Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

https://medium.com/@hadrad1000/reflecting-on-susan-fowlers-r...

I know Mike and I assure you that (1) he has the attention span to read a blog post, and (2) he was not just "assigned." He's on the tech beat. He lives in San Francisco, not New York. And he's paying very close attention to this story. Go look at his Twitter feed if you don't believe me. https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac

That's a reasonable thing to worry about, but regardless of whether the accusation is true, the worry is about an incompetent and cowed CEO not doing his job, not about an ex-employee making an accusation without public proof.

If she's right, and an investigation by the CEO causes low-level employees to be fired and no real change of the company culture and the people responsible for it, those people were working for a bad CEO all along. If she's right, the behavior of people out-politicking their direct managers and throwing away useful projects is a ticking time bomb, and if she didn't say anything, someone would have, soon enough. Or some project would have failed and people would have asked questions, or a "high performer" would have not gotten their political way, or something. And the CEO would fire low-level employees for all the same reasons.

If she's somehow wrong, and the CEO gives into unsubstantiated public pressure and makes scapegoats out of good workers, again, I don't see how this will be the only time. Uber is, shall we say, not a company that is consistently the recipient of positive press. Something else will go wrong (say, marketing threatening to blackmail a journalist) and the CEO will again feel obligated to scapegoat someone. A good CEO should stand up for their employees.

You're worried about the CEO either way. You already were - you said you don't trust Uber. You need to help your wife's girlfriend find a better job where she's not at risk of being fired by an incompetent CEO.

Certainly, you meant "Just to escape personal responsibility", or "Just to escape the bad reputation earned by bad behaviour".

Honestly, you're talking about a "blood thirsty 'internet lynch crowd'" but really, it's just ordinary people frowning upon poor ethics. Your answer seems to share responsibility equally between someone you yourself describe as willing to do anything to get what he wants, and people criticizing this behaviour.

To verify this comment well enough to publish it, the NY Times is going to have to go find enough SREs at Uber who are willing to talk to them (and likely risk losing their job if discovered) about these issues.

But then, I spent a minute browsing your latest work, too, so I am not particularly surprised that in your post you choose to, as with most modern conservatives, attempt to call citing a reactionary's record "hate" when it is that reactionary's behavior that exemplifies it.

edit: Hah, judging by the downvotes, it's not! Hehe, this is the first time I'm super-happy to be downvoted. :-)

What's this "we" business? Who's "we"?

I don't know about you, but I'm an engineer. I am neither a manager, nor an executive, nor an HR goon. I accept no responsibility for the actions of people in those positions. Especially those useless HR people. We engineers are nothing more than low-level lackeys, rank-and-file employees who have zero power except to quit.

> My point being that its quite surprising how different experience can be and how important it is to listen to how others experience the world.

That's advice that I would normally accept as good, like a Ben Franklin quote. But coming from you it strikes me as especially valuable, especially in light of current events.

That assumes your union rep is inclined to help you. In practice (not principle), they have the same incentives as the other managers and HR do in this story. The union rep could decide that the harasser is more important to their union, politically, than you are, and decide not to take action.

Plus, the union can simply terminate your membership as retaliation. For a closed shop, that's equivalent to firing you, but without many of the legal protections that come against wrongful termination.

Also about finance/payroll and others.

Yes, in theory. But most HRs "protect the org" in the most short sighted way possible

That's definitely not the case in my experience. I spent a few months at Fitbit before being harassed by a manager, Sam Trychin. All I wanted to do was do my work, be treated fairly, and not be harassed. HR was definitely not the place to go.

As soon as I made the complaint, Jade Curtis at HR had a meeting with me where she lied to my face (claimed all their managers are exactly the same when I had gone around asking other employees and explicitly confirmed my manager was not following company policy or even treating me fairly compared to his other team members), told me they would refuse to transfer me when I asked about solutions like that, and asserted that the solution was I had to talk more.

The next week they brought me in a fired me with never a written or even verbal warning, and never a negative performance review or a missed meeting, or even a late JIRA implementation. Indeed, everyone said good things about my performance. I had also followed her advice to "talk more". Again they refused to entertain any option of continuing at the company when I offered to try anything that would solve things.

