
Uber launches 'urgent investigation' into sexual harassment claims - robbiet480
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/20/uber-urgent-investigation-sexual-harassment-claims-susan-fowler
======
sgentle
My prediction: the manager gets fired, we are treated to a hand-wringing "What
We Learned" Medium post, and the cultural disease behind this particular
symptom continues unabated.

What would be nice instead: A serious and in-depth analysis going from
incidental to systemic to cultural, like NASA's "oops we dropped NOAA-19"
report -
[https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/65776main_noaa_np_mishap.pdf](https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/65776main_noaa_np_mishap.pdf)
(summary on pages 8-10)

Most companies could stand to learn some lessons from NASA, where cultural
failure means dead astronauts rather than bad PR. When their culture is bad,
they change the culture. What will Uber do?

~~~
aisofteng
You are assuming that these allegations are true. The allegations mention a
wealth of tangible evidence, but no such evidence is presented.

It may well still be true, but assuming that it is true is, at this point,
premature and probably itself biased.

~~~
owebmaster
You are assuming that these allegations are fake. The allegations mention a
wealth of tangible evidence, but no contradiction is presented.

It may well still be fake, but assuming that it is fake is, at this point,
premature and probably itself biased.

~~~
aisofteng
I am not assuming they are fake. In fact, I find it highly likely, given
Uber': reputation and the clarity of the exposition given, that it is probably
true in substance, if not in entirety.

There have also been knee jerk reactions and witch hunts orchestrated via the
internet based on one side's story or an incomplete story that were later
regretted. I do not wish to sugges to cast doubt, but to give a chance for the
full story to be heard.

------
altoz
This reminds me why calling out a company on twitter for something that goes
wrong is way more effective than calling customer support. Basically a life
lesson: Public shaming is way more effective than the processes set up to
handle these things.

~~~
spaceflunky
You're not wrong, but at a certain point public shaming as a method will lose
it's efficacy or become so ubiquitous that everybody is publicly shaming
everybody else. Is public shaming, just another name for mob justice? I guess
what I'm saying is, it is a powerful weapon, so we should be really careful
with how we use it.

~~~
gydfi
Especially since we have absolutely nothing to go on, in this case, except the
word of one disgruntled former employee.

Maybe it's all true, maybe it's totally made up, maybe it's basically true but
exaggerated and missing important information. We don't know, but plenty of
people are happy to pile on.

~~~
mijustin
It's highly unlikely that Susan's account is untrue.

Making an untrue statement, this publicly, would mean Uber's lawyers would
have a strong civil case to sue her for defamation:
[http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-defamation-
law](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-defamation-law)

Susan was brave to share her story. There's very little upside for her, and
tons of potential downside.

~~~
ScottBurson
Furthermore, she says she has evidence in the form of emails. I'm not
suggesting she will, or even should, make them public, but it would be a hell
of a gamble to claim publicly to have them if she didn't, as she will need
them if she finds herself in court.

~~~
x0x0
Those hipchat messages and emails are available to anyone with the ceo's say-
so who cares to look.

------
securingsincity
Total armchair observer viewpoint - In reading Susan's blog, there are a lot
of sexual harassment claims but there are many claims of cloak and dagger
behavior. This points to a dysfunctional organization that lacks trust. And in
that, I couldn't help but think of Conway's law [1] and the video from the
goto; conference [2] about Uber's infrastructure. "We have so many services in
production we don't even know how many there are." This may reflect a few
different trust issues. One of which includes "Not invented here" thus
building services that are duplicative. The goal of which is to show value and
get promoted. Given the blog, the communication and reporting structure is
also broken. Which, results in >1000 services in production and it being
unclear how many there are and what they all do. Most likely, this is how the
teams are structured as well.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law)
[2] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb-m2fasdDY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb-m2fasdDY)

~~~
uladzislau
From my brief interaction with Uber - you got a point about teams building
their own product to get a promotion. It looked to me like an unnessassry and
waste of resources endeavour but it totally makes sence now.

------
prymitive
It's yet another source claiming that Uber is a dysfunctional organization. At
this point it's hard for me to expect they're going to rise to the challenge
here. The "urgent investigation" is likely to be focused on "can we force
employees to sign NDAs when they leave?", everything else is likely to be the
good old game of "let's pretend we're doing something while people forget
about this".

