The New York Times coverage of Susan Fowler’s account of harassment and dysfunction at Uber reads like a case study in what happens when a company prioritizes velocity over values. Growth at all costs can get you pretty far – until you realize the “costs” part wasn’t metaphorical.
What stands out is how normal everything seemed from the inside. When you’re building fast, shortcuts start to feel like efficiency. Problems get labeled as “growing pains.” Leadership gets used to playing offense, not cleaning up the mess on defense. And suddenly, a company built to disrupt an entire industry struggles to manage itself.
Uber’s story isn’t unique, which is why it’s so worth paying attention to. Culture doesn’t drift toward health on its own. It drifts toward whatever behaviors get rewarded, tolerated, or ignored. Engineering can scale quickly. People systems don’t.
If ambition can outpace ethics this easily, how do fast-growing teams build guardrails before the culture bends too far to fix? And what would tech look like if leadership maturity were treated with the same urgency as product launches?
Related article: NY Times
