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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

#781

Post by djhworld »

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…

The fact that this harassment came from a reporting chain or not is irrelevant, no employee should have to undergo that kind of behaviour if it wasn't consented to in the first place.

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

#782

Post by pitaj »

mightykan wrote: post #771
xor1 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have zero power now but have the potential to have it. If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power (e.g. become a manager). But, then, I'd have the power to cause irreparable emotional and societal damage. If I don't know how to act like a rational reasonable human being who respects others no matter the…

> If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power.

You're talking as if the men in the article don't know that what they're doing is wrong. If some man accidentally does something harmful against a woman, he can learn from those mistakes. A pattern of repeated sexual harassment, though? That's certainly not due to ignorance.

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

#783

Post by rhizome »

tajen wrote: post #740
rhizome wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was truly frustrated with the taxi system for years, to the degree of refusing to use them hardly at all, I don't mind so much Uber breaking outdated laws (I do believe some kind of taxi commission is warranted in general) so much as the results of their business model: replacing one mafia with another. That a secondary effect is to flood the streets with even more batshit-awful drivers is proof that t…

It could even be worded like this: Given most taxis across the world provide a dodgy service and hijack fees way above official metered levels (or hijack meters or add luggage fees or spend 20 minutes negociating the fare after you've made them aware you're in a hurry for a flight) to the point that most middle-class doesn't use them, ... is replacing this mafia with a batshit-awful company still a progress? As long…

Naturally, in some places the taxi service is 1000x worse than what I ever complained about, so in those places I can see the up-front pricing for Uber to be a little bit more of a revolutionary improvement.

I think overall the experience of taking a taxi is not going to change that much, but there's going to be a big repricing when Uber runs out of loss-leader. I imagine the dream is for inflation to absorb most of that by the time the axe falls, but uber/lyft/taxi pricing across the board will have to find an equilibrium. Or differentiators.

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

#784

Post by zigzigzag »

knucklesandwich wrote: post #776
arjie wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, you might. But any such union will have a large number of disaffected people and as HN has shown, a large number of these people blame H1B workers. Their problem is that this visa exists. My problem is getting naturalised. Our incentives are not aligned and they've made that clear. I want no part of it and I will actively participate in union busting to the greatest of my ability for this reason. I don't think…

No comrades of mine would see guest workers or immigrants as a threat. I wouldn't join a union that didn't stick up for all workers, regardless of their citizenship status. Maybe we have different perspectives on how popular the anti-immigrant position is in tech (and how many neo-reactionary/dark enlightenment dipshits there are), I guess I'd just ask that you keep an open mind about this and make a decision if and…

> No comrades of mine

Ouch. Was that choice of word deliberate?

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

#785

Post by xor1 »

mightykan wrote: post #771
xor1 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have zero power now but have the potential to have it. If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power (e.g. become a manager). But, then, I'd have the power to cause irreparable emotional and societal damage. If I don't know how to act like a rational reasonable human being who respects others no matter the…

Once again, you are unable to grasp the real problem. Guess what -- men can be victims of the abuse of power too, whether that's at the hands of men or women.

>I have zero power now but have the potential to have it. If I don't know how to behave like a decent human around my female coworkers and peers right now, I would have no idea how to do this when I have more power (e.g. become a manager). But, then, I'd have the power to cause irreparable emotional and societal damage.

Simply becoming a manager doesn't give you power. One of the main purposes of middle management is to take the fall for C-level mistakes, after all. You also need to have your employer's backing. In this case, this manager is especially powerful because Uber backs him even when it's not in their best interest). I don't know how the manager in question here was able to obtain that sort of empowerment, but you are sorely mistaken if you think that his ability to stick around was simply due to a job title.

>I don't know much and I certainly don't claim to know much. All I know is that if we (men) don't curb our own behavior, we're the one squarely at fault.

I don't know how to get this through to you. This problem is that powerful people are unaccountable due to the way that our current society is structured. It has nothing to do with gender. Maybe you think this sort of thing wouldn't happen under a female CEO, but you don't know what the context of the relationship between the manager and powerful people within the company who provide him with agency.

>I'm so tired of this "not all men" attitude.

I have no idea what you mean by this.

>As someone who gets paid to make fact-based decisions all day, I cannot possibly ignore this ridiculous argument that women are at fault.

Who made that argument? I honestly have no idea what your thought process is here.

>Yes, anything is possible but the scenario you're proposing is so rare that is an anomaly.

When did I propose a scenario??

>Get off that horse, dude. Stop being on the wrong side of history.

Ok, you're just incoherent at this point.

