
Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee - qzervaas
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/business/uber-sexual-harassment-investigation.html
======
brudgers
As I commented last night[1], the New York Times has cast Fowler's experience
as a he-said-she-said story. Unfortunately I was not pessimistic enough:

1\. The New York Times spiked the most damning part of Fowler's story: that HR
was actively involved in supporting the behavior.

2\. It down plays Fowler's specific experience as typical for the industry and
marginalizes it by bringing Pao's story into Fowler's narrative. Pao's
experience was radically different, if for no other reason than Fowler is a
rank and file employee of the most typical kind, an engineer. Pao is an
executive. It also brought all the irrlevant ambiguities surrounding Pao's
executive actions at Reddit into the mix.

3\. It repeats nearly all of Uber's public response verbatim rather than
linking to it as it does with Fowler's article.

Fowler's story gets one paragraph (or two if the one sentence paragraph about
going to work for Stripe counts). The same amount is devoted to Pao. Uber's PR
gets the bulk of the article with no critical analysis.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159)

~~~
SeoxyS
NYTimes is a news organization with a mandate to report on verifiable fact,
not rumor or opinion. You're complaining that it's reported as a he-said-she-
said type of story… but for now, that's exactly what it is. The claims are
quite plausible and convincing (and likely true), but at this point they still
are merely unsubstantiated claims. If I were to imagine the right way to
report such a story at this point, it would go like this (1) summarize the
claims made, (2) include the response from the accused, and (3) emphasize that
this is a developing story. That's pretty much what the NYT did. However,
until a court or investigation corroborates the report, they shouldn't be
reported as irrefutable fact.

That said I agree that the comparison to the Ellen Pao case has no place in
this report. Pao's case was quite different and much less convincing. In my
distanced armchair opinion, she deserved to lose that case.

~~~
acchow
I really wish papers could run non-stories along with the usual stories:

"Uber Sexual Harassment Claims Story - In Progress

This story is in progress, and the following are the verified facts:

<insert facts here>

The following are claims that no media has reliable, verifiable source on yet.
If they are reporting on them as fact, you might want to reconsider what media
you trust:

<insert claims here>

We will publish our full story when we the picture is clearer."

As the newspaper of record, it's also helpful to differentiate the reliable
and non-reliable media for us.

~~~
dclowd9901
Sometimes merely repeating an unsubstantiated fact can expose a news org to
liability. Take, for instance, a slander or libel case.

~~~
clubm8
That's not true. If you attribute what you say "X said", then X is guilty of
slander/libel.

(YMMV in England)

~~~
dclowd9901
In my journalism law classes in the US, precedent was dictated on the terms I
described.

------
hueving
>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with
women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In
2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a
former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that
she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her
gender — a case she lost.

This paragraph is indicative of how terrible the NYTimes is with
editorializing. They couldn't just report on one case with objective facts.
Instead they decided to make it sound like this level of harassment is endemic
to Silicon Valley (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at)
and the only evidence they provided was the Ellen Pao case _where a jury
decided she was wrong_.

This completely devalues the entire article and puts it on par with political
commentary.

~~~
DanBC
> (this behavior doesn't match the 6 companies I've worked at)

Why do you think women would tell you about their experiences? I've read your
comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to
me.

~~~
theWatcher37
What a hateful and oddly specific comment.

"I've read _your_ comments"

Yeah, ok buddy

~~~
eropple
He's not wrong. 'hueving's comment history around here pushes an extreme-
right-wing viewpoint that is cloaked in just enough civility to make the
decent folks I know around here reconsider whether or not it's worth engaging
with him. (Many don't, because it's exhausting to be alternative-facted to
death.) I wouldn't expect a woman--or anyone--to tell me jack and/or shit if I
was comfortable expressing worldviews that treat them the way 'hueving does.
And it's not "hateful" to call out somebody whose hat is exactly that; 'DanBC
(who is a fantastic poster around here) is not wrong to use the history of a
poster to challenge his I-don't-see-it-so-it-doesn't-exist dismissals. As for
"oddly specific," 'DanBC has been here longer than I have; you start
recognizing names when the pattern of posts that make your gorge rise goes on
as long as these have.

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.

~~~
spangry
I really don't see how personal attacks, or attaching pejorative labels to
others (conservative, reactionary etc.) enhances your argument. It just makes
it seem like you don't have a convincing counter-argument and need to resort
to appeals to emotion / preaching to those who already agree with you. If you
actually want to convince people who don't share your views, perhaps consider
a different tactic.

And there's just something unsettling about going through someone's comment
history to better 'target' your irrelevant personal attacks. I think it
reveals more about you than it does about the person you're attacking.

