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

Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

susanjfowler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 1001 posts

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

#411

Post by owenmarshall »

crooked-v wrote: post #309
bifocald wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem in Uber's engineering orgs is that Uber hired too many people for too few real projects. From what I learned from my friends in Uber, many teams had largely overlapping responsibilities, and therefore created bogus projects to justify their existence. Their standard MO is picking a missing feature in a service, and then creating a new system that implemented that feature. It might be okay if all the…

I have literally never seen stack ranking mentioned in any context but horror stories and toxic company culture. What on earth possesses people to keep using it?

Most companies operate on the myth that the people responsible for doing work are interchangeable cogs that can be eliminated and replaced by a new doer with little to no impact to how the company functions.

So if you have enough traumatic brain damage to buy that line, stack ranking makes a ton of sense.

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

#412

Post by Gargoyle »

kevinburke wrote: post #392
sn9 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about the attrition rate of female engineers, I wonder if there's a similar rate of male engineers who leave due to how badly their female colleagues are treated in addition to the other factors listed in this thread and Fowler's piece. If so, that would imply that the engineering culture is being distilled into an evermore toxic workplace, since those who stay are those who make the place toxic or are simpl…

I really doubt this. A lot of men are totally unaware of how women are treated, which fellow men on their team are harassers, or don't believe women when they report harassment. My evidence for this is every man in tech reacting with shock to this story, and every woman I know saying "yep, I have a story like this," or "I know many women with stories like this"

The behavior discussed in her story includes stuff that's not sexual harassment, though. A sizable chunk of it is about poisonous office politics, something pretty much everyone would be aware of and which most people dislike. So it's not hard to believe people with better options would leave, regardless of gender, leaving people who either like that sort of politics (some do) or don't have better options.

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

#413

Post by bryne »

dllthomas wrote: post #220
AsyncAwait wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that due to the perception that they broke the recent anti-Trump taxi strike, rather than their internal work culture?

> the perception that they broke the recent anti-Trump taxi strike Something, it's worth noting, no less true of Lyft. And I think it's a little weird to be demanding owners of infrastructure lock out workers "in support of a strike". That whole reaction was absurd. This article gives me substantially more pause.

I believe they're referring to the fact that Uber took specific action to promote itself by canceling surge pricing at JFK during the strike, not that it did anything passively through inaction.

Lyft did not negate surge pricing that day, AFAIK.

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

#414

Post by minimaxir »

Travis Kalanick's response: https://twitter.com/travisk/status/833480964315557888

> 1/ What's described here is abhorrent & against everything we believe in. Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired.

> 2/ I've instructed our CHRO Liane to conduct an urgent investigation. There can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber.

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

#415

Post by CGamesPlay »

jannettee wrote: post #145
twblalock wrote: post #2

If you are sexually harassed, and HR doesn't do anything about it, you should sue. Don't expect HR to change. If the stories in this article are true, and if the evidence is as strong as the article says it is, this is a slam-dunk case for sexual harassment, hostile work environment, retaliation, etc.

Uber's employment contract includes an agreement that you won't take them to court.

So when you sue them, you also get fired, if you hadn't quit already. I am pretty confident you'd find a similar clause in any company's employment contract, but even if it wasn't there it would be a safe assumption that any lawsuit brought against a current employer would result in termination.

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

#417

Post by male_no_30122 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #263
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…

> Top engineers were being poached from Google/FB and these people > were trying to carve out territory in a quickly growing engineering > team. It is always a bit sad when one of the top characteristic of an engineer from organization X is their political ability to carve out an empire. I'm a bit surprised she doesn't have at least one law firm trying to get her to be the lead claimant in a class action lawsuit. See…

Hmmm...

A blog post like this gets so much attention where is the fucking evidence? I am a male from Iran having spent more than half of my life here and worked in Silicon Valley long enough to be considered an easy target for labels like terrorist and misogynist simultaneously (finally I'm beginning to believe it, how slow of me.) I have to say there is more and more similarities between the two with each passing day, with very little substance and meaning behind those concepts, just a vague feeling of unfairness, a thread to our identity and a powerful tool to control and manipulate and not on behalf of the proclaimed victims of course. Why should YC or VCs give more money to females founders, blacks and hispanics? [1] [2] Are we not pawns in an ugly game of moral superiority and virtue played out by those looking to profit from our moral outrage and fear?

[1] http://blog.samaltman.com/2017-yc-annual-letter (much high acceptance rate for those demographics)

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/winnie-grabs-2-5-million-f.... (a publication about babies raises 2.5MM, female founders, having worked at places like Google and Twitter gets you a free pass with VCs if you're a woman? Homebrew Capital: Well her, she must be special not her male-counter-parts. What is special and investment-worthy about this publication and those founders, and not just adding an uptick in their portfolio's founder ratio? Hey look we got two female founders in one round!

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

#418

Post by bootload »

vilmosi wrote: post #268
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 don't think having a drinking culture means drinking while programming. Quite the opposite actually.

"I don't think having a drinking culture means drinking while programming."

What is the union of work, drinking culture and SRE (the job the article refers)?

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

#419

Post by tbrowbdidnso »

MAGZine wrote: post #344
bifocald wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Culture is CEO's responsibility. Period.

Once a culture exists, it is very, very difficult to change, even (especially) if you get a new CEO or an acquisition, etc. It is true that if you are going to _attempt_ to change a culture, it must be motivated from top-down. However, placing that responsibility on the CEO alone is misunderstanding of how culture works. It's a little akin to saying that culture is the President's responsibility. No, it's everyone's…

Yes. I've found it proportionally harder to change anything the bigger a group gets.

After a certain size the only way to make a change stick is get rid of people that disagree. Or, you can wait for pressure to wear those people down over... A period of years.

If Ubers culture is really this toxic the only way to fix it would be replacement of a fair amount of leadship in the company.

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

#420

Post by YPCrumble »

minimaxir wrote: post #414

Travis Kalanick's response: https://twitter.com/travisk/status/833480964315557888 > 1/ What's described here is abhorrent & against everything we believe in. Anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired. > 2/ I've instructed our CHRO Liane to conduct an urgent investigation. There can be absolutely no place for this kind of behavior at Uber.

It's a shame that he condones harassment until it reaches the top of hacker news.
Post reply on HN