Uber’s senior vice president of engineering has been asked to resign after failing to inform the company about sexual harassment allegations at his previous job, according to Recode.
The ride-hailing company hired Amit Singhal for the role last month. He worked directly with CEO Travis Kalanick. Up until February last year, Singhal had worked for 15 years as the head engineer for Google search. Recode reports Singhal resigned from Google amid a sexual harassment scandal.
Catching the next ride of my professional journey with @travisk at @Uber pic.twitter.com/EGQn7VQTDJ
— Amit Singhal (@theamitsinghal) January 20, 2017
A female employee at Google reportedly approached HR after an encounter with Singhal, setting off a series of talks between Singhal, Google’s head of HR and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, sources told Recode’s Kara Swisher. Though Singhal denied the claims in the discussions, he reportedly said there were two sides to every story. He resigned within months.
Despite conducting background checks before hiring Singhal, Uber reportedly didn’t know about the situation at Google until Recode approached them this week. Kalanick asked Singhal to resign this morning.
“Having Singhal at the head of an organization under siege over sexual harassment issues when he was not candid with Uber over his departure from Google was considered untenable,” Swisher wrote in her ReCode article.
The news comes amid increased tensions at Uber over the treatment of women at the company. An essay posted by Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer, last week alleged widespread sexism and harassment in the company’s engineering offices. In response, Kalanick asked former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Uber board member Arianna Huffington to conduct an internal investigation.
Last week, Huffington and Kalanick met with Uber employees for an all hands meeting to discuss the letter. In audio obtained by Buzzfeed of the meeting, female engineers at Uber called on Kalanick to address the “systemic problem” of harassment.
There’s no indication that Singhal was involved in the latest allegations of sexual harassment at Uber.
