Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

basta.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 565 posts

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#211

Post by makeitdouble »

ipython wrote: post #166
makeitdouble wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If a low ranking employee in Cincinnati divulged corporate trade secrets, they'd be tried and convicted. If a low ranking employee in Shanghai did the same, what can the US company do? Not much. So it's a low risk activity, that is also actively encouraged and in many cases financed by the Chinese government. This is in no way intended to be disparaging of folks who are of Chinese descent, but rather a reflection of…

Would you get tried in the US for interning at a company and then go to a competitor with all your inside knowledge ? [edit: barring a paid non compete agreement]

Then a step further from that, sure there are laws to prevent you from wholesale lifting corporate data and bringing them out as you leave, but as many laws it will be extremely difficult to detect and prove that happened in many low profile cases. That's why instead of just relying on the law you'll lock usb ports monitor network activity and get laptops returned when someone leaves.

It's kinda like preventing shop lifting, you know it will happen at some scale.

> US company / Chinese gov

How much leverage do you thing a Chinese company has to if a three letter US agency spies on them and pass the info to US companies ? And would you argue that scenario wouldn't happen if a specific Chinese company had a decisive advantage that could severly hurt US interests ?

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#212

Post by aurareturn »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #207
nextaccountic wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> State espionage is going to be at every large US company too. Snowden revealed, among other things, that the NSA did state espionage on Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/world/americas/nsa-spied-... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra... https://g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/09/nsa-document... International relations are based on reciprocity. I…

A crucial difference is the US spying is for state use, whereas in China the state is deeply intermixed with industry. State industrial espionage is used for commercial competitive advantage. This is a huge structural and cultural difference. For instance it’s hard to believe China bootstrapped BYD and GWM among others from green fields. They’ve been exfiltrating and transferring automotive technology for decades. Th…

“When governments permit counterfeiting or copying of American products, it is stealing our future, and it is no longer free trade.” - US President Donald Trump, commenting on China.

Actually, the above quote is not Trump and not on China. It's Ronald Raegan on Japan in 1985.

When a new economic threat rises, the US will use the same playbook- demonizing in media, accusations, turn the public against said country, ban products, increase tariffs from said country, turn to allies, etc.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#213

Post by AnthonyMouse »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #134
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This tool will cost us $500 to buy. What's your hourly pay rate for 40 hours This argument makes sense, but I worry that it’s a bit short-sighted. There are a lot of metrics that are hard to quantify where it might end up better: for one thing, I’ve found that integration costs and maintenance of integration of third-party systems are routinely underestimated: I’ve implemented “buy” for various systems where the wo…

Is it any more shortsighted than using the "open tools" in the first place? There will be integration costs and maintenance of integration with open tools. You may not be able to pay anyone for support issues because those people may not provide the sort of customer support you expect when you pay someone.

The integration costs were part of the 40 hours. The trouble is you haven't avoided them by paying the money.

Open tools also tend to have a longer life, because a community survives even as members come and go, but one boss decides that a product isn't sufficiently profitable or the company gets bought out by a competitor and now it's discontinued and you have to start over.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#214

Post by late25 »

envsubst wrote: post #197
makeitdouble wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> western companies are bound by stronger ethics I wouldn't say people in the west are "better people in their hearts" but they absolutely follow more strict norms regarding honesty and theft. This is one of the main reasons why companies pay a premium for workers in the west when they could hire from other places. One example: accounting scandals in the US are rare. I don't think anyone trusts accounting figures for…

>One example: accounting scandals in the US are rare. I don't think anyone trusts accounting figures for public companies from India or china.

I work in accounting. You’re right, I trust the US more than India or China, but you’d be surprised at the liberties US companies make and how many individuals from India are auditing their work. Auditors (excluding partners and some senior managers) are just not equipped to deal with the technical accounting concepts and to challenge management. Remember, the company employs the auditors. You certainly don’t want to ruin a $1MM contract for your firm but pressing too hard.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#215

Post by ncallaway »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #186
Aeolun wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excel does not relate to Ubers’ core business. I’m nearly 100% certain we can look back at this comment in 20 years and find that absolutely nothing happened.

