If the stories in this article are true, and if the evidence is as strong as the article says it is, this is a slam-dunk case for sexual harassment, hostile work environment, retaliation, etc.
That's such a meaningless thing for an HR person to ask someone, that it clearly only serves to be patronising and hopefully stop them bringing problems up. I mean, how could you as an HR staffer possibly justify your inaction with an argument like that?
"We didn't act on any of their complaints, as we noticed that in all the cases of harassment that they reported, they were the victim in all of them!"
A manager propositioned a new employee on her first day on his team -- asking not just for a date but for sex. That's way over the line.
Also, this isn't just a gendered thing -- Google the story of Keith Rabois resigning as COO of Square.
In lieu of anything else: Susan deserves to be commended for her bravery in writing this.
Thank you Susan for writing this.
> "performance problems aren't always something that has to do with work, but sometimes can be about things outside of work or your personal life."
Also, this seems many species of wrong. I don't really see why your personal life should have any relevance to a performance review.
Thanks for posts like these.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-fine-chicago-idUSKBN1...
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/14/10772412/uber-fine-califor...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/09/uber-fined-...
http://time.com/4632430/taiwan-uber-fines/
http://economia.icaew.com/en/news/january-2017/uber-fined-20...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2464520/rivalry-between-uber-...
...
What would you actually do in their position? You leave work one evening, go home and google 'lawyer that will get me lots of money from my company and work for free while I'm out of a job using nothing but my certitude I will prevail to pay rent'? Nobody (statistically) does that. In the 99% case, you'd try to make it work and then you'd find another job. As it turned out.
Uber sounds like a pretty toxic environment.
It seems insane to me that the only recourse you have after HR is basically "gather evidence and sue" which seems to be common advice in this thread.
Totally normal behavior! Who hasn't spoken about their sex life the very first day of interactions?
"Welcome to the team, we use Git for source control, all of our company knowledgebase is on Confluence, and I'm in an open sex relationship! See you at lunch!"
I can't fathom what kind of weirdo does something like this, male or female.
This is absolutely believable, Uber has pretty much made it their standard to break the laws where-ever they can, why should work place conduct be any different? In for a penny, in for a pound.
You'd never hear something even close to this from Stripe or some other company run by upstanding folks.
Fish rots from the head.
Most of the time the easiest way to do that is to just suppress any wrongdoing and sideline whoever is being wronged. That's exactly how things played out in her story. Once again solidifying my opinion of HR being a company instead of an employee protector. If you see any wrongdoing then just get a lawyer. Never go to HR.
Edit: Folks are right. She is not an industry veteran. Incorrect assumption on my part.
I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning. A friend of mine was actually warned off by her software engineer father. I've heard stories from friends who've worked there that corroborate Susan's tales of infighting teams and inexplicable reorganizations due to high-level backstabbing. The one woman I know who works there wants out. Susan is a high-profile and credible source; hopefully her post takes Uber's work culture issues from "open secret" to "problem that has public consequences for the company".
The CEO should crack down and take serious steps towards addressing this problem - not just for PR, but because his company is seriously suffering as a result of these issues. Unfortunately for Uber, from what I've heard, Travis is part of the problem as far as Game-of-Thrones internal politics and backstabbing goes. His "move fast and break things" persona sounds like a poor model for subordinates. Between that and the company's relative external success, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for anything internal to get better any time soon.
Until it does, I simply hope that my acquaintances at Uber find somewhere less shitty to work.
> I wanted to stay on the team
...
> it was genuinely in the company's best interest to have me on that team
I read this and the rest of the article as a testiment to Ms. Fowler's work ethic and commitment to her employer and fellow employees.
> I was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making
This is the most disgusting abuse described in the article. Not only did the organization completely fail Ms. Fowler and all employees, but the HR professionals participated in the physiological abuse.
Sure, suing is an option here, but one that Uber calculates is absolutely worth the risk. Lawsuits like this aren't punishment to billion-dollar companies, they're factored into the cost of doing business. It can take years to sue a company under these circumstances, and depending on the situation, it could do more harm to one's reputation and career down the road. Most lack the energy to relive those experiences in a law office or courtroom while trying to move on with their lives.
