Uber Executive, Linked to an Old Harassment Claim, Resigns | Hacker News Reader

Uber Executive, Linked to an Old Harassment Claim, Resigns

nytimes.com

286 pointsstartupdiscuss168 comments

This stinks of scapegoating, of cover up, of distraction.

I'm sure Uber hopes this is a best/least impact course of action for them to begin to erase last week's terrible publicity from everyone's minds.

They a. Fire someone who has only been there a month -- so don't lose too hard employee investment wise. b. Happened to find someone to fire who fits extremely well into a narrative that makes it appear as though they are toughening up and tackling the root of these recent sexual harassment accusations when in reality the good old boys will be sticking around.

Capitalism may improve greatly once we have robot overlord higher-ups that are optimized for economic success only and not power drunk once they don a suit, prove they are a little more cunning and opportunistic than most people that still have fully operating empathetic brain parts, and are, quite frankly often the most idiotic but belligerent (read infantile) people in the room--though of course if some current top-dogs design/get a stake in the business logic of our future corporate AIs I'm sure our mechanized leaders will be just as ruthless and scummy.

I suspect there's a host of tie wearing, sycophantic, despicable wretches out there for every corporate leader to whom one could actually ascribe any virtue or nobility--to one whom you can call leader without having the taste of vomit well up in your mouth.

I'm not sure if that's a problem caused by capitalism or merely exacerbated by it. Chicken/egg sort of thing.

Of course I can only draw upon my limited experience, but I've met very few people in high stakes positions at major companies that I actually liked or even considered intelligent and deserving of the benefits they receive--then again ours is often a system of reward based on raw time spent and bribes offered rather than actual merit. Furthermore, it's an unfortunate fact that valuable qualities are often uncoupled; the person of great intellect may well be a piss poor leader nine times out of ten. Granted, anyone in a higher-up position at a major company has a hell of a lot of stress, responsibility, and pressure on them, but that does not legitimate disgusting behavior as an acceptable outlet, nor does it legitimate chest buffing since effective leadership at major corporation scale often relies on the minor leadership and autonomy of subordinates anyway.

Hierarchies are foolish.

Kalanick probably has an ordered list of employees he's ready to fire until this thing goes away. I wouldn't even put it beyond him to hire someone just so he can fire them after a month or two.

Please don't raise fear, uncertainty, and doubt about this.

I don't hold Uber is very high regard, especially when it comes to ethical and moral decisions, but your comment comes with a certain amount of unfound malicious intent that simple hasn't been demonstrated in any of Kalanick's, or Uber's, actions.

" that simple hasn't been demonstrated in any of Kalanick's, or Uber's, actions."

We're talking about a company that wanted to dig up dirt on journalists.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/18/uber-exec...

One doesn't prove the other.

You're right, there's smoke everywhere and the stern of the ship is on fire but that doesn't prove the bow is on fire.

I'm not trying to defend Uber! They're certainly a company that has very 'flexible' morals and ethics.

However the claim "Kalanick has an ordered list of employees he's ready to fire until this thing goes away. [He probably did] hire someone just so he can fire them after a month or two." is absolutely unfounded and is based in such little reality that it doesn't belong here on HN.

That was not the statement the OP made. He said "Kalanick probably has an ordered list of employees...", which is not the same as your interpretation ("Kalanick has an ordered list of employees..."). One is a supposition, the other is an assertion.

What they meant was, conditioned on the evidence presented about Uber's actions towards journalists, the likelihood of the existence of list of employees to fire is unaffected.

The GP tried to support the probability of their supposition with an unrelated fact, which was called out.

A person hating puppies doesn't incline them towards murder any more than liking licorice, even if both might be considered by some to be signs of character flaw or moral failing. Sometimes when there's smoke, there's just some guy trying to have a cigarette in peace away from terrible, judgemental people.

I think you're quite naive and/or haven't been paying attention to what Uber has been doing for the last few years.

I don't know about you, but I would much rather work for a person than a machine. You can bargain with a person. And people have limited attention spans.

The only reasons to not prefer working for a machine are

a) you don't trust its value function to be just, or b) you believe it will be just, but you would rather cheat people by taking advantage of human faults like irrational emotions and imperfect memory

We can argue about a) but I can't respect position b).

> b) you believe it will be just, but you would rather cheat people by taking advantage of human faults like irrational emotions and imperfect memory

This is interesting. If all men are created equal and had are grown in same environment then treating by a machine equally is just. But all men are not created equal and hence treating equally by a machine which decides their pay will be considered unjust by the lesser capable men. I am not saying it is just or unjust, just a possible thought process by an intellectually less capable men.

Great point. The whole equality vs equity you allude to debate applies here as well

I don't think most people care about b), or would even consider b). It's more likely that there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, context etc. that explains someone's behavior - and it's unlikely that an unemotional decision-maker would care. Having a bad stretch because you're dealing with personal problems at home? Perhaps your pay should be docked by some percentage since you're less productive than your peers. Trying to ramp up on a technology, but you're slower than your peers? Another pay cut - after all, you're not as efficient.

Having your pay docked because you're unable to work is standard operating procedure if you're an hourly worker, or if you bill a client hourly. And yes, if you are slower and less efficient than your peers, you should receive less pay. No more rewards for "looking" the part or being more "likable".

What you're asking for is a pure form of meritocracy, which I think is generally a good thing but does have negatives.

