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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

#321

Post by mc32 »

bootload wrote: post #211
uber_eng_throw wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Culture was extremely heavy on the drinking;" For me this is a red flag. Booze + programming == pissed programming This leads to bad code also bad team dynamics. Ultimately this will reflect on the product and bottom line. For individuals this reads like a culture where the barrel is creating ^bad apples^. Not a good look on a resume.

Drinking at work, per se, is not inherently a bad thing. It really depends on culture. It depends on whether it's responsible drinking, social drinking, or it's irresponsible, Bing drinking. There are cultures where people have a beer or two or wine glass during lunch and these people are not typically misbehaved louts. But there is a responsible culture around the drinking.

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

#322

Post by 0898 »

Teodolfo wrote: post #230
0898 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this. But tempting as it is to #DeleteUber, am I not mostly just hurting local taxi drivers who keep 75% of the revenue?

Not if you use Lyft.

Unfortunately, Lyft doesn't operate in the UK where I live.

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

#323

Post by srpablo »

home_boi wrote: post #271
knucklesandwich wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. As has been pointed out below, HR that is staffed and incentivized by the company management only serves the interests of the management. A union is the only structure that can actually win demands for workers by organizing workers to withhold their labor. It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leaders…

I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize. I'm simplifying it a bit but if you don't like your job, just grab a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and apply to big companies. The big companies pay very well, have good benefits and interview everyone because of the need for a high head count

> I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize.

I happen to agree that, relative to other industries, we're overpaid and get to live pretty lavishly for the little sacrifice that working on building systems with code entails.

That said, when you look at the value we generate for the people we work for, and remember how we are necessary to their wealth generation, I think it's worth having a conversation about organizing.

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

#324

Post by josephlord »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #262

IANAL, but isn't the described behavior by HR and the management very much illegal? I thought there were laws in place to protect workers. I hope Susan Fowler has a wonderful career.

Speeding is illegal too, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

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

#325

Post by tptacek »

jbarham wrote: post #310
tptacek wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry. People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union cont…

> Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country Hah hah, very cute. A trivial proof that this claim is false: H-1B. Indentured H-1B visa workers have absolutely zero leverage. American software developers are constantly reminded that if they don't behave and do what they're told that their jobs will be outsourced or they'll be replaced by H-1B workers…

This does not square even a little bit with the software employment market I'm familiar with, not only in California but in the Midwest.

If you believe that H1-B employees are abused in software development shops, that's all the more reason to organize.

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

#327

Post by therobot24 »

blhack wrote: post #277
bootload wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Culture was extremely heavy on the drinking;" For me this is a red flag. Booze + programming == pissed programming This leads to bad code also bad team dynamics. Ultimately this will reflect on the product and bottom line. For individuals this reads like a culture where the barrel is creating ^bad apples^. Not a good look on a resume.

I have to be honest, I know a lot of people who claim that they can write really good code if they've been drinking. I just absolutely do not understand how that is even possible. If I have ONE beer, it throws off my ability to write good code, or hold all of the concepts in my head. One of the weekly coworking meetups I go to always ends at a brewery (there is a brewery next door to the hackerspace where it is held)…

i code better after a few drinks - i end up focusing more on the forest rather than the trees.

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

#329

Post by holografix »

shruubi wrote: post #42

As someone who is Australian and not American, if anything like this happened and HR failed in the trainwreck like manner that they did in this story, we have a government organisation that oversees and enforces workplace legislation. It seems insane to me that the only recourse you have after HR is basically "gather evidence and sue" which seems to be common advice in this thread.

As a fellow Australian I must add that in three separate occasions, at two distinct tech companies, I have seen people be terminated immediatelly following a complaint of this nature to HR.

These were men and women in high management positions and by immediately I mean within 48 hours or a fortnight or so in a bullying case.

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

#330

Post by trowawaway »

minimaxir wrote: post #49
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 anything, OP's subsequent employment by Stripe is a very strong endorsement for the workplace culture of the company.

Is it? A person in need of a lifeboat will take one.

Also, the author repeatedly used the percentage of women engineers as an index of workplace quality/sanity. So we'd expect Stripe's to be much higher, right?

Is that the case?

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