Uber CEO And Sexism: Engineer Who Wrote About Sexual Harassment Says Company Is Blaming Her For #DeleteUber

The former Uber engineer who wrote a blog post about her experience at the company said the company is investigating her and blaming her for users deleting Uber their accounts.

In February, Fowler made claims about sexual harassment and the lack of female workers at the company in a blog post titled Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber.

Fowler said her boss at Uber sent a “string of messages over company chat” soliciting her for sex. She took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR, but told her they “wouldn't feel comfortable giving him anything other than a warning and a stern talking-to.”

She then realized other women had faced similar incidents at Uber.

After the blog post, the company hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to carry out an internal investigation over the matter, along with the Huffington Post’s co-founder Arianna Huffington, who is on Uber’s board of directors.

“Uber names/blames me for account deletes, and has a different law firm -not Holders - investigating me,” the engineer, Susan Fowler said in a tweet Thursday.

Fowler said people are investigating her and asking individuals she knows for personal information about her.

“Research for the smear campaign has begun. If you are contacted by anyone asking for personal and intimate info about me, please report asap,” she said in a tweet on Feb. 24.

“I don't know who is doing this or why. If someone contacts you, please send me their contact information immediately,” she added in a separate tweet.

Fowler said she has hired an attorney from Baker Curtis & Schwartz, P.C. in California, which specializes in employment law cases, including harassment and discrimination.

Last week, Kalanick held a meeting with female engineers in which the employees told him there “systemic problem” at Uber and urged him to start “listening to your own people.” The recording of the discussion was obtained by BuzzFeed.

This week Uber CEO Travis Kalanick asked the company’s SVP of engineering, Amit Singhal, to resign after he failed to disclose he left Google over a sexual harassment claim. Singhal left Google in February 2016 after top executives told him a sexual allegation from an employee claim was found “credible” after an internal investigation, according to Recode report.

Uber is also reeling back from last month’s #DeleteUber campaign and a recent New York Times report which detailed instances of cocaine use, homophobic verbal abuse, sexual harassment and even an incident in which a manager threatened to beat an employee’s head with a baseball bat at the company. Uber is also facing three lawsuits in at least two countries from former employees with claims of sexual harassment or verbal abuse actions from managers, the report found.