The problem is, how do you measure impact and performance? If you have someone on a team that spends a ton of time helping other engineers with their coding problems, their own commit rate will be lower. If you have someone who checks in a ton of code (not a great messure of ability), they may cause a ton of breakages and bugs for others, a detriment to the group overall.

Meritocracies can be gamed, and any measure you decide to track, will be gamed. At some point machines will definitely be able to track all of these data points, and incorporate them into a model, but it's still only going to have a view of the world based on the data it is fed.

This means that people will game it, and then you have a similar issue as today. While I agree with you in principle, the implementation will not be perfect.

I prefer: c) even if it's a good idea, it'll be implemented poorly and that will make my life hell d) You can't actually work for a machine because it has no animus

He is not a scapegoat. Judgement has been delayed. Harassed at google, punished at uber.

I am definitely not looking forward to robot overlords, and I think that touting them as some sort of panacea is absurd. You just replaced an opaque decision-making process with an incredibly fast/efficient opaque decision-making process.

Open source with debug traces!

Yep. My first thought was of Stross' Accelerando, and then the issue of the paperclip maximizer.

Why did Google let an executive who had credible complaints against him resign on his own, and even threw a goodbye party for him? I can only imagine how the victim felt when he or she heard about that party.

According to Kara Swisher (journalist), Google (the corporation) did not throw him a party: https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/836456506102947840

>Google was prepared to dismiss Mr. Singhal because of the claim, Recode said, but ultimately he resigned on his own in February 2016.

Seems like he resigned before being dismissed. As for the party, it was organized by his friends at Google.

If credible illegal behaviour has happened, why did Google not forward the information to law enforcement?

If Amit did do something bad, allowing him to resign makes Google complicit in letting him off the hook scot free. In that case how would the poor victim feel?

If Amit did not do something bad, how can he ever clean his name from the allegation?

Really poorly handled by Google. And now made even worse by leaking stuff to the press. Stuff like that belong in a court of law, not in some HR department.

Not all bad actions are illegal. It's generally legal to ask people to have sex with you, even if they're working for you. But it would be a poor company which tolerated that from its managers.

Is that true? Isn't harassment at least a misdemeanor?

Generally speaking, no. It can escalate to the point where other criminal statutes apply (harassment, stalking, assault). But on its own, I don't think the US has any criminal penalties specifically for sexual harassment?

Ah! Here it is. The Employer is legally liable:

https://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/penalties-sexual-haras...

Sexual harassment is illegal, but it is a tort and not a crime, and it is a tort on the part of the employer (and, maybe, in some cases the employees supervisor; most Circuits do not allow this, but there are District Courts.in the First Circuit that have, apparently) not the individual harasser (unless the harasser happens to be the supervisor, though that seems to be the case in the hypothetical here.)

The conduct involved overlaps with a number of different torts (some against the victim of harassment, some against the employer) and crimes on the part of the perpetrator, even when they are not the supervisor, though.

There is such a thing as criminal harassment, but not all harassment is criminal harassment (nor should be).

Not to single you out or anything, but this comment is representative of a class I regularly see in threads about alleged illegal activity.

Simply put, that is not how the legal system works. Whether that is how the legal system should work, is another matter.

It is not clear whether your comment, or this type of comment generally, is expressing an inquiry: why did this not happen the way I thought it was supposed to? Or a more rhetorical, why isn't the system set up differently?

So, if the latter, my bad. But my intuition says the former, and it seemed worth addressing.

> If credible illegal behaviour has happened, why did Google not forward the information to law enforcement?

please learn the difference between civil and criminal law

The country I am coming from does not have this kind of distinction.

It just feels that the US system is really unsatisfactory in actually resolving an incident. Is Amit a baddie or not? Who can tell. Here we're in a state of limbo.

which country are you coming from?

the purpose of the justice system is to determine if a person accused of breaking a law did or did not break law. that actually has nothing to do with determining whether or not someone is a "baddie" or not.

Those sorts of moral judgments might be taken into consideration by legislators when they draft and vote on legislation in the first place, but once the law exists it is no longer really about morality. Only about legality. Many legal actions are deeply immoral. Many illegal actions are not immoral.

There is no state of limbo here. If Amit Singhal broke a criminal law then he would be investigated by the police. He isn't even accused of that. He is accused of having possibly violated a civil law that would make him (and his employer) liable for financial damages. That will only happen if the injured parties come forward and file suit against him though. It's not in limbo. The injured parties have not filed suit. There might be many possible reasons for that but it means that there is no legal action against Amit Singhal and it also probably means there won't be. His reputation on the other hand, is a totally different subject.

Travis is such a coward. How is firing someone hired last month going to fix the rampant toxicity over at Uber? I think the biggest action Travis could take is stepping down as CEO. It sounds like he is central to all of the reports of the culture of sexism and harassment over at Uber we've heard thus far. Travis needs to go, the entire HR team needs to go and all higher up executives and management staff needs to go as well.

I recommend that you read Brad Stone's new book on Uber and Airbnb. You'd get a sense of how much Uber means to Travis. In my opinion, the last thing he'd do is to step down (I am not making a comment whether he should or shouldn't—it's just something that I clearly don't see happening voluntarily.)

Then the board should remove him, and his lieutenant Emil Michael who threatened to stalk journalists.