Lawsuits may provide financial compensation to those who've had to deal with these atrocious situations, but it's not going to solve the underlying problem.
Just to add something to the torrent of links already in these comments http://observer.com/2016/02/ubers-10-worst-actions-threats-l....
It's almost like they enjoyed watching her complain. Glad she got out.
We should send this link to Uber recruiters every time they approach us.
to me, the term "harassment" means repetitive, morally painful actions from a boss to his employee. Obviously the guy has a huge problem with his sex life, but why report to HR instantly , instead of trying to see if the problem is that big and can't be solved by a person to person conversation, like grown up, first ?
EDIT : i'm not trying to be a jerk, and justify the behavior of that guy. I'd just like some woman working in tech in the US to explain to me what's wrong in my scenario.
The rest of the story is horrible to hear, too.
1) Approve of the culture there and don't see a reason to leave.
2) Aren't able to find another place to work.
For instance I worked at a small company that was later bought by a larger company. One of the women I worked with was propositioned by our boss. She reported him to HR and the next day HR scheduled a meeting with her, HR, the CEO and her boss that propositioned her. They told her that her boss denied it then proceeded to ask her for the next half an hour why she was lying and why she wanted to damage his career. She left for the rest of the day in tears.
Over half of his team, including me, left within the month. It was disgusting. During my exit interview I made sure to cite it along with his frequent trips to our area where, when she wasn't there, would pick up her photo of her and her boyfriend and just stare at it along with his fraudulent billing of clients. Nothing ever happened to him, he just got moved into another group because his team got too small.
It's really disheartening to hear story after story about this and even witnessing it yourself. I can't imagine what it's like to be on the receiving end. I worry about this not only because of it being a bad thing but I also have two daughters and it fills me with dread, after what I've seen, what they may go through.
What can be done to stop such toxicity? Do we need stronger laws? Are there groups for women who can turn to?
Holy *. How long until Uber reports this as fake news?
Jose Moran, move over. Tech companies have a new scandal.
Edit: Ok ok, HN doesn't like the jab at Tesla..
Just like the NFL and NBA have player's associations, HR should be managed by external companies, or at least separated by function (supporting employees vs management). Companies would still be paying the HR teams, so incentives wouldn't be optimal, but seems like it would be a step in the right direction.
Uber came with its black cars. No one bothered. But Uber came with UberX and then Uber pool. It was a revolution, 50% cheaper. It exploded. The taxi market was/is dominated by corruption, with its medallions monopoly. Capitalism worked.
But capitalism dont stop working when Uber is winning. Now the taxi apps, specially the rebranded 99, that was the clear winner in the taxi apps fight raised hundreds of millions with the chinese and is ready to fight Uber. They now have regular taxi, a 30% discount taxi (that usually matches Uber price) and a Uber-like service with common people cars, all in the same app.
My social network mostly went back to using taxi, now that the price matches, because SP is not an easy city to transit. Uber drivers rely 100% on Waze/Google Maps. This ofyen leads to errors. Taxi drivers who drive around for years, sometimes decades are more reliable.
My point being: I dont believe in karma, but capitalism is a bitch. If you are that arrogant to mismanage that bad your resources when you are winning, when the market forces strike back, you wont be strong enough to stand on your feet.
Maybe they don't care now, they're growing, they're sitting on big piles of cash, they can afford to be assholes if they want. Our culture regrettably gives them that option, even rewards for it sometimes. But companies ossify as they grow, disruptors become entrenched and it takes a long, long time to shake a reputation like this. They've created a new market but they're not entitled to it forever.
This was a disheartening story to read to say the least. I hope that she sues as her case is abundantly clear and the response by HR and the management chain was absolutely unacceptable. If what happened is true, they should be held accountable.
