Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by AsyncAwait » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:33 PM UTC

csharpminor wrote: post #119

logandavis wrote: post #69

By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning…

Anecdotally speaking, I've noticed that Uber has become a dirty word among my friends. For example, someone using Uber will generally just say that they're calling a car rather than naming the service. Lyft doesn't have the same stigma. It should be concerning to management that the company's ethos is repelling customers. Edit: Management should be far more concerned that Uber is allegedly an environment that systema…

Isn't that due to the perception that they broke the recent anti-Trump taxi strike, rather than their internal work culture?

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

#132

Post by irfansharif » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:33 PM UTC

logandavis wrote: post #69

By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning…

ditto, Uber's job postings on our internal school board are avoided like the plague.

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

#133

Post by knucklesandwich » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:34 PM UTC

calcsam wrote: post #15

In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment: relationships within a reporting chain are generally prohibited, for both legal, ethical, and practical reasons. Sex becoming part of the effective job description crosses both legal and ethical lines, and team effectiveness is hindered when people wonder whether someone is getting special treatment because they're sleeping with the boss. A manager…

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 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.

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

#134

Post by stickfigure » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:35 PM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #38

twblalock wrote: post #2

If you are sexually harassed, and HR doesn't do anything about it, you should sue. Don't expect HR to change. If the stories in this article are true, and if the evidence is as strong as the article says it is, this is a slam-dunk case for sexual harassment, hostile work environment, retaliation, etc.

Suing would have lots of negative consequences, and few upsides. It would take up months of time, be immensely frustrating, stressful and lead other employers to be wary of you in future (even if most wouldn't admit it). Your name would be dragged through the mud by Uber in an attempt to derail the case, and you'd become an online target for haters (as with Ellen Pao). All for some uncertain monetary reward. Who need…

If this article catches public attention, Uber will attempt to bring these canons to bear anyway.

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

#135

Post by Animats » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:36 PM UTC

hackerboos wrote: post #108

sokoloff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my positive thing. Taking a cab to the airport from my house in Cambridge, MA runs about $42 before tip, so call it $48 or so. An UberX costs $24.30 right now and UberPool costs $14.30 right now. Additionally, I can summon the ride more easily and get better feedback about the arrival time, giving me more confidence/less anxiety that I'll have a problem getting to the airport on time. As a consumer, by reducin…

That 50-70% is a loss leader for Uber. Did you read the post of their financials? They are hemorrhaging money. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Uber's biggest investor is Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund.[1] They don't have a problem with the company keeping women in their place. It may even be viewed as a plus, influencing an American company to adopt Saudi values.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/technology/uber-investmen...

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

#136

Post by jannettee » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:36 PM UTC

I had a couple of job offers, one was for Uber. I was super excited about the opportunity but I spoke with one of their engineers (former) and he warned me off accepting the offer - said it was a toxic, sexist workplace and said he would not recommend women to work there. Needless to say I declined.

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

#137

Post by uber_eng_throw » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:36 PM UTC

logandavis wrote: post #69

By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning…

Hijacking this top comment to provide some personal experiences.

I started as an engineer in the spring of 2014 and this was definitely the case there.

Top engineers were being poached from Google/FB and these people were trying to carve out territory in a quickly growing engineering team.

The misogynistic culture, in my mind, comes from most of the early employees being former frat bros. Culture was extremely heavy on the drinking; see "Work-cations" where most of the team would go to an exotic location which was half-hackathon/half boozefest. There were happy hours every week with open bar because all new employees would be flown to SF (no matter where home office was) for orientation.

Crazy, most ex-employees (even the early ones) acknowledge that the culture is bad but they got their $$$ so they won't have to work again for a long time, if ever.

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

#138

Post by krautsourced » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:37 PM UTC

logandavis wrote: post #69

By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning…

Usually in these cases, these kind of company politics trickle down from the top, so it's unlikely the CEO does not know or has any interest in intervening. All the companies I worked at that had weird or toxic environments showed that kind of environment throughout most of their structure. A single arsehole in an otherwise great company is usually pushed out sooner than later. If however you notice there are mostly arseholes in your management structure, chances are this goes all the way to the top...

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

#139

Post by BinaryIdiot » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:37 PM UTC

I may have experienced a little bit of sexual harassment in my youth when working at a local McDonald's but, being a guy, it was the only time and I was able to put a stop to be rather quickly. However, being in software engineering for the past 12 years, I have seen the sexual harassment of several women all of which never saw a proper resolution.

For instance I worked at a small company that was later bought by a larger company. One of the women I worked with was propositioned by our boss. She reported him to HR and the next day HR scheduled a meeting with her, HR, the CEO and her boss that propositioned her. They told her that her boss denied it then proceeded to ask her for the next half an hour why she was lying and why she wanted to damage his career. She left for the rest of the day in tears.

Over half of his team, including me, left within the month. It was disgusting. During my exit interview I made sure to cite it along with his frequent trips to our area where, when she wasn't there, would pick up her photo of her and her boyfriend and just stare at it along with his fraudulent billing of clients. Nothing ever happened to him, he just got moved into another group because his team got too small.

It's really disheartening to hear story after story about this and even witnessing it yourself. I can't imagine what it's like to be on the receiving end. I worry about this not only because of it being a bad thing but I also have two daughters and it fills me with dread, after what I've seen, what they may go through.

What can be done to stop such toxicity? Do we need stronger laws? Are there groups for women who can turn to?

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

#140

Post by brudgers » Sun, Feb 19, 2017, 10:37 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #100

brudgers wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If taking a billion dollars from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia says something about a company's stance regarding women's equality, what it says is not terribly inconsistent with Fowler's story.

That's an interesting angle that I had not considered. That money is such a weird thing from another viewpoint as well, it means that Uber doesn't have to perform at all for the next decade or so, they can basically wait out all of their competition. It removes every incentive to actually perform which might be just what it takes to kill them.

I hate to use the phrase 'it's only a billion dollars' but at the sort of scale it strives to operate, that's not a massive warchest without follow on investment: e.g. Delta Airlines turns over about $40 billion in revenue a year and a 2.5% subsidy would gobble up a billion. If the actual subsidies are in the double digits that billion starts to look more like a normal 12-24 month funding round [1].

If it dies, it will be via dependence on meat space. There's only so much of moving atoms that can be digitally replaced and the core business is a commodity: it could compete with taxis because rides between A and B are mostly fungible and being better than existing taxi service was not a very high bar and being better than standing in the rain waving your arm was not a high bar either.

I'm sure it's software engineering is really good. But over the long term, it can only provide marginal advantages to a business that boils down to personal services.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/uber-s-lo...