There's no reason it can't be both. Your theory that sociopath executives only exploit people for money and not for other things they personally enjoy is not one that matches my experience.

And of course there's a long history of the "old boys' club" excusing sexist abuse with a "boys will be boys" mentality. So even if we didn't have a lot of evidence of how bro-y Uber was, your notion that they somehow escaped society's baseline level of sexism doesn't really stand up to Occam's Razor.

>Your theory that sociopath executives only exploit people for money and not for other things they personally enjoy is not one that matches my experience.

I think I wasn't clear enough: I'm really pointing at HR, not at general company management. You're absolutely right: corporate executives definitely do exploit people for things other than money (such as sex). I'm only looking at the situation where some manager is sexually harassing someone, and then HR protects the harasser because he's high-up in the corporation. HR isn't getting anything out of this harassment, other than keeping their jobs and furthering the financial interest of the corporation.

I do get your point about the boys' club thing, but I do think it's pretty common for female-led HR departments to also protect abusers. To me, it's just pure sociopathy: HR wants to protect the corporation at all costs, and the person running HR simply doesn't care about the victims at all.

Ah, got it. Good point. Thanks for clarifying!