15 ms·

Uber's 'hustle-oriented' culture becomes a black mark on employees' résumés

• ziszis 10y ago
  This is a classic halo effect [1]. A positive halo was "Google is making lots of money and they have 20% time. So, smart companies should do this." This is a negative halo "Uber is experiencing lots of bad PR and hustling is part of their culture. So, smart companies should stop being scrappy." The problem isn't scrappiness. It is when you push far past scrappiness and start breaking the law. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
  • itake 10y ago
    Uber is not the first (or the last) company to get in trouble for too much "hustling"[0]. It is not just the "hustle" people don't like. People view their employees as sexist bigots. All the smart companies don't want people from that culture. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/zenefits-under-investigation-in-california/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/zenefits-under-investigati...
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    • ganfortran 10y ago
      Won't go too far to say all Uber employees are sexist bigots, but I do, after all these media exposure, now have a images they have a strong feel-good bro culture
      • manmal 10y ago
        I think a company with a strong and directed culture will even absorb former "bro dudes" successfully and de-bro them. (Meaning, they will learn empathy and stop behaving in a way that hurts others)
        • yulaow 10y ago
          Doubt it. Mainly because if a company has a strong and directed culture they would bounce-back every bro-dudes already in the interview phase for "not a culture fit"
          • sokoloff 10y ago
            There's a spectrum of bro-ness, and I've seen pretty hardcore stereotypical "frat guys" at 22 mature into "normal" adult human beings on a regular basis. If you can keep your bro-ness under wraps for 4 hours for the interview, you can get hired at a company with a reasonable culture and that will continue to mold and shape you, just like any other community influence to which you are consistently exposed.
            • ubernostrum 10y ago
              Why is it someone else's job to "un-bro" them? Why can't it be their job to do it for themselves, and just have them find out they're unemployable in their desired job unless/until they do? Companies insist they won't hire people who'd need to learn other fundamental skills of the job (and that if you want the job, learn that stuff first), so why not this?
              • sokoloff 10y ago
                It is/ought to be, but the stark reality is that you can hide it and appear "normal enough" for 4 hours of interviews. I'm not making a judgment about "ought to be" just "is".
      • u_wot_m8 10y ago
        the problem is their CEO is a 40 year old man child trying to compensate for the fact he was a nerd growing up. Until he's gone nothing will change
    • tbrownaw 10y ago
      It is not just the "hustle" people don't like. People view their employees as sexist bigots. All the smart companies don't want people from that culture. As much as that makes sense, it's also interesting considering that TFA makes it sound like people are leaving because of their dislike of that culture. And having trouble because they're being associated to the thing their fleeing.
      • watwut 10y ago
        They were ok with the culture until the culture became public.
    • na85 10y ago
      It's not about scrappy vs not scrappy. It's about putting a "merit"ocracy in place that encourages people to backstab and generally act like jerks in order to get ahead. It's about priorities. I'd rather work in a slightly less-profitable company if it didn't have a toxic work environment.
      • omouse 10y ago
        It's about putting a "merit"ocracy in place that encourages people to backstab and generally act like jerks in order to get ahead. I don't know why you put meritocracy in quotes, because that's what it is. The merits that are rewarded just so happen to be acting like jerks. In general society that is not a merit; but in the company it is a merit therefore Uber is a meritocracy.
        • foobarchu 10y ago
          A meritocracy is, by definition, a system where participants succeed based on relevant ability and talent. Meritocracies do not involve pushing others down, only pushing yourself up. Backstabbing is a textbook "down" action. A system that encourages people to backstab to get ahead is effectively just a medeival court, in which employees act as petty nobles jostling for the king/boss's approval.
        • watwut 10y ago
          If keeping important business information for yourself so colleagues fail counts as merit, then yeah, uber is meritocracy. Simultaneously, the word merit lost all meaning. The example is from original article by susan who started current backslash.
        • ubernostrum 10y ago
          I prefer to call this act "The Meritocrats!" as a way to highlight that it's likely to be obscene and out of line with what people think of as "merits".
