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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

#161
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.

What is the last lawsuit you voluntarily started? A lot of things are 'an option'.

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

#162

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?

In the bay area at least a lot of us know at least one or two Uber engineers, and Uber has has an awful reputation around here for a lot longer than the month or so since that strike occurred. As a result of that (plus talking to drivers who work for both services and have strong preferences for Lyft) means that most of my friends were quietly boycotting Uber for years at this point.

I have one friend who worked at Uber and had years of experience working at another tech company beforehand. Uber basically refused to promote her, even going to far as to hire people significantly junior to her into those senior positions. In one case one of the people who was hired blatantly lied on their resume about their past experience, got caught out for it, and was still hired above her.

Even outside of the bay area Uber has taken many reputation hits for their stupid behavior. The whole incident where they were planning on digging up dirt on a reporter to ruin her character shows a huge lack of ethics at the top of the company. The "god mode" application and research into "one night stands" shows they have no respect for privacy.

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

#163

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.

You really can't think of a reason why someone would want to stay at a company like Uber? Salary? Stock options? Career path? Career security? Coworkers? The early belief that HR would help correct this? She did end up leaving the company after trying to fix it. Your not understanding why she stayed for so long is part of the problem.

> Salary? Stock options?

Are they really so much above typical Bay Area rates?

> Career path? Career security?

Plenty of people are still hiring in the current bubble, and she's an SRE, not an auto specialist or something.

> Coworkers?

Like the one who dropped his pants?

> The early belief that HR would help correct this?

Of which she was quickly disabused.

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

#164
> When I pointed out how few women were in SRE, she recounted with a story about how sometimes certain people of certain genders and ethnic backgrounds were better suited for some jobs than others, so I shouldn't be surprised by the gender ratios in engineering

Holy *. How long until Uber reports this as fake news?

Jose Moran, move over. Tech companies have a new scandal.

Edit: Ok ok, HN doesn't like the jab at Tesla..

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

#166
I think this proves that HR should be fundamentally separate from a company. The incentives are setup for a company's HR division to try and maximize success for the company.

Just like the NFL and NBA have player's associations, HR should be managed by external companies, or at least separated by function (supporting employees vs management). Companies would still be paying the HR teams, so incentives wouldn't be optimal, but seems like it would be a step in the right direction.

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

#167
In São Paulo, where I live, taxi apps appeared a couple of years before Uber entering the market. It took the market by storm, so every single cab had to be in at least one the two major apps (Easytaxi and 99taxi). It was easy, fast and safe to call a cab anytime. But it was still expensive.

Uber came with its black cars. No one bothered. But Uber came with UberX and then Uber pool. It was a revolution, 50% cheaper. It exploded. The taxi market was/is dominated by corruption, with its medallions monopoly. Capitalism worked.

But capitalism dont stop working when Uber is winning. Now the taxi apps, specially the rebranded 99, that was the clear winner in the taxi apps fight raised hundreds of millions with the chinese and is ready to fight Uber. They now have regular taxi, a 30% discount taxi (that usually matches Uber price) and a Uber-like service with common people cars, all in the same app.

My social network mostly went back to using taxi, now that the price matches, because SP is not an easy city to transit. Uber drivers rely 100% on Waze/Google Maps. This ofyen leads to errors. Taxi drivers who drive around for years, sometimes decades are more reliable.

My point being: I dont believe in karma, but capitalism is a bitch. If you are that arrogant to mismanage that bad your resources when you are winning, when the market forces strike back, you wont be strong enough to stand on your feet.

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

#168

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…

Saying that they "poached" engineers make it look like they are property of a company and can't move looking for better opportunities.

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

#169
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually used Stripe as an example before I realized that's where she had moved to so consider that a double endorsement, it's not like I have any dog in that particular race but I know some people that work there and without fault they report working there is a dream come true. The brothers have something good going there and I'll bet that when the dust settles Uber will be part of that dust and Stripe will have I…

I wish I shared your optimism that HR practices had anything to do with IPO pricing...

At some level they are linked.

Uber will have to learn to play within existing frameworks.

Key Nordic proverb: "Pissing in your pants keeps you warm only for so long". In other words, using your funds raised to make up for shortcomings elsewhere in the organization will sooner or later come to and end.

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

#170
Just to be another anecdotal data point, I am a white male iOS engineer with tons of experience on top-grossing apps. I live a few miles from Uber's new building in Oakland. But I would never consider working for them because of stories like this and others. This kind of behavior doesn't just cost them good hires among women and minorities. Having a toxic culture makes it hard to hire any decent people, and if only toxic people will agree to work there, it will just perpetuate things.

Maybe they don't care now, they're growing, they're sitting on big piles of cash, they can afford to be assholes if they want. Our culture regrettably gives them that option, even rewards for it sometimes. But companies ossify as they grow, disruptors become entrenched and it takes a long, long time to shake a reputation like this. They've created a new market but they're not entitled to it forever.

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