
A textbook case in workplace discrimination - hvass
https://backchannel.com/ubers-leather-boys-fcdcf8dbac70
======
tptacek
It's not a bad piece. Probably everything that could be said about the Fowler
piece has already been said, but the explanation of SRE culture is valuable
(most people, including developers not in SFBA or NYC, probably aren't
familiar with the concept) and it does capture a callow thoughtlessness that I
think many of us have experienced from large employers.

I'm not sure any of this is going to be newsworthy to HN commenters, but,
solidly written.

The title is, of course, godawful. Remember that most story authors don't get
to pick their titles.

~~~
FT_intern
It's a pretty big exaggeration. Most people see team gear as a gym or jogging
shirt. There's maybe a few people who actually care about it.

~~~
tptacek
It's not simply "team gear".

------
anigbrowl
Smart companies should start giving ethical puzzles to their management
candidates. Many tech companies select from the pool of engineers by setting
clever brainteasers to evaluate their problem-solving ability. How many do the
same to evaluate supervisors' understanding of social technology and
relations?

I know some firms have ethicists on staff, but they seem to be there more to
guide and/or provide cover for working with potentially dangerous technology.
I don't get the impression that they have much input into shaping the
organization's culture beyond signing off on a list of diversity goals. I'd
like to be wrong about this, though, can anyone shed more light on this
question?

~~~
pm90
You know, a sufficiently smart person would probably most likely know when
their actions are ethically questionable, despite feigning ignorance when
caught. These people act the way they do not because they are unaware, but
they know they can get away with it. So they are most likely able to fly
through any ethics puzzles.

It is a difficult problem and I'm not sure what the solutions are. Perhaps
that is why referalls are generally given so much weight by employers: I've
always thought of that as a chain of trust starting with the founders and
extending right down to lower-level employees. However, a colleague/friend
that you know well to be amazing to you might still have rather questionable
views on gender/race/nationality etc. which you don't know so even this chain
of trust isn't unbreakable...

~~~
FT_intern
No, no one actually thinks they can get away with it given the current media
climate. Donglegate is a reminder for everyone that even the smallest comment
can bring the heat on you

~~~
pyre
So you're claiming that a manager at Uber thought it was ok to buy jackets for
the guys, but to not get anything for the women because there was no bulk
discount?

What idiot thinks this line of thought:

"It would unfair to the men if we paid more for the women's jackets, so we'll
just give the men jackets and the women nothing. That seems more fair, right
guys"?

makes _any_ sense?

------
kbenson
> It is a person who almost certainly has no indication that he will suffer
> any negative consequences from essentially telling the very few women in his
> group — something that in and of itself should have been a prime concern to
> him — that they are not welcome in his organization.

Also, keep in mind that Fowler's original story noted that when she started
25% of the organization was women, and when she left it was 6%. Have so few
women should be a concern, having so few and that's partially because 75% of
them have left in roughly a year's time should have been an "all hands on
deck, company emergency, we're likely to be sued by multiple parties!"
situation.

Unless you have a _really_ good explanation for why that is, chances are
you've created an extremely hostile work environment. Even if you _do_ have a
good explanation, it's probably in your best interest to look at it with a
more critical eye, because the stakes are so high.

I mean, nobody want's to be stuck with _such a bad PR nightmare_ that they
feel the need to hire a former attorney general to signal how serious you're
taking it. At that point, you're already screwed.

~~~
elgenie
It's hard to see when the numbers are small and can be ascribed to one-off
cases for quite some time if the blindness is willful enough.

Let's say that the org started with 10 women out of 40, then two left the
company for higher offers, one switched teams for a really good opportunity,
another was fired for performing poorly, and then the last one is Fowler;
meanwhile, a team of 30 men from a bought company was integrated into the org
and of the five qualified women who came through the recruiting pipeline only
one accepted her offer while 30 men did. Suddenly, there are 6 women out of
100.

~~~
kbenson
I agree it can be hard to see, but that's why I think it's good to force
yourself to look at it more critically. In your example, even if the 6% was
reached in a fairly natural way, it still may result in a workplace that's
less inviting to women than it used to be just to how much of a minority
they've then become. This isn't just a CYA thing either, as diversity (not
just in gender) pays dividends. For example, I'll point you towards the
accidentally racist videogame[1].

1: [http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/01/12/how-we-accidentally-
made-...](http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/01/12/how-we-accidentally-made-a-
racist-videogame)

------
jonmc12
"it is not a stupid person ... It is a person who almost certainly has no
indication that he will suffer any negative consequences"

Jackets and sexual advances are likely just the symptoms. From Fowler's
account it sounds like root cause is a political culture where individuals
(esp management) are incentivized to act in their own self interest. Any
employee can safely ignore another if that other employee is not politically
tied to their personal advancement.

I'd like to think this is the wrong side of history, and that smart people
should put their self-worth in acting in ways that optimize the benefit for
all stakeholders. However, many political science theories predict just the
opposite in large political organizations where selfish actors aggregating
power end up at the top.

I know very little about Uber's org, but a leader with a Machiavellian hat on
would likely focus on hiring management that are adept at acting politically.
A political culture will eventually weed out those who are not.

