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If they hired me, I'd be talking to all the ground workers personally about company culture in general, any abusive behavior at all, any sexism on top of that,

If they hired me, I'd be talking to all the ground workers personally about company culture in general, any abusive behavior at all, any sexism on top of that, and effects on business achieving its goals. I'd probably visit or survey them a few times to re-question based on extra information I got over time. I'd anonymize the source material in final report to executives and investors. I'd highlight any damage to business objectives that I found along with changes that amount to new top-down agenda plus house cleaning at middle & lower management levels. If no response, I'd give the report and anonymized data to the media instead. Scheming politicians talking to scheming executives and management rarely results in good things. Hopefully this does but I'm not optimistic.

alexandercrohde 10y ago
Well I'm not defending Uber, nor the status quo of doing a political facade of investigation to cover your ass but I think you're making it out to be a little too simple. Uber has over 6,000 employees, so let's say you send a survey to all of them that's confidential asking about harassing behavior. Let's say you get a number like 6% [360] feel they've been harassed. Let's say you talk to the 6%, but half of those seem ambiguous (i.e. nothing in writing, this individual has complaints about a number of people and past jobs, individual's account seems inconsistent). Perhaps other employees don't even fill out your survey because they don't trust it's anonymous, or that when investigating their claims HR will be able to know who the "troublemakers" are. Nonetheless you take the 3% that seem solid and to find common threads (the same person being complained about, HR people failing to record/raise complaints, etc) but without everything in writing it's so hard to prove who raised a concern about what last year. Maybe many of those people already have left (voluntarily or not). I think if we want to solve these types of problems truly, we need to think about developing auditable systems (e.g. HR gives you a signed and written copy of every complaint, which their supervisor sees, and that lying on such a complaint be a legal offense on both the individual and corporate level).
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I'm describing a method already implemented by many large companies and one-man shops that do "efficiency engineering" by basically listening to ground workers. One of my employers got better survey results than you're describing despite being over 10x bigger than Uber. Getting the info out of workers hasn't been the hard part in industry. It's getting management to act on it that's hard. Things have to get bad enough, esp in media, that executives are forced to respond and handle policy change top down. Uber is halfway in that position.
imron 10y ago
> If they hired me .... <list of things that would identify significant liability for uber>.... And that's why they're not hiring you.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Only optional media angle adds liability. Everything else reduces liability by giving executives ability to spot and remove obstacles to execution efficiency in the company. If internal politics are as bad as stated, then even straight-up firing most of the engineering management with SRE teams running autonomously on existing goals/functionality would possibly disrupt Uber less than managers are already doing. Might even see a boost in productivity since workers are focused on engineering work they love doing instead of politics.

alexandercrohde 10y ago

Well I'm not defending Uber, nor the status quo of doing a political facade of investigation to cover your ass but I think you're making it out to be a little too simple. Uber has over 6,000 employees, so let's say you send a survey to all of them that's confidential asking about harassing behavior. Let's say you get a number like 6% [360] feel they've been harassed. Let's say you talk to the 6%, but half of those seem ambiguous (i.e. nothing in writing, this individual has complaints about a number of people and past jobs, individual's account seems inconsistent). Perhaps other employees don't even fill out your survey because they don't trust it's anonymous, or that when investigating their claims HR will be able to know who the "troublemakers" are. Nonetheless you take the 3% that seem solid and to find common threads (the same person being complained about, HR people failing to record/raise complaints, etc) but without everything in writing it's so hard to prove who raised a concern about what last year. Maybe many of those people already have left (voluntarily or not). I think if we want to solve these types of problems truly, we need to think about developing auditable systems (e.g. HR gives you a signed and written copy of every complaint, which their supervisor sees, and that lying on such a complaint be a legal offense on both the individual and corporate level).

nickpsecurity 10y ago
I'm describing a method already implemented by many large companies and one-man shops that do "efficiency engineering" by basically listening to ground workers. One of my employers got better survey results than you're describing despite being over 10x bigger than Uber. Getting the info out of workers hasn't been the hard part in industry. It's getting management to act on it that's hard. Things have to get bad enough, esp in media, that executives are forced to respond and handle policy change top down. Uber is halfway in that position.

imron 10y ago

> If they hired me .... <list of things that would identify significant liability for uber>.... And that's why they're not hiring you.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
Only optional media angle adds liability. Everything else reduces liability by giving executives ability to spot and remove obstacles to execution efficiency in the company. If internal politics are as bad as stated, then even straight-up firing most of the engineering management with SRE teams running autonomously on existing goals/functionality would possibly disrupt Uber less than managers are already doing. Might even see a boost in productivity since workers are focused on engineering work they love doing instead of politics.