[jastingo]

I'm not in the business of defending Uber - quite the contrary - but reading through the comments it seems that most people are assuming that this post by an anonymous person is 100% true.

These types of posts are worrying to me. Why could this post not have been crafted by someone at Lyft? Or one of Uber's many other detractors? Given the PR nightmare that Uber is in why not pile on while the public seems primed for that type of information and stretch out the negative news cycle?

Just thought I'd throw out a word of caution: we know literally nothing about the credibility of this person.

[enraged_camel]

She posted anonymously, BUT also went out of her way to provide an awful lot of information about herself. Information that her ex-coworkers could presumably verify and figure out her real identity (especially since Uber seems to have very few women in engineering positions).

Based on the article, she is:

  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
  7) never wears high heels

So yeah, the target demographic of the article is almost certainly her ex-coworkers. It seems to be a call to action of sorts.

[lr4444lr]

But the OP's point stands generally: If this were a smear campaign by a competing company, how different would it look?

I sympathize greatly with Ms. Fowler not least because she put her reputation out there and claimed to have documentation of the specific offenses, which a decently respectable journalism outfit like the NYTimes could fact-check. Fowler's story could be exaggerated, but I have reasonable doubt that it's true, or true enough to merit scorn toward Uber.

As inexcusable as this "Amy"'s story is if true, we have to keep our heads and recognize when we have a falsifiability problem on our hands with the current facts.

[plainOldText]

I know comments on this type of articles get extremely heated, but with no intention to favor any side, I will say this: What if she provided that "awful lot of information about herself" with the intent of deceiving the audience and creating the illusion that she's this person, when in fact she's somebody else?

Maybe she aggregated attributes from multiple women at Uber and created this new person which cannot be specifically indentified. I see this as a valid strategy to conceal one's identity.

[relics443]

Or that was all made up? Who is in a position to know every employee at Uber, so they can verify that this person actually existed, AND that they actually wrote it?

[memmcgee]

Fowler's post established that this was happening to many women in the company. If we accept that Fowler is a credible witness, which I think is a fair assessment, we already know that this is a systemic problem. It's safe to assume then that if more women come forward, they are more likely to be telling the truth than not.

Additionally, it's in Lyft's or other detractors best interests not to fake additional claims. This is a scandal that will grow on its own, as/if more women come forward. If Lyft et al is caught faking claims, they discredit all the claims and make themselves the bad guys instead of Uber. All Lyft has to do is sit back and watch Uber dig themselves deeper into the hole they're in.

As other posters have also touched on, there is a history of men (and women) doubting and minimizing abuse claims made by women. This is not a good mindset to take as it minimizes the women's experience in favor of a corporation or individual who is already in a more powerful position than the accuser. By minimizing one accuser, we make it harder for women as a whole to speak up against abuse, which is not acceptable.

[ryandrake]

Let's assume I am an internet troll. What stops me from anonymously signing up for Medium and publishing a similar story, now that there are two out there that corroborate?

[1_2__3]

I'd argue Fowler's claims are similarly unchallenged.

[openmosix]

Is Uber a company with a horrible culture? Pretty much. Are the details of these reports 100% accurate? Hard to tell. When talking about the subject, I'd recommend to think about the big picture and not the details (ehy, have you heard at Uber people call colleagues "dirty whore" during meetings?)

[eropple]

To be frank? Uber gets the benefit of the doubt when they demonstrate that they've earned it. Every bit of smoke I have seen, both online and in my social circles, has had fire behind it. Every one, without exception.

So I'm going to believe this until I have a compelling reason not to, and "but it could be fake" isn't one.

[walterstucco]

I come from the country that gave birth to Cesare Beccaria and I won't stop believing that everyone is innocent until proven otherwise. Besides this is exactly smoke, blocking us from seeing the majestic damages Uber is doing to labour ad mobility all over the world. there will always be a woman who'll accept to work for them if the pay is good enough, the ones harassed will be maybe compensated one day with a few million dollars, but the elephant Uber will still be in the room. No matter what, they are still growing, and doing it fast. That's what really scares me, and all the engineers who did a great job of building their infrastructure are, IMHO, somewhat responsible for giving them the power to abuse it. I'm sure they all thought "let's give'em time and see what happens". This happens! every f*ing time. will we learn someday? will we stop to go west looking for the gold? I'm not sure we'll ever understand.

[iopq]

Just because every time you personally saw fire behind smoke doesn't mean that in the future this will hold.

[losteverything]

Although I agree, my training informs me that there is quite a history of doubting reports made by women. From rape to domestic violence.

As a bystander I don't even want to say out loud what you did, even though it crossed my mind.

Women have historically been ignored when reporting.

[jakobegger]

Everyone believes the story because it sounds plausible. It's not the first time we've heard of very bad culture at Uber, and it fits the ways they have been reported to treat their drivers, etc.

Most of the women who left Uber didn't publicly announce why they did. Now we're seeing a plausible explanation.

[walterstucco]

As much as I oppose to Uber philosophy, technology.and their work and HR policies (I even think it's dangerous for the future of mobility), I still think plausible is not enough for news to be news. It's merely enough for bar stories. I respect so much journalism that I don't want enough, I want facts, names, proofs and the smocking gun.