~~~
Analemma_
> From Fowler's account it sounds like root cause is a political culture where
> individuals (esp management) are incentivized to act in their own self
> interest.

> I know very little about Uber's org, but a leader with a Machiavellian hat
> on would likely focus on hiring management that are adept at acting
> politically.

Travis Kalanick is famously supportive of Objectivism, the philosophy where
altruism is for losers and acting purely in motivated self-interest is the
highest possible good. Once you know that, very little about Uber will
surprise you anymore.

Surprisingly (or not), running a business on Objectivist principles is a
terrible idea. See the saga of Eddie Lampert who put Sears into a death spiral
that way: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-
sears-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie-
lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles) I for one will be
delighted to watch Uber follow their lead.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
_Travis Kalanick is famously supportive of Objectivism, the philosophy where
altruism is for losers and acting purely in motivated self-interest is the
highest possible good. Once you know that, very little about Uber will
surprise you anymore._

Complicated. I happen to believe that, regardless of how one desires to spin
it, everyone already acts in their own motivated self-interest. It's just a
question of how wiling you are to see interest and where you draw your
connections. For example it is in my personal interest to not harm others
usually because harming others makes me feel more bad in many instances than
whatever I would stand to gain. Generally speaking when people feel that way
we call them good people, and when people don't feel that way we call them
sociopaths. The problem isn't that Travis Kalanick believes that he should act
in his own self interest. The problem is that Travis Kalanick doesn't feel bad
when harming others.

~~~
Frondo
It's risky to assign motives to other people without talking to them.

You, for example, have said that what motivates you is self-interest (in
various convoluted ways). I won't dispute that. Telling me that you know
better than I do what motivates me, without having talked to me? Man, why
would you do that?

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
_Telling me that you know better than I do what motivates me, without having
talked to me? Man, why would you do that?_

A combination of genetics and upbringing, I suppose.

Slightly more concretely, it's a predictive model that by my experience always
accurately describes what is happening. This could be exemplified by the
classic question: "Would you do X (and get away with it) for Y dollars?" Where
X can be anything the questioner wants, and Y is a number that starts
astronomically high and decreases until the answer is no.

 _It 's risky to assign motives to other people without talking to them._

Sometimes, yes. But I think not in this case. What exactly is the risk here?
That at some very deep fundamental level beyond observation and understanding
a religious philosopher might tell me that I'm wrong? Ok. So what?

 _You, for example, have said that what motivates you is self-interest (in
various convoluted ways)._

More completely what I said is that self-interest includes weighing negative
and positive emotion. You willingly do things that make you feel more good
than bad. The problem for people here is not Kalanick's self interest. The
problem for people is that he doesn't seem to feel bad about hurting others in
the same way or to the same degree that they think someone should.

------
steffan
This is something that stood out to me in the original blog post as well. It
is unfathomable to me that anyone in a leadership position could harbor such a
myopic view.

If this were my team and I somehow faced (at a Director level?) some
resistance to the cost for the _6_ women's jackets, I would have paid out of
my own pocket.

------
a3n
Really? Uber won't pay full price for _six_ jackets?

This is either sexist, or an example of their obsession for getting anything
for less, including the services of contractor/employees.

Or both.

~~~
nickff
Here's a question:

Would it be sexist if the women on the team were offered either the men's
jacket, or an opportunity to purchase the women's jacket at a cost equal to
the difference in cost between the two (i.e. Uber pays the same in both cases,
but the women have to add a bit)?

Would it be acceptable to only be offered one of the two options, or would
each woman have to be allowed to choose for themselves?

These questions also implicitly ask whether Uber should be considered to have
given the men "a jacket", or "a value equal to the jacket".

~~~
tptacek
You've entirely missed the point. The dollar amount of the jacket doesn't
matter.

The point of the jacket is that they're a part of SRE culture. To have the SRE
jacket is to belong to an elite team within the company. And Uber is big
enough for that distinction to matter.

If you're going to create a wearable indication of membership in an elite
division of your company, you'd damn sure better ensure that every member of
that division can actually wear it. Not only did Uber fail to do that, it
failed in a way that specifically excluded women.

The jacket thing was less of a big deal to me before I read this story. With
the SRE culture refresher, it rises to the level of "among the worst things
Uber did".

