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Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#431

Post by tomlock »

hueving wrote: post #277
tomlock wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think women feel more or less safe around people who, given an egregious example of harassment, instead leap to the defense of the six silicon valley companies they've worked for or to criticise the NYT?

I don't know who the strawman you are attacking is, but it's definitely not me. >given an egregious example of harassment I upvoted her story. It's a terrible case and it needs to be investigated ASAP. >instead leap to the defense of the six silicon valley companies they've worked for or to criticise the NYT The comment you are referring to is in response to the NYT turning a serious, specific issue into some larger…

>I upvoted her story. It's a terrible case and it needs to be investigated ASAP.

Maybe, just maybe, you should put this above the fold next time.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#432

Post by sudosteph »

xanderjanz wrote: post #361
CydeWeys wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only baffling until you realize that it really just is horrible, blatant sexism of the worst kind. That entire department had turned so corrosively sexist (going from 24 to 3% women) that it needed to finish the job and get the rest of the women out by making it plain that they weren't welcome. We're talking about the people in power here being so horribly sexist that they have to force the women out in order to…

Thats not how I read it. They tried to push out the last few women, while scheming to keep them? Why hire them in the first place? I take it at face value, Oblivious Employees/Managers thought that not paying extra for women's jackets was equality .

> Why hire them in the first place?

Because they were qualified applicants and the hiring manager wanted to not get sued for blatant hiring discrimination?

These folks clearly don't deserve to be taken at face value. Otherwise the "Everyone is getting jackets" could have been properly taken at value to mean that everyone, including women were getting them. So we're past believing them at face value now, great.

So why did they really make this an issue? Probably some combination of:

1. Someone was playing politics and wanted a head pat for saving money (conversely, they did not want to reprimanded for going over-budget).

2. Women are often perceived as less assertive, so they thought they would be less likely to raise a stink over a "minor issue" like a free jacket. (The really pessimistic side of me says someone thought "Women don't wear leather jackets anyhow, it's not stylish enough. Why spend money on something they won't use?")

I don't for one second believe they actually thought "equality" came into play at all.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#433

Post by [deleted] »

brudgers wrote: post #352

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…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#434

Post by tomlock »

throwawaymaroon wrote: post #180
tomlock wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the sound your lady friends would be making if they knew the moral imperative you felt after reading that blog post was to defend the judicial system from comments on this website.

as a leftist... I can only feel the left is fucked. on the other hand, I am arguing in a thread that contains that complete altrightgarbletwat banned below. on the other other hand, your aggrieved-on-behalf-of-my-lady-friends stance is just so freaking overwrought and gross. you're attacking a position that no one has advocated for, with the exception of the altrightgarbletwat. go bug him. and final edit: by the way,…

You're responding to a post where I suggested a throwaway comment should be discussed with real people, irl. What position do you think I'm defending?

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#435

Post by lovich »

eropple wrote: post #410
theWatcher37 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a hateful and oddly specific comment. "I've read your comments" Yeah, ok buddy

He's not wrong. 'hueving's comment history around here pushes an extreme-right-wing viewpoint that is cloaked in just enough civility to make the decent folks I know around here reconsider whether or not it's worth engaging with him. (Many don't, because it's exhausting to be alternative-facted to death.) I wouldn't expect a woman--or anyone--to tell me jack and/or shit if I was comfortable expressing worldviews that…

It's an aside from this conversation, but why do you put a ' in front of user names?

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#436

Post by grzm »

lovich wrote: post #435
eropple wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not wrong. 'hueving's comment history around here pushes an extreme-right-wing viewpoint that is cloaked in just enough civility to make the decent folks I know around here reconsider whether or not it's worth engaging with him. (Many don't, because it's exhausting to be alternative-facted to death.) I wouldn't expect a woman--or anyone--to tell me jack and/or shit if I was comfortable expressing worldviews that…

It's an aside from this conversation, but why do you put a ' in front of user names?

It's a way of denoting a user name, similar to how @ designates Twitter user names. I suspect ' is common on HN because ' designates a symbol in lisp.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#437

Post by eropple »

grzm wrote: post #436
lovich wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an aside from this conversation, but why do you put a ' in front of user names?

It's a way of denoting a user name, similar to how @ designates Twitter user names. I suspect ' is common on HN because ' designates a symbol in lisp.

I picked it up from 'tptacek, I think. @ didn't make sense, so...

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#438

Post by brudgers »

danaliv wrote: post #425
logicallee wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the reporter didn't read the blog post, because it was beyond his attention span. Honestly, it just sounds like an editor assigned him to report. If he had read it he wouldn't have summarized it as "a lengthy post on her personal blog": he would have written that Fowler wrote about her experiences which began " On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over compa…

> Maybe the reporter didn't read the blog post, because it was beyond his attention span. I know Mike and I assure you that (1) he has the attention span to read a blog post, and (2) he was not just "assigned." He's on the tech beat. He lives in San Francisco, not New York. And he's paying very close attention to this story. Go look at his Twitter feed if you don't believe me. https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac

Curious if the reporter uses or has used Uber. If so, it is the sort of thing that traditional journalism standards would probably applaud disclosing as a potential conflict of interest. To me, this is particularly relevant for a reporter on the Silicon Valley tech beat who is likely to have past interactions with companies like Uber...given the reality that working the Silicon Valley tech beat for the New York Times, for whatever it entails, does not seem to entail breaking stories like Fowler's.

