This link has been bookmarked by 167 people . It was first bookmarked on 19 Feb 2017, by someone privately.
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brennanpr@drewgmackie See: https://t.co/iIcMBqlN5t
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Kathy GillIf you've not yet read susanthesquark's February story, please stop what you're doing > https://t.co/9IaPXf1icz https://t.co/gPSbX1nGtZ
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It's a strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying story that deserves to be told while it is still fresh in my mind, so here we go.
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They were still wrangling microservices out of their monolithic API, and things were just chaotic enough that there was exciting reliability work to be done.
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On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.
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Uber was a pretty good-sized company at that time, and I had pretty standard expectations of how they would handle situations like this. I expected that I would report him to HR, they would handle the situation appropriately, and then life would go on
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When I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man's first offense, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to. Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.
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I was then told that I had to make a choice: (i) I could either go and find another team and then never have to interact with this man again, or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that.
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(it was genuinely in the company's best interest to have me on that team),
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One HR rep even explicitly told me that it wouldn't be retaliation if I received a negative review later because I had been "given an option".
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In the background, there was a game-of-thrones political war raging within the ranks of upper management in the infrastructure engineering organization. It seemed like every manager was fighting their peers and attempting to undermine their direct supervisor so that they could have their direct supervisor's job. No attempts were made by these managers to hide what they were doing: they boasted about it in meetings,
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The ramifications of these political games were significant: projects were abandoned left and right, OKRs were changed multiple times each quarter, nobody knew what our organizational priorities would be one day to the next, and very little ever got done. We all lived under fear that our teams would be dissolved, there would be another re-org, and we'd have to start on yet another new project with an impossible deadline. It was an organization in complete, unrelenting chaos.
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But I went home and cried that day, because even aside from impacts to my salary and bonuses, it did have real-world consequences - significant consequences that my management chain was very well aware of. I was enrolled in a Stanford CS graduate program, sponsored by Uber, and Uber only sponsored employees who had high performance scores. Under both of my official performance reviews and scores, I qualified for the program, but after this sneaky new negative score I was no longer eligible.
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It turned out that keeping me on the team made my manager look good, and I overheard him boasting to the rest of the team that even though the rest of the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some on his team.
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Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn't transfer were quitting or preparing to quit. There were two major reasons for this: there was the organizational chaos, and there was also the sexism within the organization. When I asked our director at an org all-hands about what was being done about the dwindling numbers of women in the org compared to the rest of the company, his reply was, in a nutshell, that the women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engineers.
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Things were beginning to get even more comically absurd with each passing day. Every time something ridiculous happened, every time a sexist email was sent, I'd sent a short report to HR just to keep a record going.
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I replied and said that I was sure Uber SRE could find room in their budget to buy leather jackets for the, what, six women if it could afford to buy them for over a hundred and twenty men. The director replied back, saying that if we women really wanted equality, then we should realize we were getting equality by not getting the leather jackets. He said that because there were so many men in the org, they had gotten a significant discount on the men's jackets but not on the women's jackets, and it wouldn't be equal or fair, he argued, to give the women leather jackets that cost a little more than the men's jackets. We were told that if we wanted leather jackets, we women needed to find jackets that were the same price as the bulk-order price of the men's jackets.
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The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that *I* was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making, and that if I had ever considered that I might be the problem. I pointed out that everything I had reported came with extensive documentation and I clearly wasn't the instigator (or even a main character) in the majority of them - she countered by saying that there was absolutely no record in HR of any of the incidents I was claiming I had reported (which, of course, was a lie, and I reminded her I had email and chat records to prove it was a lie).
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15 Mar 17
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this was clearly sexual harassment
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it was this man's first offense,
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Upper management told me that he "was a high performer"
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and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him
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So I left that team
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I began to meet more women engineers in the company.
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I was surprised that some of them had stories similar to my own.
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27 Feb 17
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26 Feb 17
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María Pérez de ArriluceaRead at last “Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber” https://t.co/yxpE86VTwg I almost threw my laptop out of the window.
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dlgogma@JacenRKohler @paulbradleycarr https://t.co/VqDhJNHeYP
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22 Feb 17
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Robert BestAs most of you know, I left Uber in December and joined Stripe in January. I've gotten a lot of questions over the past couple of months about why I left and what my time at Uber was like.
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21 Feb 17
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Renee HawkinsI'm in awe of @susanthesquark's calm demeanor as she details all-too-common harassment/sexism patterns: https://t.co/xIZv99mAaj
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20 Feb 17
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harassment
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offense
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comfortable
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Charlotte-Anne LucasThis MUST be read by all (and keep in mind that her appalling experience is all too common throughout tech): https://t.co/jFhWMAlstW
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Grace RodriguezI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
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Ed LeafeI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
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Thomas James"Susan J. Fowler
HOME BLOG BOOKS EVENTS READING LIST ABOUT
Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber
February 19, 2017
As most of you know, I left Uber in December and joined Stripe in January. I've gotten a lot of questions over the past couple of months about why I left and what my time at Uber was like. It's a strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying story that deserves to be told while it is still fresh in my mind, so here we go.
