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

Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 216 posts

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#121

Post by username90 »

SandersAK wrote: post #14

Her work has had profound impact and I’m excited to read her book. It’s amazing to still see the ramifications of her work today. For example, in this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the community. It’s a special sort of myopia dressed up as factual rational discussion but her work exposes that sentiment for what it is: fear of change, fear of women, fear of losing power over women…

> Her work has had profound impact

I don't see it, what actually changed? Uber changed a lot, but that doesn't matter if you don't work at Uber. The only thing we learned is that investors and customers doesn't care, Uber is doing better than ever and the people who caused the problems got extremely rich in the process.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#122

Post by edanm »

lordleft wrote: post #2

That first article she wrote, exposing the culture at Uber, was profoundly upsetting and an important moment in the history of our industry. Kudos to her for standing up to one the most egregiously hostile work environments I've ever read about.

Totally agree.

The only thing I'd add - I'm not sure of the exact timeline, or the exact causation chain - but I feel like Susan Fowler's article was one of the lead-ups to the MeToo movement. So in a sense, what she did wasn't just an important moment for our industry, but for all industries.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#123

Post by 08-15 »

itsmhuang wrote: post #81
Traster wrote: post #6

>“I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I remembered that I worked at a large company, one with a sizable human resources department,” I feel like someone needs to run an education campaign on what HR is and who it works for. HR is there to protect the business. They aren't there as some moral arbiter. If you reported sexual harassment to HR you are going to be part of an equation - is it better for the business…

If that's the case, who do you report sexual harassment to?

The police.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#124

Post by scott_s »

conradfr wrote: post #72
scott_s wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sexism I see in her post: Upon joining, her manager sexually propositioned her; a subsequent manager sabotaged her performance reviews and attempts at transferring to keep a woman on his team; they gave leather jackets to SREs as a gift, but would only get jackets made for men (I think this is what you refer to as "the shirts"); she recalls many emails that she does not describe; HR claims she is the problem in a…

Propositioning to her is not really sexism, but it's inappropriate and unprofessional.

Propositioning a woman who you manage at work is sexual harassment and sexist.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#125

Post by deeg »

MockObject wrote: post #67
deeg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Susan Fowler is a hero; it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage to hit the 'send' button while knowing her life was going to change. My niece is about to graduate into the SDE work force and I have little doubt that the culture is incrementally better because of Fowler.

> the SDE work force Google didn't help with this acronym.

Sorry, I'll be better with acronyms. Software development engineer.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#126

Post by andrei_says_ »

komali2 wrote: post #118
ecmascript wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it seems like you and I live in parallel universes. I don't believe these attitudes are still in place and I believe today's people have nothing to do with what happened 500 years ago for example. I am not responsible for what other people have done so I expect not to be treated as such. In my experience, men are subjects of sexism in the IT industry to a far greater extent than women are. We never hear of this…

> happened 500 years ago for example. I think you should Google when it became illegal in the USA for a man to rape his wife.

Or when women were allowed to vote.

Or, when men started taking women's last names at time of marriage, because now men are now "traditionally" becoming property of the new family.

Also, if this post was 500 years ago, then time flies fast. https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#127

Post by edanm »

ecmascript wrote: post #98
andrei_says_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trolling or are you unaware of the thousands of years of men and institutions treating women as property, as objects of desire or status, as cheap labor, and the fact that these attitudes are still very much in place? Cry me a river, women's rights movements and feminist culture push back against this millennia-long oppression and some men don't like losing their right to treat women like sh*t. Show me the 80…

Well, it seems like you and I live in parallel universes. I don't believe these attitudes are still in place and I believe today's people have nothing to do with what happened 500 years ago for example. I am not responsible for what other people have done so I expect not to be treated as such. In my experience, men are subjects of sexism in the IT industry to a far greater extent than women are. We never hear of this…

You might be right. Or you might be wrong.

Considering the fact that confirmation bias exists, you're predisposed to look for/notice examples that confirm your hypothesis (true or not). You're also predisposed to explain why other people might be painting a different picture (e.g. media are biased). Again, whether that's true or not.

So here's my question - considering that a huge amount of people seem to disagree with you - me heavily included (I've been in the industry 16 years) - why are you convinced you are right, and not missing something?

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#128

Post by wpietri »

conradfr wrote: post #72
scott_s wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sexism I see in her post: Upon joining, her manager sexually propositioned her; a subsequent manager sabotaged her performance reviews and attempts at transferring to keep a woman on his team; they gave leather jackets to SREs as a gift, but would only get jackets made for men (I think this is what you refer to as "the shirts"); she recalls many emails that she does not describe; HR claims she is the problem in a…

Propositioning to her is not really sexism, but it's inappropriate and unprofessional.

It is certainly inappropriate and unprofessional. But it's also sexism, in that for centuries men here have been using power to push women to have sex without regard to their actual interest. E.g., marital rape didn't become a crime across the US until 1993: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape#United_States

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#129

Post by wpietri »

magduf wrote: post #66
twright wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. > Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and…

[flagged]

There's no reason it can't be both. Your theory that sociopath executives only exploit people for money and not for other things they personally enjoy is not one that matches my experience.

And of course there's a long history of the "old boys' club" excusing sexist abuse with a "boys will be boys" mentality. So even if we didn't have a lot of evidence of how bro-y Uber was, your notion that they somehow escaped society's baseline level of sexism doesn't really stand up to Occam's Razor.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#130

Post by wpietri »

MockObject wrote: post #94
SandersAK wrote: post #14

Her work has had profound impact and I’m excited to read her book. It’s amazing to still see the ramifications of her work today. For example, in this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the community. It’s a special sort of myopia dressed up as factual rational discussion but her work exposes that sentiment for what it is: fear of change, fear of women, fear of losing power over women…

> this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the community Majority of what community? Are you noticing which comments are getting voted high, and which ones are downvoted into nothingness?

This community. Tech. HN.

Sometimes these discussions, as here, go relatively well. But that's relative. There's still a lot of misogynist nonsense, both subtle and blatant, and I can watch my antisexist posts get voted up and down. But quite often they go poorly. That's something that's easy to miss if one isn't intentionally antisexist. And since sexism is something guys can ignore if we want, it's especially easy for us to miss it.

Post reply on HN