Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

Camden, in the UK? Thanks for sharing your experience. Any sort of unionized IT environment in the U.S. is an absolute rarity, if such things exist at all. I don't deny that unions would add an additional layer of complexity and will have unintended drawbacks. But if there were union shops in tech, then at least there will be options for tech workers to choose between stability and rapid growth. Certainly providing the former will help in addressing the ageism in Silicon Valley.

> you do realise that sometimes women lie, right? Unless there was written evidence or some other mitigating detail that was unmentioned, it sounds like you wanted the boss to be automatically fired based on nothing more than an accusation from a woman. [..] > What you described is a classic he-said/she-said situation. Perhaps he did have a crush on her and was a bit creepy, and the girl decided she didn't like that, but he never propositioned her. It sounds like you nor your team really knew the truth, but assumed you did. So why is it surprising to you that nothing happened? You want guilty until proven innocent to apply to you, if one day the tables are turned?

Whoa slow down for a second. I gave a very brief overview of some events that related to the topic at hand. I'm not really sure how you took that to mean myself and my team didn't know the truth and we just assumed but I think you're letting your own, personal experience taint experiences others have gone through.

We knew for sure he propositioned her. I get that you had the opposite happen to you. That sucks and, unfortunately, there isn't a great way at dealing with things on either side (IMO anyway). Too many women are not believed and, at the same time, too many women can be believed.

Regardless, if it makes you feel better about my statements, here is just a few things I remember about my boss from approx a decade ago:

- He had done it to at least two other female colleagues one of which shrugged it off as a "that's how guys act" thing and the other, he actually told me she gets "very loose when she's drunk". As you can imagine all employee celebrations had effectively unlimited company drinks purchased for them at whatever restaurant served alcohol. He enjoyed getting everyone drunk.

- He explained, in great detail, what his penis looked like to all of us including the female employees. He threatened it pull it out multiple times but his brother stopped him (his brother directly reported to him). Then he went on to describe his brother's penis in great detail.

- He once hired a woman who he described as a "dirty feminist" and suggested to several of us that we be careful about "triggering her" if we wanted to go out with her.

- He had us interview a woman who was clearly unqualified for a job. After we declined her he repeatedly asked us to re-interview her with easier questions and that we'd "find something for her to do". This eventually boiled down to him calling her several times at home trying to re-re-reinterview her which she then stopped answering him.

- He once told me and a co-worker of mine that I'd be an amazing salesman if I lost some weight because the older women in corporate jobs would "wet themselves" to give us their business.

- He once told me he hired a PI and found out his wife was talking with a divorce attorney. So, he claims, he poked holes in all their condoms and kept stalling her from taking pregnancy tests later so she'd have another kid with him and stay with him longer.

- He had us do other various projects to try and win a customer's money by doing it for free then billing their larger client for the work. I balked at this and refused to do it then he'd log in and change our hours to be against the large contract.

Honestly I could go on and on. The dude was a sleaze bag. Some of this stuff he bragged to all of the male employees about. Trust me, he did it and trust me, many of us reported a lot of his crap and nothing ever happened beyond him being moved horizontally to a different position because he lost too many employees.

The codes of conduct are unfortunately sanctimonious non-sense to beat people over the head with. Those who champion them never apply the rules to themselves, and those who really want to harass pay them no heed. This was already the case with Adria Richards and her dongle joke offense, where she harassed a guy by putting his photo on Twitter and cost him his job, and got lauded for it by gender activists and news articles alike. While citing the code of conduct.

Real harassment is already illegal. Conduct policies can only serve in the gray area where people do not want to get police involved, but still want to exact some form of retribution and punishment, often by playing the politics game. It empowers the wrong people for the wrong reasons. It also creates the illusion that tech is particularly nasty, when the exact opposite is true: despite what activists claim, it is far more meritocratic than most industries, and far more reliant on tools and methods that emphasize work over personality and identity.

The propositioning, this is a fact of life: men propose, women dispose, and it's creepy unless he's attractive. Fact is, people like to date people with similar interests, they meet in all sorts of contexts, and some are more tactful about it than others. That doesn't mean it's automatically harassment to be flirted with outside of a dating site or bar night, or that it's never welcome.

One asshole manager is just one asshole manager, and such crudeness is the exception, not the norm.

Some people would love to receive just an ounce of affection and appreciation just for merely showing up, so being able to complain about it is the luxury of the desirable. Especially when, as I've often seen, it's paired with exasperated stories of how so-and-so just won't take the endless "clear hints" that have been made, but a polite but firm "sorry, flattered but not interested" is never actually provided. We are told we must be more empathetic, but the empathy for the socially awkward or the lonely, those who are bad at reading social cues, that's never on the table. All this talk of "safe spaces" seems to vanish once it's the real nerds and geeks, the 'losers' who need consideration.

Just keep in mind, HR is mostly a female-staffed endeavour, and the passive aggressive and underhanded interaction described is certainly not typical of male interaction styles. If it's a poster child for how not to behave, I don't think those griping about techbros and misogyny are quite thinking through the implications here.

It's ok to get a coke or water at a bar.