I joined Uber as a site reliability engineer (SRE) back in November 2015, and it was a great time to join as an engineer. They were still wrangling microservices out of their monolithic API, and things were just chaotic enough that there was exciting reliability work to be done. The SRE team was still pretty new when I joined, and I had the rare opportunity to choose whichever team was working on something that I wanted to be part of.
After the first couple of weeks of training, I chose to join the team that worked on my area of expertise, and this is where things started getting weird. On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with. It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR.
Uber was a pretty good-sized company at that time, and I had pretty standard expectations of how they would handle situations like this. I expected that I would report him to HR, they would handle the situation appropriately, and then life would go on - unfortunately, things played out quite a bit differently. When I reported the situation, I was told by both HR and upper management that even though this was clearly sexual harassment and he was propositioning me, it was this man's first offense, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to. Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.
I was then told that I had to make a choice: (i) I could either go and find another team and then never have to interact with this man again, or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that. I remarked that this didn't seem like much of a choice, and that I wanted to stay on the team because I had significant expertise in the exact project that the team was struggling to complete (it was genuinely in the company's best interest to have me on that team), but they told me the same thing again and again. One HR rep even explicitly told me that it wouldn't be retaliation if I received a negative review later because I had been "given an option". I tried to escalate the situation but got nowhere with either HR or with my own management chain (who continued to insist that they had given him a stern-talking to and didn't want to ruin his career over his "first offense").
So I left that team, and took quite a few weeks learning about other teams before landing anywhere (I desperately wanted to not have to interact with HR ever again). I ended up joining a brand-new SRE team that gave me a lot of autonomy, and I found ways to be happy and do amazing work. In fact, the work I did on this team turned into the production-readiness process which I wrote about in my bestselling (!!!) book Production-Ready Microservices.
Over the next few months, I began to meet more women engineers in the company. As I got to know them, and heard their stories, I was surprised that some of them had stories similar to my own. Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.
Myself and a few of the women who had reported him in the past decided to all schedule meetings with HR to insist that something be done. In my meeting, the rep I spoke with told me that he had never been reported before, he had only ever committed one offense (in his chats with me), and that none of the other women who they met with had anything bad to say about him, so no further action could or would be taken. It was such a blatant lie that there was really nothing I could do. There was nothing any of us could do. We all gave up on Uber HR and our managers after that. Eventually he "left" the company. I don't know what he did that finally convinced them to fire him.
In the background, there was a game-of-thrones political war raging within the ranks of upper management in the infrastructure engineering organization. It seemed like every manager was fighting their peers and attempting to undermine their direct supervisor so that they could have their direct supervisor's job. No attempts were made by these managers to hide what they were doing: they boasted about it in meetings, told their direct reports about it, and the like. I remember countless meetings with my managers and skip-levels where I would sit there, not saying anything, and the manager would be boasting about finding favor with their skip-level and that I should expect them to have their manager's job within a quarter or two. I also remember a very disturbing team meeting in which one of the directors boasted to our team that he had withheld business-critical information from one of the executives so that he could curry favor with one of the other executives (and, he told us with a smile on his face, it worked!).
The ramifications of these political games were significant: projects were abandoned left and right, OKRs were changed multiple times each quarter, nobody knew what our organizational priorities would be one day to the next, and very little ever got done. We all lived under fear that our teams would be dissolved, there would be another re-org, and we'd have to start on yet another new project with an impossible deadline. It was an organization in complete, unrelenting chaos.
I was lucky enough during all of this to work with some of the most amazing engineers in the Bay Area. We kept our heads down and did good (sometimes great) work despite the chaos. We loved our work, we loved the engineering challenges, we loved making this crazy Uber machine work, and together we found ways to make it through the re-orgs and the changing OKRs and the abandoned projects and the impossible deadlines. We kept each other sane, kept the gigantic Uber ecosystem running, and told ourselves that it would eventually get better.
Things didn't get better, and engineers began transferring to the less chaotic engineering organizations. Once I had finished up my projects and saw that things weren't going to change, I also requested a transfer. I met all of the qualifications for transferring - I had managers who wanted me on their teams, and I had a perfect performance score - so I didn't see how anything could go wrong. And then my transfer was blocked.
According to my manager, his manager, and the director, my transfer was being blocked because I had undocumented performance problems. I pointed out that I had a perfect performance score, and that there had never been any complaints about my performance. I had completed all OKRs on schedule, never missed a deadline even in the insane organizational chaos, and that I had managers waiting for me to join their team. I asked what my performance problem was, and they didn't give me an answer. At first they said I wasn't being technical enough, so I pointed out that they were the ones who had given me my OKRs, and if they wanted to see different work from me then they should give me the kind of work they wanted to see - they then backed down and stopped saying that this was the problem. I kept pushing, until finally I was told that "performance problems aren't always something that has to do with work, but sometimes can be about things outside of work or your personal life." I couldn't decipher that, so I gave up and decided to stay until my next performance review.
