Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

susanjfowler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

761–770 of 1001 posts

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

#761

Post by bsaul »

zekkius wrote: post #196
bsaul wrote: post #124

Clearly there's a problem in that company, but maybe some woman working in the US could answer to me : why isn't just answering to the first mail " sorry, not interested" then keep working there not an option ? to me, the term "harassment" means repetitive, morally painful actions from a boss to his employee. Obviously the guy has a huge problem with his sex life, but why report to HR instantly , instead of trying to…

Because challenging someone to "justify" why they feel sexually harassed is inappropriate?

Yes, that's my feeling too. It's inappropriate to even wonder if the person complaining was in fact harassed.

And that leads to a country where every manager is absolutely terrified to be accused because they know they'll be automatically guilty.

In the OP case, the manager clearly behaved completely foolishly, but i have actually met people in some offices that were into open relationships, and talked extremely freely about sex, just like any other subject ( though he did have some weird behaviors, but it didn't prevent people at the office from working with him). I wonder if that Uber guy wasn't like that.

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

#762

Post by rodgerd »

crooked-v wrote: post #309
bifocald wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem in Uber's engineering orgs is that Uber hired too many people for too few real projects. From what I learned from my friends in Uber, many teams had largely overlapping responsibilities, and therefore created bogus projects to justify their existence. Their standard MO is picking a missing feature in a service, and then creating a new system that implemented that feature. It might be okay if all the…

I have literally never seen stack ranking mentioned in any context but horror stories and toxic company culture. What on earth possesses people to keep using it?

For a long time it was, "successful company x uses stack ranking, and we want to be successful, so we use stack ranking."

Microsoft were often cited. You'll note that their renaissance coincides with their elimination of stack ranking.

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

#763

Post by patricius »

Whenever I hear about a case of a woman being harassed at work, I can't help but wonder how I would react in a similar situation. I am male and I have never experienced workplace harrassment, but if a female co-worker started writing things like those in the story I can't imagine that it would annoy me the slightest. If she was attractive, I would probably be flattered. If it _did_ annoy me, I would ask the person to stop and if that didn't help, I might contact her husband as retaliation.

Is it a female-thing to take these sort of situations so seriously, or maybe a personality trait?

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

#764

Post by mavelikara »

mahyarm wrote: post #398
tsunamifury wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dig into the package, a lot of the value is locked up in unsellable shares. Vs immediately liquid RSUs of any public company.

That is any startup / private company. That isn't unique to Uber at all. IPOs are usually done when your profitable or have no other choice. You want to do an IPO when your profitable / break even or usually it becomes a bad deal for everyone.

Uber explicitly prohibits stock sale on the secondary market, and their options expiry after 30 days of leaving job (instead of the standard-but-undesireable-still 90 days).

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

#765

Post by arkh »

rdtsc wrote: post #576
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…

> My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, The sad thing is why do men want to apply there after what is know about it? I wouldn't want to be near any company that treats any of their employees like that.

Why do men end-up in dangerous yet good paying jobs? Because testosterone. Most young men are more willing to work a shit job if they can get good money than most women who value quality of life.

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

#766

Post by knucklesandwich »

deegles wrote: post #759
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 think the average software engineer is underpaid relative to the value that they deliver to a company and the economy in general. Relative to other professions, sure. But I think that if a tech company makes enough to (in one instance) pay out dividends, they have spare cash to raise wages or provide bonuses to those that generated the value in the first place.

Agreed, I think relatively high compensation is something engineers can get caught up on when discussing the idea of unionizing (though its worth noting that we're paid salaries closer to electricians and plumbers than we are to specialist doctors, not that this is really apples to apples in terms of education required).

Even though we earn good wages, its relatively easy to see that workers are not often reaping the benefits of surplus value and have no ability to weigh in on determinations of how that value is allocated. More importantly, the advantages of a union are not limited to being able to negotiate a better salary, there are lots of workplace conditions that can be pretty oppressive in the tech industry, and unions offer the ability to improve all of them.

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

#767

Post by meheleventyone »

kartickv wrote: post #430
owenmarshall wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies operate on the myth that the people responsible for doing work are interchangeable cogs that can be eliminated and replaced by a new doer with little to no impact to how the company functions. So if you have enough traumatic brain damage to buy that line, stack ranking makes a ton of sense.

I had this exact same conversation with a manager who seemed suprised when I told him people are not interchangeable cogs. He said that some people may be quicker at a particular technology / domain / whatever, or quicker to ramp up, or do slightly better work, but smart engineers can and do learn anything needed and do work that's good enough after a ramp-up that's short enough. Beyond that, he says, there are minor…

It's sort of true but a very one-dimensional view on an individuals contributions which is a bit worrying coming from a people manager. I think its funny people go around lionizing individual technical skill and at the same time insist that people are interchangeable.

In my experience most programming jobs don't really require deep domain expertise or share it by osmosis. Ideally a smart, dedicated person that gets a 40 hour a week crash course from experts in the field should get up to speed reasonably quickly.

In the absence of experts there exists a whole slew of technology that democratizes hard fields like game creation and machine learning. You can commit all sorts of sins and still end up with a well functioning product. Partly resting on technology developed as an enabler and partly resting on the sheer amount of available compute.

IMO people are far more easily replaced in terms of making an individual code contribution than they are as members of a team and it's the latter that is significantly more important. Good teams are multipliers for their members. Replacing a team member in a well functioning team is a super risky prospect. Yet we live in a world of frequent re-orgs, teams smooshed together haphazardly and overvaluing individual technical skill.

I don't see that changing anytime soon as it all sort of works and there is an endemic lack of interest.

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

#768

Post by critiqjo »

patricius wrote: post #763

Whenever I hear about a case of a woman being harassed at work, I can't help but wonder how I would react in a similar situation. I am male and I have never experienced workplace harrassment, but if a female co-worker started writing things like those in the story I can't imagine that it would annoy me the slightest. If she was attractive, I would probably be flattered. If it _did_ annoy me, I would ask the person to…

It _is_ a personality trait that you are talking about alright --- your personality trait, that is. So, thanks for sharing your views, patricius.

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

#769

Post by knucklesandwich »

arjie wrote: post #756
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…

Good luck. I'll never join. I know what you guys want (because enough of you have stated it on HN): no more H1Bs and to make sure I never find a job again because I'm a foreigner. I'll scab that union till kingdom come.

Actually I'd prefer if my country would just naturalize you instead of running you through an exploitative guest worker program that hedges your visa status on continued employment. I have absolutely no desire to prevent you from getting a job (and I'd like the union to have a spot for you and ensure you share in the benefits we create by collectively bargaining).

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

#770

Post by routelastresort »

toothbrush wrote: post #465
PaulRobinson wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a "whiskey club", and regularly go to the pub where I work. We don't do it at lunchtime. We don't do it during the working day. 5:30pm on a Friday? Let's have a glass of whiskey together. Somebody joining/leaving, or we haven't been out together for a while? Let's go to the pub after work one evening. There is a #drinks channel in Slack where people who fancy a drink after work co-ordinate, and several of wil…

> As for team dynamics, it means we know each other better and bond more frequently. Not a problem, I think. Except for the non-drinkers in your team. I suspect that they either a) feel left out, because a non-drinker at a pub has a boring time, and has to keep justifying their empty glass b) probably miss out on important decisions if a majority of the important people in a team are present, which is bad dynamics c)…

I can no longer drink, due to medical issues. I'd still go out with my team for the bonding, and probably just leave early every time. I really like how the Chef Community Summit has drinking and dry events, like Game Night. Making inclusivity a goal is fun for everyone!
Post reply on HN