Good point, yes! I definitely prefer their stories to be shared than hidden.

I know you refer to the fact these stories happened; yes, very sad indeed.But I&#x27;m happy all these stories are coming out. Definitely glad these women have had the courage to share them, hopefully enough public pressure can be built up to steer in the direction of change.

Very sad that I expected more stories like Susan&#x27;s to come out.

If you feel a submission is inappropriate for HN, please flag it.

&gt; The front pageness is a function of the credibility and interestingness of the articles posted.did you mean to say &quot;is not&quot;?

The front pageness is a function of the credibility and interestingness of the articles posted.HN is not journalism, it&#x27;s a water cooler. There&#x27;s some rules for decorum but little to no editorial function.

It is totally understandable why she chose to be anonymous.  I would let the readers decide, if they find any content shared on HN useful or not.

So, people should only bring up horror stories about their workplaces if they also expose themselves to legal or extra-legal retaliation?

I&#x27;m pretty sure everyone who&#x27;s commenting here is a person, AI hasn&#x27;t come this far.

I don&#x27;t think people should be allowed to comment without some proof of being a person.

I&#x27;d rather have it there.  Sure, there&#x27;s no supporting evidence, but I want those still working at Uber to read it.  They&#x27;re in the position to decide whether it accords with their experience.  Sometimes it can be hard to see what&#x27;s in front of your face.

I don&#x27;t necessarily agree, but I don&#x27;t think this comment should be downvoted to oblivion. It is worth keeping in mind that these allegations are being made anonymously.That said, given the level of detail and the consistency with other reports we&#x27;ve heard, I think this report sounds pretty credible.

I don&#x27;t believe HN should be front paging anonymous content without some proof of having worked at Uber.

Your parent may be referring to the events described that happened prior to 2017.

I have great news for you! It&#x27;s not. It&#x27;s 2017

horrific - how can this really be happening in 2016 ?

&gt;Says the three minute old throwaway account.Are you trying to be ironic by dismissing the critic&#x27;s anonymity while accepting the author&#x27;s?

Says the three minute old throwaway account.

Odd choice for evidence of fabrication, as that quote echoes Susan Fowler&#x27;s original post.

My opinion is that this anonymous post lacks credibility and the author is most likely LARPing. Is it really so offensive to have a skeptical view?&gt; It was normal for guys to refer to other guys as fags when they didn’t participate in private parties where sex and drugs were involved. It was normal for guys to openly refer to attractive female colleagues as sluts when they refused to go out with them.

I wouldn&#x27;t call it &quot;unnecessary.&quot; Eventually Mike will quit or get fired, then repeat this behavior at another company.

There&#x27;s enough information given in the story that virtually anybody who worked at Uber can name the people involved. Public naming and shaming is understandably desired, but unnecessary. It invites legal action.

The author could be afraid of lawsuits (even if it is true what she writes, that doesn&#x27;t mean someone can&#x27;t sue for libel&#x2F;defamation&#x2F;retaliate in some fashion).

So, just coming forward about these stories is impressive in itself. But both of the recent Uber stories have gone well beyond that: they&#x27;re coming from people who had horrific experiences at the company and have not only worked up the courage to talk publicly about it, but have put together solid strategies for deflecting a lot of the scummy ways companies, and our society, would normally come after them.To wit: Uber is a large company with fantastically deep pockets, a gaggle of high-powered lawyers, access to a strong media&#x2F;PR machine, and a lot of glamour&#x2F;adoration in the Silicon Valley&#x2F;startup culture. But those strengths are being carefully neutered!There&#x27;s Susan Fowler&#x27;s approach, which is first and foremost to make sure everybody knows she has documentation to back up her claims. That&#x27;s a very clear message to Uber that 1) they never ever want to be in a discovery situation where she could start issuing subpoenas, since she&#x27;s let them know that she knows where to get the damaging documents they don&#x27;t want coming out, and 2) leaves them guessing just how much documentation she has, and so unsure of how to publicly reply: if they try to downplay the incidents she describes, or attack her record, they don&#x27;t know whether she might produce proof that they&#x27;re lying about it.Then there&#x27;s the approach here, which is detailed enough that the people it targets inside Uber certainly know who the author is and who she&#x27;s writing about. But it does not divulge any identities with certainty to the public at large, which carries some similar &quot;I left it at this level of detail, but maybe I could divulge a lot more if you provoked me&quot; threat, but also makes it very difficult for Uber to attack her personally. To do so they&#x27;d have to out her and details of her employment record, and depending on the details that might put them obviously and publicly on the wrong side of a bunch of employment-related law as well as make them look like bullies.I would barely be able to function, and maybe just wouldn&#x27;t be able to, after some of the things that have been described as happening at Uber. I cannot imagine being able to not only call them out publicly, but also put together such a good strategy for doing so, and I have immense respect for Susan and &quot;Amy&quot; for managing it.

There&#x27;s really no reason not to name Mike #2. If this is real, he already knows who you are.

It comes as no surprise to me that a company as cavalier toward local laws and its drivers as Uber is would also mistreat its other workers.On the off-chance Amy or Susan is reading this, thanks for sharing your stories.

It&#x27;s honestly part of such a good quote, I feel compelled to post the rest.&quot;I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, like Ravaillac; but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science.&quot;How right has he been proven, before and after his time? From athletes to politicians, from Steve Jobs to Winston Churchill.

&quot;Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.&quot; -John Dalberg-Acton. It saddens me how much I have seen that quote play out in my life...

It&#x27;s not just _one_ guy being talked about.

Not sure I understand this. This guy doesn&#x27;t sound like a nerd at all. More like a BSD.

&gt; It was normal for our supervisors to openly appreciate the performance of one member over the other and publicly demean members who did not perform as per their expectations. Chauvinistic, racist and homophobic attitudes were far too normal at Uber. Once in a group chat, team members referred to a new Asian American recruit as slanty eye joe. It was normal for guys to refer to other guys as fags when they didn’t participate in private parties where sex and drugs were involved. It was normal for guys to openly refer to attractive female colleagues as sluts when they refused to go out with them. They had private chats where guys wrote sexual fantasy stories about female colleagues and supervisors where they performed all sorts of demeaning acts on the women. I confronted the guys on my team whenever they passed lewd comments about female supervisors but never felt comfortable confronting guys who were not in my team.Sounds to me like it was her team members also.

Except I doubt these are &quot;the nerds&quot;. These are likely the fratboys who studied business and are continuing their hazing and misogyny as managers after college.

From the article:&gt; It was normal for guys to refer to other guys as fags when they didn’t participate in private parties where sex and drugs were involved.This was every douchebag in high school who would laugh at me for being interested in computers back in the early &#x27;00s. And now they&#x27;re programmers 15 years later. Brogrammer culture squicks me out in several ways, but mostly because the same people who laughed at, mocked, and belittled anyone interested in programming are now invading our industry and driving the decent folk out.

