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Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

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

#711

Post by rhizome »

sgustard wrote: post #706
someone13 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean this in the nicest way possible, so please don't take this as anything personally directed at you, but: any employee of Uber that feels strongly about this should find another company to work at. If you're working in tech, in the current employment market in the Bay Area, finding another job is not hard. Not easy, both in the sense that leaving a job can be scary, and that interviews can be draining - but doab…

That comes across as a variant of "blaming the victim." Telling an internet stranger to sacrifice himself to some higher cause is not really a noble act. Maybe he can do more good by trying to change the company from the inside. Or maybe he just needs the job and doesn't need to be a hero.

Maybe he can do more good by trying to change the company from the inside

What's the success rate of this? Keep in mind that their HR department does not have the capacity to recognize repeated instances of sexual harrassment, so someone on the inside I guess will want to transfer to HR first, in order to help there, then maybe get promoted into upper management? After that they can demote themselves to driver training.

I guess Ruby on Rails really can do anything.

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

#713

Post by KerrickStaley »

I work at Lyft, and although I'm in different shoes (SW male), I really can't see this happening and HR/management stonewalling the complaints. We don't tolerate harassment, and we stand up for each other. I know I try to. [1]

I honestly don't understand how Uber attracts talent. Lyft and Uber both work on really interesting problems. [2] The difference is that Uber are, well, the sort of people Travis Kalanick would hire. [3] Lyft is smaller, sure, but we're growing at a very rapid tick (and smaller means there's more for each engineer to do). And though people generally view Lyft as being undifferentiated from Uber, I think we can positively say that we provide a better user experience in many ways, in spite of being a much smaller outfit. And again: we're growing. Fast.

Bottom line: if you're looking at a job at Uber, consider applying to Lyft :) It'll be worth your time.

[1] "Uplift others" and "Be yourself" are two of our four core values. [2] I joined Lyft after leaving a job at Google and rejecting offers from AirBnB and Dropbox, and I'm 100% confident I would do the same thing over again. Working at Lyft is fun—and impactful. [3] Not to say that they're all bad people; I have lots of friends that work there. But there's a dramatic cultural difference between the two companies, and that culture is driven by the leadership. So the "median" employee at Lyft will be very different from the median at Uber.

P.S. So clearly I'm a little biased on this subject :) Take with a grain of salt.

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

#715

Post by nthcxd »

xor1 wrote: post #571
mightykan wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should teach our sons to truly respect women. We should teach our sons to be respectful honest decent human beings. We should teach our sons to not be assholes who think they are entitled to a woman’s body. We should teach our sons to be humans with emotions and empathy for others. We should teach our sons to not be toxic despicable entitled pathetic beings. It’s on us (men). If we behave badly, it’s squarely on u…

You're missing a huge part of the problem here. People with power are the ones who need to be "taught" (punished). This behavior can only occur repeatedly when someone can get away with it, because they have power. If they don't have power, they are punished (often harshly), and a rational person will not repeat that behavior. Your blanket approach is completely ridiculous. You act like the problem is that men aren't…

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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

#716

Post by linkregister »

mdip wrote: post #645
jacquesm wrote: post #44

What's with all the 'this is unbelievable' comments here? This is absolutely believable, Uber has pretty much made it their standard to break the laws where-ever they can, why should work place conduct be any different? In for a penny, in for a pound. You'd never hear something even close to this from Stripe or some other company run by upstanding folks. Fish rots from the head.

I think the "this is unbelievable" comments are coming from people who have worked in the industry for a long time -- but not at Uber -- who are surprised that this sort of thing not only goes on, but that HR appears to be advocating the behavior through inaction. At least from my anecdotal experience, I've never seen anything like this among the four companies and 20 years I've been in software development and engin…

We don't have to look very hard to find examples of sexual harassment lawsuits that the four major tech companies have lost.

Anecdotally, I have been organizationally close (same manager, adjacent team) to serious misconduct and was completely oblivious to it, finding out about the wrongdoing years later.

It is likely that Uber is alone with its scope of HR incompetence and wrongdoing. Although their SRE is supposed to have been lifted straight from Google and Facebook, the sexual harassment cases from those organizations didn't involve nearly as much dishonesty and apathy by their Human Resources sections.

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

#717

Post by hueving »

jaxn wrote: post #584
toothbrush wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for team dynamics, it means we know each other better and bond more frequently. Not a problem, I think. Except for the non-drinkers in your team. I suspect that they either a) feel left out, because a non-drinker at a pub has a boring time, and has to keep justifying their empty glass b) probably miss out on important decisions if a majority of the important people in a team are present, which is bad dynamics c)…

I once received a bottle of wine as a Christmas bonus from the founders of the small startup I worked at. I was the only person on the the who didn't drink and was pretty offended. Especially since it was well known that I didn't drink since this company celebrated "beer thirty" every Friday.

>was pretty offended

You were offended by a gift? Just say thanks and give it away or throw it away.

The vast majority of company gifts are useless to many people. Most people can cloth themselves, buy drinks for themselves, buy bags for themselves, etc and have no need for whatever crap the company is getting them as a sign of appreciation.

Unless they demanded you chug the wine in front of them, you really should not have offended yourself this way.

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

#718

Post by smsm42 »

Philadelphia wrote: post #691
Baeocystin wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a problem for anyone other than the overly self-conscious, who are looking for reasons to explain their anxiety. Literally no one cares.

I was once rejected from a job interview at a DC startup because I didn't order a beer when they took me to lunch.

This seems a reason so stupid to reject somebody that either a) they didn't like you but didn't want to tell you the real reason, but didn't care enough to think about a plausibly sounding fake one; or b) you dodged a major bullet as these people had seriously messed up priorities. I'd bet on a) but can't exclude b) completely of course.

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

#719

Post by davesque »

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…

Are people legitimately needing clarification on this?

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

#720

Post by nthcxd »

brudgers wrote: post #338
kevinburke wrote: post #197

Mike Isaac (reporter for the New York Times) is collecting more stories of harassment & toxic work environment at Uber: https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/833445850130944000

One of the things that this article got me thinking about is how much less effective that model is. Sure, some Sunday from now, maybe there's a NYT expose that reaches a national audience. Before that happens, the NYT reporters will reach out to Uber senior management for comment and give it time to compose some hollow PR about how seriously it takes the matter and that will run alongside the actual stories of proble…

I get where you are coming from but here is no such thing as perfectly objective account or opinion. Whatever second-hand experience you gather will be colored by agenda and biases of the people conveying those messages to you.

Given that, I would be more comfortable with having a _relatively_ reliable source that I can vet via reputation and prior experience. It still doesn't mean I would just take that as a ground truth. But it's a significant difference between that and just having a bunch of anonymous eyewitness accounts.

Taking anything anybody says online seriously IS where fake news come from.

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