
Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21142081/susan-fowler-uber-whistleblower-interview-silicon-valley-discrimination-harassment
======
Traster
>“I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I remembered that I worked at a
large company, one with a sizable human resources department,”

I feel like someone needs to run an education campaign on what HR is and who
it works for. HR is there to protect the business. They aren't there as some
moral arbiter. If you reported sexual harassment to HR you are going to be
part of an equation - is it better for the business to lose you (and possibly
some token amount of cash) or to lose the people you're complaining about. If
you're complaining about a systemic issue then there is no chance you come out
on top, HR will act to protect the organisation at your expense. Since the
only time you go to HR is a situation where you can't deal with this issue
alone it means practically every situation where you are going to HR is a
situation where HR you will see getting rid of you as the cheapest way of
solving the problem.

~~~
devchix
This aphorism that HR is there to protect the company -- I hear it all the
time and it's terribly cynical, while also probably true. Why must it be this
way; asked another way, why do we accept that it must be this way, that every
time we engage HR it must be with the understanding that they are the
adversary. Why go to HR at all, why even have HR, why not fold it all in the
legal counsel's office? Why can't HR be what they purportedly say they are,
with all the videos and the role-playing and the seminars that everyone hate-
attends yearly?

Back to the article - I'm always sad and surprised that there are women doing
the work of defending bad actors by attacking the whistle-blowing women. From
the article:

> "One woman called Fowler, claiming to be a PI working on a case against
> Uber; when Fowler got off the phone, she discovered the firm the woman
> worked for pretty much exclusively helped companies discredit people who’d
> been sexually harassed or assaulted."

cf. Lisa Bloom in the Harvey Weinstein case, it's damning as Bloom vociferous
claims to be on the side that believes and defends the women accusers.

~~~
jerf
"Why must it be this way[?]"

Follow the money.

I don't mean that as snark; I'm serious. I think people in general don't
follow the money enough. Even some people who occasionally advocate for it are
very selective about it and frequently just treat it as a slur to deploy
sometimes. But it's more important than that. It should always be part of the
analysis of a business. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the
beneficiary of it.

In the case of HR, if you are a productive, profit-center worker for the
company, you may in fact at least be _partially_ paying for it, and may get
treated accordingly, though I wouldn't count on that for much. But if you are
not clearly in that category....

~~~
mcv
It's a matter of legal accountability. If companies get away with defending
the harassers, then that's what the cynical ones will do. Only if they get
punished when they handle sexual harassment cases badly, will they start
handling them better. Companies should be liable for extra damages in sexual
harassment cases when it turns out they have a history of protecting the
harassers. And maybe punish the individuals involved in protecting the
harassers.

~~~
magduf
Exactly: it's all about money, and also individual consequences to HR staff
themselves. If the company stood to lose lots of money to bad behavior, then
they would police it much better. But they don't, so they don't. Instead, it
would be hazardous to their own careers if they disciplined or canned people
that the upper management favored (due to cronyism), so they protect those
people as long as it doesn't cost the company too much.

People really need to get past this idea that HR is there to protect
employees. They are NOT your friends.

------
lordleft
That first article she wrote, exposing the culture at Uber, was profoundly
upsetting and an important moment in the history of our industry. Kudos to her
for standing up to one the most egregiously hostile work environments I've
ever read about.

~~~
commandlinefan
I remember reading that post and being surprised how little of it was actually
sexism (the only thing I saw that qualified was the thing about the shirts),
and how much of it was just maltreatment of programmers of all types. But I
guess if you have to slap the label "sexism" on it to get it to be taken
seriously, we take what we can get.

~~~
scott_s
The sexism I see in her post: Upon joining, her manager sexually propositioned
her; a subsequent manager sabotaged her performance reviews and attempts at
transferring to keep a woman on his team; they gave leather jackets to SREs as
a gift, but would only get jackets made for men (I think this is what you
refer to as "the shirts"); she recalls many emails that she does not describe;
HR claims _she_ is the problem in all of her claims; she was threatened with
firing over her claims of sexual harassment, and they backed off when she
pointed out that was illegal.