They can't; he controls the board

Well considered he built Uber Taxi two decades ago and then Uber almost a decade ago, this means a lot to him for sure. He must have waited years to get this rich get this much of influence.

If he worked hard and waited long ... why threaten it all with this juvenile BS?

the juvenile BS was always there, and was never a threat before?

I'm definitely not on Uber's side in this and would not be surprised if it's completely true, but is there clear evidence that Travis is the root of the problem? I see that HR doesn't want to fire people he's fond of, but is that on orders from Travis himself?

I think he probably should resign anyway just as a good faith gesture, but I'm curious how culpable he is personally.

> I see that HR doesn't want to fire people he's fond of

If the the descriptions we've read so far about Uber HR's response to sexual harassment and discrimination claims as well as Travis's role in them are corroborated, the board needs to do a major housecleaning at Uber starting from the CEO, many people in HR and many of these managers who were directly carrying out these actions. Anything short of that sends the signal that women are indeed considered second class citizens in the tech ecosystem.

Anything short of this would leave Uber as a silicon valley pariah. Top engineers and managers would be reluctant to join the company. Those who stay in Uber long term will have their brands tarnished. If we, as a group (silicon valley startup ecosystem) fail to respond in this manner, the entire industry's brand will be tarnished forever.

We claim to be a meritocratic and progressive bunch. It pains me to say this as a guy in this industry, I had never imagined how serious and ugly the sexism in some parts of the industry is. Yes I had known at a surface level that women have more obstacles to overcome to make it in this industry. But still Susan Fowler's blog was shocking to me. This new blogpost has doubled the shock. I hope my actions from this point on will be guided by this knowledge.

>Anything short of this would leave Uber as a silicon valley pariah. Top engineers and managers would be reluctant to join the company

In the era of alt-right ascendence and president trump? That would be nice...

It's been stated here that Uber's board cannot fire Kalanick, they don't have the power to. Ultimately Uber is still a privately-held company so unless they're doing something illegal, justice has to come from the market.

Then again, even if they were acting illegally, they have a lot of experience with that.

Y'know, back in the day, a condition for companies to get VC funding was for the Founder-CEO to step down (typically becoming the CTO or a similar position) so the VCs can install adult supervision.

We need to go back to those days.

Interesting idea, and it made me think of the converse. Would anyone really want to go back to a world before Uber? People tend to forget this. We're living in a world that has already been changed by Founder-Gods. Would we be throwing out the baby with the bathwater by restricting their ambition?

I'm not saying we shouldn't solve the problem at hand. Just that maybe corporate governance isn't the root cause. At the end of the day, Uber's fighting an important war that we only watch through headlines, but is still pretty important. The founder is the keeper of that vision, the champion of that fight. There's no way Uber would be able to stay lean and mean and fight against local governmental intransigence if it had "adult supervision".

> We claim to be a meritocratic and progressive bunch.

"Claim", yes.

It sure is odd that, over the span of my career, observed incidence of workplace bullying and harassment has shown a strong positive correlation with the frequency of such claims as those you describe; by comparison, at those places I've worked which have no such attachment to one specific end of the political spectrum, the worst I've seen is thoughtlessness. That's bad too, to be sure, but those who've engaged in it have mostly been mortified when called on it and tried hard to avoid it in future - which is the correct, and honorable, response. Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley...

Well, I was going to make a reference to the emperor having no clothes, but that's not really apropos, is it? After all, he had his dick hanging out by accident.

"bullying and harassment has shown a strong positive correlation with the frequency of such claims as those you describe"

"which have no such attachment to one specific end of the political spectrum, the worst I've seen is thoughtlessness."

My comment was not to start a partisan political thread but your anecdotal claims hold no merit here since CEO of Uber is known to spout Ayn Rand bullshit in public and is known as a Trump supporter.

I was not calling Uber's culture progressive and meritocratic. It's clearly not. I was challenging the rest of the community to treat Uber in a way that was appropriate for a meritocratic and progressive community.

> is there clear evidence that Travis is the root of the problem?

The more we hear about Uber the less I can believe that its CEO isn't responsible. Perhaps he is not the root of the problem, but when issues are this widespread, and this well known, lack of action from the top is inexcusable.

From another and latest whistleblower story "I'm an Uber Survivor"...

The HR team was known to be deftly afraid of Travis’s tendency to blame and ridicule the women and yell at HR whenever they went in with complaints of abuse. I heard about Travis personally congratulating Mike#2 for meeting strict deadlines months after I complained to HR about my abuse. It was clear to me that the regressive and abusive attitude towards female employees was trickling down from the top.

https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-ub...

Travis might be largely responsible, but an anonymous account is not good evidence of it.

Sorry, but what's your age on the internet? Anonymous account is more than enough for a witch hunt.

I'd fire someone if they'd been a harasser in the past, even if my image was already impeccable. As much as this move seems to be about improving image, it doesn't need to be (I mean: that's not the only good reason to fire someone who concealed past sexual harassment allegations).

> I'd fire someone if they'd been a harasser in the past

This news of harassment comes not from Google, but from several anonymous sources. Google declined to comment, and the man himself said that the story wasn't true.

If there was no definitive proof, and the openly stated reason is that he wanted to retire, why would you fire somebody who was merely accused of being a harasser? That makes you a larger coward than somebody who keeps somebody who's under fire.

