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Comment by harryh | Hacker News Reader

Why would someone write an anonymous blog post but then declare that they are:

  1) A woman in her late 20s
  2) Who used to work at Uber in Engineering working on
     database and networking scalability
  3) Went to a top private college
  4) has a Masters in Information Systems
  5) previous to Uber worked as a Data Analyst in a tech
     company in the Midwest and left when it was acquired
     by a Chinese firm
  6) Is 5 foot 7 Caucasian with dark hair

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Because it probably doesn't matter if ex-coworkers at Uber figure out who it is. She just doesn't want this story attached to her real name when people Google her.

It's also possible that some of that information is slightly twisted, to throw people off.

Or maybe she wants people at Uber to know who she is, but not the general public.

Perhaps because her name would be indexed by the search engines as this story is shared thousands of times? Would you like the #1 search result for your name to be a sexual harassment story?

There's anonymity in numbers. Even with Uber's relatively small female workforce, the high turnover rate and unspecified timeframe makes it likely that there are dozens of potential candidates. This sounds specific, but it's really just a lot of datapoints that already correlate heavily with the sample group (Engineering is large at Uber, elite private colleges are strongly represented at startups, average-heighted white women with dark hair are statistically average).

Furthermore, any of those descriptions could be fabricated to throw someone attempting to deanonymize her off.

I'm curious if HR will out her, or if there's so many harassment complaints lodged with HR that even so doing makes you effectively anonymous. You say that's unethical and/or illegal, but it's Uber HR, brought to you by the company that jokes about paying a million dollars to dig up dirt on your critics [1], and that lied to a judge about paying investigators to dig up dirt on someone suing them [2], [3].

[1] https://pando.com/2014/11/17/the-moment-i-learned-just-how-f...

[2] http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/15/12201134/uber-ergo-admit-l...

[3] http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/25/12274122/uber-ergo-investi...

Internally, she's almost definitely identifiable. I think the parent was talking about public identifiability, seeing how the public doesn't have access to Uber's employee records.

And yes, unethicality/illegality doesn't appear to be an impediment for Uber. In fact, they seem to revel in skirting the law.

Did a search of all current/past Uber employees based on public data mainly from LI, found only 6 people with those degrees and none were female. Did another search for people who worked as Data Analyst and worked at Uber came up with 6 different people again all male. As other answers suggest the information could be twisted, but definitely not "slightly".

What was your motivation for doing this?

As soon as someone doesn't want to be associated with a story critical of anything, the salt is implicit isn't it?

Considering the last few stories that have come out about how women are being treated in tech, what I've observed (and been enraged by) I'm pretty sure this happened/is happening still.

Are you just trying to verify the legitimacy of the post? If someone finds the courage to speak out, why would you then try to out them for doing so?

Does it even matter if it's faked if most of us could totally believe it's not? There are bigger problems being highlighted here than this individual incident...

But what do I know... Do you work there? Is someone trying to fsck with uber's valuation or something?

Are you just trying to verify the legitimacy of the post? If someone finds the courage to speak out, why would you then try to out them for doing so?

Because if it's not legitimate then it's worth knowing that? To me, this story seems far more suspicious than Fowler.

Does it even matter if it's faked if most of us could totally believe it's not?

Perhaps a variety of fake incidents have caused you to believe things that aren't true. Maybe the bigger problem being highlighted is also fake.

I recently had a conversation with someone telling me about a rape on a college campus. I told her I was skeptical. She said it was so common, why am I skeptical, and supported her case that it was common by citing Duke, Mattress Girl and UVA as examples. She was shocked when I suggested she google those incidents. Repeated fake incidents can cause people to change their priors.

So yes, the reason why "most of us could totally believe it's not" actually matters quite a lot.

What would be the motivation behind creating a 'false' rhetoric such as the experiences of women in tech?

I've certainly seen this happening / had to deal with it, I do feel that this is still an issue and something we need to improve. While it's not an across the board problem, I suspect most women working in tech would agree with me; the story, which I don't stand behind as as legitimate, is very similar to the sorts of things I've seen going on.

I wish we could just make it very hard for either false (I've seen this case happen, demonstrably, too) or true claims such as these to occur.

In most cases, talking to leads/mgt BEFORE these things get really bad would have helped and that's something we should be making easier..