Unfortunately, from my perspective, Uber has a track record of lack of accountability when it comes to leadership/managers. Pretty much everyone I know at Uber believes that Josh Mohrer [1] and Emil Michael [2] should have been fired. It's probably fair to say both are generally regarded as being high performers, but what they did was extremely damaging to the reputation of the company and the fact they weren't held accountable only worsens that reputation.
I think that generally Uber is a positive influence in the world. It has created work opportunities for millions essentially out of thin air has fundamentally changed how people think about transportation in cities for the better. Uber is certainly disruptive and its methods and behavior have been brash at times which has often resulted in a disproportionate amount of scrutiny, both deserved (comments and actions targeting journalists, sexism) and otherwise ("support" of Trump, #deleteuber, and surge price "gouging"). For me, Uber is still a place filled with many talented people working on interesting, challenging problems. But a story like this is a tough pill to swallow.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-25/colleague...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/uber-said...
HR exists solely to help 'manage' the work force. Most companies that I've worked at it does a very poor job of it. Someday the HR department will get replaced by software, in my opinion the sooner the better.
I fully believe that her manager sexually harassed her and should have faced much harsher consequences, but it's almost inconceivable that HR would frame her options this way. No doubt she feared retribution, but did HR really tell her to expect it? It's hard to know what to make of specifics like these, when words get paraphrased.
In any case, the manager's behavior and HR's response were inexcusable.
I look forward to reading your book on microservices.
Uber is bleeding engineers to other startups. Will the replacements be of the same calibre?
It is my time to thank Hacker News because how many times I read it here rule number one: HR is not there to help you with your issues, but rather to determine how your issues could negatively affect the company PR image and company itself. The don't care about yoy or how to help you out - they care how to make it so that company doesn's suffer because of whatever you going through - weather fair to you or not.
So thank you guys and I'm quite suprised someone like Susan did not know that.
This was at a company that generally treated me alright and was staffed with generally reasonable people, so I can't imagine the Kafkaesque nightmare that it must be to work at a notoriously chaotic, evil company like Uber, especially as a woman (which I am not).
The lesson, as so many other people in this thread have already said, is that HR is not looking out for you. Keep your own counsel and get everything in writing, and prepare for their attempts to bully and gaslight you into a marginalized position.
What the ever-loving fuck. They're talking about programming computers. HR at the company actually hinted that your ethnic background or gender can make you better at computers?
Maybe that's why she didn't get a promotion. Personally, I have had colleagues attempt similar things. When they embark on these external endeavors they have significantly reduced quality work in their primary job.
Obviously I don't know this author and I don't work at Uber.
If it's this egregious, it's could be much, much, higher.
> 1/ What's described here is abhorrent & against everything we believe in. Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.
> 2/ I've instructed our CHRO Liane to conduct an urgent investigation. There can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber.
This situation reminds me of the Jeremy Clarkson Effect (https://blog.vanillaforums.com/help/how-to/dealing-with-toxi...) where you keep people on board because they are high performers/popular until the point where the amount of damage they cause versus value they provide is too high and must let them go. If, for example, you lose 5 good tech people because of one amazing tech person, is it still worth to have that one amazing person? I feel like if you could quantify something like this, it would be easier to get rid of toxic people.
> I have just read Susan Fowler's blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations. We seek to make Uber a just workplace and there can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber -- and anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.
[0] http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/19/14664474/uber-sexism-alleg...
Edit: Hit enter too soon, but does anyone have a better solution that going to HR? I've seen it several times that this is the outcome, manager protected, employee shunned or moved. In one case the employee was given 12 months of severance if she agreed not to sue, nothing was done to the manager.
While I can't speak to OP's post about her particular Org, I can say that the one I'm in (marketing) is very much non-toxic and a wonderful place to work.
I'm profoundly sad she had such a bad experience and hope she is much happier now.
Susan, you're a hero.
reader note: Susan is pretty famous in SRE circles: it's doubly gutsy for her to write this.
PS I'm a guy and a valley veteran.
What I find surprising is people being surprised or trying to understand these kind of reports. Or why people try to get a job at Uber. Maybe they want to find a reason why they are still taking Uber. Yes Uber is innovative and cheaper, but you are encouraging a company with exploitative practices.
