Susan Fowler, the Stripe employee who exposed harassment at Uber, is named editor-in-chief of Increment, Stripe's new quarterly magazine for software engineers
The techie who became famous for her blog about the sorry state of Uber will run Increment. — Susan Fowler …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two months after her blog post documenting how Uber HR dismissed her harassment complaints, Susan Fowler is taking an editorial job rather than another engineering one — Stripe is handing her editor-in-chief of Increment, a brand-new quarterly magazine aimed at software engineers. The move lands mid-arc: Uber is simultaneously scrambling on culture, having just hired Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei as SVP of leadership ahead of its internal investigation results.
For Stripe, the hire is a statement about where it wants to sit in the engineering community — funding original technical publishing at a moment when its rival's workplace is the industry's biggest cautionary tale.
First-order effects
- Fowler gains an institutional platform and masthead title at Stripe, converting personal notoriety from the Uber essay into a formal media role.
- Stripe launches Increment under a high-profile name, immediately giving the magazine credibility and attention no new engineering publication would otherwise command.
Second-order effects
- The hire sharpens the contrast with Uber, which responded to the same crisis by bringing in Frances Frei as a leadership executive — rivals now competing for the same talent pool are signaling culture through visibly different moves.
- Other companies building developer-facing content or community programs face pressure to match Stripe's investment, since a competitor just demonstrated that editorial ventures double as recruiting and brand assets.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward whistleblower-engineers becoming durable industry voices rather than one-post sensations — Fowler's trajectory continued with a technology opinion editor role at the New York Times, suggesting viral internal essays can seed long-term media careers.
- If tech companies keep treating owned publications as culture and talent instruments, engineering media consolidates into corporate-funded outlets, raising questions about editorial independence that readers will have to weigh.
The trend: Engineers who expose toxic cultures are converting viral essays into lasting editorial platforms, while their former employers' rivals use culture-forward hires and content ventures to compete for talent.