[nylonstrung]

At a company as large as Uber could someone working on database scalability be involved in calls about whether or not payment should be withheld from drivers before a ride ends? Would her manager be the decision maker for that?

That detail seems suspect to me. There are also essentially no details about the work that convey inside knowledge about the ideosyncracies of Uber specifically at a work place. It is also weird to me that she chose to be anonymous but included her height and a bunch of specific incidental details - it reminds me of how liars frequently add an excessive amount of detail to add credibility to their stories.

Personally it sounds true to me. but I'd like to see more scrutiny from someone with perspective on this.

[heisenbit]

The way I see it is that the team was working on the payment system. She may well have specialized on some scaling aspects but that does not preclude her working within a team having responsibility for building or maintaining the payment system. Considering that Uber has a micro services architecture the teams will be organized vertically along end-to-end functionality and not along the architectural layers. In that way the story is consistent with what is publicly known about Uber IT.

[arunitc]

I just returned to India after working in the US for one year. I find it extremely difficult to believe such a culture can exist in the country let alone an organization. People there were friendly, extremely polite and well mannered. I never once faced any incidents or racism or hatred in my work place and out. I can't imagine things like this even in my wildest dreams.

-Chauvinistic, racist and homophobic attitudes were far too normal

-It was normal for guys to openly refer to attractive female colleagues as sluts

-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

Also the fact that she talks about driver compensation makes it look like it was an article written just to smear Uber. I may be wrong though, but really, really hard to believe.

Edit: She refused to meet Freda Kapor (see comments in post) makes it all the more suspicious.

[kdamken]

This 1000 times. It so easy to lie on the internet. It's even easier to get riled up and pick up pitchforks. The things this person wrote about were horrifying, yes, but an anonymous post on the internet should not be immediately accepted as cold hard facts.

[Tycho]

I wouldn't be surprised if this was fake. It seemed to hit on too many talking points and buzzwords. It has a "too good to be true" feel to it.

[lenkite]

I didn't see any buzzwords or liberal talking points in this article. Could you provide specifics ? This article feels exactly as it would be written by a scared and angry person. Not everyone is cool,(as in calm headed) brilliant and courageous as Fowler. Fowler had the smarts, strength and level headedness to keep proof and you get the strong feeling that she has kept more proof hidden and ready to use as ammunition . I suspect she would make a very good troop leader if she had ever joined the military - her writing gives the vibe of an very strong willed woman. But expecting most folks (whether women or men) to be like her and track all facts and evidence in a personal crisis situation is expecting too much of anybody.

[laughinghan]

Are there publicly known instances of something like this being "too good to be true", or is your feeling based only on private experience?

I have had no private experience with something like this being "too good to be true", and multiple instances of it being all too true. And there is obviously a publicly known instance of something like this that appears quite credible (the Susan Fowler blogpost). So you understand why I'd feel the opposite way---that in spite of the lack of substantiation, this feels all too true.

[rifung]

> These types of posts are worrying to me. Why could this post not have been crafted by someone at Lyft? Or one of Uber's many other detractors? Given the PR nightmare that Uber is in why not pile on while the public seems primed for that type of information and stretch out the negative news cycle?

This is a good point, but I thought what historically happens is that there are women who are too afraid to speak up? That's why I personally believe the story.. hopefully more people will speak up and so it won't matter that one of them isn't real.

[angryredblock]

Definitely agree caution is a good stance to take -- as much as we need to be supportive of victims we also need to be smart about doing our research. With that said, given Uber's recent history (Fowler) and without any action from Uber's higher-ups that indicates they actually give a shit (frankly a twitter apology from Kalanick and a half-assed 'investigation' isn't enough at this point), I'm far more inclined to err on the side of supporting the alleged victim than the alleged perpetrator in this case.

[Gatsky]

I would worry less about this credibility issue. Uber management, Mike#2, HR and likely every Uber employee will know if these claims are true, and if so, who they refer to. Our opinion and our degree of outrage matters not at all.

If history shows anything, and despite what we may like to think, public outrage has very little impact on corporate reality. The key to enacting change at Uber is the company management and HR. Rest assured the people that matter will know if this story is true.

[freyr]

From these comments, I can't tell if Uber is a scrappy startup where everybody knows everybody, or it's a huge global corporation where nobody knows what's going on elsewhere.

[joelx]

If this was a science post that had no evidence, everyone here would be shooting it down. Something about a tawdry narrative though seems to instantly be believed.

My first thought was that someone has launched an all out PR attack against Uber. There are hundreds of comments here going after Uber. This was an anonymous post and could be totally fake.

[netsharc]

It would be stupid for Lyft to do this, because if they get busted, it'd be a PR nightmare and counter-productive, because Uber can change the narrative and call Lyft the lying bad guys.

But it's also possible that it's someone who likes Lyft or/and hates Uber.

[uremog]

> Why could this post not have been crafted by someone at Lyft?

After all the shady campaigns Uber has used against their competitors, even if this were true, I'd be fine with it.

[dustinmoris]

Because only a disgusting company like Uber would pull such a thing off and since Uber wouldn't criticise Uber we can safely assume this is probably legit.

[specialist]

Do you know the difference between punching up vs punching down?