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Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

susanjfowler.com

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

#721

Post by fullshark »

floatrock wrote: post #633
MBCook wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not handcuffs, involuntary servitude is illegal. 'Golden handcuffs' means you care more about your future payout than whatever missbehavior/illegality/immorality you're overlooking. Also believing that same missbehavior won't cause the contract to be worthless by the time you get to collect.

Someone will reply with the exact citation, but there's the story of that psychologist or economist or jaded physicist who goes to a fancy bougie party, dressed like a million bucks, and goes up to a pretty lady in a fancy ballgown. "Would you sleep with me for a million bucks?" Intrigued by his presence and directness, the lady raises her eyebrows and says "go on..." "Would you sleep with me for a hundred bucks?" "N…

It was meant to be dark commentary. I don't judge people who subjugate themselves to toxic work environments too harshly. I think they are usually behaving optimally given their livelihood/personal wealth is on the line.

FWIW, I think it was brave of Ms. Fowler to write this (most probably stay silent for fear of retribution).

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

#722

Post by hueving »

smm2000 wrote: post #567
kartickv wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this exact same conversation with a manager who seemed suprised when I told him people are not interchangeable cogs. He said that some people may be quicker at a particular technology / domain / whatever, or quicker to ramp up, or do slightly better work, but smart engineers can and do learn anything needed and do work that's good enough after a ramp-up that's short enough. Beyond that, he says, there are minor…

Outside of truly unique skills, it's basically true - engineers are interchangeable with sufficient time to ramp up. I learned this lesson pretty early in my career when most senior engineer on the team left. I and everyone else freaked out because he was the only one on the team who fully understood how everything works. But you know who was not freaked out? My manager. And he was right, we did not even miss deadlin…

>Outside of truly unique skills, it's basically true - engineers are interchangeable with sufficient time to ramp up.

That qualification at the end makes it false.

If I have to give someone 1 year to learn all of the minute details of the behavior of TCP across the various operating systems clients use, the behavior of packet re-ordering in LAG algorithms, convergence times of BGP, etc, then they are most definitely not interchangeable with someone who does know these things.

Any manager who thinks this way is incompetent and will impose massive opportunity costs on the company by not fighting for raises for existing good employees under the guise that they can be easily replaced.

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

#723

Post by smsm42 »

wheelerwj wrote: post #298
projektir wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a pro-drinking culture at my company due to the nature of the business and I haven't found that it's causing any problems. It's generally done outside of work or for specific events, and I've never felt unsafe on any gathering where a lot of drinking was going on. This is a red herring, if anything. I think there's a difference between a culture where people drink a lot vs a culture where people get black out…

> We have a pro-drinking culture at my company due to the nature of the business what? what possible nature of business are you in that makes drinking more (or less) acceptable. There is no such thing. at work, you work. if you want to get drunk, you aren't working.

I think you are looking at it too narrowly. Drinking has an important social function in many cultures, western culture among them but by no means alone. Having good social interaction between coworkers is important. Of course, one has to be cognizant of the fact that not everybody drinks and not to exclude people that are not - by making sure drinking is not the only way people can interact socially. But having a round of beers once in a while with coworkers, among other things, is not that bad.

Of course, all that is about social drinking, not getting completely shitfaced to the point one loses control. That is never good.

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

#724

Post by davesque »

fermigier wrote: post #36

What do you expect from a company that has been so many times on the wrong side of the law? http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-fine-chicago-idUSKBN1... http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/14/10772412/uber-fine-califor... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/09/uber-fined-... http://time.com/4632430/taiwan-uber-fines/ http://economia.icaew.com/en/news/january-2017/uber-fined-20... http://www.pcworld.com/articl…

Was the first thing I thought about when I read this article.

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

#725

Post by hkmurakami »

uber_eng_throw wrote: post #137
logandavis wrote: post #69

By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning…

Hijacking this top comment to provide some personal experiences. I started as an engineer in the spring of 2014 and this was definitely the case there. Top engineers were being poached from Google/FB and these people were trying to carve out territory in a quickly growing engineering team. The misogynistic culture, in my mind, comes from most of the early employees being former frat bros. Culture was extremely heavy…

Longtime friend was there in 2011 iirc when they were still "Ubercab" and was cut bc he was "not a culture fit". Aka quiet Russian hacker types not wanted in the frat brotherhood.

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

#726

Post by hueving »

rdtsc wrote: post #576
logandavis wrote: post #69

By all indications, Uber has a toxic work culture that costs them both top talent and organizational velocity. I'm a college senior at a well-regarded engineering school. My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, in large part because of its reputation for internal misogyny and general assholery. Four classmates interned there last summer, and as far as I know none are interested in returning…

> My CS classmates - especially women - simply do not apply to Uber, The sad thing is why do men want to apply there after what is know about it? I wouldn't want to be near any company that treats any of their employees like that.

>The sad thing is why do men want to apply there after what is know about it?

Some students aren't privileged enough to graduate debt-free. Getting into any of these top compensating packages can mean being literally years less time being in debt.

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

#727

Post by azernik »

voltagex_ wrote: post #609
m0zzie wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are seeing the exact same thing here in Australia. An app called GoCatch which was a taxis-only app for around 5 years but moved into the ride share market last year. It used to be very difficult to get one of their cars in Sydney, but now I can get one most times I try. Many people seem to like the idea of a locally-owned company versus the tax-dodging (in their eyes) juggernaut from overseas.

GoCatch seemed to me to be a response to pretty terrible taxi dispatch. Slowly, at least where I live, the dispatches for companies are being merged and centralised, often to places far away. One of the cab companies here has moved away from the Windows Mobile (?) based terminal to just issuing a phone/tablet with an app that looks like it's from about 2001, but the drivers seem to like it.

My take? Uber and Lyft themselves are a response to pretty terrible taxi dispatch. (And, in certain parts of the US, to policies like medallions that impose a supply cap on taxicabs.) Most places I know of that have a free-ish market for cab rides (Israel, Australia, etc.) have local cab-hailing apps with similar interfaces to Uber that have outcompeted it in the local market.

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

#728

Post by spuz »

wolf550e wrote: post #623
cjbprime wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you mean by "even worse as a male employee", but I suspect you've drastically misspoken; you might want to fix that.

'spuz is familiar with male-dominated environments and finds them stifling. 'spuz is unfamiliar with a place as bad as what is described in the article and speculates that he would like that less.

Yes that's what I meant. Definitely did not mean to say it would be worse as a male than as a female so sorry if there was confusion.

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

#729

Post by azernik »

nostrademons wrote: post #542
YPCrumble wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that he condones harassment until it reaches the top of hacker news.

It's also going viral on Facebook and getting picked up by media; I've had 4 Facebook friends share it in the last couple hours, and my wife (not in tech) was just reading it.

True virality was achieved when a non-techie friend shared the Jezebel write-up.
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