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I am an Uber survivor

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Re: I am an Uber survivor

#491

Post by api »

prophetjohn wrote: post #466
Arizhel wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That said, I work in London and not SV, so I can't say if the culture is different. Yeah, that's your problem right there. I probably should have specified that this is largely a SV/USA problem. The work culture in the UK is very different from over here. Even here in the US, it's rather different by region; I don't think it's remotely as bad on the east coast.

Never seen anything like this in NYC

Nor in Boston or the Los Angeles / Orange County area.

I'm willing to believe it though. Far, far too many stories. I've also definitely seen it online in spades.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#492

Post by plainOldText »

enraged_camel wrote: post #404
jastingo wrote: post #257

I'm not in the business of defending Uber - quite the contrary - but reading through the comments it seems that most people are assuming that this post by an anonymous person is 100% true. These types of posts are worrying to me. Why could this post not have been crafted by someone at Lyft? Or one of Uber's many other detractors? Given the PR nightmare that Uber is in why not pile on while the public seems primed for…

She posted anonymously, BUT also went out of her way to provide an awful lot of information about herself. Information that her ex-coworkers could presumably verify and figure out her real identity (especially since Uber seems to have very few women in engineering positions). Based on the article, she is: 1) A woman in her late 20s 2) who used to work at Uber in Engineering working on database and networking scalabil…

I know comments on this type of articles get extremely heated, but with no intention to favor any side, I will say this: What if she provided that "awful lot of information about herself" with the intent of deceiving the audience and creating the illusion that she's this person, when in fact she's somebody else?

Maybe she aggregated attributes from multiple women at Uber and created this new person which cannot be specifically indentified. I see this as a valid strategy to conceal one's identity.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#493

Post by wvenable »

tyre wrote: post #210

I'm really happy she felt comfortable doing this. What an incredibly brave and strong person—I can't imagine what she must be feeling. What I really want to see is the other 20 men on her team tell their bosses to cut that shit out. We cannot rely on the abused to stand up for themselves; for every one who does there are thousands who cannot. It is on every one of us to report abhorrent behaviour, even if we think so…

> What I really want to see is the other 20 men on her team tell their bosses to cut that shit out.

It sounds like the abuse is pretty universal, from the article: "It was normal for guys to refer to other guys as fags when they didn't participate in private parties where sex and drugs were involved."

The 20 other men on her team were probably as concerned with keeping their job and not being abused. The big difference is that they can appear to fit in because they're men; women have a much more difficult job of it. But whenever everyone is keeping their head down, it's hard to notice that other people's issues.

The whole psychology of bullying comes into play and that is pretty complex. Yes, if everyone stood up against the bully they would win but how often does that happen in real life? Most people in this situation would likely just quit than put up with that environment so you're already left with those who can't or won't.

I'd like to think I wouldn't let that stuff happen around me but honestly I'm pretty unlikely to work in that environment in the first place. Where I do work, the culture is great and we are near 30-40% women in IT/Dev without even trying to hire for diversity.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#494

Post by relics443 »

I have friend who is an engineering middle manager at Uber. I was having drinks with him and some of his direct reports (including 2 women), and they all told me that they've never experienced or heard of any of this behavior until recently.

Obviously that's anecdata (although it has the benefit of me knowing that it's true, as opposed to Amy's story), but I think people are jumping to conclusions here.

It seems that there is some kind of problem at Uber. The scope and size of it remains to be seen.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#495

Post by xapata »

mememachine wrote: post #482
xapata wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apparently am missing your point entirely as most of your comments seem directly contradictory to the idea that harassment can be objectively observed.

What do you mean by "objectively observed"? Obviously im not asking in general, but in this case.

Sexual harassment is defined in the legal code, for the US at least. There's a pretty healthy history of cases to clarify the details.

