Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/19/21142081/susan-fowler-uber-whistleblower-interview-silicon-valley-discrimination-harassment

by Tomte • 6 years ago

132 100 6 years ago

theverge.com

lordleft• 6 years ago

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.

greatestdana• 6 years ago

That's a great point -- the blog post was a turning point and should be hailed as such.

commandlinefan• 6 years ago

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.

twright• 6 years ago

I have to disagree.

Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.

Management was sexist and the structure was kept unchanged and unchecked by HR. The jackets event, in addition to others mentioned in the post, are an extension/demonstration of that behavior.

scott_s3• 6 years ago

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...

danso2• 6 years ago

This is the typical maltreatment you experience as a programmer?

After the first couple of weeks of training, I chose to join the team that worked on my area of expertise, and this is where things started getting weird. On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.

Or this?

When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering. Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and told me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR.

alistairSH3• 6 years ago

Did we read the same blog entry?

Her first manager propositioned her for sex almost on day one.

HR lied about that managers past issues and told her suck it up or receive a negative review.

She received a negative review anyways (changed after the fact - her in-person review was positive). This blocked role changes and made her ineligible for graduate tuition reimbursement.

Leather jackets for the men, women told to deal with it.

Threatened by manager with termination because she reported somebody to HR.

mercer4• 6 years ago

I'll both agree and disagree with you, and to some degree with other people replying to your comment.

You're probably correct in thinking this maltreatment extended to men, or generally in ways that weren't specifically sexist. That doesn't mean that the sexist aspect of the maltreatment isn't also true, or an additional or more specific problem.

I'd say it's completely fine that the problems at Uber were presented from a sexist perspective, as that is a more salient and quite likely more damaging perspective.

That said, I do think there's some value to your comment in that it's very likely this kind of culture probably hurt many people in ways that weren't sexist. Highlighting Fowler's perspective, hopefully, doesn't bring to attention sexist problems at the expense of others. I don't feel it does, so far.

greenhorse2• 6 years ago

You have to almost be intentionally looking the other way not to see the clear sexism at play here.

deeg2• 6 years ago

Susan Fowler is a hero; it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage to hit the 'send' button while knowing her life was going to change. My niece is about to graduate into the SDE work force and I have little doubt that the culture is incrementally better because of Fowler.

MockObject3• 6 years ago

the SDE work force

Google didn't help with this acronym.

edanm• 6 years ago

Totally agree.

The only thing I'd add - I'm not sure of the exact timeline, or the exact causation chain - but I feel like Susan Fowler's article was one of the lead-ups to the MeToo movement. So in a sense, what she did wasn't just an important moment for our industry, but for all industries.

Traster2• 6 years ago

“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.

dstroot• 6 years ago

So very well said.

devchix• 6 years ago

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.

catalogia• 6 years ago

As far as I can tell, 'HR departments' that advocate for the interests of workers rather than the company exist, and are called 'unions.'

zajd• 6 years ago

Why can't HR be what they purportedly say they are

Because the owners pay them, not the employees

jerf• 6 years ago

"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....

jbay808• 6 years ago

I think many people believe on some level that men are on one team helping each other, and women are on a different team helping each other, as though middle school never ended. But in my experience it really isn't like that. Women are often more willing to go out of their way to help men, and men are often more willing to go out of their way to help women. (In general but not true for all individuals. And especially not for abusers, of course!)

Kalium• 6 years ago

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?

IMO, most of HR's work isn't handling major complaints. It's doing the administration to track reviews, carrying out training, making sure benefits work correctly, ensuring expenses get paid out, organizing those training sessions, and so on.

Perhaps the reason HR doesn't get folded into Legal is because most of what HR does is not stuff Legal would do particularly well.

bdowling• 6 years ago

why not fold it all in the legal counsel's office?

That would not help because an in-house lawyer represents the company and a lawyer can’t represent both sides in a dispute. In other words, company lawyers can’t represent a complainant in a dispute against their corporate clients.

By contrast, HR are not lawyers so HR can pretend to be on the complainant’s side.

octokatt• 6 years ago

why must it be this way

Companies used to have Ombudsman; literally a board member who did nothing but listen to employee complaints and help them e heard. This tended to lead to unions, which reduced company profitability, and was replaced with the current HR model, which is now giving way to out-sourced HR models.

mathattack• 6 years ago

In many cases they do roll up to legal. HR folks who think they are there for the junior employees get burned out when they get overruled by the senior ones. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but that’s why it is this way and whistleblowers are so rare. Perhaps also a competitive advantage for an employer that does protect the individuals.

whoisjuan• 6 years ago

"Toby is in HR, which technically means he works for corporate, so he's really not a part of our family. Also, he's divorced, so he's really not a part of his family."

