These are allegations by one party against another with zero data either way, why is everyone on the anti-uber bandwagon.
And again, there's no ambiguity. She says she has extensive records of this behavior. That's not something she can really walk back. In a situation where one person's word is pitted against another's, the most reliable way to buy credibility is precommitment. By writing the article that she wrote, she made a massive precommitment. She will be screwed if Uber takes her to court and she can't back up her claims. Uber, meanwhile, has said "We're looking into it." Precommitment is about cutting off your options. Uber has done the opposite.
So we have one side that just cashed out options for credibility, and one side that wants to wait and see. If you're trying to assess the situation rationally, there's only one correct play here.
She'll be crucified for saying bad things about a man in tech regardless. As we can see from the recently created accounts revving up the accusations of lying to promote her book.
But I do want to distinguish that from the crucifixion she'd receive if she were making it up. There's a difference between people being shitty online, and your professional reputation being destroyed. The former will happen regardless. The latter is less likely if she's telling the truth.
But fair point that even if she's being truthful, she's put herself at a lot of risk.
Otherwise we'll get her side of the story as written and a statement from Uber that's been rubber stamped by lawyers.
"One of Silicon Valley’s most famous venture capital firms prevailed on Friday over a former partner in a closely watched suit claiming gender discrimination, but hardly got away unscathed."
'"This case sends a powerful signal to Silicon Valley in general and the venture capital industry in particular,” Ms. Rhode said. “Defendants who win in court sometimes lose in the world outside it."'
Neither the fact that her claims were found not to be true in a court of law nor the evidence contradicting them mattered as far as the press or public opinion were concerned. Just the fact that she made them in the first place was sufficient justification for condemning the company she accused and their entire industry.
The fact that the firm not only didn't counter-sue, but also offered to settle with her in exchange for dropping her appeal, tells me that the evidence that she lied is not very strong. Everyone agrees that they took a reputation hit over this. If they had clear evidence that she committed perjury, wouldn't they be eager to clear their name exhaustively?
But second of all, I don't see nearly the kind of buy-in in Pao's case as in Fowlers. Pao sued. Fowler wrote an extensive indictment of Uber's company culture. IANAL, but it seems from what I've seen that it's hard to sue someone for defamation over a lawsuit. A scathing blog post is another story. In addition, there's inherent ambiguity in merely losing a lawsuit. Fowler's move is far more dangerous to her reputation.
SJWs made a good job, I don't believe anyone without a) seeing the evidence with my own eyes b) listening to both sides of the conflict.
Ultimately I get the feeling this is going to be one of those tough situations where if the evidence was still on Uber's computers it could have easily been removed by now. So if it was removed and Uber says there is no proof, do we then side with Uber? Or do we stay on her side? There may not be a good way to proof in favor of either party.
Outrage can score you some serious Internet popularity points, particularly when your claims are about men being sexist pigs. Don't ask for any evidence, just grab the pitchforks!
That being said, it's tempting to just believe everything Fowler wrote and hope for sweet justice. We all love a good story, after all.
Unfortunately, what makes for a gripping story of justice in the face of wrongdoing doesn't always align with reality, and it can be difficult to convince the lynch mobs of that fact.
"Guilty until proven innocent" is how our courts work, and rightly so. But, as a layperson, there's nothing wrong in assessing the evidence and saying: "the chance these claims are false is vanishingly small, given all the publicly available information about the author of the blog post, Uber's culture, the heavily-documented problems faced by female developers in SF and elsewhere, and the very very low proportion of these sorts of claims that turn out to be false".
:)
It's a civil case and the standard of evidence is "preponderance of the evidence".
um....
This is far from the first time we've had people complaining about Uber's toxic engineering culture. Using stack ranking, managers building fiefdoms and undermining each other's projects... these are hardly secrets.
At this point there is so much smoke that yes: it is entirely appropriate to believe there is a fire.
The only thing unique about this case is it is a woman and her first negative experience was a manager sexually harassing her. The rest of her post perfectly matches Uber's reputation as an engineering organization.