When someone senior gets fired, I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it's all PR.
So, yeah.
How can you make a statement like this without knowing anything about the details of the case? We have an allegation; a big one, but that's it. How many heads would you like to see in advance?
Let me ask you this: How many people in the HR department would you need to see leave before you'd feel comfortable having your sister work at Uber? What would you need to see to have trust?
Sexually-harassing manager who HR is too afraid to discipline meaningfully? High performer.
Manager who illegally threatens an employee to protect his manager? High performer.
Productive engineer who they never found a substantive reason to criticize? Not a high performer.
The ones who made the political maneuvers to garner political power within the organization are the "high performers". Fowler, on the other hand, worked hard, but didn't play the political game. She also reported a lot of people to HR, which probably earned her a lot of political enemies. Remember those "undocumented performance problems"?
(But I discount this interpretation a tiny bit because it relies on a person's account of their own performance. I think that her post is credible (she sure staked a lot on it), but I'm wary of all first-person performance claims. Nothing specific to her, just human nature.)
From what I've heard, it seems plausible that the alleged culture may exist at this company. But I don't take allegations to be true simply because they have been made - as is, in my opinion and in the opinion of the legal system of the United States, the correct perspective.
Why were reporters of harassment falsely told it was the accused harasser's first offense? Good question. There are several possible answers. Some more malicious than others. But they all end with several high level someone's losing their head.
I mean let's face it: Susan doesn't stand to gain much from publicly accusing her former employer of harboring and shielding sexual harassers, but she has a lot to lose. Heck, she probably has hurt her employment prospects quite a bit, since many future employers will label her as a "troublemaker" and refuse to hire her.
My guess: Susan has hard evidence that she can use if Uber comes after her with a defamation lawsuit. Otherwise Uber management wouldn't bother with this investigation (not to mention publicly announce that there is an investigation).
What I do want to say, however, is that in the United States there is, in fact, currently a culture that not only favors women making accusations of sexism and harassment, but also one that makes it taboo to express the normal standard of "innocent until proven guilty" in cases when the accuser is a woman.
To be clear, I am not saying that this accusation must be necessarily false or with some sort of ulterior motive. As far as I can tell, there are more than a few places in the US where this sort of thing not only exists but is considered normal, and that is a legitimate issue that needs correction ASAP.
But we still have the concept of "innocent until proven guilty", and we do have the effect I mentioned above in cases where the accuser is female. In this case, we have a blog post and nothing more, and so I think it is not only premature but also morally and ethically wrong to bring the pitchforks out immediately.
No there isn't, or we wouldn't be having this conversation!
Culture is tilted very heavily against the accuser and they are usually disbelieved and nothing is done. As in this case.
Note that "innocent until proven guilty" is only the criminal standard of proof, whereas civil law is "balance of probabilities" and the court of public opinion .. well, that does whatever the hell it likes.
At this point, considering both the detailed description and the public record showing that Emil Michael and others at the very top of Uber like to behave like drunken frat boys, that standard seems easily met to me.
Outside of court, things work differently. But we have other ways of dealing with evidence and trust, which wouldn't work very well in the courtroom.
But you already know this, and I can prove it. Suppose a close friend, who you trust, tells you that someone broke into his house and stole his TV. Are you going to set aside judgment about this situation until you can collect more evidence? Are you going to demand that he show you security camera footage? Probably not, and rightly so.
You believe your friend because of reputation. Your friend has staked your trust in him against his lying. You both know that if you find out that he lied, it will hurt your friendship, and you will be unlikely to trust him in the future. This is very much like the concept of precommitment in game theory. He has set up the situation so that if his claims turn out to be false, he's likely to suffer negative consequences. This allows him to produce evidence seemingly out of thin air, by tying his personal interests to the veracity of his claim.
Now look at the two parties in this case. Fowler has staked her professional reputation on the truth of her allegations. She posted this under her real name, on her blog which is the second Google result for her name. If she turns out to be lying, things will go very badly for her. Not only will it be difficult for her to find a company willing to hire her, but Uber could sue her for defamation.
Uber has staked... nothing. Indeed, they've done the opposite. Rather than cutting off their escape routes to establish credibility, they sacrificed credibility to buy an escape route. They publicly stated that their CEO is too unaware of the goings on at his own company to confirm or deny the allegations. They took a hit now so that they have more flexibility later.
It would be hard to overstate how bad this looks. There's no good outcome for the move Uber just made, which means that they're probably hedging against something even worse. Barring the possibility that Uber has no idea how to handle basic PR scenarios, the only reasonable explanation is that they know they're holding a weak hand.
Exactly. Given the risks, there should be some evidence. Perhaps it's not getting released at this stage to strengthen her legal position.
It is popular in the USA right now to silence rational, evidence based discussions. Now more than ever it is of vital importance that we stick to values of relying on open dialogue, reason, and facts. If these values only apply when they are convenient and comfortable for you then they aren't your values, but instead a rhetorical tool you abuse.
As a community of above-average intelligence and reason, I am disappointed to see hacker news commenters abuse their power to silence requests for evidence. If you approach things objectively you must always seek evidence. In this case the evidence shared thus far is character-based. That doesn't obviate the need or prevent the ability to have a rational, logical discussion about evidence.
Please, go ahead and silence this post as well. Show me how badly you deserve your current political situation and fractured nation. If this community behaves this way, I don't have much hope for the world.
>>It's not getting released at this stage to strengthen her legal position.
Did you miss this statement, or simply fail to comprehend it?
> Unless you have years of experience in law, you have no business scrutinizing evidence.
I'm glad to hear it. This is a valid option! We should rely on the experts and refrain from making any judgments based on this until those experts reach a determination.
Wait, no, you're just another person who shouts down any views that don't match your own, contributing to insular, prejudiced communities who never communicate or have compassion for each other. Enjoy the state of your country; people like you created it.
"Show me evidence" isn't a view
>Enjoy the state of your country; people like you created it.
I quite like Denmark these days.
Personally, I would like to give the other involved party a reasonable chance to try to respond with ether a refutation or with intended next steps before grabbing a pitchfork.
To be clear, I have no sympathy for Uber and have something like an 85% expectation that the current accusations as accurate. I do find value in erring on the side of giving all parties a full say and a full chance to institute some sort of remediation, if possible, before final judgment.
For example, many media outlets have picked up this story, and one such outlet came across today (wish I had saved the link) also mentioned alleged threats of physical violence from managers to employees. In my workplace, I've heard a manager joke "now that you've seen this, I'll have to kill you", which was clearly a joke but which could be portrayed as a death threat by a (perhaps rightfully) disgruntled employee.
When there are personal situations and emotional hurt involved, things can get skewed further than they need to be, even if the objective reality is already one to warrant raising an alarm.
Point taken, however, in its entirety. I could have communicated my perspective much better.