Even if the claims were substantiated, people do change, and I don't think that one sexual harassment claim should be sufficient to torpedo your entire career. What's next, putting them on a registry and making them wear a scarlet letter on their chest?

This whole thing is a witch hunt.

It seems like some of these people are repeat offenders, who are trying to destroy several innocent women's careers. That's kind of the actual witch hunt.

> It seems like some of these people are repeat offenders

The people mentioned in the allegations have not been named and have not had their identities revealed, and also have not had any evidence presented, except for two unsubstantiated accounts. It's probably not even the same people in Fowler's article and this most recent anonymous one.

Instead, somebody got information leaked (information that Google refuses to confirm) about something that happened in the past, at another company, gets fired because any appearance of impropriety must be squashed, and his name and career gets dragged through the mud for real evidence at all. Isn't that a witch hunt?

a witch hunt in an accusation going looking for someone to accuse, not an accusation doggedly following the accused.

I don't think calling it a "witch hunt" (a rather loaded term) is an accurate depiction at all of what is going on. Remember, in the true sense of the word, the targets of said witch hunts weren't actually witches, which is VERY disputable and an unpopular opinion to hold in this scenario where the harassers are clearly damningly guilty.

I meant that in a very very broad sense of having your reputation or spirit or career destroyed despite being innocent.

As far as I can tell, he says that the harassment wasn't harassment, and that there are two sides to every story. He does not dispute that this is the reason he left Google. At least as far as I've read, please (I'm being serious) correct me if my understanding is wrong.

Yeah, if someone left a company because of a harassment complaint, I think there's a much better than even chance that they actually did harass someone. I believe that fabricated complaints comprise a very small minority of all such complaints. I would not want my employees being harassed. So there is no way I would hire someone who I knew had departed their previous company due to a harassment complaint, since that's equivalent to accepting a high likelihood that one is hiring a harasser. I might give someone a chance if they had one way back in their past and had otherwise apparently cleaned up their act/showed contrition.

> That makes you a larger coward

Sorry, not clear on how it makes me cowardly to put the safety and security of my employees before the interests of likely harassers seeking a job at my company.

> make them wear a scarlet letter on their chest . . .

You seem a lot more concerned for the harassers' well-being than the people being harassed. I don't share this ordering of priorities with you.

> You seem a lot more concerned for the harassers' well-being than the people being harassed.

The main, and most important point. Nothing has been proven. An unsubstantiated, unrelated leak has gone out and you're already assuming that something bad has occurred. If you replace "harasser" with "communist", you get the McCarthy trials. If you replace "harasser" with "witch" you go all the way back to Salem.

You should share the ordering of priorities that you're innocent until proven guilty.

> As far as I can tell, he says that the harassment wasn't harassment

You're already making a value judgement here. He completely denies that anything untoward happened.

> Yeah, if someone left a company because of a harassment complaint

He also said that he left on his own free will, and Google threw him a retirement/departure party.

> Sorry, not clear on how it makes me cowardly

By dropping somebody who hasn't been proven to do anything wrong at another job because it looks bad for PR means you're a coward. Being swayed by public opinion on unsubstantiated charges makes you a coward, instead of standing up for your own employees.

The key difference here is in the probabilities. For every witch or communist accused, approximately none were actually witches or communists. That is simply not true for harrassers, for instance the estimated false accusation rate among rapists is around 5%[1]. Generally people have no motivation to report what is not true, reporting sexual assault of any form can be a long and tiring process, and often carries a lot of stigma with it if anything gets out... It shouldn't be so damaging to victims, but it often is. As such in these cases it is probably best to place burden of proof on the accused not the victim.

I mean, everyone does this all the time anyway. When was the last time you thought someone was guilty of something (speaking about you behind your back for instance) and you waited until they were proved guilty until you changed you behavior towards them? Innocent until proven guilty is for the courts only, people should and do act on reasonable evidence.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape

> approximately none were actually ... communists.

That sounds completely unbelievable.

It's all in how you set the bar.

Didn't Sundar and Laszlo confirm? Or did details of their internal confirmation leak?

This will only happen if he's forced out or there's a massive internal strike at Uber. I imagine he has to have something over on the board (e.g. proof of their knowledge/complicity in covering up sexual harassment), given how obviously toxic he is. And from the interactions I've had with Uber employees on this forum, there are no lengths they won't go to rationalize the most obviously horrific behavior on the part of Uber's leadership.

I'm not optimistic, but then again we seem to be living in quite the era for black swans.

I've been at a company where the CEO is the source of a toxic culture.

The board will never kick them out pre IPO if the company is growing. They might go for a coup post exit though.

Old Microsoft was super aggressive and alpha. Not sure about the harassment though. It's now a calmer behemoth.

If travis is the hero of Uber who employees rejoice then him stepping down would be a death blow to the Company.

At this point Uber has got fuck you money to keep on burning employees. Employees have golden handcuffs that don't come off until IPO.

The best people can do is not get a job at Uber. The existing employees start quitting en-masse or a major internal data leak. The revolution needs to come within Uber.

The best people can do is actually to stop using Uber. Vote with your wallet, and go to a different service. It's what I'm doing.

I was voting against Uber by not using it from the beginning: it seems to me unethical to dump entire taxi industry by not being profitable, but by attracting investments from VC and decreasing prices below profitability just to screw others.

I mean Taxis themselves have been known to take people for a ride. One reason there are local government regulations is to protect people from being ripped off. Lyft it is! And if lyft is just as bad then maybe someone will start the Fair Trade Transportation App.

