Interview with Susan Fowler

Hey engineer at Uber here. I&#x27;m a male engineer started working at Uber two years ago. I&#x27;m seeing a lot of comments here that is discrediting Susan Fowler&#x27;s accomplishments in taking TK down, and I would like to correct the notion that the culture&#x2F;TK himself&#x2F;Waymo is what brought TK down.<p>To preface I&#x27;ve work both at Google as an engineer, and frankly speaking the engineering culture at Uber didn&#x27;t differ all that much. Both org had the same amount of soft misogyny, politics, and HR that protected its highest performers. In fact a lot of characters mentioned in Susan&#x27;s blog post works at Google today. So what led up to the downfall of TK? Susan Fowler&#x27;s blog post. What she described is what a lot of people go through in every company, but she was brave enough to post her experience using her real name. I&#x27;m willing to bet if she never posted her blog post none of this would&#x27;ve happened, and it would&#x27;ve been business as usual at Uber.<p>Susan Fowler exposed the weakness in our culture and it catapulted an internal French Revolution where every head had a possibility of getting axed. This put our executives in a disarray and naturally external enemies decided to strike at us when we were weakest. The Waymo lawsuit only happened when it did and only effective as it was because of the chaos Susan Fowler initiated.<p>So please stop discrediting Susan Fowler, what she did was really the catalyst, the trigger, for Uber to set course on a better path. It&#x27;s just too bad she wasn&#x27;t able to stay and see the real impact of her words. Ubers a great place to work now.

I wish the article connected the dots of her path from studying physics at the University of Pennsylvania to working as an SRE at a San Francisco tech company. It seems like that might be an interesting part of her story.<p>I loved the anecdote of her buying her own leather jacket when Uber couldn&#x27;t be bothered to buy them for women. Brilliant.<p>The title is a bit unfortunate in that it makes her sound like an Attorney General but that&#x27;s nothing to with her but the NY Time&#x27;s Maureen Dowd who has a penchant for sensational titles.

I think the one good thing about the Harvey Weinstein scandal is that it has brought to light that the issue of sexual harassment is not just a Silicon Valley problem, it&#x27;s a problem that is almost universal in our country. I&#x27;ve written here several times here that articles similar to this one are more likely to backfire as they help perpetuate the idea that the tech industry is hostile to women and they should stay away. I&#x27;ve been thinking the best way to eliminate sexism in tech is to bring more women in to the industry. But hopefully, this increased awareness throughout the country will bring it to an end, not just in tech, but in every sector of the economy.

Good profile overall, but I think it should have delved a bit more into her visible accomplishments before the blog post. This wasn&#x27;t some random person levying these accusations, it was someone who&#x27;d spoken on multiple occasions and written a book for O&#x27;Reilly. Had she had a lower profile, the blog post might have been received very differently.

While her post did send shockwaves inside Uber and the Silicon Valley at large, I think, it was Mr. Kalanick&#x27;s incriminating involvement in the Waymo - Uber lawsuit that ultimately sunk Mr. Kalanick. He simply had to go.

I don&#x27;t see why teaching that ethics comes before career isn&#x27;t a priority. There&#x27;s a validation that either the victim or the enablers are put into a morale delma to worry about their career over ethics. Shouldn&#x27;t we be addressing that too? That there is no dilemma, it&#x27;s just a regrettable mistake to do that.

Her background is pretty non-traditional. Such people tend to be independent and consequently have a lot of integrity -- they do the career destroying things that almost nobody does.<p><pre><code> The only woman on the board then, Arianna Huffington, who had vowed that the culture of “brilliant jerks” must end, had been trying to help Mr. Kalanick by advising him to sleep more and meditate. But he caused another kerfuffle when he chose to meditate in the lactation room. </code></pre> This sounds like an environment where people were really banking on no one ever saying anything about anything -- which is just not a prudent thing to do.

Bit off topic. The article mentions a book about ants. Any ideas what it is?

&gt; “Did you read that interview with the C.E.O., Travis, where he talked about how Uber helps him get girls? He’s a misogynist. I could never use his product.”<p>I know nothing of the interview he’s referring to here, but how is it misogynistic to use your company to get girls? Was he picking up Uber employees or potential hires?

&gt; “I think, right now especially, with Trump in the White House, who knows what’s going on with North Korea?&quot;<p>Why are people so worried about going to war with North Korea? There are concentration camps in North Korea. Are South Korean and American lives worth more than the lives of those in concentration camps? The USA tried to create a free Korea during the Korean War and failed because of China and Russia. We need to try again to clean up this mess.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hoeryong_concentration_camp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hoeryong_concentration_camp</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Yodok_concentration_camp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Yodok_concentration_camp</a>

Susan Fowler&#x27;s narrative is sort of the &quot;dual&quot; of the myth of the &quot;little dutch boy&quot; who stuck his finger in a dyke, preventing disaster through a very small act.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pantheon.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;l&#x2F;little_dutch_boy.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.pantheon.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;l&#x2F;little_dutch_boy.html</a>

All China has to do is encourage this and America will self destroy its own software companies . Meanwhile America can do no such thing to China due to their censorship and tight controls.<p>Lets see what happens.

<i>She</i> didn&#x27;t bring him down... <i>HE</i> brought <i>HIMSELF</i> down. Kinda clickbait-y, if you ask me. ¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯

I think the notion of the article is wrong. She did not bring down Travis. The misogynist culture he helped to create did.