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

I am an Uber survivor

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

541–550 of 841 posts

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#541

Post by cauterized »

halayli wrote: post #288

Someone should build an app that can help in compiling such cases by automatically recording audio/vid anytime it hears a voice(s) we teach/specify (HR conversations, managers etc...) After some time I am sure the case solidifies with proofs. Sometimes you don't have the opportunity to pull your phone and open a recording app. It needs to be like siri and friends where once it recognizes a voice it starts recording.

Except for the whole thing where it's illegal to record someone without their explicit consent.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#542

Post by bbcbasic »

late2part wrote: post #60

Seems to me there are 4 issues here: 1. Racism. Not okay. Fire him. 2. Sexist behavior Not okay. Warn and then fire him. 3. Working people hard That's okay. I was made to work hard. Long days no breaks hard deadlines. That's the world we live in. 4. How this affected her I'm sorry she went through this and it's not okay. How she chooses to feel and deal with this are under her control. She shouldn't have perpetuated…

s/world/city/

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#543

Post by GauntletWizard »

mcmoose75 wrote: post #251
tyre wrote: post #210

I'm really happy she felt comfortable doing this. What an incredibly brave and strong person—I can't imagine what she must be feeling. What I really want to see is the other 20 men on her team tell their bosses to cut that shit out. We cannot rely on the abused to stand up for themselves; for every one who does there are thousands who cannot. It is on every one of us to report abhorrent behaviour, even if we think so…

A good deal of this is the entire system of control Uber has (or really, hasn't) implemented here. We already know that managers at Uber use reviews to punish those on their team that are at all critical of them (especially for ethic issues). The "20 men on her team", even if they did want to say something, could reasonably expect to have their careers (and potentially a material amount of Uber stock vesting) impacte…

One of the dirtiest tricks that Uber uses -And I found this out through firsthand experience - Is doing performance reviews where all feedback is public (I think technically it's only shown to your manager and team lead, except they're expected to make it public). This prevents you from writing negative feedback, and even damning with faint praise is a sure strategy to face retaliation. Rather than work out, privately, when one of your coworkers is underperforming, you only have the option of naming and shaming.

I'd really like a culture where this was viable - I'd love for nearly everything to be done in the public sphere, and even 'backstabbing' to be handled in the clear, but since Diffie–Hellman exists, it's not viable.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#544

Post by 1337biz »

guelo wrote: post #471
1337biz wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think this is a very important process in order to get rid of the weight a word carries. The "triggered" lead us to "triggered snowflakes". "Fake news" has undergone a similar transformation, ie from a term of old media brands branding themselves as the "real news" authority, towards now an ironic term for anything you don't like. What impresses me the most is how fast these tonalities change.

Why is it important to remove the weight a word carries?

Because it forces people to put more effort in an actual argument and not just hide behind 'x is Hitler' generalizations.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#545

Post by Scoundreller »

8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: post #446
ogezi wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want them to change instead of ending up like Theranos. If Uber went down, a lot of good people would be out of a job (both employees and drivers) and it would burn a lot investors, thus negatively affecting the funding landscape for years to come. To reiterate, I wish Uber to change. I don't wish them to fail.

Nah they need to fail. Lyft or another competitor would soak up the drivers immediately, a huge number of them already drive for both. Silicon valley alums of a top tech company are not going to be hurting for jobs in the near future. It sets the example that bullshit like this is not workable and will bring you down. There are no net downsides to uber falling.

> There's plenty of competitors that would love to fill that hole.

Maybe in the US. Elsewhere (e.g. Toronto), it's Uber or taxi.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#546

Post by bbcbasic »

uptownfunk wrote: post #183
leggomylibro wrote: post #132

>Travis is well known to protect high performing team leaders no matter how abusive they are towards their employees. The HR team was known to be deftly[sic] afraid of Travis’s tendency to blame and ridicule the women and yell at HR whenever they went in with complaints of abuse. I heard about Travis personally congratulating Mike#2 for meeting strict deadlines months after I complained to HR about my abuse. This is…

Maybe I've watched too much Suits and The Good Wife, but it just seems that it's all futile. They're a huge corp, if you file suit against them they'll hit back harder with bigger and badder lawyers, and you either settle out of court, or play the lotto with the court system and try your hand at a judgement with whatever lawyers you can afford. It's really sad how stacked the odds seem.

Not just any huge corp, but Uber - getting away with shady stuff is in their DNA

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#547

Post by enraged_camel »

lr4444lr wrote: post #462
enraged_camel wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She posted anonymously, BUT also went out of her way to provide an awful lot of information about herself. Information that her ex-coworkers could presumably verify and figure out her real identity (especially since Uber seems to have very few women in engineering positions). Based on the article, she is: 1) A woman in her late 20s 2) who used to work at Uber in Engineering working on database and networking scalabil…

But the OP's point stands generally: If this were a smear campaign by a competing company, how different would it look? I sympathize greatly with Ms. Fowler not least because she put her reputation out there and claimed to have documentation of the specific offenses, which a decently respectable journalism outfit like the NYTimes could fact-check. Fowler's story could be exaggerated, but I have reasonable doubt that…

These women are victims of harassment and abuse. It seems very unfair to expect them to also put their personal reputation on the line before we finally take them seriously. That's a very high bar to clear and it's the reason why so few women speak out publicly. That's why we must encourage, not discourage, anonymous disclosures, and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#548

Post by stouset »

gradstudent wrote: post #302
tyre wrote: post #210

I'm really happy she felt comfortable doing this. What an incredibly brave and strong person—I can't imagine what she must be feeling. What I really want to see is the other 20 men on her team tell their bosses to cut that shit out. We cannot rely on the abused to stand up for themselves; for every one who does there are thousands who cannot. It is on every one of us to report abhorrent behaviour, even if we think so…

> What I really want to see is the other 20 men on her team tell their bosses to cut that shit out. You're being surprisingly lenient in your assessment here. I'd argue they need to tell their bosses to fuck off and find another job .

I don't disagree, but consider that many of these engineers are sitting on illiquid stock options valued at millions to tens of millions of dollars.

You're asking people to stand up for what's right when it may cost them millions of dollars of incentives and the loss of years of their life in career investment. That doesn't make it right to look the other way when these kind of abuses occur, but is it any wonder that people don't speak up when the incentives are lined up so strongly against doing so?

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#549

Post by ionforce »

sidlls wrote: post #211
jimbokun wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She did fight back, told HR about what was happening, stood up to the abusers in meetings. Then when she was physically handled and verbally threatened in a meeting with many eye witnesses, nothing was done to support her or protect her. What else do they expect her to do? Bring a weapon to work and shoot everyone?

I took their comments to mean directly to the abuser in a more aggressive way than "please stop" or even "that's not appropriate." But you're right: in any adult, rational sense she "fought back."

Because everyone knows that being aggressive back to your abuser is an easy, viable option.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#550

Post by lr4444lr »

UncleMeat wrote: post #481
lr4444lr wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the OP's point stands generally: If this were a smear campaign by a competing company, how different would it look? I sympathize greatly with Ms. Fowler not least because she put her reputation out there and claimed to have documentation of the specific offenses, which a decently respectable journalism outfit like the NYTimes could fact-check. Fowler's story could be exaggerated, but I have reasonable doubt that…

It just seems surprising to many of us that this skepticism only seems to crop up in situations surrounding racial or gender discrimination.

Can you describe a general situation where this kind of skepticism is avoided? I'm keenly aware that selective application of standards of evidence in legal matters is a serious bias problem, but if you are suggesting it happens in some issue to people across the ideological spectrum on that issue I don't know what you're talking about.
Post reply on HN