The only thing Fitbit HR cared about was A) to get as much ammunition for a lawsuit as possible, and B) fire me as fast as possible after I was harassed. They didn't try at all to solve things at the company.

In terms of what happened, everything was fairly normal for a couple months. Then one day my wife drove me in to the office because my back was hurting and standing an hour on the BART made things even worse. We followed every rule for her to be in the building. We arrived at 8am after a 2 hour drive, waiting until the front desk was open at 8:30am and got her a badge, then proceeded to my desk which is safely outside all the signs indicating no guests are allowed due to unreleased projects being worked on.

The developer to my right was super friendly and talkative and awesome to my wife - completely normal. My manager came in later (he was rarely around and always left early at 4pm, one of those pre-IPO people who don't put any effort in now that they have their options) and blew up after 10 minutes - super strange. His face turned all red and he was breathing heavy and he took me aside to a private room. He said my wife is too distracting for him to get any work done and she has to move.

We immediately left the area and went to the couches across from the front desk to figure out what to do. Then I took her off campus. She never visited again any day after that (who would bring their wife back when their manager is acting creepy toward her?), but my manager continually blew up about her and made up new rules about her. For example, the week after, he took me aside to a private room again and said she couldn't visit ever again. Meanwhile when other team member's family visited, he was super nice and even booked a conference room for a full day for another team member's kids to visit.

At the same time he started treating me very unfairly. For example, he said any exercise on my part counted as a "long lunch" and wasn't allowed. Meanwhile it was "Steptember" and all employees were encouraged to exercise and had internal teams competing with who could do the most exercise.

Similarly I was in an automatic activity tracking beta test, and all short exercises had failed to trigger the new logic, so I took a 1 hour bike ride on the Embarcadero instead of lunch to try to get a positive result for my beta test data - he blew up about this as well.

The manager claimed the PM had been trying to contact me all day and wasn't able to because I took that bike ride. This was not true. The PM Hipchatted me on the way back from the bike ride, I stopped at a cafe on the way back, and did the code review the PM wanted from me immediately, within 10 minutes.

So the manager was lying about my interaction with the PM to justify his not letting me exercise and his blowing up any time I was away from my desk - which I had to be pretty often because I was writing the Bluetooth pairing code and there's a step that aborts if there are too many devices nearby, like at our desks. The test group lead actually worked from home at least one day a week for precisely this reason and I was only working down the hall at some tables, which should not have been a problem.

Meanwhile everyone else at the company I talked to encouraged exercise, and one manager I talked to even recommended an afternoon nap for getting your energy back to code some more! So my manager was definitely not following company policy or treating me fairly. All HR cared about was firing me, though. I found out later the manager was divorced and that's probably why he went nuts over my wife.

It actually sounds really similar to Susan Fowler's experience at Uber. She had a manager acting creepy and weird because of his own marital issues. Then HR invented fake "undocumented performance issues" that were never communicated before and didn't hold up to scrutiny when other employees were asked about it, so that HR could deny transfer and any other solutions, and the manager could keep looking good at the company.

Apart from potentially being difficult emotionally there are tons of negative outcomes that could come from taking the legal route

Here's a list of potential negative outcomes of lawyering up:

* getting terminated (remember, at-will employment) * getting blacklisted by other teams at your current employer * getting blacklisted by potential future employers. Court cases are often public and in some industries companies are forced to make ongoing litigation public * having your weird texts, emails, personal life and sexual history being dragged out in a public court case * losing and still having to pay all those lawyer fees * winning but not getting any meaningful compensation * getting harassed on twitter/wherever by the alt-right/gamergate crowd.

Yes, people should be getting in trouble but it's a prisoners dilemma where each individual victim is not incentiviced to do anything.

Consider that the people who are wronged in these situations didn't set themselves those days to be harassed. Now they should not only stand what's been done to them, but also drop everything they were doing that day to sue? I think there's an understandable tradeoff that people go thru in those circumstance. They push the issue as seems appropriate in term of benefit/time. Where that line lies depends on the situation, the people involved and how much they enjoy spending their time litigating instead of doing XYZ other thing.

