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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

#831

Post by true_religion »

computerex wrote: post #574
true_religion wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate more on the misogyny that was part of the culture? So far you've only identified that they like drinking, traveling and were part of the Greek social system in university. What I'm looking for are instances of demeaning women, discounting their achievements, systemic disapproval for the words of women, favours being handed out on the basis of gender, solicitation of sexual favours in non-equal power…

Did you not read the article? Literally has an example of everything you are referring to.

The person I'm responding to actually worked at Uber, so they can potentially give more information than what the article contains.

What do you have against talking to other witnesses 'of the crime' so to speak?

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

#832

Post by hueving »

pnathan wrote: post #747
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…

I am utterly persuaded at this point that the software industry workers need a union. Software engineering hiring practices are profoundly flawed; this is something a union could address at an industry level. It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck when, say, $sales_guy two tables over is paid minimum wage + commission (disclaimer: I have no knowledge of this occurring at my current company; it…

>A company of people work together, and should share in the returns as they cover each other's deficiencies.

This is not an economically rational way to behave, so it's not sustainable for a company to do this and keep talent for high market-value positions. People are compensated based on the minimum required to get them to join and stay at the company, so their compensation is going to be driven by the market value of people with their skills.

Very small companies may be able to afford to pay every employee the cost of a principle software engineer (or whatever the highest position they have is), but this falls apart extremely quickly if the company needs lots of customer support positions or lots of sales people. They end up having to cut compensation to all of the high-end positions and subsequently lose anyone good enough to get jobs that pay market rate.

The majority of companies don't have the profit margins to throw away an extra $100,000 or whatever it takes per employee annually to pay everyone the top position market rate.

>It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck

What do you say to people that spend years of their life getting advanced degrees in math/physics/CS/whatever that make them experts in the subject matter the company is working on? "That sounds hard, here's the same paycheck as the undergrad working next to you who knows almost nothing in the field."

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

#833

Post by jaxn »

flukus wrote: post #688
jaxn wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once received a bottle of wine as a Christmas bonus from the founders of the small startup I worked at. I was the only person on the the who didn't drink and was pretty offended. Especially since it was well known that I didn't drink since this company celebrated "beer thirty" every Friday.

Well known you never drank or well known you didn't drink at work?

Well-known that I didn't drink at all.

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

#834

Post by [deleted] »

flukus wrote: post #688
jaxn wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once received a bottle of wine as a Christmas bonus from the founders of the small startup I worked at. I was the only person on the the who didn't drink and was pretty offended. Especially since it was well known that I didn't drink since this company celebrated "beer thirty" every Friday.

Well known you never drank or well known you didn't drink at work?

[deleted]

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

#835

Post by bogomipz »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #682
bogomipz wrote: post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"As for team dynamics, it means we know each other better and bond more frequently" Is drinking actually bonding though?

Definitely. Alcohol is a social grease. Facilitates having fun, kills off stress temporarily. All conductive to bonding, even if not strictly necessary.

I guess we have different definitions of bonding then, because that just sounds like regular drinking to me. In my opinion a bond is forged through some meaningful connection or meaningful shared experience. I just don't find knocking pints back to be meaningful experience. Its a bond that lasts until the pub closes. I say this as someone who drinks as well.

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

#836

Post by lostboys67 »

home_boi wrote: post #271
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…

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

Underworked - with all the unpaid OT going on and they aren ot overpaid when compared to other professions

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

#837

Post by bpicolo »

rspeer wrote: post #744
bpicolo wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber recruiters once emails about 100 engineers in my company the same email...except they managed to swap around the first/last names on all of them.

Most recruiters are comically bad at targeting -- apparently there isn't enough downside to just carpet-bombing as many e-mail addresses as they can find -- but this does not mean that recruiting is inherently wrong.

The funny bit was the swapped names, it's like they had a spreadsheet but shifted a column down. Didn't double check the names against emails so I assume it was automated.

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

#838

Post by lostboys67 »

smsm42 wrote: post #800
knucklesandwich wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors. The beauty of a union is there doesn't have to be an objective definition. A union gives you a democratic voice to advocate for what you think is fair. Without organized labor power, your voice is completely ignorable. > Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fa…

How is it a beauty? Stupid decision made by 1000 people is better than by one? At least if I make stupid decision I am to blame and I can fix it. If 1000 people make it, I have 1/1000 of infuence (in fact even less if I am not eloquent or persuasive) and can't change anything. Talk about ignorable. I certainly don't need a "democracy" to take my decisions for me. There's a place for it as we can't each personally dec…

As an individual you have virtualy zero chance of effecting any change - I have how ever got several thousand people a better pension at British Telecom (I was the secretary for one of the larger BT union branches)

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

#839

Post by TeMPOraL »

bogomipz wrote: post #835
TeMPOraL wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. Alcohol is a social grease. Facilitates having fun, kills off stress temporarily. All conductive to bonding, even if not strictly necessary.

I guess we have different definitions of bonding then, because that just sounds like regular drinking to me. In my opinion a bond is forged through some meaningful connection or meaningful shared experience. I just don't find knocking pints back to be meaningful experience. Its a bond that lasts until the pub closes. I say this as someone who drinks as well.

Alcohol does not create a meaningful bonding experience by itself (unless you're out tasting some very rare and special beverage). It matters what you're doing while drinking. Personally, I find hours-long conversations over beers to be quite good at building rapport with people.

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

#840

Post by wz1000 »

mysticmarvel wrote: post #810
wz1000 wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leadership betraying the trust of workers and neglecting the demands of the most marginalized members (such as the UAW in 1941), but a union correctly structured and rooted in worker solidarity is the only proven way to fight management on these kinds of issues. Thats why the IWW exists, and they desperately need members. They refuse to cooperat…

Good god... I just Google'd the IWW. Their website looks, at a glance, like a militant extreme left group. From the hard white-and-red on black colour scheme through to a photo of two people in fatigues carrying AK-style weapons next to an advert for a highly politically charged event. If they want more members, they might want to tone down the "militant" imagery. I'm uncomfortable being associated with that.

The IWW has a long history, and pioneered the American labour movement, being practically the first union to admit women and blacks. It has not been a stranger to government repression in this period, and is decidedly anti government and view all political solutions with distrust. Instead they advocate for direct action. If you don't have anti-authoritarian/anarchist leanings, you probably won't fit in with the philosophy of the IWW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Everest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Outrage

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html?_r=0

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