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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

#391

Post by layer8 »

willcipriano wrote: post #377
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…

Intellectual property is a western invention as I understand it. I don't think China agrees that you can own an idea like we assert that we do.

China certainly did agree in various ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_China

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#392

Post by avidiax »

PeterStuer wrote: post #338

Running the models on laptops overnight? They know desktops and servers exist right?

Uber, at that time, was "scrappy". Every operating city was a different market with different rules, so Uber was akin to a franchiser that gave their market managers wide leeway to setup whatever business processes are needed to succeed in that market.

Excel is the easiest way for business-oriented people to make numerical decisions, run incentive campaigns, segment riders and drivers, produce reports required by cities, counties, states, etc.

The data teams providing market intelligence to the various markets, of course, knew about servers. But they would not have the time or skill to setup something like this, and the business still had daily data needs. So the laptops it was, for a time.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#393

Post by robertlagrant »

pbj1968 wrote: post #262
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 I was called a racist 25 years ago when I said, “like, our engineering school is, like, crawling with Chinese nationals.” We said like a lot on the 90s.

It's probably the "crawling with" that did it.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#395

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#396

Post by aragonite »

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…

Counterpoint: scihub, libgen links are routinely shared on HN as a matter of course (likewise in academia). I've seen HN threads in which people unapologetically reminisce about torrenting movies/music.

Perhaps your will object: "But the publishers/Disney/etc are evil, greedy entities and I don't owe them anything." But I'm sure anyone who's stolen corporate secret elsewhere can come up with a similar justification in their head! After all, that may well be why they left the company in the first place.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#397

Post by avidiax »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #381

I’m really curious how Uber China was actually supposed to work. I once worked for a company that built server software and my understanding was that they were partnered with a Chinese company to sell into that market. We built a branded, localised installer for them. I’m not sure what the business arrangement was or what equity relationships (if any) there were between the companies. But I can’t imagine Uber would e…

> I can’t imagine Uber would ever be allowed to have a fully owned Chinese subsidiary competing in that market

You imagine correctly, to my knowledge. Western companies in China have to be 51% Chinese owned, on paper.

In reality, they own 100% (plus or minus diplomatic relationship issues), they just haven't asserted this right yet.

This is just my opinion: Uber could never have won in China, and Uber's management likely knew this, but the story of China was needed at the time to drive company valuation and allow the "hockey stick" dashed line of future growth to be plausible.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#398

Post by kome »

robertlagrant wrote: post #394
kome wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, but who cares. software is software.

No idea what your point is, sorry.

i understand ownership, but software and code are so easy to copy, transfer and modify that it would be stupid not to do it. it's not like stealing a car. arrr

in other words: ownership of immaterial goods is mostly a scam

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#399

Post by egwor »

kqr wrote: post #373
tempaway85751 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Nothing came of it, but I took the code and shoved it into my back pocket for a rainy day ... You can't really do this. Depends on your employment contract but code you write for an employer is usually copyright to them ... My first reaction was to publish the code on Github ... You can't really do that either.

I agree this seems fairly clearly illegal. That said, I think OP is morally in the right here, and I wish I had the guts to do similar things. Sharing code is a good thing. Helping one company innovate using code that another company chose to ignore is also a good thing.

I'm not sure how we weigh up the morals here. If you've done something using a companies resources (laptop, desk, chair etc.) and they're paying you and the contract says they own it I don't see how you can have a moral high ground. Maybe there should be some way to allow these ownership concepts to expire so that society benefits overall but right now we don't have that.

Re: I built Excel for Uber and they ditched it

#400

Post by willcipriano »

layer8 wrote: post #391
willcipriano wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intellectual property is a western invention as I understand it. I don't think China agrees that you can own an idea like we assert that we do.

China certainly did agree in various ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_in_China

Interesting commentary on the talk page there.
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