~~~
eropple
If "conservative" is a pejorative--well, that's their own doing. I called
myself a conservative for a very long time until it became obvious that
American conservatism required of its adherents a level of misanthropy that I
could not ever support. Hell, I worked for Republican congressional campaigns,
twice!

But you seem to misapprehend me, and maybe that's my fault. I don't want to
convince any extremist. My intention is to deny them the legitimacy of the
chin-stroking, pince-nez-adjusting "thoughtfulness and reason" that they so
earnestly adopt. Because that posture is very, very good at convincing the
low-information reader that they are credible. They are not. The extreme right
wing understands that this isn't about facts (but are happy to retreat to the
sinecure of "what about _your_ facts?!" when challenged), but about
narratives. I will (and 'DanBC did) challenge 'hueving's narrative because his
narrative doesn't make sense: of course he doesn't _see_ it, those who
experience it would have to be themselves reality-averse not to realize it
would just be an invitation for a battery of well-actuallys and backhanded
snipes. It's who he chooses to show himself as. He has no credibility when he
leans on what he sees, and shouldn't.

As far as "going through someone's comment history": I'm a known quantity
around here and I use my real name. Others may choose to use pseudonyms and
that's fine, but their histories _here_ are important for context. 'hueving I
recognize by sight. The poster to whom I replied is not one I recognize, but
he has comments blurfing about "liberals" literally on the first pace of his
comment history. I'm not going to go digging, but I like knowing whether I'm
dealing with somebody who's actually acting in good faith. He wasn't, and you
can bet I'll call him on it.

------
ChuckMcM
I wonder how much impact this will have. If they will discipline and fire
people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed, or if they will
make a lot of noise about investigation and saying how terrible they feel and
not have anything change.

Someone here once asked me how I differentiated between a corporation run by
people and a corporation structured as an institution. In the latter there are
processes put in place that bind the people in the corporation to specific
rules and constraints, and the consequences of not following the rules is well
defined and not up to interpretation.

An example of that would be a sexual harassment protocol that would be
activated by making a claim to the protocol director. That position would
typically report to the general counsel or the CEO. That director would have
30 days from the time of the report to capture statements from all of the
named parties, copies of all company email from all named parties, and any
chat session transcripts. The protocol director would then have another 30
days to seek out any corroborating information from people likely to be
affected and then would provide the CEO (or General Counsel) with a report on
whether or not harassment was deemed to occur. If it had, they would be
required to remove from management responsibility the perpetrator on a first
offense, and to separate from the company on a second offense. There would be
no consideration for their "performance" against their goals.

Its all very mechanical, there isn't a lot of leeway for misinterpretation and
the punishment is fixed without recourse. Of course there are similar
punishments doled out to protocol enforcers should they attempt to mitigate
the protocol.

Institutions are interlocking processes and regulations which insure the
proper functioning and survival of the institution in the face of imperfect
people being in charge of executing the institution's mission.

Corporations of people run on loyalty, friendship, and leverage. In such a
corporation, justice is only found the exercise of friendship or leverage. And
greater friendship or greater leverage can steer the result regardless of its
merits.

~~~
justonepost
It will have impact. It won't move the needle 100% across the industry, but I
can see a 5% movement. Well done Susan if she doesn't sue.

~~~
ygjb
Why "if she doesn't sue"? Assuming she is giving an honest accounting, and has
the evidence to back it, why shouldn't she be compensated for shedding the
light on the shitty practices of the company that shielded her, and a number
of other folks that need to be held accountable for their abuse.

------
hn_throwaway_99
I'm dismayed that articles about sexual harassment in tech often bring up the
Ellen Pao case. Her claims were _rejected_ because the jury found that her
claims weren't believable, and if you look at the evidence that was presented
in the case, I don't think this is an unreasonable conclusion.

If the accusations in this case are true (and, according to the original blog
post, there should be plenty of paper trail to back them up), then bringing up
the Ellen Pao case does a disservice to Susan Fowler. It would be like
bringing up the UVA gang rape case during a discussion of a real case of
sexual assault.

------
gkoberger
One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is _not_ your
friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to
protect you. It's to protect the company.

~~~
dclowd9901
Sure they're not your friend, but Jesus Christ, the amount of legal trouble
this particular HR establishment exposed themselves to through their actions
is breathtaking. THAT'S their job: to prevent the company from getting sued!!

In this case I'm completely bewildered as to why HR handled this particular
situation so clumsily.

