NEW YORK – An India-born top executive at Uber was asked to resign after the ride-hailing titan found that he did not disclose that he had left his previous job at Google after a sexual harassment complaint.
Amit Singhal had joined Uber in January as senior vice president of engineering after working for 15 years at Google, where he oversaw the internet giant’s search efforts. A report in Recode said Uber CEO Travis Kalanick asked Singhal to resign on Monday after it was found that Singhal did not disclose to the car-hailing firm he had left Google a year earlier after an allegation against him of sexual harassment.
Google had deemed the employee’s claim of sexual harassment against Singhal “credible” in an investigation. The report said Singhal, “a highly regarded engineer in Silicon Valley”, had disputed the allegation to Google executives at the time and denied the allegations again. The report claimed that Google was prepared to fire Singhal over the allegations after probe but did not have to do so after he resigned. The employee who filed the complaint against Singhal did not work for him directly, but worked closely with the search team, the report said, adding that she also did not want to go public with the charges.
“Harassment is unacceptable in any setting. I certainly want everyone to know that I do not condone and have not committed such behaviour,” Singhal said. “In my 20-year career, I have never been accused of anything like this before and the decision to leave Google was my own,” he said.
Singhal’s departure comes at a time when Uber is facing scrutiny following allegations of sexual harassment by a former female employee against her manager. She said in a blog post last week that her manager had sent inappropriate messages to her and the company’s human resource department were not supportive.