Lots of people don't even bother going through the hurdle of reporting to HR, being interviewed, being questioned, being doubted, having to spend hours or days handling the issue, instead of doing their work. Bringing that to the next level: not many people desire to spend their time suing instead of doing whatever it is they'd rather do with their time.

Arguably, issues should be pursued to educate and deter. But up until which point? I think you'll agree that it's understandable why someone would choose that reporting to HR was enough and suing wasn't worth the trouble.

If you wish to take it to court yourself, then they may also be able to provide you with or help you find an appropriate lawyer for the case.

Seemed like a fine solution, but it soon became evident that she had, in fact, been blacklisted: 18 months passed before anybody would even give her an interview, and that was only after deciding to change industries altogether. That silver parachute was, in hindsight, wholly inadequate compensation. Meanwhile her harasser has continued his career with no repercussions whatsoever.

When these problems are cultural / institutional, the threat of a lawsuit will neither benefit the victim nor effect any real change. Takes something more sustained and substantial than that.

This is hitting all the major news outlets, the CEO and the board are already promising "urgent" investigative action. And, oh yeah, a company valued at multi-billions is about to be hit with publicity which they will pay dearly for as #deleteuber starts trending again, at a time when angry people are sick of reading about the latest Trump zinger.

In the best case scenario a lawyer would have gotten her a modest pay out in exchange for shutting up, far more likely however would be a disappointing outcome and blacklisting.

Saying "sue" is easy if you're not the one that has to deal with the fallout from it. Several months if not years dragged through the courts, having to relive the experience. Being blacklisted from the industry and unable to find a job. Constant harassment from frog trolls who seem to pop up every time a woman tries to assert that she's a human being.

There's no legal minimum but it's more difficult to form a class with a handful of people.

Sexually-harassing manager who HR is too afraid to discipline meaningfully? High performer.

Manager who illegally threatens an employee to protect his manager? High performer.

Productive engineer who they never found a substantive reason to criticize? Not a high performer.

The ones who made the political maneuvers to garner political power within the organization are the "high performers". Fowler, on the other hand, worked hard, but didn't play the political game. She also reported a lot of people to HR, which probably earned her a lot of political enemies. Remember those "undocumented performance problems"?

(But I discount this interpretation a tiny bit because it relies on a person's account of their own performance. I think that her post is credible (she sure staked a lot on it), but I'm wary of all first-person performance claims. Nothing specific to her, just human nature.)

Let me ask you this: How many people in the HR department would you need to see leave before you'd feel comfortable having your sister work at Uber? What would you need to see to have trust?

Exactly. Given the risks, there should be some evidence. Perhaps it's not getting released at this stage to strengthen her legal position.

It is popular in the USA right now to silence rational, evidence based discussions. Now more than ever it is of vital importance that we stick to values of relying on open dialogue, reason, and facts. If these values only apply when they are convenient and comfortable for you then they aren't your values, but instead a rhetorical tool you abuse.

As a community of above-average intelligence and reason, I am disappointed to see hacker news commenters abuse their power to silence requests for evidence. If you approach things objectively you must always seek evidence. In this case the evidence shared thus far is character-based. That doesn't obviate the need or prevent the ability to have a rational, logical discussion about evidence.

Please, go ahead and silence this post as well. Show me how badly you deserve your current political situation and fractured nation. If this community behaves this way, I don't have much hope for the world.

Personally, I would like to give the other involved party a reasonable chance to try to respond with ether a refutation or with intended next steps before grabbing a pitchfork.

To be clear, I have no sympathy for Uber and have something like an 85% expectation that the current accusations as accurate. I do find value in erring on the side of giving all parties a full say and a full chance to institute some sort of remediation, if possible, before final judgment.

For example, many media outlets have picked up this story, and one such outlet came across today (wish I had saved the link) also mentioned alleged threats of physical violence from managers to employees. In my workplace, I've heard a manager joke "now that you've seen this, I'll have to kill you", which was clearly a joke but which could be portrayed as a death threat by a (perhaps rightfully) disgruntled employee.

