Top Uber Exec Fired for Not Disclosing a Sexual Harassment Allegation While at Google
Uber’s SVP of engineering, Amit Singhal, denies wrongdoing in the Google situation, which was never resolved. Nonetheless, his time at Uber is over.
Uber has been under fire of late, between the #deleteUber movement costing the company 200,000 users according to some reports, as well as bombshell allegations of a corporate culture rife with sexism and sexual harassment by former engineer Susan J. Fowler. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick promised to take the latter allegations seriously, and we may be seeing the first effects of that today, as top executive Amit Singhal has been asked to leave the company over sexual harassment allegations—that occurred at his former employer, Google.
Apparently, during his employment, Google launched an internal investigation into the claims and found them "credible," according to Kara Swisher of Recode. Singhal left the company before any action was taken, and though Singhal reportedly acknowledges there was such a situation, he denies wrongdoing, writing in an email to Swisher: “Harassment is unacceptable in any setting. I certainly want everyone to know that I do not condone and have not committed such behavior. In my 20-year career, I’ve never been accused of anything like this before and the decision to leave Google was my own.”
Singhal was asked to leave for not disclosing the situation to Uber during his hiring process.
Swisher adds that Singhal’s dispute with Google is unrelated to Fowler's claims, though it seems very likely that the increased scrutiny by the company in the wake of those claims created a situation in which having a top exec with an unresolved sexual harassment charge became untenable for Uber.