What point are you intending to communicate here?That there is a stereotype that people interested in software engineering are &quot;nerds&quot; who are losers and picked on in school? That the stereotype is accurate, and &quot;yet again&quot; software engineers bully other people because they were bullied?

Not sure what kinds of companies you&#x27;ve worked at, but from what I&#x27;ve seen, founders, execs, and their inner circles aren&#x27;t nerds.

Yet again the nerds have become the bullies.

Wow, while I expected more stories to surface, this one seems to be a whole different level. But then again, Uber seems to be a really dysfunctional company.

&gt; It seems both women who&#x27;ve come forward would have open-and-shut cases against Uber for multi-millions in damages.Is it possible that their contracts are written in such a way as to preclude this? Which if so is gross and shouldn&#x27;t be allowed by contract law IMO, but it certainly wouldn&#x27;t surprise me.

&gt; It&#x27;s surprising to me that neither have pursued Uber in this regard.Reasons to pursue sexual harassment litigation:* You may make some money.Reasons to not pursue sexual harassment litigation:* You will have to devote an enormous amount of money, time, energy, health, and your emotional well-being.* Your lawyers will take half the settlement, either in up front fees, or as a portion of the bounty.* You will get to share, and then be brutally cross-examined about all the worst bullshit you had to endure in a courtroom.* With so much money on the line, you will trigger a smear campaign against you, whose impact will persist long after the trial concludes.* You want to program, instead of dealing with legal bullshit.* You just want this nightmare to be over, instead of it being brought up over, and over again.* You don&#x27;t want to have your name permanently associated with &quot;Sues your employers for millions of dollars&quot;. Good luck getting a job after that.* If for whatever reason you lose, you will get to enjoy all the damage to your reputation, all the trauma and indignities that you had to re-live, the black mark on your employment record (Who would hire a liar who sues her employers?), and you&#x27;ll probably be counter-sued by Uber. I hope you&#x27;re independently wealthy.It&#x27;s easy to suggest the nuclear option when you have no skin in the game.

&gt; multi-millions in damages. It&#x27;s surprising&gt; to me that neither have pursued Uber in this regard.I also find this surprising to the point of puzzling. Yes, HR (+legal) works for the company, ALWAYS. However, protecting the company from multi-million dollar lawsuits and potential negative publicity certainly falls within the remit, and removing offenders and mollifying victims would be the way to go.So something doesn&#x27;t quite add up, and I have a hard time believing &quot;oh, we know that they won&#x27;t sue&quot; would be sufficient. Then again...hubris.

Please don&#x27;t misunderstand the following comment to mean that I am defending Uber. I quit using Uber over a year ago when I first learned of some of their business practices.&gt;It seems both women who&#x27;ve come forward would have open-and-shut cases against Uber for multi-millions in damages.These cases are tough to win, even in a liberal jurisdiction like SF. For example, does &quot;Amy&quot; have any witnesses that are willing to testify about what they saw? Sure, a subpoena can compel them to testify, but if the men who were present are still working there, how likely is it that they are going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth under questioning?The calculus becomes &quot;keep my current job that is paying my bills, and maybe get a raise&#x2F;promotion soon&quot; vs. &quot;stick my neck out for someone who no longer works here.&quot;Sure, there are good lawyers who could maybe trip them up, but now you&#x27;re treating what should be friendly or neutral witnesses as hostile witnesses. And Uber has some good lawyers too, obviously.Further, even if some of these guys have moved on to other companies, they have to calculate how testifying in Amy&#x27;s favor might come back to bite them later. With a guy like Travis who lacks good character (according to all the accounts I&#x27;ve read, anyway), it will come back to bite them sooner than later.So &quot;open-and-shut&quot; is usually not really at all, but rather a less than 50% chance of recovering damages after years of difficult litigation. Unless, of course, you have lots of really good documentary evidence that&#x27;s admissible.

&gt; H&#x2F;R ACTS AND WILL ALWAYS ACT IN THE COMPANY&#x27;S BEST INTERESTS. NOT YOURS.You&#x27;re right, and here&#x27;s the thing. It seems both women who&#x27;ve come forward would have open-and-shut cases against Uber for multi-millions in damages. It&#x27;s surprising to me that neither have pursued Uber in this regard. Similarly, it&#x27;s surprising to me that Uber HR hasn&#x27;t done the mental calculus to figure out that these women have a solid case, and just fix the problem. Or, most disturbingly, Uber HR DID do the mental calculus, determined neither woman would sue; and, therefore, made the correct choices as &quot;best for the company.&quot;Either way, I&#x27;m taking Lyft.

In response to your statement, I just have to say that Uber&#x27;s HR _has not_ acted in the company&#x27;s best interest and has actually worked in opposition to its best interest.Through inaction and malpractice they have increased the legal liability Uber faces and encouraged irreparable reputational damage for Uber.

Business != Company, company (made up of orgs) is a component of a business. If someone in my HR group does not act in the best interests of the business AND the company (and usually putting the company before the business is the right thing to do) they would lose their job quite quickly. My obligation as a CEO is to my shareholders, and my shareholders know that putting my people in front of returns will always result in better returns. It&#x27;s pretty clear cut, you&#x27;re nothing without your people, and that&#x27;s that.

This is not really an obscure secret.Wikipedia: “Human resources are the people who make up the workforce of an organization, business sector, or economy. [...] A human-resources department (HR department) of an organization performs human resource management, overseeing various aspects of employment, such as compliance with labour law and employment standards, administration of employee benefits, and some aspects of recruitment and dismissal.”

There&#x27;s an sf novel featuring a futuristic form of slavery, with a character who&#x27;s introduced as a Director of Human Resources: only much later do you find out what that means. Subtly done.(Your first meaning never occurred to me.)

&gt;As an employee (and human) it seems reasonable to interpret it as &quot;resources for humans&quot; and thus assume it would be there to help.Where&#x27;d you ever get that crazy idea?&gt;But its true meaning, to execs&#x2F;stakeholders&#x2F;corporate persons, is &quot;[the department which manages the] human resources&quot;.Not exactly. The true meaning is &quot;the department which works to exploit the human resources as much as possible&quot;.

The genius of labeling it &quot;human resources&quot; just struck me. As an employee (and human) it seems reasonable to interpret it as &quot;resources for humans&quot; and thus assume it would be there to help. But its true meaning, to execs&#x2F;stakeholders&#x2F;corporate persons, is &quot;[the department which manages the] human resources&quot;.

&gt;H&#x2F;R ACTS AND WILL ALWAYS ACT IN THE COMPANY&#x27;S BEST INTERESTS. NOT YOURS.Except their actions here are not in the best interest of the company...why do people keep posting this in the context of discussing Uber? These are casebook examples of what HR should not do.

