Eyal Gutentag, CMO of ZipRecruiter, has resigned after a report detailed an alleged sexual battery incident involving Gutentag when he worked for Uber in 2015
BuzzFeed News : Tweets: @daveyalba , @mat , and @rmac18 Tweets: Davey Alba / @daveyalba : After my and @RMac18's report about alleged sexual harassment in tech this week, Eyal Gutentag, CMO of ZipRecruiter, has resigned. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... Mat Honan / @mat : “On Friday morning, an all-hands meeting was held... during which the CEO cautioned marketing employees against leaking details of the circumstances of Gutentag's departure to the press” http://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ... via @daveyalba Ryan Mac / @rmac18 : The former Uber exec who became chief marketing officer at ZipRecruiter after a sexual misconduct allegation has now resigned following our story earlier this week. http://www.buzzfeednews.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Eyal Gutentag's exit extends a pattern the related coverage has tracked since 2017: senior operators whose alleged misconduct traces back to Uber being forced out of their current roles once reporters publish. Uber's own housecleaning began with Ed Baker's resignation and Amit Singhal's dismissal, escalated through the Holder report that stripped Travis Kalanick of duties, and continued with Cameron Poetzscher's resignation last October after a Wall Street Journal report.
What changed here is that the accountability followed an executive out of Uber entirely: the alleged 2015 incident surfaced via a BuzzFeed News investigation by Davey Alba and Ryan Mac two-plus years after Gutentag had moved to ZipRecruiter, and the resignation came within days. The internal response matters too — an all-hands where the CEO cautioned marketing staff against leaking details of the departure to the press.
First-order effects
- ZipRecruiter immediately loses its chief marketing officer and must run a search while containing an internal leak problem, having already warned marketing employees against talking to reporters.
- Gutentag's employability takes a direct hit: the allegation is now attached to his name publicly, tied to his Uber tenure rather than anything he did at ZipRecruiter.
Second-order effects
- Employers hiring out of Uber's 2015-era leadership bench now carry reputational exposure for conduct that predates their own tenure — background diligence on prior-workplace behavior becomes a live concern for any company recruiting ex-Uber executives.
- Uber's brand keeps paying for pre-2017 conduct through other companies' crises, reinforcing the incentive for current boards to resolve misconduct probes internally before they become press narratives.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, investigative reporting functions as a delayed accountability mechanism that outlasts job changes: an allegation can surface years later at a new employer, so executive vetting and board risk management increasingly have to account for prior-company conduct records.
- Companies' instinct to restrict employee communication during such departures — as ZipRecruiter did at its all-hands — sits in tension with the leak-driven reporting model that produced the story, raising the odds of further disclosures from inside.
The trend: Workplace-misconduct investigations are no longer bounded by employment: reporters are holding former executives accountable at their new employers, turning old incidents into present-day resignations.