~~~
xiphias
Sure..the thing I don't understand is why she didn't go to a lawyer? That
would have been the next logical step for me. At least 1 person should get to
prison if there is enough evidence collected by multiple women.

~~~
discodave
I used to have this attitude until I heard harassment stories from two close
personal friends in the last year. It's really hard to come forward,
especially if you're early in your career and struggled to get any job in the
first place.

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.

~~~
leroy_masochist
> Here's a list of potential negative outcomes of lawyering up

Aren't most of these potential negative outcomes of _suing_ , not lawyering
up?

Having a conversation with a lawyer who specializes in employment law to get a
temperature-check on your specific situation (does it qualify as harassment,
what are your options, what are likely outcomes of exercising these options
given precedent case law, etc) will not result in "having your weird texts,
emails, personal life and sexual history being dragged out in a public court
case".

Even if you _do_ sue, most lawsuits (especially discrimination ones) are
settled out of court, without lascivious details being made public.

~~~
discodave
> Aren't most of these potential negative outcomes of suing, not lawyering up?

You're _kind-of_ right, but suing only has teeth if you're prepared to go to
court and not bluffing. Engaging a lawyer without suing is just going to cost
you money. All of the things I said still suck if you're going through
depositions, even if everything isn't being made public. Imagine having to sit
in a room full of lawyers and explain why you replied 'haha' to an
inappropriate text instead of "I'm forwarding this to HR right now."

------
jen729w
When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then,
it's all PR.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I think one senior person isn't enough in a case like this. What is described
here is an entire malfunctioning department, which in my opinion, couldn't be
attributed to anywhere below the C-level. Sure perhaps there is somebody who
can be fingered "VP of HR" or whatever, but anybody who has so little
visibility into their department that this type of scenario could evolve is
clearly not auditing what's happening levels beneath them.

~~~
idiot_stick
> _I think one senior person isn 't enough in a case like this. _

How can you make a statement like this without knowing anything about the
details of the case? We have an allegation; a big one, but that's it. How many
heads would you like to see in advance?

~~~
alexandercrohde
It's not so much a number of heads, but what I reject is the common notion
that somebody can be so many levels above a problem that they are absolved of
responsibility.

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?

------
bflesch
I find it disconcerning that they did regular performance reviews, and she
aparrently scored very highly on them. But later those ratings were discounted
by some "hidden" factor.

Why would I waste time on performance reviews when I'm not openly giving
feedback to the employee? How can an organization efficiently distribute team
members based on metrics derived from performance reviews when there is such
an impactful but undocumented component of the review?

~~~
zatkin
I think that the "undocumented component" is undocumented for the very same
reason that companies have an undocumented component with technical interviews
- they're trying not to get themselves into a potential legal situation.

~~~
CydeWeys
That's not what I got out of it at all. My take on it was that the
"undocumented component" was made up after the fact, as a retroactively
fabricated excuse to remove her eligibility to transfer teams. The same
situation happens all the time in a gender-neutral way in the form of raises
and promotions that are promised but then fail to materialize, with some new
excuse being created out of thin air.

Also, my company very explicitly does not have an undocumented component to
technical interviews, as that could open up all sorts of legal liability. The
interviewers write up their feedback and the feedback is then evaluated by a
neutral hiring committee who never met the interviewee in question. Keeping
the paper trail of 100% of the information that went into the hiring decision
is the best defense against possible discrimination claims.

------
euphoria83
These events could not have happened without the CEO himself setting an
example and establishing an unwritten policy in the company about how to deal
with such issues. It is not a matter of one person or team or manager or
event. The series of events establish a pattern. The investigation will just
be an eye-wash, with a gentle firing of a low level HR executive and some new
internal policies that will be disregarded immediately.

------
dsfyu404ed
>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with
women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment.

That's a hell of a claim since this is a "typical corporate America" type of
problem.

~~~
farnsworth
Well there are some typical corporate American companies that have this
problem. But I would argue that (almost?) all tech companies have this
problem.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
What?? Everywhere I worked a screenshot like what she's describing would get
you fired. Over office chat even?? It's not even hearsay. Someone can bring up
the exact chat history.

~~~
ygjb
That's great! It sounds like you have worked at places that follow the rules.

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.

~~~
obstacle1
Think about what you are saying using your brain. It is equivalent to "please
stop giving me your anecdotes, because they conflict with these other
anecdotes that I like better".

