Nothing there. The article says "maybe they will fire CTO and Graves" and then goes on to discuss how bad it would look. The initial premise however is that the firings would be done to make the company look better. Makes zero sense and contains no new information.
>He has already been frequently away from the office, sources say, and his absence is unlikely to have a huge impact on the day-to-day operations of the company.
That's interesting. In a bigger company how much of a responsibility should the CTO have to handle harassment incidents. Imo, as long as he or she hands off to the coo (say), or hr chief, the responsibility is complete. The CTO should not be regularly dealing with these sorts of issues, that's not what they were hired for.... (With understanding that legally that may not be the case)
There is this famous quote from I think Steve Jobs. It says that once you are VP or CT* there are no excuses for things going wrong in your department. You are the responsible person.
Honestly yes. His investors have put money into the company as much because they believe in him as because they believe in the idea but at this point all the evidence is pointing to the idea being sustainable but Travis not being. They're hemorrhaging money fighting a losing war with regulators, Lyft, and the taxi monopoly but if they get self driving cars working (which is no guarantee) they are poised to be something incredible. Given all this it can easily be argued that Kalanick is doing more to harm Uber than to help it. If I'm an investor, or on the board, while I might not be ready to throw him out on his ear quite yet, it's absolutely a conversation I'm having.
Let's use some logic here, instead of quotes. An unqualified HR department that does not have proper procedures in place may not notify or relay all of the facts to other parties.
Using your logic, if I'm in charge of HR and simply sweep complaints under the rug, it's not my fault because other people should know what is going on.
No, it's your fault for sweeping it under the rug. But it's also the fault of people above you for allowing a culture and an out-of-control department where stuff gets swept under the rug.
No. I am saying that the CTO is responsible for knowing what is going on in his/her departments, full stop. "Knew or should have known". If the CTO doesn't know, it's the CTO's fault for not knowing, because it's the CTO's job to know.
Now, if you have one employee go off the rails, it's not the CTO's fault for knowing in advance that the one employee had problems. But a department-wide issue? Yeah, it's the CTO's job.
Having been a CTO I can tell you the only way to be a good one is to accept responsibility for everything under your control. I'd always tell my team my real job was to be the first one to catch bullshit as it rolled downhill and take as much of it as humanly possible (sparing them as much as I could).
You can very easily disrupt and prevent bad cultures by intervening and setting a good example. Once you're a C-level everything is your fault and only your fault because you have the power to stop it. After it being your fault, it's a process problem, only if it's assuredly not a process issue can it then be someone else's fault.
Saying it's the COO or HRs fault is to ignore the problems of culture; ones that YOU allow to exist. Your department/team WILL listen to you and often reflects your ideals and attitudes in the business. By simply being lazy is to create a culture that says it's okay or participate in it (whatever it is). I think this sort of thinking is pretty shameful to be honest and largely why most manager/executives are looked at poorly.
Lead by example and obviously the examples from Uber's executives are to be huge pieces of immoral shit. If you're at the top and you deny your responsibility you're a terrible person.
Sorry if this comes across as harsh, but after having done the job and hopefully done it well (only the teams under me could say for sure)-- this makes my blood boil. Being a CTO, or executive, is a lot harder, different, and complicated than I had ever thought it would be. It's a role that I can hardly recommend to most people who want to do it well.
> as long as he or she hands off to the coo (say), or hr chief, the responsibility is complete.
Especially since, in this case, the problem is happening in the CTO's organization, the hand-off isn't enough. It's definitely the kind of thing you follow up on, and see through to resolution. Out of pure self interest, a CTO would do this to protect the productivity of the org, and maybe also because it's obviously the right thing to do.
If you're in management, you're responsible for these things. You don't get to be "just" a technologist when you're in a leadership position. You're responsible for the well-being of everyone who works for you. That means seeing it through to resolution, not just throwing it over the fence and dusting off your hands.
Doesn't matter because this is a modern version of which hunt; everybody is assuming that the CTO knew about this simply because he is a CTO.
They do not know what it is to be a CTO; pretending does not count
He can't know things that are not reported to him; he can't act on things that 'are beeing taken care of' by so called HR department.
Neither of us knows what happened, but some people tend to like watching individuals burn for entertainment purposes. Throw a fancy title in the mix, and everybody has an opinion all of a sudden.
>In Fowler’s account of her year at Uber, she says that she explicitly reported the incidents of sexual harassment directly to Pham when she ran out of clear remedies. Nothing came of her attempts, she wrote.
"For example, Fowler wrote that she also spoke to the company’s chief technology officer, Thuan Pham, about a termination threat Fowler’s manager made for reporting his manager. That type of threat is illegal under equal employment laws."
"... he replied that he had been a manager for a long time, he knew what was illegal, and threatening to fire me for reporting things to HR was not illegal. I reported his threat immediately after the meeting to both HR and to the CTO: they both admitted that this was illegal, but none of them did anything."
Or did you read the telephone version of her account that Recode decided to spin and blindly made up your mind?
'In Fowler’s account of her year at Uber, she says that she explicitly reported the incidents of sexual harassment directly to Pham when she ran out of clear remedies. Nothing came of her attempts, she wrote.'
Fowler's version:
'For example, Fowler wrote that she also spoke to the company’s chief technology officer, Thuan Pham, about a termination threat Fowler’s manager made for reporting his manager. That type of threat is illegal under equal employment laws.
'
Not sure why you're downvoted for this comment - for those who don't understand it, it is referencing the explicit responsibility about getting the information to the person whose domain it is vs. doing more and making sure that it is resolved properly. The manager does strictly what is the person's responsibility, the leader makes sure that the person under him/her gets a satisfactory resolution - the leader does this because it affects individual & team morale and sets the example that that is what is expected (to a positive end). The leader also employs his/her abilities endowed upon the position to make sure it isn't forgotten, which builds trust, transparency, and fosters an open culture - the one who is purely focused on just managing actively works against all of these points by not exerting leadership.