Performance review season came around, and I received a great review with no complaints whatsoever about my performance. I waited a couple of months, and then attempted to transfer again. When I attempted to transfer, I was told that my performance review and score had been changed after the official reviews had been calibrated, and so I was no longer eligible for transfer. When I asked management why my review had been changed after the fact (and why hadn't they let me know that they'd changed it?), they said that I didn't show any signs of an upward career trajectory. I pointed out that I was publishing a book with O'Reilly, speaking at major tech conferences, and doing all of the things that you're supposed to do to have an "upward career trajectory", but they said it didn't matter and I needed to prove myself as an engineer. I was stuck where I was.
I asked them to change my performance review back. My manager said that the new negative review I was given had no real-world consequences, so I shouldn't worry about it. But I went home and cried that day, because even aside from impacts to my salary and bonuses, it did have real-world consequences - significant consequences that my management chain was very well aware of. I was enrolled in a Stanford CS graduate program, sponsored by Uber, and Uber only sponsored employees who had high performance scores. Under both of my official performance reviews and scores, I qualified for the program, but after this sneaky new negative score I was no longer eligible.
It turned out that keeping me on the team made my manager look good, and I overheard him boasting to the rest of the team that even though the rest of the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some on his team.
When I joined Uber, the organization I was part of was over 25% women. By the time I was trying to transfer to another eng organization, this number had dropped down to less than 6%. Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn't transfer were quitting or preparing to quit. There were two major reasons for this: there was the organizational chaos, and there was also the sexism within the organization. When I asked our director at an org all-hands about what was being done about the dwindling numbers of women in the org compared to the rest of the company, his reply was, in a nutshell, that the women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engineers.
Things were beginning to get even more comically absurd with each passing day. Every time something ridiculous happened, every time a sexist email was sent, I'd sent a short report to HR just to keep a record going. Things came to a head with one particular email chain from the director of our engineering organization concerning leather jackets that had been ordered for all of the SREs. See, earlier in the year, the organization had promised leather jackets for everyone in organization, and had taken all of our sizes; we all tried them on and found our sizes, and placed our orders. One day, all of the women (there were, I believe, six of us left in the org) received an email saying that no leather jackets were being ordered for the women because there were not enough women in the organization to justify placing an order. I replied and said that I was sure Uber SRE could find room in their budget to buy leather jackets for the, what, six women if it could afford to buy them for over a hundred and twenty men. The director replied back, saying that if we women really wanted equality, then we should realize we were getting equality by not getting the leather jackets. He said that because there were so many men in the org, they had gotten a significant discount on the men's jackets but not on the women's jackets, and it wouldn't be equal or fair, he argued, to give the women leather jackets that cost a little more than the men's jackets. We were told that if we wanted leather jackets, we women needed to find jackets that were the same price as the bulk-order price of the men's jackets.
I forwarded this absurd chain of emails to HR, and they requested to meet with me shortly after. I don't know what I expected after all of my earlier encounters with them, but this one was more ridiculous than I could have ever imagined. The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that *I* was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making, and that if I had ever considered that I might be the problem. I pointed out that everything I had reported came with extensive documentation and I clearly wasn't the instigator (or even a main character) in the majority of them - she countered by saying that there was absolutely no record in HR of any of the incidents I was claiming I had reported (which, of course, was a lie, and I reminded her I had email and chat records to prove it was a lie). She then asked me if women engineers at Uber were friends and talked a lot, and then asked me how often we communicated, what we talked about, what email addresses we used to communicate, which chat rooms we frequented, etc. - an absurd and insulting request that I refused to comply with. When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering. Our meeting ended with her berating me about keeping email records of things, and told me it was unprofessional to report things via email to HR.
Less than a week after this absurd meeting, my manager scheduled a 1:1 with me, and told me we needed to have a difficult conversation. He told me I was on very thin ice for reporting his manager to HR. California is an at-will employment state, he said, which means we can fire you if you ever do this again. I told him that was illegal, and 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. (I was told much later that they didn't do anything because the manager who threatened me "was a high performer").
I had a new job offer in my hands less than a week later.
On my last day at Uber, I calculated the percentage of women who were still in the org. Out of over 150 engineers in the SRE teams, only 3% were women.
When I look back at the time I spent at Uber, I'm overcome with thankfulness that I had the opportunity to work with some of the best engineers around. I'm proud of the work I did, I'm proud of the impact that I was able to make on the entire organization, and I'm proud that the work I did and wrote a book about has been adopted by other tech companies all over the world. And when I think about the things I've recounted in the paragraphs above, I feel a lot of sadness, but I can't help but laugh at how ridiculous everything was. Such a strange experience. Such a strange year.
Note: I am temporarily disabling comments because there are too many for me to keep up with!
