Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interview with Susan Fowler

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 130 posts

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#51

Post by farnsworth »

spamizbad wrote: post #15
adamnemecek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are overssimplifying the situation. Iraq and NK are/were both dictatorships but the similarity ends there. Cultural differences go very far.

No, you're over-simplifying this by assuming we can resolve a humanitarian issue with a war. We can't. Even conservatives like Steve Bannon know this. The Iraq War plus its aftermath has a death toll approaching 1 million, 1/6th the size of the Holocaust. Conflict with North Korea will be even worse.

Exactly, we don't even want to give Puerto Ricans the support they need, so what's the chance Trump won't drop some bombs, declare victory, then leave millions to rot?

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#52

Post by fizixer »

bogomipz wrote: post #38

I wish the article connected the dots of her path from studying physics at the University of Pennsylvania to working as an SRE at a San Francisco tech company. It seems like that might be an interesting part of her story. I loved the anecdote of her buying her own leather jacket when Uber couldn't be bothered to buy them for women. Brilliant. The title is a bit unfortunate in that it makes her sound like an Attorney…

I feel for what happened to her at Uber but, no offense, her description of her physics achievements appeared to be borderline bullshit (e.g., things like studying for quantum field theory exams a year and half after getting introduced to college level physics and math for the first time, after picking philosophy as a major originally. And then proceeding to blog about how everyone can do this because she can).

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#53

Post by pfarnsworth »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #26

What ar we creating celebrities out of people who blogged about their experiences? She made a courageous public statement. Should she get to move forwards in her chosen technical career with this shadow behind her, or must she be turned into a social crusader? That weirdly distorts incentives of behavior.

You're wrong, she wants to be the social crusader. She has the ear of Silicon Valley and she believes that she must use this opportunity to educate us on things that she believes are important. She's not wrong.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#54

Post by vidoc »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #26

What ar we creating celebrities out of people who blogged about their experiences? She made a courageous public statement. Should she get to move forwards in her chosen technical career with this shadow behind her, or must she be turned into a social crusader? That weirdly distorts incentives of behavior.

> What ar we creating celebrities out of people who blogged about their experiences?

Because ambivalence and good measure doesn't seem to be trendy anymore. This applies to other subjects, sadly.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#55

Post by jakelazaroff »

Good profile overall, but I think it should have delved a bit more into her visible accomplishments before the blog post. This wasn't some random person levying these accusations, it was someone who'd spoken on multiple occasions and written a book for O'Reilly. Had she had a lower profile, the blog post might have been received very differently.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#56

Post by fpoijasw »

Hey engineer at Uber here. I'm a male engineer started working at Uber two years ago. I'm seeing a lot of comments here that is discrediting Susan Fowler's accomplishments in taking TK down, and I would like to correct the notion that the culture/TK himself/Waymo is what brought TK down.

To preface I've work both at Google as an engineer, and frankly speaking the engineering culture at Uber didn't differ all that much. Both org had the same amount of soft misogyny, politics, and HR that protected its highest performers. In fact a lot of characters mentioned in Susan's blog post works at Google today. So what led up to the downfall of TK? Susan Fowler's blog post. What she described is what a lot of people go through in every company, but she was brave enough to post her experience using her real name. I'm willing to bet if she never posted her blog post none of this would've happened, and it would've been business as usual at Uber.

Susan Fowler exposed the weakness in our culture and it catapulted an internal French Revolution where every head had a possibility of getting axed. This put our executives in a disarray and naturally external enemies decided to strike at us when we were weakest. The Waymo lawsuit only happened when it did and only effective as it was because of the chaos Susan Fowler initiated.

So please stop discrediting Susan Fowler, what she did was really the catalyst, the trigger, for Uber to set course on a better path. It's just too bad she wasn't able to stay and see the real impact of her words. Ubers a great place to work now.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#57

Post by goseeastarwar »

fizixer wrote: post #52
bogomipz wrote: post #38

I wish the article connected the dots of her path from studying physics at the University of Pennsylvania to working as an SRE at a San Francisco tech company. It seems like that might be an interesting part of her story. I loved the anecdote of her buying her own leather jacket when Uber couldn't be bothered to buy them for women. Brilliant. The title is a bit unfortunate in that it makes her sound like an Attorney…

I feel for what happened to her at Uber but, no offense, her description of her physics achievements appeared to be borderline bullshit (e.g., things like studying for quantum field theory exams a year and half after getting introduced to college level physics and math for the first time, after picking philosophy as a major originally. And then proceeding to blog about how everyone can do this because she can).

That deafening silence is hopefully encouraging you to reflect on why you decided to write this response.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#58

Post by alphonsegaston »

fpoijasw wrote: post #56

Hey engineer at Uber here. I'm a male engineer started working at Uber two years ago. I'm seeing a lot of comments here that is discrediting Susan Fowler's accomplishments in taking TK down, and I would like to correct the notion that the culture/TK himself/Waymo is what brought TK down. To preface I've work both at Google as an engineer, and frankly speaking the engineering culture at Uber didn't differ all that muc…

>Ubers a great place to work now.

I’m sorry, but companies’ cultures don’t change that fast and it’s not even really clear how much power Kalanick has actually ceded. Was the entire chain of command from the HR staff that tried to shut women up to the execs that passed around a rape victims medical records cleared out?

I don’t doubt that a place like Google has many of the same problems and agree that Fowler should get a great deal of credit for her courage. But actual change is a long and far more difficult process than what has happened at Uber.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#59

Post by BadassFractal »

baron816 wrote: post #32

I think the one good thing about the Harvey Weinstein scandal is that it has brought to light that the issue of sexual harassment is not just a Silicon Valley problem, it's a problem that is almost universal in our country. I've written here several times here that articles similar to this one are more likely to backfire as they help perpetuate the idea that the tech industry is hostile to women and they should stay…

Let's be real, males using positions of power to obtain sex isn't exactly a US-only problem, it's fundamental hardwiring of virtually every primate species.

I don't think any country at this point is particularly amazing at containing those primal tendencies, but happy to be proven wrong.

Either way, just like with violence and crime, we need to continue the journey of education of what is and is not acceptable behavior in the civilized world in 2017 and hope that that, combined with the legal system, keep those primal urges (that evolve much slower than our technology and our moral progress) in check.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#60

Post by greenyoda »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #41
atomical wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stalin and Mao supplied Kim Il Sung in the Korean War because they didn't want democracy to spread to Asia. China and Russia are still obstructing the US with the same goal of preventing democracy. If we don't do it no one will. The Kims have proven their ability to retain power. Some people think death is better than having to live in North Korea: http://www.worldtribune.com/senior-north-korea-official-and-...

That’s a quite peculiar read of the history. The real story of Korea is something more like: -The United States propped up the corrupt and vicious right-wing ruler Syngman Rhee, who was responsible for thousands of extrajudicial killings of his political opponents. And also not a real fan of democracy -His reign of murder and repression created a context in which, Kim Il Sung, by opposing him, could build on his repu…

"So neither side really fighting for or against the spread of democracy."

In fact, South Korea continued to be ruled by repressive dictatorships until 1987:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korea#1979

Post reply on HN