I don't know the motivation. Perhaps someone feels harassment is a real problem, but can't find any real examples of it, so feels the need to tell lies for a good cause? Perhaps someone merely wants to harm Uber? They certainly have no shortage of people who hate them.

But regardless of motivation, the facts show that many people are willing to fake stories just to support their "team". Sometimes they do this at great personal risk and cost, e.g. lighting their own truck on fire or making false police reports. As an example of one category, there have been many such incidents since Nov 7:

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2016/12/23/denton-man-s... http://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016/12/14/hate-hoax-nyc-musl... http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/S-Jersey-man-ar... http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/ann-arbor-police-womans-s... http://patch.com/new-york/gardencity/man-who-drew-swastikas-...

So it's hardly beyond the realm of possibility that such a person took an hour to write a medium post in an incognito window for such purposes.

Sure; I can't fault any of that. Even if this was a link to a chapter of a fictional book though, I'd be saying the same thing.

I don't accept this as truth, I assume it's fiction as no one is standing behind it. My only point was, that in general, none of us are terribly shocked by stories such as these, and that's what I wanted to talk about.

I really do hope that less of this goes on than is reported, I sadly feel that the opposite is true -- and that's from personal experiences not unverifiable stories on the internetz.

Real or not, no one's shocked because we just had a major eye-opener (Fowler) so recently.

I normally disagree with everything 'yummyfajitas posts, and I personally dislike Uber due to the number of well documented unethical actions they've taken. Additionally, I think this type of story has played out so many times that no one thinks the story is truly unbelievable.

In light of all of that I still think this is the kind of story that needs to be verified before action is taken. Just off the top of my head I could think of a number of reasons for someone to create a false story in this situation ranging from semi-believable, a competitor like Lyft adding more fuel to Uber's current PR fire, to conspiracy theory level, China trying to hurt a foreign company so that Didi Chuxing has an easier time growing.

Its unfortunate, but the internet allows unethical actors to craft and spread unverifiable stories with little effort but a high payoff due to the emotions of everyone who reads them. The same feeling that leads us to want to take action after reading this, because it would be genuinely terrible if true and we want to believe people, is the same feeling that leads anti vaxxers to believe fake science they find on the internet.

It absolutely does (need verification).

As for the false news/polarisation thing... Am I the only one starting to panic just a teeny little bit?

I am trying to verify its legitimacy, how can you silently accept such a critical post on face-value, no I don't work there. Giving voice to false claims intensifies their illegitimate power and in societies that this prevails that same power can be used by propagandists to advance their goal, so it's not about Uber it's about giving homage to truth, as every person's responsibility should be.

I've not accepted it as genuine at all; I'm saying that regardless of if it's real or not, the point here is that if it was it wouldn't surprise us..

I'd really really like it if we could get to the point where if stories like this came out for any company, we would be more surprised by them..

As for the illegitimate power (I'm not even sure what that is...) and propagandists comments; I don't really see how this fits into twist of those..

It's a story about some bad behaviour at a big tech company.. Is it a big deal? Individually; nah. As a general trend in tech that I've certainly experienced; yeah. Is it part of a propagandists plot to turn your country into a communist superstate and increase their "illegitimate power" -- I doubt it..

> I'm saying that regardless of if it's real or not, the point here is that if it was it wouldn't surprise us …

It would certainly surprise me. I simply cannot imagine working with the sort of folks Amy describes. I'm not saying that such folks don't exist — it's a big world — but that I have never in my almost two decades of work in our field run into them.

Now, maybe that means I haven't run into them. I can accept that. And maybe it means that Uber is particularly bad in this regard. I can also accept that.

I don't know if this story is true or false: I honestly don't. It's probably worth investigating; certainly, after Susan Fowler put her name on some allegations of despicable behaviour it probably is.

If there are pockets of our field where this is considered normal, they need to be eliminated. But it does not accord at all with my experience of trends in our field.

> As a general trend in tech that I've certainly experienced

What do you mean by that? Do you mean you've experienced an upswing in these incidents, or an upswing in the number of news stories about these sorts of incidents?

There are numerous incidents where broad media coverage of unsubstantiated claims cause public outrage over exaggerated incidents. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_controver... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria for examples.

Perhaps trend was the wrong word. I simply meant that for all the female employees and coworkers I've had over the last few years, almost all of them have confided a story such as this to me when we discuss women in tech.