~~~
tzs
> If you're going to create a wearable indication of membership in an elite
> division of your company, you'd damn sure better ensure that every member of
> that division can actually wear it.

I'd agree, but would also suggest not creating _a_ wearable indication of
membership. Create _multiple_ wearable indications of membership, and everyone
gets one of those indications. Maybe a choice of a jacket, a nice laptop case,
a fancy scarf, or a sword with belt scabbard.

Of course we're talking about Uber, so if they did that it would probably be
the leather jacket for the men and a string bikini for the women...

~~~
tptacek
I agree with this too! A special laptop cover or huge laptop sticker, a
special phone case, something you can attach to you bag --- all seem like
better ideas than jackets or shirts or bathrobes (which I guess was also a
thing at Google?).

------
6stringmerc
Penny-wise and pound foolish.

Quite a lot of this scenario reminds me of a local case that got a bit of
press, and it's analogous, as in bad thinking:

Drunk guy takes a cab to hotel, doesn't want to pay cab driver $40, so he
punches the cab driver and runs into the hotel. Cab driver follows, has hotel
staff call Police. Police get info for drunk guy's room and knock. Drunk guy's
friend answers and lets the Police in. Police discover bag after bag after bag
full of Tax Return ID theft evidence. Multiple arrests, leading to other
arrests in other states. Multi-million dollar bust...over a $40 cab fare...

Yet another instance where "Do unto others" as a basic "Hmm is this fair"
moment of reflection can be very enlightening. Other side of the fence type
thing. I've been on both sides enough to understand it's not everybody's
skill, but, eh, for management it's rather fundamental...

------
tobtoh
The last line of the article is something that has been blazing out to me
since the first few negative media articles started appearing about Uber's
work practises.

For all the continual PR damage control that the CEO utters, the problem is
the CEO and the board. All the bad business practises that are leaking out
aren't 'oversights', a generic 'management/process' problem, or actions of an
isolated 'bad apple' \- it's ingrained culture established by what the CEO
allows explicitly or implicitly (through omission of action).

The problem is at the very top of Uber.

------
nunez
So a note on Google's leather jackets that is completely tangential to the
article: They source theirs from Golden Bear, who make amazingly high quality
jackets (on par with Schott). They are actually quite expensive at retail
_unless_ you buy them in bulk, which Google does.

~~~
theptip
Since you seem to be quite familiar with the products, I'm interested to know
-- can you estimate the difference between bulk and retail? Looks like ~$200
retail for the first jacket I clicked online.

Would be interesting to estimate what percentage of the total spend Uber were
short-changing their female employees over.

~~~
drunken-serval
I can't speak for jackets but I do help run a convention that bulk orders
t-shirts. If you want one custom t-shirt, it's $20+/shirt. If you bulk order,
it's $3/shirt for 300. We also get t-shirts for our staff, those are $9/shirt
for 20-40.

~~~
jcrawfordor
For screenprinted shirts there is a very substantial setup portion of the cost
though, the actual shirts are dirt cheap in any case but the setup for the
print run can take a worker a couple of hours for multiple screens. The result
is that for small runs the setup cost dominates. Leather jackets are just
expensive to begin with, so I would expect the item cost to dominate even for
small order sizes, resulting in a much shallower discount curve.

And even if the jackets were customized they were probably embroidered or had
embroidered patches applied - the machines used for this are computer-
controlled and there is essentially no setup cost involved (besides some time
to prepress the art).

------
steven
Good to see so many people here are agog with disbelief at this story, which
understandably didn't get as much talk as the more disturbing harassment
charges. I am assuming by Uber's lack of a counter narrative to the jacket
story that it is accurate. To be sure I did write Uber asking if Fowler's
account was correct, but they did not reply.

------
sriram_sun
I spoke with a recruiter from the Uber "money" team a few weeks back. They are
investing 2 Billion per year just for that team.

------
rudolf0
>Instead he replied that if Uber paid a little more for the women’s jackets,
they would have been beneficiaries of special privilege. This is standard
bigot’s code for denying people protection from discrimination because of
their gender, race, religion, or sexual preference.

I think the jacket issue has Uber clearly in the wrong, but it's a huge
stretch to claim that opposition to giving a minority group special privileges
is always "standard bigot's code".