Many companies have this problem. Everyday we can make it better, make it less prevalent, and change how management, engineering, designing, hiring, recruiting, and socialization are done.
Nothing is going to change if all that comes of this is folks hemming and hawing on chat forums. Not much will even change if you decide that this is the final straw to delete Uber. What will make a change is if you go to work on Tuesday and ask your HR rep, "What is the protocol for this?" Make sure they have it in writing. At a small company? Ask the founder to make sure this is covered. Make sure that everyone agrees that these actions cannot go unpunished because people are "high" performers.
And now I am impressed:
https://fledglingphysicist.com/2013/12/12/if-susan-can-learn...
https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2016/8/13/so-you-want-to-l...
My negative experience doesn't compare to Ms. Fowler's, but what I've seen basically boils down to:
1) Senior engineers and managers who lack anything approaching maturity. A lot of toxic personalities have been promoted into positions of seniority because they were at some point considered high performers. Many managers and senior engineers are concerned mainly with expanding their influence over improving the organization, helping those with less experience or — god forbid — actually getting anything done.
2) Diseased work culture. 60-hour work weeks seen as normal and encouraged as an enactment of Uber's "Always Be Hustling" cultural value. Tons of drinking, sometimes forced on you by your manager or your manager's manager. Too many unhappy, burnt out people fearful of negative performance reviews.
3) A lot of this stems from our CEO, Travis Kalanick, being profoundly out of touch. He's constitutionally incapable of acknowledging the company's real problems (toxic culture, massive unprofitability, drivers who hate us to name a few).
There are some fantastic engineers and plenty of good people at Uber, but the company rewards the bad eggs far too often and it's killing us from within.
Holy shit. There are terrible people who make into positions of power and then abuse it. But it is whole other layer of horribleness when there is institutional corruption and evil which encourages and protects that. With a nice little bonus of blackmail on the top -- "you'll get bad reviews if you stay, be careful".
It is humiliating to have that happen to someone, then the humiliation and hurt triples when you realize the system that you hoped is there to fix the problem and stand behind you is helping the perpetrator.
I have seen some really good programmers, if the 10x myth was true, it certainly was true for them. But I wouldn't bat an eye kicking them out in cases like this.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/19/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-says...
Nobody should ever have to work with a single-gender reporting tree; in the five or so steps between each individual contributor and the CTO there should be at least one woman.
It's not an impossible, or even implausible, goal. Throw a little money at it and widen the funnel, and you'll find plenty of absolutely incredible women. It's even self-perpetuating - each woman brings a network of peers to the table and makes further recruiting that much easier.
But that first hire is a doozy... I've turned down jobs in the valley before because I'd be the only woman in my org (it was only a tie-breaking factor, but a big one.)
There is no answer to the retort that Uber is successful. If that was the only guiding light for humanity, then we should just be living as savages surviving on who can punch the hardest.
My uber got hacked and some jerk took a supposed $1k ride in London on my dime. As soon as I found out I wanted to cancel my account but uber didn't allow users to cancel their accounts. I had to send an email and wait. Also they know about the hack and blamed the users for letting their accounts being hacked via not having a crazy strong password.
They need to burn to the ground .... run by total greedy douchebag pigs!
Does that indicate anything about how the case is going? Such as that the settlement negotiations are at an impasse?
With the exception of a startup that was on the verge of failing, this is every organisation I've ever worked for. Including two of the big silicon valley giants (one who got cut down to size after 2000, one that's still big). I wonder if the underlying reason is the same.
I must say I've also reported people to HR, and I have regretted EVERY interaction with HR I've ever had. Initiated by me or otherwise. My attitude to meeting HR now is that there's 2 options: schmooze and snooze (as in have "a good meeting in which there is one and only one accomplishment: agreement between both parties that no other meetings are necessary"), or please contact my lawyer at ...