~~~
edblarney
Sadly, a company can have some very bad attributes and still make a lot of
money.

Paradoxically, most companies are really good at some things, whilst being
simultaneously bad at others.

~~~
nenreme
Uber is losing money at astonishing rates.

~~~
owebmaster
And now we know where. 1000s of microservices?

------
laughfactory
I'm glad to hear this has gotten the CEOs attention. I read her account and
was absolutely horrified at how she, and other women, we're (are?) treated at
Uber. Livid is more like it. I'm also disappointed in the men who work there,
some of whom worked with her, but who apparently didn't behave like honorable
human beings and demand the behavior stop. Granted, I'm assuming other men
knew of this behavior, but I don't think that is likely to be much of a
stretch. We all have a responsibility to look out for each other, no matter
our gender. So yeah, Uber screwed up massively, and made me and my wife
rethink ever using their services again, but I'm also disappointed in their
whole workforce for not rooting out this behavior organically. "But I needed a
job," isn't a good excuse, when the fundamental value we should all hold is
decency. If you run across this shit in your own organizations make sure you
speak up. Keep records. Make sure they know that retaliation will be handled
with legal representation and with outreach to the state Department of Labor.
Will there sometimes be negative repercussions for you personally? Yes. Will
you sleep better at night? Yes. Will things improve in the aggregate over
time? Yes, if enough of us simply refuse to stay quiet when we see and hear
this kind of thing.

~~~
MrQuincle
The CEO should have access to the mentioned metrics.

\+ average stay of an employee

\+ percentage female employees over time

It's not so hard to assume something is wrong in HR or company culture if
these figures show anomalies.

I think if Uber was more data minded about their own progress and efficiency,
the board would have catched it even if they are in some kind of ivory tower.

------
moocow01
Im going to assume that this is just damage control to handle the media
accusations. Ive never been an Uber employee but have been apart of previous
large SV companies that were driven by what I perceived to be management
structures plagued (or driven?) by in-fighting and unethical behaviors.
Perhaps Im being presumptive about Uber's internals but from my experience
once you define a company culture its almost impossible to turn it around in
any meaningful way. From what I hear about Uber internally and externally it
smacks of the same cultures of places of the past like Zynga or Groupon. It
seems to me watching SV over the years companies of this profile follow a
pattern of hype, exuberant growth and then an unabated fall over a long period
of time after which the CEO gets thrown out and the company survives on life
support. I guess we'll see if Uber is different.

~~~
cavisne
Its an interesting point, interacting with both Zenefits and Uber I got the
same impression, the "bros" from the early days were being pushed out by the
"pros" from Yammer (Zenefits) and FB/Google (Uber).

However this doesn't seem to have helped at Zenefits, and I guess it didn't
help at Uber either.

Even more concerning is I would guess (and Linkedin corroborates this a bit)
that the SRE org where this harassment occurred was basically lifted from the
Google org tree.

~~~
chris11
I'm not sure if this is necessarily indicative of harassment at FB/Google.
I've heard rumors that SRE at Uber was pretty bad. I had classmate who
interned out in the bay area and was thinking about working in SRE. They
mentioned that Uber was poaching a lot of engineers to do SRE work with crazy
high offers. But they wouldn't stay around a long time because apparently both
the technical and non-technical cultures were pretty bad. Sometimes jobs can
be a lot a lot worse than you expected, and you can't really change much as a
new hire.

~~~
GauntletWizard
I just quit Uber SRE after only six months. There was a combination of really
bad tech and really bad culture - There was a huge seniority culture despite
the face that nobody had been there for more than three years. There was a
focus on 'big impact' that felt just like a recent article[1] about feature
mills - Despite being, you know, the division charged with keeping things
going. They'd drilled and drilled on solving simple problems, but hadn't fixed
the engineering reasons why those problems kept showing up. And they couldn't
keep technical staff who knew what they were doing. The people I actually
liked and respected at Uber were leaving in droves. Even new hires barely
stuck around - A full third of my new hire orientation class left before me.

And, oh, yeah - I had three managers in that six months. One was fired, one
quit precisely at his one year, and the third had 70 direct reports.

If you see candidates coming from Uber, tenure past a year is a warning sign.
I knew a few I'd want to work with again - A lot more I wouldn't.