If you're going to use personal experience as evidence for some phenomenon,
you need to accept personal experience from every angle, not just the angle
that agrees with your perception of the phenomenon.

~~~
ygjb
Fortunately I don't need to think too much about what I am saying on this
topic, because this has been an area that's been examined by lawyers, law
makers, and researchers for at least 20 years. There is a growing mountain of
evidence that can only be ignored by those who are uneducated or unaware of
the topic (and no-one in tech other than recent graduates should be at this
point). It's time for everyone in tech to stop ignoring the problem, and start
publicly and privately calling out any and all bad actors on this even if it
destroys the careers of a few "high performers" (even setting aside the fact
that said high performers with bad behaviour often drag down the performance
of the teams and organizations they are a part of, offsetting any of the
gains). Since this is hacker news and not a blog post or paper, I will leave
it as an exercise to the reader to find more evidence of that claim - why not
start with this
[http://lmgtfy.com/?q=impact+of+bias+on+team+performance](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=impact+of+bias+on+team+performance)

These are just a short list of samples of articles that are based on surveys,
studies, and legal opinions (and that's all I could find in literally the time
it took me to pour my espresso this morning).

[http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229336?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229336?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

[http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-
bias...](http://fortune.com/2014/08/26/performance-review-gender-bias/)

[http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/men-and-women-
biased-...](http://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/men-and-women-biased-about-
studies-stem-gender-bias-opposite-directions/)

[https://www.wired.com/2014/07/gender-
gap/](https://www.wired.com/2014/07/gender-gap/)

[https://theestablishment.co/new-study-finds-60-of-women-
in-t...](https://theestablishment.co/new-study-finds-60-of-women-in-tech-
experience-sexual-harassment-ddfeaf42fba9#.20mtgbhhe)

[https://mic.com/articles/132285/most-women-in-tech-say-
they-...](https://mic.com/articles/132285/most-women-in-tech-say-they-ve-been-
sexually-harassed-many-others-are-likely-silent#.TuhbxPCqQ)

------
hatsunearu
I just find the whole leather jacket incident incredibly baffling.

It's just a few hundred bucks. Is Uber that short of cash? It's ridiculous.

~~~
CydeWeys
It's only baffling until you realize that it really just is horrible, blatant
sexism of the worst kind. That entire department had turned so corrosively
sexist (going from 24 to 3% women) that it needed to finish the job and get
the rest of the women out by making it plain that they weren't welcome. We're
talking about the people in power here being so horribly sexist that they have
to _force the women out_ in order to feel comfortable being themselves.

Any company that cares one inkling about diversity will go out of its way to
make minorities feel comfortable. We're dealing with the opposite situation
here: A department actively working to drive out diversity.

~~~
xanderjanz
Thats not how I read it. They tried to push out the last few women, while
scheming to keep them? Why hire them in the first place?

I take it at face value, Oblivious Employees/Managers thought that not paying
extra for women's jackets _was equality_.

~~~
sudosteph
> Why hire them in the first place?

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.

------
meerita
After reading the entire blog post, and also reading that the CEO is
concerned, I want heads rolling. Specially those who were involved from HR,
managers. I think it will centrate the people on doing their job, not doing
anything aside from this.

What a bad image UBER is getting for toxic "high performers".

~~~
CydeWeys
I'm worried that the head of HR will be fired as a scapegoat or something,
when they were never empowered to truly deal with issues like this in the
first place, and that such policy will continue. If the company culture is
toxic to begin with, and "high performers" are retained at all cost, firing
one head of HR makes no difference if, afterwards, HR is still not going to be
empowered with truly addressing these issues.

~~~
meerita
The head of HR wasn't reported, that's what I believe it happen. That's why
now it is on duty. I think this has happen in middleground, not the highest
spheres. Well, the CTO is involved, and as manager, he had to work on that
matter from day 1. The CTO will not be kicked, of course, but it tells you how
much the company will do with this.

------
overcast
Why does everything involved with UBER, sound like it's run by some type of
frat house?

~~~
settsu
My theory, as a casual observer and not speaking from experience (aside from
having been a 20-something white male), is going straight from college to
founding a company with m/billions at stake has the tendency to breed and feed
unhealthy perspectives. Not always, not inherently, and certainly not
irreparably, but ostensibly more often than not for the SV unicorns.

------
ilamont
Crisis PR 101. Announce an investigation, "discipline" a few anonymous people
or fire the most egregious offender, announce a new code of conduct, and then
hope the furor blows over in a week or two.

But nothing will really change if this is part of the ingrained culture at
Uber. Fish rots from the head, as someone noted in yesterday's thread.

------
dkarapetyan
I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change.
From anecdotal evidence I feel like nothing really changes. It's mostly people
in some bubble that get really upset and then a week later everyone forgets
what exactly they were upset about.

