David Bonderman Resigns from Uber Board
mobile.nytimes.comSo Bonderman made an overtly sexist, diminutive comment about a new FEMALE board member at a meeting held SPECIFICALLY to address Uber's inherent culture & sexism issues?
I'm not sure whether watching HBO's Silicon Valley or just pulling up HN has given me more belly laughs at the inanity of the current state of tech over this past 12 months.
Really can't make this up. The board has spent months trying to figure out how to deal with their culture issues, and minutes into the all-hands presenting their findings, he says a disparaging offhand comment about women.
And interrupts Arianna Huffington to do so, too.
I wonder if Uber's investors have an unusual perspective on women's issues:
https://www.crunchbase.com/funding-round/3561e0558d4fa07f0dc...
On one hand, we live in an age that highlights and elevates any remarks made to a point that there are serious real world repercussions.
On the other hand, the internet offers a layer of perceived anonymity that causes people to say things they never would, or should, in person. Things that they would be ashamed if that had to repeat to peers, in person.
It's a strange time to be alive.
This was said in person though?
The right thing to do. He needs to be replaced by a woman, and to Ariana's point they need several on the board. Plenty of work required to change the toxic culture at Uber.
FTFY: He needs to be replaced by a more qualified individual. It doesn't matter what gender they identify as.
A woman with a perspective on the diversity and culture they need to create seems uniquely qualified for the role.
"Diversity hiring" is a double edged sword though. There's a stigma attached to it which is really hard to overcome even if you're good.
It's crazy that hiring a woman to be the second woman on a board is considered "diversity hiring" though. It's not a super minority that is being looked for to tout diversity, it's half the population! I'm sure there are women who are both utterly qualified AND can provide a perspective on the more inclusive culture they are trying to create.
Hiring a woman is not crazy in the least. Hiring a woman because she's a woman over a more qualified male candidate (or the other way around) is harmful. There are plenty of women who don't need such "help".
Not sure why we immediately need to jump to the trope that a more qualified male candidate would be passed over. You're treating a seat on the board as if were some sort of technical role with hard skills. It's not - it's a role to be a positive and influential voice within a company dealing with a toxic culture. Being a successful woman and having all the experiences and perspectives that come with that is literally part of their qualification for the position.
> Not sure why we immediately need to jump to the trope that a more qualified male candidate would be passed over.
This is the original piece comment we are talking about:
> He needs to be replaced by a woman
It's evident that the objective is to hire a women, not to hire a qualified person, therefore a less qualified person can be hired just because she is a women. A person hired like this would most likely not get too much respect because she had an advantage not because of her skill, but her gender.
> Being a successful woman and having all the experiences and perspectives that come with that
See my question in another comment.
Replacing Bonderman with "a woman" will not magically solve issues around sexism. There is quite a bit of research, for instance on academic hiring, showing that women often have the same or at least similar sexist biases against women as men. See also the research on implicit stereotypes showing that both men and women associate men with traits related to strength and power and women with traits related to weakness. A female board member would probably not make stupid comments like Bonderman's but that alone is not going to change the toxic culture at Uber.
Not sure what straw man you are arguing against, certainly never said it would "magically solve issues around sexism" or that "alone" is "enough to change the toxic culture".
We are talking about the role of board member - which comes with the impact of immediately being one of the most powerful and influential voices within Uber. Bonderman's voice spoke volumes today about the culture the company previously condoned, and a new female board member could potentially have a far greater positive impact promoting a more inclusive culture. By definition, one person can't change a company culture, but could set an example and set the ball rolling.
Sorry, my previous comment wasn't clear enough. Perhaps I misunderstood you, but you seemed to suggest that being female would uniquely qualify a new board member to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture. The research that I referred to suggests that this may not be the case or at least not as much as you might think.
Are you implying that men are incapable of those sensibilities?
While I understand the sentiment... it DOES matter what gender they identify as. Uber's culture issues deal with sexism and harassment towards Women. You need a diverse group for the board and adding white males will not fix their issue.
So how many ways do you cut the diversity pie? You've now introduced skin color on top of gender. You've also removed the slice that represents "white" (whatever that means) males. Is it your stance that the pie now only represents females? What about other groups of people, how about we slice it into socioeconomic pieces, age, hair color, weight, etc.
The point is, your vision of diversity is just anti-white-male. You'll be satisfied until you find too many representatives of whatever arbitrary label you come up with next.
It's more about breaking up a monoculture. You can't introduce a representation of every possible division of humankind. But that's an unrealistic extreme, just like having no representation is an extreme. At some point, working in a diverse environment you just start thinking about others more than before.
