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I'm an Uber engineer. I've been here several years. I'm not going to comment on any recent news, but I do have something very important to say that I've yet to

by uberino 10y ago

I'm an Uber engineer. I've been here several years. I'm not going to comment on any recent news, but I do have something very important to say that I've yet to see anyone else voice. What frustrates me most about people are hell bent on painting a wildly successful company in the worst light possible is that doing so has very serious negative implications for equality and opportunity for women and other groups that are under-represented in tech. Let me explain why. Spending several years at a unicorn startup opens up so many opportunities. Look at early employees from Fairchild, Paypal, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. These companies minted many many millionaires and gave them tons of valuable experience to go out and start their own companies after they left. When you so aggressively bad mouth the culture of a rising unicorn such that you discourage certain groups from even applying to work there, you have deprived those people of an opportunity to be on a rocket ship. You're perpetuating the very problem you're railing against. My colleagues in the LadyEng group here at Uber have on many occasions lamented how hard a time they have recruiting other women to join the company because of the reputation in the media. The company culture has been so maligned by those with an agenda that even the women engineers here have a difficult time convincing other women to join. If you really want people who are under-represented in tech to succeed, you should encourage them and support them in joining every rising unicorn that exists and will ever exist regardless of how that culture is perceived, because four years after joining they will have the money, experience and connections to create their own companies and perpetuate a virtuous cycle. If you agree with this message please spread it because so few people realize how they are contributing to a self-fulfilling prophecy that hurts the cause they claim to champion.

lazyloop 10y ago
These are the words of a man who contributed to the very problem that Uber is facing, and who is now scared that his vested equity will not be worth anything. Perhaps Uber should start fixing problems, instead of blaming minorities for not having a thicker skin. Wishing for minorities to invade Uber and fix all problems for you is delusional at best.
dyu 10y ago
Uber is not the only unicorn. There are others. Maybe by convincing these women and other under-represented to join others, they can actually become more productive and bring more value. Your logic seems to say, back in 2008, we shouldn't have badmouthed Big Banks, because they were paying above-market rates to their employees, and these salaries would have trickled down back to the society and solved the subprime mortgage crisis.
- uberino 10y ago
  I don't like to speak in absolutes, but we have two outcomes for the future. An institution either succeeds or it fails. I'm not going to speculate on the outcome which I believe is more likely for my company because it's irrelevant to the thought experiment I'm about to present. In the event the institution fails, everything is reset to zero and the talent and resources are redistributed in the World. Value is destroyed, but undesirable aspects are too. You can judge if that is a net positive or net negative outcome. The other outcome is that the institution weathers a storm and succeeds either way. Under this scenario, there are two new scenarios: (a) the institution survives with all the good, well meaning people you agree with on board, helping steer it into the future; or (b) those encouraging the good, well-meaning people to abandon the institution, leaving those that remain to steer that institution into the future. Ignore what you want to happen for a moment. If the likelihood of survival despite current events is sufficiently high, then encouraging those with whom you agree to abandon the institution is contrary to your best interests. This is a game theoretic scenario, which I encourage you to explore on your own. Remember that the banks survived. That all said, I'm not discouraging you from challenging institutions that may have aspects to correct. I'm encouraging you to reconsider how you challenge those institutions to determine all the consequences, intended and unintended. Personally, I think it's best to challenge them to be better in the ways I think is better.
aasseer 10y ago
I don't think it's about opportunities, it's about what impact it's making to this world, is Uber worth existing? Is it really making the world any better? Is it even irreplaceable? Or it's just a toxic company trying to suck every bit from the world with a fake mask of "sharing economy"? With racism and sexism?
- gizmodo59 10y ago
  > Is it really making the world any better? Does this mean no one should work in many companies that do not make the world any better than what it is now? One could easily argue that most of the companies, though they claim to make the world a better place, they honestly do not.
  - uberino 10y ago
    Institutions are generally necessary for a society to function. The only alternative that omits institutions is homesteading, and with 7+ billion people on this planet, that isn't really an option anymore. Talking in absolutes doesn't actually aid the discussion. Few institutions are purely good or purely evil. They are made of people, who themselves are not purely good or purely evil, who have their own motivations, some altruistic and some selfish. We live in dynamic systems, in which institutions and individuals play a role. As a general rule all make things better in some ways and worse in others. Transportation network companies (TNC) have produced economic winners and losers. Many people have access to more job options with less friction. Taxi drivers have seen their income shrink. The laws of supply and demand both with the network of one TNC and between the networks of multiple TNCs in competition with one another drive prices down. Driving the prices down makes transportation accessible to more people (both the more privileged and the less privileged), but it also drives down the income of those driving. Eventually self driving cars will drive down the costs further, democratizing convenient transportation further and eliminating many jobs. Due to path dependency, humanity is heading down this path one way or another. If one institution doesn't take us in this direction, another will. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/02/space_stasis.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/0... It's not going to be easy. It will be fraught with challenges, technical and social. The human and social problems will likely eclipse the technological problems in both scope and magnitude, but we're going to face them either way. We've been through this before during the industrial revolution. Life is recursive. It was a painful transition, but we came out the other side with a society that was more prosperous and had more opportunities for more people to live a life free of suffering than ever before. We can either claim the sky is falling, or we can put our heads down and work on figuring out how to solve the biggest challenges of our day. No solution we come up with will be perfect. We're going to have to cooperate in the form of institutions to tackle such large problems. No institution we come up with will purely make the world a better place because there are no silver bullets.
shshhdhs 10y ago
I work for a Fortune 100 size company that treats women and under-represented groups with respect & dignity (from every interaction I've seen). The pay and benefits are excellent as well. I'd rather convince women to join my company than a company that mistreats them. Your argument about a rocket ship lottery ticket isn't worth much compared to mistreatment.
- uberino 10y ago
  Absolutely. Please do encourage them and help them join your company and every other company where they will succeed. I won't comment on your last statement since I think I've adequately addressed the value of active sampling and application of the null hypothesis in determining a statistically valid position on how they likely would be treated instead of taking these articles at face value.
itsdrewmiller 10y ago
This argument would hold water if there was a common pattern of discouraging women or other tech minorities to avoid early stage startups. AFAIK this is solely an Uber thing though, because Uber is that much worse than the status quo. Also, this seems like maybe it would be a relevant consideration for joining Uber in 2010 - nobody joining in 2017 is hitting the lottery and contributing to a virtuous cycle.
- uberino 10y ago
  AFAIK Again, I'm not going to try and present information contrary to what you know (it would likely just be attacked for being biased), but I would encourage you to ask yourself if you're adequately applied the null hypothesis to any institution on which you have formed a position: https://byrslf.co/the-null-hypothesis-loves-you-and-wants-you-to-be-happy-3189413d8cd0#.auqyhodkk https://byrslf.co/the-null-hypothesis-loves-you-and-wants-yo... I would also encourage you to not consider the ways in which you believe an institution is worse than the status quo, but also consider the ways in which it is better. As an exercise, list out both when considering the relative merit of an institution. How is it better? How is it worse? Eliminate from both lists those aspects that are inevitable (for reasons of path dependency) regardless of which institution is solving the same problem. For those ways in which it is worse than the status quo, consider ways in which those could be corrected. I won't comment on your last statement because it involves discussion of future growth prospects, which no two people will likely agree on.
  - jaredklewis 10y ago
    > Again, I'm not going to try and present information contrary to what you know (it would likely just be attacked for being biased) This is silly. "I could refute your point of view, but you would just make a baseless character attack against me, so I can't. Your fault really." Fowler put forth what I and many others have found to be a cool headed, well documented, and credible account of events. The ball is in Uber's court. So far they hired Eric Holder and there have been some resignations. Too soon to know for sure, but it does seem to lend further credence to Fowler's account. If Fowler made something up, it will be up to you guys make that point. I don't find the "I won't provide my version of events because you guys are not discussing this in good faith" very convincing. It's passive aggressive. If you can't discuss because of legal issues or an agreement with your employer, that's fine. But don't blame us.