Was there any new information from the investigation in this article or was it strictly a hit piece? I've read it twice and the only thing it is saying is that two executives were responsible because of their position in the org chart, which isn't new information AFAIK.
Since it doesn't seem that Graves or Thuan did anything wrong, I'm trying to understand what vested interest recode has in terms of trying to get either executive thrown under the bus. Do they just want another executive out, any executive, so they can write another piece about people who have left the company?
At worst, one can make some sort of claim of professional negligence due to their positions but it's entirely possible the buck stopped with Renee. We simply don't have enough information to judge either of these two at this point but Recode is painting them as guilty. If they have smoking gun evidence, they should present that, but if they are trying to ruin the lives of these two for the sake of ad impressions, that's incredibly slimy and a breach of professional ethics for a journalist.
The only new information AFAICT are a few insider opinions about these two executives that may have come from someone being merely descriptive or with an ax to grind. Those quotes were also completely unrelated to the investigation. Recode isn't practicing journalism here. They are using a few quotes to craft they own story that is pure speculation. Last I heard, that's called fiction, not journalism. One should not be writing fiction that will be interpreted as fact when it can cause real people to be hurt without merit.
> Since it doesn't seem that Graves or Thuan did anything wrong
Wait, what? Did you read the article? If Fowler reported her problems to Thuan himself, then he most certainly bears responsibility, and needs to answer for that. Same with Graves: he was head of HR for periods over that time, and needs to answer too.
Only when you start holding the top-level people accountable will the culture change. Throwing some flunky under the bus will never bring about serious change.
Without bearing witness to that communication, how can you assign blame? What was said/written? There are so many unknowns here that it's all entirely inconclusive right now, yet people are happy to assign blame and responsibility with almost no information and evidence.
Is that how you'd want your trial to be conducted if you were the accused?
There are serious allegations here that merit more than a peanut gallery trial by public opinion and speculation.
I'm not saying we shouldn't hold top management accountable, but we should have actual facts and details on what transpired so we know who to hold accountable.
You're being intentionally obtuse. If you are the defacto head of a business unit which has an obvious failure multiple times over, you go. You're at fault. Full stop.
If you don't understand this, you've either never worked for a functional organization if your life, or you're some sort of weird proto-autist that doesn't understand basic leadership principles.
The investigation is ongoing, and the results will be announced by the end of the month. You are already passing judgment that they should not be held accountable, when you don't have any facts either! All I'm saying is that if the investigation concludes that Thuan was informed directly by Fowler and did nothing, then he deserves to be fired. Same with Graves.
You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say they shouldn't be held accountable. I'm saying those responsible should be held accountable.
There's not enough information yet to say who is responsible.
The message to Thuan could have been such that he had to delegate to to HR. With issues like these the buck stops in HR. There are all sorts of issues on how to handle these issues and sensitive terminations. If you mishandle things like this you end up stuck between a sexual harassment lawsuit and a wrongful termination lawsuit.
You always delegate issues like this to HR and your lawyers.
Graves and Thuan would be responsible if they either did not delegate appropriately or if they actively interfered.
Furthermore, all sorts of miscommunication may have transpired. If the executives were contacted by email for example, what's to say that the email didn't have a bad subject line and never got read.
We simply don't have facts and we can't hold the right people accountable until we have those facts. Maybe Graves and Thuan are the right people, but we don't know that yet
As soon as a senior executive becomes aware of any kind of illegal activity, malfeasance or behavior for which the company could be held liable, it becomes their responsibility.
When Fowler reported her harassment & HR's failures directly to Thuan, he became obligated by fiduciary duty to deal with the problem. Thuan could not just hand it off to HR because HR (which was Graves' responsibility) had already failed Fowler--which is why she reported it to Thuan.
Uber has never disputed Fowler's report, which points directly at Thuan & Graves. We'll see at the end of the month, but this kind leak from Uber suggests that the publicly released version of Holder's report will be PR puffery that'll blame it all on Thuan & Graves & attempt to vindicate Kalanick. Expect Huffington as the media messenger. She'll be outraged when anyone dares to suggest Travis knew. And ask if the interviewer is actually questioning Holder's integrity.
I'm not sure who'd believe that Kalanick didn't know about any of it regardless.
"A company’s narrative moves like a clock: it starts at midnight, ticking off the hours. The tone and sentiment about how a business is doing move from positive (sunrise, midday) to negative (dusk, darkness). And often the story returns to midnight, rebirth and a new day."
I feel like Uber is starting to see if it can hit midnight.
I read the Clinton email chain; I find Huffington to be unethical and a general disgrace. Her appearance on this board is obviously a political stunt / leverage of her influence just like the Clinton campaign.
Maybe this was down voted because you provided no reason; but there are many to dislike AH and she fits in well with this Org in my opinion
No, there are more asians by percentage in tech companies than asians by percentage of the general population.
If asians count for diversity, there is no lack of diversity of tech companies. If asians don't count for diversity, then the author's point is invalid since it shouldn't matter to morale whether or not the fired person was white or asian.
If asians count for diversity, there is no lack of diversity of tech companies.
This statement doesn't really make sense. By definition, no one group (or two for that matter) can "count for diversity", as "diversity" is the absence of such clustering.
The article implies that the lack of diversity, coupled with the fact that the CTO who is leaving could lower employee morale.
I don't know how else to parse that statement. If absence of such clustering is the meaning of "diversity", why would the departure of an ethnic CTO cause lowered morale?
