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I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

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Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#151

Post by lowbloodsugar »

ryandrake wrote: post #120
thebradbain wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote the comment above, though I'm not the author of the code that you appear to think I am. But I am in agreement with him. > Their employment contract for-sure states they own any work produced by you during your employment, and you agreed to this. There are many open legal questions as to where this line is drawn. Surely the line falls somewhere between "every character I've ever typed on a keyboard" and "the v…

Like many things in this area, the answer is usually "You'll find out if you want to go up against an army of lawyers". The last three companies I worked for all claimed ownership of any IP I create, on or off the job, using company's equipment or using my own equipment. One of them explicitly called it out during the interview: You will have to stop working on open source or publishing side projects when working her…

IANAL: In California they cannot, unless it is related to the employer's business (so if the employer is Apple, Google or AWS, they probably can). In most states they can.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#152

Post by ipython »

cflewis wrote: post #145
ipython wrote: post #144

Best quote: "People working for Didi apply for intern jobs at Uber China and then exfiltrate our data. We can’t let them see the formulas or they’ll just copy what we do!” This is so true. People in the US just don't understand the level of economic and industrial espionage that happens in China on a daily basis. I was responding to an unrelated breach at an unnamed tech company back in mid-2000s time frame and had a…

Well, not just corporate espionage, right? State espionage is going to be at every large US company too. To speak to the article, I can only imagine how excited an agency would be to get real-time updates on the Uber movements of a target.

Two things. First, this isn't the same thing; you're talking about embedding a resource in a company to read out real time telemetry from internal systems (information with a short shelf life), not stealing industrial trade secrets (information with a very long shelf life). Second, I can assure you that, even with our imperfect systems, there is actually a set of checks and balances in place to prevent rampant (note I said rampant) abuse of this kind.

Yes, agencies would be very excited for this sort of capability. Do they get it as a matter of course that easily? No. There are layers of accountability, legal authorities, and (warranted) push back from commercial entities.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#153

Post by jhaenchen »

mrintegrity wrote: post #2

I get a strangely dystopian feeling from this article, like it's almost about a character in a black mirror episode

That's because everyone in this comment section is giving wisdom about how to deal with the emotional reality of being abstracted from the fruits of their own labor. "Don't get attached to your work" is dystopian.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#154

Post by nardi »

I do not like working with people like this, because I don't want to be anywhere near the maintenance burden of a pile of hacks that technically can run a single Excel spreadsheet. I don't even want to be within earshot of people complaining about this. If I even thought about it for too long I'm sure I'd have a giant headache.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#155

Post by makeitdouble »

ipython wrote: post #144

Best quote: "People working for Didi apply for intern jobs at Uber China and then exfiltrate our data. We can’t let them see the formulas or they’ll just copy what we do!” This is so true. People in the US just don't understand the level of economic and industrial espionage that happens in China on a daily basis. I was responding to an unrelated breach at an unnamed tech company back in mid-2000s time frame and had a…

They don't understand it, because what you're quoting as a behavior is pretty standard anywhere in the world. That's why companies protect their secrets from low rank employees.

Except if you're arguing that western companies are bound by stronger ethics, in which case I'd like to see some evidence.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#156

Post by itigtohft »

DrDroop wrote: post #123
abeppu wrote: post #59

I'm confused about the circular reference thing. Like, was there a reason to do the linear regression that way? Is there a secret story in a story where next week, in a spinoff / sequel episode, the data scientist responsible will explain why they took the weird/surprising choices they did?

I didn't know you could do this in excel but it reminded me of the converge adverb in k: https://xpqz.github.io/kbook/Adverbs.html#converge-f-f

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_iteration

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#157

Post by julianeon »

mock-possum wrote: post #126
continuitylimit wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So come on man, let’s be honest here. I got serious sacred masterpiece vibes from this story. This reminds me of some Hindu parable about people who let go of possessions and head out to become ascetics. So there is this wealthy man and wife and the wife is all upset because her brother keeps insinuating that he’s gonna go ascetic and cut loose. The husband tells her to stop her crying and don’t worry about it, he ai…

What an utterly bizarre story. What’s the point of it? Why is the wife upset about her brother? Why is the husband so sure the brother won’t do it? What’s the significance of his little performance at the end? Why is the wife the husband’s mother, what does that have to do with anything, considering the issue is with the wife’s brother? Why don’t we get to see what the wife’s reaction to the husband’s stunt is - is s…

It's a simple twist ending. The twist is that the wife was worried her brother would become an ascetic - but the person she should have worried about, the person who was planning to and did become an ascetic, was her husband. The performance is his declaration of asceticism, and the "you're my mother" line is a stock part of it, essentially meaning I renounce sexual attraction when said to your (former) partner.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#158

Post by lowbloodsugar »

ryukoposting wrote: post #112

I wonder if the author would view this situation differently had Uber/Box decided to claim the code as their own. It has to bring some catharsis to know that, even if the code never actually met its potential, at least the whole world can see and appreciate it. I created a whole programming language as an intern for . It was lazily evaluated and garbage collected. Unquoted MAC addresses were valid syntax, among other…

The part the author is missing is that Box and Uber have already claimed the code as their own. It will be in the employment contract. The author appears to be under the impression that asking a mid-level manager (or even a senior manager) "Hey, do you want this?" and that manager answering "No", is in any way legally binding on the company.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#159

Post by cowthulhu »

continuitylimit wrote: post #24
bastawhiz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. The code was originally written outside of work hours. I offered the code to Box and they didn't want it. If Uber wants a few thousand lines of JavaScript from over half a decade ago that didn't originate with them and that they used for less than a month, they can send me a letter.

So come on man, let’s be honest here. I got serious sacred masterpiece vibes from this story. This reminds me of some Hindu parable about people who let go of possessions and head out to become ascetics. So there is this wealthy man and wife and the wife is all upset because her brother keeps insinuating that he’s gonna go ascetic and cut loose. The husband tells her to stop her crying and don’t worry about it, he ai…

I want to know what GPT model was used to generate this comment so I can make sure to avoid it

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#160

Post by anikan_vader »

makeitdouble wrote: post #155
ipython wrote: post #144

Best quote: "People working for Didi apply for intern jobs at Uber China and then exfiltrate our data. We can’t let them see the formulas or they’ll just copy what we do!” This is so true. People in the US just don't understand the level of economic and industrial espionage that happens in China on a daily basis. I was responding to an unrelated breach at an unnamed tech company back in mid-2000s time frame and had a…

They don't understand it, because what you're quoting as a behavior is pretty standard anywhere in the world. That's why companies protect their secrets from low rank employees. Except if you're arguing that western companies are bound by stronger ethics, in which case I'd like to see some evidence.

Less so ethics and more so credible legal action against offending companies and individuals.
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