Now, maybe that's part of life. I'm sure most of the males I've worked with have a story about being bullied or getting into a horrible fight with a coworker at least once, and perhaps by putting women experiencing these things into a certain category we're also part of the problem..

shrug -- I just don't like seeing people I like or am responsible for in some way getting a hard time; hopefully I won't see much more of it.

>Does it even matter if it's faked if most of us could totally believe it's not?

With the popularity of people crying "fake news" and the study recently hitting the front page of HN/Reddit that if you repeat a lie enough, people are more inclined to believe it [0], it bothers me to see a sentence like this. Yes, it matters a lot whether or not it is legitimate. "Fake news" never seems to matter to individuals if it supports their point of view.

Do you "totally believe it" because you've heard similar stories that are equally unverifiable or because you've had similar experiences? If it's because you've heard similar stories, how credible are those stories? Do you believe it because it has been repeated again and again? The last credible story along the "identity politics" line that I can remember offhand is "Donglegate" which I don't even take seriously, because it made a huge mess out of an immature joke that was overheard.

This whole "Even though it was a lie, I was trying to start a conversation!" is such a common tactic it's become a meme at this point and the fake victims "trying to start a conversation" are beginning to hurt the credibility of actual victims.

I pass no judgement on the credibility of the article - as I haven't read it. I came across this comment from /newcomments

[0] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022537177...

No. I don't.

I meant that in the context of the overall experiences in women in tech, not women at uber or anything more specific than that.

Let me try to rephrase.. Would you be shocked that this sort of thing goes on? I would not. My only point was that the bigger problem is exactly THAT lack of surprise, and not the legitimacy of the post; and that's what we should be talking about.

I don't trust anything about the post, even if it was intentionally labelled as fiction; I'd feel the same way.

I would be shocked that a bunch of high-IQ, high-conscientiousness individuals would repeatedly engage in dangerous activities with a high probability of getting caught, and in such easily provable ways.

Putting on my evil villain hat for a moment, if I want to harass women it won't be at my workplace. It won't be at my favorite bar in Pune where I get laid regularly. I'll take the bus to Mumbai, head to some bar in Andheri where no one knows my face, and do it there. That's just a sign of my rational self interest (and evil villain hat) combined with a demonstrated ability to rub two brain cells together and think a step or two ahead.

>I would be shocked that a bunch of high-IQ, high-conscientiousness individuals would repeatedly engage in dangerous activities with a high probability of getting caught

There's a long history of precisely such individuals doing precisely this sort of thing.

And in any case, there is not a high probability of getting caught, for reasons that your comment illustrates. Women who make these claims are not believed.

I can't work it out either. I've had staff who I really liked and knew for years, who were TOTALLY normal be reported to me by other males on the team for harassing female staff..

He admitted his behaviour and he couldn't explain why he did it; was a pretty rough experience for everyone..

I understand your reasoning but I don't think it takes into account the motivations of those that harass. Harassment is about control. Taking the bus to Mumbai to harass some random woman you don't know and are unlikely to ever see again isn't as powerful as harassing/controlling women in your every day life.

"listen and believe"

Please don't do this. Nothing can be gained from this.

Not everyone is on LinkedIn.

Yeah, lets be real here. The idea that all (or even most) current and past Uber employees are findable on LinkedIn is laughable at best.

if you went looking for my work history you wouldn't find it, it's not documented anywhere public. You would have to have access to some completely internal/non public databases.

Even if she did have a LinkedIn, she'd probably just leave Uber off of it.

You think Uber has only 6 "Data Analyst"s?

Yeah, I read the first paragraph and thought it sounded wicked fake, way too storied up. Maybe Lyft hired a writer.

Having some people know who you are is very different from having the Internet know who you are. Even if she got doxxed (let's hope shoe doesn't), it's unlikely the fallout would be similar.

Why would someone read this whole post, and the main takeway they get from it - enough to post a hackernews comment - is to question the poster's claims of interest in anonymity. (And - let's be honest - therefore trying to discredit her whole story one chip at a time).

People like you are the problem.

The thing that strikes me, is that regardless of if this is 'verified' or not, that this sort of thing is not beyond the imagination or, indeed, the experience of most of us who have female staff/coworkers..