Uber has almost always had the advantage when it came to raising money (perhaps today that is no longer the case), so I bet Travis has control over the board.

I agree that something drastic has to happen to show goodwill to Uber's current employees, but I think what you are asking for, practically speaking, is for them to shutdown. I don't know what the best option is, but shaking up management that much, from what I have experienced, is a death sentence for a company.

I feel bad for Susan and Amy; I also feel for the good employees at Uber. It would be good to get a little more context from Susan and Amy to see how systemic this harassment really is/was. Some of it reads like lots of people were complicit, but I have to imagine there are/were a good portion of good people there who were not. As a man I embarrassingly feel like I am completely oblivious to harassment of women in the workplace, because I'm not complicit in it, and I don't have close enough relationships with woman colleagues for them to divulge this kind of personal information. I would hope there are a lot of people that were innocuously oblivious to it... if not that would be sickening.

I've never seen sexual harassment play out in front of me, but I have seen several other sorts, and my experience suggests that you don't need binoculars and a field guide to know what's going on.

Well yes if it's systemic, I agree, but if it's committed by a few bad actors then I think it is difficult for anyone not involved to tell how bad it is. If I was on Susan's team and my manager was the only perpetrator and he did so through private messages, and Susan didn't divulge what happen to her to me then I feel like I would never know, and that would be reasonable. Now if her manager was being outwardly inappropriate (bordering on harassment), and it was being condoned by colleagues that's a different story, and I would agree with you. That's all I really want to know about Uber's culture, because harassment where I have worked is more secretive and nuanced then the latter example, and the reason I haven't been aware of it while it's happening. I'm only aware when the people involved take appropriate action.

> It sounds like he is central to all of the reports of the culture of sexism and harassment over at Uber we've heard thus far

I mean, he's the CEO. He's probably going to be the one common thread between _everything_ that happens at Uber.

Not to say that he isn't at fault for anything, but it seems disingenuous to try and make this connection.

> Travis is such a coward. How is firing someone hired last month going to fix the rampant toxicity over at Uber?

There's no suggestion that he believes it will. But in the event that somebody withheld information about the reason for their dismissal or exit from a previous role, he's within his rights to terminate their employment. (And probably correct to do so IMO.)

This seems like an absurd attempt at trying to lay the blame for recent reports on someone who was hired a month ago?

Or an effort to actually clean house.

There is not enough evidence from this one act to make ANY judgment on whether Uber is fixing their problem or carrying on as usual.

In the best case, firing a very expendable recent hire for a good reason is much less painful than getting rid of an important engineer, or even HR and top management. Fixing the problem would require company-destroying purges.

No, the best case would be actually fixing the problem. Heaven forbid we "get rid of an important engineer", when, literally, that's the exact problem that got Uber into this mess. Multiple times complaints were met with "well, he's a high performer, so try to stay on his good side, and well, if he gives you a negative review, we can't do anything about that".

If removing the problem would destroy the company, that's a much bigger issue in itself.

I meant "the best case" as the morally best possibility in which Uber is least evil: neglecting the serious behaviour problems, but at least firing someone who deserved to be fired. They might also have fired an innocent, or a conniving expendable employee, to improve their image. Today's commotion about their CEO insulting a humble Uber driver suggests a ruthless PR campaign of distraction and damage control.

“Harassment is unacceptable in any setting,” Mr. Singhal said in a statement. “I certainly want everyone to know that I do not condone and have not committed such behavior. In my 20-year career, I’ve never been accused of anything like this before, and the decision to leave Google was my own.”

So the implication is then what? Uber made the whole thing up? He's never been accused before he was accused at Google, or before he was accused in the media?

Just to be clear: I have no way of knowing the facts and am just commenting based on my memory of what I read.

What he says doesn't contradict what Uber said.

Uber let him go for not revealing the accusations. They have no way of knowing what the results of the investigation were.

"What he says doesn't contradict what Uber said. Uber let him go for not revealing the accusations"

What he said directly contradicts what Uber said. Uber said there was an accusation. He says there has never been an accusation. These are direct contradictions. 1!=0.

I think that's an incorrect interpretation of what he said. He does not say there has never been an accusation, he says there has never _before_ been an accusation.

He does admit that there was a Google accusation.

Or Uber and this guy did a deal because of his clean record (just like all the guys that the 2 girls complained about to HR and HR said "it's the first complaint about him!" multiple times). Now he's lost his job, and the other side will say "the feminist witch hunt caused the jobs of innocent people!"

> In my 20-year career, I’ve never been accused of anything like this before

That reads to me as "until now".

> and the decision to leave Google was my own

"We need you to resign immediately, or we will have no option but to terminate your employment." "Then I choose to resign."

I remember when Singhal's hiring was discussed here on HN last month. People wondered what would attract Singhal to Uber. Now we know: the company culture.

If history offers any clues, Ellison might be taking a look at mr Singhal right about now.

It can't be that Singhal's life has just ended. Everyone is more than their worst moments. Everyone deserves a second chance. The guy did a complete rewrite of Google's search engine... he made Google what it is today. The guy deserves to use his talents somewhere. I hope he gets the help he needs and moves on with his life peacefully.

Nah, I disagree.

It's time for housecleaning in this industry. If it is true that he jumped before he was pushed at Google, then they must have had some serious evidence against him.

