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Uber's Employee Ratings Put Women at a Disadvantage, Suit Says
- jey 9y agoTldr: the claim is that when male managers are faced with stack ranking employees, they will often choose male reports over female reports due to sexist bias.
- hnaccount357 9y agoIf I take that at face value doesn't that mean any performance evaluation system would be flawed so long as a man is in charge of it? (Assuming that women don't also rate women higher) >“This pay-for-performance system is fundamentally flawed,” Tavis said in an interview. “The performance element is very subjective.” What is the alternative?
- nradov 9y agoOne partial alternative is 360-degree performance reviews where each employee's performance is subjectively evaluated not just by one manager but rather by a collection of other employees they work with spread out across all levels of the org chart. Of course that's not perfect either but at least it provides more data points and can reduce the impact of some biases.
- s73ver_ 9y agoNot to mention it removes the whole, "Ok, you get the 5 this time around, the rest of you have to wait your turn" bullcrap.
- koolba 9y agoIf everyone has similar biases then having more reviewers isn’t going to address the issue. It would just normalize the bias toward the mean of the reviewers. I’ve seen that first hand at offices that do this type of review system and the “cool kids” still end up on top. At least individual biases being the driver allows a person to find a manager that champions their style of person.
- matt4077 9y agoI don't know if the article is too long, but "due to sexist bias" is certainly too short to give it justice. The specific problem with stack ranking is the one-on-one ranking method. I'm absolutely convinced that I myself would succumb to all sorts of biases when asked to rate people like that: I'd tend to think the silent, introvert guy who stays late and has no fashion sense is smarter than the outgoing jock leaving at 5pm sharp to be with his family. I'd somehow convince myself that the guy I enjoy eating lunch with is more important than the Belgian guy who doesn't speak english well enough to socialise... The article makes a similar point: “My observation was whoever was the best orator got their people ranked higher.” On aggregate, it's quite obvious that these biases could amount to gender-specific discrimination, even if not a single evaluator had gender on their minds.
- jey 9y agoTrue. I would have done better if I had omitted the word "sexist" and simply said "due to biases".
- pwinnski 9y agoOne at a time, the reasons given for bias are never[0] gender or race, but collectively, well, I've already mentioned a recent HBR study[1] in the comments here once, but I'll stop at twice. [0] For some reasonable value of "never" [1] https://hbr.org/2017/10/a-study-used-sensors-to-show-that-men-and-women-are-treated-differently-at-work https://hbr.org/2017/10/a-study-used-sensors-to-show-that-me...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mfoy_ 9y agoI think a simpler and better claim would be that: When managers are faced with stack ranking employees, they will often decide based on factors not purely related to the productivity or value of the employee. ---- That, and as an employee in a stack-ranked organization, you know you need to be competitive. Not in terms of productivity but in terms of "in the eyes of your manager"-- Perception is more important than performance. Studies have shown that men compete more aggressively than women, on average. So it's certainly plausible that men enjoy a gender-driven advantage that isn't purely due to gender-discrimination. Rather, it is the system that is biased. This reminds me of that "racist algorithm" debacle.
- pwinnski 9y agoThat's one possibility, but a recent HBR study[0] suggests that we lean on "reasons" like that more quickly than we should. [0] https://hbr.org/2017/10/a-study-used-sensors-to-show-that-men-and-women-are-treated-differently-at-work https://hbr.org/2017/10/a-study-used-sensors-to-show-that-me...
- mfoy_ 9y agoSo you're saying it's not the system, or at least not solely the system, and that the managers are almost certainly biased? I can appreciate that. It's almost certainly true. Most people are biased. The point of my comment wasn't argue differently, or to defend Uber or their managers, but to show how choosing a sexist system is the same as being sexist, in effect.
