Uber is acting fast to try and respond accordingly to a potential backlash from a seething blog post published Sunday revealing repeated, ignored, and bypassed instances of rampant sexual harassment inside Uber.
Uber's Sexism Allegations
According to an internal memo sent to employees at Uber Monday afternoon, Travis Kalanick, the ride-hailing company's CEO, says that Uber has tapped former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to oversee "an independent review" of the allegations brought on by Susan Fowler, the former Uber engineer who authored the revelatory blog post, which went viral and resulted in a widespread outrage.
Fowler spent a year in Uber as a site reliability engineer, with her stint marred by numerous sexual harassment instances that were mishandled or, more accurately, not at all handled, by the company's HR department. Fowler's repeated complaints were not given due gravitas, with her supervisors even going as far as threatening to terminate her if she didn't stop submitting her complaints.
Fowler's 'External' Performance Problems
In the middle of a maelstrom of office politics, which saw upper managers attempting with nary a scintilla of subtlety to overthrow one another, Fowler then tried to be transferred to a different department, a request which was blocked for no good reason: her performance had so far acquired glowing reviews. She was told by the company, however, after Fowler's labyrinthine and circuitous process of applying for a transfer, that performance problems aren't always work-related. They can sometimes be rooted from outside of work or one's personal life.
No matter how many times Fowler complained, the HR insisted that she was the running theme in all of it, essentially indicating that she was the root of the problem.
The #DeleteUber campaign, which was first brought up during Uber's alleged exploitation of Trump's immigration ban as a business advantage, has also now began entering the narrative in response to Fowler's accounts.
Uber Independent Sexism Investigation
Holder will collaborate with Arianna Huffington, cofounder of The Huffington Posta and an Uber board member; Liane Hornsey, Uber's new HR chief; and Angela Padilla, Uber's own in-house lawyer. Uber critics, however, have already pointed out that bringing a board member, an Uber employee, and an in-house lawyer renders Kalanick's "independent" investigation useless, as reported by The Verge.
In the email Kalanick sent to employees, he reiterated about Uber's appalling diversity statistics, pledging to bring the company forward as it weathers the crisis and ultimately address the sexual harassment issues. He also informed them that Uber's first diversity report will be released in the next few months, while pointing the percentages of female employees in other companies.
"I believe in creating a workplace where a deep sense of justice underpins everything we do," writes Kalanick, as written in the memo obtained by Recode. "Every Uber employee should be proud of the culture we have and what we will build together over time."
Silicon Valley Sexism
Sexual harassment is rampant in Silicon Valley, as reported by TechCrunch, noting that the worst part is most of complaints of this nature go by ignored, undocumented, and largely kept out of sight. Fowler's tell-all, if true, paint a bleak picture of Uber's internal operations and culture, which is marred by a cyclical roundabout loop of sexism and office politics, as illustrated through Fowler's accounts.