In Lessons Learned
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sonya 16 hours ago
i'm so sorry you had to go through that..... I can't begin to imagine. Yikes.
Brettopia 16 hours ago
This is horrible. I considered a job with Uber but decided not to move forward. I'm glad now. Then again, it was with HR, so maybe I could have helped to change the culture. Probably not.
Carl 16 hours ago
Interesting story thanks. A lot of high performers in the company lol.
Cromulent Green 16 hours ago
Please name and shame all these people.
Marianne 16 hours ago
Thanks for sharing your story. I found it from a friend on FB and shared it with more friends there. What a horrible, sexist culture.
Me 16 hours ago
Where are the screen shots?
Leigh 16 hours ago
This is crazy! Thank you for sharing
Suzanne 16 hours ago
Thank you for sharing. I am so sorry you had these unprofessional encounteres. Bring information to the public is the only way to get change. Please post this on glass door.com
You are brave and fearless! Go lady ho
Adam 16 hours ago
Post all of your documented evidence after blurring out the private details. We need to see if it is really sexism or feminist delusion. It is very commonplace to whine about sexism and call everything sexist in the Bay Area. So I am very skeptical of this story.
Analiese 16 hours ago
Thank you for sharing. Please sue!!!!!!
Wang 16 hours ago
I cannot imagine that a company like UBER would allow that thing to happen, shame on the HR team and the stupid management layer.
Susan,I was touched by your courage and integrity, please keep on fighting.
G M 16 hours ago
You should hire an attorney and file a lawsuit for gender discrimination. It sounds like you have all the documentation you need.
Rosamund 16 hours ago
Thank you for being brave and sharing this. As a woman working in tech, it means a lot.
GonzoI 16 hours ago
I've heard and seen some horrible things, but never an organization so institutionally backwards as this. And I have worked for politicians in government offices where firing to make room for people who helped the campaign is considered expected. It's undoubtedly different as a male in a male-dominated industry, so I can't begin to understand the situation, but I'm shocked you stayed after the first incident, let alone all the others. Telling you that your boss might retaliate on your performance review and that there was nothing that could be done about it is absolutely insane. It's frankly astonishing that with so many victims you haven't been asked to join in a class action lawsuit against Uber over this. It's bad enough that the organization itself should be dismantled.
T 16 hours ago
Thank you for sharing this. You were courageous and strong and a role model on not tolerating sick behavior in the workplace.
Stephen 16 hours ago
Good work op. You showed a lot of courage. Thanks for sharing.
Cheryl 16 hours ago
A good reminder re: HR. They are never on the side of the employee and always represent the interests of the company they work for. As appalling as this story is, it's not an isolated one. We women (and many men) have had to deal with this kind of treatment across the board, at all levels, in all fields. That it continues at all is reason enough for Feminism to exist. Clearly, we have a LONG way still to go.
PS 16 hours ago
Wow...this is sickening but doesn't surprise me one bit. HR is often the watch-dog of upper-management, not the champion of employee rights. Yet another illustration of crap women have to keep wading through just do do their jobs. Keep on fighting!
noreenqueen 16 hours ago
its my first time to register a blog and i dont know what to do
Simba 16 hours ago
Ok who is moderating these comments - and why are harmless comments not being posted? Happened to both me and my friend now. Our third friend who commented after us got his comment posted though! This is some real filtering bull crap...
Jamieson Eileen 16 hours ago
I was bullied by two coworkers at a large company and, for over a year, kept a log, reported incidences, politely requested to be removed from the team... but because myself and these women, who made making my life hell into a sport, were "high-performers" I wasn't moved and they weren't reprimanded. After almost 2 years, despite loving my work, I finally had to quit. Sometimes, a company only cares about the company. I'm sorry you had to go through this and appreciate that you didn't stop fighting to be heard. Even though it was clear Uber would not listen.
SG 16 hours ago
Stop being the typical Indian women who writes until there is nothing left. We want to know what you are saying in a quick manner, we have other things to do!
Rob Frankel 16 hours ago
Nicely done, kiddo.
Jules 16 hours ago
You're awesome and brave for posting this. Thanks for sharing. I'm so sorry this happened to you. Although not surprising as this happens daily at big tech companies. I had a similar situation at Google. HR didn't do anything when I reported my mgr. They said it was my perception, blocked my transfer off the team, and let him give me a negative performance review. Hopefully this will create more awareness and foster change.
Grady 16 hours ago
Thank you so much for sharing this incredibly important account, and I thank you for being willing to bring light to it.
Robert Glennie 16 hours ago
Uber are in New Zealand. I think I'll stick with the local tried and true taxi companies after this.
Ash 17 hours ago · 2 likes
Jesus. You joined an unethical company that uses predatory pricing to stomp out the full income jobs of taxis and also uses its enormous power over drivers to pay subminimum wage, but like any feminist, you ignore the people you hurt, and focus on you.
