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An honest thought: Is Uber an inherently "evil" company? Startups in the spotlight, like Uber, are under a lot of pressure to live up to their "darling" statu

An honest thought: Is Uber an inherently "evil" company? Startups in the spotlight, like Uber, are under a lot of pressure to live up to their "darling" status, lest they risk losing investors and the snowball of problems that comes with. Doesn't Uber have to be unrestrained in its current state? Don't most darlings of today (Amazon, et al) have to move forward as quickly and fervently as possible, putting comparatively less important (see: human resources vs. market valuation) to the back-burner?

munchbunny 10y ago
You're touching on some very well-trodden lines of thinking. It's the distinction between thinking of a situation as "morals aside, here's what's happening" and thinking of a situation as "high road and low road lead to the same place, but one is clearly better." This distinction and the conflation of the two perspectives is why Machiavelli has a bad name. Uber isn't inherently "evil" to the extent that its product and mission aren't clearly one way or another morally. But based on Ms. Fowler's blog post and the information that has come out afterwards, Uber has systematically done immoral things by creating a culture clearly hostile to women. And they knew about it and did nothing about it. In that sense, yes, they are being evil. In the long run, maybe this isn't enough to sink the Uber ship. Maybe keeping the brilliant jerks around was actually the right decision from a business standpoint. That doesn't stop Uber from being evil, it just means that they succeeded in the amoral sense. But you also can't draw any conclusions about whether neglecting HR was or wasn't advantageous, because there are too many factors at play. So at the end of the day, we make a value judgement that women should be treated equitably regardless of the situation (within sensible bounds), and Uber seems to have done the opposite in many big ways.
trjordan 10y ago
A good thought. There is a real pressure to perform at the highest level. There's a naive view that lets you either ignore this kind of sexist behavior because the perpetrators are productive, or condemn it, possibly tanking the company in the process. However, Uber is not a small company, and there is lumpiness in their performance. In Susan Fowler's article, there's a real concern to turning over a large chunk of their employees, and the fact that they're women shows that this is a problem of sexism. That sort of moderate-scale bigotry is harmful to a company, and it's not something that you can necessarily read the whole culture from. Growth papers over a lot of things, but that doesn't mean the things that are happening are good and that they're condemned by all. Moving forward is important, but there's real short-term incentives for the managers of bigots and harassers to clean up their houses. It's reasonable that they made mistakes hiring too fast, but there's no real reason to tolerate that kind of behavior for any amount of time.
muglug 10y ago
There's a difference between working hard to solve a set of problems and Uber HR's reported abrogation of their responsibility to foster a safe working environment.
gillianlish 10y ago
Yes, there is absolutely no fucking way other than treating employees like they are garbage. Of all the hundreds of thousands of companies in the world, Amazon and Uber are the two most typical and everyone needs to follow them because obviously they are doing things the way it has to be done. That's how all the great products we use were made. Like think about the Snuggly. Snuggly HQ was a brutal realization of Lord of the Flies. The bottom sales guy had his head cut off and stuck on a pike in front of the others so they'd remember their duty to the emperor.
- stagbeetle 10y ago
  Your examples are working against you. Companies aren't about great products, they're about making money. Snuggie (Allstar Products Group) is magnitudes less important and powerful than Amazon. Coming from an executive perspective and not an engineering/developing one
  - nikdaheratik 10y ago
    Or maybe your examples are the special case. IMO, you don't have to treat your employees poorly in order to get the best results. What happens is that important and rich companies tend to attract these abusive harassers who want to carve out a space in an important company and make a big chunk of money as well. And because the company is more focused on growth, it hasn't brought in the right gatekeepers to keep these kinds of people away.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
I'm going to put aside the question of whether it is "evil" or not (it is, IMO). I don't believe there is anyone putting a gun, or a huge check or whatever, to the CEOs head, or the HR director's head and telling them they have to play enabler to a serial harasser, even once. And it doesn't matter whether it's a sexual harasser or an abusive supervisor, the person should be out either way. The idea that being an a-hole is what gets the job done is just a relic, if it ever was true. People do their best work when they aren't being harassed or having to put up with alot of useless BS. I would bet that if you look at the actual results, you would see that their employees are getting the job done in spite of these tactics, or maybe that they're not performing as well as they could, and that the toxic person is also sabotaging other teams to such an extent that their group looks better by comparison. Bottom line, either the people who should be making the right decision and firing people for toxic behavior don't care, or they are not allowed to do their job and get rid of them because the people above them won't let them. Which just leaves them doing damage control. Neither option is acceptable.

