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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

#851

Post by bayesian_horse »

jitl wrote: post #191
Rapzid wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't qualify her as an industry veteran. This is not how things would have played out at a lot of the risk-adverse companies I have worked for. I'm sure it does at some places and it's no surprise to hear this about Uber TBH. Being just a couple years out of college, I'm not sure why you would expect her to understand all the shity ways the world can work.

What qualifications does Susan lack that would make her an "industry veteran" in your eyes?

I think that is debatable. She has apparently worked for four different companies, accomplished a lot and gone through quite some st already.

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

#852

Post by nickpsecurity »

mncolinlee wrote: post #669
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)…

There is something called the Ballmer Peak, which has even been demonstrated in one study. Up to a point, the theory goes, creative work benefits from mild intoxication. Beyond that point, productivity goes out the window. For me, I believe that point is around two drinks. For you, it could be teaspoons. Either way, I wouldn't generally drink before the end of the work day. Personally, I find coding is hardest when y…

I'll add that alcohol starts as an upper. It gives you a buzz that makes you feel good and want to do stuff. That's obviously beneficial if you can focus it on a work-related task. Several people here corroborated that hypotheses by saying they do. I've done it, too, in many situations.

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

#853

Post by scott_s »

tptacek wrote: post #183
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.

Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry. People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union cont…

There is aprofesssional association, but I don't think many non-academics see it as such: the ACM, http://www.acm.org/about-acm/about-the-acm-organization

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

#854

Post by grey-area »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #504
grey-area wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit surprised so many people want to give her advice. She's already taken a really bold step and written cogently and in a balanced way about her situation, the toxic culture at Uber, and made it clear she's moved on to a better place. Why talk about what she should be doing and hasn't done as if there is only one way to resolve this? Why not give thanks to the writer for writing this and putting up with all th…

I think this is a good point. The discussion here really highlights how people combine what they are reading with what they are thinking into a combined message. I was reading her account and the GP comment from the uber throwaway and making observational comments about people who spend time on political maneuver versus doing excellent work. I've known a number people over my career who got promoted often and achieve…

Thanks for this comment - I agree with your points here. It is worth us all thinking about how to fix the broken culture, rather than thinking about what the author can do, she's done her part in a very brave way by writing this honest article.

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

#855

Post by shoover »

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.

It is good to see the support here. I am unpleasantly surprised at the comments admonishing her for not lawyering up, though. She bothered to write publicly, which is more than anyone outside the situation could rightly ask. She wrote very well on painful, personal events and I think can be proud of how she handled it. It opens the door for others, and Uber management is going to have to deal with it one way or another this week.

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

#856

Post by TheCoelacanth »

tristor wrote: post #696
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of labor practices that most software developers would agree on changing: unpaid overtime, unreasonable on-call requirements, lack of transparency in equity compensation, unreasonably short windows for exercising vested stock options after leaving the company.

Thanks to the Fair Labor Standards Act, anyone who is a software engineer is exempt from overtime pay as long as they make at least $455/week on a salary basis.[1] Hint, I don't know any software engineers making less than $23660/yr. It's a heinously stupid regulation, and it's one which was lobbied for heavily by the tech industry to reduce labor costs. But that is the federal law of the US currently, which means ye…

Yes, I'm aware. That's why I pointed it out as something that a union could change.

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

#857

Post by weberc2 »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #753
weberc2 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have. Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objectiv…

> If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. In an idealized market, yes. But given incidents like this, it seems like some employees must be being treated for more fairly than others -- which suggests there's no fairness at all.

I was speaking about fairness across the economy, not fairness within the company. For every Uber there are a dozen companies that actively seek out female employees for diversity purposes. I'm not aware of any data that suggest gender discrimination in the United States (and no, the wage gap is not an example of discrimination, as almost all of it is known to be caused by differing aggregate priorities between the sexes).

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

#858

Post by Steuard »

67726e wrote: post #822
tptacek wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Party A accuses Party B of misconduct and Party B claims that the accusation is false (explicitly or implicitly), then someone is lying. If you aim to be nobly impartial until compelling evidence is available, the logically appropriate response is not "assume the story is false" but "assume the truth of the story is unknown". There's no purely logical reason to treat one story or the other as the one that should be believed by default. (Mind you, you don't have to refuse to make any judgement at all before irrefutable evidence is available. I personally believe that there are better approaches.) In this case, I don't know whether Uber has given any sort of response (whether to affirm or deny any of this), but absence of a denial certainly can't be construed to make their case stronger.

I too often see a tendency for people to treat claims of wrongdoing more skeptically than counterclaims of innocence, especially where gender is involved. That makes me very, very uneasy.

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

#859

Post by amyjess »

HerraBRE wrote: post #746
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…

The parent comment may seem a bit flippant, but the underlying question is a good one - why do talented, non-toxic people seek employment with companies that are well known to have such terrible culture? I'm not in the Valley, so all the information I have about Uber's culture is through popular media, but ever since I first heart the company's name it was linked to scandal, poor ethics and/or misogyny. Talented soft…

> Do SW devs just not realize how much power and choice they have? Or do people really just choose to work for unethical businesses because they expect a good paycheck?

I used to work for a company that mistreated me (no, they didn't pay me well either). Getting out felt like getting out of an abusive relationship, and I stayed as long as I did for the same reasons people stay in abusive relationships: I thought I was worthless and that no other company would hire me.

Before that company, I had been unemployed for two years thanks to the combination of the financial crisis and my own lack of experience. When I interviewed with them, I was ready to end it if I didn't get an offer because my extended unemployment had just run out. Thankfully, I got the offer, and I wound up working there for 2.75 years before I got out.

I believed that I had to stick with them because they gave me an offer when I was broke, desperate, and suicidal. As the problems kept piling up and piling up, I stayed because I was too afraid to put myself out there because I felt like I was a worthless person and deserved a company that would treat me like the worthless person I am.

Eventually, things got so bad that I applied to several companies at once in a fit of rage, and one of them got back to me with a coding test, then a phone interview, then an in-person interview, and finally an offer, at which point I had the pleasure of putting my notice on my boss's desk.

It's been over two years since I got out, and I'm glad for it. The company I jumped ship to ended up not working out in the long run -- a little over a year in, I got caught up in a layoff that took out 1/3 of the company -- but I eventually landed at my current job, which is by far and above the best company I've worked for, and I'm really glad I'm here and not still stuck at that abusive place.

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

#860

Post by knucklesandwich »

wz1000 wrote: post #788
knucklesandwich wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cooperat…

Love the wobblies, and from what I understand they've organized one of the few existing tech workers unions, the IWW 560. Definitely very interested in organizing with them.
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