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Some Uber Employees Balk at Travis Kalanick’s Exit

nytimes.com

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Re: Some Uber Employees Balk at Travis Kalanick’s Exit

#61

Post by davidf18 »

zzalpha wrote: post #59
davidf18 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "One group of women saying the culture in Uber is corrosive? Well that's rumour and innuendo." I never suggested rumor or innuendo. But it is sexist to not believe not a single woman but a number of women who come out and support TK. Women know even if they have not experienced it directly (e.g. "the grapevine") if it were a sexist environment. It is sexist to discount the FB poster, Margaret-Ann Seger and the many…

But it is sexist to not believe not a single woman but a number of women who come out and support TK. ROFL. I could literally replace the word "support" with "do not support" in this sentence and it would be an equally valid argument. A bad one. But equally so. Read my comment again. I already explained why both groups of women could be right . Something else was going on. You're confirmation bias is showing again...

To suggest that there is an culture of sexual abuse and for a number of women not to feel it and to state otherwise is sexual abusive. In fact they went as far as to praise the environment.

It is suggesting that these women's feelings should not be taken seriously.

You are either pregnant or not. You can't be both.

As I mentioned earlier, Eric Holder is a lawyer, the issue has do do with emotions and Eric Holder has absolutely no clinical training let alone clinical training for this specific kind of environment. That makes him unqualified to make judgments.

The question is why wasn't a specialist brought in. Someone who has the clinical training and business training who has experience dealing with hi-tech startup cultures brought in for an evaluation. It makes everything highly suspect.

I am not denying that some women and others may have been put off by the culture. Or that there may have been some specific cases of abuse. But clearly there was no culture of sexual abuse.

It simply cannot be that Ms. Sanger and a number of women were highly supportive of an environment that promoted sexual abuse. They are not crazy, they are not in denial. It was not a pervasive culture.

There is something else going on and to do everyone justice, don't use an unqualified lawyer to investigate, use a qualified industrial psychologist with extensive clinical training. Use the right person for the job.

As I said before, I have dealt with such a highly qualified individual. I use awareness of cognitive biases in my work where unlike Uber, cognitive biases can kill people.

Something else is going on. A properly trained industrial psychologist with clinical training and who knows the hi-tech startup environment should investigate.

Re: Some Uber Employees Balk at Travis Kalanick’s Exit

#62

Post by zzalpha »

davidf18 wrote: post #61
zzalpha wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is sexist to not believe not a single woman but a number of women who come out and support TK. ROFL. I could literally replace the word "support" with "do not support" in this sentence and it would be an equally valid argument. A bad one. But equally so. Read my comment again. I already explained why both groups of women could be right . Something else was going on. You're confirmation bias is showing again...

To suggest that there is an culture of sexual abuse and for a number of women not to feel it and to state otherwise is sexual abusive. In fact they went as far as to praise the environment. It is suggesting that these women's feelings should not be taken seriously. You are either pregnant or not. You can't be both. As I mentioned earlier, Eric Holder is a lawyer, the issue has do do with emotions and Eric Holder has…

Let's set aside the claim that stating an argument can be "sexually abusive"--I can't express how ridiculous that is--and cut to the core of your argument, which, if I may, can be summarized as follows:

When it comes to whether Uber possesses a sexually abusive workplace environment, You are either pregnant or not. You can't be both.

This is perfect example of a false dichotomy.

Corporate culture is not some monolithic thing.

Uber is a 15,000 person company. Individual departments and reporting chains likely varied significantly. That there may have been groups or departments in Uber that did not share the corrosive culture experienced elsewhere in the company is not only within reason, but to be expected.

I am not denying that some women and others may have been put off by the culture. Or that there may have been some specific cases of abuse. But clearly there was no culture of sexual abuse.

Do you work at Uber? Have you experienced their culture first hand? What, precisely, makes you qualified to make this determination, thus invalidating the claims of others who do have first-hand experience at the company and have said otherwise?

