Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, February 21

• Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee: The chief executive of Uber on Sunday opened an internal investigation into claims of sexual harassment made by a former engineer at the company. The engineer, Susan Fowler, said that she was sexually harassed by her direct supervisor during her time at Uber and that after she reported those claims to the human resources department, they were ignored. She gave her account in a lengthy post on her personal blog on Sunday. “It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR,” Ms. Fowler wrote. “Upper management told me that he ‘was a high performer’ (i.e. had stellar performance reviews from his superiors) and they wouldn’t feel comfortable punishing him for what was probably just an innocent mistake on his part.” Ms. Fowler left Uber in December and this year joined Stripe, a payments processing start-up. Ms. Fowler’s story is particularly resonant because of Uber’s reputation for having an intense workplace culture with high turnover. Hours after Ms. Fowler’s post, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, said it was the first time the issue had come to his attention. He said he had instructed Liane Hornsey, the company’s recently hired chief of human resources, “to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations.”

• Texas Oil Fields Rebound From Price Lull, but Jobs Are Left Behind: Oil and gas workers have traditionally had some of the highest-paying blue-collar jobs — just the type that President Trump has vowed to preserve and bring back. But the West Texas oil fields, where activity is gearing back up as prices rebound, illustrate how difficult it will be to meet that goal. As in other industries, automation is creating a new demand for high-tech workers — sometimes hundreds of miles away in a control center — but their numbers don’t offset the ranks of field hands no longer required to sling chains and lift iron. Roughly 163,000 oil jobs were lost nationally from the 2014 peak, or about 30 percent of the total, while oil prices plummeted, at one point by as much as 70 percent. The job losses just in Texas, the most productive oil-producing state, totaled 98,000. Several thousand workers have come back to work in recent months as the price of oil has begun to rise again, but energy experts say that between a third and a half of the workers who lost their jobs are not returning. Many have migrated to construction or even jobs in renewable energy, like wind power. “People have left the industry, and they are not coming back,” said Michael Dynan, vice president for portfolio and strategic development at Schramm, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of drilling rigs. “If it’s a repetitive task, it can be automated, and I don’t need someone to do that. I can get a computer to do that.” Indeed, computers now direct drill bits that were once directed manually. The wireless technology taking hold across the oil patch allows a handful of geoscientists and engineers to monitor the drilling and completion of multiple wells at a time — onshore or miles out to sea — and supervise immediate fixes when something goes wrong, all without leaving their desks. It is a world where rigs walk on their own legs and sensors on wells alert headquarters to a leak or loss of pressure, reducing the need for a technician to check. And despite all the lost workers, United States oil production is galloping upward, to nine million barrels a day from 8.6 million in September. Nationwide, with a bit more than one-third as many rigs operating as in 2014, production is not even down 10 percent from record levels.

• Snap arrives in London to woo skeptical investors ahead of IPO: Snap Inc, owner of popular messaging app Snapchat, kicked off its first investor roadshow on Monday, looking to persuade London money managers to back its initial public offering in the face of concerns about its growth prospects, valuation and corporate governance. The U.S. company, which has yet to make a profit, is targeting a valuation of between $19.5 billion and $22.3 billion from listing on the New York Stock Exchange, after cutting its initial target of $20 billion-$25 billion last week following investor feedback. Investors attending Monday's event said Snap's 26-year-old Chief Executive Evan Spiegel gave a sleek presentation. However, they were disappointed there were no projections on the company's future revenues or advertising share - an indication of how quickly Snap thinks it can make money from its huge user base. "That's the million dollar question and we won't find out for some time," said one potential backer on his way out from the hour-long event where Spiegel ditched his usual casual wear and wore a suit with no tie. Few U.S. firms aside from Apple have made big profits on hardware, and camera and wearable gadget makers have much lower valuations than Snap is seeking. Most of the questions related to how the company plans to manage its engagement with advertisers and users, and monetize that better, according to people who were in the room. Its responses won over some potential investors. "Management did a good show, they were very convincing," said one attendee. Some fund managers have said they will stay away from Snap given its decision to adopt a three class share structure - the first of its kind - that will mean shareholders who buy in through the IPO will not have any voting rights. Instead Spiegel and his co-founder Bobby Murphy will have the right to 10 votes for every share, and existing investors one vote for each of their shares. "My view would be investors should tread with caution here, the fact the shares will carry no voting rights would be a major concern for me from a governance perspective," Richard Saldanha, global equities fund manager at Aviva Investors, said ahead of the roadshow. Aviva manages 318 billion pounds across a range of asset classes. Mike Fox, head of sustainable investments at Royal London Asset Management, said the inability to vote against a company at its annual general meeting was a "major red flag" and he would not be taking part in the IPO.