It looks to me that people are piling on, just because.
Other than the fact that corporate HR "investigated" the literal screenshots of Susan being sexually propositioned by her supervisor the day she joined the company and determined there was nothing wrong, right? I sure fucking hope that skews form the mean when it comes to harassment.
Your words are chosen so carefully. "Anecdotal...looked credible..." The same words I'm sure HR had in their oops-we-got-caught presentation for Travis.
If they look carefully chosen it's because I'm trying to keep an objective perspective on this. Susan's account looks credible, and as far as I can tell Uber messed up, but how do you extrapolate that to a systemic problem?
This whole thing looks like a typical internet pile-up. Uber screwed up in a specific instance, and now everybody wants to take a free hit.
>I sure fucking hope that skews form the mean when it comes to harassment.
Well does it? Out of the countless shrill blog posts and news articles on this, did anybody investigate if this is really a systemic problem at Uber?
Let's be clear on what a systemic problem is. The organization has many levels of controls, with employees in different departments to independently ensure that as the organization functions and moves forward, it is doing so in the right way. In this case, the HR, the Line Managers and others have individual responsibilities to ensure that sexual harassment is not tolerated. But each of these controls failed. Worse, it seems like they collaborated to undermine this. This is a systemic problem, as many parts of the system are functioning incorrectly. Now, is this a frequent problem or one off? Usually, systemic problems are frequent as there is reason to believe these controls will be violated / broken again.
And at the end of it all, you're still just using a sample of one to justify a conclusion. Not only a sample one, but biased sample of one giving one side of the story. Again, she seems very credible, but because you weren't there, and you don't know the full-story you really have to refrain from asserting strong conclusions.
What is happening here looks like typical behaviour of an internet mob on a righteous crusade and it makes me uncomfortable, because I've seen this countless times. Inevitably real people end up getting hurt because you want to virtue signal to others and take some cheap shots..
From Susan Fowlers' article:
>When I joined Uber, the organization I was part of was over 25% women. By the time I was trying to transfer to another eng organization, this number had dropped down to less than 6%. Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn't transfer were quitting or preparing to quit.
Sounds kinda systemic.
My problem with conspiracy theories is that they always take the following form:
1) Event X occurred.
2) I can't imagine how X could have happened other than if Y is true.
3) Therefore Y is true.
Here's how it looks like with UFOs:
1) I saw a streak of light travelling very quickly across the night sky.
2) I cannot imagine what terrestrial phenomenon could have caused it.
3) Therefore Aliens.
I don't know why the proportion of women in that specific organization fell. Was it because sexism or sexual harassment caused them to quit? Was it because of differential hiring, where over a period of time more men were hired? Was it because more women got promoted out of the 'organization'? Was it just a statistical glitch? I don't even know what an 'organization' is in that context.
And whose job to investigate that would it be? I don't think you understand how public opinion works.
It's not exactly reliant on (nor has it any designated 'investigators' for) that sort of thing. It just does what it will
Not mine. What's your point?
>I don't think you understand how public opinion works.
I know how internet mobs work.
The metrics I'd like to look at would be harassment complaints, harassment claims on anonymous survey for witnessing, being a victim of, or participating in harassing behavior, and reports from HR outlining frequency of complaints and the results of those complaints.
If you could compare these metrics to industry standards I think you could make a credible case one way or the other. Eg Uber employees report harassment more frequently on anonymous surveys than to HR. This suggests Uber culture does not sufficiently encourage reporting harassment. Or, uber HR rejects sexual harassment claims more frequently than similar companies, suggesting they have problems investigating such complaints, etc.
I also found the story of sexual harassment at uber believable and outrageous, but that doesn't mean it's a systemic problem.
What kind of world do you live in? Because the real world doesn't provide you any of these metrics or statistics so you will very likely never see this kind of "proof" coming out from any workplace that's been accused of not fighting against sexual harassment.
Science is beautiful but there are places where you can't gather the data to do it, this is probably one of these cases.
How about more evidence than the anecdotal experience of one person. Like I said - she seems credible, but it is only one side of the story and one singular instance.
>Science is beautiful but there are places where you can't gather the data to do it, this is probably one of these cases.
So the alternative is you just make up your own conclusion?
Untrue. There are many, many accounts from current and former employees that say it is pervasive. That is far from "nothing."
[1] http://fortune.com/2017/04/10/wells-fargo-clawback-stumpf-to...
"Tolstedt, on the other hand, is losing 54% of the $125 million pay package she was originally entitled to when she retired."
How savage! Cutting Tolstedt's pay to several tens of millions of dollars.
Those who loathe Uber can only wish to witness Kalanick learn humility by holding only the ashes of Uber he ignited and then burned!
Of course, maybe there's a lot of interest because of seemingly irrationality of management in handling this situation?
Human nature!
.edit: down-vote city for calling HNers human? Or what? Just curious. Don't really care about the points.
.edit²: removed a bit of the blanket from that statement. Pardon the initial poor wording!