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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

#401

Post by male_no_30122 »

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…

A blog post like this gets so much attention where is the fucking evidence? I am a male from Iran having spent more than half of my life here and worked in Silicon Valley long enough to be considered an easy target for labels like terrorist and misogynist simultaneously (finally I'm beginning to believe it, how slow of me.) I have to say there is more and more similarities between the two with each passing day, with very little substance and meaning behind those concepts, just a vague feeling of unfairness, a thread to our identity and a powerful tool to control and manipulate and not on behalf of the proclaimed victims of course. Why should YC or VCs give more money to females founders, blacks and hispanics? [1] [2] Are we not pawns in an ugly game of moral superiority and virtue played out by those looking to profit from our moral outrage and fear? [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/2017-yc-annual-letter (much high acceptance rate for those demographics) [2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/winnie-grabs-2-5-million-f.... (a publication about babies raises 2.5MM, female founders, having worked at places like Google and Twitter gets you a free pass with VCs if you're a woman? Homebrew Capital: Well her, she must be special not her male-counter-parts. What is special and investment-worthy about this publication and those founders, and not just adding an uptick in their portfolio's founder ratio? Hey look we got two female founders in one round!

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

#402

Post by azernik »

save_ferris wrote: post #79

Stories like this are so enraging, and yet far too common today. My partner went through a somewhat similar experience at a Big 4 accounting firm a while back. She tried to request an internal transfer to get away from a sexist, toxic environment only to have her managers destroy her credibility in the organization and ruin her career chances there. Sure, suing is an option here, but one that Uber calculates is absol…

When they come with court orders and injunctions mandating changes of behavior (and not just financial compensation) they can indeed solve the underlying problems.

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

#403

Post by pbiggar »

holografix wrote: post #329
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.

As a fellow Australian I must add that in three separate occasions, at two distinct tech companies, I have seen people be terminated immediatelly following a complaint of this nature to HR. These were men and women in high management positions and by immediately I mean within 48 hours or a fortnight or so in a bullying case.

Who was fired? The victim or the harasser?

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

#404

Post by withdavidli »

trowawaway wrote: post #330
minimaxir wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, OP's subsequent employment by Stripe is a very strong endorsement for the workplace culture of the company.

Is it? A person in need of a lifeboat will take one. Also, the author repeatedly used the percentage of women engineers as an index of workplace quality/sanity. So we'd expect Stripe's to be much higher, right? Is that the case?

>Also, the author repeatedly used the percentage of women engineers as an index of workplace quality/sanity. So we'd expect Stripe's to be much higher, right?

Don't have the answer for you. But I would say the repeated lies by HR she stated in defending repeat offenders, and having the same reports of harassment by her female coworkers over the same managers speaks more to the quality/sanity of the place than percentage of women in the workplace.

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

#405

Post by male_no_30122 »

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…

Same here.

A blog post like this gets so much attention where is the fucking evidence? I am a male from Iran having spent more than half of my life here and worked in Silicon Valley long enough to be considered an easy target for labels like terrorist and misogynist simultaneously (finally I'm beginning to believe it, how slow of me.) I have to say there is more and more similarities between the two with each passing day, with very little substance and meaning behind those concepts, just a vague feeling of unfairness, a thread to our identity and a powerful tool to control and manipulate and not on behalf of the proclaimed victims of course. Why should YC or VCs give more money to females founders, blacks and hispanics? [1] [2] Are we not pawns in an ugly game of moral superiority and virtue played out by those looking to profit from our moral outrage and fear?

[1] http://blog.samaltman.com/2017-yc-annual-letter (much high acceptance rate for those demographics)

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/winnie-grabs-2-5-million-f.... (a publication about babies raises 2.5MM, female founders, having worked at places like Google and Twitter gets you a free pass with VCs if you're a woman? Homebrew Capital: Well her, she must be special not her male-counter-parts. What is special and investment-worthy about this publication and those founders, and not just adding an uptick in their portfolio's founder ratio? Hey look we got two female founders in one round!

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

#406

Post by brudgers »

tptacek wrote: post #252
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.

I fully expected this thread to be a shitshow, but comments here are overwhelmingly supportive of Fowler, and except perhaps for the very bottom of the thread, I don't see much much "this is unbelievable" at all. I'm pleasantly surprised.

It's the weekend. The pros are no more likely to take a busman's holiday than anyone else.

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

#407

Post by hamburglar »

afarrell wrote: post #129

I wonder if it would be a red flag for an engineer to continue to work at Uber for more than 6 months after this post comes out since it would signal that they either: 1) Approve of the culture there and don't see a reason to leave. 2) Aren't able to find another place to work.

Are you kidding me? Expecting others to hang a huge decision like a job change on a single issue like this and punishing them for not deciding the same way you would is absurd.

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

#408

Post by rifung »

srpablo wrote: post #323
home_boi wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize. I'm simplifying it a bit but if you don't like your job, just grab a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and apply to big companies. The big companies pay very well, have good benefits and interview everyone because of the need for a high head count

> I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize. I happen to agree that, relative to other industries, we're overpaid and get to live pretty lavishly for the little sacrifice that working on building systems with code entails. That said, when you look at the value we generate for the people we work for, and re…

I don't think the value you generate actually matters in regards to compensation though. What matters is how easy you are to replace.

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

#409

Post by x0x0 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #263
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…

> Top engineers were being poached from Google/FB and these people > were trying to carve out territory in a quickly growing engineering > team. It is always a bit sad when one of the top characteristic of an engineer from organization X is their political ability to carve out an empire. I'm a bit surprised she doesn't have at least one law firm trying to get her to be the lead claimant in a class action lawsuit. See…

My partner was in a somewhat similar position. When she spoke to a lawyer, the lawyer asked her two questions:

1 - did she ever want to work in X industry again / was she comfortable with being blacklisted, legal or not;

2 - was she comfortable with this being what she did with the next two years of her life

It's a harder decision to make than you think.

Not to mention the unrelenting wave of assholery that would be generated on sites like, well, HN towards any woman that dared do what you suggest.

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

#410

Post by majewsky »

muninn_ wrote: post #304
blhack wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be honest, I know a lot of people who claim that they can write really good code if they've been drinking. I just absolutely do not understand how that is even possible. If I have ONE beer, it throws off my ability to write good code, or hold all of the concepts in my head. One of the weekly coworking meetups I go to always ends at a brewery (there is a brewery next door to the hackerspace where it is held)…

Clearly you haven't heard of the Balmer Peak

So that's Uber's problem. They hired Google/FB engineers when they should've been hiring MS experts for Ballmer Peak calibration. /s
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