Even if the story is totally fabricated, the bigger point here is that this sort of thing really does go on, and I'm really not sure why. I've had staff who were totally normal and who I actually quite liked whom I've had to let go / perm shitlist for behaving in ways I could never have predicted them to, as soon as I added a female engineer to the team..

What's up with all this? Sad as it is, I always have a sit down with new female staff on my teams and try to let them know that they can come to me with anything like this which goes on and we'll work out how to deal with it together. It's a sad fact, but I've never discussed this topic with a female techie who doesn't have at least one story..

It's on all of us to stop this shit from happening.

Just... Have each others backs, folks!

Not a problem at all. People should always question credibility of random things on the internet.

Even though you just tried to #identity_politic someone with blind belief, I'm not going to say people like you are the problem. Just tone down your zeal a bit and approach the problem rationally.

Branding someone's concern for the well being and liberty of others as "identity politics" (or in other context "political correctness") suggests an interpretation of the world where the only reason anyone would empathise with others is to win credibility and acceptance from peers. It's a very cynical worldview.

That's not remotely close to what the parent comment was saying...

Being genuinely puzzled by someone's actions is not by definition an attempt to discredit them. I was also puzzled by her detailed description of herself. It wasn't clear to me wether she believes that it isn't enough detail for uber to identify her, or if she doesn't care if uber is able to identify her she just wants to be anonymous to the public. Neither of those cases undermine her story even slightly.

Its not discrediting, its asking for proof. There are some very harsh accusations here. And if there is one thing that I learned about the Internet, that its full with trolls. Just look at some Reddit dramas on what lengths people will go to troll others.

The proof is all the other women who are going to come forward.

The individual cases don't matter, because that can always be pushed off with "bad apple" arguments.

What matters is the trend. And there is DEFINITELY a trend. Every female Uber engineer will tell you that.

Indeed. Fowler already came out in public and said this is a systemic problem. If you accept that Fowler is a credible source, which I think is a fair assessment considering she's a talented and well regarded engineer who has nothing to gain from accusing Uber of such serious claims, then any other women who come forward can be given the benefit of the doubt that their experiences are real.

Also if you know women at Uber, you can also establish a trend.

>People like you are the problem.

Not exactly healthy discourse.

People have had a decade to get used to the idea of institutional discrimination, unconscious biases, unintentional discrimination and sexism.

I don't expect the average rural Trump voter to have become aware and gain an in-depth understanding of these concepts over that time, but well-educated, well-connected, big-city techies that frequent hackernews have NO EXCUSE.

There is no room for healthy discourse when the default reaction from so much of the privileged side is to pick apart, dismiss, and discredit.

If your instinct when you hear a woman coming forward with stories of sexism in the tech industry is anything but to listen, understand, and empathize, you are part of the cause, not the solution.

I can both listen, understand and empathize while at the same time engaging my critical thinking skills. The former does not preclude the latter.

From the description of circumstances, Uber will already be able to identify the author. Assuming they go after her (as they are often wont to do), it only increases her credibility in the eyes of the public, damaging Uber further.

She should hope they go after her. That ensures retaliation damages.

Most people would prefer the damage to not take place.

Its one thing for the people who know her to know it was her, its another thing for the world. That is why.

in fact it's maybe even better if her colleagues know it was her since that may empower them to start taking action against uber or start taking action the next time they see this shit happen.

She put enough information so that the parties relevant would be able to identify all the actors but the parties not involved can't. That's not strange - she wants to tell her story and have it attached to her by identity but not name.

Because any woman who speaks up under their real name is bound to get harassment from gamergate types and other misogynistic asses who have nothing better to do. Fowler is already getting harassed online.

Additionally, assuming that Uber isn't stupid enough to coordinate a smear campaign of their own (although it happened to Ellen Pao)[1], she's safe. And if someone does doxx her, it means either: (a) Uber decided to doxx her or (b) one of the Uber employees that participated in her harassment decided to doxx her. Either way, it looks even worse for Uber and could set them up for a lawsuit.

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Feminism/comments/594rad/exreddit_c...

Seems to me the author is trying to characterize herself as boring, intelligent, hard-working, skilled and educated. A model employee. An asset to the company.

As opposed to the standard MRA characterization of all women as flighty, bitchy, whiny, screechy, slutty, dumb, "cheaters" who slept their way to the top somehow using their devious womanly wiles (but won't sleep with the MRA in question because they hate men).

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