Hacker News Reader

Comment by macspoofing | Hacker News Reader

>Seems risky to hire a recent Uber employee at this point because bringing a toxic sexist into the company can inflict massive damage.

Jesus. They are still people. You want to ostracize them from all society and prevent them from earning a living in their chosen career?

'Sexual harassment' is also a catch-all term that can encompass all kinds of actions. It could involve a clueless, inexperienced 20-something asking out his co-worker and misreading her signals - fuck that guy right? Throw him out of society and forget him forever, right?

And I have yet to see any evidence for this "toxic sexist" atmosphere that apparently is part of the Uber culture. This isn't it. 20 people were fired out of 12,000.

View on HN

I have independently verified Susan Fowler's claim that her management chain didn't treat her case seriously. And by that I mean with a member of her management chain.

If an entire chain of management and HR don't treat a claim like that seriously (no one has disputed the claim), there is absolutely a cultural problem.

> I have independently verified Susan Fowler's claim that her management chain didn't treat her case seriously. And by that I mean with a member of her management chain.

Just to verify: are you an Uber employee, then?

Nope. I don't need to be to have a conversation. Of course, you could argue the person I was speaking with shouldn't have shared the information with me, but that's their concern.

We have no way of independently verifying your claim.

Welcome to the internet. You won't like it.

I wish there was some kind of 'best of HN' where this comment could live on forever.

> I have independently verified > Nope. I don't need to be to have a conversation

You can't publicly claim that you independently verified something and provide absolutely no information on that verification. You are not a Pope.

You started the conversation and chose to share that piece information.

He is free to share it, and you are free to disbelieve it, this isn't a court of law.

The thread seems to be dismissing it as it is an unsubstantiated claim.

>I have independently verified Susan Fowler's claim that her management chain didn't treat her case seriously. And by that I mean with a member of her management chain.

I never doubted her account. But it is anecdotal, and you can't extrapolate her singular experience to the entire company.

Many other women have come forward, including those IN Uber HR.

How many have to before it isn't a "singular experience"?

It is categorically NOT anecdotal. The proper word is "testimonial". You cannot simultaneously "never doubt her account" and label it "anecdotal", look it up in the dictionary.

Ok. Maybe I used the wrong word.

I have independently verified that Elvis is living on an island in the south Pacific with tupac and biggie.

As a manager, if you have a clueless 20-year old making an inappropriate proposition to one of your reports, and you hear about it, you are legally obligated to deal with the situation. It could mean reprimands, demotions, pay cuts, and re-assignment. It could mean termination.

Harassment happens in every single company.

The difference between companies is whether or not management takes the problem seriously.

I assure you, batch-firing 20 people for sexual harassment out of 6,700 is not normal. It means that there has been a consistent pattern of management not dealing with harassment - which was exposed upon review.

>As a manager, if you have a clueless 20-year old making an inappropriate proposition to one of your reports, and you hear about it, you are legally obligated to deal with the situation. It could mean reprimands, demotions, pay cuts, and re-assignment. It could mean termination.

Sure. I don't disagree with that, even the termination. But I hate the idea of now treating these individuals as modern equivalent of 'untouchables'. OP used incredibly ugly words to describe people he has no clue about, and implicitly advocated for not hiring them.

>I assure you, batch-firing 20 people for sexual harassment out of 6,700 is not normal.

12,000. It's a big company.

>t means that there has been a consistent pattern of management not dealing with harassment

Except we don't know what it means, do we. It could be that they fired a bunch of people to make a PR statement. Or not.

12k is quite small I have worked in big companies where we had more engineers in our single division that Google has employees.

> As a manager, if you have a clueless 20-year old making an inappropriate proposition to one of your reports...

This is the hypothetical example people often give; but that is probably the easiest imaginable case. Fowler's report is regarding a manager who'd been with the company for several years -- not twenty years old unless they started in their teens -- who was a hardened and repeat offender. That seems to be more inline with what actually happens.

Clueless people can be corrected. What we're talking about here is very different.

For what it's worth, "prevent them from earning a living in their chosen career" is not the same as "ostracize them from all society."

A person who has been cut from a grad school program for rampant academic honor code violations can be a perfectly-functional member of society, and if no school wants to trust them as a teacher, that's not the fault of the schools.

