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With Her Blog Post About Toxic Bro-Culture at Uber, Susan Fowler Proved That One Person Can Make a Difference (recode.net)
Kara Swisher, writing for Recode: It was Lao Tzu who said that "the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." In the case of complete and utter change reeling through Uber right now -- culminating in the resignation of its once untouchable CEO Travis Kalanick -- it turns out that it began with one of the most epic blog posts to be written about what happens when a hot company becomes hostage to its increasingly dysfunctional and toxic behaviors. It was clear from the moment you read the 3,000-word post by former engineer Susan Fowler about her time at the car-hailing company that nothing was going to be the same. Titled simply, "Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber," the essay deftly and surgically laid out the map that the media and others would use to prove to its out-to-lunch board and waffling investors that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had to go. In her account, Fowler was neither mean nor self-righteous, although in reading the story that she laid out about her horrible time there, it would have been completely fair for her to have taken that tone.
Film at 11.
It's doubtful that Travis was the only problem child at Uber. He probably hired like-minded pals who remain in power there, so this won't be the last we hear of problems at Uber.
But this isn't "bro culture" or "toxic masculinity", he's just an everyday, run-of-the-mill, common asshole. Plenty more where he came from.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
NOw...let's see if anyone will hire her now, after all of this....
She brought down a 'toxic' CEO, ok....but now, is she a bit 'toxic' too?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
He wasn't fired due to the blog post. The VCs wanted him out for a long time. There is a long history of "articles" about it on the web. It is possible the VCs wanted to get rid of him because of the culture though.
This wasn't about political correctness, it was about common decency, and Uber's lack thereof.
NOw...let's see if anyone will hire her now, after all of this....
According to her blog post that she wrote in February, she left Uber in December and started work at Stripe in January. When a push came to a shove at Uber, "I had a new job offer in my hands less than a week later."
She brought down a 'toxic' CEO, ok....but now, is she a bit 'toxic' too?
The men who work at Uber should probably be viewed as "toxic" by future employers, as the bad boy mentality drives out good people.
Of course not.
And young attractive females have always had an easy time âmaking a differenceâ: allegations of sexual improprieties against men have often been fatal to the careers of those men, or simply fatal when the abuser was a white woman and the male was black.
The idea that this is some newly developed superpower by women is not just laughably historically ignorant, it is offensive.
Being sexually propositioned on your first day by an immediate superior and then punished when you turned them down is not and never will be okay. And that has nothing to do with political correctness. These facts have been more or less confirmed by Uber themselves. If she "tried" this at a "real" company, her boss would have been fired on the spot.
I had the pleasure of meeting Susan at a conference before this all started and it saddens me that someone obviously so bright had to deal with that kind of bullshit.
Now, every pat on the butt or peck on the cheek is 'harassment'.
no, it's harassment, without scare quotes. The chivalrous thing to do is to keep your hands off your coworkers until you're invited.
If she has the skills and can do the job, then I'd hire her. If she 'whistleblows' on sexist practices, so what? I don't want that kind of stuff at my company. She would make the place better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."