I am an Uber survivor

Additionally, it's in Lyft's or other detractors best interests not to fake additional claims. This is a scandal that will grow on its own, as/if more women come forward. If Lyft et al is caught faking claims, they discredit all the claims and make themselves the bad guys instead of Uber. All Lyft has to do is sit back and watch Uber dig themselves deeper into the hole they're in.

As other posters have also touched on, there is a history of men (and women) doubting and minimizing abuse claims made by women. This is not a good mindset to take as it minimizes the women's experience in favor of a corporation or individual who is already in a more powerful position than the accuser. By minimizing one accuser, we make it harder for women as a whole to speak up against abuse, which is not acceptable.

When Peter Thiel says "single digit millionaires have no effective access to the legal system" [1] on the surface that sounds laughable and out-of-touch but I think there's a lot more truth to this than most people would like to admit.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.de/peter-thiel-hulk-hogan-gawker-...

There's a great article published by Salon called "The Confidence Gap" which talks about this issue. Women do seem to have less confidence than men in western societies, but that's a greater social issue.

If you are a female engineer who finds out you are underpaid, go find a new job and ask for the salaries you discovered your male counterparts made. You'll most likely get it.

..and in general, you should switch jobs at the 2 year mark if you're young and fresh out of school. That way you don't get stuck as a Java/.NET/Ruby/limited-language developer, you expand you skills and you know to ask for larger increases with each job and get the current market rate. If you get stuck with the standard 2%~5% cost of living increase each year, you'll be under market value very quickly.

The wage gap is mostly a myth. When there is a gap, it has less to do with gender and more to do with the larger socialite taboo of knowing other peoples' incomes. If income/wages were transparent at every company, we'd see much less income inequality.

Just a tiny fraction of people are able to look at their "output" in a way that isn't being almost completely shaped by their "input".

If all their inputs says that their behavior is okay, they'll regard it as okay.

To wit: Uber is a large company with fantastically deep pockets, a gaggle of high-powered lawyers, access to a strong media/PR machine, and a lot of glamour/adoration in the Silicon Valley/startup culture. But those strengths are being carefully neutered!

There's Susan Fowler's approach, which is first and foremost to make sure everybody knows she has documentation to back up her claims. That's a very clear message to Uber that 1) they never ever want to be in a discovery situation where she could start issuing subpoenas, since she's let them know that she knows where to get the damaging documents they don't want coming out, and 2) leaves them guessing just how much documentation she has, and so unsure of how to publicly reply: if they try to downplay the incidents she describes, or attack her record, they don't know whether she might produce proof that they're lying about it.

Then there's the approach here, which is detailed enough that the people it targets inside Uber certainly know who the author is and who she's writing about. But it does not divulge any identities with certainty to the public at large, which carries some similar "I left it at this level of detail, but maybe I could divulge a lot more if you provoked me" threat, but also makes it very difficult for Uber to attack her personally. To do so they'd have to out her and details of her employment record, and depending on the details that might put them obviously and publicly on the wrong side of a bunch of employment-related law as well as make them look like bullies.

I would barely be able to function, and maybe just wouldn't be able to, after some of the things that have been described as happening at Uber. I cannot imagine being able to not only call them out publicly, but also put together such a good strategy for doing so, and I have immense respect for Susan and "Amy" for managing it.