The opening paragraph of the Holder Report to the Uber Technologies board of directors reads, “On February 19, 2017, Susan Fowler, a former engineer at Uber Technologies published a blog post detailing allegations of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation during her employment at Uber and the ineffectiveness of the company’s then-existing policies and procedures. The next day, Uber retained Eric Holder and Tammy Albarrán, partners at the law firm Covington & Burling, to conduct a thorough and objective review. Last week saw the resignation of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, and it all began with a blog post.
This was the first time that a blog post by a former employee brought down a CEO and exposed a hugely toxic culture in an organization. Fowler’s post is to be commended on that basis alone.