Should Hans Reiser be given a second chance because he's good at file systems?

Turn it around, if an engineer does amazing work all their career, and behaves within societal norms, do they at some point accumulate enough credit to allow them a "get out of jail free" pass?

Not sure I'd give Singhal a pass --depending on evidence provided, that said, I'd probably give someone who develops a cure for even one of the cancers a pass. It's probably not the PC thing to say, but if someone could have such a positive on their side of the scale, I think I could give them a pass.

Your example has some false equivalence, Hans is a convicted murderer, Singhal is an accused sexual harasser. Those are not equivalent.

In a purely procedural society such a hypothetical person does not get a pass --in a more relative society he gats a pass. Kind of how we look the other way regarding historical figures of importance and their flaws when what they achieved transcends those flaws.

The false equivalence was deliberate!

This is one of those subtle things that can be problematic, we don't have a good moral calculus on where to draw the line. Slippery slope or reductio, your choice.

Large companies often run a simple financial thought experiment:

"How much liability does this expose us to (a.k.a. how much to make this go away -- hence the popularity of confidentiality clauses in settlements)" vs. "What is this person worth to us"

If we accept that he left Google before they forced him out, then (cynically) Google must have decided that the liability was greater than his value.

But when we consider this from the perspective of someone who has been abused at their place of employment, they may be facing a career change, PTSD, you name it. Both of the women that have written about their experiences at Uber describe stark psychological responses to their experiences - these can/will have lifelong impact. Does a track record of technological innovation excuse even one instance of that?

Obviously I can't speak for the affected people, and different people will react differently to a similar event, that said, if it happened to me, I do think I could excuse it, but not forgive it. That is, I'd be willing to "take one for the team". But then again, having been robbed at gunpoint in highschool, while kind of scary hasn't scarred me measurably.

As another example, I knew women who complained about sexual harassers to me, but as I encouraged them to seek out HR and report, they said the harassment, in their estimation, didn't warrant getting their supervisor in trouble, that they could handle it. Different people have different tolerances and different ways to address unfavorable circumstance.

> I'd be willing to "take one for the team"

> But then again, having been robbed at gunpoint in highschool, while kind of scary hasn't scarred me measurably.

A mildly dismissive viewpoint followed by an irrelevant appeal to emotion followed by an anecdote. This feels a little unfair to those who've actually gone through sexual harassment (which is a spectrum and ranges in severity). Surely, there's something to be said of the psychological damage that results from sexual harassment as well.

> I'd be willing to "take one for the team"

How does sexual harassment further the aims of the team?

Ok, so I should probably get fired for saying "Hi" for the female coworker not on my team: because how do you know where to draw the line?

If that's a serious question, then it would indicate you literally have bad enough social judgement that you probably shouldn't. Almost nobody would consider that a serious question, so if you do then the onus is on you personally.

That was not a serious question. I just wonder wher it all leads. Immune system, when it has nothing to do starts to attack the body itself.

If it was not a serious question, then it was disingenuous and unhelpful.

As someone with an autoimmune disorder this is a poignant metaphor!

Putting aside the over-simplification, when we no longer have to contest with discrimination in the workplace, then sure, we have to be cautious about misuse of those protections. But until then we have to fix the situation that we are in now.

Women sit around all day, scouring office communication for sexual harassment, trying to meet a quota? I really don't think that's how it works.

that's a funny comparison because reiserfs never got past toy filesistem since from inception to the bitter end was plagued by corruption and data losses.

> Should Hans Reiser be given a second chance because he's good at file systems?

I'm not sure I'm able to follow your analogy. Hans murdered his Russian mail-order bride who was getting a divorce from him. There's a pretty big difference from a convicted murderer to an alleged sexual harasser.

If someone came to me and told me that they'd been convicted of murder, I could not in good conscience hire them and expose my team members to that risk. There would be no further discussion.

If someone came to me and told me that they'd been accused of sexual harassment and had left that job, I'd inquire and try to understand the details. There is much more gray area. If someone had physically assaulted another person, I'd immediately say no-hire. If someone had made untoward sexual remarks and was unapologetic for it, no-hire. If someone had said they misread someone else's body language and made a pass was apologetic for it, then negative, but not an immediate no-hire.

This seems disturbingly severe. Someone misread body language, was corrected, and immediately apologized; you say that's a negative?

Also, what happens to more serious crimes when a person is released from prison? I've had several ex-cons on my team from time to time. My view is, if they've been released from prison then they've done their time and we (as a society) owe them a chance to show that they can rehabilitate. What's the alternative? Once you've committed a crime, even a serious crime, you should be unemployable and starve on the street? It's a serious question.

> you say that's a negative?

Yes, I perceive that as negative compared to someone who did not exhibit that mistake. I'm not saying that's a no-hire or an extreme negative. I'm trying to communicate that is an indicator of a possible issue, that means it needs to be looked at further to see if there's a pattern of misreading body language.

> Once you've committed a crime, even a serious crime, you should be unemployable and starve on the street? It's a serious question.

I understand and respect the question you've asked. I want to make sure we separate genuinely serious crimes like murder/rape from crimes that are perceived as serious but in my subjective opinion are harmless like drug use. If someone had been convicted of using or even selling cannabis, I would not perceive that as a negative. If someone had been convicted of murder, I would perceive that as unemployable in my team. The reason being is that I could not consider exposing my team to that risk. I can see that even here, there's some gray areas. For example, if the murder was in self-defense or an act of revenge, and there had been a long period of healthy behavior, then perhaps this could be mitigating factors. I would not want anyone to be unemployable or to starve. There are jobs that are less team oriented that might be suitable, or where the risk can be more tightly controlled.

