I am an Uber survivor • Hacker News Board

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#801

Post by grokas » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

uberengineer123 wrote: post #698

barleymash wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't think someone should be fired without "overwhelming evidence" (California is at-will, of course you can fire someone for being a massive jackass that makes/made sexist comments), doesn't mean your anecdote doesn't corroborate the sentiments of this article. Despite the fact that you felt like you dealt with the situation, it still shows that this type of thing happens at Uber, even in "your cor…

>(California is at-will, of course you can fire someone for being a massive jackass that makes/made sexist comments) There are more considerations like whether you're willing to pay unemployment, or open yourself up to a lawsuit depending on the circumstances.

So basically, Uber is LESS willing to risk a lawsuit for firing bad/sexist/asshat employees and MORE willing to risk a lawsuit from employees who bear the brunt of the abuse.

Oh yea thats right. As other have discussed, its because Uber is a juggernaut corp who will out-spend the legal competition anyway, so Uber doesn't care.

I appreciate your defense that "it isn't everyone" and "I am an Uber engineer and I stand up for women/gays/minorities", but I'm not sure we are getting at the larger picture here.

Its the movers and shakers at the top who need to start setting the right example instead of protecting their golf buddy who is making 6 figures. You have done your part, but this needs to go all they way up to the top.

You'd think they would at the very least care about the bad press in terms of quarterly/yearly earnings and the potential loss of customers/drivers because of the PR fallout.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#802

Post by chickenfries » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 3:59 PM UTC

mjolk wrote: post #236

chickenfries wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you understand the possible risks to putting your real name behind your words, regardless of their veracity. Medium isn't a court of law, they don't owe anyone any evidence and you pointing out that there isn't any is implying that they have a reason to hide their name that isn't justified.

> Medium isn't a court of law, they don't owe anyone any evidence and you pointing out that there isn't any is implying that they have a reason to hide their name that isn't justified. You're right. And I don't have to trust what I read on Medium -- what I'm suggesting is that I don't believe _this particular anonymous author_ (and to be careful, I'm entirely willing to believe a culture of unacceptable behavior exis…

Very well, since you refuse to stand behind your words I assume you are an Uber shill, perhaps Travis himself, trying to cast dispersion on a story.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#803

Post by dang » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 4:01 PM UTC

mememachine wrote: post #793

dang wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've banned this account for trolling. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13748377 and marked it off-topic.

I'm actually not trolling... I was making a real effort to have a genuine discussion here believe it or not. To be honest I'm not sure what I did wrong, and I'm definitely not pleased with this result.

Perhaps you weren't trolling intentionally, but you made the quality of this already divisive thread far lower in the two ways that aren't ok here: unsubstantiveness and incivility. You've also done this before.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#804

Post by ryanx435 » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #523

ryanx435 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

innocent until proven guilty. this means that we have to hold 2 competing ideas at the same time until due process has been given, like shrodeinger's cat only for justice: 1) the woman is a victim and the "shitbag" should be punished appropriately. 2) the woman is lying and the "shitbag" is a victim of false accusations. until more details are known, it is possible that the accused is the victim. If this ends up bein…

That applies in the case of a court of law or if I were an individual in the media reporting on the alleged incident (in which case I would likely try to corroborate with other alleged victims). It doesn't make sense in the situation (here) where someone is making the accusation. She knows it happened, she was there , from that perspective this guy should be getting wrecked. It would be a public service. There's no r…

I hereby accuse you of sexually assaulting me. I know it happened. I was there, and from that perspective you should be getting wrecked. I am making my accusations anonymously on the internet so it must be true.

by your logic we should now scream your name from the mountain tops and conduct a witch hunt and destroy your reputation and livelihood simply because you have been accused.

the truth is that Women are people and people often lie. True equality means recognizing that everyone, male, female, and everywhere in between, have the capacity for lying.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#805

Post by dang » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #732

This is the part that really hits me. When, in a meeting, Mike#2 says to "stop being a whiny little bitch" Yet Torvalds says worse all the time, and he's a geek hero. I sense a double standard here, and I'm not sure why.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13750425 and marked it off-topic.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#806

Post by harryh » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 4:14 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #796

rl3 wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People like you are the problem. Not exactly healthy discourse.

