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Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber
Maybe someday
37
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
67/100Critics
7/100Scholars
Author:
Susan Fowler
Publisher:
Viking
Date:
February 18, 2020
Susan Fowler was just 25 years old when her blog post describing the sexual harassment and retaliation she'd experienced at Uber riveted the nation. Her post would eventually lead to the ousting of Uber's powerful CEO, but its ripples extended far beyond that.
What The Reviewers Say
... sharp and engrossing.
In one way, the memoir is an expansion of the 2017 blog post: It documents, in detail that is deeper and more gut-wrenching than a 2,900-word entry could allow, Fowler’s experiences at Uber. It recounts casual sexism and casual racism and, as Maureen Dowd put it in an article about Fowler’s original post, 'the self-indulgent, adolescent Pleasure Island mentality of Silicon Valley.' But Whistleblower, despite its subtitle’s reference to Uber, is also a memoir in the classic sense. It is the story of how Fowler’s life was shaped by her time at Uber—but a story, too, of her fight for a life that would not succumb to the company's influence.
Exceptionalism is one of Silicon Valley’s founding principles, and a little bit of that has crept into Fowler’s book. There is no denying that she has been incredibly brave, and her life story is one of David against many, many Goliaths. But there is a danger in overstating the power that one individual has. Silicon Valley is defined by systemic ills.
The memoir...[provides] more eyebrow-raising details about just how hostile and chaotic Uber's workplace was. But Fowler is much more interested in unpacking how — and why — she responded by going public.