        • na85 10y ago
          I put it in quotes because in my view it's not merit that gets you ahead in such an -ocracy. Merit implies a quality of being good, or otherwise praiseworthy. Being a backstabbing misogynist dickbag gets you ahead at Uber but I would not describe you as worthy of merit.
    • pottersbasilisk 10y ago
      So then they'll be absorbed by wall street.
  • ucaetano 10y ago
    This isn't halo effect. When hiring someone from a company that has a certain culture, you expect people to share some of that culture. With more severely negative points of Uber's culture coming to light, companies are wondering how much of that culture the current employees share. And there's a difference between being scrappy and hustling.
    • sokoloff 10y ago
      Could you describe the difference? Other than the less common definition of "fraud or swindle", I think the common definition of hustle and scrappy have a heavy overlap.
      • mcguire 10y ago
        One of them means you didn't get caught. Not sure which, though.
      • ucaetano 10y ago
        There is a heavy overlap between the two, but my impression is that being scrappy has a side that hustling doesn't: finding ways to do things with far less resources that it would be normally required. Essentially, scrappy is, IMHO, finding shortcuts and detours to avoid an obstacle. Hustling feels more like beating down that obstacle until it gets out of the way. But that's all semantics, and therefore my personal opinion. I've always heard "scrappy" as a positive thing, and "hustling" as something either ambiguous or just plain bad.
  • ryandrake 10y ago
    Is this really a thing? If I had "Low Level Enron Employee" on my resume would the top executives' misconduct be a black mark I had to explain to future interviewers?
    • michaelt 10y ago
      Is this really a thing? If you were in the Hitler Youth in 1941, and you were 14, and it was mandatory, people will still bring it up 72 years later when you are literally the Pope [1] Is it fair? No. Will some people do it anyway? Absolutely. [1] http://abcnews.go.com/International/pope-benedict-dogged-nazi-past-achievements-jewish-relations/story?id=18469350 http://abcnews.go.com/International/pope-benedict-dogged-naz...
      • jacobolus 10y ago
        Didn’t help Ratzinger that he spent his whole career being the inquisitor attack dog of the Church’s right wing. My Mexican Jesuit friends called him “Nazinger” for his political actions as an adult, not for his past. German Catholics called him the “Panzerkardinal”.
    • SyneRyder 10y ago
      If you were a low level Wells Fargo employee, that could be something you had to explain in an interview. According to NPR, Wells Fargo employees have found they can't get another job in the banking industry: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/21/498804659/former-wells-fargo-employees-join-class-action-lawsuit http://www.npr.org/2016/10/21/498804659/former-wells-fargo-e...
      • in_cahoots 10y ago
        That's not the same at all, these employeees were fired and officially blacklisted for doing what is right, not marked as guilty by association.
        • whatok 10y ago
  • johan_larson 10y ago
    Let's take all of this with a grain of salt. It wouldn't be the first time a journalist with a preconceived notion went out and solicited quotes until she found some that supported her position. We don't know how many people she talked to along the way.
  • Bartweiss 10y ago
    And notably, a lot of what Uber has done wrong doesn't even read as "scrappiness gone too far". Retroactively changing performance reviews isn't "too scrappy", it's just malicious.
  • metaphorm 10y ago
    what do you even mean by "scrappiness"?
• bgutierrez 10y ago
  Culture shapes how individuals behave, and people will change to accommodate new cultures. They might come in with bad habits, but the only reason I would look at their last company's behavior was if that person had been their early or high enough to shape that culture.
  • Bartweiss 10y ago
    One really good point in this thread is that people leave companies for cultural reasons as well as professional ones. Blackballing ex-Uber employees hits not only the people who created that culture but also people who had the integrity to leave because of that culture, who are presumably quite good candidates (culturally). So yeah, I can't really imagine applying that judgement to people who never had the time/position to shape the culture.
• atonse 10y ago
  30 years ago these same aholes would've gone to Wall Street. Now they go to Silicon Valley Instead. No surprise that some companies get infected with them as a result.
