So then, zero stars for Travis Kalanick. The Uber co-founder and CEO has stepped down after a tumultuous period culminating in a spotlight being shone on the company’s corporate environment of sexism, as revealed in a powerful blogpost by former employee Susan Fowler. Make no mistake; this is largely Fowler’s victory and proof that speaking out can reap dividends, despite the risks involved and the bravery it takes.
It has taken just four months since Fowler wrote her exposé – which has been retweeted more than 22,000 times – for Kalanick to fall on his priapic sword. In the blogpost, Fowler detailed how on her very first day in the job a colleague sent her chat messages propositioning sex. Even though the HR department conceded that this was sexual harassment, and that it later emerged other women had suffered the same treatment, the colleague was not punished. Fowler was essentially told to forget about it. She also noted that Uber’s female staff – 25% of employees – had dropped to 6% during her time there. An exodus of women due to both the chaotic nature of the organisation but more specifically, the insidious sexism.
Many comments underneath the blogpost were from women, thanking Fowler for speaking out. “Putting your story out there is incredibly risky, and you will probably get a lot of haters and headache for your effort. But, as a woman in tech: thank you so much for making your voice heard”, one commenter wrote. Another said she was dealing with the same issues in her position at Apple.
These stories are all too common in any workplace, but the scale of sexism in tech is particularly known. Three years ago I investigated wide-ranging sexism faced by women in tech and was overcome with responses. Tales of strip clubs, belittlement, discrimination in the face of expectant mothers.
Now, Fowler has been vindicated in detailing her experience. Uber has had a roll call of dubiously ethical and misogynist incidents – threatening a (female) journalist; treating its drivers as chattel; Kalanick’s obnoxious rant at a driver; instances of physical and sexual assault, and kidnapping, on female passengers after inadequate background checks (and acquiring one rape victim’s medical records in attempt to smear her); spying on users; the lack of support for a rare female driver who said that two male passengers had sexually assaulted her; anti-competitive practices. You name it, and if it’s shitty behaviour, Uber has probably done it.
Kalanick had already announced a period of time off, but it seems he has been pushed out by five major shareholders who have had enough of Uber’s increasingly toxic brand and the details emerging from the “urgent investigation” into the corporation, ordered by Kalanick himself after the pushback. Kalanick is just the latest to go. In fact, Uber is now left without a COO, CFO, CMO – and with Kalanick gone, CEO. People have either resigned or been “terminated”, as corporate machine speak has it.
The most high-profile leavers are the company’s president Jeff Jones, who said Uber’s values were incompatible with his own; head of communications Rachel Whetstone; Ed Baker, the vice-president of growth; senior vice president of engineering Amit Sinhal – fired after it was revealed he had not disclosed former sexual harassment claims against him when he worked for Google; Anthony Lewandowski who has been at the centre of a lawsuit surrounding Uber’s driverless technology, and who was also fired. The head of finance left after little more than a year and a half. The turnover of staff either caught up in scandal or fed up with company’s culture is ridiculously high.
Maybe the absurd icing on Uber’s snafu cake however was, in a meeting last week to address workplace sexism, a boardroom member … made a sexist comment (you couldn’t make it up). He later stepped down, with the approval of Arianna Huffington, another board member. Uber has brought in some women – Frances Frei and Bozoma Saint John as chief brand officer, a rare woman of colour in tech, so it’s possible that the culture will change, but I’m not holding my breath. At all.
So congratulations to Fowler for raising her head above the parapet and in doing so claiming the biggest Silicon Valley tech-bro scalp. She has done all of us, both women and men who don’t want to work in a toxic, misogynistic environment, a great favour. And that’s a glimpse of possibility in a world which seems turned away from progressive values right now.
As former head of Google Brain, Andrew Ng, put it in the wake of Kalanick stepping down: “Don’t underestimate the power of your voice, even if you’re just one person. Speak truth”.