That part wasn't an excuse for harassment. And it also wasn't about programmers' salaries as justification. He was using rhetorical hyperbole to emphasize that the utilitarian benefit of Uber for brown and female riders is still true. That was a response to tyre's comment, "So now you have a company that isn't actually what it pitched itself to be.

Yes, harassment is harassment but it looks like yummyfajitas was responding to a specific business claim by tyre.

Part (but not all!) of the reason for this is that not every $150K/engineer is getting harassed, only some are, and some are doing the harassing, and in particular, those who are doing the harassing are, by all reports, not actually helping Uber's social mission effectively. If you're willing to sacrifice something about engineers to help Uber change the world for the better, sacrifice the people who take time out of their workday to proposition the people they manage, or who ignore their boss because they're trying to get themselves promoted, or who create and cancel projects to create the illusion of work, or who interpret people who sabotage their teammates as high performers. (And sacrifice them by firing them or better yet not hiring them, not by harassing them.)

I don't give a fuck how much that woman was getting paid, it is not conditional on her receiving sexual harassment from her supervisors. It is conditional on her doing her goddamn job, and making people feel unsafe by directly propositioning them obviously interferes with that.

As a society, we've made the decision that traffic regulation, gun regulation or preventing the sale of loose cigarettes does justify the police gunning people down or choking them to death. (Note that after Eric Garner and Philando Castille, no one advocated eliminating the rules that got them killed.)

So why is an unpleasant work environment somehow one of those things that are unjustified no matter what?

"So why is a hostile work environment somehow one of those things that are unjustified no matter what?"

Words matter.

Furthermore, the type of people that want to invest in companies that decrease systemic racism and harassment experienced by their riders should also be concerned about similar problems at places closer to home. Framing these abuses as though they are not all different manifestations of failing to recognize other people's humanity on some level really undermines any progress.

Specifically, if you think (1) "There are things in the world that are really bad, and no amount of greater good justifies them. Harassment is one of them." but you also favor cigarette regulation, then you must implicitly think the inevitable shooting/strangling people/other violence is NOT one of those things that are "really bad and no amount of greater good justifies them".

Or alternatively, the stated principle (1) is not your real justification and merely a post-hoc rationalization.

I suspected the latter. But I was wrong - as it turns out geofft is internally consistent and also opposes cigarette regulation, firearm regulation, and all the other rules who's enforcement involves doing things that are "really bad and no amount of greater good justifies them". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13725372

Regardless, this is whatabouttery. It's true that we have much more serious problems in the world than workplace harassment, like poverty and slavery and famine. That doesn't mean that the less serious problems aren't still problems.