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Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

businessinsider.com

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Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#61

Post by mcguire »

beaconstudios wrote: post #43
jordigh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While in principle being judged by nothing by your actions is a great, well, principle, in practice "meritocracy" ends up favouring people who were already socially advantaged in some way or another (e.g. male) to elicit the actions that the meritocratic judge is looking for. The idea sounds nice, but it ends up just reinforcing cronyism. If you belong to the right in-group, usually stratified along some social injus…

the point of a meritocracy is to produce the best possible work and reward good performance, not to right real or perceived injustices. Statistically speaking, if the majority of developers are male then a majority of high-performing developers will also be male. Hiring lower-performing females to attempt to achieve balance does not fix the original issue, and it serves to harm the hiring company by choosing people b…

Are you aware of Ms Fowler's allegations?

https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...

Nothing to do (directly) with underrepresentation or "hiring lower-performing females".

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#62

Post by mcguire »

dominotw wrote: post #55
urahara wrote: post #2

This is very much like a sign that Uber again takes an old path of silencing people and problems instead of fixing toxic culture. Makes me think that they also prepare to blackmail Fowler.

Huffington said this time all problems will be fixed. I trust her, can we give them some time before saying 'takes an old path '.

It's fun to listen to what people say, but you really need to watch what they do.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#63

Post by ZeroCool2u »

uberthrowaway1 wrote: post #45
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be Uber's modus operandi every single time they're in trouble and it almost always seems to backfire on them, PR wise. I'm curious though, what tipped her off? While I've worked at tech start-ups before and can believe all the behavior she outlined (because I've seen similar things myself, it's very believable) it still bothers me to continue to take someone's word at face value. I mean I do, I would tr…

Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. >This seems to be Uber's modus operandi every single time they're in trouble and it almost always seems to backfire on them, PR wise. From attending all hands meetings I get the sense TK has a victim mentality and sees himself doing no wrong or Uber doing no wrong. Since we're clearly not wrong, it has to be the critic, right? /S To be fair, we do get some BS scandals related to…

Wait, your CTO cried at the all hands? Like publicly burst into tears in front of the entire meeting? I'm just curious, what did someone say to them that had that effect?

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#64

Post by uxp100 »

revelation wrote: post #44
victor9000 wrote: post #26

This is really saavy marketing by Blind App

Well, until people awake from their righteous fervor and ask why the anonymous Blind app knows there are 2000 Uber employees using it And god beware they start asking what Blinds business model is going to be!

Because you are required to sign up with a company email. It's anonymous for the users, not for blind.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#65

Post by mooted1 »

I work at Uber. I was on the wifi yesterday. I was successfully using blind. If business insider would like video evidence, I'm happy to work with their reporters 1:1.

There's a lot of problems at the company and it's been a difficult week for many of us here. Not having access to blind is not one of them.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#66

Post by callmeal »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #24
paganel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and people complaining about why Skype, OneDrive and SharePoint are so terrible. I'm glad that people at MS themselves complain about how awful Skype has become. This proves that there are still sane people over there, for a moment I thought that me and my colleagues who still rely on Skype (Slack has never caught on with us) are not paranoid when we complain among ourselves about it.

Pretty much everyone at the IC-level at Microsoft is well-aware of the systemic issues plaguing many products - lower management too - but these issues don't get fixed because of whatever decisions being made at the Director level (mostly of the "evil" kind, like how improving UI responsiveness won't raise profitability but adding video ads will, or how no-one will switch to OneDrive-for-Business simply because the d…

Can you please also fix the "escape key closes chat without any warning" feature too?

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#68

Post by dllthomas »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #57
dllthomas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She says in her next tweet that she doesn't know who it is or what their aims are. I doubt Uber is attempting to smear her. I don't think the people involved are that evil, but I'm pretty confident they aren't that stupid.

They previously (and probably illegally) hired a private intelligence firm to dig up dirt on their opponents in a court battle: http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/10/12127638/uber-ergo-investi... They did the same to intimidate journalists: http://fortune.com/2014/11/18/uber-rides-into-new-pr-storm-o...

To be clear, in this case I think it's quite unlikely, specifically, that Uber is looking for information with an intent to discredit, disparage, or defame Susan Fowler.

> They previously (and probably illegally) hired a private intelligence firm to dig up dirt on their opponents in a court battle

What was done there seems obviously inappropriate. It's unclear to what degree the intent was (I certainly understand wanting context). The situation was obviously very different.

> They did the same to intimidate journalists

Maybe. On the other hand: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicole-campbell/what-was-said-... And even in the Ben Smith's account they didn't actually do it.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#70

Post by alphonsegaston »

dllthomas wrote: post #68
alphonsegaston wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They previously (and probably illegally) hired a private intelligence firm to dig up dirt on their opponents in a court battle: http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/10/12127638/uber-ergo-investi... They did the same to intimidate journalists: http://fortune.com/2014/11/18/uber-rides-into-new-pr-storm-o...

To be clear, in this case I think it's quite unlikely, specifically, that Uber is looking for information with an intent to discredit, disparage, or defame Susan Fowler. > They previously (and probably illegally) hired a private intelligence firm to dig up dirt on their opponents in a court battle What was done there seems obviously inappropriate. It's unclear to what degree the intent was (I certainly understand wan…

Why is it unlikely, given that they've done this exact thing in the past? You're entitled to think whatever you want, but you can't in good faith argue that this isn't their pattern of behavior. You're right that the circumstances are different, but the only constant is Uber underhandedly going after anyone who criticizes them.

And an editorial in HuffPo from someone who pals around with the person engaging in the abusive behaviour is a pretty weak defense. Especially since they did a similar thing before:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/19/uber-inve...

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