by uberino 10y ago

lazyloop 10y ago

These are the words of a man who contributed to the very problem that Uber is facing, and who is now scared that his vested equity will not be worth anything. Perhaps Uber should start fixing problems, instead of blaming minorities for not having a thicker skin. Wishing for minorities to invade Uber and fix all problems for you is delusional at best.

dyu 10y ago

Uber is not the only unicorn. There are others. Maybe by convincing these women and other under-represented to join others, they can actually become more productive and bring more value. Your logic seems to say, back in 2008, we shouldn't have badmouthed Big Banks, because they were paying above-market rates to their employees, and these salaries would have trickled down back to the society and solved the subprime mortgage crisis.

uberino 10y ago
I don't like to speak in absolutes, but we have two outcomes for the future. An institution either succeeds or it fails. I'm not going to speculate on the outcome which I believe is more likely for my company because it's irrelevant to the thought experiment I'm about to present. In the event the institution fails, everything is reset to zero and the talent and resources are redistributed in the World. Value is destroyed, but undesirable aspects are too. You can judge if that is a net positive or net negative outcome. The other outcome is that the institution weathers a storm and succeeds either way. Under this scenario, there are two new scenarios: (a) the institution survives with all the good, well meaning people you agree with on board, helping steer it into the future; or (b) those encouraging the good, well-meaning people to abandon the institution, leaving those that remain to steer that institution into the future. Ignore what you want to happen for a moment. If the likelihood of survival despite current events is sufficiently high, then encouraging those with whom you agree to abandon the institution is contrary to your best interests. This is a game theoretic scenario, which I encourage you to explore on your own. Remember that the banks survived. That all said, I'm not discouraging you from challenging institutions that may have aspects to correct. I'm encouraging you to reconsider how you challenge those institutions to determine all the consequences, intended and unintended. Personally, I think it's best to challenge them to be better in the ways I think is better.

