I had an extended exchange with an Uber employee the other day, in which he steadfastly refused to believe that Uber was going after Fowler after the initial reports of this. Despite countless examples of this kind of behavior in the past, he kept insisting that everything was only "alleged" or "unverified."
I'm not sure what kind of cargo cult they have going on over there, but it sure is effective at getting people to see past the most obvious examples of straight up awfulness. Explains a lot about what happened to Susan.
It's not just Uber. When your identity gets caught up in your employment, political party, religion, etc. you end up suffering from serious cognitive dissonance regarding it.
They don't want to believe that an entity they identify with is a bad (ethical, political) actor. They see themselves as good (and maybe they are), and so this thing that they base their identity on must also be good (and in some ways, maybe even most, it could be). Criticism of the entity becomes criticism against the self, which they cannot help but deny because it destroys their own self-image.
I steadfastly refused to
expect, pending more data, investigation with intent to discredit, disparage, or defame Susan Fowler.
This is still unclear but I certainly agree that it is very worrying. You can bet that we'll be asking tough questions about it on Tuesday.
As an aside, I believe you simply meant "cult" - "cargo cult" is specifically to do with performing actions superficially resembling things that work elsewhere without understanding (or replicating) the why of it. Your accusation, of persisting in believing bizarre things in the face of evidence, is more general.
Hey, thanks for commenting on this. I respect that you'll stand up internally against any attempt to go after Susan. Apologies for not giving you more credit in my original comment.
I used cargo cult because I expect that a lot of the willingness to dismiss this behavior is out of expectation of a maybe-never-to-be-delivered gift from the "IPO Gods."
Just to be clear, I'm not ascribing this to you, but I've had other conversations with Uber employees who were explicitly cynical in their stance, after this fashion.
An alternate idiom that avoids the "cult" versus "cargo cult" confusion would be "I don't know what's in their [corporate] Kool-Aid over there...".
That evokes the image of Jim Jones People's Temple Jonestown mass murder-suicide, using poisoned Flavor Aid beverage mix. In a corporate context, "drinking the Kool-Aid" means to uncritically embrace the corporate culture, even if it is actually toxic.
Anecdotally, companies that try to impress a culture upon their employees always do it to obscure the otherwise obvious shortcomings in the business itself. Without fail, it is continuously reinforced propaganda, designed to create an irrational emotional attachment to the workplace. Subtler versions use "we" or "us" to refer to the employee labor, rather than the owners and managers.
Everyone does it to some extent, and once you can see the fnords, you can't stop seeing them.
The literal cargo cultists were south Pacific islanders that saw temporary military airfields constructed in World War 2, and planes filled with valuable cargo landing on them or making airdrops, correlated the two, and then built their own mock airfields so that the goods would once again rain down from the sky. The business of running a working airfield was transformed into a religious ritual to call down manna from heaven. In a modern figurative sense, "cargo culting" is something like instituting a daily stand-up meeting when your development process is not actually Agile Manifesto compatible.
While "cult" is in a literal sense nothing more than a group with a common religion, the word has acquired a derogatory shading that implies practices hostile and predatory to the membership, secrecy, and insularity. If your religion severely punishes heterodoxy or apostasy, attempts to supplant or replace your supportive institutions such as family, friends, and government, and encourages you to liquidate your own wealth and transfer it to the religious leadership, it will probably be referred to by non-members and the news media as a cult. Some businesses employ cult-like practices, and often replace the direct tithing with less obvious schemes, such as multilevel marketing or sweatshop labor.
> I'm not sure what kind of cargo cult they have going on over there
Cargo cultism has nothing to do with getting people to see past "straight up awfulness."
Is Uber practicing sympathetic magic in hopes that they'll receive what they're after? And if so, after what more-technicially-advanced society are they patterning their behavior?
Maybe you meant something like that (e.g., [tech figure/company] is predatory, they were successful, therefore being predatory might bring success–could go the argument), but I have no idea from your comment whether that's the case.
For anyone who isn't familiar with cargo cults, they're pretty interesting, yet for some reason the word "cargo" has become this word we prepend to "cult" when we want to make a cult sound more scary, but it has nothing to do with that, and everything to do with what can happen when certain societies make contact with ones that are more technologically advanced: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
Uber employee here. I don't believe Uber would be stupid enough to investigate or disparage Susan. She is and should be untouchable. In my opinion Uber should offer her a full apology, their thanks, and "make it right" financially.
I don't think you understand the level of support Susan has at Uber. And the level of anger that her blog post erupted within Uber towards management. She has every employees' support. And thanks to her, massive changes in culture and management are going to happen. She singlehandedly changed Uber more than anyone in management would or could.
So if Uber were investigating Susan, there would be massive revolt against management, guaranteed. It would be immediate.
...but she says this is happening, so where's the revolt? I'm not sure how you can support Susan but than pick and choose what to believe about her experience, then and now with Uber. That's not support.
Because she is unfortunately incorrect. Just because I support her doesn't mean I can't be factually objective. It sounds like some sort of miscommunication.
Here is the official statement from Uber:
"The law firm Perkins Coie is looking into the specific allegations raised by Susan. They will report into Eric Holder, who is responsible for the overall investigation into Uber's workplace practices. To be clear: they are investigating Susan's claims, not Susan personally."
In an email from one of our lawyers, she specifically mentions that Uber has been in constant contact with Susan's lawyers so this was a surprise. And that Uber of course doesn't hold Susan to blame for anything.
I'm sorry, but I'll wait for futher word from Susan on this. Uber and it's surrogates have little in the way of credibility in this regard, given that they've intentionally lied about similar behavior in the past.
That's your prerogative. I choose to believe this was a misunderstanding on the part of Susan. Of course, if there is further evidence then I would love to hear it and make a new decision then.
Of course everyone that knows more facts on both sides of the story and draws a different conclusion is a victim of cargo cult.
Sadly, no one is willing to state the facts on the other side because they will be labeled as, cargo cult victim, if not worse. And we might lose our critical thinking skills along the way.
The media environment is partly to blame. They are chasing shiny objects that generate clicks, while leaving fact-based reporting in the backseat. There was an actual harassment case against Tesla filed in court last week by a current employee. How many stories have we seen on that?
I'm not sure what kind of cargo cult they have going on over there, but it sure is effective at getting people to see past the most obvious examples of straight up awfulness. Explains a lot about what happened to Susan.