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Comment by giis | Hacker News Reader

Looks like they hired him without complete background check. Its good attempt. This will look like PR stunt unless they step-up and take action on their long-term employee(s) - regardless of high performer or not - who might have involved in the harassments.

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Most background checks only look at criminal records. So something that is conducted privately would not even show up.

Anyways, like many others I feel like this guy is just a scapegoat considering the fact that he has only been at Uber for a month. On the other hand, what is Uber supposed to do here? They found out somehow that Google has done an internal investigation that he has been accused of sexual harassment before. If they do not ask him to resign, people would be outside with their pitchforks knowing that they have a possible sexual offender working for them.

I think it's insane that "allegations" of harassment are enough to get you fired. That sets the bar far too low, below any standard of evidence.

Replace google with some shit company that didn't want you to leave and you'll see what I mean. I warned my boss at my current job that my last one ain't gonna be too happy about me leaving since I was nearly irreplaceable. I'm still betting they said terrible things about me, but what kind of bullshit evidence is that?

According to the article, he was not fired because of the allegations, but fired because he did not disclose the nature of his departure from Google.

When you're a high up enough executive you need to be trustworthy - his first action with the company proved that he isn't.

He resigned on his own terms. I know executives pull that crap all the time to avoid getting "fired" but the fact is he quit voluntarily

There is something called "lying by omission" or telling the truth, but not the whole truth.

Also, if you are told to resign or you will be fired, that's not resigning on your own terms.

The last few places I interviewed at specifically asked this. "Have you ever been involuntarily terminated, or voluntarily resigned to avoid termination?"

If Amit didn't reveal that he had forced out (whether he officially resigned or was fired is a distinction without a difference) of Google after an investigation of serious charges against him, then that's a good enough reason to fire a top executive.

Businesses are very risk-averse.

HN should really ban throwaway accounts on sensitive threads.

In any case, if you don't at least know that the response to your comment will be that allegations of harassment more often result in retaliation against the accuser than punishment of the accused - between the multiple Uber fiascoes, Casey Affleck, Brock Turner, etc. - then I find it hard to believe you're trying to listen in good faith.

I think the more plausible occurrence is that Kalanick knew about it before hiring him, then hired him anyway, and only fired him after the Susan Fowler story came out. Surely someone of Kalanick's stature would have been able to find out about this through back channels when he was vetting Singhal.

There probably wasn't any way to know. Guessing someone at Google just leaked it, perhaps related to the Waymo feud with Uber.

Or perhaps his accuser, or someone familiar with her, saw the timing would have been optimal to shoot an email to an Uber board member.

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