Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

Post by mariojv » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 11:37 PM UTC

knucklesandwich wrote: post #133

calcsam wrote: post #15

In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment: relationships within a reporting chain are generally prohibited, for both legal, ethical, and practical reasons. Sex becoming part of the effective job description crosses both legal and ethical lines, and team effectiveness is hindered when people wonder whether someone is getting special treatment because they're sleeping with the boss. A manager…

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…

Post by ChuckMcM » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 11:38 PM UTC

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…

   > Top engineers were being poached from Google/FB and these people
   > were trying to carve out territory in a quickly growing engineering 
   > team.

Post by cf » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 11:39 PM UTC

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #155

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…

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.

Post by home_boi » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 11:40 PM UTC

jmduke wrote: post #17

I am struggling to think of something productive to contribute to this discussion, because this absolutely incensed me. In lieu of anything else: Susan deserves to be commended for her bravery in writing this.

Post by tptacek » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 11:42 PM UTC

ben_olive wrote: post #264

tptacek wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'll take a moment to reread the entire article, you'll see that she did not in fact overreact --- in fact, if anything, she underreacted, staying on long after the incident you're commenting on, working exclusively with management to resolve her problems, and leaving the company only after gross mistreatment both in employee reviews and by HR. Could you perhaps try giving the article another read and let us kno…

I'm not saying she overeacted. Please read what I wrote. They fucked up repeatedly and she would have grounds to sue. But this is annectodal evidence, let's not try to generalyze and draw overarching conclusions from this. To me this post shows how fucked up Uber is right now, let's not try to make generalyzations about the rest of the industry from this.