~~~
linkregister
The Uber CEO did withdraw from the U.S. President's economic council after
widespread outcry from a vocal portion of customers and a high proportion of
employees. This is not an example of a major change, but it did demonstrate
that Uber is responsive to public opinion.

~~~
rajathagasthya
I think it's fair to say that Uber only takes corrective actions only when
there is public outrage. Otherwise, breaking the laws and unethical behavior
is all well and good.

------
random_upvoter
As a meta, it seems to be an infallible rule of Hacker News that any
discussion about the relationship between men and women turns into an angry
painful mess in no time. Maybe we should look into this anger itself rather
than draw all sorts of conclusions from cases of which we don't know half of
what really happened.

~~~
adekok
It's similar to conversations between conservatives and liberals. Both groups
have _implicit_ assumptions about how the world works. They have _implicit_
value judgements, in preferring one thing versus another.

Conversation _almost never_ describes these implicit assumptions. As a result,
each side ends up thinking that the other side is stupid, obtuse, biased, etc.

Getting to the underlying biases is hard.

As evidence, see any number of newspaper headlines, including this one:

[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-
east/donald-t...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/donald-
trump-us-military-attack-yemen-civilians-women-children-dead-a7553121.html)

Ignoring the Trump bit, the headline says "kills 30 civilians, including 10
women and children"

Now, try to prove that the male / female victims were treated equally. And,
that there is no implicit bias in male / female relationships.

I'm not saying that such bias is good, bad, or ugly. I'm saying it exists. And
it underlies a lot of conversations, without anyone realizing it.

Which goes a long way to explaining why things end up as you pointed out.

~~~
RileyKyeden
I think in a lot of cases it's more that:

1: We know the assumptions.

2: We know the differences are often intractable (I will never relent on full
LGBTQ equality, for example)

3: We can't just split off and do our own thing because we need each other for
civilization to function, so we have to deal with them.

Some of us can avoid dealing with it by moving to the city/suburbs/exurbs
where there's more unity, but that just postpones dealing with the problems we
ran from. Eventually, elections happen, and you realize putting 50-5000 miles
between you and that person who finally motivated you to leave didn't actually
resolve your conflicts.

------
searealist
I have a hard time believing HR really behaved the way they are portrayed in
that article. They really claimed that if she elected to stay in her current
department she should expect to receive a negative review from the boss she
rejected for a sexual relationship? This is just too much. And for someone as
savvy and with as large an internet presence as the author, I can't imagine
she would accept this resolution. The crowd is quick to crucify Uber here, but
we have seen similar claims before that have turned out to be false or
exaggerated greatly. It's also suspicious that the claimant tends to only last
in jobs for a median of 6 months before moving on and has just released a
book. This deserves a full investigation and we will have to wait and see what
evidence surfaces.

~~~
rubicon33
Thank you. The swiftness with which the hammer has fallen on Uber, is
disturbing. Yes, at face value, this looks bad for Uber. But, the claims here
are serious enough that we really should be holding our judgement before an
investigation, or some other evidence surfaces.

This does not mean I think her claims are false. In fact, I BELIEVE them to be
true, but I withhold my judgment and public criticism until I can be sure.

~~~
sinuage
Healthy Skepticism is well... healthy, but I think at this point there is
enough evidence out there to confirm the story.

Case in point, a quick look at glassdoor reviews seems to confirm the story.
(there's even one that says it's "Not Great for Women" \- Sep 2016 although
it's not as devastating as this article but the info from that and other
reviews seem to support what she's saying)

It's disturbing when it seems people are jumping react before all the facts
are there, but it seems the story is verifiably true. If there is still doubt,
I think the discussion is better served by bringing up specific items than a
whole cloth rejection of the story.

~~~
searealist
The only thing that review says in reference to women is "Emotionally
unintelligent male managers (all the way up to the CEO) make it hard for women
to feel heard and valued." This has nothing to do with sexual harassment.

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.

~~~
sinuage
I don't mean to imply that 1 review on glassdoor is the smoking gun. But a
bunch of reviews talking about the same issues (not specific to sexual
harassment), and other comments and testimonials not on glassdoor seem to
point in the same general direction. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt doesn't
mean it needs to be incontrovertible.

Let's not miss the forest for the trees here, this isn't about a single case
of sexual harassment (at least to me it isn't). It's about how Uber is
operating as a business and culture and from that what are its long term
prospects.

------
JumpCrisscross
Please reach out to your state labour commissioner. Here are some numbers for
California [1] and New York [2].

[1]
[http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm](http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/DistrictOffices.htm)

[2] [https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language-
access.shtm](https://labor.ny.gov/immigrants/language-access.shtm)

------
edoloughlin
Headline should read 'Uber Ignored Female Employee's Claims of Sexual
Harassment Until She Quit, Wrote About It And Got It Picked Up On High Profile
Site'

------
kuyan
This is the third post on this topic that's made the front page:

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683894)

[2]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022)