It&#x27;s kind of like going to the police. They don&#x27;t necessarily share your interests, and they have the power to destroy you. That some or good doesn&#x27;t help much if you go to the one who isn&#x27;t.

I&#x27;ll add that a significant portion of people I&#x27;ve encountered who have careers in HR are not particularly empathic nor &quot;people persons&quot;.That is, don&#x27;t interact with them expecting to be &quot;understood&quot; as a person.You may not just get a &quot;no, we can&#x27;t do that&quot;. You may well also get an unmentioned strike against you, for even raising the point or concern.There are some good people in HR. Although, upon reflection, I realize that those I&#x27;ve met tended to have moved on or exited HR.Anyway, my point is, don&#x27;t just expect &quot;in the employer&#x27;s interest&quot;, be also aware of and prepared for a lack of basic human connection.

&gt;H&#x2F;R ACTS AND WILL ALWAYS ACT IN THE COMPANY&#x27;S BEST INTERESTS. NOT YOURS.Point of order here. HR acts in management&#x27;s best interests, not necessarily the company&#x27;s. It&#x27;s pretty clear that HR&#x27;s actions here are not in the company&#x27;s best interests given how much of a shitfest this has been for Uber. They gave cover for people who were not acting in Uber&#x27;s best interests and, as a result, Uber lost all their goodwill, they&#x27;re bleeding talent, and you&#x27;d have to be delusional to think toxic norms like this haven&#x27;t been affecting their morale and productivity.Management&#x27;s interests are separate from the best interests of the company. Shareholder interests are separate from the best interests of the company. A company is made up of employees, management, shareholders, AND clients all together. All of them are stakeholders and its best interests are the things that properly balance the needs of everyone to fulfill its mission or goal. It&#x27;s neoliberal bullshit to claim that only management and shareholders matter, and the sooner we accept that the sooner we can make our corporate governance tack into a sane direction.

&gt; Amy&#x27;s situation was grave, and kudos to her for getting out. But everyone should read these stories and burn this line into their heads permanently.Yes but the company&#x27;s best interest is to support Amy and fire Mike#2.The reason is that if there is credible evidence of this behavior, she has easy settlement on par with Mike&#x27;s value to the company (unless that is measured in 8 figures which is unlikely since at the end of the day, if they paid him $500k...they could replace him for $500k).

&gt; H&#x2F;R ACTS AND WILL ALWAYS ACT IN THE COMPANY&#x27;S BEST INTERESTS. NOT YOURS.Hopefully the recently-revealed experiences at Uber will be taken as a wake-up call by HR folks whose calculus tells them that the best option is to cover up problems.It should now be apparent that buried issues will eventually come to light, so the short-term gain of coverups won&#x27;t be worth the long-term risk.

One of the ways HR acts in the interest of the company, is to make sure managers aren&#x27;t putting the company at risk by engaging in unethical or illegal behavior. HR isn&#x27;t your friend, but if they enable harassment and discrimination, they are failing in their role of corporate governance and should be replaced.A competent CEO would take action here.

Ouch, those caps.Yes, normally, HR acts in the company&#x27;s interests.But for many companies, its in their best interests to identify and fire creeps who work there and abuse women (or others generally).What HR will do for you depends on what type of company you work in.If you work in a company that cares about its culture, that values diversity and respects its employees, then HR is very likely to help you if you experience problems like these.If you work for Uber - well I guess that&#x27;s what all the heat and light is about. Is Uber such a shithole that these kinds of behaviour are actually condoned by the CEO?Maybe we&#x27;ll find out.

Yes, HR acts in the company&#x27;s best interests, not yours. However, if you ever want to be able to pursue legal claims against a company for actions such as permitting harassment, or firing you in retribution for it, you need to be able to document that you reported the problem to the appropriate people (i.e. HR).Going to HR is the right move for something like this. In any sane company, HR will take such a claim seriously because the potential legal downside if they don&#x27;t is an unacceptable risk. In an insane company - aside from the fact that you can&#x27;t measure the insanity level until you have in fact made such reports to HR and seen them dismissed - you still need to be able to show that you brought the problem to HR&#x27;s attention and they did nothing about it.

Please don&#x27;t use uppercase for emphasis. This is in the site guidelines: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;newsguidelines.html</a>.

&quot;In essence, the HR department blackmailed me that if I make noise, I’d be fired. I was distraught by the HR department’s response especially considering that most of the HR folks I dealt with were women.&quot;Say it over and over, say it loud, and say it to every single person entering the US workforce from day one:H&#x2F;R ACTS AND WILL ALWAYS ACT IN THE COMPANY&#x27;S BEST INTERESTS. NOT YOURS.Amy&#x27;s situation was grave, and kudos to her for getting out. But everyone should read these stories and burn this line into their heads permanently.

Agreed. Way too much vitriol and the details are too perfect to be believable. I&#x27;m flagging as well.

I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s an appropriate use of flag:&gt; Please don&#x27;t submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think a story is spam or off-topic, flag it by clicking on its &#x27;flag&#x27; link. If you think a comment is egregious, click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click &#x27;flag&#x27; at the top.The story is not spam, not off-topic, and has a good chance of being non-egregious. It&#x27;s certainly true it could be wrong, but that&#x27;s very different.(Maybe I&#x27;m wrong about appropriate use of flagging? I&#x27;d concede that it&#x27;s fair for you to downvote it, but I suspect HN has disabled downvotes on stories for a reason, and using flagging as a pseudo-downvote seems wrong.)

I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s flag-worthy because it absolutely could be true. It&#x27;s not like anything here is that difficult to believe given previous insider reports from Uber. None of the claims here are that absurd.But, yes, it could easily be an anonymous troll. It needs verification.

I&#x27;m one of the flaggers.This is an entirely anonymous complaint with no particular reason why anyone would believe it. A lot of it read to me as too perfect. Too designed to hit all of the right buttons to generate outrage.I won&#x27;t deny that it could be true. But I&#x27;d also give that possibility under even odds. And if stories like this are true, then we&#x27;ll likely have enough opportunity to learn that later to give this version undue attention.

Not even halfway through reading it and I swore that somehow I must have missed that today was April 1st. Extremely sad if true, however highly questionable whether it is true.

Ideologues of all flavors frequently diss HN like this. Someone needs to stand up for the community, so I guess I will. This was a slur, and your prediction turning out consummately wrong illustrates this nicely.I think it&#x27;s in poor taste to diss a group with grand rhetoric whilst participating in it, since you&#x27;re as much a part of it as anyone else. If you think so poorly of your community, perhaps find a different one and post nastily there. I hear Twitter is good for that.The reality of the HN community is that it&#x27;s divided much the way that society at large is. The comments here inevitably reflect that. It&#x27;s a mixed bag, a lot of what&#x27;s in that bag isn&#x27;t great and a small portion is awful, but (a) this community does manage somewhat better than most of the rest of the internet and (b) far more of the participants here are thoughtful and decent than otherwise.