  • brennanc 10y ago
    That's a pretty gross generalisation based on one company. There are definitely a few cases but the industry as a whole isn't comparable to Wall Street by any means.
    • veli_joza 10y ago
      Your statement seems to imply you want to exempt Silicon Valley from gross generalization, but still apply it to Wall Street companies?
      • adrenalinelol 10y ago
        It is probably a bit of an over-generalization, but let us not forget Wall St. did crash the economy and no one at the top was held accountable.
        • untog 10y ago
          And why do you suppose that Silicon Valley will not crash the economy? It's not implausible, with the arrival of increased automation, self-driving cars, etc. that the economy will at least take a major hit as a result of Silicon Valley innovation. And I'll wager a lot of the Valley will get very rich off it, too - just like Wall Street.
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          • mcguire 10y ago
            Hey, it happened on 2000. The only difference was that the dotcom crash didn't have a load of consumer debt behind it.
• am_i_down 10y ago
  Willingness to generalize an entire group seems far more deserving of a black mark.
  • zippergz 10y ago
    Hiring is hard. We have to use all the data points available to us. If someone seems to have thrived in a culture that is counter to the culture we're trying to build, that's a valuable data point.
    • mantas 10y ago
      Insert {protected minority} and see how it sounds. People may have worked there for a variety of reasons and/or in different team. Let alone that stuff like Stockholm syndrome exists for a reason.
      • knorby 10y ago
        That's absurd and offensive on a lot of levels... The thing anyone in a protected class wants is to not be judged on that as a factor one way or the other. People working at Uber are "struggling" because their perceived ticket to the stars is looking kind of bad; they wish there were getting offers left and right for working there, because plenty of people get jobs on the basis of their last company. You get judged in interviews, and it is a best case scenario if it is over recent stuff you had control over.
        • mantas 10y ago
          I don't care of they're struggling with or without quotes. What sucks is sweeping generalisations. Which is exactly what is going on. I'm pretty sure most people went were because of tech challenge and/or money. Not because of chasing bro culture or possibility to offend coworkers. From what I read about Uber, it looks like most people were not happy about what was going on. There were a small amount of assholes (which exist in any company or community). The problem is that management is OK with assholes and give them a pass. However, all the good folks are thrown together with few assholes. P.S. I'd be happy to see Uber gone. I'm not using it on principle for their "disruption" mentality. As well as the rest of "sharing economy".
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• employee8000 10y ago
  I'm being contacted around 3 times a day for the last couple of weeks from a laundry list of companies so I don't think the article is true. Not all orgs at uber have/had a bad culture and the engineering teams are fantastic. Many people love working at Uber, but clearly something needs to change, and they are, for the better.
  • kevinr 10y ago
    Oh, they know people are on the market. That's the vultures circling. They also know they need to be on the lookout to disqualify you if you exhibit bad behavior, so they're going to be very picky in the hiring.
    • employee8000 10y ago
      Rooting out assholes in interviews is even harder and less reliable than evaluating programmers with whiteboard interviews. The SVP from Google passed an extensive due diligence check, and some of the high performer assholes that got fired hid themselves almost perfectly. Hopefully this environment is over at this point but I'm readying my resume just in case.
      • snarf 10y ago
        Given that key HR people at Uber come from Google, is it possible that Uber senior management actually knew about the issues surrounding their star SVP hire from Google when they hired him and were OK with it until reporters were tipped off due to current events and they started sniffing around? I am a little dubious of Uber's narrative that they first found out about this from reporters and fired him soon after.
      • kevinr 10y ago
        Every asshole I've ever known in tech got flagged by an interviewer during the hiring process, but the people making the hiring decision ignored the feedback. Often the person doing the flagging was female, or the hiring manager was desperate for a body, or it was otherwise easy for them to justify their decision to themselves. And in every case it wound up costing the company other, productive employees and millions of dollars. It's very easy for assholes to 'hide' their assholishness if the people with power aren't looking for it, and won't listen to the people who see it. However, even people like that are now on notice that Uber employees are tainted.
