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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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

makeitdouble wrote: post #218
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…

> 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…

[deleted]

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#222

Post by [deleted] »

aurareturn wrote: post #199
aintgonnatakeit wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sup PLA. The Chinese people are intelligent and strong. Why don’t you let them express that strength freely?

PLA. What? I don’t even know what that stands for. I assume it’s the Chinese army right? Any post that is isn’t anti China here is now labeled as paid for by the Chinese government right? It shows how much anti-China propaganda has gotten since Trump came into power and how much the US has turned nationalist. People here have drank so much anti China propaganda that any neutral to positive post about China is immedia…

[deleted]

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#223

Post by cornel_io »

user_named wrote: post #201
bastawhiz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Just make it like Excel" is a super low quality answer from someone who has a completely different set of objectives. The only way forward would have been to consult with someone closer to the actual users and counter-argue from there. The only contact we had with "actual users" was over WeChat because they were on the other side of the planet. > What's missing here is the courage to recognize weak assumptions and…

Nah, that's why you have product managers. I would have talked to this stakeholder for an hour and realized the solution is not to build another excel.

You're routinely successful at arguing down C-level execs who have already rejected your pushback multiple times?

Seems like a risky strategy...

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#224

Post by Alupis »

aurareturn wrote: post #217
Alupis wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Espionage, in the classical sense is not strictly the issue. It's everything else...

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#225

Post by fnordpiglet »

aurareturn wrote: post #212
fnordpiglet wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ba…

Except China has required technology transfer and has been actively committing state sponsored industrial espionage for decades. Surely this isn’t news?

I’m down with China as a competitor, but we have a strong division between state and industry and China does not. I don’t think a unipolar world is a good idea, and I’m glad for a resurgent China. But it’s absurd to put on blinders and believe forced technology transfer and industrial espionage isn’t a cornerstone of their success.

https://www.investopedia.com/forced-technology-transfer-ftt-...

https://www.csis.org/programs/strategic-technologies-program...

At several megacorps seeking access to Chinese markets we were forced to transfer crucial trade secrets in exchange for access. We did our best to render it as useless as possible, but it was still very key stuff. Over two decades the Chinese government erected barrier after barrier even after complying to the point that the market access failed and competitors based on our technology dominated the domestic Chinese economy.

I see your parallel comments where you vigorously decry these statements as some sort of nationalism and anti Chinese sentiment. This isn’t that - this is simple historical fact, and I have had first hand experience with it and know the game being played from personal experience. I assumed this was all common knowledge given how much press it’s gotten over the last twenty years, which makes me wonder why you’re grinding this contrarian axe so hard?

Edit: I would note that this is fundamentally different from counterfeiting. This is capturing R&D directly at the top end of technology and processes through extortion and outright theft. I don’t actually blame China or Chinese people, it’s just a cultural difference in what’s acceptable and a belief that the state and industry are separate, which China doesn’t agree with. But the lesson to be learned is China doesn’t play by our rules, and we need to adapt to the situation better.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#226

Post by thebradbain »

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…

Regardless of the fact that California is much, much more strict in what they allow, to the point where oftentimes a company’s lawyers won’t even try:

Fine. Don’t fight, I agree, that would be an unfair fight and a waste of time/money.

The US court system requires a “good faith” effort to settle the issue before it enters the legal system. A cease and desist for example— whatever it is, you’d have plenty of time to simply decide it’s not worth it and remove the code once they take notice.

As it is, this is all no harm, no foul.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#227

Post by ezconnect »

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…

US government have been using all it's tools to destroy US corporation competition since forever. Look at Huawei for just one example.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#228

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #213
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the open tools often end up with more transferable skills down the road: e.g. learning to deploy to AWS only helps with AWS; learning to deploy to k8s lets you be productive in a lot more situations.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#229

Post by envsubst »

makeitdouble wrote: post #218
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…

> 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…

> hire US workers outside of sheer competency

It's not a competency it's a network effect.

> Yet we're not seeing Samsung massively moving institutional operations to US centers for instance.

Samsung probably has great trust developed among its senior management.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#230

Post by geoelectric »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #148
bastawhiz wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I asked at the time, and I did it. If either company wants to start a legal fight over a pile of code that neither of them wanted that's old enough to be in elementary school, they know how to reach me.

The problem is that you are claiming ownership of this code and by making it available on GitHub under an MIT license you are claiming that you have the right to do so. If I take that code and make a billion dollar business out of it, Box or Uber could then claim a share of it. That's the kind of things that companies do with the lawyers on retainer. I then sue you for falsely claiming that you own it. You are partic…

A spreadsheet UI didn’t relate to Box’s core business because Box didn’t sell spreadsheet UIs. Box could have had the author’s hobby project been adopted as a feature but explicitly chose not to. The author clearly owned that bit if they did it on their own resources and own time.

In other words, you can write generally useful components and utilities on your own time, network, and equipment; license them to your employer if everyone agrees; and either way you still own them. You just can’t write something directly related to or competitive with the products or processes that make your employer money.

The spreadsheet formulae and enhancements the author wrote during work hours at Uber, though, no. But even just their direct boss as an agent of their employer saying it’s ok to throw it on GitHub would probably cut them loose, especially since it’d be a derivative work with joint ownership.

All IMO of course, but that’s how I would have seen it in their shoes.

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