The author explains how analyzing and presenting data was worth millions of dollars. The author documents how a senior executive instructed him to write excel . It is clearly their core business. Also, and this comes back to the fantasy/denial/wishful-thinking aspect here, neither I nor the law says core business. That's a word that you added. If you did it as part of your job, then it is, by definition, part of thei…

> neither I nor the law says core business

That’s just factually false. You specifically wrote:

> Even in California the "I wrote it on my own time" doesn't apply to software that relates to an employer's ***core*** business.

You can’t complain about people being “wishful” or in “denial” when they are quoting you.

Maybe California law is silent in the topic, but Aeolus wasn’t the person who introduced that specific phrase.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#216

Post by envsubst »

late25 wrote: post #214
envsubst wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> western companies are bound by stronger ethics I wouldn't say people in the west are "better people in their hearts" but they absolutely follow more strict norms regarding honesty and theft. This is one of the main reasons why companies pay a premium for workers in the west when they could hire from other places. One example: accounting scandals in the US are rare. I don't think anyone trusts accounting figures for…

>One example: accounting scandals in the US are rare. I don't think anyone trusts accounting figures for public companies from India or china. I work in accounting. You’re right, I trust the US more than India or China, but you’d be surprised at the liberties US companies make and how many individuals from India are auditing their work. Auditors (excluding partners and some senior managers) are just not equipped to d…

I agree.

> You certainly don’t want to ruin a $1MM contract for your firm but pressing too hard.

Only in the west would you get any push back at all. The auditor would feel some duty to bring up an issue even if it reflected poorly on the company and even their own managers.

I agree they likely wouldn't push an issue beyond its welcome, but this particular value is unheard of in many parts of the world.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#217

Post by aurareturn »

Alupis wrote: post #210
aurareturn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you believe the US has done what China is currently doing, then I have a bridge to sell you... There's no point in furthering this discussion if you are unwilling or incapable of acknowledging basic, publicly accessible facts about China's espionage campaign and worse. Hint, it's not simple industrial espionage... Whataboutism is not going to make anyone side with your position while China grows increasingly belli…

US has a intelligence budget of nearly $100 billion/year. What do you think they're doing?

In addition, the US shares intelligence with the Five Eyes on China. What do you think they share?

When was the last time you read a news story that isn't purely anti-China?

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#218

Post by makeitdouble »

envsubst wrote: post #197
makeitdouble wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> western companies are bound by stronger ethics I wouldn't say people in the west are "better people in their hearts" but they absolutely follow more strict norms regarding honesty and theft. This is one of the main reasons why companies pay a premium for workers in the west when they could hire from other places. One example: accounting scandals in the US are rare. I don't think anyone trusts accounting figures for…

> This is one of the main reasons why companies pay a premium for workers in the west when they could hire from other places.

By this token "other places" companies would also want to pay a premium to hire US workers outside of sheer competency. Yet we're not seeing Samsung massively moving institutional operations to US centers for instance.

> accounting scandals

Whait, what ? You're telling me that while the crypto bubble is bursting and they're going to prison for egregious fraud ?

Also, scandals being few in number would probably be a sign of overcorruption and systematic rot or the controlling structure. I'm not sure that's what we want.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#219

Post by zik »

mkii wrote: post #177
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…

And yet, when the author takes code from one company to use for another, or releases company code on Github, nobody bats an eyelid.

My hair stood on end both times he did this. Holy crap that's some massive legal liability.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#220

Post by schlowmo »

> “The city teams only know how to use Excel, just make it like Excel.”

> “Why can you see the formulas?”

> “You said to make it just like Excel.”

I can't keep up with the espionage story that followed but I had this conversation more than once in my professional career.

The first time I sat as a junior dev on a multi-month project replacing a excel spreadsheet for financial controlling of data centers that only one person who was going to retire understood with a web-based solution.

They were quite proud that they were going to get a "modern" solution.

Then they wanted me to make it like excel. What followed was evaluating every fricking excel JavaScript library out there at this time, going for one and started duct taping all the missing pieces.

They were pleased but the look was off. It wasn't excel. I slapped some styles on it coming quite close.

I was not prepared for what happened during the next presentation: They hated it because they wanted a modern web based solution (their words, not mine) and what they got was a poor excel knockoff running in their Internet Explorers. Tables are so 90s.

I remember the pain so vividly that I regard "just make it like excel" as some kind of forming meme for my career till today.

Post reply on HN