HN hates anything that bashes the misogynist culture of Silicon Valley.  This story will be flagged dead shortly.

This is one of the most heavily flagged submissions I&#x27;ve seen in a while - hit #2 with 70 points, and now is at #6 with 174 points in 40 min, while the new #2 is 124 points in 2 hours.

in fact it&#x27;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.

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

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

Because it probably doesn&#x27;t matter if ex-coworkers at Uber figure out who it is. She just doesn&#x27;t want this story attached to her real name when people Google her.It&#x27;s also possible that some of that information is slightly twisted, to throw people off.

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

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.

Having some people know who you are is very different from having the Internet know who you are. Even if she got doxxed (let&#x27;s hope shoe doesn&#x27;t), it&#x27;s unlikely the fallout would be similar.

I&#x27;m curious if HR will out her, or if there&#x27;s so many harassment complaints lodged with HR that even so doing makes you effectively anonymous. You say that&#x27;s unethical and&#x2F;or illegal, but it&#x27;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] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pando.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;17&#x2F;the-moment-i-learned-just-how-far-uber-will-go-to-silence-journalists-and-attack-women&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pando.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;11&#x2F;17&#x2F;the-moment-i-learned-just-how-f...</a>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;7&#x2F;15&#x2F;12201134&#x2F;uber-ergo-admit-lie-investigation-court-travis-kalanick" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;7&#x2F;15&#x2F;12201134&#x2F;uber-ergo-admit-l...</a>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;7&#x2F;25&#x2F;12274122&#x2F;uber-ergo-investigation-lawsuit-judge-ban-kalanick" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;7&#x2F;25&#x2F;12274122&#x2F;uber-ergo-investi...</a>

There&#x27;s anonymity in numbers. Even with Uber&#x27;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&#x27;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.

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, &quot;cheaters&quot; who slept their way to the top somehow using their devious womanly wiles (but won&#x27;t sleep with the MRA in question because they hate men).

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?

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&#x27;m not going to say people like you are the problem. Just tone down your zeal a bit and approach the problem rationally.

Being genuinely puzzled by someone&#x27;s actions is not by definition an attempt to discredit them. I was also puzzled by her detailed description of herself. It wasn&#x27;t clear to me wether she believes that it isn&#x27;t enough detail for uber to identify her, or if she doesn&#x27;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.

The thing that strikes me, is that regardless of if this is &#x27;verified&#x27; or not, that this sort of thing is not beyond the imagination or, indeed, the experience of most of us who have female staff&#x2F;coworkers..Even if the story is totally fabricated, the bigger point here is that this sort of thing really does go on, and I&#x27;m really not sure why. I&#x27;ve had staff who were totally normal and who I actually quite liked whom I&#x27;ve had to let go &#x2F; 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&#x27;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&#x27;ll work out how to deal with it together. It&#x27;s a sad fact, but I&#x27;ve never discussed this topic with a female techie who doesn&#x27;t have at least one story..It&#x27;s on all of us to stop this shit from happening.Just... Have each others backs, folks!

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.

&gt;People like you are the problem.Not exactly healthy discourse.

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&#x27;s claims of interest in anonymity. (And - let&#x27;s be honest - therefore trying to discredit her whole story one chip at a time).People like you are the problem.

What was your motivation for doing this?As soon as someone doesn&#x27;t want to be associated with a story critical of anything, the salt is implicit isn&#x27;t it?Considering the last few stories that have come out about how women are being treated in tech, what I&#x27;ve observed (and been enraged by) I&#x27;m pretty sure this happened&#x2F;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&#x27;s faked if most of us could totally believe it&#x27;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&#x27;s valuation or something?

Please don&#x27;t do this. Nothing can be gained from this.

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

You think Uber has only 6 &quot;Data Analyst&quot;s?

Did a search of all current&#x2F;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 &quot;slightly&quot;.

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&#x27;t stupid enough to coordinate a smear campaign of their own (although it happened to Ellen Pao)[1], she&#x27;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]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Feminism&#x2F;comments&#x2F;594rad&#x2F;exreddit_ceo_the_firm_ellen_pao_had_sued_was_very&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Feminism&#x2F;comments&#x2F;594rad&#x2F;exreddit_c...</a>

She put enough information so that the parties relevant would be able to identify all the actors but the parties not involved can&#x27;t. That&#x27;s not strange - she wants to tell her story and have it attached to her by identity but not name.

Why would someone write an anonymous blog post but then declare that they are:<pre><code> 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</code></pre>

We live in a world of fake news, but anyone who questions an anonymous blog post during a media hype-cycle surrounding Uber&#x27;s sexual harassment allegations is flagged? It&#x27;s important to be more diligent in these times, not less.

until the resources are self-driving cars?

The resources are the humans and the departments responsibility is to keep the company from being sued.

You have got that backwards dude: the Resources are the Humans.

I&#x27;ve experienced this at just about every single non-startup that I&#x27;ve worked for.Basically, once the company is big enough that you don&#x27;t know everyone who works there, the evil actors and back stabbers emerge. Especially when a company is growing rapidly, you go from being a human in the eyes of others, to a performance report -- some numbers on paper.My new strategy? Leave any company that gets bigger than 300 people or so. It&#x27;s worked so far!

It&#x27;s unfortunate that the Silicon Valley work culture is being tarnished by companies like Uber. There are many companies that respect women and have HR departments that actually fulfill the purpose of being helpful Resources to Humans. I hope the anti-Uber sentiment grows so other companies can learn from this example.I&#x27;m glad the author is sharing her story.

It would be remarkably easy for the author to validate the authenticity of her post by adding a picture of a pay-stub with blacked out identifying information &#x2F; names &#x2F; amounts.Or alternatively publish the story with a news agency as a protected source under a pseudonym.Uber deserves what they have coming to them at the moment, but an anonymized post that fits perfectly into the Uber &#x2F; sexism &#x2F; hostile work place with no evidence should be treated as suspect.

If this is true, then it&#x27;s horrifying. I didn&#x27;t agree with the crowd and delete Uber earlier for the protest stuff, but if this is true, then bye-bye Uber.

And just to add an endorsement, Accenture is a highly evolved technology firm. If you&#x27;re looking to work somewhere that treats everyone equally and would never tolerate a Mike #2, give them a shot. I am not an employee, but have done several contract stints internally and they are simply the best workplace I&#x27;ve ever been around.

Until and unless they have clear internal changes that allow female and minority engineers to work in a positive, equal pay for equal work environment.

