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I am an Uber survivor

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Re: I am an Uber survivor

#271

"In essence, the HR department blackmailed me that if I make noise, I’d be fired. I was distraught by the HR department’s response especially considering that most of the HR folks I dealt with were women." Say it over and over, say it loud, and say it to every single person entering the US workforce from day one: H/R ACTS AND WILL ALWAYS ACT IN THE COMPANY'S BEST INTERESTS. NOT YOURS. Amy's situation was grave, and k…

[deleted]

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#272
I think it's pretty obvious that Travis Kalanick should resign. He is the constant in all these stories supporting this nasty company culture. In the past year he has also been linked with Uber's shady business (attacks on press, fake income for drivers, etc) . He is the one pushing on borderline legal tactics. Even their business model is borderline legal (if anything). How he can deny knowing anything like the sexual harassment not happening ?

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#273
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The front pageness is a function of the credibility and interestingness of the articles posted. did you mean to say "is not"?

No, I meant "is". Though, to clarify, I meant credibility-in-the-eye-of-the-upvoter.

Oh, ok. Gotcha.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#274
post #31

Why would someone write an anonymous blog post but then declare that they are: 1) A woman in her late 20s 2) Who used to work at Uber in Engineering working on database and networking scalability 3) Went to a top private college 4) has a Masters in Information Systems 5) previous to Uber worked as a Data Analyst in a tech company in the Midwest and left when it was acquired by a Chinese firm 6) Is 5 foot 7 Caucasian…

Why would someone read this whole post, and the main takeway they get from it - enough to post a hackernews comment - is to question the poster's claims of interest in anonymity. (And - let's be honest - therefore trying to discredit her whole story one chip at a time). People like you are the problem.

The thing that strikes me, is that regardless of if this is 'verified' or not, that this sort of thing is not beyond the imagination or, indeed, the experience of most of us who have female staff/coworkers..

Even if the story is totally fabricated, the bigger point here is that this sort of thing really does go on, and I'm really not sure why. I've had staff who were totally normal and who I actually quite liked whom I've had to let go / perm shitlist for behaving in ways I could never have predicted them to, as soon as I added a female engineer to the team..

What's up with all this? Sad as it is, I always have a sit down with new female staff on my teams and try to let them know that they can come to me with anything like this which goes on and we'll work out how to deal with it together. It's a sad fact, but I've never discussed this topic with a female techie who doesn't have at least one story..

It's on all of us to stop this shit from happening.

Just... Have each others backs, folks!

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree, and considered making a comment about the same point, but in all honestly, I think it's a small quibble in the grand scheme of what the article is about.

Yes, I don't want to blame "Amy" for this. Lots of people have started using the word this way. It is a minor quibble. Perhaps you're right that by bringing this up, I'm distracting from the major point of her article. I still want to leave it up, though.

"tried to trigger me and insulted my intelligence to see if I break under pressure"

I'm much more astounded that this is their interview technique.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Great, retain a Chicago politician so you know you'll get the answer you're paying for." right. regardless of where you stand on his performance as attorney general, hiring eric holder is a political move. if uber actually cared about investigating this, they wouldn't have hired a politician.

Eric Holder was AG. AG is not a political office, and he's not a politician. What you should be concerned with is the fact that he was associated with them previously and is a proponent of theirs.

> AG is not a political office, and he's not a politician.

AG is a Presidential appointment with Congressional confirmation. While those appointed are not necessarily politicians, it is most certainly a political position.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#277
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree with all this, I just think it's frustrating for a lot of people when you see a terrible situation that's supposed to have judicial remedies, but in practice that system just doesn't work.

This is sort of the best of all possible worlds. Any time there's a problem, everyone involved can just say "oh, she should sue" and "why doesn't she sue, there are lots of legal remedies". And then if she spoke with a lawyer, that lawyer would point to all the problems listed above plus many more (the difficulty of proving damages, for one) and would almost certainly try to dissuade her from suing no matter how grie…

The difficulty in employment harassment/constructive termination cases is seldom in the quantum determination step.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#278

>Travis is well known to protect high performing team leaders no matter how abusive they are towards their employees. The HR team was known to be deftly[sic] afraid of Travis’s tendency to blame and ridicule the women and yell at HR whenever they went in with complaints of abuse. I heard about Travis personally congratulating Mike#2 for meeting strict deadlines months after I complained to HR about my abuse. This is…

Maybe I've watched too much Suits and The Good Wife, but it just seems that it's all futile. They're a huge corp, if you file suit against them they'll hit back harder with bigger and badder lawyers, and you either settle out of court, or play the lotto with the court system and try your hand at a judgement with whatever lawyers you can afford. It's really sad how stacked the odds seem.

Why is this being modded down? It's the truth. Big companies almost always come out on top in trials because they can afford the best lawyers, and they can afford to game the system to bankrupt their opponents by filing never-ending motions to delay and other tactics which increase the legal costs to the opponent. You're almost never going to get a positive result if you're a rank-and-file employee; your best course of action is to leave the company and find something better.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#279

>Travis is well known to protect high performing team leaders no matter how abusive they are towards their employees. The HR team was known to be deftly[sic] afraid of Travis’s tendency to blame and ridicule the women and yell at HR whenever they went in with complaints of abuse. I heard about Travis personally congratulating Mike#2 for meeting strict deadlines months after I complained to HR about my abuse. This is…

>"Great, retain a Chicago politician so you know you'll get the answer you're paying for."

Normally I don't care, but because I'm from Chicago and am officially very touchy about all the abuse the city catches, I'd like to correct the record as Eric Holder is from New York.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#280

>Travis is well known to protect high performing team leaders no matter how abusive they are towards their employees. The HR team was known to be deftly[sic] afraid of Travis’s tendency to blame and ridicule the women and yell at HR whenever they went in with complaints of abuse. I heard about Travis personally congratulating Mike#2 for meeting strict deadlines months after I complained to HR about my abuse. This is…

More interesting, I think, that Uber has a standing relationship with the law firm Holder works for. Holder has previously worked on Uber's behalf: http://airport.blog.ajc.com/2016/06/15/former-u-s-attorney-g...

He does have a credible image, but the announcement sort of co-opted that to make it seem like he might be somehow independent in his thinking. In reality, he's a lawyer being paid by Uber. As such, he isn't really inclined to find all the dirt...Depends on where said dirt is.

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