
Uber has hired former Attorney General Holder to probe allegations of sexism - donjh
http://www.recode.net/2017/2/20/14677546/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-eric-holder-memo
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danielvf
Hiring Hoder to head an investigation is essentialy the strongest possible
response from Uber. Time will tell if it's enough to win back Uber's urban,
progressive leaning US market.

Both Holder and Huffington have reputations of using positions of power to
advance progressive causes. Because that's their personal brand, it's pretty
safe to assume that they will be giving more weight to that than to making the
company look good.

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system16
Maybe I'm just cynical, but their response comes off as disingenuous.

If the toxic culture is as widespread as is being reported, there is
absolutely no way the CEO could not know about it - either by participating in
it, condoning it, or just turning a blind eye to it. To come off as so
shocked, dismayed, and completely unaware that there is such an issue is
ridiculous.

To be fair, I don't see any other way he could respond to this and still save
himself.

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Arizhel
I really hate to defend a CEO with a devil's advocate response, as I generally
say only bad things about executives, but I feel I must here, but note that I
really know nothing about Uber's corporate culture or very much about the
facts in this case. What I do know, from my work at some corporations, is that
the people in the executive suite can frequently be very isolated from what's
going on below them. So if the misogyny was kept at the lower levels, I think
it's quite possible the CEO just didn't know. I've also noticed that,
frequently, HR departments act like they're the ones running the company, and
don't actually tell the execs what they're doing, so it's quite possible too
that the HR goons were in on it, but since they have Napoleon complexes and
liked to act like they're really in charge, they didn't tell the CEO anything.

So while I have little love for CEOs, I have far less love for HR directors,
and if this ends up getting blamed on the HR people and their whole department
is sacked, I'll by laughing my ass off. It's ridiculous how many horror
stories I've heard about insane HR directors.

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joshmn
This doesn't address, not to mention even attempt to fix the underlying
problem. This just points fingers. You can say "shame on you, don't do this
again" but it doesn't change the fact that (an) individual(s) thought their
behavior was acceptable, tolerable, appreciated, appropriate...

Just PR as far as I'm concerned. A "yeah, you're right, we've been noted for
this before; I (Travis) take responsibility, as it's my duty to ensure that
all employees at Uber are treated with respect regardless of gender. I have
put in place x and y program, with a required z course which, I believe, are
necessary steps in the right direction in eliminating this at our great
company" would suffice.

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Fej
It is in Uber's best interest to cultivate a welcoming workplace. Uber has
done some shady stuff but I don't think this one is just PR. If tons of people
quit Uber because the workplace culture is terrible, they'll suffer brain
drain.

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ashayh
And then what?

Apparently, many other individuals either directly participated, or indirectly
did nothing. Both are equally bad. This indicates a broken culture not just
for the company, but for Silicon Valley and the industry as a whole.

It is likely that Uber employee demographics closely match Bay area. Are we to
believe that for all the talk about liberalism, & progressiveness, when it
comes to real action, SV employees will choose stock options instead?

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Arizhel
>This indicates a broken culture not just for the company, but for Silicon
Valley and the industry as a whole.

Well, we've been hearing about "brogrammers" now for quite some time. There
definitely seems to be a giant amount of misogyny among the under-35
programmer crowd, according to numerous sources and stories. So I don't think
that this incident at Uber is unusual for the industry, sadly, but rather the
work culture at SV companies is broken.

>It is likely that Uber employee demographics closely match Bay area. Are we
to believe that for all the talk about liberalism, & progressiveness, when it
comes to real action, SV employees will choose stock options instead?

I think your assumption is faulty. While there's certainly a lot of tech
employees in the Bay Area, I think it's faulty to assume that the vast
majority of the population of the Bay Area works as programmers (or in closely
related fields). No economy can work that way. Yes, there's a lot of
progressivism among the Bay Area population; I think it would be ridiculous to
deny that. But I think it's apparent that SV programmers only give lip service
to it, at best, and they're a small subset of the overall population there.