Yes.  Because I&#x27;ve done it.  And you tell people it wasn&#x27;t a good fit.  And if it&#x27;s uber you tell them it&#x27;s because uber is a bunch of jerks.

&gt; How she chooses to feel and deal with this are under her control. She shouldn&#x27;t have perpetuated her pain by staying in the situation.Can you understand how hard it is for someone to leave a job after a short amount of time, knowing that every future employer will see that on your resumé?

&gt; 3. Working people hard
That&#x27;s okay. I was made to work hard. Long days no breaks hard deadlines. That&#x27;s the world we live in.No, it&#x27;s not okay. But this one is not the company&#x27;s problem; it&#x27;s on the union, or lack thereof.

I think you are right on the first part. I don&#x27;t view racism and sexism as exactly the same type of thing. Racism is just evil, and sexism is sometimes just ignorance (he hits on her and doesn&#x27;t know it&#x27;s not wanted). But, same ignorance could be argued for racism, even though I think it&#x27;s different. I dont think uber wants or cares for my opinion, but if it&#x27;s beyond the pale, in both case, fire on first offense. Else, one warning and then out.Your second paragraph suggests an ideal that we should aspire to but it&#x27;s not the reality for startups and high growth industries. If we seek out this part of this industry we shouldn&#x27;t bellyache about the hours.

1,2. Why is racism considered a fireable offense, but sexism they should get a warning first? Either give them a warning on both or fire on both.3. I think many would argue that we shouldn&#x27;t have to live in a world where long days with no breaks is the accepted standard. I&#x27;ve worked that way, 10 hour days, 6-7 days a week, it&#x27;s not sustainable and leads to burnout, poor quality work, and grumpy employees.

Seems to me there are 4 issues here:1. Racism.Not okay. Fire him.2. Sexist behaviorNot okay. Warn and then fire him.3. Working people hardThat&#x27;s okay. I was made to work hard. Long days no breaks hard deadlines. That&#x27;s the world we live in.4. How this affected herI&#x27;m sorry she went through this and it&#x27;s not okay. How she chooses to feel and deal with this are under her control. She shouldn&#x27;t have perpetuated her pain by staying in the situation.

She wrote: &quot;Even though I don’t work at Uber any longer, the damage that was done to me by Uber’s work environment ruined my spirit.&quot;you have stay until they kill your spirit just because Uber is a cool company?I can imagine people keep staying there if they have to feed their hungry children and pay mortgage in a very bad economy, but not just because its a &quot;Cool&quot; company.

Uber is huge, it&#x27;s recognizable, it&#x27;s got interesting problems. Susan Fowler even wrote a bestselling book related to some of her work there. You get to work with a lot of smart people. That&#x27;s a lot of motivation to try to stay despite bad things happening. It&#x27;s easy to say in hindsight how bad it was, but I&#x27;d say most people want to try to do a good job and will expect some problems that they will just &quot;have to deal with&quot; with any work environment. But in the end, they realized the bad outweighed the good and they -did- quit.

It is very strange to me when I read these &quot;Survivor&quot; stories. I really can&#x27;t relate to them not because I am a male and don&#x27;t work in Silicon Valley but because I know I can and I have quit companies because I couldn&#x27;t tolerate to work there. There is not fucking reason to keep suffering at a company for whatever reason. QUIT as soon as you feel unhappy let alone you come to a point where they &quot;break&quot; you. Are you kidding me? This is not North Korea. No one is forcing you to keep suffering. You are living in a goddam United State of America, and in a goddam Silicon Valley.

I question myself what would happen if she openly scream at his face with a nice: Why don&#x27;t you go and f...

Don&#x27;t &quot;rarely&quot; use it. Delete it. Now. Close your account, explaining to Uber why you&#x27;ve done so. Tweet&#x2F;Facebook&#x2F;Blog about having done so. Encourage all your friends, family, and coworkers to do the same - explaining exactly_ why you came to the decision.There really is no other self respecting choice. Sitting on the fence is condoning and enabling their behaviour.

I&#x27;d like to thank these brave women for coming out and speaking against these evils. I rarely use Uber but more importantly, I&#x27;m not interviewing&#x2F;working for Uber ever.p.s. I&#x27;ve had one opportunity in the past that I declined due to lower pay package. Current one seems good, but I&#x27;m not going forward.#nouber

Is that the acceptable minimum there? Like the two years in other areas?

I think you mean 1 ~ 2 months. In places like the Valley, Seattle, NYC .. the market is insane. You can pick up new jobs insanely fast.

It could take 6 months just to find a job, get through the recruiters, pass the whiteboard hazing, negotiate your package, and give notice. You&#x27;re advocating starting your next job search your first day at the company.

They&#x27;re _probably_ implying that 6 month stints on your CV don&#x27;t look &quot;bad&quot; to a hiring manager.I&#x27;m not in the valley, but here (in Sydney) I tend to ask questions about people changing jobs in 12 months or less, and more than one 6 month stint (especially consecutive ones) is a serious red flag (mostly due to local employment law and practices). There are a set of people who &quot;interview well&quot;, but cant actually cut it in the roles they land - these people can _usually_ stick it out and fake their way through a 6 or 12 month stretch before getting fired or leaving because they know it&#x27;s inevitable if they don&#x27;t.One six month stint in the middle of 18+ month stretches and you&#x27;ll probably at least get an interview with questions asked about the short job (with even vaguely plausible answers &quot;I hated the commute&quot;, &quot;the manager I was working for left, and I didn&#x27;t enjoy it as much after&quot; would all be fine, if delivered with sincerity)3 six month stints in a row, without provided upfront and verifiable explanations &quot;these two were contracting engagements, that one was a company that folded 6 months after I started&quot;, you&#x27;ll most likely not make it to the phone screen stage.It&#x27;s certainly different in the valley - but I still question how much a string of 6-ish month stints on your cv is gonna be read down the track...

&gt; Just a reminder that you can change jobs after 6 months in the valleyWhat does this mean?

&gt; It was normal for me to get to work at 7 in the morning and leave late at night with only a thirty minute break in between.Yep, sounds like a bad place to work.Just a reminder that you can change jobs after 6 months in the valley, there is really no need to put up with that or wait for evil managers to make the place hell.

&quot;Travis is well known to protect high performing team leaders no matter how abusive they are towards their employees.&quot;Time for this Travis dude to resign, right?

Although this post is anonymous, Given what has come out recently about Uber, I&#x27;m strongly inclined to believe what she wrote. If Uber gets into any more trouble then the board and investors will have to do something because the bad press would be directly hurting their business.&quot;Visibly angry, Mike#2 covered the microphone of
the conference phone, he reached over to
hold my hand tightly and told me to stop
being a whiny little bitch.&quot;I can&#x27;t imagine that because someone performs well at their jobs they&#x27;d be entitled to treat another person in such a demeaning manner.