People have had a decade to get used to the idea of institutional discrimination, unconscious biases, unintentional discrimination and sexism. I don't expect the average rural Trump voter to have become aware and gain an in-depth understanding of these concepts over that time, but well-educated, well-connected, big-city techies that frequent hackernews have NO EXCUSE. There is no room for healthy discourse when the d…

I can both listen, understand and empathize while at the same time engaging my critical thinking skills. The former does not preclude the latter.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#807

Post by eropple » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 4:50 PM UTC

iopq wrote: post #787

eropple wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be frank? Uber gets the benefit of the doubt when they demonstrate that they've earned it. Every bit of smoke I have seen, both online and in my social circles, has had fire behind it. Every one , without exception. So I'm going to believe this until I have a compelling reason not to, and "but it could be fake" isn't one.

Just because every time you personally saw fire behind smoke doesn't mean that in the future this will hold.

This is true! And when Uber demonstrates that they deserve the benefit of the doubt, I will give it to them. Because I'm not a court; I'm a person.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#808

Post by unholiness » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 4:57 PM UTC

uberengineer123 wrote: post #605

wvenable wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I really want to see is the other 20 men on her team tell their bosses to cut that shit out. It sounds like the abuse is pretty universal, from the article: "It was normal for guys to refer to other guys as fags when they didn't participate in private parties where sex and drugs were involved." The 20 other men on her team were probably as concerned with keeping their job and not being abused. The big differen…

>It sounds like the abuse is pretty universal, from the article: "It was normal for guys to refer to other guys as fags when they didn't participate in private parties where sex and drugs were involved." Full disclosure, I work at Uber. I have been staying out of this until now, but this point particularly grinds my gears. If I heard anything remotely like what was discussed in this article you bet your ass I'm going…

I agree, but for people to step up and complain, there needs to be a system around them that supports it.

The crazy part about these stories is not that Uber has a few awful people, and it's not that there aren't people who will speak up and complain. The crazy part about these stories is that HR seems to be systematically supporting the few awful people and antagonizing the people who speak up and complain.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#809

Post by mememachine » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #803

mememachine wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually not trolling... I was making a real effort to have a genuine discussion here believe it or not. To be honest I'm not sure what I did wrong, and I'm definitely not pleased with this result.

Perhaps you weren't trolling intentionally, but you made the quality of this already divisive thread far lower in the two ways that aren't ok here: unsubstantiveness and incivility. You've also done this before.

Really? You thought I was unsubstantial? The people I was replying to were far more unsubstantive and really I restrained from incivility admirably. This is a disappointing decision to say the least.

Re: I am an Uber survivor

#810

Post by heisenbit » Tue, Feb 28, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

nylonstrung wrote: post #497

jastingo wrote: post #257

I'm not in the business of defending Uber - quite the contrary - but reading through the comments it seems that most people are assuming that this post by an anonymous person is 100% true. These types of posts are worrying to me. Why could this post not have been crafted by someone at Lyft? Or one of Uber's many other detractors? Given the PR nightmare that Uber is in why not pile on while the public seems primed for…

At a company as large as Uber could someone working on database scalability be involved in calls about whether or not payment should be withheld from drivers before a ride ends? Would her manager be the decision maker for that? That detail seems suspect to me. There are also essentially no details about the work that convey inside knowledge about the ideosyncracies of Uber specifically at a work place. It is also wei…

The way I see it is that the team was working on the payment system. She may well have specialized on some scaling aspects but that does not preclude her working within a team having responsibility for building or maintaining the payment system. Considering that Uber has a micro services architecture the teams will be organized vertically along end-to-end functionality and not along the architectural layers. In that way the story is consistent with what is publicly known about Uber IT.