>Uber has 12000 employees; 20 were reprimanded for sexual harassment. That's 0.001%

Well those are the ones that were actually fired.

http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/uber-h...

Seemingly:

215 issues investigated

100 dismissed

57 still under investigation

31 in counseling or training

7 reprimanded in writing

more than 20 fired

215/12000 is near to 2%, such a number of "cases", even if half of them are dismissed should trigger each and every possible alarm.

What percentage do you need it to be to acknowledge sexual harassment is a problem in that company?

Why not flip it around a bit: what percentage do you think?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for Uber or sexual harassment or any nonsense like that.

I (seriously) just want to know if you're advocating for giving every company with a > 0.0% harassment rate the Uber treatment.

I'm not the one dismissing a blatant problem based on a tiny percentage value. We've seen in various accounts that many incidents were swept under the rug because the person was a supposed "high performer". Then there is the recent email issue. This suggests that the problem is top-down in the company. When the problem is top-down, surely you deserve such treatment?

Right! The issue is management sweeping the allegations under the rug.

A lot of the hate towards Uber in these threads seems to be about the number of allegations, not that they were swept under the rug (in my opinion at least–I don't read HN religiously).

That, I think, leads us to where we are right now: a comment thread that's basically about "what's the minimum number of sexual harassments can occur before a company has a 'problem'?"

I'm not trying to pick on you, so I apologize if I come across that way.

> A lot of the hate towards Uber in these threads seems to be about the number of allegations, not that they were swept under the rug

If you have a large number of harassment incidents, it's completely relevant to question if there is a culture problem in the company (a problem which was denied outright by the parent commenter), and IMO this is what HN seems to be doing. Especially when you have accounts of Uber having a "frat" culture trickling down from the CEO and some senior executives condoning (this is probably too strong a word) such behavior.

My point is Uber isn't being treated unfairly by any means.

The rate is a red herring, it's the reaction when it was reported.

Imagine if your local PD reported that they only ignored .01% of 911 calls. Would you find that acceptable?

I don't disagree. The the parent comments focused on how often the harassment happened—not Uber's response—so it piqued my curiosity.

How many high level departures do you need to read about to acknowledge Uber is doing something about it?

Maybe if it went all the way to the top, and Travis Kalanick himself stood down for a while, maybe then you'd ease off?

Did I say Uber isn't doing anything about it? The parent comment dismissed a clear problem in the company and was being all revisionist now that TK is on a leave by saying that he's a ruthless business leader running a typical SV unicorn and is being treated "unfairly". I pointed out that he failed to see a problem.

Details matter--get this one right, please!

Twenty were _fired_ for sexual harassment issues.

Given what we know of Uber's internal culture, my money says that many, many more were counseled, reprimanded or whatever than just those twenty.

IIRC, of the 215 cases that were investigated, 20 resulted in termination, some 17 resulted in warnings (i.e. if HR hears complaints about you again, you're fired), and some 27 resulted in counseling. The rest were found to be either simple enough to resolve with a conversation, or about ex-employees, or lacking information, or unfounded accusations.

There's now a new anonymous hotline where employees can report harassment, so presumably any new reported cases will be investigated by the law firm that was hired for this.

Please revisit basic arithmetic.

  20/12000 = 0.001666...
  20/12000 ≠ "0.001%"

And that's only the count of people fired.

So far.

It's not the count of disciplinary actions of any sort, not even the count of cases that were investigated, and certainly not the count of incidents, full stop.

20 out of 200 cases found by the investigation. Who knows how many others were not logged or never reported.

Yeah, and at other companies, they're handled internally with respect and compassion. That's why you don't read about them in Medium posts where the employee repeatedly points to appalling failures within the organization.

Actually, you probably can. It's just that no one cares about "Initech corp" or whatever, while Uber's name alone guarantees headlines.

That's 0.2%, not 0.001%.

HR lie to multiple victims of harassment to protect the harasser. This does not happen in normal companies. This is not about the number of harassers, but systemic protecting of them.

Isn't the problem more about how the company handled the complaints? Your record on shutting that stuff down once it's reported should be flawless - Uber's isn't.

Sexual harassment cases are like cockroaches: by the time you see one, you can be sure there's lots more crawling around behind the walls.

20 have been reprimanded so far