Yes, that&#x27;s exactly the problem: it&#x27;s psychological jargon. People started using it in a jargon way to try to explain to others what PTSD is like. It was supposed to evoke compassion from people if they understood what triggering someone was. Instead it became a point of ridicule and mockery, &quot;oh, I hurt your feelings? Did I trigger you, sweetheart?&quot;

The word has lots of original meanings, many of which are quite disparate:&quot;Large price increases could trigger demands for even larger wage increases.&quot;&quot;His unpleasant remark triggered an argument that almost cost them their friendship&quot;&quot;Studies show that lack of water is the number one trigger of daytime fatigue for Americans.&quot;And so on. The usage you&#x27;re citing is relatively recent jargon.

Why is it important to remove the weight a word carries?

I actually think this is a very important process in order to get rid of the weight a word carries. 
The &quot;triggered&quot; lead us to &quot;triggered snowflakes&quot;. &quot;Fake news&quot; has undergone a similar transformation, ie from a term of old media brands branding themselves as the &quot;real news&quot; authority, towards now an ironic term for anything you don&#x27;t like. What impresses me the most is how fast these tonalities change.

For some people i know who have PTSD and&#x2F;or deal with people with PTSD, an attack can mean complete personality and identity disassociation that absolutely requires police involvement and in the aftermath of which having neither them nor anyone else die is a blessing. And that&#x27;s with people who&#x27;re entirely excellent at any other minute in their life.As such, i entirely agree that frivolous use of the word is at best annoying when it comes from people who have no idea what it means.

It&#x27;s especially silly in the context of an interview. While an interview shouldn&#x27;t be an inquisition, it obviously does have some areas where you&#x27;re being put on the spot, on purpose.Note: Specifically staying just on the &quot;trigger&quot; topic. Not disregarding the level of concern that the story brings, assuming it is true.

Yes, I don&#x27;t want to blame &quot;Amy&quot; for this. Lots of people have started using the word this way. It is a minor quibble. Perhaps you&#x27;re right that by bringing this up, I&#x27;m distracting from the major point of her article. I still want to leave it up, though.

I wholeheartedly agree, and considered making a comment about the same point, but in all honestly, I think it&#x27;s a small quibble in the grand scheme of what the article is about.

I had several takeaways. Just split them into several comments in this thread.

Strange that this was your takeaway when there were so many other things in the article to be greatly bothered by.

&quot;Trigger warnings&quot; come from liberal arts colleges afraid of upsetting students with material that the previous generation of students coped with somehow, that&#x27;s the first time I heard it used in this context.

&gt;I think part of what made Susan Fowler&#x27;s account credible to many people was that she didn&#x27;t use the same terminology as university political groups (trigger, survivor, etc).Yeah, you have to look at this girl&#x27;s age and background. It makes sense that she&#x27;s going to use that terminology. Every generation has different ways of talking about things.

Fowler&#x27;s post was incredibly well written and showed the power of understatement.

She is very careful but smart about her article. Title reads &quot;Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber&quot;, doesn&#x27;t seem very accusatory to me, however this only makes the what the article presents even more absurd.

I think part of what made Susan Fowler&#x27;s account credible to many people was that she didn&#x27;t use the same terminology as university political groups (trigger, survivor, etc).The title, &quot;I am an Uber Survivor&quot;, and the first few paragraphs, made me immediately skeptical. After she revealed specific examples of Uber&#x27;s toxic culture, I began to feel quite guilty.

&gt; tried to trigger meMan, I really wish the internet hadn&#x27;t decided that &quot;trigger&quot; means to anger or upset someone instead of the original meaning: provoke an anxiety or panic attack, like lighting firecrackers around war veterans.Not that what Uber is doing here to &quot;Amy&quot; isn&#x27;t despicable. I&#x27;m just a little bothered by this relatively frivolous usage of the word &quot;trigger&quot; compared to the original purpose for using it: to highlight the experiences of those suffering from PTSD. PTSD can come in many forms, not just from wartime trauma. That&#x27;s what &quot;triggering&quot; someone was about.

HR exists to protect companies, not employees.  I don&#x27;t know why people ever think going to HR is a good idea.  Go to a lawyer, and let that lawyer go to HR.

&quot;Recently&quot;? They&#x27;re in deep public relations trouble recently. They&#x27;ve been ethically reprehensible for ever.

A very sad read. Uber is in deep ethical trouble recently. Postpone that IPO plan guys.Would not it be better if HR of your company can be managed by some third party with 100% transparency?

What especially annoys me about the Uber&#x27;s management is that they believe themselves to be tough and no-nonsense - but in reality their behaviour is self-destructive. In other words, they are delusional and arrogant, not practical and reality-oriented. I have worked with people like this, though they were not as extreme as Uber.Travis Kalanick is often painted as an example of Ayn Rand&#x27;s philosophy in action. [1] I don&#x27;t doubt he follows his own shallow understanding of her ideas. Still, what she actually said was that it&#x27;s in your rational self-interest to treat everyone you deal with fairly and trade value for value. I.e., you need ethics to succeed in business.John Allison of BB&amp;T bank explains this principled approach better than I can [2]. He grew BB&amp;T into a top 10 American bank, but he&#x27;s the polar opposite of the stereotypical ruthless capitalist.If you screw people over, you may gain a short-term advantage, but you will inevitably fail in the long-run. Enron, Zynga, Groupon, and countless others have proved this.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pando.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;10&#x2F;24&#x2F;travis-shrugged&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pando.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;10&#x2F;24&#x2F;travis-shrugged&#x2F;</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;XPSGMbqEGU0?t=3m12s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;XPSGMbqEGU0?t=3m12s</a>

I can absolutely imagine an Uber manager speaking against ethics. I find it less plausible that a man in his 40s (my age group) refers to women as &quot;sweetheart&quot;...that seems like a thing someone in his 60s or 80s would say.

&quot;There is no place for ethics in this business sweetheart. We are not a charity.&quot;OMFGI don&#x27;t know if this is real or not, but given how Uber acts publicly about everything else (breaking the laws until governments are forced to amend the laws for Uber), I&#x27;m not surprised at all if this really is the overall attitude that they have for everything.

You can delete it from the app, as well. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imore.com&#x2F;how-to-delete-your-uber-account" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imore.com&#x2F;how-to-delete-your-uber-account</a>

I get a 404 past the telephone&#x2F;email entry page...

After reading the original blog post I went to remove my account from the app. It asked to provide always on access to location and when I refused I couldn&#x27;t even reach app&#x27;s menu. I removed the app and used the same link you provided to remove my account, and mentioned my experience in the comment section. Now they sent me an email saying that my account is still active and they&#x27;ll fix the app. The fact that process of closing my account is not a single button press and is taking me more than two days is beyond ridiculous and infuriating to be honest.