Re: Some Uber Employees Balk at Travis Kalanick’s Exit

#63

Post by mcphage »

majewsky wrote: post #56
mcphage wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not a case of "Oh look! a shiny object" but "Oh no! We are building an obsolete business". Why? Even when driverless cars are standard, why does Uber need to spend the money building their own driverless car program, instead of just buying driverless cars from the manufacturer like the rest of us will do? Their business plan doesn't require them to build the technology, just use it. It would be like if Miss C…

You're assuming that auto companies will just sell these driverless cars like they did regular cars. This may be true for Tesla (esp. since they're successfully marketing their not-yet-driverless cars as "equipped for autopilot" to improve sales before driverless is actually a thing), but for other auto companies, I could easily see them offering driverless cars only as-a-service.

> I could easily see them offering driverless cars only as-a-service.

They do this now; it's called "leasing". But if they're going to stop selling cars and only lease them, why wait? It's a bookkeeping detail that's unrelated to the car itself.

Cars depreciate in value so heavily, I don't know why auto manufacturers would want to adopt 100% of that loss—but there isn't anything currently stopping them.

Re: Some Uber Employees Balk at Travis Kalanick’s Exit

#64

Post by davidf18 »

zzalpha wrote: post #62
davidf18 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To suggest that there is an culture of sexual abuse and for a number of women not to feel it and to state otherwise is sexual abusive. In fact they went as far as to praise the environment. It is suggesting that these women's feelings should not be taken seriously. You are either pregnant or not. You can't be both. As I mentioned earlier, Eric Holder is a lawyer, the issue has do do with emotions and Eric Holder has…

Let's set aside the claim that stating an argument can be "sexually abusive"--I can't express how ridiculous that is--and cut to the core of your argument, which, if I may, can be summarized as follows: When it comes to whether Uber possesses a sexually abusive workplace environment, You are either pregnant or not. You can't be both. This is perfect example of a false dichotomy. Corporate culture is not some monolith…

I looked into this a bit further and there was an entire committee including Holder but nobody that was truly an expert with a background in clinical psychology and industrial psychology consulting. The committee has not one qualified professional with any clinical psychology background at all suggesting they were more interested in dealing with bad publicity than they were actually investigating and understanding and fixing a problem.

You have not addressed at all the fact that they did not use a professional to investigate these claims.

> "What, precisely, makes you qualified to make this determination,..."

I don't have to work there. People such as the FB poster Margaret-Ann Seger and many other women who work there have been very upset about his firing. Just read the comments for Sanger's post on FB -- those written by women who support TK. There are 1,800 likes 350 shares, 65 comments to her FB post alone.

Google for the name "Margaret-Ann Seger" and you will see there are recall petitions and other positive comments by other women about the culture there.

You simply can't have these kinds of testimonials from women in there was a truly toxic culture there. Your issue is not with me, but the women who testify in TK's favor.

Culture does mean culture -- it means something endemic throughout. Undeniably there were cases just as there were cases in other tech firms. But to discount the words of the many women who work there supporting TK and his kindness and leadership is in itself discounting their opinions which is sexually abusive.

Re: Some Uber Employees Balk at Travis Kalanick’s Exit

#66

Post by chronid »

marricks wrote: post #27
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #12

I'm sure it's not "some" but a lot of employees, but most are afraid to speak out just because they have seen what happens to people who advocate for someone who's down. I know for a fact that a lot of Uber employees nowadays can't talk freely outside about the fact that they work at Uber, when they used to be proud to talk about it just a couple of years ago. I also know that many employees at Uber (men or women) ar…

I’m sure there’s tons of male employees who thought the situation was overblown and wanted things to settle down. I mean, they helped enable such an awful workplace culture. Heck, I’d say select female employees may have thought it was okay, though there really wasn’t many female workers there it seems because they fled. A couple months fear of being “witch hunted” is a small price to pay for what appears to be years…

> A couple months fear of being “witch hunted” is a small price to pay for what appears to be years of harassment women at the company had to endure.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

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