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Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

susanjfowler.com

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Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#211

Post by bootload »

uber_eng_throw wrote: post #137
logandavis wrote: post #69

By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning…

Hijacking this top comment to provide some personal experiences. I started as an engineer in the spring of 2014 and this was definitely the case there. Top engineers were being poached from Google/FB and these people were trying to carve out territory in a quickly growing engineering team. The misogynistic culture, in my mind, comes from most of the early employees being former frat bros. Culture was extremely heavy…

"Culture was extremely heavy on the drinking;"

For me this is a red flag.

    Booze + programming == pissed programming
This leads to bad code also bad team dynamics. Ultimately this will reflect on the product and bottom line. For individuals this reads like a culture where the barrel is creating ^bad apples^. Not a good look on a resume.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#212

Post by mnx »

DrJaws wrote: post #168
uber_eng_throw wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hijacking this top comment to provide some personal experiences. I started as an engineer in the spring of 2014 and this was definitely the case there. Top engineers were being poached from Google/FB and these people were trying to carve out territory in a quickly growing engineering team. The misogynistic culture, in my mind, comes from most of the early employees being former frat bros. Culture was extremely heavy…

Saying that they "poached" engineers make it look like they are property of a company and can't move looking for better opportunities.

I don't like that word either, but it seems to be the standard term.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#213

Post by Eridrus »

tptacek wrote: post #183
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.

Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry. People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union cont…

So what organising principles should a software developer union have?

It's easy to say they could be anything we want it to be, but I'm not sure there's a real consensus on any particular principle.

Lots of people who talk about unions seem to value privacy protections for consumers, but there are clearly software developers writing this software who have a different view.

Ubers reputation has been trash for almost as long as Uber has existed, I feel like most people are there to get rich, do you expect those people to go on strike for a grievance that doesn't affect them?

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#214

Post by moocow01 »

pvg wrote: post #157
moocow01 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some degree... my Uncle sued Fedex, his employer at the time, for unsafe working conditions about 10 years ago after being injured on the job. I'd actually call his lawsuit frivolous but he received a very large sum of money from it. About 5 years ago I used an attorney to communicate with my previous employer about a contract they had broken by not paying the agreed severance compensation. Im not sure why in this…

I'd say 'my uncle (not me) in a personal injury lawsuit' and 'I used a lawyer in a contract dispute that ended right there' is a very different setting from 'this is my job that i'd like to keep'. I don't mean this is merely or even at all a matter of practical difficulty. Few people go home and toss in bed thinking about how they can sue their employer. I find 'she should have just sued' is pretty glib and why I ask…

Actually I lied Im a lawyer and have represented many class action lawsuits over my 50 years of experience and my assumption is that you are as well. Happy now?... Look, its very accessible to contact a lawyer and be professionally consulted about your legal options especially for someone who is compensated at the level of an engineer. Personally if I experienced the things exclaimed here Id be tossing in bed thinking about how to sue my employer. I agree that its personally challenging to pursue legal action... but I think supporting and encouraging people who may deserve legal retribution is responsible.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#215

Post by home_boi »

jacquesm wrote: post #44

What's with all the 'this is unbelievable' comments here? This is absolutely believable, Uber has pretty much made it their standard to break the laws where-ever they can, why should work place conduct be any different? In for a penny, in for a pound. You'd never hear something even close to this from Stripe or some other company run by upstanding folks. Fish rots from the head.

It is unbelievable because anyone with a brain bigger than a pea would realize that emailing (leaving actual records) of something so inappropriate would lead to terrible consequences, especially when sent to a female since females have much higher PR damage capability and media sympathy than males.

There is the underlying threat at the majority of tech companies that any small comment (see donglegate) that even weakly references a female could decimate your reputation.

The cost is huge for any rational actor and there is the assumption that one has to be a rational actor in order to be hired at top companies.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#216

Post by throwaway_374 »

cobookman wrote: post #67
throwaway_374 wrote: post #25

To show our solidarity against this kind of behaviour by corporate, we should all crowd fund your lawyer's fees and teach Uber a big fucking lesson really blow it out of the water. Really stick it to them. I'll happily begin contributions. edit: rather pathetic with all the male chauvanistic Uber engineers on here downvoting away.

Why crowd fund. Given the author's story, if true there would be lots of lawyers lined up to take the case for a percentage of damages or for publicity. Especially if this turns class action.

To send a message that she is not alone and we are collectively revolting against corporate HR abuse.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#217

Post by rosser »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #171
knucklesandwich wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. As has been pointed out below, HR that is staffed and incentivized by the company management only serves the interests of the management. A union is the only structure that can actually win demands for workers by organizing workers to withhold their labor. It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leaders…

That speaks to me. After salary negotiations, HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them. They seemed to be there only to defend the boss and register me as a complainer. It took me several jobs and this post to learn that.

> HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them....

The thing you need to keep in mind about HR is this: they aren't there to help you, to have your back. They're there to protect the company from you. Incidental to that, they've traditionally managed the benefits the company is either required or chooses to give you, and acts as a place for you to take concerns such as sexual harassment. But even in those cases, their duty is to the company, not to any individual employee.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#218

Post by madeofpalk »

revelation wrote: post #128
shruubi wrote: post #42

As someone who is Australian and not American, if anything like this happened and HR failed in the trainwreck like manner that they did in this story, we have a government organisation that oversees and enforces workplace legislation. It seems insane to me that the only recourse you have after HR is basically "gather evidence and sue" which seems to be common advice in this thread.

You can't sue, there is likely a mandatory arbitration clause in the employment contract (because why not, it's free) and it applies to everything .

Also not enforceable.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#219

Post by ben_olive »

HR fucked up and the manager should not have talked to her that way. Absolutely agree. I believe she has grounds to sue if she wishes.

Now, I think it's easy to take this type of situations and overeact. The behavior Susan described is not appropriate. That said, I think there is a trend to classify any romantic behavior or advances as sexual assault and innpapropriate behavior. Nowadays I would have a very hard time asking a girl out at work. Is it really that crazy that you might meet a girl/guy you might want to date at work?

I have had 2 girls ask me out at work in the past 3 years. Both times I just wasn't interested and politely declined. No big deal. I have also had girls approach me in professional settings such as conferences and ask me for my number and invite me for drinks. Come on people, we are human, we are attracted to each other and it's ok to approach other people as long as we are respectful and have some common sense. Let's not pretend we are robots.

I think the pendulum is swinging too much to the other side at the moment. It's easy to just generalyze and overeact. The opinion I just expressed would be considered very controversial nowadays and I would not dare to utter it in my office. People overeacted to drugs in the 80s and initiated a "drug war" that resulted in 1000s of people to be incarcerated for no good reason and billions of dollars wasted. Let's try to learn something from the past.

Re: Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

#220

Post by dllthomas »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #131
csharpminor wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally speaking, I've noticed that Uber has become a dirty word among my friends. For example, someone using Uber will generally just say that they're calling a car rather than naming the service. Lyft doesn't have the same stigma. It should be concerning to management that the company's ethos is repelling customers. Edit: Management should be far more concerned that Uber is allegedly an environment that systema…

Isn't that due to the perception that they broke the recent anti-Trump taxi strike, rather than their internal work culture?

> the perception that they broke the recent anti-Trump taxi strike

Something, it's worth noting, no less true of Lyft. And I think it's a little weird to be demanding owners of infrastructure lock out workers "in support of a strike". That whole reaction was absurd.

This article gives me substantially more pause.

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