Uber board director and CTO under pressure in sexual harassment investigation
recode.net
recode.net
> But he is a loyalist
This explains a lot.Especially since, in this case, the problem is happening in the CTO's organization, the hand-off isn't enough. It's definitely the kind of thing you follow up on, and see through to resolution. Out of pure self interest, a CTO would do this to protect the productivity of the org, and maybe also because it's obviously the right thing to do.
I'm terrible at Regex myself but you were probably looking for C.O (which is also bad because it would match things like C<O.)
https://regex101.com/ for the unaware
C[A-Z]OUsing your logic, if I'm in charge of HR and simply sweep complaints under the rug, it's not my fault because other people should know what is going on.
Brilliant.
Now, if you have one employee go off the rails, it's not the CTO's fault for knowing in advance that the one employee had problems. But a department-wide issue? Yeah, it's the CTO's job.
They do not know what it is to be a CTO; pretending does not count
He can't know things that are not reported to him; he can't act on things that 'are beeing taken care of' by so called HR department.
Neither of us knows what happened, but some people tend to like watching individuals burn for entertainment purposes. Throw a fancy title in the mix, and everybody has an opinion all of a sudden.
>In Fowler’s account of her year at Uber, she says that she explicitly reported the incidents of sexual harassment directly to Pham when she ran out of clear remedies. Nothing came of her attempts, she wrote.
"For example, Fowler wrote that she also spoke to the company’s chief technology officer, Thuan Pham, about a termination threat Fowler’s manager made for reporting his manager. That type of threat is illegal under equal employment laws."
"... he replied that he had been a manager for a long time, he knew what was illegal, and threatening to fire me for reporting things to HR was not illegal. I reported his threat immediately after the meeting to both HR and to the CTO: they both admitted that this was illegal, but none of them did anything."
Or did you read the telephone version of her account that Recode decided to spin and blindly made up your mind?
Which one is it?
That doesn't sound right to me. While perhaps not illegal, it is certainly unethical and uncaring.
The point is, she did not tell the CTO that she was a victim of sexual harassment. End of story.
Informing the CTO that one of the managers said (verbally) something in regards to the conditions of the employment is an entirely different issue.
The idea that you think both of the issues are even remotely compatible scares me.
https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/retaliation.cfm
"Participating in a complaint process is protected from retaliation under all circumstances."
Recode's version:
'In Fowler’s account of her year at Uber, she says that she explicitly reported the incidents of sexual harassment directly to Pham when she ran out of clear remedies. Nothing came of her attempts, she wrote.'
Fowler's version:
'For example, Fowler wrote that she also spoke to the company’s chief technology officer, Thuan Pham, about a termination threat Fowler’s manager made for reporting his manager. That type of threat is illegal under equal employment laws. '
You can very easily disrupt and prevent bad cultures by intervening and setting a good example. Once you're a C-level everything is your fault and only your fault because you have the power to stop it. After it being your fault, it's a process problem, only if it's assuredly not a process issue can it then be someone else's fault.
Saying it's the COO or HRs fault is to ignore the problems of culture; ones that YOU allow to exist. Your department/team WILL listen to you and often reflects your ideals and attitudes in the business. By simply being lazy is to create a culture that says it's okay or participate in it (whatever it is). I think this sort of thinking is pretty shameful to be honest and largely why most manager/executives are looked at poorly.
Lead by example and obviously the examples from Uber's executives are to be huge pieces of immoral shit. If you're at the top and you deny your responsibility you're a terrible person.
Sorry if this comes across as harsh, but after having done the job and hopefully done it well (only the teams under me could say for sure)-- this makes my blood boil. Being a CTO, or executive, is a lot harder, different, and complicated than I had ever thought it would be. It's a role that I can hardly recommend to most people who want to do it well.
No... it would only prove they are willing to throw a few to the mob to save the rest.
I think we should be encouraging companies to address their issues. Being cynical about it doesn't really help.
That said, I agree with you that if they think their hands are now clean, they've sort of missed the point.
Mind sharing whatever information you have that shows that CTO was aware of everything HR and other managers were trying to sweep under the rug?
Since it doesn't seem that Graves or Thuan did anything wrong, I'm trying to understand what vested interest recode has in terms of trying to get either executive thrown under the bus. Do they just want another executive out, any executive, so they can write another piece about people who have left the company?