I have to state my reasons as a required field, AND wait for their &quot;approval&quot; to delete my own account? WTF is this shit.

You can delete your Uber account here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.uber.com&#x2F;h&#x2F;24010fe7-7a67-4ee5-9938-c734000b144a" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;help.uber.com&#x2F;h&#x2F;24010fe7-7a67-4ee5-9938-c734000b144a</a>

I&#x27;m guessing that it was the glamor (Uber) and the money. And the challenge to beat those assholes at their game.

That&#x27;s quite different from what Amy alleges happened to her at the interview.

Famous example: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;hyman-rickover-interview-techniques-2014-4" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;hyman-rickover-interview-tech...</a>I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s actually useful when interviewing for a job with lives on the line, but I would guess that it creates an effect where the worse the interview experience is the happier you feel when you pass it.

we kind of do that to our government officials no?

In my mind there&#x27;s a pretty clear difference between being challenged to justify your answers or go into deeper detail in a response and being intentionally insulted.  I&#x27;m not thin skinned, but I&#x27;m not about to go to work for someone after they spend an hour or more calling me retarded.

Have you not been in a stressful technical interview situation? I have even heard of people doing this on purpose to weed out people who don&#x27;t &quot;perform under pressure&quot;.

It wouldn&#x27;t bother me much.I&#x27;ve worked with people who couldn&#x27;t handle pressure, who would just shut down and blank out when you criticized their plans or gave negative feedback. It&#x27;s not pleasant - such people force you to spend more time thinking about their feelings than about technology or strategy. People like that shut down the free exchange of ideas.I&#x27;d much rather suffer through a grueling interview for a day than work with such people on a daily basis. Being a healthy adult without PTSD, I don&#x27;t get &quot;triggered&quot; by interviewers questioning me or playing games.

&gt; I remember how the interviewers constantly tried to trigger me and insulted my intelligence to see if I break under pressure.What the fuck? I&#x27;d walk and never entertain an offer from a company that spent the interview insulting and provoking me. Who would be stoked to get an offer after an experience like that, much less accept it??

To me, this detail seems like it was planted in the story to identify him specifically to the people who would &quot;know&quot; the signal. No idea how accurate that could be, though.

in case there are two &quot;mike&quot;s close to travis. 2 was hired after 1.

Noob auestion: why &quot;Mike#2&quot; instead of simply &quot;Mike&quot;?

Who else could hire the investigators?It&#x27;s a tricky problem, but ultimately you rely on the investigators caring more about their reputation than any one contract. If it gets out that firm X doesn&#x27;t do objective reviews, then future companies in hot water won&#x27;t hire them.The real challenge here is that these investigators are not independent. Eric Holder has done prior work on behalf of Uber, which means he could reasonably be biased towards the company.

Independent only means independent of the company&#x27;s staff. Whether objective or partial to the company is a different story.

Exactly. It&#x27;s not an independent investigation if you hire the investigators.

If this article is truthful, then the problem is coming from the top, not just one manager being abusive.

I work at Uber. What happened to Susan Fowler and Amy is terrible.To give another side of the Uber story, I&#x27;ve seen nothing but respect on my team of ~25 engineers. Only a few of us are women, but also only a few of us are the &quot;white male&quot; stereotype that you see in the press. Everyone I&#x27;ve talked to on my team is aware of and upset about the lack of female engineers in tech.I saw Uber&#x27;s CTO (Thuan Pham, a Vietnamese refugee) downstairs at Uber the day Susan Fowler posted her article. A woman who works at Uber came up to him, and asked him how he&#x27;s doing. He said, &quot;It&#x27;s a tough time, but we&#x27;ll get through it.&quot; She told him, &quot;I&#x27;m sorry, I know how much you care&quot;, and gave him a hug.Arianna Huffington is on Uber&#x27;s board of directors. She&#x27;s in charge of helping Uber employees &quot;lead healthier lives&quot;. In response to Susan Fowler&#x27;s article, Arianna has been holding personal discussions with employees about what we&#x27;re going to do to stop this type of thing from ever happening again.It&#x27;s easy to stereotype a company, but at the end of the day you&#x27;re talking about ~12,000 individuals. Many if not most of whom came from Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I&#x27;m hopeful that these decisions didn&#x27;t come from the top. It really may have been just a couple of individuals who did messed up things, and should&#x2F;will be fired.

As skeptical as I am with Uber, I&#x27;m still hoping that something will come up with the investigation. It also encourages me that more people are speaking up. The more bad press they get, the more pressure they&#x27;ll have to have their &quot;investigations&quot; result in some discipline.

Eric Holder was AG. AG is not a political office, and he&#x27;s not a politician. What you should be concerned with is the fact that he was associated with them previously and is a proponent of theirs.

&gt;&quot;Great, retain a Chicago politician so you know you&#x27;ll get the answer you&#x27;re paying for.&quot;right. regardless of where you stand on his performance as attorney general, hiring eric holder is a political move. if uber actually cared about investigating this, they wouldn&#x27;t have hired a politician.

Why is this being modded down?  It&#x27;s the truth.  Big companies almost always come out on top in trials because they can afford the best lawyers, and they can afford to game the system to bankrupt their opponents by filing never-ending motions to delay and other tactics which increase the legal costs to the opponent.  You&#x27;re almost never going to get a positive result if you&#x27;re a rank-and-file employee; your best course of action is to leave the company and find something better.

agreed, watching &quot;the good wife&quot; has been uncomfortably educational about how the system works.

Uber is sitting on billions of dollars of VC money. I&#x27;m sure that there are some very high-powered law firms out there salivating at the chance to represent these women in a class-action lawsuit.Maybe the victims won&#x27;t get as much recompense as they deserve (because so much of the judgement will go to attorneys), but I would not be so sure that Uber will have them outgunned in court. At the very least, it could teach Uber a lesson by putting an expensive crater in their VC runway.

Not just any huge corp, but Uber - getting away with shady stuff is in their DNA

As others have pointed on, on top of all that, even if you win, you&#x27;re going to have a very hard time getting a job in the same field because of the law suit.

At this scale of awfulness and given how much cash Uber has, I imagine some very good employment lawyers are going to be shaking the bushes looking for as many plaintiffs as they can find, and wouldn&#x27;t think of charging them to participate.

Get Peter Thiel on your side.  He used the courts to kill Gawker.

Maybe I&#x27;ve watched too much Suits and The Good Wife, but it just seems that it&#x27;s all futile. They&#x27;re a huge corp, if you file suit against them they&#x27;ll hit back harder with bigger and badder lawyers, and you either settle out of court, or play the lotto with the court system and try your hand at a judgement with whatever lawyers you can afford. It&#x27;s really sad how stacked the odds seem.