aasseer 10y ago

I don't think it's about opportunities, it's about what impact it's making to this world, is Uber worth existing? Is it really making the world any better? Is it even irreplaceable? Or it's just a toxic company trying to suck every bit from the world with a fake mask of "sharing economy"? With racism and sexism?

gizmodo59 10y ago
> Is it really making the world any better? Does this mean no one should work in many companies that do not make the world any better than what it is now? One could easily argue that most of the companies, though they claim to make the world a better place, they honestly do not.
- uberino 10y ago
  Institutions are generally necessary for a society to function. The only alternative that omits institutions is homesteading, and with 7+ billion people on this planet, that isn't really an option anymore. Talking in absolutes doesn't actually aid the discussion. Few institutions are purely good or purely evil. They are made of people, who themselves are not purely good or purely evil, who have their own motivations, some altruistic and some selfish. We live in dynamic systems, in which institutions and individuals play a role. As a general rule all make things better in some ways and worse in others. Transportation network companies (TNC) have produced economic winners and losers. Many people have access to more job options with less friction. Taxi drivers have seen their income shrink. The laws of supply and demand both with the network of one TNC and between the networks of multiple TNCs in competition with one another drive prices down. Driving the prices down makes transportation accessible to more people (both the more privileged and the less privileged), but it also drives down the income of those driving. Eventually self driving cars will drive down the costs further, democratizing convenient transportation further and eliminating many jobs. Due to path dependency, humanity is heading down this path one way or another. If one institution doesn't take us in this direction, another will. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/02/space_stasis.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/0... It's not going to be easy. It will be fraught with challenges, technical and social. The human and social problems will likely eclipse the technological problems in both scope and magnitude, but we're going to face them either way. We've been through this before during the industrial revolution. Life is recursive. It was a painful transition, but we came out the other side with a society that was more prosperous and had more opportunities for more people to live a life free of suffering than ever before. We can either claim the sky is falling, or we can put our heads down and work on figuring out how to solve the biggest challenges of our day. No solution we come up with will be perfect. We're going to have to cooperate in the form of institutions to tackle such large problems. No institution we come up with will purely make the world a better place because there are no silver bullets.

shshhdhs 10y ago

I work for a Fortune 100 size company that treats women and under-represented groups with respect & dignity (from every interaction I've seen). The pay and benefits are excellent as well. I'd rather convince women to join my company than a company that mistreats them. Your argument about a rocket ship lottery ticket isn't worth much compared to mistreatment.

uberino 10y ago
Absolutely. Please do encourage them and help them join your company and every other company where they will succeed. I won't comment on your last statement since I think I've adequately addressed the value of active sampling and application of the null hypothesis in determining a statistically valid position on how they likely would be treated instead of taking these articles at face value.

itsdrewmiller 10y ago

This argument would hold water if there was a common pattern of discouraging women or other tech minorities to avoid early stage startups. AFAIK this is solely an Uber thing though, because Uber is that much worse than the status quo. Also, this seems like maybe it would be a relevant consideration for joining Uber in 2010 - nobody joining in 2017 is hitting the lottery and contributing to a virtuous cycle.

uberino 10y ago
AFAIK Again, I'm not going to try and present information contrary to what you know (it would likely just be attacked for being biased), but I would encourage you to ask yourself if you're adequately applied the null hypothesis to any institution on which you have formed a position: https://byrslf.co/the-null-hypothesis-loves-you-and-wants-you-to-be-happy-3189413d8cd0#.auqyhodkk https://byrslf.co/the-null-hypothesis-loves-you-and-wants-yo... I would also encourage you to not consider the ways in which you believe an institution is worse than the status quo, but also consider the ways in which it is better. As an exercise, list out both when considering the relative merit of an institution. How is it better? How is it worse? Eliminate from both lists those aspects that are inevitable (for reasons of path dependency) regardless of which institution is solving the same problem. For those ways in which it is worse than the status quo, consider ways in which those could be corrected. I won't comment on your last statement because it involves discussion of future growth prospects, which no two people will likely agree on.
- jaredklewis 10y ago
  > Again, I'm not going to try and present information contrary to what you know (it would likely just be attacked for being biased) This is silly. "I could refute your point of view, but you would just make a baseless character attack against me, so I can't. Your fault really." Fowler put forth what I and many others have found to be a cool headed, well documented, and credible account of events. The ball is in Uber's court. So far they hired Eric Holder and there have been some resignations. Too soon to know for sure, but it does seem to lend further credence to Fowler's account. If Fowler made something up, it will be up to you guys make that point. I don't find the "I won't provide my version of events because you guys are not discussing this in good faith" very convincing. It's passive aggressive. If you can't discuss because of legal issues or an agreement with your employer, that's fine. But don't blame us.