> Everyone is more than their worst moments

Maybe. In my worst moments, I haven't sexually harassed a coworker. I think a lot of people can say that, honestly and proudly. Singhal made his $35M+, and I'm honestly not too worried about him finding his next job. He'll be OK.

But where you ever accused?

I dunno, I'm happy to throw anyone under any bus, pretty much of anything ever. I just think we should consider sticking with "innocent until proven guilty", if only beacuse cultures without it, like Middle Ages England and the witch hunts, didn't seem like very fair places.

He seems to have enough money to not need to be in a leadership position again. I'm sure he can find some other use for his time.

"he made Google what it is today". Then he is a bad guy after all. Ten links to the same website in the first result page is not marvelous.

If I would be working with one of these guys, I would not be given the first chance. I am all for giving second chances, but there should be a way how to do it without killing a chance of unlucky junior women or even ethical dude who happen to be in their team.

Hmm... This sounds familiar!

    Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar
    performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable
    punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.

https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

how is his life ended? he can just retire and spend time with his family. or work on a personal project. the ability to remain gainfully employed with a 7 figure salary is not the definition of a man's life.

> someone held accountable for their behavior while at Uber

You mean "alleged behavior" and "while not at Uber".

None of these Uber claims have been substantiated at all, and he was fired as a face-saving move, rather than having anything at all to do with the current alleged scandal.

That picture of Singhal peaking around the corner was very apropos.

Looks like they hired him without complete background check. Its good attempt. This will look like PR stunt unless they step-up and take action on their long-term employee(s) - regardless of high performer or not - who might have involved in the harassments.

I think it's insane that "allegations" of harassment are enough to get you fired. That sets the bar far too low, below any standard of evidence.

Replace google with some shit company that didn't want you to leave and you'll see what I mean. I warned my boss at my current job that my last one ain't gonna be too happy about me leaving since I was nearly irreplaceable. I'm still betting they said terrible things about me, but what kind of bullshit evidence is that?

According to the article, he was not fired because of the allegations, but fired because he did not disclose the nature of his departure from Google.

When you're a high up enough executive you need to be trustworthy - his first action with the company proved that he isn't.

He resigned on his own terms. I know executives pull that crap all the time to avoid getting "fired" but the fact is he quit voluntarily

There is something called "lying by omission" or telling the truth, but not the whole truth.

Also, if you are told to resign or you will be fired, that's not resigning on your own terms.

The last few places I interviewed at specifically asked this. "Have you ever been involuntarily terminated, or voluntarily resigned to avoid termination?"

If Amit didn't reveal that he had forced out (whether he officially resigned or was fired is a distinction without a difference) of Google after an investigation of serious charges against him, then that's a good enough reason to fire a top executive.

Businesses are very risk-averse.

HN should really ban throwaway accounts on sensitive threads.

In any case, if you don't at least know that the response to your comment will be that allegations of harassment more often result in retaliation against the accuser than punishment of the accused - between the multiple Uber fiascoes, Casey Affleck, Brock Turner, etc. - then I find it hard to believe you're trying to listen in good faith.

Most background checks only look at criminal records. So something that is conducted privately would not even show up.

Anyways, like many others I feel like this guy is just a scapegoat considering the fact that he has only been at Uber for a month. On the other hand, what is Uber supposed to do here? They found out somehow that Google has done an internal investigation that he has been accused of sexual harassment before. If they do not ask him to resign, people would be outside with their pitchforks knowing that they have a possible sexual offender working for them.

There probably wasn't any way to know. Guessing someone at Google just leaked it, perhaps related to the Waymo feud with Uber.

Or perhaps his accuser, or someone familiar with her, saw the timing would have been optimal to shoot an email to an Uber board member.

I think the more plausible occurrence is that Kalanick knew about it before hiring him, then hired him anyway, and only fired him after the Susan Fowler story came out. Surely someone of Kalanick's stature would have been able to find out about this through back channels when he was vetting Singhal.

It does feel a bit like Uber's CEO trying to get rid of credible replacements.

Also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747177

Folks, look.. I'd love to hop on the Uber hate wagon, but they didn't take liberties with my personal info in a malicious way, change the level of their service or drastically change the terms of the agreement. That and they provided a service that I still find useful and commensurate for what I pay. I could not care less what social struggles take place internally, and my once a month fare doesn't do much to further any ill wills being schemed in a dark room somewhere at Uber HQ. Don't construe this as me endorsing any bad actors; I'm simply wondering how much of this outrage among HN posters is really translating to Lyft and Taxi conversions, and how much of it is just internet outrage and virtue signaling puffery.

Could you explain more the point of your post? Because to me it seems like you're saying that Ubers behaviour is acceptable as long as they make money. Did I misunderstand?

I think (s)he is saying that most angry commenters will display outrage online, and then unthinkingly call an Uber within the next 24hrs to go eat a burrito.

This is exactly what I was saying.

Using "virtue signaling" is in vogue, and I don't like it. Yes, the idea is real, but it has become an easy way of dismissing the legitimacy of the person it is invoked against, without doing any work to actually support the accusation.