• deleted 10y ago
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• ryandrake 10y ago
  Having worked at companies with varying degrees of "hustle" culture, I have to say I prefer (and I know others who prefer) the hustle, the energy, the sense of urgency, the culture of always being present and checked in. If you've got in-born hustle, it's tough to work around people without it. Once lack of hustle takes hold, it spreads like a virus through a company, and soon everyone comes down with this "eh, we can always do it later" attitude about everything. People start not taking deadlines seriously, start worrying more about taking time to build consensus rather than being quick and decisive. Roll in late to meetings, etc. You can even see it watching foot traffic--non-hustlers physically walk slower through the halls. Companies that hustle aren't for everyone but let's not condemn it. It's good to have a variety of work cultures available because different personalities work better in different environments. Note the above rant doesn't excuse illegal or discriminatory behavior. I'm just addressing the simplistic "hustle = bad" argument.
  • AstralStorm 10y ago
    You're misunderstanding hustle with commitment and energy. See, hustle is urgency for sake of urgency at the expense of everything, including breaking rules and social values. Going without consensus is also one way companies (esp. small ones) implode or do unethical and illegal things. What is more, this hustling approach discounts brand perception and PR. We see the effects. You may be fast, but if you damage your brand badly enough in the process you might have as well not have done anything.
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      To me, hustle is simply energy/urgency even when nobody is looking. It doesn't have to have a negative connotation.
      • throwanem 10y ago
        Uber may have given it one for a while.
      • crispyambulance 10y ago
• Animats 10y ago
  It can be worse. Something similar is happening to the "binary option" industry in Tel Aviv, Israel. A "binary option" is a bet on whether some financial indicator will go up or down. While there are such things as real binary options on real exchanges, the ones sold from phone banks in Tel Aviv are bets against the house. The house sets the odds and usually wins, and even when they lose, most binary option shops don't pay up. 80% of investors lose everything. In Israel, it's illegal to scam Israelis this way, but completely legal to scam the rest of the world. The scale of this industry is substantial. It's doing at least $1.2 billion a year in income, and that's the part that pays taxes in Israel. This has been going on for almost a decade, and the scam was growing rapidly. Then, in 2016, the jaws began to close. The US CFTC won a big case against the biggest binary option firm in Israel, Banc de Binary. They had to pay back everybody who lost money and pay huge damages. (Banc de Binary once offered $10,000 to anyone who would remove that info from their Wikipedia entry. That attempt backfired, badly.) Then there was a 15-part expose in the Times of Israel, titled "The Wolves of Tel Aviv".[1] Now, finally, there are more investigations and a bill to make it illegal to run this scam out of Israel. Banc De Binary ceased operation a few weeks ago. (Or at least they disappeared, removing their sign from the Banc De Binary Tower.) At least four other binary option "brokers" have gone out of business in recent weeks. As a result, there are lots of layoffs. Scamming people from a phone bank was a good-paying job. The companies liked to hire recent immigrants to Israel who could speak the languages of their target countries fluently. English and Arabic were the most popular languages. A lobbyist for the binary option industry, testifying before a committee of the Knesset, claimed that there are 20,000 people employed in binary options in Israel, and 60,000 people indirectly. "You see the building boom right now in Tel Aviv? Well, you can just say goodbye to that because most skyscrapers in Tel Aviv will be empty. There will be no one to fill them up." There's even a claim from the binary option industry that shutting down this scam will increase terrorism, because it will take away the income of thousands of Arabs. So 20,000 scammers are becoming unemployed, in a city of only 400,000 people. A former employee of a binary option company faces a far worse black mark than being from Uber. The binary option salespeople are full time con artists. Nobody legit in finance is going to hire them. Getting any legit job will be tough. (World's smallest violin plays.) [1] http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-vast-amoral-binary-options-scam-exposed/ http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-...
• tatotato 10y ago
  It's worse when you have a black mark on your record for actually hustling.
