Uber Whistleblower Takes On Silicon Valley, Armed With Stoic Philosophy
In 2017, Susan Fowler published a blog post that shook Silicon Valley. Her matter-of-fact account of sexism, sexual harassment and "unrelenting chaos" on Uber's software teams prompted a reckoning that brought down CEO Travis Kalanick.
It's easy to focus on what happened to Fowler. Her manager messaging her about sex on her very first day. A different manager sneakily changing her good performance review to a bad one, to block her from moving to a less-dysfunctional unit. The absurd episode with the leather jackets.
But in her, Fowler makes a dedicated plea for you to focus, instead, on what she did about it. Again and again throughout the book, she says she wants to be the hero of her story — not the victim. Or, to use an Isaiah Berlin quote she's fond of, "a subject, not an object."