(And I do wonder if women's experiences are the same. WTF)
I always really struggle to imagine these sorts of things happening in a large, organised way. Allowing this sort of thing to go on in your business should be an enormous risk. It amounts to a conspiracy, and its hard to believe that any one employee with the interests of the business at heart would allow it to continue, much less that very many people in a group would, and its extremely difficult to swallow that someone on the level of CTO would fob this sort of thing off rather than crapping their pants and lighting fires up under arses to get it investigated and fixed.
The other part I find hard to believe is that anyone, let alone large numbers of people can put up with this sort of treatment at work for so long without taking very serious action. I don't mean going to HR, or reporting it to X, Y or Z organisation or authority - I mean really, seriously decisive action - e.g. force some director/owner to pay attention personally, and provide them evidence, and record how it goes in case they are part of the problem - however that ends you are in a very strong position to proceed, with the wrong outcome quit and /do the right thing/ and continue to pursue it for the sake of others - with the correct outcome the problem is solved. I'll concede that eventually in this retelling there are more serious efforts, but its not far enough, fast enough - and I struggle to believe that "working with smart people" or any other such thing would make up for it.
At the same time its all horribly believable... One reason being that its happening in Silicon Valley, and more generally the USA. Compared to my experiences of the UK and Europe, workers rights in the US are terrible, discrimination is rife and the legal system very strongly favours the privileged and wealthy. Don't get me wrong we have our problems of discrimination and poor workplaces too... but, especially for office workers and professionals, there are lots of incentives for employees and employers to put a stop to it, and they generally carry a very low risk.
Another reason its believable is that when you don't feel safe, have to make expenditure and/or rely on your income for survival I can appreciate not wanting to rock the boat with your employer. I think that is a very selfish and stupid attitude, especially when others will suffer for your inaction, but I can appreciate why people take such positions.
However, all that being said there is something here that really irks me. I've been in situations with horrible employers before and I've blabbed about it to the press, and you know what I did? I had evidence, and I published that evidence with my complaints. The author talks about having evidence in their retelling of events, yet doesn't provide it alongside. I'm not sure I'd ever feel comfortable attacking anyone for anything without some evidence - maybe she just didn't think to keep it personally and left it in a work mailbox (an engineer being /that/ sloppy though? hard to swallow still). Its nice to see other people coming forward and backing the claims up... but I'm still left with a niggling doubt because of this. There is always the possibility that people will try and abuse discrimination claims for financial gain... its not reasonable to discount that possibility without some evidence to the contrary (i.e that the claims are valid) - as much as its more social acceptable to not raise this issue.
Maybe I'm weird, but that first response from HR would have been given a response offering /one/ chance to get it right without any indication that its a single chance (threats are dumb), followed by a notification of my intent to expose their behaviour publically (again no threat, just polite notice). Some copy of the e-mail thread with a select personal details blocked out in black would be posted on the internet that evening... definitely not days, weeks or months later - after the fact.
Still, I'm more inclined to believe it, the way the story is so casually told as if the blog post is to satisfy people asking questions needing the same story to be told, to save time on answering them personally, and not to expose bad behaviour is ... well ... its just sad, but its believable. The impression I get is that the author doesn't really appreciate just how unacceptable this sort of thing is, and is resigned to having to live with it... :(
I honestly don't understand how Uber attracts talent. Lyft and Uber both work on really interesting problems. [2] The difference is that Uber are, well, the sort of people Travis Kalanick would hire. [3] Lyft is smaller, sure, but we're growing at a very rapid tick (and smaller means there's more for each engineer to do). And though people generally view Lyft as being undifferentiated from Uber, I think we can positively say that we provide a better user experience in many ways, in spite of being a much smaller outfit. And again: we're growing. Fast.
Bottom line: if you're looking at a job at Uber, consider applying to Lyft :) It'll be worth your time.
[1] "Uplift others" and "Be yourself" are two of our four core values. [2] I joined Lyft after leaving a job at Google and rejecting offers from AirBnB and Dropbox, and I'm 100% confident I would do the same thing over again. Working at Lyft is fun—and impactful. [3] Not to say that they're all bad people; I have lots of friends that work there. But there's a dramatic cultural difference between the two companies, and that culture is driven by the leadership. So the "median" employee at Lyft will be very different from the median at Uber.