~~~
sanderjd
Why wouldn't there be lots of stories about this on the front page? It is big
news about a major player in the exact target market of this site. It is also
actionable to the audience here: this story may affect the decisions of many
current and potentially future Uber employees.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Relax, kuyan didn't provide any opinions with these links. It wasn't
necessarily a complaint.

~~~
sanderjd
I didn't mean to be un-relaxed, but I see that I may have been re-stating the
obvious.

------
chickenfries
More like "Uber Announces it Will Investigate Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-
Employee"

~~~
linkregister
Yes, there hasn't been any verifiable action other than the press release.
Then again, it's a weekend.

------
acjohnson55
Interesting that Arianna Huffington is taking a personal hand in this
investigation, given that her former Chief of Staff and Managing Editor at
HuffPost, Jimmy Soni, was dogged by similar allegations:
[http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was-
investigate...](http://gawker.com/top-huffington-post-editor-was-investigated-
for-sexual-1626614104).

This is a mess. They need a fully independent investigator.

------
bitmapbrother
Amazing how bad PR can get a company to start investigating things. They
should probably also investigate the total incompetence of their disgusting HR
department.

------
mcculley
It's very common that startups have such issues. You've got a bunch of younger
inexperienced managers and an inexperienced HR department.

What I don't understand is, why don't investors compel such valuable startups
to get experienced HR? Do they calculate that the lawsuits will cost less than
outsourcing HR or otherwise getting adult supervision? Or are they just blind
to it?

~~~
baloneyman
I think startup is a pretty generous term for the growth stage that Uber was
in at the time

~~~
mcculley
I agree in that I think startup is a vague term. I think what is important is
that it's a young company funded by external investment, not organic growth.
Why don't investors care about such issues enough to be proactive?

------
babelsquid
Why does Thuan Pham get a free pass on what happens under his supervision? He
joined Uber as CTO two years before Fowler's hiring.

------
chx
Yeah, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said it was the first time the
issue had come to his attention, yeah. And we are to believe this. Yeah.

------
sjg007
In California your employer is required to keep a personnel file. Get a
lawyer. They are the pros. Don't leave it to a blog post, this is way more
important.

------
bsclifton
One of the criteria for being a high performer needs to be: being a decent
human being and treating other people with the respect they deserve

------
epynonymous
i have been a long time uber user, up until their sale in china to didi taxi,
and it was a beautiful service here. since then, i have deleted their app just
because it was taken over by some useless shell company in beijing.

but what is happening lately with all the accusations about uber, the trump
immigration executive order and how uber profited off that, some uber ban in
some city, etc. it all seems quite methodical and targeted. do not think it's
lyft of all people, that would be too obvious, maybe it's like the secret
brotherhood of the knights or something. who aside from lyft/taxis would gain
the most from uber collapsing? (not that they're anywhere close to
collapsing). i guess there are probably a lot of haters out there since
they've been really at the top.

personally i've given up on uber, but mostly because their service essentially
is being killed by didi taxi in china.

------
sschueller
With Travis at the helm is anyone surprised? Don't expect anything to happen
unless it has to because of more bad PR.

------
debt
Uber having a terrible year in PR.

~~~
whatever_dude
I tend to believe that more often than not, you reap what you sow.

------
twfarland
With that evidence, the CEO should not only fire the creeps involved, but name
and shame them. Incredibly damaging, not just for PR reasons, but for missing
out on talented people and allowing toxicity.

------
LordHumungous
In case I needed another reason to hate Uber.

------
solarengineer
The book "Corporate Confidential" is a must read.

------
st3v3r
I will believe it when I see it. I have no confidence that anything will
actually change, and that anyone other than a token fall guy will be fired.

------
thinkloop
These are allegations by one party against another with zero data either way,
why is everyone on the anti-uber bandwagon.

~~~
mistercow
Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out. Fowler knows this. There's no
room for ambiguity here: either Uber has broken the law _extravagantly_ , or
she's lying. If the latter is true, she will be crucified for it. The
defamation suit alone would be monumental.

And again, there's no ambiguity. She says she has extensive records of this
behavior. That's not something she can really walk back. In a situation where
one person's word is pitted against another's, the most reliable way to buy
credibility is precommitment. By writing the article that she wrote, she made
a massive precommitment. She will be _screwed_ if Uber takes her to court and
she can't back up her claims. Uber, meanwhile, has said "We're looking into
it." Precommitment is about cutting off your options. Uber has done the
opposite.