[1][https://hackernoon.com/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-
feature-f...](https://hackernoon.com/12-signs-youre-working-in-a-feature-
factory-44a5b938d6a2#.9b8uajv1g)

------
swsieber
Unless people are fired and policies are changed and enforced, this will only
be a PR stunt.

It'll be interesting to see if this is a PR stunt or if it's for real.

------
gefh
"We're very, very sorry - that we got caught".

------
partycoder
The accusation is not only against the managers but mainly against their HR
department.

The CHRO is now being asked to investigate their own department? Doesn't seem
very effective.

~~~
hamburglar
I really hope they're able to corroborate some of the claims about how HR
responded, because there was a whole list of responses that make it clear that
at least one person in HR is a liability to the company:

* waving away sexual harassment because the offender is a "high performer"

* repeatedly lying about the same person committing their "first offense"

* telling the reporter that retaliation should be expected and there's nothing HR can do about it

* implying the reporter must be the problem because the common element in all of her complaints is her

* telling the reporter that it's unprofessional to report these problems via email and to keep records of them

These are all responses of an HR department that is going out of their way to
not hear complaints, and any company of Uber's size should be very, very
concerned about this attitude coming back to bite them in the ass. If these
responses all came from one HR contact, that person should be out on their ass
ASAP. If they came from various people, then HR management is completely
fucked.

~~~
halbritt
Fundamentally, the job of HR is to shield the company from liability and in
this case, they failed miserably.

------
M_Grey
Well that was certainly quick. Context (Not that anyone needs it)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022)

~~~
toast76
No, it wasn't quick. It is way way too late. It shouldn't require someone to
publicly shame them before taking action. Acting now, after what was known
privately is now public, is a cynical effort to appease the masses whilst
continuing to condone ongoing practices within their organisation.

The people involved should've been fired long ago, and for Kalanick to come
out and say what happened is "against everything Uber stands for and believes
in", thus suggesting he was unaware, only serves to reinforce his failure as
leader. Blame ultimately lies with the CEO, no matter what.

Women shouldn't need to put their careers on the line to publicly shame a
company before justice is seen.

(edit: apologies to the parent, was not pointing fingers at you...anger was
misdirected)

~~~
M_Grey
You're right of course, but to be clear I only meant it was a short period of
time from the story breaking, to a response. I'm not praising Uber, I'm not
noting the intensity and rapidity of their, "Oh shit" reaction.

~~~
rhizome
It took him 10 minutes, if that, to text the person who's going to investigate
so they heard it from him first, then a couple of tweets.

------
mhkhung
I think it is common to have incompetents running HR in these high-valued
startups, when the VP is probably just a beer-buddy or the wingman of the
founder, with no formal HR education or experience. I have had one of those
asking the big no-no questions in an interview and I can't stop rolling my
eyes.

------
linkregister
It seems like widespread change only happens at Uber in response to a media
inquiry (privacy violations, now sexual harassment offenses).

It's pretty suboptimal, but whatever works.

------
vorotato
Uber has always felt skeevy, but now I know that the whole damn fish is
rotten.

------
pkkim
This reminds me of the one-week safety investigation that Tesla promised to
undertake after one of their workers published a blog post.
[http://www.valuewalk.com/2017/02/1903910/](http://www.valuewalk.com/2017/02/1903910/)

------
Geekette
The non-independent format of investigation potentially compromises
effectiveness. Given the size of the company, nature of allegations and how
systemic the alleged infractions appear to be, the better course would have
been to source an investigator externally.

------
w00tw00tw00t
There is an old saying: a fish rots from the head down.

------
27182818284
The original poster _had screenshots_

If you didn't fucking automatically rely on things like Slack, etc, this
should be a five minute lookup to verify.†

    
    
        † My organization switched to slack from our own IRC too... :-(

------
clickbait
I personally won't have anything against Uber until these claims are proven to
be true; too often is it found out that the claims are lies.

~~~
jjirsa
Already a long history of similar stories out of Uber - trend isn't proof, but
it puts the burden on them, not the accuser

~~~
clickbait
This past year has been filled with a vast amount of false accusations; in my
opinion, it would be wise to be sceptical of any claims that aren't backed up
with any evidence.

Anyone could write an article saying that Uber was misogynistic towards them
in some way, and everyone will eat it up because they already hate Uber over
the JFK airport stuff.