At worst, one can make some sort of claim of professional negligence due to their positions but it's entirely possible the buck stopped with Renee. We simply don't have enough information to judge either of these two at this point but Recode is painting them as guilty. If they have smoking gun evidence, they should present that, but if they are trying to ruin the lives of these two for the sake of ad impressions, that's incredibly slimy and a breach of professional ethics for a journalist.
The only new information AFAICT are a few insider opinions about these two executives that may have come from someone being merely descriptive or with an ax to grind. Those quotes were also completely unrelated to the investigation. Recode isn't practicing journalism here. They are using a few quotes to craft they own story that is pure speculation. Last I heard, that's called fiction, not journalism. One should not be writing fiction that will be interpreted as fact when it can cause real people to be hurt without merit.
Wait, what? Did you read the article? If Fowler reported her problems to Thuan himself, then he most certainly bears responsibility, and needs to answer for that. Same with Graves: he was head of HR for periods over that time, and needs to answer too.
Only when you start holding the top-level people accountable will the culture change. Throwing some flunky under the bus will never bring about serious change.
Is that how you'd want your trial to be conducted if you were the accused?
There are serious allegations here that merit more than a peanut gallery trial by public opinion and speculation.
I'm not saying we shouldn't hold top management accountable, but we should have actual facts and details on what transpired so we know who to hold accountable.
There's not enough information yet to say who is responsible.
The message to Thuan could have been such that he had to delegate to to HR. With issues like these the buck stops in HR. There are all sorts of issues on how to handle these issues and sensitive terminations. If you mishandle things like this you end up stuck between a sexual harassment lawsuit and a wrongful termination lawsuit.
You always delegate issues like this to HR and your lawyers.
Graves and Thuan would be responsible if they either did not delegate appropriately or if they actively interfered.
Furthermore, all sorts of miscommunication may have transpired. If the executives were contacted by email for example, what's to say that the email didn't have a bad subject line and never got read.
We simply don't have facts and we can't hold the right people accountable until we have those facts. Maybe Graves and Thuan are the right people, but we don't know that yet
If you don't understand this, you've either never worked for a functional organization if your life, or you're some sort of weird proto-autist that doesn't understand basic leadership principles.
When Fowler reported her harassment & HR's failures directly to Thuan, he became obligated by fiduciary duty to deal with the problem. Thuan could not just hand it off to HR because HR (which was Graves' responsibility) had already failed Fowler--which is why she reported it to Thuan.
Uber has never disputed Fowler's report, which points directly at Thuan & Graves. We'll see at the end of the month, but this kind leak from Uber suggests that the publicly released version of Holder's report will be PR puffery that'll blame it all on Thuan & Graves & attempt to vindicate Kalanick. Expect Huffington as the media messenger. She'll be outraged when anyone dares to suggest Travis knew. And ask if the interviewer is actually questioning Holder's integrity.
I'm not sure who'd believe that Kalanick didn't know about any of it regardless.
"A company’s narrative moves like a clock: it starts at midnight, ticking off the hours. The tone and sentiment about how a business is doing move from positive (sunrise, midday) to negative (dusk, darkness). And often the story returns to midnight, rebirth and a new day."
I feel like Uber is starting to see if it can hit midnight.
Maybe this was down voted because you provided no reason; but there are many to dislike AH and she fits in well with this Org in my opinion
Why does this matter
All of a sudden, Asian people become a minority when it suits the narrative.
There are plenty of Asians (South and East) at all the tech companies being castigated for lack of ethnic diversity. You can't have it both ways.
Wow... can't count women either, they are over half the population!... hmmM
If asians count for diversity, there is no lack of diversity of tech companies. If asians don't count for diversity, then the author's point is invalid since it shouldn't matter to morale whether or not the fired person was white or asian.
If asians count for diversity, there is no lack of diversity of tech companies.
I don't know how else to parse that statement. If absence of such clustering is the meaning of "diversity", why would the departure of an ethnic CTO cause lowered morale?
Since they're not considered minorities, the lack of diversity and their ethnicity should not affect morale at all.
So whether or not your contention is correct, it is of no help to the original comment.