------
tzs
I'm curious now. What do companies that give out company shirts or jackets do
when everyone is male so there is no male/female style problem, but some of
the males are fat enough or tall enough to need a big & tall size, and those
sizes are not available or are a special order for the shirt/jacket they've
chosen?

There is enough basis in fact for the fat programmer stereotype that this
surely must come up now and then.

Another one I've seen is giving out food. My employer gave out hams one
Christmas. There was one vegetarian, but he was a vegetarian for health
reasons, not moral reasons, and was OK with getting that gift and then giving
it to a friend of his who liked ham and everyone was happy.

But what if we'd had someone who was vegetarian for religious reasons? Or
someone who was not vegetarian but could not eat ham for religious reasons?
Could giving out that ham be construed as discriminating against them on
religious grounds? And would it matter that it was given out for Christmas,
which is nominally a religious holiday, as opposed to if it had been given out
for, say, President's Day, which is completely non-religious?

~~~
gregshap
> and those sizes are not available or are a special order for the
> shirt/jacket they've chosen?

you get the special order, or get some other style and get the embroidering or
whatever, or pick a different thing to get

------
dec0dedab0de
I am confused why the jackets would be different in the first place. And the
discount argument makes zero sense. If anything, this is a reason to find a
different supplier, it's not like there is only one company making jackets.

~~~
mst
Even if it was precisely the same configuration of zips/pockets/etc. there's
still the fact that a female cut garment can need to have different amounts of
material to accommodate bust and hips.

I accidentally bought a women's cut top at a goth festival once; the extra
material across the chest was noticeable when wearing it (though other people
didn't notice from just looking, so I happily wore that top for years anyway).

------
watwut
It gives some background to jacket thing. From all the complaints in the
original article, I found this one puzzling. I understood that it was
annoying, I did not understood why would someone pick that one as an example
for article.

------
wyldfire
Do private equity firms audit their investments' processes/practices? What at
astonishing way expose themselves to liability and destroy their brand while
alienating talent at the same time.

------
shitgoose
cleverness of management at ueber (or anywhere else for that matter) is
overrated. this story is typical example of idiocy that rules above certain
level in each organization. janitors are the only ones that do honest and
useful job. it is all downhill from there.

------
draw_down
And yet- as much as I'd like to be wrong, as much as I wish it were different,
their investors don't care (except one wrote a medium.com post), their board
doesn't care, and their business will most likely survive this short blip and
continue as before. In 6 months, will this dustup matter?

~~~
aetherson
There are two basic allegations in Fowler's blog post:

1\. There is a horrifying amount of sexual harassment going on at Uber, far
more than you'd expect from "a large organization will eventually hire some
people who are douchebags," and that sexual harassment is institutionally
tolerated at least.

2\. Uber has a management culture of politics, infighting, and undercutting
each other.

From a moral perspective, #1 is a bigger deal than #2. But from a bloodless
amoral "can we get our money out of Uber" perspective, I'd expect investors to
be much more concerned about #2.

#1 is pretty easy to deal with. Fire a dozen people in a high profile way, re-
instruct HR, and then probably even if you have two dozen (or more) sexual
harassers still in your organization, they will be good enough about hiding
their tracks that you'll be able to go long enough for the furor to die down.
And since large numbers of people just don't _want_ to sexually harass other
people, even if they're given lots of opportunity, you probably won't have to
fire such large numbers of people that your organization will trip up.

#2 on the other hand: If that culture really is pervasive throughout the
management, then they'll have driven all the non-political managers away. What
do you do about that? You can't fire everyone between your execs and your ICs.
You can't survive long-term with a management culture of backstabbing and
empire building -- especially when you're trying to go through a super painful
and disciplined process of weaning your company off multi-billion-dollar
expenses towards a very distant line of profitability.

~~~
tobtoh
I don't think #1 is as easy to deal with as you may think. In any other normal
company, sexual harassment normally stems from isolated individuals, or at
worst a particular department.

But from Fowlers account, it sounds like the culture is well and truly
embedded through the whole company. Heck, even HR is burying the issue.

Company culture (what is enabling both #1 and #2 issues) is established by the
CEO and board through what they explicitly and implicitly (through omission of
action) allow. That means, the problem is at the CEO-level - that's not an
easy problem to solve.

Sure you can fire the CEO ... but now #1 is as big a concern to investors as
#2.

------
grb423
these misogynist women-hating lunks turn my stomach. They need to terminated
immediately, be humiliated on social media and have their careers ruined
forever. They can wear their stupid war jackets while they cry.

~~~
grzm
Ranty comments do your passion no service regardless of the strength of your
conviction.

