Susan Fowler, former site reliability engineer at Uber, now working for payment gateway company Stripe, released a blogpost which detailed an unpleasant account of the sexist treatment she received while working for Uber. You can read her story for yourself - it's a pretty absorbing tale. I'm just going to paraphrase some of the injustices she allegedly suffered.
- Fowler was sexually propositioned by her superior on her first day at work.
- Upon reporting the offence to HR, HR decided that the offender would not be penalized because he was a high performer and it was his first offense.
- Fowler was offered an option to transfer. However, if she opted to remain, she would risk a retaliatory bad performance review from her superior, and this review would be considered legit because she had refused the option to transfer. (Are you rolling your eyes at this crap? I am.)
- Subsequent complaints about the offender from other colleagues were similarly covered up with the "first offense" excuse.
- There's also some weird shit about leather jackets...
- Her Manager threatened to fire her because she reported his Manager to HR.
- Her performance reviews were altered negatively, blocking her chances for a raise, bonus and transfer.
Do I believe Fowler? I'm inclined to. It seems to be consistent with the overall "frat-bro" culture I've been hearing about at Silicon Valley. But just because I believe her doesn't automatically make her allegations true - and until this is confirmed by the other party, they remain allegations.
In all fairness, we don't have Uber's side of the story. And it's pretty hard to get at the moment considering CEO Travis Kalanick declared that he was going to conduct an internal investigation concerning Fowler's allegations, and said investigation is still ongoing. Coming from a guy who once described his company as "Boober", this strikes me as rather ironic.
But if - if Fowler's allegations are true, this is nothing short of disgusting.
Now, I've never been under the illusion that Human Resource was on the employee's side. I've long accepted that HR is on the side of management in most cases, and the sooner one comes to terms with this reality, the better. Even so, there ought to be limits. Covering up outright wrongdoing crosses that line twice. It's not so much that the offender in question was a hotshot who delivered consistently and that Fowler was just one of many engineers. This would have been as great a travesty if Fowler had been a janitor.
What are the consequences of this bad press?
As long as Uber continues to deliver quality services, I'm not about to support the #DeleteUber. campaign. Not that I think users shouldn't delete the Uber app - I think users should do whatever they damn well please. My objection to Uber's employment practices are not moral in nature. I don't care if Uber hires perverts with weird deviant fetishes in their spare time, wife abusers or utter assholes. As long as these people are good at what they do, all's well and dandy.And no, I certainly don't give a flying fuck that Uber didn't participate in the taxi strike by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance in protest over the so-called Muslim ban by the Trump administration, which was the entire catalyst for the #DeleteUber campaign. Not everything is about Donald Trump, dammit!
No, my objections are from an ethical and professional standpoint. It is unethical to discriminate in terms of anything but ability. It is unprofessional to subject your co-workers to sexual harassment, which by any objective standard is a huge no-no. Nobody works in a vacuum. Nobody is that good. And when somebody unwilling or unable to play nicely with others, gets put in a position of power, everyone suffers. The company eventually suffers. No matter how good you are, it's only half the picture. The other half of the picture is all about how well you work with others.
By that measure, Uber has failed. Not as a service provider, but as a company. And I won't be shedding any tears if they do go down due to talent leaving, because based on this account, it's nothing less than they deserve.
However, users don't care about all that. And neither are they required to. Uber's user base does not look likely to significantly decrease. They may suffer a dip in profits, but this won't be a deal-breaker for their continued sustainability.
The real fallout is likely to be in employment. If Uber doesn't review the way it treats its employees pronto, they may find real difficulty in retaining current talent, and hiring future talent. No self-respecting engineer wants to be rated on anything but ability. In fact, the average engineer probably will not thrive in a toxic environment where playing office politics is required to get ahead.
I don't generally take cabs, so deleting Uber from my mobile is a moot point. But assuming I was an Uber user, this would not cause me to delete the app. I would, however, not want to work in Uber at all.
Having just a fraction of Fowler's ability and experience, I doubt Uber would be interested in hiring me (though I might make a pretty good janitor) but even if they were, I think it's safe to say I won't be touching that cesspool with a ten-foot pole. There are few things I detest more than a tech company that doesn't even attempt to treat its employees fairly. I've worked for enough of these companies to feel a severe antipathy towards such practices.
Damage Control
Richard Levick, founder and CEO of Levick, suggested that Uber could repair the situation by hiring more female engineers. |
| Are you fucking serious?! |
Firstly, hiring based on gender rather than ability is just more sexism. Not what Uber needs right now.
Secondly, hiring females just to appease the public is insulting to both the hired personnel and the people being appeased.
Thirdly, until Uber's macho-shit culture is improved and Human Resource practices put under severe scrutiny, they have no business hiring any female.
Yep, something smells fowl at Uber, all right.
T___T
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