- LeoJiWoo 9y agoI'm highly skeptical of your links explanation. People have good reason to be doubtful of social sciences, and the replication crisis has only gotten worse now affecting biological science. https://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 https://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-... http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778 http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39054778
- sidlls 9y ago
- Grustaf 9y agoEven if true, why would this be a bigger problem in a stack ranking system? Surely they wouldn’t promote more people in total just because they had some other, more reasonable system? They’d still favour men if they are anti-women.
- maxxxxx 9y agoWhen I look at the female managers in my company I don't think they do any better.
- model_m_warrior 9y agoLol, lame reasoning. What happened to iron clad empirical evidence before suing? Oh I guess that was never the case, eh?
- mrgoldenbrown 9y agoYou are correct, even if you meant to be trolling. It was never the case that suing required iron clad empirical evidence. Civil cases in the United States use the "preponderance of evidence" standard, not the "iron clad" standard you just made up.
- Will_Parker 9y agoAnd "preponderance of evidence" means 50/50 plus a feather.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mfoy_ 9y agoEven criminal cases don't need "iron clad" empirical evidence. Only "beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt"... so like... 95%-ish.
- openasocket 9y agoNote you need a "preponderance of evidence" to win a suit, not to bring a suit in the first place. Many times the plaintiff doesn't have sufficient evidence for a win when they bring the suit, and get that evidence during the discovery phase, during depositions, subpoenas, etc.
- s73ver_ 9y agoAt this point, any company that thinks stack ranking is a decent idea just needs to die.
- gozur88 9y agoI wouldn't go that far, but I agree stack ranking is a really bad idea. Uber seems to be full of bad ideas, so maybe it's a good fit.
- mfoy_ 9y agoMaybe Uber is like an organizational Gaspode[1], in which so many bad ideas are all running amok at once that it all keeps working, somehow. [1]: https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Gaspode https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Gaspode >is only still alive because the various diseases are too busy fighting each other to kill him
- Triesault 9y agoThe article states Uber stopped using a stacked ranking system. > Microsoft Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have faced similar legal challenges; both firms and, more recently, Uber, have abandoned the practice.
- alexasmyths 9y ago"Uber seems to be full of bad ideas," I don't know. They've basically changed the world, made a 60 billion dollar company quickly, and become a brand synonymous with a service. That's very special. Just as I think they probably have used some slightly underhanded things on their way there, I significantly doubt anything they're doing is considerably more sketchy than other companies. As the article states: 1/3 of F100 companies use stack ranking - so how can we possibly call them out for it. Moreover, that someone 'says they are sexist' does not make them sexist.
- nnfy 9y agoI think there is a growing problem in our society, or at least what appears in media, wherein any systematic discrepancy is blamed automatically on some kind of discrimination, without consideration of the possibility for consistent differences in merit between subpopulations.
- mfoy_ 9y agoSo your response can be summed up as "Well maybe the men are just better on average?"
- atom-morgan 9y agoNo. He said "any systematic discrepancy is blamed automatically on some kind of discrimination, without consideration of the possibility for consistent differences in merit between subpopulations." This doesn't factor in which gender is more represented. Parent could have said the same thing about nursing or elementary school teachers but that doesn't mean they're implying men are better than women.
- mfoy_ 9y agoI'm not going to go to great lengths to explain to you how you are missing the message. It's not about "factoring in" anything, or what the specific "subpopulation" at play is. GP used a lot of big fancy words to literally(!!) say "Whenever cases like this arise, people are so quick to jump to 'sexism' as the answer without even allowing for the possibility that women just actually are worse employees than men."
- atom-morgan 9y ago> without even allowing for the possibility that women just actually are worse employees than men. Again, you're reading what you want to read.
- mfoy_ 9y ago
- cloudwalking 9y agoMany of my friends have stopped using Uber in favor of Lyft. Is this a real trend, or just something I see in Silicon Valley tech circles?
- surrey-fringe 9y agoIt's the tech circles. Most people who use ridesharing see it only as a cheaper, easier option, which it is.
- fishcolorbrick 9y agoI'll second that anecdote... among my peer group in Portland, OR, Uber is deprecated for ethical reasons.