Personally, I don't have a high opinion of the tech culture though, and I suspect even the people fired for sexual harassment will be employed in another tech company within six months. The money flows too fast and too loose to expect otherwise, and the overall engineer-owner-capitalist-America ecosystem doesn't act as a sufficient deterrent to toxic sexual harassment culture to expect these employees will actually be cut out of the loop. It's a Hollywood environment.

Part of the problem is it is difficult to determine if someone has been fired for cause, or because they are a scape goat, or if they just weren't liked by management, or many other reasons

Are you referring to the new company when looking at a potential employee's past experience? Couldn't you just ask them why they were terminated? I don't think Uber is going to fire actual scapegoats that weren't related. That would surely leave them up to even more legal trouble.

Yup - I was generally responding to people in this thread who are arguing that it is appropriate to blacklist anyone with 'Uber' on their resume

> inexperienced 20-something

Well, if he learns and grows from the experience, maybe he'll end up better than the ones that didn't fuck up.

--Former stupid as fucking fuck 20 year old

That's my point exactly. Tech companies are full of dumb 20-somethings who will make dumb 20-something mistakes. This may result in them getting reprimanded or terminated which will serve as a learning experience. But OP went further. She/He characterized them as "toxic" and potentially inflicting massive damage on the new company's culture with the implications that no company should hire them. Disgusting.

Reality check: overwhelming majority of 20 years old dudes don't harass women. They are not as dumb as you imply and they know what harassment is.

If you would be right, then radical feminists are right in that college students need special classes to tell them what is rape, what is harassment and what is proposal. Majority of non radical people opposed that on the grounds that it is insulting and dudes know.

If at the age of 20 you are so confused, then you are add toxic as dude who does not know difference between boxing match and pub fight. And as rare.

I neither accept your 'reality check' nor the ridiculous binary choice your presented where everyone just knows how to act or radical feminists need to run university workshops (completely ridiculous).

Social interactions and social boundaries are largely a learned behaviour - it is not something that is innate in us. Because there is a huge emotional component when dealing with things like attraction, love, infatuation, jealously, rejection - you really just learn through experience. And by the way, no where am I advocating that companies shouldn't set clear boundaries on conduct in the workplace. Shit happens, and people will fuck up purposely or accidentally and should be held accountable (which may involve termination or even involvement of the justice system - depending on severity). I'm disgusted by OP's characterization of individuals that were fired in this probe, the ugly words she/he uses to describe them and for implicitly advocating to ostracize them from society - people he knows nothing about.

If it is normal to not know the difference, then they need class on it. No reason to have random girls be harassed cause duses are too emotional to know difference. However, they are both well aware and in enough of emotional control.

Seriously, if your emotions are that out of control, you are not suitable to live independently. I might be fine to use taxes to pay you counselling through.

Why would you think I was referring to 'dudes'? I was referring to 20-somethings, men and women. Women can be (and are) dumbasses too.

I think you and I are too far apart on this. I disagree with your thought process and your conclusions.

Neither men nor women are thay much stupid. We are talking about unethical and morally wrong behavior, not stupidity anyway.

It doesn't help your case to misrepresent what happened here. Nobody got fired for asking out a coworker.

Jesus. They are still people. You want to ostracize them from all society and prevent them from earning a living in their chosen career?

No one has an absolute right to work in the industry of their choice. If you join a company that makes your future career more difficult then that's bad luck, but maybe it's also a lesson for us all: speak up for your coworkers when you see bad behaviour, and don't let things escalate to the point where other companies might see you as a bad hire for something you didn't do.

Time to hope you had an education that was broader than a career that is based entirely on acting like a dick.

I would not ever hire anyone from Uber. The tech people I've met from there are technologically toxic and disgustingly gross as human beings.

Sorry kids. Is it anecdotal evidence? Yes. Is it based on going to hang with their hangouts? Yes. It is.

Soooooo messed up in every way.

20 is a good start.

As a counter argument, complicit nazis who did not have a direct hand in the gas chambers are also people, but I doubt many people sympathize with their ability to live their lives normally after the war.

That Godwined quickly.

Wow.

> 'Sexual harassment' is also a catch-all term that can encompass all kinds of actions.

Not one of which should ever be tolerated in the work environment.

There should not be 2, much less 20, simultaneously being fired for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com