Those are the instances. What that tells me is that it was a deeply sexist
system.

See: [https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-
on...](https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-
strange-year-at-uber)

~~~
conradfr
Propositioning to her is not really sexism, but it's inappropriate and
unprofessional.

~~~
wpietri
It is certainly inappropriate and unprofessional. But it's also sexism, in
that for centuries men here have been using power to push women to have sex
without regard to their actual interest. E.g., marital rape didn't become a
crime across the US until 1993:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#United_States)

~~~
username90
That isn't sexism, similar things happens all the time in gay relationships.
Similarly men murdering women in relationships is not sexism, since gay men
murder their partners at a higher rate than straight men. So it isn't sexism,
it isn't about men hating women, it is just about men committing a lot more
brutal violence on average. Or in this case, it is just about men being a lot
more forceful about sex than women, even when they are proposing to men.

~~~
wpietri
The notion that the law allowed men to rape certain women seen as their
property isn't sexism?

You could be right that men have some innate tendency to commit more violence.
But what they also have, as your excuses here make plain, is more social
license to commit violence. The former, if true, is just a fucked up fact our
evolutionary history. The latter, though is very definitely sexism.

------
namanaggarwal
You can never overestimate the amount of sexual harassment women faces in the
tech industry.

My Fiancée kept telling me about different incidents that happened with her
and I used to always brush it off saying maybe you are reading too much. Until
one of her other female colleague shared the same incident. I asked her to
goto HR but be prepared for the backlash to the extent of firing. And as
expected HR took no action, nothing. She changed firm and then the same story
with different people. And I am not talking about small companies, they are
Fortune 500 companies.

This industry seriously needs people like Fowler to come forward and write
about it. I encourage my Fiancée to write her experiences as well.

~~~
deepaksurti
>> You can never overestimate the amount of sexual harassment women faces in
the tech industry.

Why just tech industry, even though I am offering anecdotal evidence? My wife
works in the social services sector, and listening to her and her female
colleagues; it's the same story.

------
roseway4
There have already been posts (now deleted) speaking to how terrible the
culture was generally and how the experiences of men have been lost in the
"#metoo noise". Both can be true. She's telling the story from a women's
perspective and encountered situations that were unique to women at Uber. It
also sounds like she suffered greatly in the aftermath of going public[1].
Continuing to speak out must have taken great courage. This all doesn't
discount the pain and suffering many men may have experienced at Uber, but
again, she's telling her story.

[1] [https://time.com/5784464/susan-fowler-book-uber-sexual-
haras...](https://time.com/5784464/susan-fowler-book-uber-sexual-harassment/)

------
allisonburtch
It's incredibly brave of her to take on the darling of venture capital,
because what she highlighted wasn't the extremes of silicon valley culture,
but the ordinariness of its status quo. And how it's deeply anti-human (and
anti-woman) in so many ways. Truly, kudos to her.

------
SandersAK
Her work has had profound impact and I’m excited to read her book.

It’s amazing to still see the ramifications of her work today.

For example, in this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the
majority of the community. It’s a special sort of myopia dressed up as factual
rational discussion but her work exposes that sentiment for what it is: fear
of change, fear of women, fear of losing power over women, and the insecurity
of emasculated men who work in power systems that encourage them to kick down.

~~~
MockObject
> this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the
> community

Majority of what community? Are you noticing which comments are getting voted
high, and which ones are downvoted into nothingness?

~~~
wpietri
This community. Tech. HN.

Sometimes these discussions, as here, go relatively well. But that's relative.
There's still a lot of misogynist nonsense, both subtle and blatant, and I can
watch my antisexist posts get voted up and down. But quite often they go
poorly. That's something that's easy to miss if one isn't intentionally
antisexist. And since sexism is something guys can ignore if we want, it's
especially easy for us to miss it.

~~~
MockObject
My experience here on HN, over the recent past few years, has only ever been
consistent with this thread. Anything that could possibly be interpreted or
misinterpreted as sexist gets voted down into oblivion. As do any defenders on
abstract principles, or who take neutral stances.

