A week after a former employee accused Uber of ignoring her sexual harassment claims, the ride-sharing giant has dismissed its lead engineer for failing to disclose a claim of harassment from his days at Google.
Amit Singhal, SVP of engineering, was asked to resign yesterday by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, by Recode Co-Founder (and a Spring.St Smartest Woman on Earth) Kara Swisher.
Swisher noted that a previous claim of sexual harassment against Singhal by a Google employee were found “credible” during an internal investigation there. Singhal is former SVP for search for Google.
According to Swisher, Uber executives learned of the Google investigation after Recode alerted them to it.
Writes Swisher: “Sources at Uber said that the company did extensive background checks of Singhal and that it did not uncover any hint of the circumstances of his departure from Google.”
Singhal, meanwhile, disputed the allegation from his time at Google, writing to Swisher that, “Harassment is unacceptable in any setting. I certainly want everyone to know that I do not condone and have not committed such behavior.” He added that he has never been accused of anything like this before, “and the decision to leave .”
Last week, Uber was rocked by allegations by a former engineer for the company, Susan Fowler, who published a detailed blog outlining harassment she experienced while working there as well as the lack of support she claim she received from Uber’s human resources team.
The accusations prompted the company to launch an internal investigation led by former United States Attorney General Eric Holder and Uber board member Arianna Huffington.
"What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in,” Kalanick said last week. “It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey, our new Chief Human Resources Officer, to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations.”
Kara Swisher is one of Spring.St's '27 Smartest Women on Earth in 2017'. Find out more about her here.
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