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Former Engineer Says Uber Is a Nightmare of Sexism; CEO Orders Urgent Investigation (susanjfowler.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: A former Uber engineer has published an explosive account of sexism and power struggles in the workplace, with allegations beginning from her very first official day with the company. The engineer, Susan Fowler (who left Uber in December and now works for Stripe), posted the account to her blog on Sunday, calling it a "strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying story." It is indeed horrifying. Sexism is a well-documented problem in Silicon Valley, but the particulars of Fowler's account are astounding. She says problems began on day one, when her manager accosted her with details of his sex life: "In my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR. When I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man's first offense, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to. 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. The things only get worse for Fowler. Read the full account of her story here. In the meanwhile, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said the company would "conduct an urgent investigation" into the allegations, and promised to fire anyone who "behaves this way or thinks this is OK."
Journalist Paul Carr summing up the situation, says, "Uber's ability to be on the wrong side of every moral and ethical issue is bordering on magical."
Journalist Paul Carr summing up the situation, says, "Uber's ability to be on the wrong side of every moral and ethical issue is bordering on magical."
Maybe you don't see it since you are not the target of it.
If hitting on a coworker were illegal sexism, a good part of the slashdot audience wouldn't be here, because their parents never would have hooked up.
It's not appropriate for someone to send messages like this to a subordinate, period, the end. It creates a hostile work environment because they have to worry about whether they'll be penalized for saying no.
The appropriate response to someone walking in with a fistful of evidence that someone is engaging in sexual harassment is to fire the harasser, immediately. This is especially true anywhere that has had sexual harassment training. And basically all tech companies are doing that now, and this sort of thing is evidence that it is necessary; both the event, and all the jerkoffs scrambling to defend what is clearly unacceptable behavior.
Uber has a rule against sex between drivers and riders, no matter what. I guarantee you that their employee code of conduct bans sexual harassment, and clear sexual advances like these without invitation are a clear case of sexual harassment.
Finally, it wasn't actually his first offense, that was just a lie told by HR. Because HR is not your friend. Get that part straight right now. They work for the company and their job is to smooth the rough, pacify the angry, and meet legal requirements. It is not to help you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think the main problem here is that the superior propositioned the subordinate. This is problematic, as when she refuses, which she did, she was still dependent on him, and it was easy for him to punish her for her refusal. Of course, he still could put care on treating her the same, but obviously this is something very hard to prove, and therefore the best approach would be to ban this behavior.
Generally though, assuming or expecting that every employee lives in a happy relationship and doesn't want any new ones is just not realistic. Employees will seek relationships and generally this doesn't cause any harm to anybody, just when the power relations are so direct like with direct superior and subordinate its a problem.
He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.
No fucking way. This has got to be some kind of alt-right/4chan/cuck joke parody, right? Woman convinces beta male to have "open relationship" so she can fuck alphas on the side, SHOCKING beta with no game can't score, harasses actually capable women and helps ruin otherwise successful company.
"Sluts and cucks ruin everything for everyone." This has to be a joke, right?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Note that sexism was a *small* part of the situation described. What amazes me was the continued desire to work for a company because of the 'great engineers'.
The reality is you can find a *good* company that also has great engineers. Other companies also face interesting challenges that are worthy of your time. I've seen people fall into this trap of toiling under crappy management because 'their team is so great'. The problem is that crappy management gets all the benefits of your awesome teams work (in fact, in crappy management, the management gets nearly *all* the glory and your 'awesome engineers' are the first under the bus when good times are over, after months on end of 60+ hour workweeks, where the management is only around for part of maybe 3 days a week. You need to find a company that has both a great team *and* good management.
If it had been an isolated incident with one manager, and switching teams fixed it, but she reports a pattern of management dysfunction that seems pervasive, at least to wherever she could go. Now it *might* be the case that her perspective by itself is skewed, but in her view of things, it was a terrible situation and she stayed *way* longer than anyone should have.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Let me ask you a simple question. Ignoring the sexism, which doesn't apply to you, read her description of the corporate culture and tell me: does this sound like a place you'd like to work?
It isn't just sexism, she describes a generally toxic work culture in which all kinds of problems can arise and persist. It's one where managers are focused on competing with each other, even to the point of undermining their supervisors; you might let a problem ride for a bit because you might need to use it against them later.
Now granted, this might not be a fair description of Uber's culture. Or her perceptions might be colored by what was a string of bad luck. But we all know places that shade this way exist. The problem of a organizations that are at the same time bureaucratic and cutthroat go way back. What she describes could be the politics of an old-time royal court.
Why? Why does this kind of culture crop up again and again in human history?
I think because ruthless internal competition offsets some of the natural lethargy of a bureaucracy. It can serve the interests of whoever is on top, at least in the short term. If you have no talent for inspiring people you can at least set them against each other. But you'd be a fool to join such an organization at the bottom, knowing what it is, if you had any alternatives.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm white. Behind the black guy's back, the shit I hear. I even had a supervisor try to get me to blame a bad defect on him - that I caused. I couldn't do it. I couldn't live with myself and in a World where a smart hard working guy gets blamed for shit he didn't do just because he was born with a certain skin color in the wrong society.
The fucker knew he was doing wrong too. And what could I really do? Bitch to HR? Remember folks, HR works FOR management. Remember that. They are NOT your friends and they are NOT there to protect you but to protect management.
So far, it has happened only once in my career. But never the less, bigoted shit like this happens and not everyone -including the victim - may be aware of it.
