In wake of the huge controversy surrounding ex-employee Susan Fowler Rigetti’s claims of being harassed while she was working with Uber, the company has set the wheels in motion to investigate the matter and take action. Meanwhile, while some early stage investors have expressed their displeasure with regards to the direction the investigations were taking on Medium, Uber employees are apparently using the Blind app to discuss things.
Apparently, after Fowler published her post, anonymous app Blind received a huge surge in usage. Apparently, the number of Uber users signing up on the platform more than doubled almost overnight. And in case you are thinking that they were there to express solidarity against Waymo’s patent infringement lawsuit against Uber, well, think again. Apparently, most of the discussion taking place there had to do with the controversy surrounding Miss Fowler.
In case you are unfamiliar with how Blind works, the app lets folks working in companies like Microsoft, Google and Uber engage in conversation with each other. However, there are a couple of twists. One, you can only engage with people in your own company and everyone has to identify their identities. Two, the chats are all anonymous. So basically, no one knows who you are talking to at a particular time.
There is also a lounge where people from different companies can intermingle, and it was here that the trouble first occurred. A few days ago, an Uber employee from the company’s HR department claimed that the over 100 employees had resigned from the company’s San Fransisco offices.
Meanwhile, Uber has denied all these claims. Interestingly, TechCrunch reports that the It also appears to have blocked access to the app over the office WiFi. This is what makes things interesting. Say it was an impostor, why would Uber block access to Blind? What’s more, Blind requires you to confirm your company. So it was quite likely to be an employee.
So there are a couple of things that could have happened. The said employee could have been right and the company does not want such news coming out through such unofficial channels again. The second option is that the employee — for reasons of his or her own — was attempting to discredit the company and Uber does not want such a thing to take place again.
Whatever the reason, it sure appears that Uber employees are far from placid and are taking an active interest in the controversy.
