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This stinks of scapegoating, of cover up, of distraction. I'm sure Uber hopes this is a best/least impact course of action for them to begin to erase last week
by voidhorse 10y ago
This stinks of scapegoating, of cover up, of distraction.
I'm sure Uber hopes this is a best/least impact course of action for them to begin to erase last week's terrible publicity from everyone's minds.
They
a. Fire someone who has only been there a month -- so don't lose too hard employee investment wise.
b. Happened to find someone to fire who fits extremely well into a narrative that makes it appear as though they are toughening up and tackling the root of these recent sexual harassment accusations when in reality the good old boys will be sticking around.
Capitalism may improve greatly once we have robot overlord higher-ups that are optimized for economic success only and not power drunk once they don a suit, prove they are a little more cunning and opportunistic than most people that still have fully operating empathetic brain parts, and are, quite frankly often the most idiotic but belligerent (read infantile) people in the room--though of course if some current top-dogs design/get a stake in the business logic of our future corporate AIs I'm sure our mechanized leaders will be just as ruthless and scummy.
I suspect there's a host of tie wearing, sycophantic, despicable wretches out there for every corporate leader to whom one could actually ascribe any virtue or nobility--to one whom you can call leader without having the taste of vomit well up in your mouth.
I'm not sure if that's a problem caused by capitalism or merely exacerbated by it. Chicken/egg sort of thing.
Of course I can only draw upon my limited experience, but I've met very few people in high stakes positions at major companies that I actually liked or even considered intelligent and deserving of the benefits they receive--then again ours is often a system of reward based on raw time spent and bribes offered rather than actual merit. Furthermore, it's an unfortunate fact that valuable qualities are often uncoupled; the person of great intellect may well be a piss poor leader nine times out of ten. Granted, anyone in a higher-up position at a major company has a hell of a lot of stress, responsibility, and pressure on them, but that does not legitimate disgusting behavior as an acceptable outlet, nor does it legitimate chest buffing since effective leadership at major corporation scale often relies on the minor leadership and autonomy of subordinates anyway.
Hierarchies are foolish.
- test1235 10y agoKalanick probably has an ordered list of employees he's ready to fire until this thing goes away. I wouldn't even put it beyond him to hire someone just so he can fire them after a month or two.
- madeofpalk 10y agoPlease don't raise fear, uncertainty, and doubt about this. I don't hold Uber is very high regard, especially when it comes to ethical and moral decisions, but your comment comes with a certain amount of unfound malicious intent that simple hasn't been demonstrated in any of Kalanick's, or Uber's, actions.
- lawless123 10y ago" that simple hasn't been demonstrated in any of Kalanick's, or Uber's, actions." We're talking about a company that wanted to dig up dirt on journalists. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/18/uber-exec-apologises-emil-michael-journalist-sarah-lacy https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/18/uber-exec...
- notimetorelax 10y agoOne doesn't prove the other.
- lawless123 10y agoYou're right, there's smoke everywhere and the stern of the ship is on fire but that doesn't prove the bow is on fire.
- madeofpalk 10y agoI'm not trying to defend Uber! They're certainly a company that has very 'flexible' morals and ethics. However the claim "Kalanick has an ordered list of employees he's ready to fire until this thing goes away. [He probably did] hire someone just so he can fire them after a month or two." is absolutely unfounded and is based in such little reality that it doesn't belong here on HN.
- allengeorge 10y ago
- vinceguidry 10y agoI don't know about you, but I would much rather work for a person than a machine. You can bargain with a person. And people have limited attention spans.
- flippe 10y agoThe only reasons to not prefer working for a machine are a) you don't trust its value function to be just, or b) you believe it will be just, but you would rather cheat people by taking advantage of human faults like irrational emotions and imperfect memory We can argue about a) but I can't respect position b).
- jhgjklj 10y ago> b) you believe it will be just, but you would rather cheat people by taking advantage of human faults like irrational emotions and imperfect memory This is interesting. If all men are created equal and had are grown in same environment then treating by a machine equally is just. But all men are not created equal and hence treating equally by a machine which decides their pay will be considered unjust by the lesser capable men. I am not saying it is just or unjust, just a possible thought process by an intellectually less capable men.
- quirkot 10y agoGreat point. The whole equality vs equity you allude to debate applies here as well
- allengeorge 10y agoI don't think most people care about b), or would even consider b). It's more likely that there's a lot of circumstantial evidence, context etc. that explains someone's behavior - and it's unlikely that an unemotional decision-maker would care. Having a bad stretch because you're dealing with personal problems at home? Perhaps your pay should be docked by some percentage since you're less productive than your peers. Trying to ramp up on a technology, but you're slower than your peers? Another pay cut - after all, you're not as efficient.
- jhgjklj 10y agoHe is not a scapegoat. Judgement has been delayed. Harassed at google, punished at uber.
- allengeorge 10y agoI am definitely not looking forward to robot overlords, and I think that touting them as some sort of panacea is absurd. You just replaced an opaque decision-making process with an incredibly fast/efficient opaque decision-making process.
- digi_owl 10y agoYep. My first thought was of Stross' Accelerando, and then the issue of the paperclip maximizer.
- lallysingh 10y agoOpen source with debug traces!