So we have one side that just cashed out options for credibility, and one side
that wants to wait and see. If you're trying to assess the situation
rationally, there's only one correct play here.

~~~
makomk
There's an obvious test of whether your claim that, if she's caught lying,
she'll become a massive pariah: Ellen Pao, whose claims fell apart in a court
of law thanks to evidence she was lying. Look at how the publications like the
New York Times and people in this thread treated that case. Here's some quotes
from the NYT article about her losing that is linked from this one:

"One of Silicon Valley’s most famous venture capital firms prevailed on Friday
over a former partner in a closely watched suit claiming gender
discrimination, but hardly got away unscathed."

'"This case sends a powerful signal to Silicon Valley in general and the
venture capital industry in particular,” Ms. Rhode said. “Defendants who win
in court sometimes lose in the world outside it."'

Neither the fact that her claims were found not to be true in a court of law
nor the evidence contradicting them mattered as far as the press or public
opinion were concerned. Just the fact that she made them in the first place
was sufficient justification for condemning the company she accused and their
entire industry.

~~~
mistercow
First of all, there's a big difference between merely losing a civil case and
having been proved to have lied. It just means the jury did not find
sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. There are a lot of possible reasons for
that. If you want to make the case that she was actually lying, you need to
point out specific evidence for that.

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.

------
thenewregiment2
"It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane
Hornsey, our new Chief Human Resources Officer, to conduct an urgent
investigation into these allegations." Me Kalanick. Ah the damn pattern.
Boycott Uber now?

------
abandonliberty
Is there any physical/electronic evidence?

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

Our democracy and the world needs people committed to reason, evidence, and
open dialogue. The choice is yours.

~~~
xenadu02
Here's the thing: If you had ever taken even a few minutes to sit down with
women who work in our industry and asked them if anything like this has ever
happened to them you would learn it is extremely common. You would also learn
that women rarely get the benefit of the doubt in these situations and are
often punished or eventually forced out of the company. Women don't talk about
it because jerks immediately start screaming "WHERES THE EVIDENCE?!?!?!?!". As
far as anyone can tell she has no interest in pursuing a legal case; in that
sense this is just like the NFL national anthem controversy. No matter how
blandly and inoffensively someone behaves there will be assholes at the ready
to condemn them for speaking out about anything in any form whatsoever. Susan
kept her head down, tried to do good work, then left for another job. She has
made the absolutely minimum of an issue out of this as it is possible to make.

Try this thought experiment: assume the original story was written by a man
and was identical except for the sexual harassment part. The same tales of
toxic work culture. The same stories about managers protecting fiefdoms,
undermining each other, and withholding information. The same story about
being denied a transfer so this person could serve as a "feather in the cap"
of the manager denying the transfer. Would you still be out here claiming it
is the end of civil society that everyone isn't demanding evidence before
rushing to judgement?

Hint: we've had these kinds of stories show up before with male authors and
the answer is _no_ , people aren't so demanding. Only people who experience
sexual harassment are held to this double-standard.

Nothing about what Susan posted seems far-fetched or out of the ordinary. HR
exists to protect the company from you, not to help you or ensure justice is
served. Telling people this is someone's first offense is likely to diffuse
the situation and ensure no one files any pesky complaints with commissions
nor hires a lawyer. Playing games with performance reviews is par for the
course. Anyone who complains is viewed as a troublemaker. This happens on a
daily basis in most companies in the USA.

Of course I don't believe you (or the rest of your compatriots) posting here
are acting in good faith. If she shared screenshots and emails you'd just
claim they were faked. How exactly she is supposed to gather evidence (when CA
is a two-party state, so recording the conversations secretly would be
illegal) is never explained.

~~~
just2n
> Here's the thing: If you had ever taken even a few minutes to sit down with
> women who work in our industry and asked them if anything like this has ever
> happened to them you would learn it is extremely common.

