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Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#41

Post by JumpCrisscross »

blawson wrote: post #32
gkoberger wrote: post #19

One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is not your friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to protect you. It's to protect the company.

Sure, but what's the alternative, especially in a case like this? Your manager is engaging in harassment, HR is where you "should" raise this. Her following protocol also makes her case stronger I would argue. You gave your company the chance to make things right. After that I'd say the gloves could come off if that's the route you want to go.

> what's the alternative

Contact your state's labour commissioner. If you received stock or stock options, contact your state securities commissioner. Otherwise, suing is tried and true.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#42

Post by chimeracoder »

obstinate wrote: post #35
gkoberger wrote: post #19

One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is not your friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to protect you. It's to protect the company.

I hear this truism a lot, along with "companies must put the profit obligation first." It's only true in a very limited technical sense. When someone is harassing you, "protecting the company" generally means making sure that person doesn't harass you or anyone else, often by firing them. Because if they don't, the company is at risk of massive liability. That doesn't mean they can't be terrible at their jobs, or fai…

It's true, and to some extent the problem is that you hear about the bad HR stories, but rarely the good ones - in which they quietly take action, but nobody except the parties involved ever notice. When HR does their job right, nobody other than those people even notices that they're there.

That said, lots of companies have HR departments that are terrible, so it all depends on whether you think yours is trustworthy and competent or not.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#43

Post by rajathagasthya »

linkregister wrote: post #13
dkarapetyan wrote: post #9

I've always wondered if the high profile fallout actually causes any change. From anecdotal evidence I feel like nothing really changes. It's mostly people in some bubble that get really upset and then a week later everyone forgets what exactly they were upset about.

The Uber CEO did withdraw from the U.S. President's economic council after widespread outcry from a vocal portion of customers and a high proportion of employees. This is not an example of a major change, but it did demonstrate that Uber is responsive to public opinion.

I think it's fair to say that Uber only takes corrective actions only when there is public outrage. Otherwise, breaking the laws and unethical behavior is all well and good.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#45

Post by searealist »

I have a hard time believing HR really behaved the way they are portrayed in that article. They really claimed that if she elected to stay in her current department she should expect to receive a negative review from the boss she rejected for a sexual relationship? This is just too much. And for someone as savvy and with as large an internet presence as the author, I can't imagine she would accept this resolution. The crowd is quick to crucify Uber here, but we have seen similar claims before that have turned out to be false or exaggerated greatly. It's also suspicious that the claimant tends to only last in jobs for a median of 6 months before moving on and has just released a book. This deserves a full investigation and we will have to wait and see what evidence surfaces.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#47

Post by meritt »

gkoberger wrote: post #19

One thing that every employee needs to understand is that HR is not your friend. No matter how friendly or helpful they seem, their job is not to protect you. It's to protect the company.

If HR had actually done their job, Kalanick wouldn't be spending a Sunday night struggling to reattach his unicorn's horn.

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#48

Post by kevhsu »

farnsworth wrote: post #31
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #29

>Ms. Fowler’s account is another sign of Silicon Valley’s struggle with women’s issues and diversity in a male-dominated engineering environment. That's a hell of a claim since this is a "typical corporate America" type of problem.

Well there are some typical corporate American companies that have this problem. But I would argue that (almost?) all tech companies have this problem.

What corporate American companies don't have this problem?

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#49

Post by jacobolus »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

I wonder how much impact this will have. If they will discipline and fire people and put processes in place to keep the problem fixed, or if they will make a lot of noise about investigation and saying how terrible they feel and not have anything change. Someone here once asked me how I differentiated between a corporation run by people and a corporation structured as an institution. In the latter there are processes…

If you‘re interested in what you call “corporations of people”, one classic sociology paper is about Medici Florence, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~snijders/PadgettAnsell1993.pdf

Re: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee

#50

Post by sjg007 »

searealist wrote: post #45

I have a hard time believing HR really behaved the way they are portrayed in that article. They really claimed that if she elected to stay in her current department she should expect to receive a negative review from the boss she rejected for a sexual relationship? This is just too much. And for someone as savvy and with as large an internet presence as the author, I can't imagine she would accept this resolution. Th…

Citations needed.
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