• linkregister 10y ago
  This should be marked as an opinion piece. I struggle to find the data to back this article. Even the recruiting agency interviewed for the article gave a wishy washy answer. It may be unfair to make a "black mark" on every journalist at The Guardian, but after the false "WhatsApp considered harmful" stories, I am unable to take anything they print at face value. Response by moxie: https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/ https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoo...
  • itsthejb 10y ago
    The Guardian used to be a "serious" newspaper, but since they went after markets outside of the UK, including online, they're more of a "classy tabloid". Farming clickbait. A very unfortunate turn. Used to really enjoy their culture content in the 90s
• Twirrim 10y ago
  Outside of the deplorable sexual harassment stuff, it wasn't the "hustle" that bothered me in that infamous blog post What bothered me was all the back stabbing. Those are strong black marks for me against anyone that has worked in management in Uber.
• spudlyo 10y ago
  It would be tempting to vote no on an otherwise qualified candidate citing "culture fit" who has Uber on their resume and a whiff of "bro dude" about them. Ultimately though I hope I'd resist that temptation, because people deserve the benefit of the doubt; even young, white, physically fit dudes who enjoy sports and previously worked at Uber. I've worked with some nerds who were awful mean-spirited tyrants, and some bro dudes who were really kind and sweet.
  • sillysaurus3 10y ago
    It would be tempting to vote no on an otherwise qualified candidate citing "culture fit" who has Uber on their resume and a whiff of "bro dude" about them. Ultimately though I hope I'd resist that temptation, because people deserve the benefit of the doubt; even young, white, physically fit dudes who enjoy sports and previously worked at Uber. If you substitute the gender or the color of "young, white physically fit dude" you get blatant racism or sexism. If someone did something wrong, then hold that against them. Being biased against someone's color or gender isn't ok.
    • onion2k 10y ago
      I think there's a very big difference between being biased against race or gender and being biased against someone's work history. The whole point of interviewing and reading resumes is to filter people out (or in) based on their experience. If recruiters start tossing out resumes because they mention Uber that's not "discrimination" in any powerful sense; it's simply caution in the light of recent events.
      • strken 10y ago
        If it's about work history, then why mention that "even young, white, physically fit dudes" still "deserve the benefit of the doubt" if they "previously worked at Uber"? If someone reads a resume from a former Uber employee, and the evaluation process includes well, his parents came from Korea and he doesn't lift weights, so..., is that really a good thing?
• chillwaves 10y ago
  Poor dude-bros. With their six figure salaries, their sexism and discrimination. Won't someone give dude-bros a chance? I just wonder when dude-bros will finally have their time to shine in history. Poor dude-bros.
  • sillysaurus3 10y ago
    We have to comment in constructive and substantive ways on divisive topics. Otherwise the whole thread rapidly goes downhill.
    • altstar 10y ago
      I think this thread already has past that point.
    • deleted 10y ago
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  • dang 10y ago
    Please don't do this here, regardless of how correct your views are or how righteous your sympathies. It breaks the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and as sillysaurus3 pointed out, makes the thread obviously worse. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13818623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13818623 and marked it off-topic.
• patgenzler 10y ago
  This piece is another cheap "strike it while the iron is hot" hit job to get attention. Yes, Uber seems to be having serious culture issues but the underlying problems of sexism and favoritism towards "high achievers" are industry-wide - not just limited to Uber. They have a lot at stake - it's only fair to assume that they will come out of this mess and fix their problems as soon as possible. Uber employees, both current and former, will have no problem getting good offers - tech companies have biases but are smart enough not to mass generalize. The fact that they "made it into Uber" far outweighs any speculation around Uber's culture. The real black mark is the "hit job oriented" culture of media. They need to step back and rethink what they stand for.
  • Mendenhall 10y ago
    I can tell by reading responses it has a lot to do with current political climate.
  • transfire 10y ago
    This. MSM hit jobs seem to be increasingly frequent, although it is an old tactic. I think (or at least hope) more people are starting to see through it now though. But the MSM is subtle and many reports that might not seem it are actually hit pieces as well. Sometimes it is as subtle as the phrasing of a single line in an otherwise ordinary article.
