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The Fall of Travis Kalanick

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Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#51

Post by decacorn »

uberemployee wrote: post #48
decacorn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the n…

I’m sorry you had a terrible interview experience. In 2017 we hired Gayle Laakmann McDowell (CTCI author) to train engineers on how to interview better and how to design better interview questions that weren’t biased. She held many sessions so hopefully our interviewing experience improves but it’s a skill that needs constant training.

I'll just say this: there is a systemic behavior of tech bros treating everyone like they are the king of the hill and everyone else are peasants.

The only way to solve THAT problem is purging the tech bros. Sorry, a big name new hire won't address the situation I experienced. Period.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#52

Post by Anderkent »

platz wrote: post #40

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good…

How does Uber 'oppress the underclass'? Puhlease.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#53

Post by decacorn »

mattnewton wrote: post #50
decacorn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the n…

My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not “getting” unit tests.

i went through a number (again i am refraining to be specific in order to mask my identity) of interviews, let's just say between 2-10 interviews. The rudeness I experienced was 10X worse than your situation, so I really feel for you.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#54

Post by misun78 »

harryh wrote: post #10
misun78 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significantly better with Dara who understands the needs for a peacetime ceo. Happy to field any specific questions.

Uber is an unprofitable, non-public company with incredibly fierce competition that is expected to face enormous changes do to technological developments. Why in the world would you think it needs a peacetime CEO?

Peacetime doesn’t necessarily mean not being competitive. Uber is at a stage where it doesn’t need to bend the rules anymore. Read up on how Dara handled the Brazil legislation for example. Rather than fighting any regulation as TK may have, he effectively worked with the government to legalize and legitimize Uber. I expect him to do the same in London.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#55

Post by Larrikin »

mieseratte wrote: post #44
matte_black wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't companies usually hand out t-shirt swag with their company names on it? Most of the time that I see someone with a company logo on their shirt I do not readily assume they work at that company.

I would never assume someone walking around with a North Face t-shirt works for North Face but tech companies are obscure, especially outside of the big tech cities. If I see someone wearing a t-shirt for a tech company in my city, they more likely than not work for that company. If I saw someone with an Uber shirt I would assume they work for them, and probably as corporate. I can't say I've ever seen a driver weari…

As a receiver of a lot of SWAG, all of those company shirts become pajamas until the day they go into the H&M donation bag. I can't imagine any situation outside of working for that company where I would want to walk around advertising for them on an uninspired shirt with their logo plastered on it.

I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering the entire thing garbage.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#56

Post by api »

platz wrote: post #40

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good…

VC-driven Silicon Valley innovation is directly aimed at making money.

The fact that money making overlaps significantly with oppressing the underclass is not the fault of Silicon Valley, though SV isn't doing anything to help. It's a side effect of the fact that we are in an extremely demand constrained economy.

Demand constrained economy is a fancy pants way of saying "everyone is broke so they can't buy anything so why make anything for people to buy?" Below the upper middle class, nobody has any expendable income. That means there are few customers for things designed... well... for customers. That means entrepreneurs can't make money selling things to people unless they're luxury goods, and that's a tough market to break into. (Juciero wasn't such a dumb idea from this perspective. VCs aren't stupid. It was a gamble on creating a new luxury market for the top ~10%. Better executed it might have succeeded.)

As a result Silicon Valley (along with every other industry) must turn elsewhere for customers. Elsewhere is advertisers, propagandists, oppressive regimes, etc., hence surveillance capitalism. The other alternative is to try to find ways to crush margin ("disrupt" as its been redefined to mean) out of some existing industry, which usually means slashing wages and killing jobs and ultimately making the demand constrained economy problem worse.

The ultimate blame for this situation goes to Washington for pushing supply side economics in a demand constrained economy and to New York for abandoning productive capitalism in favor of financial gambling and bubble inflation.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#57

Post by misun78 »

moxious wrote: post #8
misun78 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significantly better with Dara who understands the needs for a peacetime ceo. Happy to field any specific questions.

The media has reported on some fairly outrageous cultural excesses. Question -- did you experience these when Kalanick was there? Since Dara showed up, anything specific you can say about what was done and whether it "feels different" and how? In some places the CEO is a distant figurehead, and whatever his or her values, the day-to-day experience is more dominated by your local crew of < 20 people. In other places,…

Both? I experienced nothing anywhere close to the egregiousness mentioned in the media. But TKs ruthlessness, long work hours ethics was always omnipresent. It wasn’t so much top down mandated to work hard but the culture was there. Paradoxically managers at times would have to push the employees to take breaks, vacations etc. I personally relished that environment but understandable how those would other commitments would find it hard. Our compensation structure also encouraged working hard (and all the stress, burnouts and disappointments that stemmed from it) so even if an employee had all the freedom to leave work at 5 pm and do other things, unless you were ultra-efficient in the 8-9 hours at work (which some of the best engineers I worked with were), there was always a risk of missed incentives. In short, it felt like a great company for those who could manage these trade offs. For all others, it was stressful.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#59

Post by swang »

mattnewton wrote: post #50
decacorn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the n…

My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not “getting” unit tests.

yep, somewhat similar experience

my interviewer was 15 minutes late to the call, didn't even know what position i was applying for, didn't ask me at all about the assignment they made me do, then ended my call early because they had to be somewhere. already knew i didn't get the job but didn't even get back to me until a month later.

person still works at uber. pretty high up now. i guess i'm glad i didn't get farther given all that came out afterwards.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#60

Post by lhorie »

zwily wrote: post #2

If you’ve followed the Kalanick story till now, there’s nothing new in this article. However, it’s interesting to see it all put together. Anyone know what it’s like inside Uber today?

Another Uber employee here. I can confirm that whereas opinions of Travis were a mixed bag, Dara is pretty much universally liked. He's very serious about doing things the right way, and him taking the initiative to address the previously-under-covers 2016 leak gets my utmost respect.

I got in just a month before TK stepped out, shortly before the Holden report, and Liane Hornsay and Frances Frei joined. Since then, the company implemented a crisis hotline where you can anonymously report abuse, it ran courses about what's considered inappropriate behavior, and there's a huge overhaul going on with regards to the cultural values and the performance appraisal process. Frances was particularly vocal about the inadequacy of the top 3 bottom 3 system that was in place before.

I mentioned this before elsewhere, but when Liane had a board member step down the afternoon after he made a sexist comment in a all-hands meeting, it spoke volumes about how serious they were about setting new norms at Uber.

I also recall seeing an email a few months ago that basically said that whoever was working on any competitive intelligence project involving spying was to halt all further work effective immediately. The culture of doing things right is definitely becoming a thing.

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