Why aren't managers graded on retention? If you lose too many people you're penalized or fired.
Or, grade managers on how far their direct reports advance in the company??
Sexism at Uber from Female Management
41–50 of 234 posts
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#42Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything that the manager is doing wrong. We can debate whether the manager is effective at her job, but it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism. The only citation I can find relevant to the claim of sexism is that she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work. It may very well be that a tank-top is inappropriate attire at Uber's workplace. At IBM and many o…
>it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism. >she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work She was not "asked not to wear a tank top to work". Her manager directly linked her (sane) clothing choices to the implication of promiscuity and its impact on her career, with an anecdote about one of her previous coworkers social habits and underwear. That's inexcusable. The employee's email is not "openly hostile…
"Don't wear revealing/sexy clothing" seems to be a common requirement at many jobs, and not sexist at all - though clearly it would be tailored specifically to the (inappropriate) clothes an individual is wearing.
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#43None of what she described is sexism. Even the tank top thing, maybe barely. Her manager made a good point - maybe her career isn't progressing as fast, because she dresses very casually, and people don't take her as seriously. I don't think I've ever seen a girl in tech wear a tank top (not that I would mind, just pointing it out).
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#44Why aren't managers graded on retention? If you lose too many people you're penalized or fired.
Perhaps because it's a poor indicator of performance. There's a lot more factors at play when people quit than just "i hate my boss"
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#45Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything that the manager is doing wrong. We can debate whether the manager is effective at her job, but it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism. The only citation I can find relevant to the claim of sexism is that she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work. It may very well be that a tank-top is inappropriate attire at Uber's workplace. At IBM and many o…
She was told that her body was a distraction and should dress modestly to remedy this. That's sexism writ large.
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#46Why aren't managers graded on retention? If you lose too many people you're penalized or fired.
In the Susan Fowler case, at least, her manager changed a good review to a poor one to avoid losing her to another team. So I'm not sure that a blanket "if you lose too many people" policy is necessarily a good thing.
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#47Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything that the manager is doing wrong. We can debate whether the manager is effective at her job, but it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism. The only citation I can find relevant to the claim of sexism is that she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work. It may very well be that a tank-top is inappropriate attire at Uber's workplace. At IBM and many o…
Read a little more carefully. The problem here isn't really "sexism", it's that "Tina" has an insecure personality that feels threatened by the people on her team, and thus is marginalizing everyone on it who sticks out in an attempt to establish dominance.
You're correct that a good manager could make a comment about a tank top being inappropriate attire at a given office. But note when Tina said this: it was when the author was talking to another manager to leave the team. Tina isn't giving constructive advice; she's trying to stop the author from forming relationships with other managers. Note also, that Tina led the feedback with disparaging Mark, by saying that Mark was staring at the author's breasts. The implication is "Mark doesn't have your best interests in mind, he's simply a pig; I have your best interests in mind by telling you to cover up, which is advice I think you need to hear."
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#48Why aren't managers graded on retention? If you lose too many people you're penalized or fired.
Because retention can be too subjective. If you lose a lot of bad people then retention is not a bad thing. If you start to lose good people then what was the common reason? Not willing to pay? Company culture? Team culture?
Company I work for retention can be factored in but the ability to rate your boss is given each year and if that comes back negative along with poor retention than that is reason for further action.
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#49Why aren't managers graded on retention? If you lose too many people you're penalized or fired.
Perhaps because it's a poor indicator of performance. There's a lot more factors at play when people quit than just "i hate my boss"
That's a pretty huge factor though. It's definitely something that should be taken into account.
Re: Sexism at Uber from Female Management
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders:: It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
>It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people. This isn't really an issue if you promote an engineer to mgmt when they have demonstrated that can manage people, rather than before and assume they can grow.
That's a fair point, but I think that clean idea can be messy in practice.
For one, engineers rarely manage people before they are managers. They might lead a team or be a product manager, etc., but those have different (albeit overlapping) challenges from managing people.
Another important factor is that in small or fast-growing companies, there's often not a formal promotion to manager. One day, you're the solo dev or maybe the you're senior dev of some secondary system. That system gets unexpected popularity/traction, and your manager starts throwing resumes or new recruits in front of you. And before you know it, you're managing a team, still trying to lead code reviews but also dealing with personnel issues, manage timelines, etc. You weren't really promoted. You were just the person in charge of this thing, and the thing grew underneath you. I'm not saying that's ideal, but it's something I've seen fairly often.