P.S. So clearly I'm a little biased on this subject :) Take with a grain of salt.
But after reading through Susan's reflections, the core problem seems to be in the HR department.
Allowing repeat offenses like Susan describes exposes Uber (as well as individual managers) to significant legal liability (in CA and NY, and possibly elsewhere).
Any qualified HR person knows and understands these liabilities and makes a very strong case to top management that proper conduct must be enforced.
Susan, you are probably entitled to legal remedies for what you went through because the offender had already been warned. The manager in question (and his manager) will also be subject to direct penalties under California law.
If you don't do it for yourself, do it for the many other women who will suffer through the same indignities and might not be as empowered as you were to take action.
Is it a female-thing to take these sort of situations so seriously, or maybe a personality trait?
A modern reworking of unionisation may be the only answer - a p2p network, focused on employee welfare, independent of company interest.
Avoid working at companies with HR departments. In order to have an HR department a company has to be big enough to support a population of what I like to call "floaters".
No, I'm not referring to those visual artifacts... No, I'm not referring to people who aren't attached to teams...
I am referring to turds, of course.
Furthermore, the larger the HR department the more likely there is to be a turd infestation of horrific proportions.
That's funny bit
This deserves to be all caps, and in bold.
Ambitious people tend to eat shit sandwiches until they are either immune to them, or realize there's more to life.
She pointed out that the number of women at Uber was dwindling - women are smart, they take the 'more to life' route oftentimes.
It's just life playing itself out - as long as people are willing to eat shit, for money, like Susan did for a whole year - Ubers are going to be around.
No amount of blogging about it is going to help - if you're willing to eat them shit sandwiches, someone out there is going to make em for you :)
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page...
Nope, this is full-on sexual harassment enabled by HR that went so far as to ambiguously punish the victim. Every time I think the 21st century is finally here, $h!+ like this happens.
The guy should have been terminated immediately once she produced the chat logs. The end. Even from a pure cold-blooded business perspective, if he's showing such poor judgment in this area, god only knows what kind of engineering decisions he's making and how they'll come back to haunt down the road.
Also, fire all of Uber's HR implicated in this nonsense. Sure, they're there to protect the company, they failed here, and they'll just fail again.
It seems likely that a large company that treats trusted headquarters employees like this article described may also have ethical lapses in the way they treat field people. Mistreatment makes people angry.
In the waning days of the late unlamented Eastern Airlines, the airplane mechanics were angry. If you ride in an airplane maintained by angry people, you're placing great trust in their professionalism. You're trusting the line workers to leave their anger in their lockers.
In the same way, if you get into a car driven by an angry person, you're trusting that person to put his anger in the glove box. I'm sure most of Uber's drivers do that.
But isn't worker satisfaction a critical success factor for a business like Ubers?
I don't care of you're Thomas Edison, James Watson, or Nikola Tesla. Sending sexually-oriented messages to women in your workplace ever, let alone the first day that person is on board, is completely unacceptable and any "bro" who thinks it's OK ought to be subject to a zero-tolerance policy.
As a guy, I've faced a different type of harassment, but have made it a point to maintain a clear electronic trail within and outside the company in case the company retaliate if and when I complain
That manager should have been fired on the very first offense Susan reported. "Don't proposition your colleagues for sex, especially on company comms, ESPECIALLY on the day she starts her job" is an implicit rule that doesn't need explaining. How isn't this lawsuit material? Are the employment contracts really that binding?
Instead of just telling the guy never to make such a proposal again.
> this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me
You might as well call it gang rape. Sure it's one of the most idiotic ways to talk to women, however it's nowhere near a level that deserves to be called harassment, it also only happened once. I remember watching a video where a guy tapped a woman on the shoulder and people will calling it sexual assault.
It's a real shame that everything has to be about sex and race nowadays, I would rather talk about the rest of the article where she talks about corruption inside the company.
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