Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber

susanjfowler.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

931–940 of 1001 posts

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

#931

Post by cbtacy »

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.

Well said. Those of us who have worked with folks in management at Uber or who have friends who have worked at Uber all know very well what Uber is like. This is no more shocking than discovering that Amazon is a brutal, highly political workplace. People in tech just don't want to admit that their little playground is a cesspool of discrimination, entitlement and bigotry. That's all.

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

#932

Post by battlebot »

sidcool wrote: post #824

What a shitty HR. Fire the bastards

First off, I'm a man and I haven't fared a whole lot better over the years. You never go to HR for any reason. I once had an absentee manager whom the entire team complained about. Why the hell the company even protected that asshat is a mystery to me, but they backed him to the hilt while basically censuring all of us. That's not as bad as sexual harassment, but the state some of these companies are in and yet they still manage to operate!

And this is why so many working people are stressed to the max and basically just don't give a shit anymore.

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

#933

Post by DanBC »

cbtacy wrote: post #925
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.

I'm guessing you're male? Time to sit down and shut up for a bit, yeah?

If you think a comment shouldn't be on HN you can downvote it or flag it.

There's a high karma threshold for voting. There's a lower karma threshold for flagging. Flagging (I think) should be reserved for serious violations. The flag button appears if you click the timestamp of the post.

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

#934

Post by cbtacy »

mdip wrote: post #645
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 think the "this is unbelievable" comments are coming from people who have worked in the industry for a long time -- but not at Uber -- who are surprised that this sort of thing not only goes on, but that HR appears to be advocating the behavior through inaction. At least from my anecdotal experience, I've never seen anything like this among the four companies and 20 years I've been in software development and engin…

I've worked in the industry for 25 years. I'm not shocked. It's no surprise at all. The only people who are saying "it's unbelievable" are people who have worked VERY hard to not see disgusting bigotry and rampant unprofessionalism that is endemic in this industry.

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

#935

Post by cbtacy »

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…

The CEO is the problem. The fish stinks from the head.

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

#936

Post by ansible »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #30
jackweirdy wrote: post #13

> The HR rep began the meeting by asking me if I had noticed that I was the common theme in all of the reports I had been making That's such a meaningless thing for an HR person to ask someone, that it clearly only serves to be patronising and hopefully stop them bringing problems up. I mean, how could you as an HR staffer possibly justify your inaction with an argument like that? "We didn't act on any of their compl…

HR serves to protect the company, you have to think in HR's shoes. If the complainant goes away and finds another job the problem is solved. Most harassment cases tend not to end up in court, usually the aggrieved party quits.

HR serves to protect the company, you have to think in HR's shoes.

HR, done ethically and applied consistently, protects both the company and the employees. It makes clear what is acceptable, and what isn't. And it makes clear what is expected of each employee in general.

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

#937

Post by facepalm »

cbtacy wrote: post #926
facepalm wrote: post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took issue with the "I guess it is very common that women expect that kind of harassment", because it plays into sexist stereotypes. I think in these matters )(sexism, racism, bias), it pays to be precise. How else can you counter bias? What if countless people told me they had been mugged by black people? Don't understand your comment about lines in the sand. What do you mean?

Exactly. You don't understand. So stop talking and start listening to the women around you, yeah?

Which women? There were no women mentioned, just a guess that it happens often. There was one article by one woman that is the topic here. Afaik nobody claimed that her story is unbelievable.

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

#938

Post by lowbloodsugar »

home_boi wrote: post #913
meowface wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't explain the bizarre jacket drama, or reports from other female coworkers.

The jacket drama had nothing to do with gender really and she was making a big deal out of something trivial. I can imagine the scenario is like "ok we're too cheap to create custom jackets for everyone so we will order the jacket size that fits the majority and the minority can try to fit in it". If the gender ratio was the other way around, there would be a similar situation. The response to other reports are stand…

Sure, and we could save money by only have women's restrooms on every other floor, or not at all since we can certainly save money by not hiring women at all. Its just economic sense: we know that its easier to find men, so lets just optimize for men. Then there's all that diversity training. And don't forget women create tension at the office because they are pretty and their women parts distract the men who can't be expected to control themselves.

If you think that any of this is trivial, you are part of the problem.

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

#939

Post by facepalm »

headcanon wrote: post #930
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.

finding data about underreporting of sexual harassment in the workplace is by definition difficult, since it is by definition not being reported, so anecdotes are all we have in many cases. If you want a source though, here is one: ( https://hbr.org/2016/10/why-we-fail-to-report-sexual-harassm... ) In this case, the data is moot. It doesn't matter if 10% of women experience this, or 90%. Whether or not it is a proble…

Of course the scale of the problem makes a difference. People are also being murdered on a daily basis, but we don't claim it affects the labor force at scale (like "there is a shortage of women in STEM because they have all been murdered"). Just like murders should be prevented, sexual harassment should be prevented. But that doesn't necessarily make it a large scale problem.

As for the linked problem, I criticize that it doesn't properly define sexual harassment. The comparison here is to a guy who proposed sex on a first work day and threatened a stunted career. Is that really what women experience all the time. Or is it mostly that an unwanted colleague is attracted to them? The methodology is also not clear (very likely they only asked women, which seems rather one-sided. For "real" crime there is a reason for there being courts and judges).

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

#940

Post by HerraBRE »

amyjess wrote: post #859
HerraBRE wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

Thank you for sharing your experience, it's enlightening. I'm glad you're in a better place now.
Post reply on HN