Good ole boys club
Uber has been under fire lately for its exclusive company culture and lack of staff diversity. Like many Silicon Valley companies, its ranks are very light on women and racial minorities.
However, Uber has been especially feeling the heat since a former software engineer for the company, Susan Fowler, published a scathing blog post revealing a chauvinistic work environment where women are regularly sexually harassed and denied access to promotions.
In the depths
Bloomberg investigated further by interviewing about a dozen current and former Uber employees who worked in hiring and recruitment.
Most of them asked to remain anonymous, since many have signed contracts stating they will not publicly criticize the company.
Set up to fail
Nonetheless, these insiders told reporters that Uber’s attempt to increase diversity by tasking an arm of its hiring team to recruit minorities were largely failing due to lack of leadership and data.
Members of the hiring team were unable to make effective headway towards increasing staff diversity because they were told that the company did not collect demographic data about its employees.
Over the years, according to these testimonies, many women software engineers requested such data from human resources, and were told that such data was unavailable.
Revolving door
Furthermore, the diversity arm of the hiring team has lost and gained at least six different recruiters in the past year and half.
Without a solid group of recruiters working on the issue over the long-haul, the team keeps losing its momentum.
These recruiters told Bloomberg that “diversity took a backseat to the company’s need to hire quickly.”
Empty words?
“We’re spending a good deal of time reflecting on what will lead to true diversity and inclusion,” says Liane Hornsey, Uber’s senior vice president of human resources.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Uber Sr. VP vowed to bring a “positive cultural change” to Uber to hopefully lead to more diversity.” quote=”She has vowed to bring a “positive cultural change” to Uber that will hopefully lead to more diversity in its staff.”]
Uber released its first diversity report this week.
