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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

by mdip 10y ago

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 engineering. Granted, the percentage of women who were in technical, non-management, positions[0] hovered around 20%. In those cases, the skillsets of the women ranged as much as it did the men and all of the folks I worked with treated each other, regardless of gender, respectfully and professionally. I wouldn't imagine seeking a date with co-worker. What happens when you break up? Do you want to bring that to work with you ever day? At the companies I've worked for, I know of one incident where a person was let go for "having a crap-ton of porn on his work PC" that someone from security noticed when the proxy logs flagged his workstation. This individual was a VP, a "high performer" and was very well like. He was also out on his hide a few hours after his laptop was seized and inspected. This was with no reports from women even hinting that he'd acted inappropriately on the job. And we had nobody inspecting proxy logs looking for this sort of thing -- that guy in security who happened upon his workstation ended up being there because he was investigating a malfunction, but because of corporate agreements we'd all signed, he was obligated to report what he found[2]. I hate to say it, but this is the kind of behavior I'd expect out of teenagers, not adult men. And it's one of those things you usually don't have to tell people not to do. Though I have no experience with this specific kind of behavior, I've noticed that when people fail on morally obvious things, they're often failing on many other things and I would be worried if I were an investor about having my money tied up in a company that had this kind of a reputation -- what other laws does this corporate culture find acceptable to break? I'd be twice as concerned if this were my employer -- not just out of fear of being harassed, but out of fear that a company with these kinds of ethical lapses is often quickest to screw those who work for them (or take them down with them). No way. [0] Perhaps my experience is unusual, but for 17 years the VP level individuals in my teams have been women, I've reported to a Director level employee who was a woman and I've had a woman for a manager on more than one occasion. [1] Thus far, I know only of this account, which without additional data is as anecdotal as my comment, here, but based on others piling on, I am inclined to believe that there's a real problem here. [2] Paraphrased, we were basically required to report everything even if we were not directly involved, but if I saw something this inappropriate, I wouldn't need a signed agreement to persuade me -- I had full confidence in the HR teams at the places I was at and knew it would be handled appropriately.

linkregister 10y ago
We don't have to look very hard to find examples of sexual harassment lawsuits that the four major tech companies have lost. Anecdotally, I have been organizationally close (same manager, adjacent team) to serious misconduct and was completely oblivious to it, finding out about the wrongdoing years later. It is likely that Uber is alone with its scope of HR incompetence and wrongdoing. Although their SRE is supposed to have been lifted straight from Google and Facebook, the sexual harassment cases from those organizations didn't involve nearly as much dishonesty and apathy by their Human Resources sections.
cbtacy 10y ago
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.
- mdip 10y ago
  I've got to disagree here, and again, I'm going off of personal experience at only four companies. On the one hand, of the four companies, three were well established, and none were startups -- however, in a strike against them as far as discrimination is concerned, the they were in telecom and performed layoffs once to twice a year of about 5-10% of staff (more during 2007-2008). The only blatant cases of discrimination I witnessed were two occasions where older employees were let go due to them being close to retirement age[0]. Accusing individuals of turning a blind eye to discrimination is a pretty strong charge. An equally strong charge would be to state that some individuals go out of their way to look for discrimination where none exists and call those individuals something akin to "snowflakes". To be clear: I don't, personally, believe either of these things, but I think it's important to play Devil's Advocate from time to time. Another possibility is that people saying "it's unbelievable" do so because they, themselves, wouldn't dream of acting in this manner or being part of a team where this kind of behavior went on. And I think some people disregard "bigotry and rampant unprofessionalism" because human nature tends toward avoiding confrontation (or risking one's job by causing a problem for an influential manager). That last bit is the worst case because it causes the problem to be sanctioned through inaction, it damages the company, its shareholders, its customers and its employees[1], which causes a feedback loop making it even harder to stand up when something unethical is witnessed. [0] This was done because the managers thought it was the best option for everyone -- the two guys were with the company a long time, would receive a very big severance package (this company had a great severance offering) and they were preventing another few employees from being let go who were younger with families. Unfortunately, I know that in one case, the individual let go was both a high performer and had no desire to retire at retirement age. It was ugly and I nearly left the company after it happened (I only stayed because they were being bought out and the new company was taking us over -- it was as good as getting a new job as the two places didn't resemble each other on anything but paper). [1] And I get it -- I was personally told on one occasion by my boss that he "had just spent an hour convincing our VP that I should keep my job" because I pointed out a large license violation I had discovered and wasn't aware that the person responsible for that (unintentional) licensing oversight was in the room. In the end, though, I would have done it regardless and my actions resulted in that manager being forced to work with the vendor, avoided an audit and negotiation got us pennies on the dollar to become compliant, again.

by mdip 10y ago

linkregister 10y ago

We don't have to look very hard to find examples of sexual harassment lawsuits that the four major tech companies have lost. Anecdotally, I have been organizationally close (same manager, adjacent team) to serious misconduct and was completely oblivious to it, finding out about the wrongdoing years later. It is likely that Uber is alone with its scope of HR incompetence and wrongdoing. Although their SRE is supposed to have been lifted straight from Google and Facebook, the sexual harassment cases from those organizations didn't involve nearly as much dishonesty and apathy by their Human Resources sections.

cbtacy 10y ago

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.

mdip 10y ago
I've got to disagree here, and again, I'm going off of personal experience at only four companies. On the one hand, of the four companies, three were well established, and none were startups -- however, in a strike against them as far as discrimination is concerned, the they were in telecom and performed layoffs once to twice a year of about 5-10% of staff (more during 2007-2008). The only blatant cases of discrimination I witnessed were two occasions where older employees were let go due to them being close to retirement age[0]. Accusing individuals of turning a blind eye to discrimination is a pretty strong charge. An equally strong charge would be to state that some individuals go out of their way to look for discrimination where none exists and call those individuals something akin to "snowflakes". To be clear: I don't, personally, believe either of these things, but I think it's important to play Devil's Advocate from time to time. Another possibility is that people saying "it's unbelievable" do so because they, themselves, wouldn't dream of acting in this manner or being part of a team where this kind of behavior went on. And I think some people disregard "bigotry and rampant unprofessionalism" because human nature tends toward avoiding confrontation (or risking one's job by causing a problem for an influential manager). That last bit is the worst case because it causes the problem to be sanctioned through inaction, it damages the company, its shareholders, its customers and its employees[1], which causes a feedback loop making it even harder to stand up when something unethical is witnessed. [0] This was done because the managers thought it was the best option for everyone -- the two guys were with the company a long time, would receive a very big severance package (this company had a great severance offering) and they were preventing another few employees from being let go who were younger with families. Unfortunately, I know that in one case, the individual let go was both a high performer and had no desire to retire at retirement age. It was ugly and I nearly left the company after it happened (I only stayed because they were being bought out and the new company was taking us over -- it was as good as getting a new job as the two places didn't resemble each other on anything but paper). [1] And I get it -- I was personally told on one occasion by my boss that he "had just spent an hour convincing our VP that I should keep my job" because I pointed out a large license violation I had discovered and wasn't aware that the person responsible for that (unintentional) licensing oversight was in the room. In the end, though, I would have done it regardless and my actions resulted in that manager being forced to work with the vendor, avoided an audit and negotiation got us pennies on the dollar to become compliant, again.