When there are personal situations and emotional hurt involved, things can get skewed further than they need to be, even if the objective reality is already one to warrant raising an alarm.

Point taken, however, in its entirety. I could have communicated my perspective much better.

Please don't use your personal observations to discount the growing collection of evidence that this sort of thing is happening at tech companies around the world, and not just in the bay area.

Because they were qualified applicants and the hiring manager wanted to not get sued for blatant hiring discrimination?

These folks clearly don't deserve to be taken at face value. Otherwise the "Everyone is getting jackets" could have been properly taken at value to mean that everyone, including women were getting them. So we're past believing them at face value now, great.

So why did they really make this an issue? Probably some combination of:

1. Someone was playing politics and wanted a head pat for saving money (conversely, they did not want to reprimanded for going over-budget).

2. Women are often perceived as less assertive, so they thought they would be less likely to raise a stink over a "minor issue" like a free jacket. (The really pessimistic side of me says someone thought "Women don't wear leather jackets anyhow, it's not stylish enough. Why spend money on something they won't use?")

I don't for one second believe they actually thought "equality" came into play at all.

There is also talk of long hours, but it is not clear if the reviewer meant that is a negative specific to women or not.

I also believe the claims because they are very specific, egregious, and should be verifiable; and they were related in a simply facts manner: there were no questions of intent or what the other people were thinking, and only a limited amount of heresay. Additionally, it felt more like a "this kind of thing is happening, you should watch out for it" than a call for pitchforks and torches.

I see you've never actually dealt with HR departments before.

I worked at a company where the director of IT/Dev hired his wife to the department; they were swingers and engaged in a variety of unethical and harassing behavior. If you got on his wife's bad side he would punish you by taking away bonuses. He was also regularly drunk at work (and later died of liver failure around age 45). They both propositioned women in the office.

Nothing was done. HR papered over any complaints and ensured anyone who did complain was given a bad performance review to ensure if a lawsuit were ever filed they could point to bad performance and claim it was just sour grapes. He was seen as critical to the success of the department and the company had grown quickly. The head of HR was old golfing buddies with the CEO and both were friends with the director in question.

He was only fired once he grabbed one of his manager's breasts while in a huge meeting with a bunch of people. This was not the first time he grabbed women around the office, but there were too many witnesses to punish the victim in this specific case.

:)

um....

But I do want to distinguish that from the crucifixion she'd receive if she were making it up. There's a difference between people being shitty online, and your professional reputation being destroyed. The former will happen regardless. The latter is less likely if she's telling the truth.

But fair point that even if she's being truthful, she's put herself at a lot of risk.

The fact that the firm not only didn't counter-sue, but also offered to settle with her in exchange for dropping her appeal, tells me that the evidence that she lied is not very strong. Everyone agrees that they took a reputation hit over this. If they had clear evidence that she committed perjury, wouldn't they be eager to clear their name exhaustively?

But second of all, I don't see nearly the kind of buy-in in Pao's case as in Fowlers. Pao sued. Fowler wrote an extensive indictment of Uber's company culture. IANAL, but it seems from what I've seen that it's hard to sue someone for defamation over a lawsuit. A scathing blog post is another story. In addition, there's inherent ambiguity in merely losing a lawsuit. Fowler's move is far more dangerous to her reputation.

This type of argument is extremely dangerous. Not only isn't it true for many (I've done this), it's conflating claims with evidence.

If one is being honest, it's clear that the vast majority of news outlets that routinely cover activities in the tech industry are ideologically left-leaning and progressive towards ideas like those in feminism. It's regularly claimed that sexism in the tech industry is a major issue as fact, including in the linked article:

> Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment.

This is a factual claim, and no evidence is ever given for claims like these from left-leaning media.

Now, given that we have an established media that leans this way, and has a long history of sensationalizing the hell out of anything that they find validates their position, why is it then that stories like these are so infrequent? Why must we suspend disbelief and not require evidence a few times a year when these stories get published and talked about? And further, why then must we conclude that because we get a few sensationalized cases per year that this is a pervasive issue which many women face, as you claim?

