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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

#421

Post by dllthomas »

bryne wrote: post #413
dllthomas wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There's an argument that that's economically incoherent - a strike is about restricting supply, and surge is about increasing supply. Turning off surge does not work against the strike.

But that's actually immaterial: surge was turned off a half hour after the strike ended.

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

#422

Post by asabjorn »

RodericDay wrote: post #384
dllthomas wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Lyft kept operating, Uber reacted to the strike by fixing low prices ensuring good will with desperate customers.

That's not the effect of turning off incentives that get more driver to go tot he area. Instead Ubers actions made it so that an increase in demand was not followed up with an increased amount of available drivers at the airport. It doesn't help you if prices are low if there are no cars available.

This was in my opinion a very appropriate way to respect the strike without forcing drivers to not make money unless they chose to do so themselves.

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

#423

Post by hibikir »

sergiotapia wrote: post #43

>On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. Totally normal behavior! Who hasn't spoken about their sex life the very first day of interactions? "Welcome to the team, we use Git for source control, all of our company knowledgebase is…

Unfortunately the 'I am in an open relationship, want to fuck?' line is something that I've seen more than once, initiated by both men and women engineers. At least one of those examples goes to a lot of conferences, and pretty much opens with that line to people in the opposite sex, and has a Twitter following in the 5 digits.

I am also aware of a funded dev tools startup that has a single woman engineer: She happens to share a bed with the CEO every so often. Imagine how comfortable that must be for any other woman that might join the company, or anyone sharing a team with said woman engineer.

So I have seen the kind of weirdos that do something like this. I don't wish them on my worst enemy.

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

#424

Post by Xuber_112233 »

tfar wrote: post #51
HarryHirsch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR serves to protect the company, you have to think in HR's shoes. If the complainant goes away and finds another job the problem is solved. Most harassment cases tend not to end up in court, usually the aggrieved party quits.

"HR serves to protect the company" That point comes up every time a bad-HR related post is placed here. However, isn't it very short sighted to consider silencing/removing the accusers a protection of the company. This results in a bad culture and bad PR about that culture in developer circles. Won't the reduced diversity and all that comes with it have bad effect on the company long term?

Most people don't publicly post something due to a fear of a lawsuit.

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

#425

Post by dllthomas »

RodericDay wrote: post #384
dllthomas wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Lyft kept operating, Uber reacted to the strike by fixing low prices ensuring good will with desperate customers.

Except if you look at the timeline, surge was turned off some time after the strike ended.

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

#426

Post by MBCook »

sn9 wrote: post #382
kevinburke wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an Uber recruiter contacts you, bring this up and tell them their nonfunctioning HR department makes working for their company a non starter. If you work at Uber, quit, and/or contact the board and tell them that this behavior is unacceptable and the people responsible need to be fired. If the culture won't change, the CEO needs to be fired. If you work in tech, bring up this article with your manager or CEO and t…

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 would quit. I wouldn't want to see people treated that way.

I've seen a 100% male company (quite small, not 75-100 people) and seriously worried about how things would go when some women were hired. Bit rough at first but it worked out for them (luckily). In a small company a bad lawsuit or two could be a serious threat to the survival of the place.

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

#427

Post by cjbprime »

freyr wrote: post #242

> "or (ii) I could stay on the team, but I would have to understand that he would most likely give me a poor performance review when review time came around, and there was nothing they could do about that." I fully believe that her manager sexually harassed her and should have faced much harsher consequences, but it's almost inconceivable that HR would frame her options this way. No doubt she feared retribution, but…

Please try to get better at conceiving things, it's important. This is totally plausible given the rest of the extremely credible account.

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

#428

Post by tclancy »

projektir wrote: post #237
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.

We have a pro-drinking culture at my company due to the nature of the business and I haven't found that it's causing any problems. It's generally done outside of work or for specific events, and I've never felt unsafe on any gathering where a lot of drinking was going on. This is a red herring, if anything. I think there's a difference between a culture where people drink a lot vs a culture where people get black out…

>I've never felt unsafe on any gathering where a lot of drinking was going on.

Are you a woman?

I am a good coder with a bad drinking habit who has worked at companies that were ok with drinking on site. While they handled it well and while I love an excuse to get together over beers and discuss coding, it's definitely a smell. Black out drunk has nothing to do with it. Hell, it would be preferable if people just passed out. The problem is all the folks who don't pass out but all of a sudden think this is a good time to declare their love for a coworker's body.

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

#429

Post by joshu »

cjhanks wrote: post #379

'I pointed out that I was publishing a book with O'Reilly, speaking at major tech conferences, and doing all of the things that you're supposed to do to have an "upward career trajectory", but they said it didn't matter and I needed to prove myself as an engineer.' Maybe that's why she didn't get a promotion. Personally, I have had colleagues attempt similar things. When they embark on these external endeavors they h…

Having external recognition including speaking and writing can be part of the promotion requirements. They were certainly in mine when I was at Yahoo.

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

#430

Post by kartickv »

owenmarshall wrote: post #411
crooked-v wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had this exact same conversation with a manager who seemed suprised when I told him people are not interchangeable cogs. He said that some people may be quicker at a particular technology / domain / whatever, or quicker to ramp up, or do slightly better work, but smart engineers can and do learn anything needed and do work that's good enough after a ramp-up that's short enough. Beyond that, he says, there are minor differences he doesn't worry about as a manager.

I didn't know how to respond to that.

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