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

#786

Post by pitaj »

mathw wrote: post #774
patricius wrote: post #763

Whenever I hear about a case of a woman being harassed at work, I can't help but wonder how I would react in a similar situation. I am male and I have never experienced workplace harrassment, but if a female co-worker started writing things like those in the story I can't imagine that it would annoy me the slightest. If she was attractive, I would probably be flattered. If it _did_ annoy me, I would ask the person to…

Your comment pretty much sums up the prevailing misogynist attitude that gives rise to the kind of workplace culture Susan Fowler is describing. > if that didn't help, I might contact her husband as a retaliation I honestly can't believe you wrote that. If it was an exact replica of the scenario with the genders reversed, the husband probably wouldn't mind anyway (well, maybe would be bothered by the inappropriatenes…

I think it's a fundamental difference between how men and women treat relationships and sexuality.

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

#787

Post by zyngaro »

Baeocystin wrote: post #665
scrollaway wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With rare exceptions, I'm a non-drinker. Nowhere in Europe have I ever had an issue ordering a coke instead of an alcoholic drink, even when hanging out with people getting completely shitfaced. Is this seriously a thing in the US? Feeling like you have to drink if you're surrounded by people drinking? I keep hearing stories like that. Nobody is going to judge you for not consuming alcohol - if anyone does, they're c…

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.

Interesting. What do you mean by self-conscious ?

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

#788

Post by wz1000 »

knucklesandwich wrote: post #133
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…

Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. As has been pointed out below, HR that is staffed and incentivized by the company management only serves the interests of the management. A union is the only structure that can actually win demands for workers by organizing workers to withhold their labor. It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leaders…

> It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leadership betraying the trust of workers and neglecting the demands of the most marginalized members (such as the UAW in 1941), but a union correctly structured and rooted in worker solidarity is the only proven way to fight management on these kinds of issues.

Thats why the IWW exists, and they desperately need members. They refuse to cooperate with big business and government, and are based on decentralized worker solidarity and principles of direct action, not the capture of state power. If a union derives its power from the state, it is easily corrupted and subverted.

https://iww.org/unions/dept500/iu560

https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/want-to-unionize-developer...

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

#789

Post by zigzigzag »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #139

I may have experienced a little bit of sexual harassment in my youth when working at a local McDonald's but, being a guy, it was the only time and I was able to put a stop to be rather quickly. However, being in software engineering for the past 12 years, I have seen the sexual harassment of several women all of which never saw a proper resolution. For instance I worked at a small company that was later bought by a l…

No offence intended, and I realise the detail at the end about picking up the photo seals it for you, but you do realise that sometimes women lie, right? Unless there was written evidence or some other mitigating detail that was unmentioned, it sounds like you wanted the boss to be automatically fired based on nothing more than an accusation from a woman.

I've been in your bosses position, though not in a sex-related situation. A woman accused me of something in a private meeting with me and our manager. It was quite trivial and I can't even remember exactly what it was (this happened years ago), but it was work related - I was her tech lead but not her direct reporting manager and she was accusing me of undermining her, and gave an example of a specific incident that would indeed have been rather bad: if it were true. Which it wasn't.

Fortunately, this woman was an exceptionally bad liar (she lied repeatedly and frequently and had been caught many times but was mysteriously never let go). The conversation she was referring to had happened over email. So our boss asked her to bring it up so he could read it for himself. She proceeded to open her laptop, load the email and read it with the boss sitting next to her. It completely contradicted her account, and the only thing she could find to say was "oh". I remember me and my manager looking at each other with wtf type expressions on our faces.

That woman was eventually promoted into management.

What you described is a classic he-said/she-said situation. Perhaps he did have a crush on her and was a bit creepy, and the girl decided she didn't like that, but he never propositioned her. It sounds like you nor your team really knew the truth, but assumed you did. So why is it surprising to you that nothing happened? You want guilty until proven innocent to apply to you, if one day the tables are turned?

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

#790

Post by Illotus »

jacques_chester wrote: post #386
blhack wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to be honest, I know a lot of people who claim that they can write really good code if they've been drinking. I just absolutely do not understand how that is even possible. If I have ONE beer, it throws off my ability to write good code, or hold all of the concepts in my head. One of the weekly coworking meetups I go to always ends at a brewery (there is a brewery next door to the hackerspace where it is held)…

Alcohol increases confidence in one's abilities. Everyone has some skill they insist they are "better at" when drunk.

Back in university days I often wrote assignments while tipsy and then edited them when sober. Cider was just perfect for silencing the inner critic to get some thoughts to paper.
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