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Interview with Susan Fowler

nytimes.com

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Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#111

Post by bertil »

santaclaus wrote: post #67
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #5

Her background is pretty non-traditional. Such people tend to be independent and consequently have a lot of integrity -- they do the career destroying things that almost nobody does. The only woman on the board then, Arianna Huffington, who had vowed that the culture of “brilliant jerks” must end, had been trying to help Mr. Kalanick by advising him to sleep more and meditate. But he caused another kerfuffle when he…

> Her background is pretty non-traditional. Howso? There are quite a few Ivy League physics grads in the bay.

I suspect the original comment was referring to the home-schooling and intense Stoic education early on. Ivy League physics grads are indeed pretty part-and-parcel; people who had to go to Dean's office to get in, less so.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#112

Post by BadassFractal »

skybrian wrote: post #104
BadassFractal wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 behav…

Saying it's "fundamental hardwiring" is not science, it's speculation at best. Figuring out what's cultural versus genetic in humans is a difficult scientific problem that can't be solved by vague analogy to other species. If you want to be "real" just avoid pseudo-scientific claims altogether. If you think there's science behind something at least cite a paper.

Not posting links to papers also doesn't automatically make what I said any less true.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#113

Post by crispyambulance »

rectang wrote: post #101
crispyambulance wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fowler did a very brave thing. Most people who do "blow the whistle", however, end-up with nothing more than a termination and blacklisting. People like to think that silicon valley corporations are very different than their traditional counterparts, they're NOT. HR will always, always, ALWAYS protect top-performers and the interests of the company in front of literally anything else, especially individual employees.…

The lesson you want us to take away from Fowler's victory is to accept that the status quo is impervious, to give up hope and never try? How about we instead look at what Fowler did right so that she didn't get "termination and a blacklisting"? Then we can perhaps accelerate the progress that whistleblowers bring to industry and society.

Fowler is paying a _very_ high price for speaking out, not everyone can do that, and I don't think this should be expected of anyone. It is a sacrifice. Will her actions pave the way to make such overt sexual harassment less common in corporate environments? Perhaps.

I can tell you right now, however, that HR departments will _NEVER_ have the back of employees. They will do whatever perfunctory actions are mandated by law, but they will eject whistle-blowers and anyone else who they perceive as a "problem" at the first convenient opportunity.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#114

Post by fpoijasw »

abalone wrote: post #63
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…

> The Waymo lawsuit only happened when it did and only effective as it was because of the chaos Susan Fowler initiated. This seems a bit much. Why on earth would Google wait to sue? Their case was not at all dependent on internal turmoil at Uber. Fowler deserves a lot of credit but there was significant chaos pre-blog-post (#deleteuber) and after (Greyball). Uber was having a new crisis every other week it seemed, al…

I think there's a misunderstanding of TKs character. At least internally, whenever there was a critcism externally against Uber whether it be deleteuber or greyball our engineering team only grew more determined. The more backlash from the media it made us closer together and stronger. TK was the most inspirational after external media attack and even after Waymos lawsuit he displayed vigor and confidence that we are the righteous ones and that alphabet is going to lose this battle against us. There's a misconception that these attacks weakened our culture or confidence in our leadership. It's the opposite it was a signal that we were moving fast and changing the world, and TK was at the helm defending us.

This narrative and solidarity broke down soley due to Susan Folwer. I really want to emphasize this point. Her blog post is the only piece of controversy that really made ourselves question whether we were doing the right thing. The only time we saw our great leader unable to justify our hypergrowth and the only time I personally saw him break out in tears, was the all hands discussing Susan Fowler's blog post.

