Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#351

Post by macrael » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #233

>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her gender — a case she lost. This paragrap…

My feed is full of women saying that this kind of stuff is not unique to Uber. What's apparently remarkable is that all of this happened to her in one year.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#352

Post by brudgers » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 4:59 PM UTC

As I commented last night[1], the New York Times has cast Fowler's experience as a he-said-she-said story. Unfortunately I was not pessimistic enough:

1. The New York Times spiked the most damning part of Fowler's story: that HR was actively involved in supporting the behavior.

2. It down plays Fowler's specific experience as typical for the industry and marginalizes it by bringing Pao's story into Fowler's narrative. Pao's experience was radically different, if for no other reason than Fowler is a rank and file employee of the most typical kind, an engineer. Pao is an executive. It also brought all the irrlevant ambiguities surrounding Pao's executive actions at Reddit into the mix.

3. It repeats nearly all of Uber's public response verbatim rather than linking to it as it does with Fowler's article.

Fowler's story gets one paragraph (or two if the one sentence paragraph about going to work for Stripe counts). The same amount is devoted to Pao. Uber's PR gets the bulk of the article with no critical analysis.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13683159

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#353

Post by epynonymous » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:01 PM UTC

i have been a long time uber user, up until their sale in china to didi taxi, and it was a beautiful service here. since then, i have deleted their app just because it was taken over by some useless shell company in beijing.

but what is happening lately with all the accusations about uber, the trump immigration executive order and how uber profited off that, some uber ban in some city, etc. it all seems quite methodical and targeted. do not think it's lyft of all people, that would be too obvious, maybe it's like the secret brotherhood of the knights or something. who aside from lyft/taxis would gain the most from uber collapsing? (not that they're anywhere close to collapsing). i guess there are probably a lot of haters out there since they've been really at the top.

personally i've given up on uber, but mostly because their service essentially is being killed by didi taxi in china.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#354

Post by jimmywanger » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:05 PM UTC

nxtrafalgar wrote: post #201

jimmywanger wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you make unwanted sexual advances towards someone, you're sexually harassing them. That's untrue. It has to pass a bar of being "frequent and severe". ( https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sexual_harassment.cfm ) With your "clear cut definition", simply asking somebody out on a date that you work with is sexual harassment if he/she doesn't want to go. Which is ridiculous on the face of it, because if you don't make…

"Harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision" Seems pretty clear-cut to me?

"Frequent" and "severe" are definitely not legal terms.

If you ask somebody out to dinner, and they say they're busy, is it ok to ask them out again in a week? Is that frequent?

Everything is context driven, which makes things very difficult to write hard and fast rules about. For instance, it is usually sexual harassment if you link somebody to a page of with pictures of models in lingerie on it. If you work for an online clothing shop, it might be perfectly normal. "Every time anybody rates this item, it throws an exception in the server logs. Is there anything special about it?"

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#355

Post by Neliquat » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:08 PM UTC

TorKlingberg wrote: post #267

golergka wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've read your comments on HN, and you'd be the last person I'd tell if it had happened to me. So you prefer preaching to the choir to trying to change someone's mind?

Are you saying victims of harassment have some duty to seek out and tell people who are unlikely to believe them or care?

If it clearly benefits current and future victims to be taken seriously and get any help they may need? Yes, in my opinion. But that is a much more personal ethics call.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#356

Post by st3v3r » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:10 PM UTC

I will believe it when I see it. I have no confidence that anything will actually change, and that anyone other than a token fall guy will be fired.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#357

Post by ebbv » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #336

freyr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how much impact this will have. What were the consequences when Uber management was caught behaving badly in the past? In November 2014, Uber’s senior vice president Emil Michael suggested Uber hire a team of opposition researchers—equipped with a million-dollar budget—to dig into the personal lives of journalists who reported negatively about the company in order to dox, target and harass them and their f…

What actually happened: "Emil was pushing Ben to answer why it was OK for journalists to publish false stories or attack a businessperson’s personal life. Ben was quiet. It was a pretty normal conversation about hypotheticals. There was no malice or yelling or fighting. It was a chat between the two of them that I happened to overhear. The last comment that I heard was when Emil hypothesized about creating a coalitio…

HuffPo should be disqualified as a source regarding Uber. As stated in the NYT piece, Arianna Huffington is on Uber's board. She has a clear interest in shining as positive a light as possible on Uber at all times.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#358

Post by freyr » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:15 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #336

freyr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how much impact this will have. What were the consequences when Uber management was caught behaving badly in the past? In November 2014, Uber’s senior vice president Emil Michael suggested Uber hire a team of opposition researchers—equipped with a million-dollar budget—to dig into the personal lives of journalists who reported negatively about the company in order to dox, target and harass them and their f…

What actually happened: "Emil was pushing Ben to answer why it was OK for journalists to publish false stories or attack a businessperson’s personal life. Ben was quiet. It was a pretty normal conversation about hypotheticals. There was no malice or yelling or fighting. It was a chat between the two of them that I happened to overhear. The last comment that I heard was when Emil hypothesized about creating a coalitio…

So Emil talks about spending millions on PR to discredit their critics, and then his journalist friend writes an article discrediting a critic and contradicting everything he said. Sorry if I'm a bit skeptical.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#359

Post by st3v3r » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:17 PM UTC

hueving wrote: post #233

>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. In 2015, the venture capital world was put under the microscope when Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, claimed in a lawsuit that she was discriminated against at the blue-chip venture firm because of her gender — a case she lost. This paragrap…

Except this kind of behavior is endemic to the industry. Just about every woman I know in the industry has a story similar to this. All over Twitter, women are sharing their similar stories.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it hasn't happened. It means you haven't paid attention.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#360

Post by st3v3r » Mon, Feb 20, 2017, 5:19 PM UTC

Neliquat wrote: post #355

TorKlingberg wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying victims of harassment have some duty to seek out and tell people who are unlikely to believe them or care?

If it clearly benefits current and future victims to be taken seriously and get any help they may need? Yes, in my opinion. But that is a much more personal ethics call.

Except telling someone like the OP who clearly is not the kind of person that would believe the victim or try to get any help, and instead launch into a cross examination isn't going to do that. All that's going to do is make the victim feel even worse, and possibly discourage her from getting help or reporting at all.