27 ms·

In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment: relationships within a reporting chain are generally prohibited, for both legal, ethical,

• elmar 10y ago
  I am shocked, how is possible to get away with this toxic company culture.
  • davedx 10y ago
    Because they're "high performers". Screw Uber. Just delete that app and never use it.
    • u_wot_m8 10y ago
      I'd like the think that eventually karma will catch up with Uber. Hard to think of a single positive thing to say about the company.
      • sokoloff 10y ago
        Here's my positive thing. Taking a cab to the airport from my house in Cambridge, MA runs about $42 before tip, so call it $48 or so. An UberX costs $24.30 right now and UberPool costs $14.30 right now. Additionally, I can summon the ride more easily and get better feedback about the arrival time, giving me more confidence/less anxiety that I'll have a problem getting to the airport on time. As a consumer, by reducing my cost by 50-70% while providing a marginally better service, I can readily find one thing positive to say about the company.
        • u_wot_m8 10y ago
          You could say the same about lyft, seemingly minus the illegal and immoral behavior, though they might get away with the same behavior due to not being in the spotlight as much as Uber
          • sokoloff 10y ago
            Sure. Being able to say a positive thing about Jane does not diminish the positive thing that I say about Susan.
        • karussell 10y ago
          Wait until no one else is in the market. Then have fun with your positive thing/thinking :)
          • mikeash 10y ago
            I don't see that happening. There's no natural monopoly here and almost no barriers to entry. The moment Uber tries to leverage being the only one left, someone new will undercut them.
            • majewsky 10y ago
              There will be a natural monopoly (or rather, a natural oligopoly) once the car makers all have their own autonomous carsharing fleets and sell cars only with an EULA that forbids ridesharing. The entry barrier for car manufacturing is way higher.
              • stale2002 10y ago
                Ok, but a lot of companies are working on self driving cars. If one company refuses to sell self driving cars to consumers/upstart ride sharing companies, then that means that ANOTHER self driving car company can makes 10s of billions of dollars by ignoring this rule. Do you really think that not a single one of the multitude of self driving car companies would break the collusion agreement, if there is 10s of billions of dollars on the line?
      • tomlu 10y ago
        It should cost them employment talent, which should be a factor against them versus other employers with less toxic work cultures, all else being equal.
  • angry-hacker 10y ago
    They are used to break the laws, it's called disruption, I think.
    • grzm 10y ago
      Disruption doesn't necessarily imply illegal activity.
      • rebolek 10y ago
        But Uber does.
        • grzm 10y ago
          Then that's the point that should be made, not some vague innuendo about an aspect of entrepreneurism in general.
      • mtanski 10y ago
        In fact many current industries engage in illegal activities. Most often cartel behavior and price fixing. Generally this behavior is not curbed already because it's hard to prove price fixing without having concrete information about the communication. Technically you don't need to have communication, but it's hard. Sometimes all you need is one new vendor to enter the market place and not play by the old rules.
    • rhizome 10y ago
      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 they aren't disrupting anything but taxi management and not hacks[1] in general. 1. http://answergirlnet.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-are-taxi-cabs-called-hacks.html http://answergirlnet.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-are-taxi-cabs-...
  • powera 10y ago
    There is no pressure to change when they can continue to get billion-dollar handouts from Saudi billionaires no matter what happens.
  • calvinbhai 10y ago
    probably because "Brilliant Jerks" are tolerated
    • st3v3r 10y ago
      Yup. There was the article a couple days ago about how employers should avoid the "brilliant jerks", and everyone in the comments was saying how they'd rather have the "brilliant jerk" than someone who was nice and mediocre (despite the fact that isn't the choice at all; there are plenty of people who are talented and not asshats). Well, when you make that decision, this is the kind of workplace you get.
• username223 10y ago
  Not just sex, but sex in an "open relationship," presumably as "backup booty." It's hard for me to understand why she didn't immediately start trying to GTFO, but instead stuck around for a year and tried to make things work. Save transcripts and screenshots, find a new job, then sue at leisure.
  • stevebmark 10y ago
    You really can't think of a reason why someone would want to stay at a company like Uber? Salary? Stock options? Career path? Career security? Coworkers? The early belief that HR would help correct this? She did end up leaving the company after trying to fix it. Your not understanding why she stayed for so long is part of the problem.
    • username223 10y ago
      > Salary? Stock options? Are they really so much above typical Bay Area rates? > Career path? Career security? Plenty of people are still hiring in the current bubble, and she's an SRE, not an auto specialist or something. > Coworkers? Like the one who dropped his pants? > The early belief that HR would help correct this? Of which she was quickly disabused.
      • smhost 10y ago
        I think the downvotes might be from people who want to be super careful about victim-blaming. But I agree with you that we should be training people to detect bullshit early on and to just get the fuck out in those situations. Labeling her actions as rational and healthy is probably not helpful either.
        • stevebmark 10y ago
          You both should sit this one out. Talk to your women engineer friends to get a better understanding of the situation.