If you're curious about it, your HR department probably has some training materials.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#496

Post by gareim »

cyberpunk wrote: post #358
yummyfajitas wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the motivation. Perhaps someone feels harassment is a real problem, but can't find any real examples of it, so feels the need to tell lies for a good cause? Perhaps someone merely wants to harm Uber? They certainly have no shortage of people who hate them. But regardless of motivation, the facts show that many people are willing to fake stories just to support their "team". Sometimes they do this at grea…

Sure; I can't fault any of that. Even if this was a link to a chapter of a fictional book though, I'd be saying the same thing. I don't accept this as truth, I assume it's fiction as no one is standing behind it. My only point was, that in general, none of us are terribly shocked by stories such as these, and that's what I wanted to talk about. I really do hope that less of this goes on than is reported, I sadly feel…

Real or not, no one's shocked because we just had a major eye-opener (Fowler) so recently.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#497

Post by nylonstrung »

jastingo wrote: post #257

I'm not in the business of defending Uber - quite the contrary - but reading through the comments it seems that most people are assuming that this post by an anonymous person is 100% true. These types of posts are worrying to me. Why could this post not have been crafted by someone at Lyft? Or one of Uber's many other detractors? Given the PR nightmare that Uber is in why not pile on while the public seems primed for…

At a company as large as Uber could someone working on database scalability be involved in calls about whether or not payment should be withheld from drivers before a ride ends? Would her manager be the decision maker for that?

That detail seems suspect to me. There are also essentially no details about the work that convey inside knowledge about the ideosyncracies of Uber specifically at a work place. It is also weird to me that she chose to be anonymous but included her height and a bunch of specific incidental details - it reminds me of how liars frequently add an excessive amount of detail to add credibility to their stories.

Personally it sounds true to me. but I'd like to see more scrutiny from someone with perspective on this.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#498

Post by elsewhen »

guelo wrote: post #275
jordigh wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

many investment banks put users in an impossible situation to see how the candidate reacts under pressure. i'm not defending what uber did, just clarifying that this could have been the goal.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#499

Post by mememachine »

xapata wrote: post #495
mememachine wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "objectively observed"? Obviously im not asking in general, but in this case.

Sexual harassment is defined in the legal code, for the US at least. There's a pretty healthy history of cases to clarify the details. If you're curious about it, your HR department probably has some training materials.

>If you're curious about it, your HR department probably has some training materials.

There you go again, with the pointless grandstanding.

It seems like you never had any intention of having a genuine discussion, since I can't find a single one of your comments that doesn't read as venomous and disingenuous. You're exactly the type of person that needs HR, and I mean that in a bad way really.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#500

Post by obstinate »

relics443 wrote: post #485
enraged_camel wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She posted anonymously, BUT also went out of her way to provide an awful lot of information about herself. Information that her ex-coworkers could presumably verify and figure out her real identity (especially since Uber seems to have very few women in engineering positions). Based on the article, she is: 1) A woman in her late 20s 2) who used to work at Uber in Engineering working on database and networking scalabil…

Or that was all made up? Who is in a position to know every employee at Uber, so they can verify that this person actually existed, AND that they actually wrote it?

> Who is in a position to know . . .

Nobody is. She could be lying. She could even be providing the demographic information of a coworker who had none of these experiences. She might be a space alien for all we know.

So you just have to weigh the evidence and get comfortable with uncertainty. Is there someone who would make all this stuff up? Sure. No doubt there's someone out there who likes internet adulation enough to cook up a story. Is this an instance of that happening? Not very likely, I think, since it corroborates what we're hearing from a lot of other people about Uber's culture, and Ms. Fowler's story. I judge that there is a high likelihood this story is true or mostly true.

That's all you can do really. You're never going to get first-hand, attributed corroboration in a case like this. This is because anyone in a position to do that would be outing the anonymous whistle-blower by corroborating, especially if more than two people did. If they care about the victim, they will respect her choice to remain anonymous. So demanding more before assigning credibility is tantamount to deciding to always disbelieve anonymous accounts. That is an option available to you, but I don't think that option is the most useful for developing true beliefs about the world around me, so I don't choose it.

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