Inside Story: Is Uber Leaving Its Female Engineers on the Curb?

Susan Fowler joined ride-sharing service Uber in November 2015 as a site reliability engineer. At the time, women comprised 25% of the engineers on staff. On her first day, her team manager sent her numerous emails telling her that he was in an "open relationship" and was looking for women with whom to have sex. She promptly reported him to the human resources (HR) department. Although HR acknowledged that his conduct constituted sexual harassment, an HR representative claimed it was the manager's first offense and indicated that HR would not feel comfortable doing more than giving him a "stern talking-to" and a warning.

(Fowler later spoke with several other female engineers who told her that they also had been sexually harassed by the same manager. When they had complained to HR, they too had been told it was his "first offense.")

At the time Fowler complained to HR, the HR representative told her that she could either look for another team or stay where she was with the understanding that she would probably receive a bad performance review from the manager. Fowler was also told that if she did get a bad performance report, HR would not consider it retaliation, because she had been given the option of moving to another team. Fowler elected to move to another team.

Working at Uber could be "chaotic," causing many engineers to request transfers to less hectic departments. Although Fowler had a perfect performance score and there were managers who wanted to work with her, her request to transfer to another department did not go through. After she asked why, HR told her that she had "undocumented performance problems." When she pressed for details, she was told that performance problems did not necessarily mean issues related to work, but could be "about things outside of work or your personal life." Uber subsequently changed her performance review and score, without telling her, making her ineligible for transfer. When she asked HR to restore the review to the original, she was told that the bad review would have no "real-world consequences." In fact, though, the bad review made her ineligible to continue in the graduate program at Stanford University that Uber sponsored. By now, the number of female engineers at Uber had dropped to about 6%. About this time, Fowler overheard her manager bragging that he had managed to keep Fowler on his team even though other teams were losing female engineers "left and right."

After another incident of sex discrimination occurred, Fowler again complained to HR. The female representative with whom she met asked Fowler whether she (Fowler) might be the problem. The HR representative also stated that "sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others," so the low percentage of women in engineering shouldn't be "supris[ing]." Shortly after this meeting, Fowler's manager told Fowler that she was on "very thin ice" for reporting his manager to HR. He also told her that because California was an at-will employment state, he could fire her if she made another report. Fowler replied that this would be illegal (which HR confirmed). In December 2016, Fowler left Uber. By then, only 3% of the 150 site reliability engineers were women.

The above information was taken from Susan Fowler's blogsite. Travis Kalanick, Uber's CEO, said that what she described was "abhorrent & against everything we believe in" and that anyone who thought such behavior was acceptable would be fired. Uber retained former attorney general Eric H. Holder, Jr., to investigate claims that Uber's human resources department "repeatedly ignored" harassment claims when those complained about were "top performers." One plaintiffs' law firm criticized Uber's in-house counsel for not training the HR department to immediately report internal allegations of sexual harassment to in-house counsel, who should oversee a prompt investigation of the complaint. As of early 2017, the percentage of women in tech positions at Uber was 15.1%, lower than for most other tech companies, including Google (19%), Apple (23%), and Airbnb (26%), but on a par with Twitter (15%).

More than 75% of Uber's leadership team were males; women comprised 36% of its overall workforce, mostly working in non-tech positions.

Although other Silicon Valley companies have faced claims of sexual harassment and discrimination, multiple sources have called Uber one of the worst offenders. Critics claim that Uber is "well known in the tech industry for its unfriendliness to women" and that "among women engineers ... Uber is the epitome of bro-grammer culture" where men are the dominant programmers. Some have said that Uber's culture is "unfixable" and wonder if there is anything Uber's management can do to "dig themselves out of this hole."

Uber has taken steps to fix its "corporate culture," but will it succeed? In addition to its sexual harassment issues, employees recently described the company as a "cutthroat, political environment" where "[g]rowth ... was prioritized above everything else." This, in turn, "skewed the development" of the company into "something that embraced the 'cult of the individual.'" After major news sites published a video showing the CEO heatedly arguing with an Uber driver, the CEO issued an apology to his employees and said that he needed to "fundamentally change as a leader and grow up ... [and] admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it." In June 2017, Kalanick resigned as CEO "under pressure from investors," although he will remain on the board of directors. One investor noted that although Kalanick "best personified Uber's potential ... it's not like he really could stay without it being brutally bad for the company."

Days later, Justin Caldbeck apologized for making unwanted sexual advances during potential business deals and announced that he would be taking an "indefinite leave of absence" from Binary Capital, the venture capital firm he co-founded. Caldbeck allegedly tried to have sex with one female entrepreneur, sent late-night texts to "meet up" with another, and groped a third under a table at a bar. Clearly Silicon Valley's tremendous success building phenomenal companies has engendered a sense of entitlement that has robbed multiple women of their dignity and ability to be respected as a valuable member of the team. Perhaps the removal of Kalanick and Caldbeck will serve as a cautionary tale for other would-be offenders.

What you would do, if you are in Susan Fowler's position [you are a talented engineer, the title and compensation are excellent], but, you have a difficult boss and a weak HR Department. Post your proposed course of action together with your assessment of the risks and rewards of taking such action [use bullet points to keep it succinct].