So again please don't discredit Susan Folwer's blog post.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#115

Post by sctb »

dominotw wrote: post #84

All China has to do is encourage this and America will self destroy its own software companies . Meanwhile America can do no such thing to China due to their censorship and tight controls. Lets see what happens.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#116

Post by [deleted] »

poothrowaway wrote: post #90
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…

>Uber couldn't be bothered to buy them for women Let it be known the manager who made the decision not to buy jackets for women only worked at Uber for a year, made a magnificent mess of SRE, and went back to Google with a more senior position. This same guy made a data science manager (who has a PhD in theoretical chemistry) take notes during his meetings, and who coincidentally was one of his only female reports. F…

[deleted]

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#117

Post by quadrangle »

atomical wrote: post #45
quadrangle wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just saying this generally, not really weighing in on this case, but: If you've ever been the subject of an interview or two, there's a decent chance you've had the common experience of not being presented as you expected. Experienced folks know how to basically tell journalists what words to write because journalists otherwise put all sorts of strange things and misinterpretations in. You certainly can't put the…

Why else would they interview her?

I'm not saying there's any malice here!

The interviewer and interviewee have the same core understanding: describe stuff about the person relevant to the human-interest angle about the interviewee.

What happens is as an interviewee is that you sit down with an interviewer and talk to them like you would meeting anyone, tell them about yourself and how you came to be involved in whatever the interesting thing that led to the interview. Then, you read the article in surprise about how they put some weird spin on a random little side-note or anecdote or made a connection between two things you said that aren't really connected. And it becomes obvious that they did those things because they actually don't know you at all and are grasping at telling an in-depth story about someone they just met and knew nothing about really.

Go ask anyone who's been interviewed this way. You'll find it common that the published article presented things in ways the interviewee thinks are weird, inaccurate, just confused or out of proportion.

The only real point is: don't assume the interviewee has any responsibility or desire for promoting themselves in the style of the article. That's not likely the case, even if it happens sometimes.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#118

Post by dang »

atomical wrote: post #103
dang wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Concentration camps? Good grief. Please don't. It is a poster child of what we don't want: off-topic, political, ideological, generic, inflammatory. Did I miss anything? Here's a tip: if we end up at "Stalin and Mao" we've reached internet information death. That's one of the black holes whence no thread emerges. If a tangent points there, please do it somewhere else.

> Concentration camps? Good grief. So I shouldn't talk about this here but you're going to start with me? Please follow your own suggestions. Did I miss anything? Please refer to the guidelines: > Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. > Here's a tip: if we end up at "Stalin and Mao" we've reac…

I'm sorry to have come across as condescending. Communicating this stuff is hard! I've probably had to post something like this at least a thousand times, and the statelessness of it can get frustrating.

Meanwhile, even though commenters here are supposed to know the site guidelines, you may not have had any idea that you were doing anything wrong. If so, I can understand how this would be an off-putting way to hear about it.

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#119

Post by abalone »

fpoijasw wrote: post #114
abalone wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Waymo lawsuit only happened when it did and only effective as it was because of the chaos Susan Fowler initiated. This seems a bit much. Why on earth would Google wait to sue? Their case was not at all dependent on internal turmoil at Uber. Fowler deserves a lot of credit but there was significant chaos pre-blog-post (#deleteuber) and after (Greyball). Uber was having a new crisis every other week it seemed, al…

I think there's a misunderstanding of TKs character. At least internally, whenever there was a critcism externally against Uber whether it be deleteuber or greyball our engineering team only grew more determined. The more backlash from the media it made us closer together and stronger. TK was the most inspirational after external media attack and even after Waymos lawsuit he displayed vigor and confidence that we are…

> So again please don't discredit Susan Folwer's blog post.

I didn't. I said you're over-attributing the Waymo lawsuit to it. You didn't respond to that.

As for whether Fowler was the sole factor in "TK's" ouster and none of the other crises had a material impact, well, that's a strong claim. Benchmark's letter alludes to cavalier business practices as well: "[Operating without a CFO for over two years] cannot be justified, given the scale and complexity of the business, and is symptomatic of the broader problems with past management practices."[1] There were more problems at Uber than just morale.

[1] http://fortune.com/2017/08/14/benchmark-employee-letter-uber...

Re: Interview with Susan Fowler

#120

Post by BadassFractal »

AnAnonyCowherd wrote: post #82
BadassFractal wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 behav…

> 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'm sorry, but did you just make a generalizing statement linking a difference in behavior to sex? Logically, you can invert your comment to say that females use sex to get power. Neither of these things can be said. Ever. Isn't this sort of thing precisely what…

http://paulgraham.com/say.html
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