It is also telling that it is used exclusively to undercut progressive stances -- things like feminism, liberal immigration policies, fair pay, etc. It is never used to undermine the position of someone who who has made a typically conservative stance. Let me demonstrate.

Statement 1: "I wouldn't want to work there because they have a reputation as having a sexist work environment."

Rejoinder 1: "Your obvious virtue signaling is a joke. I don't care what you think."

Statement 2: "I believe in the constitution and believe guns are a significant foundation to the freedoms we enjoy."

Rejoinder 2: "You are just virtue signaling. Ooh, look at me, I'm such a patriot. Ha ha."

Why is it we only see type 1 rejoinders and not type 2?

i like how somehow they believe that people can't honestly believe that woman shouldn't be objectified and should be equal and therefore think that anyone expressing that must not be genuine and most just be "virtue signaling"

Thanks for pointing this out. I've noticed this as well. But, you should be careful with comments like these, as someone will probably accuse you of both being "triggered", and of being a "cuck".

I'm still not sure if I'm annoyed or delighted to see Shakespearean insults coming back into fashion, although I've yet to see some commenter riposte that someone's wit is as thick as a Tewkesbury mustard...

Whenever someone uses "cuck" unironically, it tells me what tribe they belong to. It often saves me a lot of time, as there is no need to engage them in conversation.

Which, ironically, is virtual signaling. That's the modern world though - lets everyone retreat to your corners and come out throwing buzzwords at each other.

"Misogynist"

"Cuck"

If only we could talk about ideas, not labels.

Does it really matter? Uber is more popular than the other services, but it's still not profitable on its own and it is not established enough that it can afford too many major PR hits.

If nothing else, this will hurt their hiring on every level, which does hurt the company in the long run.

Has there been a tech company that has been this highly called out on their culture before this?

Well, there was that Ellen Pao suit a year or so back.

And a bunch of others:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=sexual+harassment+silicon+valley&t...

It must feel like hell to be working at Uber and wake up everyday to this news. On the other side some people crave the drama, this is surely up to the standards. What's next? Travis is supporting Trump?

I have no idea what the allegations made against Singhal are, or whether there is any veracity to them, but I do know that if we treat allegations as a guilty verdict, then allegations, whether honest or not, become an extremely powerful, career ending strike against someone.

I understand why Uber would drop him, even if just for PR purposes, but I'm curious why a forum which is so concerned with upholding of classic American values(as discussed during the recent Trump EO banning certain people from certain states) would be willing to dismiss another American virtue: innocent until proven guilty.

He resigned. So for whatever reason, he agreed to leave of his own volition.

Whether that's because he is actually guilty of the accusations and knows it, or the CEO forced him to for publicity reasons (or both)... who knows. But nobody has been branded officially "guilty" of a crime in terms of the American legal system.

He resigned before being dismissed by Google according to the article.

Most people on the McCarthy era hollywood blacklist were not found guilty of anything - only accusations, and I don't recall a lot of people defending that episode.

>but I do know that if we treat allegations as a guilty verdict

Your comment is extremely off base. In additions to an allegation we have:

1) An investigation that found the allegations "credible."

2) A resignation that appears to be because of these allegations, in an attempt to avoid the allegations and investigation coming to light.

3) A failure to disclose these circumstances to a new employer. While that might be fine for somebody not in a leadership position, for somebody at the SVP level, come on.

1) What were their standards for finding it 'credible'? If you concede this point, you're basically giving unlimited authority to a completely unknown institution (whoever Google hires for these things?).

2) That's one possibility. Another possibility is not wanting to deal with it. So long as there isn't an admission of guilt, I'm not sure how the public can really know these things.

3) I agree with you 100% on this one, if it really happened. What if that itself is a cover. What if Travis hired Amit knowing that he had this potential blemish on his record, but hired him on the contingent that he may fire him immediately if it ever came to light?

Or maybe Singhal resigned because despite telling his management it was untrue, they didn't side with him despite his long term loyalty to the firm.

If you feel you've built the company with your own hands, and then the firm institutionally closes ranks against you because of a false accusation (or that's how you perceive it), then you'd probably be very bitter and want to leave anyway.

Regardless of whether Amit is a scapegoat, we clearly need to applaud Uber for encouraging this resignation. Another high level executive with sexual harassment history is not needed, and I hope this signals a change of direction for Uber that is followed up by further cleaning of house.

The problem is HR ignoring sexual harassment reports. Fire whoever needs to be fired in HR, and implement a real HR policy.

Leaking cherry-picked names to the press and scapegoating will not calm things down.

I am "impressed" by how much weight an harassment claim carries in certain circles these days.

Its almost as if the suits treat it like social leprosy.

How did Uber hire him without background check? I think Uber HR Head should also resign.

I wonder if the timing was intentional at Google. Top level technical talent leaves, Google throws a party for him, then suddenly it comes out after the Uber scandal that he's involved in similar proceedings?

Someone at Google was angry about the departure.

Glad to see Uber has taken actions to fire Singhal. He well deserves this. Sexual harassment should not be tolerated anywhere anytime. Singhal is such a hypocrite. He says “Harassment is unacceptable in any setting” while he did it himself at Google(Of course he denies it but Google's internal investigations found it credible). He said he wanted to focus on philanthropy while he joined Uber less than a year after he left Google.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com