Is it just me or are other people also constantly surprised by how many big names have their hands in the &#x27;uber pot&#x27;?It&#x27;s like there&#x27;s a massive list of investors and shareholders who are all riding this &quot;sure thing&quot; to big riches. Which makes me wonder two things: 1.) is uber too big too fail? are there so many rich and powerful people invested that they will make uber succeed no matter or 2.) this thing could be the biggest investor flop in recent memory.

Eric Holder certainly does already have an existing business relationship with Uber-<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigstory.ap.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;01685274cc944196af9016ad0a875b72&#x2F;eric-holder-weighs-uber-against-fingerprint-checks" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bigstory.ap.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;01685274cc944196af9016ad0a875...</a>

It sounds like they&#x27;re using &#x27;Chicago politician&#x27; as a character description (valid or not). Similar to how people might use Nazi (e.g. Grammar Nazi, or &quot;You&#x27;re such a Nazi!&quot;) etc.

I&#x27;ve also heard that he puts ketchup on his hotdog.

Agree. I&#x27;ve lived both places. Clearly, NYC has more slippery characters.  &#x2F;bash

&gt;&quot;Great, retain a Chicago politician so you know you&#x27;ll get the answer you&#x27;re paying for.&quot;Normally I don&#x27;t care, but because I&#x27;m from Chicago and am officially very touchy about all the abuse the city catches, I&#x27;d like to correct the record as Eric Holder is from New York.

More interesting, I think, that Uber has a standing relationship with the law firm Holder works for. Holder has previously worked on Uber&#x27;s behalf: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;airport.blog.ajc.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;former-u-s-attorney-general-eric-holder-backs-uber-in-letter-to-atlanta-mayor&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;airport.blog.ajc.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;15&#x2F;former-u-s-attorney-g...</a>He does have a credible image, but the announcement sort of co-opted that to make it seem like he might be somehow independent in his thinking. In reality, he&#x27;s a lawyer being paid by Uber. As such, he isn&#x27;t really inclined to find all the dirt...Depends on where said dirt is.

One doesn&#x27;t retain Eric Holder to investigate. When a company has a race problem they pay a high profile member of that race some dough to appear to set things right. Does anyone know of such a case in which things were actually set right? I&#x27;m willing to believe that I&#x27;ve never heard the story because it&#x27;s boring news, but still

It seems that Uber has strong correlation between &quot;abusive&quot; and &quot;seen as high performer&quot;.

One wonders if something from the investors world view went into uber..

&gt;Travis is well known to protect high performing team leaders no matter how abusive they are towards their employees. The HR team was known to be deftly[sic] afraid of Travis’s tendency to blame and ridicule the women and yell at HR whenever they went in with complaints of abuse. I heard about Travis personally congratulating Mike#2 for meeting strict deadlines months after I complained to HR about my abuse.This is why I&#x27;m skeptical of Uber&#x27;s promise to investigate these allegations. When I heard that they had retained Eric Holder to investigate, my knee-jerk reaction was petty and cynical: &quot;Great, retain a Chicago politician so you know you&#x27;ll get the answer you&#x27;re paying for.&quot;I was a little disappointed in myself at the time, but damn. With this company, I&#x27;m starting to think that impression might have been on the money.

&gt; But based on the flags this story is getting, many don&#x27;t [believe your story].Or maybe they know her story all too well, and are angry to see it here. It&#x27;s not like there&#x27;s nobody from Uber on HN, I mean.

I also believe your story Amy, and strongly suggest you think _very_ carefully before providing any sort pf &quot;proof&quot; to people who demand it, and view those people with intense suspicion.And reledi? Grow up man - give up on your &quot;not all men&quot; attitude - trying desperately to preserve your own dignity by failing to acknowledge that our industry treats women in ways with should shame all men, and that your &quot;Holy Grail&quot; tech employers like Uber are at the worst end of the bell curve - quite clearly run by reprehensible human beings from the top down - which filters all the way down the org chart. #deleteuber

I also believe Amy. But I recognize that many don&#x27;t. The story will have difficulty making an impact if people are easily attacking its authenticity.

Amy, I believe your story because it is a second independent set of events that closely parallels Susan&#x27;s story.You do not need to suffer more indignity by &quot;being outed.&quot;Best of luck!

Do you have _any_ basis at all for your suggestion that _all_ of the stories you hear in private and public about the leadership and management of Uber being toxic all the way from the top are ever worth &quot;wondering&quot; about their truthfulness? Is _any_ of Uber&#x27;s public behaviour worthy of giving them the benefit of the doubt? They&#x27;re rotten through and through - and here you have the audacity and insensitivity to question individual accounts of poor treatment at the hands of the clearly reprehensible garbage in control of the company? _Seriously?_

I agree, this is the only thing that I&#x27;ve been wondering, otherwise it really is, for me personally, the end of any interaction with the company, it is unforgivable if true.

Maybe you should follow the trend.One person coming forward is not evidence. Evidence is when every single Uber engineer that I talk to, backs up these claims.Don&#x27;t focus on this one case. Focus on all the other women who are going to come forward in the next couple weeks.

Many people hate Uber. Maybe Amy wrote this. Maybe a taxi driver wrote this.I have no idea, and to pretend otherwise is to fool myself in order to confirm my preconceived notions.

Amy, many people believe your story. But based on the flags this story is getting, many don&#x27;t, at least not yet.Is there any way you can verify the authenticity of your story without losing your anonymity to the public? For example, would Susan be able to verify you as an ex-employee?

Yet another example, with lots more that won&#x27;t come out publicly, of just how toxic Uber&#x27;s culture of growth at any cost and personal allegiances to Travis really is. The current internal investigation by insiders is a complete joke and only a class action lawsuit can start to right the wrong.

Not sure I would want to hire some of them, if they think this behavior is normal.

Let&#x27;s forget about the drama for a minute and focus on running an actual business.It seems like a lot people are about to leave Uber and that&#x27;s a business opportunity!Here&#x27;s a list of Uber employees that can be recruited away with little to moderate effort: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;results&#x2F;people&#x2F;?facetCurrentCompany=[&quot;1815218&quot;]" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.linkedin.com&#x2F;search&#x2F;results&#x2F;people&#x2F;?facetCurrent...</a>

How insidiously toxic. I cannot think of a better or more perfectly descriptive word than toxic (at least this is the word we use in the military for environments less bad than that).&gt; Therefore, it hurts me to say that despite my grit, I was not prepared to deal with the abuse and dehumanizing treatment I received from my supervisors and colleagues at Uber.Nobody should expect to be so prepared. Nobody volunteers to become the equivalent of a prisoner of war.

Yes, you should assume any opposing viewpoint has been bought and paid for by the opposition.&#x2F;s

Is it possible that the flaggers have been mobilized by Uber to shut down criticism?

I am an Uber survivor