I don't understand why these jobs are even worth it to anyone? How much are they making 130-160k to work 16 hour days and are abused on top of that? Fuck that.
I am an Uber survivor
681–690 of 841 posts
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#682Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there publicly known instances of something like this being "too good to be true", or is your feeling based only on private experience? I have had no private experience with something like this being "too good to be true", and multiple instances of it being all too true. And there is obviously a publicly known instance of something like this that appears quite credible (the Susan Fowler blogpost). So you understa…
Here is one example https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/28/alt-ri... I could tell it was fake because it hit on so many tropes of the left. Here's a more directly comparable example (incredibly long winded expose... skimming recommended) https://contraspin.co.nz/the-weaponising-of-social-pt1-the-c... It's not about the events, it's about how they are framed and told by the anonymous author.
I'm confused. Are you saying that Guardian article is a hoax? In what way is that a publicly known fact? I did not see any retraction or correction on the link provided.
The Contraspin article is pretty fascinating and from skimming it, makes a decent case worth taking seriously, but one good case isn't a consensus; in fact, it appears to run directly contrary to the consensus. (It also has plenty of weak spots; for example, someone who's been Executive Director of the EFF for 15 years has a lot of credibility in my eyes.) By contrast, Sarah Fowler's article has been corroborated by reputable sources like the New York Times [1], who've found additional horror stories along similar lines. (To be clear, I'm operating under the assumption we're in agreement that all indications are that Sarah Fowler's story is fundamentally accurate.)
Do you have any examples where it's a thorough consensus that an anonymous testimonial was made up to hurt someone, the way, for example, there's a thorough consensus that the Rolling Stone UVA article was pretty much made up?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace...
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#683Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"Why is this being modded down? It's the truth."
Since when has the truth been popular, or well received when it wasn't also what people wanted to hear?
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#684Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand where you're coming from; I don't think you've made enough of an effort to understand where your parent is coming from, your focus is entirely on how wrong you feel your parent is. Of course the criminal justice system must abide by the principles of due process. Simultaneously, if someone anonymously expresses great suffering, we are of course under an ethical obligation to take them seriously, offer th…
I reread the parent, because your point is a well-taken that I might have brushed it aside too quickly. I can specify upholding my skepticism on the grounds that only Uber employees in some certain proximity to "Amy" could deduce whether she's a real person. If not Amy herself, but 2 or 3 of them who could vouch will come forward out of anonymity and say something along the lines of "yes, 'Amy' is a real person. Her…
>>I disagree that anonymous, unverifiable grievances impose on otherwise ethical and rational people a positive obligation of specific personal demand for belief or compassion.
Amy's specific experiences may or may not be verifiable. I believe you are missing the point though. This isn't about Amy herself. If it were, she would have come out publicly, like Susan has. I suspect the reason Amy posted her story anonymously is because it is about the treatment women in general receive at Uber. That's what makes her story credible: we have heard from multiple sources so far that the atmosphere at Uber is extremely hostile to women.
Here's an example why anonymity is important: law enforcement agencies receive anonymous tips all the time. One way they decide whether to follow up on a tip is by looking at surrounding factors. For instance, if multiple anonymous tips within a short period of time suggest that Bob may be involved in child trafficking, that is in most cases sufficient to earn Bob a police raid.
Same thing with Amy's story. By itself, it is full of extraordinary claims. In light of everything we have learned about Uber's company culture though, the claims are both ordinary and credible.
Is there a chance that it was written by a rival company's astroturfers? Sure. Just like how Bob may actually have been a target of swatting[1]. But law enforcement agencies still have an obligation to investigate the anonymous tips against Bob, just like we as the public have an obligation to offer belief or compassion to stories like Amy's.
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#685Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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." Full disclosure, I work at Uber. I have been staying out of this until now, but this point particularly grinds my gears. If I heard anything remotely like what was discussed in this article you bet your ass I'm going…
>I had one opportunity to speak up when my female teammate was being discriminated against >He's a massive jackass too, but you can't fire people on the spot for being a massive jackass without a lot of evidence to back it up. The implication of this is that you also have experience at Uber working with somebody who is unfireable despite being a "massive jackass" and engaging in sex discrimination against at least on…
I feel like you didn't really read my post. You don't fire somebody the first, or even second, time they mess up. There are plenty of people at plenty of companies that /should/ be fired, but have not yet because you generally don't fire somebody without overwhelming evidence. This is not a problem exclusive to Uber.
Despite the fact I pretty clearly explained the problem, you still read into it the way you wanted the narrative to be read.
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#686I'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…
If this was a science post that had no evidence, everyone here would be shooting it down. Something about a tawdry narrative though seems to instantly be believed.
My first thought was that someone has launched an all out PR attack against Uber. There are hundreds of comments here going after Uber. This was an anonymous post and could be totally fake.
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#687>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.
At this scale of awfulness and given how much cash Uber has, I imagine some very good employment lawyers are going to be shaking the bushes looking for as many plaintiffs as they can find, and wouldn't think of charging them to participate.
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
These women are victims of harassment and abuse. It seems very unfair to expect them to also put their personal reputation on the line before we finally take them seriously. That's a very high bar to clear and it's the reason why so few women speak out publicly. That's why we must encourage, not discourage, anonymous disclosures, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
To give anonymous accusations of harassment and abuse the benefit of the doubt is to believe that someone is an abuser without evidence to. Given the effect that this can have on a persons life I don't believe it should be encouraged at all. It's guilty until proven innocent.
It's really not "guilty until proven innocent". Nobody has gone to prison, much less been charged with a criminal offense. The article doesn't name anyone in particular, so even if harassment accusations ruined mens' careers (which is a comically untrue assertion in the first place), that argument holds no water. Sexism is real, harassment is real, and demanding some arbitrarily high standard of evidence before you believe it is at best obtuse and at worst deliberately complicit.
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can you be so sure it was Uber? Susan's tweet was intentionally vague [0]. You are forgetting that some past and present employees that could be directly implicated by Susan's evidence may also choose the smear campaign route to save their hide. This could range from the women in HR* who might get thrown under the bus by Uber for aiding and abetting, to the men that perpetrated the actual harassment. *Of course t…
Isn't uber known for this? I remember them responding to a lawsuit or something by hiring PIs to get dirt on people - stuff beyond the merits of the case. They've always ended up looking
Yes, they have threatened to dig up dirt on reporters and have even hired former CIA agents to go after information on someone who is suing them.
Re: I am an Uber survivor
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 differen…
>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." Full disclosure, I work at Uber. I have been staying out of this until now, but this point particularly grinds my gears. If I heard anything remotely like what was discussed in this article you bet your ass I'm going…
I had a similar experience at a previous company I worked at, and a similar reaction. When people heaped criticism on them for sexism I essentially said "no way, I've never seen any of that, this is outrageous, you're slandering the good guys".
Well, as it turns out, they weren't. A female engineer I knew in passing wound up writing an essay similar to this one describing her horrible treatment at the hands of one of her coworkers and HR. I was shocked, but I also knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't make up something like that. She shared that story as her goodbye email from the company.
Even now, I'm baffled and angry about the response the company made. I don't know why it was handled that way, and I don't know why her coworker acted so wretchedly. It boils my blood, and mixed in with that and the bewilderment is a certain sense of shame that I had misplaced my trust so badly.
Anyways, I guess all of that is just a long way of saying that I hear where you're coming from and hope your experience ends better than mine did.