- Michael Scott

wpietri8• 6 years ago

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.

The problem with running that campaign is that the actual companies, which have much more ability to "educate", will say the exact opposite. "We're different," they say. "We really care about our employees." And as with insurance, one doesn't really find out how good the product is until something pretty bad happens.

I'll also note that in my experience, HR often fails to reach the level of protecting the business. HR's first goal is to protect HR, especially at a dysfunctional company.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 6 years ago

I could not agree more. I too was once somewhat naive individual thinking HR is there to, you know, make work a place where I don't have to fear of having to go to work each morning.

I won't bore with details. The unit had a high turnover. Since a good chunk of those were people, who eventually just quit, it did not affect company's employment insurance. The boss was the worst boss I could wish on anyone.

Eventually, being a young idiot, I went to HR to complain since it was getting really bad. It helped that a day before I went, another person quit in a rather explosive fashion.

Anyway, moments after HR talk I was placed on an improvement plan of sorts. I won't give you the whole back and forth, but I survived 4 months before I found something better.

As my wife would attest, I was coming back from work livid.

But manager in question was friends with CEO and numbers look good. HR looks at this says: couple of burned out people is just cost of doing business.

Bottom line is.. if you are going to HR, you better have a plan.

fhood• 6 years ago

This can change. Sure HR will almost always protect the organization, but I hope we are coming to the point where it is unequivocally more damaging to these companies to sweep these issues under the rug rather than dealing with them properly.

mercer4• 6 years ago

How do you see that happening? As long as HR is department paid by the organization, how is there any way, structurally, for said department to change? How would said change translate to 'less damaging' in a way that is measurable enough that stakeholders will care?

As much as unions can be problematic, at least there's at least a possibility they'll pick the worker's side.

chrisseaton• 6 years ago

I think you may be misunderstanding. The idea is that a large HR department knows how to do things legally correctly. People hope that a large corporate HR department is going to be at least following the law, which is a step up compared to a tiny company with no HR expertise that may do things unprofessionally. I don't think anyone's under a misapprehension that having an HR department means they're going to side with you.

mercer4• 6 years ago

I'd say the very assumption that those who 'own' the output of your labor, especially in larger companies, is hopelessly but understandably naive.

eweise• 6 years ago

They are there to protect the business. One way they do that is by ensuring that the business follows the law. So, they are aligned the the interests of the employees up to a point.

rat9988• 6 years ago

Unless they think you cannot prove it.

p_l• 6 years ago

Only so long as they don't decide that not following the law vigorously isn't better for any reason. Said reason might not be well thought through.

itsmhuang• 6 years ago

If that's the case, who do you report sexual harassment to?

08-15• 6 years ago

The police.

Traster2• 6 years ago

Well, its difficult- and it's important to realise that there's not going to be some perfect resolution. A lot of people simply decide fighting isn't worth it and move on to other companies. If it's very serious, you can obviously contact the police.

In my opinion if you consider your position and you do want to pursue complaining about harassment the first thing to do is contact a third party for advice. In the UK you can contact acas.org.uk who will give impartial advice about what your rights are. I'm sure there are equivalent organisations elsewhere about what your rights are, if you really are all out of options contact /r/legaladvice but obviously take that advice with a pinch of salt.

A good rule of thumb is you need contemporaneous records of what you're complaining about - whether that is a diary or inducing the person you're accusing to put their suggestions in writing (eg, via email) and keeping a copy of that outside of work. Telling people outside of work what's happening also helps.

