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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

#821

Post by facepalm »

kevinburke wrote: post #820
facepalm wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your guessing sounds rather sexist. Why not stick to data instead of guessing? There is enough bias against men already.

My "data" is every woman I know in tech sharing this story with a comment like, "A version of this happened to me" or "I know so many people who have had this happen to them." Also multiple stories of women reporting harassment and being forced out of companies, as well as multiple women I know signing NDA's as a condition of receiving severance pay to avoid discussing a company's poor treatment or management of hara…

Then don't write "I guess it is common", state the number of women who told you such things. Personally I haven't heard many such stories from women in tech.

Also differentiate between some colleague being interested in them and boss proposing sex on first day.

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

#822

Post by 67726e »

tptacek wrote: post #252
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 fully expected this thread to be a shitshow, but comments here are overwhelmingly supportive of Fowler, and except perhaps for the very bottom of the thread, I don't see much much "this is unbelievable" at all. I'm pleasantly surprised.

What scares me is that there is no evidence, only allegation. Yet people are jumping on the bandwagon, making sure to pillory anything they disagree with in connection to an alleged incident. Guess what? People lie. Until some proof is offered, you should treat the accuser with dignity but assume the story is false.

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

#823

Post by projektfu »

What shocks me is the talented engineers still putting in hard work for the benefit of this system that they all hate. Companies blackball employees all the time, but the employees are happy to go the extra mile for an antisocial management structure and a megalomaniac boss? What's wrong with you people?

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

#825

Post by sidcool »

sergiotapia wrote: post #43

>On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. Totally normal behavior! Who hasn't spoken about their sex life the very first day of interactions? "Welcome to the team, we use Git for source control, all of our company knowledgebase is…

Sex addict is the term that comes to mind.

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

#827

Post by miesman »

After 35 years working as an engineer one of the main things I've learned is that HR is there to protect the company from its employees. Sorry if that sounds cynical but it really is the bottom line. Even still, the fact that HR was unable to step in and even mitigate the destructive behavior (let alone doing the right thing) really speaks to the culture and ineptness of Uber's HR.

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

#828

Post by zigzigzag »

otikik wrote: post #809
zigzigzag wrote: post #789

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You might have missed this part: > I made sure to cite it along with his frequent trips to our area where, when she wasn't there, would pick up her photo of her and her boyfriend and just stare at it along with his fraudulent billing of clients

It looks like you didn't read my post, as you missed the first sentence where I explicitly reference that.

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

#829

Post by thecupisblue »

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.

"Hold my beer!"

"What?! Are you crazy?!"

"Don't worry, I got this."

Goes on to write vanilla JS.

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

#830

Post by lostboys67 »

bogomipz wrote: post #647
home_boi wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The booze thing gets exaggerated at many places. It is usually the marketing/HR/business dev/sales teams that indulge in that culture. The engineering team is usually much more constrained in their alcohol consumption, although the media groups them with the frat boys from sales.

I don''t agree with this at all. This certainly hasn't been my experience. Enthusiastic appreciation of craft beer and Scotch are very much a part of tech startup culture.

Try working for a Civil engineering company :-) I no longer drink snakebite and black at lunch :-)
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