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Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

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Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#161

Post by pfarnsworth »

mandevil wrote: post #129
mlindner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If having Uber in my career profile makes me look bad to a prospective company then I don't want to work at that company. If the company policy I'm applying to is so toxic that they feel the need to purge people for minor things then I would never want to work there.

Excuse me, sir or madam. You seem to have accidentally included sexual harassment in the category of "minor things." I presume that you are not such an awful human being that you actually believe this, so I would suggest choosing your words more carefully in the future so that people don't accidentally consider you terrible.

Google had many reported cases of sexual harrassment. Is having Google in your resume a bad thing too?

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#162

Post by pfarnsworth »

skewart wrote: post #135
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to do both with far fewer than 12,000 people. I suspect that the bulk of those people are doing something else.

> You should be able to do both with far fewer than 12,000 people. You're absolutely right. You could probably run Uber with a tenth of that headcount. The thing is, at a lot of companies - and I'm guessing Uber is the same - there's no incentive to have a small team. In fact, managers are incentivized to have a bigger team. Having more reports, and more levels of management, under you is a status symbol. Plus, peopl…

No, you couldn't. Uber is a global company with operations in almost 100 countries, and in several hundred cities. Each city has their own team of employees running the business.

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#163

Post by Jach »

moomin wrote: post #126
kbenson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article doesn't discuss the seniority of the fired employees. It's very hard to distinguish between scapegoating and actually working to fix the problem without that information. It's probably important to consider that even with those numbers, you wouldn't know whether it was scapegoating or not. All they would do would be to allow you to make assumptions, which is more about your preconceptions of what you th…

Sooner or later you've gotta decide who to believe. The person with nothing to gain by reporting it, or the company with everything to gain by denying it. Besides, it isn't hearsay, the allegations have been made by some of the victims. Hearsay is something else.

Not really. I can continue living completely agnostic of this drama, it's none of my concern, a belief either way pays no rent. If I wanted to work there, then I'd have to decide, but as a casual user there's no need. Downvoters: do you drink coke products?

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#164

Post by logical42 »

macspoofing wrote: post #34
hueving wrote: post #7

I wonder if events like this turn Uber employees who leave around this time into a market of lemons. Obviously nobody will put on their resume that they were fired for sexual harassment so hiring managers will have to wonder if a person who left Uber recently was fed up or fired. Seems risky to hire a recent Uber employee at this point because bringing a toxic sexist into the company can inflict massive damage.

>Seems risky to hire a recent Uber employee at this point because bringing a toxic sexist into the company can inflict massive damage. Jesus. They are still people. You want to ostracize them from all society and prevent them from earning a living in their chosen career? 'Sexual harassment' is also a catch-all term that can encompass all kinds of actions. It could involve a clueless, inexperienced 20-something asking…

As a counter argument, complicit nazis who did not have a direct hand in the gas chambers are also people, but I doubt many people sympathize with their ability to live their lives normally after the war.

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#165

Post by macspoofing »

watwut wrote: post #159
macspoofing wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I neither accept your 'reality check' nor the ridiculous binary choice your presented where everyone just knows how to act or radical feminists need to run university workshops (completely ridiculous). Social interactions and social boundaries are largely a learned behaviour - it is not something that is innate in us. Because there is a huge emotional component when dealing with things like attraction, love, infatuat…

If it is normal to not know the difference, then they need class on it. No reason to have random girls be harassed cause duses are too emotional to know difference. However, they are both well aware and in enough of emotional control. Seriously, if your emotions are that out of control, you are not suitable to live independently. I might be fine to use taxes to pay you counselling through.

Why would you think I was referring to 'dudes'? I was referring to 20-somethings, men and women. Women can be (and are) dumbasses too.

I think you and I are too far apart on this. I disagree with your thought process and your conclusions.

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#166

Post by bogomipz »

macspoofing wrote: post #137
bogomipz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Is there? I've seen people claim this but I haven't seen any evidence for it." Can you explain why you feel that 20 people being fired as a result of a company-wide investigation into to sexual harassment doesn't constitute evidence of a problem?

Because it's 20 people out 12,000 and I (we) have no idea what it is they were fired for exactly. We don't know the context, the exact infraction, and how it was dealt with initially. I can't even tell if that rate is high, average or low when compared with any other company of similar size who would create a special sexual-harassment probe to investigate itself.

>"Because it's 20 people out 12,000"

What are you suggesting by this, that there is an acceptable margin for unacceptable behavior?

>We don't know the context, the exact infraction, and how it was dealt with initially."

We do know the context, the context was an investigation into sexual harassment conducted by an outside law firm.

We know that 31 people are in counseling/training and another 7 were given warning as a result of the investigation. So by comparison the incidents with these 20 were determined to be serious enough that they warranted termination instead of counseling or a warning.

>I can't even tell if that rate is high, average or low when compared with any other company of similar size who would create a special sexual-harassment probe to investigate itself."

I think the fact that 58 people (20 + 31 + 7) needing to be addressed retroactively instead of proactively at the time of the complaint is a pretty good indication there might be a large problem.

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#167

Post by AlwaysRock »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #64
djsumdog wrote: post #14

Feels somewhat symbolic at this point. The massively corrupt shop decides to fire a bunch of people who max out the acceptable level of corruption. Even how they hired Holder feels like a PR tactic; a man who was against all the US torture techniques ( http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-rescue-of-eric-holder... ) and yet prosecuted no one. He is the image of a career, PR frontman. I'm still going to take Lyft ove…

I disagree. This is the proper course of action when you have a harassment problem. Fire people. It's fine if you want to take Lyft... I have been choosing Lyft from the beginning. But I applaud Uber for doing this investigation. I'm honestly baffled that people are criticizing them for it. If there are people the investigation missed, that's a problem, but it's a separate issue and we have no evidence of it at this…

People who have decided they dislike uber are unlikely to ever decide to like them again. Firing 20+ people who have sexually harassed other employees is objectively a good thing for a company to do.

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#168

Post by randyrand »

tehwebguy wrote: post #103
randyrand wrote: post #57

I just want to say, for every person in disgust of Uber and their sexual harassment scenario, there are many more of us that just don't care. Of course, most that don't care don't comment. So the comment section is not a good view of public opinion. Just the vocal minority.

Hard not to reply with sarcasm. Other people not caring about sexual harassment makes it worse.

If no one cared, the problem would be solved. That's simple logic right there.

An odd unexpected consequence of this is that by trying to get fewer people to care, it is in fact helping to solve the problem.

Re: Uber Fires More Than 20 Employees in Harassment Probe

#169

Post by kevinburke »

randyrand wrote: post #158
kevinburke wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harassment encompasses a wide range of behaviors besides "asking another adult if they want to have sex with you," from _continuing to ask someone after they've turned you down_, to inappropriate touching, to quid-pro-quo, where career advancement, or good work assignments, are tied to sexual favors. These offers don't need to be explicit. It's difficult to do your best work when you don't feel safe in the workplace.…

But none of those other behaviors happened at Uber. It was literally someone asking another adult if they want to have sex. How childish are we to get upset over this? I can understand that feeling uncomfortable is not good. Lots of things make lots of people uncomfortable. Maybe the issue is that Americans become uncomfortable too easily? Or do not know how to handle feeling uncomfortable?

> But none of those other behaviors happened at Uber

That's false; of course they did. She was told by HR that after her manager propositioned her, she had to switch to another team, or likely suffer a poor performance review.

In another conversation with HR she was told that CA is an at-will employment state and she was on thin ice for reporting her manager to HR.

In other words she was punished for declining a proposition.

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