munchbunny 10y ago

You're touching on some very well-trodden lines of thinking. It's the distinction between thinking of a situation as "morals aside, here's what's happening" and thinking of a situation as "high road and low road lead to the same place, but one is clearly better." This distinction and the conflation of the two perspectives is why Machiavelli has a bad name. Uber isn't inherently "evil" to the extent that its product and mission aren't clearly one way or another morally. But based on Ms. Fowler's blog post and the information that has come out afterwards, Uber has systematically done immoral things by creating a culture clearly hostile to women. And they knew about it and did nothing about it. In that sense, yes, they are being evil. In the long run, maybe this isn't enough to sink the Uber ship. Maybe keeping the brilliant jerks around was actually the right decision from a business standpoint. That doesn't stop Uber from being evil, it just means that they succeeded in the amoral sense. But you also can't draw any conclusions about whether neglecting HR was or wasn't advantageous, because there are too many factors at play. So at the end of the day, we make a value judgement that women should be treated equitably regardless of the situation (within sensible bounds), and Uber seems to have done the opposite in many big ways.

trjordan 10y ago

A good thought. There is a real pressure to perform at the highest level. There's a naive view that lets you either ignore this kind of sexist behavior because the perpetrators are productive, or condemn it, possibly tanking the company in the process. However, Uber is not a small company, and there is lumpiness in their performance. In Susan Fowler's article, there's a real concern to turning over a large chunk of their employees, and the fact that they're women shows that this is a problem of sexism. That sort of moderate-scale bigotry is harmful to a company, and it's not something that you can necessarily read the whole culture from. Growth papers over a lot of things, but that doesn't mean the things that are happening are good and that they're condemned by all. Moving forward is important, but there's real short-term incentives for the managers of bigots and harassers to clean up their houses. It's reasonable that they made mistakes hiring too fast, but there's no real reason to tolerate that kind of behavior for any amount of time.

muglug 10y ago

There's a difference between working hard to solve a set of problems and Uber HR's reported abrogation of their responsibility to foster a safe working environment.

gillianlish 10y ago

Yes, there is absolutely no fucking way other than treating employees like they are garbage. Of all the hundreds of thousands of companies in the world, Amazon and Uber are the two most typical and everyone needs to follow them because obviously they are doing things the way it has to be done. That's how all the great products we use were made. Like think about the Snuggly. Snuggly HQ was a brutal realization of Lord of the Flies. The bottom sales guy had his head cut off and stuck on a pike in front of the others so they'd remember their duty to the emperor.

stagbeetle 10y ago
Your examples are working against you. Companies aren't about great products, they're about making money. Snuggie (Allstar Products Group) is magnitudes less important and powerful than Amazon. Coming from an executive perspective and not an engineering/developing one
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  Or maybe your examples are the special case. IMO, you don't have to treat your employees poorly in order to get the best results. What happens is that important and rich companies tend to attract these abusive harassers who want to carve out a space in an important company and make a big chunk of money as well. And because the company is more focused on growth, it hasn't brought in the right gatekeepers to keep these kinds of people away.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

I'm going to put aside the question of whether it is "evil" or not (it is, IMO). I don't believe there is anyone putting a gun, or a huge check or whatever, to the CEOs head, or the HR director's head and telling them they have to play enabler to a serial harasser, even once. And it doesn't matter whether it's a sexual harasser or an abusive supervisor, the person should be out either way. The idea that being an a-hole is what gets the job done is just a relic, if it ever was true. People do their best work when they aren't being harassed or having to put up with alot of useless BS. I would bet that if you look at the actual results, you would see that their employees are getting the job done in spite of these tactics, or maybe that they're not performing as well as they could, and that the toxic person is also sabotaging other teams to such an extent that their group looks better by comparison. Bottom line, either the people who should be making the right decision and firing people for toxic behavior don't care, or they are not allowed to do their job and get rid of them because the people above them won't let them. Which just leaves them doing damage control. Neither option is acceptable.