That doesn't seem unreasonable, but in this case the her immediate superior opened on day 1 with "I'm in an open relationship, please have sex with me". Later she finds out that HR is basically encouraging him by taking no action against a "high flyer", which explains why he (correctly) thinks he can get away with it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I think the headline and summary gives a wrong impression. Sure, sexual harassment is tolerated but the wider picture the writing paints is about dysfunctional organisation. Specifically:
1. Apparently the boss did not make sex a condition of continued employment. He's her boss. That's ALWAYS implied or always the risk.
Really? Then why was it OK when Bill Clinton had sex with an intern?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I see an allegation with no facts. Anyone working in IT understands how to make a screenshot, if not how to log a chat session. Yet no evidence is presented, and what would the easiest thing be for this person to do? Save evidence, because sexual harassment is ILLEGAL.
Your claim (repeated) that you have to be the victim to see sexual harassment on the scale she is claiming is moronic. It would be visible to at least everyone on that team. There would be more than one claim from more than one person if it was that rampant. In the event it was just her and she over-hyped the scale, she could have this thing called evidence. Yet there is no evidence, just allegations. I'll wait for the court case, and would be willing to bet a paycheck that no evidence is forthcoming.
Sorry, but there are no groups of dudes hanging around conspiring on how to fuck over, and fuck, women in the company. Quite the opposite, since the virtue signalling SJWs are rampant in SF and would have busted the boss to make a name for themselves.
You clearly didn't RTFA. She has extensive email and chat records to back up her claims. Yes, I am taking her word for it. But if you are accusing her of lying about it, it is you who need to provide evidence.
And yes, there actually are groups of dudes conspiring how to fuck women at the company. Not at every company of course. But I have seen such things at jobs I have had.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
The older companies have been there and done that already. Previous incidents have honed policies about such behavior in the workplace to a fine edge.
As a result, your older companies make sure you understand they will not tolerate it. At all. Annual reviews and signed acknowledgements of said training with the threat of termination of employment for any violations pretty much keep folks civil.
It's just a matter of the new ones getting a taste of what happens when you don't have clear policies on the issue.
Watch for a zero tolerance policy to be born rather quickly ( as it should ) now that there is a spotlight on it. Will be a non-issue shortly as they will likely fire the guy in question if the allegations turn out to be true.
We're supposed to believe that because this is Uber, and because everything about Uber is evil, this is News For Nerds.
This is news for nerds. Uber is a tech company, and the people that work there are nerds. I don't like vague accusations that tech companies are "sexist" because, while they are, I don't believe they are any more sexist than non-tech companies. But in this case, the accusations are not vague. Ms Fowler has made very specific accusations against specific people, and has hard evidence to back up what she is saying. Uber's behavior in dismissing her complaints was appalling.
The larger number is the unadjusted amount. It's less of an issue because to some extent it is down to choices made, but to some extent it is also down to more systemic problems like the burden of child care tending to fall more on women than on men.
Are you claiming systematic discrimination of men? 80% of all custody awards go to women, if not a bit higher. I'd agree that we need to look at systematic problems, but the lens should not be positioned in a biased starting point. FWIW, I am a single parent and raised my kid from 10mos without any assistance or support. Even though my ex got hooked on drugs and became physically abusive after my child was born (both proven in court), it was an extremely difficult court case because I'm a man. We had to settle on joint legal custody with me having sole physical custody to make the Judge happy. She fought for money, I fought for the best interest of my child.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The price of shame — March 2015
The Republican weaponization of Clinton's misdeed was to claim that this behaviour made Bill unfit to govern. (If powerful men having extramarital affairs with young women was incompatible with leadership, well, the vast sweep of history does not so record.)
Family values aside, the power imbalance creates the risk that Bill would abuse his immense power to cover up the vastly exaggerated blot on his record. The Republicans actually knew that anyone with an accurate base rate of human history / human culture would not regard his behaviour as incompatible with leadership—though a common and damning blot nevertheless, so the tactic was to escalate the stakes until Bill felt compelled to lie about it—which, unfortunately, was extremely easy to anticipate.
Lying to formal body of review is considered incompatible with leadership, sort of, incrementally, since not all that long ago. For example, it barely extends as far back as the Reagan's Iran–Contra affair. (Some people roll with family values and view Clinton's offense as the worse offense. I happen to roll with geopolitical transparency, and so I view Reagan's offense as the worse offense—he appointed those clucks, and it was his ultimate responsibility to know all the big shit).
Bill was plenty smart enough to figure out that the public perception battle would play out exactly as it did, leaving him boxed into a corner where he could—according to his established character—only choose to lie (perhaps he overestimated his power to blow off the investigation, but even there, had he succeeded, he would have mortgaged a sizeable fraction of his presidential energy in ruthlessly defending his momentary gratification).
Clearly, his judgment in this matter fell short of the mark by any standard.
However, I rate it not quite as bald as boasting about sexual harassment with a camera rolling. Whatever Bill purportedly said to Donald on the golf course (that was "far worse" in Donald's personal judgement), there was no film at eleven after the fact.
The modern world contains a lot of cameras and microphones. Trump's world has contained many cameras and microphones since way back. A prudent man in his position wouldn't be openly bragging about his magical power to get away with sexual harassment just to impress Billy Bush. And it's not like Donald didn't have a front row vantage point on Bill sinking his own boat through which to consider and amend his own standard of personal conduct. Donald had every opportunity to know better, and the penny never dropped.
So in summary, a whole lot of things are "not okay" but still the world largely spins as it has always done for thousands of years.