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Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

susanjfowler.com

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

#141

Post by afarrell »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #131
csharpminor wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Anecdotally, the perception among my acquaintances is that they treat their drivers less well than Lyft does.

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

#142

Post by dkarapetyan »

pvg wrote: post #40

For all the people saying 'HR works for the company' and 'She should have sued!', I think you're underestimating how difficult that is to do. You're reading the account of a person who was clearly perfectly aware of her rights and how corporate workspaces operate. What would you actually do in their position? You leave work one evening, go home and google 'lawyer that will get me lots of money from my company and wor…

Engineers, especially the ones at Susan's level, are pretty well paid. Suing would have definitely been an option for her.

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

#143

Post by AlwaysBCoding »

brudgers wrote: post #91
jacquesm wrote: post #44

What's with all the 'this is unbelievable' comments here? This is absolutely believable, Uber has pretty much made it their standard to break the laws where-ever they can, why should work place conduct be any different? In for a penny, in for a pound. You'd never hear something even close to this from Stripe or some other company run by upstanding folks. Fish rots from the head.

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.

I've always wondered what Uber is going to do when their self-driving cars can legally drive in Saudi Arabia, but women can't. Seems like they're going to run up against that pretty soon.

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

#144

Post by username223 »

jacquesm wrote: post #89
username223 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just sex, but sex in an "open relationship," presumably as "backup booty." It's hard for me to understand why she didn't immediately start trying to GTFO, but instead stuck around for a year and tried to make things work. Save transcripts and screenshots, find a new job, then sue at leisure.

> It's hard for me to understand why she didn't immediately start trying to GTFO, but instead stuck around for a year and tried to make things work. Some possibilities: - Because she's loyal to her co-workers - Maybe still not jaded enough to jump ship at the first reason - quite possibly didn't have another job lined up to jump ship to A year isn't all that long, and if things had been turned around who knows she mi…

I guess I don't have that kind of loyalty to brand-new co-workers. She seems like she had the reputation and skills to land an interchangeable SRE position with good pay. My boss immediately propositioning me as a secondary member of an "open relationship" is creepy enough to outweigh a whole lot of loyalty and/or money. It's commendable to try to fix a dysfunctional work environment, but if the boss essentially drops his pants in front of you and is not fired, things are probably broken beyond repair.

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

#145

Post by jannettee »

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.

Uber's employment contract includes an agreement that you won't take them to court.

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

#147

Post by rhizome »

angry-hacker wrote: post #47
elmar wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am shocked, how is possible to get away with this toxic company culture.

They are used to break the laws, it's called disruption, I think.

As someone who was truly frustrated with the taxi system for years, to the degree of refusing to use them hardly at all, I don't mind so much Uber breaking outdated laws (I do believe some kind of taxi commission is warranted in general) so much as the results of their business model: replacing one mafia with another. That a secondary effect is to flood the streets with even more batshit-awful drivers is proof that they aren't disrupting anything but taxi management and not hacks[1] in general.

1. http://answergirlnet.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-are-taxi-cabs-...

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

#148

Post by exolymph »

sergiotapia wrote: post #43

>On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. Totally normal behavior! Who hasn't spoken about their sex life the very first day of interactions? "Welcome to the team, we use Git for source control, all of our company knowledgebase is…

> I can't fathom what kind of weirdo does something like this, male or female.

People who get off on violating other people's boundaries.

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

#149

Post by adekok »

tfar wrote: post #51
HarryHirsch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR serves to protect the company, you have to think in HR's shoes. If the complainant goes away and finds another job the problem is solved. Most harassment cases tend not to end up in court, usually the aggrieved party quits.

"HR serves to protect the company" That point comes up every time a bad-HR related post is placed here. However, isn't it very short sighted to consider silencing/removing the accusers a protection of the company. This results in a bad culture and bad PR about that culture in developer circles. Won't the reduced diversity and all that comes with it have bad effect on the company long term?

> isn't it very short sighted to consider silencing/removing the accusers a protection of the company.

Yes. It's also human psychology. See the church sex abuse scandals. The morality that people claim to have is less important than protecting the group.

The same thing applies to HR. The HR person who shuts down an accuser is doing it in order to protect their position in the hierarchy, and to protect the people in the hierarchy that they know. The fact that it's illegal, and can very well destroy the company is completely irrelevant.

In these cases, short-term focus is more important than long term goals.

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

#150

Post by projektir »

ejlangev wrote: post #82

Nothing really surprising here though. Tech (and the world) has always had a problem with sexism. Uber is particularly egregious but given the long history of quotes from the CEO is it any surprise that this is their culture? Writing was on the wall the whole time. Just to add something to the torrent of links already in these comments http://observer.com/2016/02/ubers-10-worst-actions-threats-l... .

I would say this is pretty surprising. Tech may have a problem with representation, but there's a very big difference between something as overt as this, and, for instance, not being able to find candidates from diverse backgrounds. We should never lump the two together.

I guess it's not surprising that this happened at Uber, though.

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