61–70 of 234 posts
It really is insane to think this type of stuff could go on for so long at such a prominent company. It's amazing that it didn't come out sooner.
HR is not there to protect you or help you. They are there to protect the company. Sometimes protecting the company happens to mean helping you, and sometimes the HR people are good people who look for solutions that makes everyone happy. But don't count on it.
While reading the account, it seems the Manager is from India perhaps? Edit: I am an Indian and it is a big deal in India to wear "revealing clothes", albeit I have no idea what a tank top is neither do I care Just FYI do you don't assume that I am a sexist and downvote me.
Which racist thought made you reach that conclusion?
Usually toxic work environments are a symptom of an underlying issue-they resemble the people who created it. Even if they are nice, grossly overlooking toxic individuals might be part of a results over process type of mentality. Another possibility is Uber is fucked and people are kicking the can down the road based on chauvinism. Reading her nightmare reminds me of this quote from The Sopranos. "Money flows uphill,…
During my exit from a previous employer over a CEO whose sexual misconduct makes Uber look like the ACLU, one of our investors gave me the advice that "the CEO sets the culture". The context there was that if the CEO and I didn't see eye to eye on something, that was never going to change while this person was CEO. In the time since, I've found that advice to be so reliably true that it's one of the core things I use…
This advice may be reliably true but I would also argue there are major exceptions. For example, take founder & ceo of any billion dollar company and you will find that they evolved drastically (in good and bad ways) over the years. Zuckerberg has radically transformed himself from an immature frat boy to a charitable, intelligent billionaire CEO. I am sure people who have known him over some period of time would disagree with your investor's line of thinking.
How do you know (asking seriously, since I work alone 99% of the time) when somebody is sexist (or any other ist ) or if he/she is just a generally unpleasant person? Also, I got to say that if I'm in the same room with a woman who has a very visible cleavage I will look into the ceiling to avoid even the vague notion that I'm looking into their breasts.
Neither is mutually exclusive or objective. Someone can be sexist and be a pleasant person and someone can be an unpleasant person, but not sexist.
Similarly, someone can be unpleasant and racist to one person, but be pleasant and not racist to another.
There's not solid way to determine these things. If you're not in a position where you're being scrupulously watched over for signs of being an ist, then just try to be a good person instead of being not a sexist, or not a racist.
> Also, I got to say that if I'm in the same room with a woman who has a very visible cleavage I will look into the ceiling to avoid even the vague notion that I'm looking into their breasts.
That sounds more like social anxiety/ conditioning.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or stop promoting engineers to management roles they aren't educated for or socially prepared for.
But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders:: It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
Get your engineers who want to go into management to get a MBA (regular, part time, or executive). Eng background with a MBA is IMHO one of the best combinations around.
Managing people & businesses isn't something you're born with, it's something you learn and train. Just like coding, but sometimes way harder.
Full disclaimer: I have a computer engineering undergrad and a MBA, so take my opinion with a lot of salt :)
So... Tina's an asshole/jerk/bitch, but where's the sexism?! (I'm not disputing sexism in Susan Fowler's case.)
Although the story doesn't spell out the gender of everyone on the team - the statistics of 11 engineers implies she could be the only female - only controlling her work behavior (where and when she can work), but not her coworkers (that they can work from home), if all her coworkers are male, is pretty sexist. And it may be indicative a deeper - and more pervasive - problem of sexism (for example, she was regularly managed differently because she was female, which sounds like the case) that was the main problem for her.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything that the manager is doing wrong. We can debate whether the manager is effective at her job, but it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism. The only citation I can find relevant to the claim of sexism is that she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work. It may very well be that a tank-top is inappropriate attire at Uber's workplace. At IBM and many o…
Mandatory dress codes. Men in suit, with tie from the time you enter the office until the time you leave. Women in suits, pants or skirts.
Or go whole hog and require everyone to wear grey coveralls when in office.
Institutions with dress codes generally have less BS distractions because the distractions simply can't exist.
Why aren't managers graded on retention? If you lose too many people you're penalized or fired.
Because retention can be too subjective. If you lose a lot of bad people then retention is not a bad thing. If you start to lose good people then what was the common reason? Not willing to pay? Company culture? Team culture? Company I work for retention can be factored in but the ability to rate your boss is given each year and if that comes back negative along with poor retention than that is reason for further acti…
Bad people in a company means there's a hiring problem, which ultimately is a management problem.
Losing lots of people means the pay is too low or the bullshit is too high, and both of those are management problems as well.