Random example I've seen many times, but feel free to extrapolate to other positions/issues: If you have a group of native British developers of a web app, there's a good chance that any non-latin input will be either mishandled or rejected. Not because they hate other languages, but simply because that's not a problem they run into, or think about. Add one (for example) Greek dev, and the team will be quickly made aware of and learn about the locales and encoding issues. This will help the accessibility for all cultures, not just British and Greek.
Exposure to enough people different than you makes you think about others more. Even if you don't work with every possible token representation of the difference.
If he were an engineer, you'd be right. But for a board seat, being a woman is exactly the sort of qualification that is needed at Uber right now.
There is the theory. And there is the reality.
The theory says it shouldn't matter who you are it should only be based on your professional ability. And in theory it wouldn't make a difference to the ability of a company to function whether the gender or racial mix was one sided or not.
The reality is different. The reality is that having a uniform gender and race mix across a company causes all sorts of problems to the culture which in turn flows through to the companies actions and behaviours. And so if you want your company to be healthy you need to have at least some mix of men and women and races because the fact is that employees simply behave differently when there is a mix.
How does this reality, this idea that companies are dysfunctional if gender and race are uniform, fit the data of the previous few thousand years of human progress?
Has the world changed? Can groups of uniform gender-race people no longer act cordially to people who aren't same gender-race?
Hold the front page, groups of uniform gender-race people have acted cordially to people who aren't the same gender race for thousands of years? Citation needed.
I believe what he's saying is that without the action of individuals within certain groups, it would be impossible for those in groups without power to progress. If they were uniformly racist and sexist, then progress could not have been made.
That's to say they are capable of it, not that it's ideal or that they were responsible solely for progress. Most abolitionists were not African-American.
> Can groups of uniform gender-race people no longer act cordially to people who aren't same gender-race?
"No longer?" At what point did they ever?
> FTFY: He needs to be replaced by a more qualified individual. It doesn't matter what gender they identify as.
Given the politics of the situation, reasonable people might hear in this: "A woman should not be hired for this role."
Imagine the optics of replacing a sexist old man with another sexist old man. Worth the risk to shareholder value?
"Another sexist old man"?
Do you see the irony in your statement?
Yes, I often use irony intentionally. Could you please expand on your comment?
Your full quote is: "Imagine the optics of replacing a sexist old man with another sexist old man. Worth the risk to shareholder value?"
Your statement implied that replacing one "sexist old man" (who we believe to be a sexist by something he said) with another "old man" is a risk to shareholder value because that replacement, by virtue of being a man and/or old, will also be a "sexist".
Your statement is passing judgment on a potential candidate without knowing anything about them simply based on their potential gender. That is definitionally sexism, the same sexism you are identifying as a risk to shareholder value. Perhaps you didnt mean it that way but that doesnt change the valid interpretation of the statement. The irony is that this sexist statement was made in a thread about an article of a guy who made a sexist comment (that cost him his job).
Thank you for explaining my very, very little joke.
We might consider the possibility that a suitable woman in the role is significantly less likely to make this very embarrassing class of mis-step. And with billions of dollars on the line... where's the smart money? I suppose that is a sexist sentiment, too. Nuts, I can't win!
Ha, apologies for not picking up on the joke. It can be challenging to know when you are having a literal conversation or not in written form.
HN is probably not the place to have this conversation (I would have emailed you if it were in your profile) but to your point on "a suitable woman is significantly less likely to make this embarrassing mis-step"... that too is overt sexism of the kind I suspect you would find unacceptable coming from a man. Rhetorical question: how would you feel about a male manager justifying hiring a man because he is "significantly less likely to get pregnant and lose interest in the job"?
Lolz, yes, I do think that is a sexist comment and a part of me wonders if you actually think it isnt (maybe I'm being too literal). That said, I don't really care that you are making it. I'm a white male living in the 21st century, living with the double standard of being labeled a sexist or racist despite not being one is something you have to accept.
To your point, I think "smart money" buys the right tool for the job. I can see why you think replacing this old rich sexist white male with a young rich (sexist) white female is the smart move as it gets the trolls of your back and appeases the populists trying to hijack your company through negative PR. Anyway, I had fun with this. Hope you're having a good day.
Taken to the extreme, simple advocacy for a particular group crowds out advocacy for other, disjoint groups... putting them at a marginal disadvantage. There's a 'line of OK', and where it lies is is a multivariate equation of justice, utility, harmony, and context.
Having read more and more YCombinator News comments on these topics recently... I'm starting to understand that there are voices out there that decry any perceived sexism at all, no matter the circumstances. I honestly find cries of 'sexism against men' that completely discount the real world context to be rather gauche.