    • steego 10y ago
      There's nothing new under the sun as far as this type of piece is concerned. Even pissant local journalists are well versed in the art of using innuendo to create stories where there are none. Hijacking the reader's imagination and letting them jump to your conclusions is one of the oldest tricks in the book. About ten years ago, one of our local papers did a 23 piece series on a pile of dirt with trace amounts of old pesticides in a middle school. Everyone at the school was transparent and forthcoming and the health rick of this temporary pile of dirt was beyond miniscule. That's not just my opinion. I interviewed the toxicologist who authored the newest and toughest environmental regulations. That local journalist had successfully push vague innuendo that hijacked many parent's worst fears and sense of outrage and they ended up firing the superintendent. Based on the models, the increased risk of cancer from being exposed to these pesticides were something around 1/250,000. Your normal risk of cancer is between 1/3 to 1/2. Many of these parents were convinced their kid's health faced an imminent threat and the photos of their outraged faces reflected that. But they sold a lot of papers running that series and I'm sure it was the boost that journalist needed to make it to the next level.
• dandare 10y ago
  > “To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to work with someone who did well in that environment,” he said. “If you did well in that environment upholding those values, I probably don’t want to work with you.” My faith in humanity has been instantly restored by 10% :)
• deleted 10y ago
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• angry-hacker 10y ago
  Loads of pretty words doesn't hide the fact you're racist.
  • dang 10y ago
    Personal attacks will get your account banned from HN. Please don't do this again. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13818996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13818996 and marked it off-topic.
    • angry-hacker 10y ago
      Calling out a racist is a personal attack? Great double standards, ban Thiel from your board as while you're at it, bunch of hypocrites.
      • dang 10y ago
        Hurling epithets at other users is. It's not like this is hard to understand. You can't argue this way on this site regardless of how right your views are.
        • jowiar 10y ago
          So as long as we add a "bless your heart" or two beforehand, like the good-ol-boys, we can say whatever we want.
        • angry-hacker 10y ago
          I might have been wrong, but it's neither hard to understand the double standards HN/SV and the general consensus of left have. It's so bad that a guy who has thought of himself as liberal (or whatever you Americans like to call it), is happy to be called an old Fox News Russian Agent conservative racist homophobe idiot uneducated, because all these words have lost the meaning. You can see from my profile I've been a good long-standing citizen of HN. Instead of banning me, maybe you should have banned the parent for hate speech. But you lack the balls for it.
• badusername 10y ago
  Blah - seems like a sensationalist clickbait article, just cashing in on the current media cycle. I'm honestly more shocked at the myopic discussion in this thread, quite lacking in understanding the range of motivations of people who work there. I'm a long-time engineering employee, and seen a lot of ups and downs. To build a service that was used by a few thousand in one city to millions all over the world has been one of the most exciting jobs I've had, with great feats of engineering and operational execution. Numbers don't lie that we've built a reliable service - the negative media cycles don't hurt the business. There have been a ton of growing pains, with a lot of agenda-driven empire builders, bro-ey-ness, and general lack of careful cultural development that have contributed to the current situation, and left quite a few rankled employees in its wake. Whether it will come out strong from this situation is up to the strength of the leadership, and we'll see what the remedy holds. FWIW, I have seen a huge uptick in recruiter inbounds in the last few weeks (understandably), with all the best names Facebook, Google, Amazon and Tesla on the list.
• throw2016 10y ago
  This is simple to deal with. Uber has picked up a 'roguish' reputation. This is how it plays out. In an year or 2 'tainted' management is ejected replaced by new management with folks who have the right reputation and say all the right things. They can then move into respectable territory pretty quickly. For now it suits the decision makers to play this out to their maximum advantage.
• ungzd 10y ago
  Blackmark-oriented culture is problem too.
