Another day, another allegation against Uber. Keala Lusk, a former Uber software engineer, just posted to Medium her story of sexism, disrespect and condescending behavior at the hands of a female manager at Uber.
In her post, Lusk summarizes an email she sent to Uber’s HR department about her manager. The TL;DR was that Lusk’s manager allegedly refused to accept any feedback, and implied that the reason Lusk was not progressing in her career was because she wore tank tops.
“I was shocked and suddenly painfully aware of my body and appearance in a way that I’ve never been at work,” Lusk wrote. “It made me feel humiliated, as if I shouldn’t be wearing anything to show my arms or skin. How could she say this? I have never faced discrimination because of what I was wearing (which was a black tank top from DefCon) and was at a complete loss for words. I didn’t know what to say. She kept going with, “Maybe he doesn’t want that around his team. Try wearing longer sleeve shirts for a few months and see how that goes. It might help you transfer to their team.”
In response to this specific allegation, an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch, “We take any and all allegations of this nature very seriously and have forwarded this to Attorney General Eric Holder and Tammy Albarran to include in their investigation.”
This comes shortly after Susan Fowler alleged sexual harassment at Uber, which Lusk said is not uncommon at Uber.
“In my time there, I saw malicious fights for power, interns repeatedly putting in over 100 hours a week but only getting paid for 40, discrimination against women, and prejudice against the transgender community,” she wrote.
A difference in Lusk’s story is that, instead of the sexism coming from a man, she says it came from a female engineering manager. Lusk says she reported it to Uber’s human resources department to no avail, which is similar to what Fowler described in her post.
Like other stories Lusk has heard, she wrote that nothing changed, even “after multiple meetings with my manager and HR” and that “it was simply brushed aside and swept under the carpet of collective Uber suffering.”
Head on over to Medium to read Lusk’s full account of what happened.
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