Yeah, optics matter, but a reasonable person might take your comment as saying "optics matter more than merit".
Your last sentence doesn't follow. Maybe you could replace a sexist old man with a man who isn't sexist?
I would rejoinder with: the optics are the merit. These are only board members, after all.
Maybe you could replace a sexist old man with a man who isn't sexist?
This is not testable. Move what you can measure.
Ok, so how do you test that a female hire isn't racist?
By not moving the goalposts.
no. the requirement is "woman". don't you get it?
he still has the board seat, it's TPG board seat, he can pick one of his co-workers
All thanks to the leaked audio from the meeting (6:40): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/inside-ubers-hands-meeting-tr...
This was the right move.
On another note it's getting harder and harder to separate the news out of Uber from satire. Watching the car accident continue over again at head office feels like I'm sometimes caught reading The Onion.
Preparing to be bombarded with downvotes for this, but resigning over such a remark seems like an overreaction. His apology seems sincere, that should be enough.
On the scale of things said about women by men in power this is about a 2/10, there's many much more egregious examples of sexism out there for people to be upset about.
You have to look at the remark in the context it was made. They were having a meeting where they presumably tried hard to make the point that they're very serious about fixing their culture. This is the only way to _maybe_ keep this believable, even if you feel that "everyday sexism" should be considered harmless.
I understand your comment but I think you are completely wrong.
The comment in itself is an everyday (unacceptable but everyday) example of misogyny. But to judge it based on the abstract is frankly absurd.
However, the comment, as does everything, exists in context. If he said this a year ago...its in the report. If he said it two years ago, everyone laughs. To say it not just in the present moment, but AT THE MEETING where Uber is trying to move beyond this culture is unacceptable. It isn't about the comment itself even, its about how the comment undermines everything Uber is trying to do right now. If they had not let him go they likely would have opened themselves up to lawsuits from every other person they fired, and the attempts at cultural change would have literally died at birth.
Yeah right.
What possess someone to say something like that at a time like that. Maybe try keeping ya gob shut.
Maybe it'd be nice for a change if men in power were generally saying pleasant things about women.
That there are worse things happening in other places doesn't mean we can't also expect better behaviour from those in front of us now.
P.S. Hello from the south island
Even if you're 100% okay with the remark you have to admit that it's a huge show of incompetence to make it at a meeting specifically about fixing Uber's sexist culture.
I think that's generally true about the remark in a generic setting. That he blurted it in that time and place, though...that's the catch.
There's (pretty much) always a more egregious example though.
It also seems like, given the context of the remarks, the (probably little) harm this causes him, and the potential for a new board member who's hopefully more inclusive, that hopefully something good comes of this.
From the ultra-cynical viewpoint, what's really the cost of leaving the Uber board at this point?
Resigning as a board member is not quite the same as resigning as staff or executive.
What do you think of adding Marissa Mayer to Uber's board of directors? She seems to be suited to run companies in Uber's position.
that comment is quite sexist.
?
I'm not sure I fully understand the point he was trying to make? Was it a dig at Huffington not adding value?
Listening to the audio, he's saying it in jest and Huffington laughs along (albeit nervously since it wasn't a funny joke). It's just reinforcing a stereotype that women tend to talk a lot.
Interesting, thanks for clarifying. Yeah the quotation on its own was unclear what point it was even trying to make.
It was a verbal version of these cheeky bathroom doors:
Not so cheeky coming from this person at that time and place, though.
Thanks that helps. Seems like one misstep after another with this company but sounds like he did the right thing in resigning.
it would _seem_ that his attempted defense is that he claims he was trying to say "having more women on the board would lead to more discussion" -- but that appears to be his defense, it is unknown if that defense would actually be true at all...
By now this is starting to be downright hilarious. Fuck all these folks and the Ubers they rode into town in.
Hey staticautomatic, I hope you see this. Sorry for the offtopic comment but I couldn't find your email anywhere. Shoot me an email at fkocrimgproc@gmail.com . It's about OCR.
It seems like teachable moments have become fireable offenses. I understand the seriousness of the issue and context, but is this really worth the level of outrage it has received?
Edit: Curious at the downvotes for an honest attempt at a reasonable discussion on the issue. Such are the times.
Calling this a 'teachable moment' is really letting the person off the hook for observing and learning up before now.
If he hasn't learned by now what is appropriate behaviour, why do you think he'll ever learn?
And if he doesn't learn rapidly and advance with best practices in corporate culture and governance, then he's not capable of the leadership and management responsibilities of a board member.
The 'teachable moments' were at least 3 years ago, if not much earlier. The firing offence is ignoring them.