Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevinburke | Hacker News Reader

If an Uber recruiter contacts you, bring this up and tell them their nonfunctioning HR department makes working for their company a non starter.

If you work at Uber, quit, and/or contact the board and tell them that this behavior is unacceptable and the people responsible need to be fired. If the culture won't change, the CEO needs to be fired.

If you work in tech, bring up this article with your manager or CEO and tell them that this behavior is unacceptable, opens the company up to ridiculous amounts of lawsuit risk, will hurt recruiting, depress morale, and that you will quit if harassment complaints aren't taken seriously.

View on HN

> If an Uber recruiter contacts you, bring this up and tell them their nonfunctioning HR department makes working for their company a non starter.

This. Companies don't change until there's a huge price to be paid for not changing. When top recruits start turning down Uber because of their sexist policies/politics, then Uber will be forced to change.

In addition, the only people left at Uber will be people who think this behavior is acceptable. In that case, it will only be a matter of time before there is a lawsuit.

Thinking about the attrition rate of female engineers, I wonder if there's a similar rate of male engineers who leave due to how badly their female colleagues are treated in addition to the other factors listed in this thread and Fowler's piece.

If so, that would imply that the engineering culture is being distilled into an evermore toxic workplace, since those who stay are those who make the place toxic or are simply people who try to work around it.

It would take an extremely focused and persistent effort on the part of upper management to change this trajectory before the company implodes, as I suspect is inevitable in the long run should my assumptions prove accurate.

I really doubt this. A lot of men are totally unaware of how women are treated, which fellow men on their team are harassers, or don't believe women when they report harassment. My evidence for this is every man in tech reacting with shock to this story, and every woman I know saying "yep, I have a story like this," or "I know many women with stories like this"

The behavior discussed in her story includes stuff that's not sexual harassment, though. A sizable chunk of it is about poisonous office politics, something pretty much everyone would be aware of and which most people dislike. So it's not hard to believe people with better options would leave, regardless of gender, leaving people who either like that sort of politics (some do) or don't have better options.

> My evidence for this is every man in tech reacting with shock to this story

You've interviewed us all, have you?

I don't find the accusations surprising or outside the realm of possibility at all.

An alternative (and I believe intended) reading of this line is

My evidence for this is every man in tech who is reacting with shock to this story

rather than

My evidence for this is that every man in tech is reacting with shock to this story

So you were also shocked by this story?

If not, I guess neither of us exist, because I (sadly) wasn't.

Edit: Originally said: So let's leave out the "every man" crap and focus on making the world a better place, please.

As grzm points out, I'm an idiot. Disregard the above sentence.

But still, people who wouldn't appreciate this crap definitely exist, and our quitting/refusing to be recruited would likely still make a point.

I think you're likely misreading the sentence: see

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683594

Edit: minor wording change.

Thanks; edited original.

I would quit. I wouldn't want to see people treated that way.

I've seen a 100% male company (quite small, not 75-100 people) and seriously worried about how things would go when some women were hired. Bit rough at first but it worked out for them (luckily). In a small company a bad lawsuit or two could be a serious threat to the survival of the place.

Men can be mistreated and leave on their own, they don't need to have female colleagues suffer.

A lot of what is in this article is not even exclusive to women.

Culture has a long inertia, it replicates and grows by itself. So yes, toxic workplace become ever more toxic and no a toxic culture cannot be improved.

If you work at a company that already fires anyone who acts like that, and later use them during the on-boarding given to all new employees as real life examples of how you do NOT run a proper business... well, enjoy your workplace :D

Sure, definitely.

Where do I send the bills for my groceries, then? Would you prefer email or snailmail?

The people with the most leverage at Uber to make a difference would have their pick of companies to work for; as the OP notes, she had a job offer within a week. If you are actually an engineer at Uber, I bet recruiters are constantly emailing you about job offers.

Obviously, if you don't think you can easily get another job, stay.

There's effort, entropy, and uncertainty with changing jobs. My only point was that saying, "Why don't you just get another job?" is just a little dishonest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com