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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

#521

Post by mikejones85 »

It's easy to blame Uber given their track records. I don't disagree that Uber should have fired that manager and let that be the end of the story. However, from the upper management's perspective, it was probably difficult for Uber to let go an experienced manager because of a complaint from a relatively new employee. Her LinkedIn profile tells me that she's also quite inexperienced. Please correct me if I'm wrong: Am I the only one who picked up the signal that the storyteller was an alpha female and a drama queen?

Really would love to hear different perspectives on this.

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

#522

Post by bpicolo »

DrJaws wrote: post #168
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…

Saying that they "poached" engineers make it look like they are property of a company and can't move looking for better opportunities.

Uber recruiters once emails about 100 engineers in my company the same email...except they managed to swap around the first/last names on all of them.

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

#523

Post by mst »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #143
brudgers wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If taking a billion dollars from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia says something about a company's stance regarding women's equality, what it says is not terribly inconsistent with Fowler's story.

I've always wondered what Uber is going to do when their self-driving cars can legally drive in Saudi Arabia, but women can't. Seems like they're going to run up against that pretty soon.

I would expect "enjoy the revenue from female customers wanting to be able to take a car to where they want".

Sometimes profit and social goals happen to align.

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

#525

Post by jonathankoren »

ben_olive wrote: post #235
kenferry wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the whole article? It sounds like you're only reacting to the first incident. And yes, anyone in your management chain making moves on you is 100% inappropriate. There's a power relationship there. Most companies have explicit guidelines about things like this.

I did, and I agree that it was completely inapropriate. They mishandled the situation repeatedly and I agree with most of what she is complaining about - apart from the leather jacket thing. I'm reacting to some of the conversation going on here (very much a torch and picthfork crowd for some threads).

The leaather jacket thing is textbook exclusionary.

To wrap it up as "equality" is insulting. A real stand for equality is saying everyone gets one, or no one gets one. The cost thing is obvious canard. All it takes is one email to sales to saying, "I'm looking to buy 50 men's jackets and 2 women's jackets. The website is giving me a deal on the men's, but not the women's. I want the same deal on the women's. Otherwise I'm backing out of the whole sale."

Even then you're just penny pitching. How much of a deal could this have been? $50 at most? Get that out of petty cash.

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

#526

Post by [deleted] »

cjbprime wrote: post #427
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.

[deleted]

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

#527

Post by mst »

trowawaway wrote: post #330
minimaxir wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Going from 26% to 6% of any particular description of employees that quickly is probably not a good sign for quality/sanity.

I'd feel the same way if, say, s/women/conservatives/ or s/women/$minority/.

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

#528

Post by tjalfi »

jonathankoren wrote: post #479
projektir wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>We have a pro-drinking culture at my company due to the nature of the business Do tell what business this is, because unless the industry is alcohol production, I'm having a hard time believing this is an instrinc quality of an industry and not just a "boys will be boys" excuse.

Alcohol use isn't an intrinsic quality of the legal industry but it might as well be.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4736291/

The following excerpt is the first sentence of the conclusion.

"Attorneys experience problematic drinking that is hazardous, harmful, or otherwise consistent with alcohol use disorders at a higher rate than other professional populations."

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

#529

Post by dmritard96 »

calcsam wrote: post #15

In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment: relationships within a reporting chain are generally prohibited, for both legal, ethical, and practical reasons. Sex becoming part of the effective job description crosses both legal and ethical lines, and team effectiveness is hindered when people wonder whether someone is getting special treatment because they're sleeping with the boss. A manager…

it is interesting that sex is the hot button. in general we special case sex in the US. While I dont mean to say sexual harrasment isnt a real problem, its interesting to me more philosophically that propositioning for sex is ultra problematic but propostioning for a platonic relationship is less so, or drinking, or anything else beyond strict job fulfillment labor. its obviously a problem when a power dynamic is abused but I would argue there is a weird puritanical nature to seeing a sexual proposition as preposterous but an unwanted platonic advance as largely benign

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

#530

Post by weberc2 »

knucklesandwich wrote: post #303
home_boi wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

First of all, it should be all tech workers that unionize, not just software engineers. And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have. I sugg…

> And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have.

Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors. Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory.

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