This very comment of mine could be interpreted suspiciously as insufficiently
antisexist, and be downvoted too.

Further, I use HN as a proxy for the general attitudes of the tech industry.

~~~
wpietri
My experience is different. I submit that maybe you are only noticing what
you're noticing. People who aren't directly affected by systemic oppression
rarely notice it as much as people who are, if only because for the latter
group success and even survival depends on being very alert the fine details.

------
ythrowawhy
Having worked at a rapidly expanding SV company during the same time frame I
witnessed & experienced similar wildly juvenile & unprofessional behavior. My
own experience parallels Fowler's in some disturbing ways and makes me think
that the complete lack of corporate oversight or HR professionalism is rampant
throughout the entire industry. Kudos to her for having the courage to go
public.

------
relaunched
It's not just Uber. There is an ethos around running companies that succeed at
all costs. Getting big is their God and everything else can be sacraficed.
They are level 4 leaders...long-term doesn't matter. Burying things is the
norm; culture, values, compliance, the law...doesn't really matter, outside of
HR marketing speak.

It's hard to be a good company when you can get away with being bad, so long
as the metrics still show good.

------
pimmen
I don't know if this was just the culture and influence from Kalanick, but
Uber all around seems like a terrible company. Tehy cover up data breaches,
they lie to regulators when they test their self driving cars, they act
passively when women get harassed on their watch. I haven't worked there but
from the outside it seems pretty much "do whatever you want, but don't get
caught".

------
ra07312006
there should be no "WHY" someone had to sacrifice their career/life to expose
systemic industry wide treatment of people that is unjust. There is only that
this treatment exists and that the industry is not going to progress without
everybody's collective effort to change it

------
buckminster
You seek to profit by gaining employment at a company built on disrespect for
society and its laws and then you are surprised that it doesn't treat you with
respect?

I have no sympathy for anyone in this story.

~~~
wpietri
Uber had very good PR. In hindsight, we all know what a horrorshow Travis was,
and how awful his company became. But when Fowler joined Uber, she was 24, and
Uber was still on the rise, a beloved darling. It's entirely reasonable that
she (and many others) joined on the basis of what the media and what
recruiters were saying at the time.

------
notyourday
Speaking of Uber and Susan Fowler - had the current CEO frog marched out
everyone that authorized, worked on, did not block, did not fight against what
she experienced especially after the publication of her post?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/books/review/susan-
fowler...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/books/review/susan-fowler-
whistleblower-uber.html)

If not, why has not the board frog marched the current CEO out?

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Such destructive cleaning of house creates the wrong incentives. Most of the
people involved would have lacked either the full story or the power to do
anything about it. If it's a fireable offense to be near a big scandal, the
rational response isn't to start fighting against the problems you see - it's
to build a massive silo to minimize the number of problems you can see.

~~~
notyourday
There were people who authorized either employees or contractors to harass
her, dig the dirt out on her, etc, etc, etc. There were people who
read/compiled/presented that information to the higher ups in
management/executive levels. Did those people write memos/emails to their
bosses saying that based on their view they should not be doing it but since
they may not be fully aware of the full context they need their boss to send
reply to this memo/email and say "Yes, do it."

That's the accountability. Someone makes a decision. That someone gets to be
accountable.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Absolutely. Maybe you don't have the full context of the story - the CEO at
the time that Fowler got harassed, Travis Kalanick, ended up being that
someone who's accountable.

~~~
notyourday
It is highly unlikely that the CEO did it all himself.

It is far more likely that there were dozens if not hundreds of people that
actively and willingly participated in it. Were those people terminated?
That's the real question. I'm, frankly, shocked that it is presumed that by
replacing a CEO rather than replacing everyone who thought going after Susan
was "just doing their job, not a big deal, no need to have a boss sign off on
it" is considered to be acceptable.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I don't think I agree - it seems very likely that bosses all the way up the
chain were signing off on it. "Let's hire investigators to discredit her" is
surely not a decision that some random member of HR staff would make on their
own.