Intersectionalilty says you are a huge jerk who deserved everything you got.
Next time out, you and your sisters should consider the ethics of the company. How your employer treats society is likely how they will treat you.
Piss off.
Sam 16 hours ago
Wtf? Bitter much?
too much 16 hours ago
lol calm down
Renee 16 hours ago
Uh, really? You don't know the circumstances that brought OP to work at Uber. Sometimes you don't have the luxury to complain about an opportunity when it comes. A job is a job. You can do good work within unethical companies - does that diminish the effect the company as a whole? No, because she's not in higher management, and she had NO CONTROL over those decisions being made. Unethical companies exist everywhere. It's not unheard of - or, for that matter, shameful - for employees to stay because they want to make things better and still do good in the midst of the chaos.
I've never been a fan of Uber, partly for the reasons you mentioned, but if employment within a company YOU dislike means you believe she "deserves" sexual harassment, management openly hindering her upward mobility, and unethical-slash-borderline-illegal workplace situations, I'd rethink your own ideas on intersectionality and supporting women. Like, a lot of things.
Dan Schultz 16 hours ago
( correct me if I'm wrong, but in this message are you not doing the EXACT SAME THING you are complaining about? i.e. you are ignoring the people hurt, and focusing on a smaller issue that only you care about? )
Stacy 16 hours ago · 1 like
Way to BLAME THE VICTIM! Tons of companies are predatory and don't have the best business practices. Does this mean that they should treat their female employees like trash?
How do feminists "ignore" the people they hurt? What about the MALE Employees and founders of this company? How are they blame free? You sound like a small-minded man overcompensating for his micropenis. Please get help.
Jess 16 hours ago
Seriously?
Michael 16 hours ago
"Like any feminist... [you] focus on you"
I don't think you understand the idea of intersectionality. Especially funny coming from a guy (I'm guessing
Joseph De Vico 16 hours ago
What do you mean, "like any feminist?" Your indictment of Uber was supportable until it morphed into a hail of neckbeard hate pellets.
AKP 16 hours ago
So just because she is a woman and a feminist she, and not the other hundreds of men at the company, is responsible for the livelihoods of taxi drivers?
Piss off.
Glamwhitetrash 16 hours ago
Nawww, poor little Ash... been permanently friend-zoned haven't we? What a sad little misogynist you are.
PS the Cretaceous era called and said you haven't RSVPd to their Bg Meteor Party invitation.
L 16 hours ago
Yeah, real crazy that she posted *her own perspective on *her experience on *her own site with *her actual name as the URL. What a shitty feminist or whatever.
Tyler 16 hours ago
lmfao ah yes nothing like virtue signalling to defend your misogyny
Joe Silverstein 16 hours ago
You might be just as huge a douche as her manager, and also a moron. The taxicab system is a monopoly set up by the government (which artificially restricts the supply of cab medallions). Uber is crushing that monopoly, and everyone wins except the taxi drivers. Do you agree that monopolies are bad?
Also, who said she is a "feminist?" Any self-respecting woman would be pissed-off if this happened to them.
Elkin Sierra 16 hours ago
wtf
Rob 16 hours ago
Just because taxi companies didn't come up with something to help avoid disruptive change doesn't make it the engineers' fault. Rudeness just makes you look like the same soulless jerks you purport to be complaining about.
Ming 16 hours ago
Wow dude. Victim blaming af.
If the company sucks, they suck. It's illogical to turn around and say the author sucks for not thinking Uber would suck.
Piss off.
Robin 16 hours ago
Your comment sure says a lot about the intersectionality you supposedly believe in.
Steve Consilvio 16 hours ago
Ash, you are what is called a moron. You should work on that.
Iris 16 hours ago
I'm sure in your self righteous world we should all only work for ethical companies and definitely women who expect to be treated with respect (aka "feminists") should consider these things before taking that paycheck.
You. Are. Ridiculous.
Eli 17 hours ago · 1 like
Thank you for sharing. It's crazy to think that this is one documented story for the MANY that go unreported. It saddens me that persons in such a high-profile company (or in civilized society for that matter) conduct themselves so chauvinistically and without regard to their fellow person.
Fight the power. I will never support Uber again.
Morgan 17 hours ago
Thank you for sharing your bizarre experience at Uber, we still have many glass ceilings to break, thank you for showing people we still have a long way to go!!
Julia 17 hours ago · 3 likes
So, this happens in all fields in all disciplines in all walks of life here in the U.S. I bet the only ones shocked hearing this are the men reading this. Similar incidents happen whether you work in a fast food restaurant or in the halls of Congress (I know both). Keep saying this out loud and especially tell the men who aren't afraid of equal women. If you are silent they think you agree, like it or believe you deserve it.
Jess 16 hours ago
Not quite. I am shocked and I am a woman. Obvs I experience inequality in the workplace but this is crazy. Such a pain we should have to keep telling men, 'educating them'. But yes, good point about focussing on the men who aren't afraid of women, the others sap a lot of energy.