• NDT 10y ago
  Oh you mean the piece of shit that thought shouting "Faggot, hope you die of AIDs" was a good display of free speech? I wonder if he, as a gay man in a powerful position, would be ok with that now.
• knucklesandwich 10y ago
  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 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.
  • TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
    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.
    • unityByFreedom 10y ago
      What? It's literally your right to vote to join a union. If a majority of coworkers vote for one, you've got a union. Look up the National Labor Relations Act.
      • tptacek 10y ago
        Not only is this true, but the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. It's a huge exception to at-will employment. I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started talking to the Tech Solidarity people. I'd always thought the reason nobody goes on strike is that you'd simply be fired for doing so. But, no! That was dumb of me! Striking --- really, most forms of employee protest against working conditions --- is protected federally. I'm particularly interested in how these laws interact with the employment laws for salaried workers. In addition to it being unlawful (in most cases) to fire an employee for striking, it's also (usually) legally risky to dock a salaried employee's pay.
• a13n 10y ago
  Does anyone know who this "high performing" manager is?
• madeofpalk 10y ago
  > In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment Is there anyone that thought a manager asking their subordinate for sex isn't harassment?
  • dgudkov 10y ago
    Strictly speaking asking a subordinate for sex is not always a harassment (but very frequently is).
    • dzhiurgis 10y ago
      What are the scenarios where it is and isn't harassment? I have not knowledge or experience in this area, so to me it looks you'd either have to use very vulgar language, do it repeatedly after being told it is unwanted or basically have negative intention. Else it's just an odd thing to do at workplace. Note, I am asking this as genuinely curious foreigner from very un-PC culture. Not trying to be annoying or anything like that.
      • dgudkov 10y ago
        Appreciate your politeness in a such controversial topic. Apparently, when the both persons are already in a romantic relationship, or are spouses (which can happen in a family business) it's not harassment. Thus, whether such offer is harassment or not is based on a subjective judgement of each party, rather than some hard-coded rule. In the case described by the author it was clearly harassment because one party perceived it so. Even when it's not harassment and wanted by both parties, it still can be undesirable from a professional ethics perspective as it can affect morale of other employees. So it leaves very few cases when it's acceptable, but they do exist.
      • monodeldiablo 10y ago
        For the same reason that police can't ethically solicit sex from someone they've pulled over for a traffic violation: There's a power imbalance that unfairly biases the propositioner over the victim. Even if the boss asks politely, the subordinate knows that their job -- and likely their financial stability -- ultimately depends on making the boss happy...
• morgante 10y ago
  I don't understand how anyone could be unsure about that being harassment. It's about as clear-cut as you can get. He should have been fired the day that surfaced. If someone who worked for me ever did something like that, they'd be out the door pronto. It speaks volumes that he wasn't, to the point which I am irrationally tempted to doubt the veracity of her claims. Don't proposition anyone in your reporting chain. Don't flirt with them. Don't do anything with them. It's really not that complicated. If you are attracted to someone who works for you (it happens), do the adult thing and ignore it.
  • pas 10y ago
    It's hard to just ignore feelings. You'll have biases. It'll show. (Eventually.) Talk to HR (or your boss), get them (or you) a new team/manager. Or if the feelings go away, then great, crisis averted, but it's rarely that simple.
    • morgante 10y ago
      That's not always possible (especially in a small startup) and I'd argue it's not fair to force them to change teams. I also disagree with the notion that it'll show eventually. Usually if you consciously suppress them they'll go away pretty quickly.
  • rimantas 10y ago
    > do the adult thing and ignore it. While it probably the best advice it does sound a bit like pope's advice for the gay people: it is ok, if you do not act on it. Being unhappy is just an adult thing, I guess.
• dmritard96 10y ago
  it is interesting that sex is the hot button. in general we special case sex in the US. While I dont mean to say sexual harrasment isnt a real problem, its interesting to me more philosophically that propositioning for sex is ultra problematic but propostioning for a platonic relationship is less so, or drinking, or anything else beyond strict job fulfillment labor. its obviously a problem when a power dynamic is abused but I would argue there is a weird puritanical nature to seeing a sexual proposition as preposterous but an unwanted platonic advance as largely benign
  • misingnoglic 10y ago
    I would say that if the manager asked her out on a platonic date on her first week, that would be almost as wildly inappropriate.
    • dmritard96 10y ago
      My experience at a former company was that the management would plan a group happy hour and there was a ton of pressure to participate. This in particular hurt those that had families or other priorities and advantaged those that were younger and more willing to drink. I was young and willing enough to go along with drinking but personally felt this was more a requirement since so much in the way of promotions and getting put on the best projects was who you knew on top of technical competency. I will say the dynamic is different when its a one on one socializing vs team outings but in general I think its quite complex. There is no doubt that what happened is wrong, kept happening and constitutes sexual harassment, but its weird to me that sexual harassment so overwhelmingly gets attention when the cultural problems with orgs like this are so much deeper.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• davesque 10y ago
  Are people legitimately needing clarification on this?
• djhworld 10y ago
  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.