on the podcast The Daily where Michael Barbaro interviewed a reporter who worked on the Harvey Weinstein story. I think they said that The New York Times had tried to pursue this story in the past, but they really wanted to make another push for it this year to expose the unreported stories of sexual harassment.
untog 9y ago
I don't think it's possible to know. There are so many cultural factors that led to where we are today that it's all but impossible to draw a straight line. No doubt Susan Fowler had an effect on that culture. So did the first female Presidential nominee losing to an incredibly unqualified man (before anyone starts, no, I'm not saying that sexism is the only reason she lost), as did the fact that Trump himself had numerous accusations against him that were all but dismissed in popular consciousness... I don't mean to diminish Fowler at all. But the moment we have arrived at is a huge collection of interconnected events, not a straight line from A, through B, to C.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  I wonder if Clinton didn't have certain associations - Bill, Weiner, Weinstein (the Clintons were warned about him and met with him after the election to make a show about the campaign, only to later feign shock and distance themselves), would those accusations against Trump have had more power? I know that's not your main point, it's just important to point out culpable people like the Clintons were instead of seeing them (or the campaign) as victims. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-wei... In late September, emails show, he was discussing a documentary television show he was working on with Hillary Clinton. He had long raised campaign cash for her, and her feminist credentials helped burnish his image — even though Tina Brown, the magazine editor, and Lena Dunham, the writer and actress, each say they had cautioned Mrs. Clinton’s aides about his treatment of women. Now, Mr. Weinstein exchanged questions about distribution rights for the show. “I am hopeful we can get a good price for this,” Robert Barnett, Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer, replied. Two days later, Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, interrupted a vacation in Hawaii to field advice from Mr. Weinstein, according to the emails. The Wall Street Journal was reporting on turmoil at Amazon Studios, one of Mr. Weinstein’s business partners. He recommended an aggressive response that involved hiring some of his own team, including a libel lawyer who “makes sure everyone sticks to the right narrative,” Mr. Weinstein wrote. He added, “I’m happy to coordinate with whoever you’d like, as a friend of the court.” Mr. Bezos declined to comment.
  - 9y ago
myth_drannon 9y ago
From my understanding of US politics, once the Dems/Clintons were gone from the political scene it was open hunt on him, Fowler or not.
Buldak 9y ago
There's no way to know of course, but I'm more inclined to point to Trump as the impetus for America's reaction against sexual misconduct.
- rsynnott 9y ago
  I think it might be stoking the fire now, but there wasn't really all that much of a response when allegations were made about Trump, either by voters or the media. It's really hard to see that as the jumping-off point. As a result of the current climate, indeed, Trump's allegations are being re-examined by the media.
dominotw 9y ago
Would Susan Fowlers blog have blow up the same way if Uber handn't supported Trumps immigration ban.

dtf 9y ago

According to editor Lionel Barber, Fowler was up against the likes of Macron, Xi, MbS, Musk and Bezos. https://www.ft.com/content/7ab21e44-de85-11e7-8f9f-de1c2175f5ce https://www.ft.com/content/7ab21e44-de85-11e7-8f9f-de1c2175f...

djroomba 9y ago
Those guys basically rule the world politically or economically, and Susan won at the Financial Times. That doesnt seem right. The other people have a extraordinary larger impact on global economics and politics.
- untog 9y ago
  They also ruled the world last year, and will rule the world next year. "Person of the Year" awards tend to highlight people that have had a particularly atypical effect in one particular year. They'd be pretty boring if they didn't. Another way to look at it: while Bezos has done plenty with Amazon in 2017, it's a continuation of what he was doing in 2016. And I suspect 2018 will continue this year. It's not that his achievements aren't notable, it's that they didn't dramatically change the course of this year's events, or inspire a dramatic change of direction. By comparison, 2017's awakening to sexual assault/discrimination claims is an absolutely huge deviation from existing patterns.
- team_america 9y ago
  It's because of today's victim-hood culture. Achievements do not matter anymore. Merit is a lost concept. You get your achievements handed to you now by falling into protected groups and putting in the bare minimum effort. She wrote a blog post documenting her year at Uber, it's great she did that, but it not Financial Times worthy. Honestly, even on a social level, why not Terry Crews? He's the only man that spoke out. You'd think he'd win a victim point for being black. But then he loses a point for being a man. This whole victim-hood culture is ridiculous. Long gone are the days of the real heroes such as Martin Luther King jr.
- danans 9y ago
  > The other people have a extraordinary larger impact on global economics and politics. That would only make sense if the primary criterion for selection were raw power. I don't know FT's criteria or the MO behind their Person of the Year designation. My hunch, however, is that it might be more nuanced, and they might be interested in people who stand up against established power, especially given the current sociopolitical climate.