Murtaza 17 hours ago · 1 like
Thank you so much for sharing this.
Emk 17 hours ago · 8 likes
Sweet lord, get this off the web and into a lawyer's office right now. If you have all that documentation, and even a semblance of an idea about who those other women are, you have a class-action hostile work environment lawsuit. And this isn't just about how you feel about it, it's about making sure asshats don't continue to get away with stuff like this. I don't like telling any woman what she has to do about harrassment, but please consider how you would feel having left knowing that there are other women out there still dealing with these jerks. This isn't "normal" and it's not something you just "put up with" on the way to the top. This is textbook sexual harrassment and an attempt to cover it up and an attempt to threaten you out of continuing to report. Please go to a lawyer.
Steven Woodruff 17 hours ago · 1 like
You probably should have gotten an attorney early on. It's the only stick they will respond to. Perhaps it is still possible, but it's an odious company with a lousy and totally unsustainable business model. You should be glad you're out.
Linda JC 17 hours ago
Thank you for posting and being so strong. From what I hear, Stripe is a good company and gladly welcomes engineers of all backgrounds and genders. Best of luck on your journey.
$shot 17 hours ago
nts: short uber
Logan 17 hours ago · 2 likes
I'm boycotting Uber after having read this. Never again. Literally just deleted the app on my phone and will be sharing this with all my friends as well. (Heads up Lyft, you're going to be getting many new loyal customers now.)
Ash 16 hours ago
> I'm boycotting Uber after having read this. Never again. Literally just deleted the app on my phone and will be sharing this with all my friends as well. (Heads up Lyft, you're going to be getting many new loyal customers now.)
All those horror stories of how they mistreat their drivers did nothing to persuade you.
Stories of the subminimum wage, stories of the predatory pricing to undermine full income jobs with taxis, reports on how they are undermining public transport, well hell Logan, it's a cheap ride, especially UberPool.
How Uber treated people much less privileged than young healthy educated engineers meant ZERO to you.
But hell, they treated someone who looks like you wrong, or someone you do respect, and now it's #deleteuber.
Newsflash: Lyft is barely any better. Treats drivers with equally poorly. Maybe less intentionally corrupt.
Maya 16 hours ago
Oh boy, lyft is not any better.
Emma Badame 17 hours ago
Thanks so much for sharing this. Though it's awful that there are so many similar stories out there, it does make me feel slightly better to know that I wasn't alone in what I went through.
Michael pang 17 hours ago · 1 like
I'm surprised at the female HR rep who was not taking your side but her job was probably on the line or something. But it's sad that SHE would also blame you since you're the victim.
Boethius 17 hours ago · 2 likes
As a manager I'm trying to fathom why anyone - from HR on down - would even dream of responding the way they did to you. They must have dozens if not hundreds of sexual harassment lawsuits pending.
I suppose an organization growing with as much velocity as Uber can't pause to seriously contemplate its actions. HR seems utterly complicit in its apparent cultural free-fall. Whomever is leading it should be fired immediately.
g 17 hours ago
link to Production-Ready Microservices?
Jayme 17 hours ago
Another example of an immoral organization chasing profits at all costs. Fuck Uber, I'm a "high performing male" who's been in IT for 20 years and I would NEVER tolerate working at a company that does this. If any engineers reading this are still there you are part of the cultural problem if you continue to work there!!!
Tom 17 hours ago · 1 like
You should reach out to a lawyer and consider filing a Title VII complaint
SB Hopper 17 hours ago
Sounds like an extremely disheartening experience.
CC 17 hours ago · 2 likes
Screw Uber, this is absolutely terrifying.
H Sellens 17 hours ago
Good for you keeping records of the abuses. Good luck you will go far!
Dwayne Charrington 17 hours ago · 1 like
As a man, reading this made me feel sick. I am so sorry you had to endure all of this, there is no other way to describe this situation: it's fucked up. Speaking out is the first step, the next step is to get together with all of these other women who endured the same thing and take it to the courts. You did the right thing by reporting as much as possible to HR, there should be a paper trail of all documented reports (hopefully you kept all of the evidence as well).
Male-led companies like Uber really need to wake up to themselves. As a man, if I ever saw someone being treated like you were, I would speak out. Sadly, most men do nothing because they're part of the problem. I've seen enough casual sexism at many workplaces to know this isn't a small-scale problem, women are discriminated against in all facets across tech.
Lauren 19 hours ago · 2 likes
Thank you for writing about this!
I'm a female undergraduate at MIT (studying electrical engineering & computer science) and my peers and I find ourselves trapped in a bubble. In this bubble, there is a misconception that because our peers are near-equally represented in gender, that our workplaces somehow will be too. While it is true that gender equality has come a long way since the 1920s, our working world is still far from being as fair as we all deserve it to be. Because of people like you sharing your experiences with us, we can all more clearly see this truth--that we're still far from perfect--and we can all remember to keep fighting.