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.

~~~
sudosteph
Dude, this isn't a court case. It's one woman sharing a story about how sexism
in a male-dominated environment affected her career. Anyone can opine on it,
especially people who have experienced similar issues firsthand and want to
discuss the root cause of it and how to stop it(Is it a few bad apples? Is it
endemic to tech/SV culture? Is it a problem equally in all fields dominated by
a single sex?). If you don't think there's a pattern there worth discussing,
that's your call, but it seems clear that a huge number of us do, and a blog
post is plenty sufficient for discussing that.

I'm glad your women friends tell you things are all good and rosey, but the
rest of us are going to keep talking about this sort of behavior until it
stops happening.

Also, scare quotes around "rape" statistics? Ewww.

------
siliconc0w
Not saying uber is right or wrong but part of the problem is there aren't any
sane rules of what is and isn't sexual harassment - there is mostly just vague
case law and public opinion so things are treated 'case by case'. I was told
by a HR department that if someone overheard you and misconstrued what you
said it still could be harassment even if they don't report to the person
talking. No one could agree what was and wasn't harassment when people in the
meeting posed several real-life scenarios. I tried to basically explain the
ridiculousness and lack of clarity of what they were saying but felt the
extreme discomfort in the room and stopped.

You basically have the option of abstaining entirely from any comment or
remark that could resemble anything sexual to anyone within physical or
digital earshot or be at risk to an uncertain and unwritten standard. Treat
everyone as formless blobs of raceless genderless biological matter or else.
This is a impossible when when jobs become the majority of people's lives and
part of their identity. Sex is a crucial part of human identity and denying
it's existence generally isn't healthy behavior or even practical.

~~~
enraged_camel
Actually, the dictionary definition of sexual harassment is quite clear cut.
If you make unwanted sexual advances towards someone, you're sexually
harassing them.

I don't know about you, but most people are quite capable of understanding
when an interaction is a) sexual in context and meaning and b) unwanted.

~~~
jimmywanger
> If you make unwanted sexual advances towards someone, you're sexually
> harassing them.

That's untrue. It has to pass a bar of being "frequent and severe".
([https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm))

With your "clear cut definition", simply asking somebody out on a date that
you work with is sexual harassment if he/she doesn't want to go.

Which is ridiculous on the face of it, because if you don't make some sort of
advance, you'll not know if it's unwanted or not.

The language "severe" is ambiguous, but asking somebody out once to dinner
should not be a fireable offense. Telling somebody what you would like to do
to them sexually should be.

~~~
nxtrafalgar
"Harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a
hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse
employment decision"

Seems pretty clear-cut to me?

~~~
jimmywanger
"Frequent" and "severe" are definitely not legal terms.

If you ask somebody out to dinner, and they say they're busy, is it ok to ask
them out again in a week? Is that frequent?

Everything is context driven, which makes things very difficult to write hard
and fast rules about. For instance, it is usually sexual harassment if you
link somebody to a page of with pictures of models in lingerie on it. If you
work for an online clothing shop, it might be perfectly normal. "Every time
anybody rates this item, it throws an exception in the server logs. Is there
anything special about it?"

~~~
enraged_camel
To me there is a very clear difference between asking a fellow coworker out to
dinner, and propositioning a subordinate for sex on their first day on the
team.

You keep coming up with all kinds of examples, but in real life most people
know (or _should_ know) what constitutes harassment and what doesn't.

~~~
jimmywanger
> but in real life most people know (or should know) what constitutes
> harassment and what doesn't.

That's a very dangerous statement.

First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people. If you want
clear cut rules, you're not going to find it.

Second, these things are culturally dependent. You can go topless on a beach
in France and nobody will bat an eye, do so in an asian country and you'll be
gawked at, and in any conservative Muslim country you'll be jailed.

Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary
sanctions and/or accusations.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>First, in this case, we're obviously not dealing with most people.

Of course we are. Most people don't go around sexually harassing others.
That's why you hear about it when it happens.

>>Second, these things are culturally dependent.

Again not sure how that's relevant. We aren't talking about a foreign employee
who was temporarily visiting the company's San Francisco headquarters. If we
were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be acceptable
where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

>>Simply saying "You should know" is not a legal justification for monentary
sanctions and/or accusations.

Last time I checked, saying "I didn't know that was the law" was not an
excuse.

You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then don't
do it. It's really that simple.

~~~
jimmywanger
> Most people don't go around sexually harassing others.

A high proportion of programmers are on the autism spectrum compared to the
general population. The law should apply to everybody equally, but this sort
of thing is extremely hard to pin down. Something appropriate in one situation
is not appropriate in another, and it takes discernment.

> If we were, then you could make the argument that such behavior may be
> acceptable where the employee is from, but it isn't here in the US.

We're talking about the law in general, about how it's especially not clear
cut and black and white in this case. Your arguments aren't relating to that
point at all.

> You aren't sure if something may be perceived as sexual harassment? Then
> don't do it.

That is ridiculous. Most people don't know the law backwards and forwards

It's stupid to think that people are responsible for all of the perceptions
people have of them, especially people who are on the spectrum, as I have
alluded to earlier. Would you just cut all people with social disorders out of
any sort of human interaction, because by your logic, they can't do anything?

There is no hard and fast rule, as I have said before. There are standard
deviations from the median, and it's hard to draw lines in human behaviour, a
nuance that seems to escape many people.