• menacingly 10y ago
  I keep waiting for the massive PR siege against Uber to fizzle out but it apparently has marathon legs
  • comboy 10y ago
    It's amazing how much circle jerk around this is happening on HN, which usually holds reasonably cold and rational views. I'm not saying that Uber is doing good things but it definitely feels like an organized campaign that successfully snowballed.
    • linkregister 10y ago
      I don't think it's organized. I've seen otherwise benign organizations and individuals (I'm not saying Uber is benign) dragged through the mud and later vindicated. Many different publications pile on to vulnerable targets in order to catch up with reader interest. See Fatty Arbuckle, Lindy Chamberlain.
• dep_b 10y ago
  I don't think everybody that works at Uber joined because of their hustle culture, was part of that while working there or even knew about it while they worked there. I've seen many companies in my life and I was always amazed about some of the stories I heard at the water cooler about people I'd never expect in places I never expected. If you're not part of the water cooler circle, focus on your work and the problems you are solving and have a nice bunch of direct colleagues and a manager that's not a big jerk (to you and anybody you see him/her interact with at least) you really might be surprised about hearing this stuff. If you join Uber in 2017 or later then I feel you might deserve a stigma. But somebody hacking on the API 10 hours per day and minding his own business? Not so much.
• crispyambulance 10y ago
  The "black mark" certainly doesn't apply to all employees. As one of the recruiters indicated, Uber in the work history might prompt pointed behavioral questioning of candidates. I suspect it might be more of an issue for high-level execs and possibly project/program managers, but you have to screen for assholery for those titles regardless of where they come from.
• kazinator 10y ago
  Befitting of Uber, they stole the "Uber way" and called it their own "Develop an incomplete solution and beat them to the market" is, of course, the Google Way, the Microsoft way, the Bell Labs way, the IBM way, ..." Time to market is important. “A lot of them have told me that they’re having a hard time finding something new.” I'm not convinced that this is because they are tained by Uber. It could be that the property "having worked at Uber" carries a statistical bias with "hard to employ elsewhere" simply because perhaps Uber was blindly on-boarding toms, dicks and harriets off the street. (Maybe the way they get drivers at the bottom of the org chart permeates how they staff the rest of it.)
• coryfklein 10y ago
  Bob: Worked at Uber for 3 years Joe: Worked at LinkedIn for 3 years With only this information, which person is more likely to engage in backstabbing or sexual harassment? With the information available to me, the answer seems clear: Bob Can somebody explain the fault in my reasoning please?
  • istorical 10y ago
    There's nothing wrong with your reasoning, it's just called 'painting an entire group for the sins of some subset". Or in other words, it means you're prejudiced against Uber employees.
    • coryfklein 10y ago
      Are you saying we shouldn't engage in this kind of reasoning because of the words used to describe it? Shouldn't reasoning be used based on its ability to model the world accurately? If the above reasoning is prejudice, does that make prejudice a good thing?
      • techthroway443 10y ago
        Real question is, if it's true can you still call that prejudice?
  • DenisM 10y ago
    The fault is simple - when dealing with a person, treat them for what they are, not for what your own preconceived notions tell you. Even statistically justified prejudices are unfair. Statistically some ethnic groups are more likely to have a criminal record. Don't just assume - go ahead and check. Is it more effort? Yes. That's why we call it "the right thing to do" and not "the convenient thing to do".
  • BeetleB 10y ago
    >With only this information, which person is more likely to engage in backstabbing or sexual harassment? >Can somebody explain the fault in my reasoning please? The fault is in insisting that you have to come up with an answer. I think the biggest lesson I learned in grad school was learning not to make decisions with inadequate data. And rooting out those who do.
• digi_owl 10y ago
  I find myself "bemused" how while Uber was playing fast and loose with all kinds of regulations they were just good buys disrupting a rotten old boys system. But now that accusations of sexual harassment at the office has been aired, they are suddenly "unclean". Almost makes one wonder if the whole "feminism/women's rights" terminology has been hijacked and weaponized by some entity that could not care one bit about actual women, but are using the terms and methods for social assassination objectives.