Gabe 19 hours ago · 2 likes
It is so disheartening to hear that you did everything right, reporting things, keeping records, doing your job well, and yet nothing changed for the better and lots of things changed for the worst. Congratulations on getting out, but I feel for the women still there that cannot get a better offer outside and have to stick it out. I also am anxious about al the ex-Ubers that will go on to to found/join new companies, join VCs, etc and will come with their 'normal'. This kind of culture is insidious and contagious unless stopped.
Putul 19 hours ago
Thanks for sharing.
Luisa Pinheiro 19 hours ago · 1 like
Sexism is an universal plague. Thankfully we're learning how to fight it. But it's a marathon, not a short distance race. Hope we have the guts to keep standing up for what's right - it's very often quite a distressing battle. ❤
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COPYRIGHT 2016 SUSAN FOWLER"SusanJFowler sexism Uber humanresources business management cleverAmericansolutionstoproblemsthatshouldnotexist
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Mela EckenfelsEverything about Susan Fowler's account of what it was like to be a female engineer at Uber is terrible. https://t.co/bcqVikxOzu
Davon abgesehen, dass #Uber ein Problem hat – in wie vielen StartUps läuft das vermutlich ähnlich? https://t.co/eNabSTGMtU -
Marta PintoI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
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Javier NeiraHoly shit
https://t.co/Y3WuyUhJPX -
Caitlin KrauseThis MUST be read by all (and keep in mind that her appalling experience is all too common throughout tech): https://t.co/jFhWMAlstW
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In the background, there was a game-of-thrones political war raging within the ranks of upper management in the infrastructure engineering organization. It seemed like every manager was fighting their peers and attempting to undermine their direct supervisor so that they could have their direct supervisor's job. No attempts were made by these managers to hide what they were doing: they boasted about it in meetings, told their direct reports about it, and the like. I remember countless meetings with my managers and skip-levels where I would sit there, not saying anything, and the manager would be boasting about finding favor with their skip-level and that I should expect them to have their manager's job within a quarter or two. I also remember a very disturbing team meeting in which one of the directors boasted to our team that he had withheld business-critical information from one of the executives so that he could curry favor with one of the other executives (and, he told us with a smile on his face, it worked!).
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According to my manager, his manager, and the director, my transfer was being blocked because I had undocumented performance problems
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I kept pushing, until finally I was told that "performance problems aren't always something that has to do with work, but sometimes can be about things outside of work or your personal life." I couldn't decipher that, so I gave up and decided to stay until my next performance review.
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Performance review season came around, and I received a great review with no complaints whatsoever about my performance. I waited a couple of months, and then attempted to transfer again. When I attempted to transfer, I was told that my performance review and score had been changed after the official reviews had been calibrated, and so I was no longer eligible for transfer. When I asked management why my review had been changed after the fact (and why hadn't they let me know that they'd changed it?), they said that I didn't show any signs of an upward career trajectory. I pointed out that I was publishing a book with O'Reilly, speaking at major tech conferences, and doing all of the things that you're supposed to do to have an "upward career trajectory", but they said it didn't matter and I needed to prove myself as an engineer. I was stuck where I was.
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Dan NievesI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
This MUST be read by all (and keep in mind that her appalling experience is all too common throughout tech): https://t.co/jFhWMAlstW -
Sloane BerrentI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
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Daniël CromptonOr explains how a company would think most people would even want a leather jacket: https://t.co/NN13IfB4hZ ("We al… https://t.co/P8yJvXN1Fd
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Matt BinderI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
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David RoncancioI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
This experience is far too common in our workplace, we must listen and support those affected
https://t.co/5ugo5UNg6R @susanthesquark -
Lun EsexI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
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Stuart McIntyreRT @susanthesquark: I wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
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Upper management told me that he "was a high performer" (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn't feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.
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I was then told that I had to make a choice: (i) I could either go and find another team and then never have to interact with this man again, or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that.
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One HR rep even explicitly told me that it wouldn't be retaliation if I received a negative review later because I had been "given an option". I tried to escalate the situation but got nowhere with either HR or with my own management chain
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It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.
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Over the next few months, I began to meet more women engineers in the company. As I got to know them, and heard their stories, I was surprised that some of them had stories similar to my own. Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company
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In the background, there was a game-of-thrones political war raging within the ranks of upper management in the infrastructure engineering organization. It seemed like every manager was fighting their peers and attempting to undermine their direct supervisor so that they could have their direct supervisor's job.
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I also remember a very disturbing team meeting in which one of the directors boasted to our team that he had withheld business-critical information from one of the executives so that he could curry favor with one of the other executives (and, he told us with a smile on his face, it worked!).
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I was lucky enough during all of this to work with some of the most amazing engineers in the Bay Area. We kept our heads down and did good (sometimes great) work despite the chaos. We loved our work, we loved the engineering challenges, we loved making this crazy Uber machine work, and together we found ways to make it through the re-orgs and the changing OKRs and the abandoned projects and the impossible deadlines. We kept each other sane, kept the gigantic Uber ecosystem running, and told ourselves that it would eventually get better.