~~~
throwaway_374
I'm afraid controlled rationality has lost its cause sometime ago. Action and
anger are now necessary.

------
mememachine
Uber seems like a really trashcan company from her post.

------
throwaway_374
Is this actually real? This is utterly ridiculous. Sounds like a company run
by a bunch of privileged entitled amateurs with zero consequences for their
actions. This culture needs to be punished severely. Name and shame the
director involved.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _Sounds like a company run by a bunch of privileged entitled amateurs with
> zero consequences for their actions._

Yep. That's at least 90% of all startups.

Not that they're all sexist specifically, but when you have an entire economic
sector based on "these kids say they can write a program that will
revolutionize industry X, let's give them $10 million," you're gonna wind up
with what you said.

------
ouid
I think that the company which sold the leather jackets is the one in the
wrong, if the facts are correct in this example. If you are paying a bulk rate
for jackets, that bulk rate must apply to male and female jackets. They don't
have to be the same price at the end, but the discount has to apply to the
entire order.

I also, however, think that the facts are probably misrepresented in this
article.

~~~
squeaky-clean
> If you are paying a bulk rate for jackets, that bulk rate must apply to male
> and female jackets. They don't have to be the same price at the end, but the
> discount has to apply to the entire order.

Group buys in fashion are very common, and this is never how they work. Two
leather jackets of a different size but the same model will use the same
materials and labor. A different jacket model (yes, even a female version),
requires different cuts and maybe even different materials.

This isn't uncommon at all, except for the part where Uber thought this made
it okay to buy nothing for the women.

Edit: Not even fashion, but anywhere really. If I want 10,000 of one IC, and 5
of another, I will not get a unit discount as if I had bought 10,005 of a
generic item. I get a discount on the first IC, and full price on the latter.

------
1_2__3
I'm sorry but none of this story makes any sense at all and I feel like I'm
living in some kind of weird alternate reality. Sit down, look at the world
around you, and ask yourself if the account seems plausible _at all_. The
number of people not just indifferent but actually full to the brim with
malice for this to have gone down at claimed is staggering. Literally dozens
of people would have be outright evil - to no benefit of their own, just
caricatures of masculine evil - for even half of it to be true as-written.
It's just such a cartoonish version of villainy it's what a collective Tumblr
mind would spit out as a novella.

~~~
clint
Sounds like someone who has never worked in this industry or talked to any
woman working in this industry. These people are not "evil" even though their
behaviors are extremely harmful and reprehensible. What is happening here are
extremely privileged and ignorant people (generally white, straight men)
operating within a context where there are no consequences for bad behavior.

Your reaction here is also a part of the problem—these kinds of behavior have
been extensively documented inside and outside this industry for nearly a
hundred years now. You deny and belittle these people's lived experiences with
no data of your own to back it up besides banal theories and "cartoonish"
ideas of how people operate in the world.

Another thing for you to think about before you respond to this with your
poorly researched screed is that there are literally no upsides to Susan for
reporting this stuff. All the data we have show that women who report these
kinds of behavior get blacklisted from the industry, shunned by their peers,
and perhaps face legal action. This doesn't even count the tidal wave of
harassment, death threats and worse that comes along with exposing men in
power for doing bad things (depression, suicide, paranoia, etc). Think about
how awful your own situation would need to be to open yourself up to that sort
of thing. No one does this lightly and without cause, and yes this stuff
happens all the time and even worse.

Another good read to improve your ignorance of the matter:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-
workplace...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace-
culture.html?_r=0)

~~~
jimmywanger
>these kinds of behavior have been extensively documented inside and outside
this industry for nearly a hundred years now

Holy crap computers have been around for 100 years?

> (generally white, straight men)

Citation needed. Also, think about this. What other sort of adjective used to
describe people or sexual orientation would be acceptable to describe people
fitting a bad image? If you said the same thing about hispanic bisexual women,
would that be socially acceptable?

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
> Holy crap computers have been around for 100 years?

I'm guessing you weren't able to read the "and outside" part of the sentence
you glibly quoted. If anything, claiming that it's less than 100 years is the
major failure of that statement.

> If you said the same thing about hispanic bisexual women, would that be
> socially acceptable?

Can you name an environment where hispanic bisexual women are extremely
privileged?

~~~
jimmywanger
> I'm guessing you weren't able to read the "and outside"

I guess then it's just a rhetorical flourish for no added benefit? 100 years
ago there was no inside or outside of the industry - what's the point of that
statement?

