Uber shutterstock image
(Shutterstock Photo)

A former Uber employee’s allegations of sexual harassment in the ride-hailing company’s corporate office has retriggered the #DeleteUber movement on Twitter.

The hashtag has been tweeted more than 7,500 times in the past 24 hours, with more than 3,600 retweets, according to TrendsMap. The hashtag saw a significant increase Sunday afternoon, following a blog post by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler.

In her post, Fowler detailed a culture at Uber that allows for blatant sexual harassment and sexism. Fowler, who left the company in January to work for Stripe, said she and other women repeatedly reported incidents to human resources and were told there was little the company could do. She also alleged managers retaliated against employees for the reports.

In one incident Fowler describes, her direct manager messaged her on company chat about looking for women to have sex with. According to Fowler, she immediately reported the harassment but was told by HR that it was the manager’s first offense, so he would receive a warning and she would likely receive poor performance reviews. Later, she said other women came forward about the same manager and were similarly ignored.

“Women were transferring out of the organization, and those who couldn’t transfer were quitting or preparing to quit,” Fowler wrote. “There were two major reasons for this: there was the organizational chaos, and there was also the sexism within the organization. When I asked our director at an org all-hands about what was being done about the dwindling numbers of women in the org compared to the rest of the company, his reply was, in a nutshell, that the women of Uber just needed to step up and be better engineers.”

During the remainder of her time at Uber, Fowler said she repeatedly received poor performance reviews without significant explanation. At one point, she alleges she was told her performance problems could be “about things outside of work or your personal life.”

Stories about Fowler’s account went viral on Sunday and by Monday morning had show up in the trending section of Facebook’s News Feed. Fowler tweeted her appreciation to those who showed her support.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.

In an attempt to mitigate backlash, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick responded to Fowler’s post on Twitter on Sunday, saying he’s ordered an “urgent” investigation into the allegations.

“What’s described here is abhorrent & against everything we believe in,” Kalanick tweeted. “Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.”

Kalanick is all too familiar with how bad PR can hurt Uber. The #DeleteUber boycott initially began after the company’s lack of response to Donald Trump’s immigration ban. Following the viral movement, Kalanick stepped down from Trump’s economic council earlier this month.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.