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We all lived under fear that our teams would be dissolved, there would be another re-org, and we'd have to start on yet another new project with an impossible deadline. It was an organization in complete, unrelenting chaos.
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Things didn't get better, and engineers began transferring to the less chaotic engineering organizations. Once I had finished up my projects and saw that things weren't going to change, I also requested a transfer. I met all of the qualifications for transferring - I had managers who wanted me on their teams, and I had a perfect performance score - so I didn't see how anything could go wrong. And then my transfer was blocked.
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It turned out that keeping me on the team made my manager look good, and I overheard him boasting to the rest of the team that even though the rest of the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some on his team.
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When I joined Uber, the organization I was part of was over 25% women. By the time I was trying to transfer to another eng organization, this number had dropped down to less than 6%. Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn't transfer were quitting or preparing to quit.
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One day, all of the women (there were, I believe, six of us left in the org) received an email saying that no leather jackets were being ordered for the women because there were not enough women in the organization to justify placing an order
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He told me I was on very thin ice for reporting his manager to HR. California is an at-will employment state, he said, which means we can fire you if you ever do this again. I told him that was illegal, and 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
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I was told much later that they didn't do anything because the manager who threatened me "was a high performer"
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Out of over 150 engineers in the SRE teams, only 3% were women.
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Yee Sian NgAs most of you know, I left Uber in December and joined Stripe in January. I've gotten a lot of questions over the past couple of months about why I left and what my time at Uber was like.
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was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with h
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t I had to make a choice: (i
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to escalate the situation but got nowhere with either HR or with my own management cha
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some of them had stories similar to my own
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ting the exact same manager
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both HR and management had been lying a
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Eventually he "left" the company.
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We all gave up on Uber HR and
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very manager was fighting their peers and attempting to undermine their direct supervisor so that they could have their direct supervisor's jo
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performance problems aren't always something that has to do with work, but sometimes can be about things outside of work or your personal life
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I didn't show any signs of an upward career trajectory
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publishing a book with O'Reilly, speaking at major tech conferences
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I went home and cried that day
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keeping me on the team made my manager look good,
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even though the rest of the teams were losing their women engineers left and right, he still had some on his team
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I joined Uber, the organization I was part of was over 25% women.
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omen were transferr
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umber had dropped down to less than 6%
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re quitting or preparing to qu
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xism within the organi
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ganizational cha
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the women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engine
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irector of our engineering organiza
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I replied and said that I was sure Uber SRE could find room in their budget to buy leather jackets for the, what, six women if it could afford to buy them for over a hundred and twenty men.
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f we women really wanted equality, then we should realize we were getting equality by not getting the leather jack
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*I* was the common theme in all of the repo
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When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering.
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only 3% were wome
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Muzaffaruddin Alvivia All News on 'The Twitter Times: Muzaffar69/corpgov' http://bit.ly/1Sto0U9
#CorpGov All News on 'The Twitter Times: Muzaffar69_corpgov'
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One day, all of the women (there were, I believe, six of us left in the org) received an email saying that no leather jackets were being ordered for the women because there were not enough women in the organization to justify placing an order.
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instigator
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she countered by saying that there was absolutely no record in HR of any of the incidents I was claiming I had reported (which, of course, was a lie, and I reminded her I had email and chat records to prove it was a lie).
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an absurd and insulting request that I refused to comply with
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recounted
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berating
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California is an at-will employment state, he said, which means we can fire you if you ever do this again.
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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. (I was told much later that they didn't do anything because the manager who threatened me "was a high performer").
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I'm proud of the work I did, I'm proud of the impact that I was able to make on the entire organization, and I'm proud that the work I did and wrote a book about has been adopted by other tech companies all over the world.
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disheartening
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insidious
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severance
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appalled
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perpetration
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employee
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Buster BensonI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
Every CEO should grab this URL, send it to all@ saying "this is never ok. If it ever happens, come directly to me." https://t.co/860mhNYa2T
Stop. Using. Uber.
https://t.co/LnMBDVeyNV
One year ago today, I wrote this:
https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH -
Wessel van RensburgReflecting on One Very, Very Strange Year at Uber https://t.co/H0LYdauh1E (https://t.co/nCHQl48b7K)
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dtweneyRT @louisgray: This is simultaneously the most important, disappointing and unsurprising post you'll read on sexism in tech today. https://…
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19 Feb 17
nikerymI wrote something up this weekend about my year at Uber, and why I left: https://t.co/SyREtfLuZH
— Susan Fowler Rigetti (@susanthesquark) February 19, 2017
via Instapaper: Unread http://ift.tt/UvJzr1
Reflecting on One Very, Very Strange Year at Uber https://t.co/aeXm6wF5OC
— Hacker News (@newsycombinator) February 19, 2017
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