Obviously solving these sorts of problems within the company's HR system isn't great, but it really is the only resolution you can have beyond law enforcement, and even if you succeed in getting your harraser disciplined or removed your career will be damaged. But the point is that if you know your legal rights and have a strong record of what you're complaining about then the HR equation changes- no longer are you someone to brush off, now you're someone who poses a legitimate threat to cost the company money (and more importantly, if the HR person screws up dealing with the issue it'll be a black mark against hem, so they may well decide it's best to take your side). But remember, every single meeting, every single issue needs recording, time and date. And it's for the exact reason this article demonstrates - if you have a noted timeline saying "25th July - I complained about X, I was told "A",27th July- HR told X, 28th July - X initiated a performance conversation with me" it becomes much much easier to demonstrate retaliation - and because it's easier for you to prove, it makes it much more likely the company will want to avoid you actually demonstrate that in arbitration or court.

magduf9• 6 years ago

If the harassment has moved beyond the workplace, and someone is stalking you at home or wherever, then call the police. As long as it's still at work, the easiest thing, and probably best choice for your career, is to find a new employer ASAP. We're talking about software engineers/devs here: this field is hot, and there's lots of demand. GTFO and find a better place to work. Just look at the women who's the subject of this article: she blew the whistle publicly and now doesn't even work in the field. This, unfortunately, is generally what happens to whistleblowers; I've seen it before with someone close. She saved lives, but now can't work in that field any more.

After you've found greener grass, if the company is large enough, write an anonymous review on Glassdoor.com calling them out for their toxic environment, so others will know to avoid that cesspool.

It's really a shame that our society shits on whistleblowers so badly.

puszczyk• 6 years ago

someone needs to run an education campaign on what HR is and who it works for. HR is there to protect the business

What I still don't understand is why the uber HR acted this way. I think people understand that HR is there for the company, but the assumption is that they want to avoid any bad press.

If they protect a person who is a multiple offender. And this person is not C*E or high ranking manager, just a regular "high performer" (what does it even suppose to mean). What's the outcome going to be. Isn't it obvious that at some point this will generate a bad press for the company. And the bad press will be more costly than replacing the offender.

Also, when they fire an offender they are likely to "send a message" and avoid some offenses in the future.

I totally don't get how on earth protecting a "high performer" and sexual offender is good for the business.

Unrelated but I wonder what happened to the HR folks that handled these cases. What would have been their line of defense — "I was only following orders", "I didn't want any trouble in the team"?

Do they have good careers now because the next employers consider them loyal? Do they have hard time because they did poor job protecting uber?

arvinsim• 6 years ago

It's never as simple as a moral equation. You must take account office politics and the connections people have inside the company.

For all we know, that guy might be a friend of a CEO, a relative of HR, etc.

SideburnsOfDoom• 6 years ago

Point well made that quite often, "the right thing" and "protect the company" are the same, because "protect the abuser" is not good for the company, good publicity etc.

However, people often act for short term gain at the cost of long-term pain. I think that it's fair to say that Uber did when they repeatedly tried to "make the problem go away".

magduf9• 6 years ago

I totally don't get how on earth protecting a "high performer" and sexual offender is good for the business.

It probably isn't, in the long run, but it IS good for the HR chief's career to keep the executives happy, and the "high performing" sexual predator is probably a good buddy of the executives. And as for the good of the business, why should the executives care about that (in the long run)? As long as it performs well for the next few years, that's good enough, because the executives will move on by then.

allisonburtch• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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.

dudul3• 6 years ago

For example, in this very thread

Can you provide quotes and/or links to examples?

komali2• 6 years ago

Turn on the ability to view flagged comments and scroll down.

MockObject3• 6 years ago

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?

wpietri8• 6 years ago

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.

username903• 6 years ago

Her work has had profound impact

I don't see it, what actually changed? Uber changed a lot, but that doesn't matter if you don't work at Uber. The only thing we learned is that investors and customers doesn't care, Uber is doing better than ever and the people who caused the problems got extremely rich in the process.

notyourday3• 6 years ago

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...

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

wpietri8• 6 years ago

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. It seems like a good point. Large swathes of Uber, especially people with power, seemed ok with all sorts of ethical failings. I'd really love to know how many of those people kept their jobs.

Of course, large companies often treat major failings as PR problems. So instead of cleaning house or making other big changes, they do the minimum necessary until the heat is off. A classic in the genre is Jack Dorsey, who is extremely good at sounding sincere and contrite, promising to listen and improve until attention is elsewhere.

SpicyLemonZest3• 6 years ago

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.

notyourday3• 6 years ago

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.

roseway4• 6 years ago

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...

ra07312006• 6 years ago

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• 6 years ago

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.

wpietri8• 6 years ago

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.

carapace• 6 years ago

Riiiiight? I mean the clue is in the goddamned name: Uber

namanaggarwal• 6 years ago

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.

oumua_don17• 6 years ago

> 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.

relaunched• 6 years ago

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.

ythrowawhy• 6 years ago

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.

pimmen• 6 years ago

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".

Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

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