- rtx 9y agoMostly tech circles, they are beating their competition in India.
- jknoepfler 9y agoI uninstalled uber when the shit hit the fan. I won't ever reinstall it, and I actively suggest others do the same. I won't support a company that sounds like a sorry mix of aws corporate culture and /r/incels social culture
- BinaryIdiot 9y agoI know I have but not because of their business practices (which I agree they've done some not good things). Lyft is $3 - $4 cheap, consistently, for me in the East Bay. I know for a ride the pricing of either is pretty decent but some days I need to take several rides so I try to save money wherever I can. Most of the people I know who use or drive either because they seem them as commodities and don't really care. They just pick the better priced or closest one.
- liberte82 9y agoHow long until there are so many competing brands that an umbrella app is developed to interface with all of them? It seems the inevitable nature of startup market.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoIs it possible to create a performance review system that somebody won't complain is sexist?
- tptacek 9y agoObviously, yes. Problems like this are endemic to zero-sum schemes like stack ranking.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoHow? Edit: The parent post was edited. Are other employee evaluation schemes free of appearance of sexism (or actual sexism), or is it harder to see?
- tptacek 9y agoThe edit wasn't necessary to support the first sentence. There are thousands of tech companies, large and small, and most of them monitor employee performance. Meanwhile: allegations of sexist bias in review processes are infrequent enough to be newsworthy. QED.
- SamReidHughes 9y agoA quick google immediately shows pages like this one [] which frets about sexism without including the words "stack" or "ranking." It has the usual citing of questionable concepts like implicit bias, or the Bloomberg article's "unconscious bias." What I would like to know is, suppose you need to make a system in a large organization in an attempt to lay off your 10% worst employees. It's pretty reasonable to expect sexist rankings, even made by non-sexists, and to also expect beliefs by individuals, wrongly held, that their personal low rank was the result of sexism. How do you determine whether an organization's ranking system is sexist, in which direction, and by how much? [] https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/how-performance-reviews-are-reinforcing-gender-bias-5-steps-to-fight-against-it-performance-review https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/how-performance-revie... Edit: By non-sexists, I mean, like, non-garbage people.
- liberte82 9y agoWhy not normalize the rankings? It seems that at volume, that sexism should be the only remaining factor when looking at overall averages. Unless you really believe that "women are worse drivers". Normalize them to the average for each sex.
- ardit33 9y agoI think this is a more issue of "Stack Ranking", which by itself should be illegal, but somewhat it is still legal. While pretty much all employment in the US is "at will" employment, "good faith" is assumed in the system.... Stack Ranking by default is a "bad faith" system, where the employer, will fire people, even though the employees were good performers (if you are in a team of all good performers, it is common place that stack ranking punishes good performers/employees as well). It is very similar to the "decimation" system that the Roman Army practiced, when a particular unit or legion performed bad or cowardly in battle, one in ten was chosen (via short sticks), and culled to death by their companions. Very brutal, and can't see how it improves morale even if the unit itself is actually performing well. (which stack ranking is, constant decimation). This causes rampant politicking and favoritism to the point that systematic discrimination arises from it.
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoThat doesn't sound very similar to decimation. Stack ranking is picking and punishing the worst team members based on some system. Decimation was purely random. Decimation was a system for BUILDING cohesion. You don't flee battle because you might be decimated. You don't let your comrades flee battle because you might be decimated. It's for when you want to severely punish a collective group of people but can't afford to hurt them all. Stack ranking is the opposite. You are actively competing against your colleagues. You are incentivized for your colleagues to fail.
- ardit33 9y agoYou missed the part that in a team of good performers, (i.e. no dead woods in the team), it ends up being a defacto "random" system.... when it comes to actual performance, and that's where politiking and favoritisms kick in. Both have the "Culture of Fear" as a central point, and yes, stack ranking has its roots on the Roman Decimation system. http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/performance-improvement-plans-and-the-culture-of-fear http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/performance-impr...
- QAPereo 9y ago