Basic Googling suggests there's plenty of basis for investigative journalism:

http://fortune.com/2016/09/15/apple-employees-sexist-environ...

http://fortune.com/2015/09/16/microsoft-gender-discriminatio...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/01/18/oracle-la...

http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/18/technology/facebook-discrimi...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/12/silicon-v...

What is curious is that there are not New York Times stories in the high ranking Google search results for relevant search terms.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#439

Post by geofft »

tlogan wrote: post #411
Joeri wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you there when the alleged facts happened? If not, it is definitely he-said-she-said. It is probable that things happened as Fowler claims, but we have no way of knowing without evidence. The article mentions the facts, which are basically who said what, since neither side has shared any evidence. Personally I'm not going to pass judgment either way without knowing more, but this is definitely going into my some…

I just came here to say that. I do not trust Uber and I do not trust her. And without evidence it is "he-said-she-said". I really do not know what to say here. Personally, I'm also worried that girlfriend of my wife working in Uber HR might be accused of "hiding sexual harassment" and subsequently just fired (because they are liability). In these cases kind of cases, "investigation by CEO" will cause low-level employ…

> Personally, I'm also worried that girlfriend of my wife working in Uber HR might be accused of "hiding sexual harassment" and subsequently just fired (because they are liability). In these cases kind of cases, "investigation by CEO" will cause low-level employees to be fired - even if they did nothing wrong.

That's a reasonable thing to worry about, but regardless of whether the accusation is true, the worry is about an incompetent and cowed CEO not doing his job, not about an ex-employee making an accusation without public proof.

If she's right, and an investigation by the CEO causes low-level employees to be fired and no real change of the company culture and the people responsible for it, those people were working for a bad CEO all along. If she's right, the behavior of people out-politicking their direct managers and throwing away useful projects is a ticking time bomb, and if she didn't say anything, someone would have, soon enough. Or some project would have failed and people would have asked questions, or a "high performer" would have not gotten their political way, or something. And the CEO would fire low-level employees for all the same reasons.

If she's somehow wrong, and the CEO gives into unsubstantiated public pressure and makes scapegoats out of good workers, again, I don't see how this will be the only time. Uber is, shall we say, not a company that is consistently the recipient of positive press. Something else will go wrong (say, marketing threatening to blackmail a journalist) and the CEO will again feel obligated to scapegoat someone. A good CEO should stand up for their employees.

You're worried about the CEO either way. You already were - you said you don't trust Uber. You need to help your wife's girlfriend find a better job where she's not at risk of being fired by an incompetent CEO.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#440

Post by wfo »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #414
nkoren wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When those "true facts" are the personal details of journalists and their families, researched and published specifically to make them fear for their safety. If you think that maliciously doxing people is perfectly fine as long as the dox are true facts , then you are a being a troll. If I have misunderstood your point, then I apologise and would appreciate clarification.

Doxing refers to identifying anonymous writers on the internet. So I'm not sure what you are referring to - Emil Michael was discussing reporting true but embarrassing personal facts about (public figure) Sarah Lacy. Specifically, the idea was to write articles like these, but with Sarah Lacy (founder of Pando) as the subject: https://pando.com/2014/02/27/we-call-that-boob-er-the-four-m... https://pando.com/2014/10/0…

No, the idea was to dig up private information about people in retaliation for them doing their jobs because the things they write don't reflect well on Uber.

The first article there is taking a public PR interview that someone chose to give and copy pasting it. He should be thanking Pando for it, they are simply repeating quotes he intentionally gave to the public with a little bit of editorializing.

The second one is downright nasty I agree, except for the entire section on Uber which is totally fine. Just quotes that Kalanick gave to the news media and the public willingly speaking as CEO of his company (NOT dredged out of his personal life) and 'information' about their business practices and NOT about the personal, private life of anyone. It also outlines illegal business practices, a culture of disregard for customer safety, disrespect for drivers, etc. Something Uber customers (and shareholders) have a right to know about but that Uber certainly won't tell them.

Quoting leaked personal emails is nasty. There's a line between private and public and exposing someone's private life because you don't like what they're doing in their public life is what's so disgusting and beyond the pale. Pando certainly does exactly that (they did it to Evan Spiegel in the article you linked), you could even say their entire business model is based on being scummy but that doesn't mean it's alright for Uber to. In fact it's much worse for Uber to. I don't trust Pando with personal information about my comings and goings (or trust them at all, with anything) or let them install an app on my phone with permissions. Pando doesn't forcibly alter the laws in every governmental jurisdiction it touches to favor their business. It's a huge difference of scale.

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