Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

by Sarah Wynn-Williams

I know something’s up when things don’t move fast. At the same time I pitch this transfer, Eric Holder’s report on sexual harassment at Uber is getting a lot of attention in Silicon Valley. This came out in the wake of the revelations by a whistleblowing engineer named Susan Fowler, who wrote a blog post detailing how she’d been treated by her bosses at Uber, and the failure of Uber’s HR department to help her. One of Holder’s big recommendations is specifically about allowing people to transfer away from bosses who they report are harassing them. At Uber, supervisors were blocking transfers, trapping women with those they were complaining about. I assumed that with this in the news, and Sheryl Sandberg still one of our most visible executives, my transfer would go through. I was wrong. Javi and I try everything to make the transfer happen quickly, but eventually Javi says the only way through is to plead directly with Elliot so he unblocks it. I don’t know if it’s Joel or Elliot who’s stopping the transfer, but it never happens. Elliot and I meet in his office. He admits that he “knows it’s been tough for me with Joel.” Then he blindsides me by asking whether my new role with Javi will involve working with the policy team at all, because “that might be a problem.” That’s when I understand he’s not going to let me do this. “I don’t want to put you in a bad position,” I tell him. “I’m trying to do the best thing by everyone. You know me. I’m just trying to do my job. I’ve b...