Given the context that these same outlets routinely print other stories that overhype exaggerated or outright false claims in this same vein (earnings mismatch, college "rape" statistics, etc), why is this suddenly the issue where second guessing what's printed is not okay? Surely merely believing what anyone tells you uncritically is dangerous.

I'll gladly wait until actual evidence is presented, or a group that is actually informed by the facts of the case (and not overly sensationalized clickbait articles) makes a decision regarding the merits. That's for the judge and any jury to decide, and the rest of us can opine when actual evidence is provided. A blog post truly is insufficient.

Please try your own thought experiment: would requests for evidence in your scenario get silenced by assumptions and accusations of bad faith and sexism?

These are some of the same tools used by dictators, despots, and criminals to chill rational discourse.

Your thought experiment is lacking a critical component: the hearsay accusation of a criminal act. You've unwittingly created a straw man argument.

This is a risk when you don't engage with the world in a rational evidence-driven format. You mislead even yourself.

Try this thought experiment: Assume I'm a very supportive professional married to a woman who works in technology, intimately familiar with the pressures and difficulties that come with that. You can explore my comment history if you like.

Seriously re-read what you've written and consider it from my perspective. What does it say about you, your prejudices, values, beliefs, and open mind? What is the impact if everyone behaves the same way?

Can you see why I'm concerned that ycombinator contributors behave this way?

Or: view it from the perspective of a misogynist that you seek to shame and silence. Few of them will be converted through bullying. You're trying to stop terrorism by bombing Iraq. Attacking the wrong people for the wrong reasons while sacrificing your values quickly destroys your reputation, highlights your hypocrisy, and creates new opponents.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that your behavior here doesn't match how you see yourself or how you want to be. That you have a love of democracy, freedom, and the pillars that support them. We desperately need people like that, and we have no shortage of ignorant bigots.

Your boss by definition is in a position of power over you. If they date you (let alone ask for sex in this manner!), they can be seen as exploiting their power over you, or you being treated differently in return for sex. That just doesn't work. It's always unethical, regardless of consent of the employee (who might also be too afraid to say no).

It really sounds like you're trying to fit this case to an agenda that's important to you, and you're working against your own interests by doing that. Bringing up ambiguous definitions in the context of a clear cut case discredits the idea that ambiguity is a problem. You'd be better off just accepting that this case is blatant, and saving the arguments about ambiguous definitions for a time when they're actually relevant.

Seems pretty clear-cut to me?

What is difficult is proving that what is alleged to have happened actually transpired (or if cases are not properly investigated).

But this is why we have a justice system. If there is a paper trail, and evidence of repeat activity, as in this case, there is little ambiguity.

[1]: https://employment.govt.nz/resolving-problems/types-of-probl...

In the appropriate context, of which the workplace is not one. There are other places where individuals make an effort to curtail sexual discussion (church, the dinner table, around small children, within earshot of their parents), so I think it is well within the capabilities of healthy young professionals to generally keep sex out of the workplace.

> when you have younger people working 60+ hours with a close group you will have people talking about sex.

Well perhaps they shouldn't. Of course, sex or topics of a sexual nature might come up, just as say, the color of your last bowel movement might come up, but I'd argue that it shouldn't be a topic of regular discussion and that a culture that aims to defer such discussions to a venue outside of the workplace is a good idea precisely because it is impossible to manage the variable spectrum of comfort in sexual discourse among individuals, especially among a diverse workforce (and not just with regard to gender, but also age, cultural and religious background, as well as sexual experience, history and maturity).

> That should be expected but the current legal standard doesn't allow for that.

The current legal standards certainly allow for it, the bar for sexual harassment in a legal sense is generally pretty clear (proving what actually transpired is sometimes a different story), but what tends to be less clear is company policy regarding the fine line between what is permissible and what is inappropriate. I think the spectrum of what is considered over the line varies so wildly that the only sensible approach is "just don't bring it up".