LeoJiWoo 9y ago

Susan Fowler is a great person but this reeks of a clickbait agenda. She is important but Xi, Bezos,and Musk are radically changing the face of the world in a much much greater capacity. EDIT: Musk has the hyperloop, tesla, spacex. These are what I consider revolutionary technologies that could change the face of our global civilization. Bezos is eating the world with amazon, whole foods, and washington post. Amazon is leading so many new industries drone deliveries, cloud, and so many are cities are competing for hq2. What isn't amazon doing lately ? Xi is changing the face of silicon valley by making SV more like china which has huge global implications. I think Fowler is great, but she isn't on the same level.

mikestew 9y ago
Ya know, your comment might leave something to discuss had you left out the “clickbait” part. Instead it leaves me impulsively want to downvote. But, hey, happens to the best of us, so let’s move on. I suppose it depends on one’s gender to some degree. Musk is the epitome of “boys and their toys”, because nothing he’s done has had any impact on my life yet (well, except the oodles of dosh made off TSLA). Bezos? Eh, modern day Sam Walton that impacts the lives of more than a few, but in the end a retailer. But if you’re female, I could see how one might view the Fowler situation as “good, maybe I’ll have to put up with creepy men just a little less than I did last year.”
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  OP's comment is exactly right, and I've noticed a trend in the Financial Times over the past several years to jump increasingly on social activism bandwagons. The way they've lionized Ellen Pao, for example, a figure who has turned exploitation of these bandwagons into a personal brand, has been incredibly frustrating to watch.
  - fred_is_fred 9y ago
    What Susan did and the other women and men who have come forward this year will have a massive impact on the business world and the types of people who read FT need to know about it. It will affect HR policies, compensation, career paths, job assignments, and the manager/employee relationship in general. Having your business outed as an "Uber" will destroy billions in shareholder value and may end up with you, the C-suite guy, getting canned, even if you're a "nice guy". You can be damned sure that all these C-level guys are reviewing policies and having internal discussions about this and making sure that they're not going to be next. New rockets and computer products come every year and have been since 1969. Wholesale cultural shifts in business are more rare, more impactful, and more complex.

itsmemattchung 9y ago

> Her father was a preacher, prison chaplain and at one stage a high school teacher. Ms Fowler never graduated from high school, instead working as a babysitter and ranch hand, and teaching herself in the local library. Lacking a formal education but determined to go to university, she submitted a list of books she had read as part of her college application > After winning a place at Arizona State University to study philosophy, she then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, earning a degree in physics. In her final year at Penn, she wrote a blog entitled “If Susan can learn physics, so can you”, explaining how she caught up despite having no secondary maths education. By the time she reached Uber at age 24, she was a physicist and computer scientist, and wrote her first book about software architecture while working at the company Damn. Very impressive.

ktta 9y ago
>“When I was younger, I used to think that my unconventional upbringing was a weakness, but over the past few years I’ve learnt to see it as one of my greatest strengths,” she says. “I never had a single thing handed to me, I had to fight for everything I wanted, like my education. When I was harassed and discriminated against, I fought as hard as I could — because I hadn’t gone through all of that, I hadn’t worked so hard my entire life, just to have someone take it away from me.”
- myth_drannon 9y ago
  Just survival bias, for every fighter like her there are 99 others that fell through the cracks. Not everyone is born with such a strong will to succeed.
  - jonny_eh 9y ago
    What's the bias here? She seems to deserve all the positive attention she gets.
    - vailripper 9y ago
      Absolutely, but I think it can also be said that it's a pretty messed up system where it requires that will to succeed to have success.

greywolf 9y ago

more than deserved, she's definitely this year's hero

lerie82 9y ago

Meh.

sctb 9y ago
Most of your recent comments break the guidelines by being unsubstantive. Could you please stop and re-read them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

whatok 9y ago

Previous winner list: https://ig.ft.com/sites/person-of-the-year/ https://ig.ft.com/sites/person-of-the-year/

V-eHGsd_ 9y ago
what a strange list of people to join. I mean, I realize you have to contextualize these name in the time they were selected but, Trump, Spitzer, GWB, Rupert Murdoch, Kissinger.
- whatok 9y ago
  Mohamed Bouazizi in 2011 is the only comparable in the list from what I can tell.
  - V-eHGsd_ 9y ago
    thankfully susan didn't have to set herself on fire :)
dominotw 9y ago
Only 2 other women. Merkel and Thatcher. Good see another woman on the list.
craftyguy 9y ago
> 2016 > Donald Trump Well, that certainly takes a lot of the prestige out of her winning...

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SadWebDeveloper 9y ago

I can't decide if this is good or sad.

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mikekij 9y ago

Well deserved.

heedlessly2 9y ago

Side comment, but I started working for Uber recently. Someone on my FB friendslist unfriended me because of that. Irony was that she works at Palantir. Pot meets kettle