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Uber reported to the state that I was fired for "annoying a coworker."
- s_dev 7mo agoPaywall links shouldn't be allowed on Hacker News. It's not possible to subscribe to every service that could be theoretically be submitted. We're not all on $350k SV wages either. That said it's hard to gauge this story as it's a one sided affair, author maybe 100% in the right but that can't really be determined.
- bstsb 7mo agoi don't get a paywall when accessing (maybe ublock?) but either way: https://archive.ph/DbTn2 https://archive.ph/DbTn2
- richwater 7mo agoGod forbid we support journalism that -- gasp -- costs money. Regardless, in this instance it's someone's blog.
- s_dev 7mo agoYou can support journalism independently of submitting to Hacker News. Paid sites aren't suitable for aggregators like this one including the likes of the nytimes et al. Even if they sometimes have great content we'd simply have to go without.
- 1024core 7mo agoHow is some random ex-Uber-engineer's self-written story "journalism" in any shape or form?
- das_keyboard 7mo agohn/dangs stance on this: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=paywalls%20by:dang&dateRange=a... tldr: paywalls are allowed as long as they can be circumvented easily, eg via archive.ph or similar services
- s_dev 7mo agoDang also indefatigably links various threads together with the clear intention of making things clearer for posterity. archive.is is great at the time of writing but will it be here a year from now or will there be another successor on another domain? I hope so but I would hate to think Hacker News will become discussions on articles people can't access. I think a good rule is if it can be archived on the wayback machine it's suitable. Will the wayback machine be here 1 year from now? I think much more likely than archive.is and there is no escaping that such bets have to be made. "Circumvented easily" is more nebulous than people give it credit for.
- kikki 7mo agoIt's 350k now? I need to catch up
- delfinom 7mo agoShit, HR doesn't even exist to protect the company sometimes. Sometimes they get so cancerous that they start to operate as if the company works for them. Hence my megacorp's most recent CEO fired the CPO, and hired a long time former company employee with no HR background to go clean house of the infestation of Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice Presidents in HR.
- mc32 7mo agoUltimately it's the board of directors' call. Sometimes they are oblivious to how much HR undermines the company by bringing in unnecessary distractions and making poor hiring decisions. Like much else, it's subject to momentum.
- frankharv 7mo agoI have just experienced this.They raised HR exec up to VP level so they could investigate another VP to ultimately fire them. Then once the BAD VP was fired the owner fired the HR VP and the the replacement was not a VP. DirtyDeeds.DoneDirtCheap.
- ryandrake 7mo agoIt seems like this employee was in a no-win situation. If he engaged in the non-work-related conversation the co-worker was trying to initiate, he would have been fired. If he ignored the co-worker, they would have found a reason to fire him. Instead, he responded saying he was advised to keep communication to just work topics... and he was fired. The company was clearly planning on firing him for any possible reason. His first mistake was complaining to HR about another employee griefing him. HR is always going to consider the initial complainer as "the problem."
- soperj 7mo agoPeople have this mistaken belief than HR is for them when they are there 100% for the employer. The only people who are there for you in these situations is the union (if you have one).
- simianwords 7mo agothis cliche is so often repeated that i'm now questioning whether this is even true. unions are counterproductive many times - they serve the interests (only temporarily) for the incumbents while failing to or ignoring the larger consequences like the whole company or industry declining. i wonder if the HR cliche is similar.
- OkayPhysicist 7mo agoIf you belong to a union, you are the incumbent that the union exists to serve. Depending on the union's bargaining power, it may or may not succeed in representing your interests, but it has your interests as a central goal.
- stetrain 7mo agoThe cliche about HR doesn't mean that HR can't ever be helpful to you, just that they are incentivized to be helpful in ways that help the company. For example advising on how to best use benefits to keep employees healthy or recover from an illness or injury so they can return to work. But if your needs as an employee go against what is best for the company by costing money, productivity, or creating risk for bad publicity, or they go against high level managers or executives who hold outsized sway with HR, then it will be difficult for you to get help from them.
- simianwords 7mo agowhat could be the reason from the other side if we had to think of one?
- 121789 7mo agoThis article is vague enough to be useless. No actual evidence of the convo from the author’s side. Seek an unemployment lawyer
- fwip 7mo ago9 times outta 10, when you get somebody vagueposting about "I was fired for NO REASON," they're just incapable of actually admitting the reason.
- anon-ex-uber 7mo agoI am hesitant to share company DMs for obvious reasons.
- ryandrake 7mo agoThe advice to seek legal representation is still probably your best course of action. If you're clearly in the right and have a paper trail showing it, you have a chance. Of course, the first thing your lawyer will advise you to do is take down the Medium post.
- fancyfredbot 7mo agoWhat made HR act in this way? They clearly felt they were protecting the company by firing this person, but they've done nothing wrong and it's unclear they posed any kind of threat to the company. Certainly the complaint about his co-worker would not be perceived as a threat. I will give some weight to the possibility that Uber HR are utterly disfunctional, but on balance I'm left with the impression there's more to this story than we're being told.
- frankharv 7mo ago[flagged]
- sleazebreeze 7mo agoThere are a lot of missing parts to the story. If we assume the author left out everything that made them look bad, and including only what makes them look good then the result is a very incomplete feeling article. For example: they asked for guidance and then the very next thing is them being fired. How did they respond to the coworker? Something is off here - the coworker who had messaged him about non-work topics TWO days in a row - then immediately reported him for his reply. What?
- anon-ex-uber 7mo agoI was the one who let HR know that I sent her the message.
- Moral_ 7mo agoThe fact this person could not get an attorney to represent them says a lot.
- zoklet-enjoyer 7mo agoAll the local lawyers have conflicts of interest? I know someone suing their landlord and he had to find a lawyer 3 hours away because all the local lawyers work with this property management company.
- aipatselarom 7mo agoWhoa, what an interesting variation of "buying the railroads".
- withinboredom 7mo agoIt’s literally a tactic in divorce reddits. Go to all the lawyers in the city and get a meeting. Now they can’t work with your partner because they’ve given you advice.
- frankharv 7mo agoNot really. Most all companies have Binding Arbitration built into employment contracts. What lawyer wants to have their pay limited thusly? You can hire your own lawyer for the proceedings but no jackpot payouts in arbitration.
- OkayPhysicist 7mo agoArbitration agreements have largely backed off in the last couple of years, because the main benefit (avoiding class action lawsuits) has been eroded. Activists discovered that you can cause serious economic damage to company simply by mass-filing arbitration claims, and some case law poked holes in just how "binding" the agreements were (and if someone can appeal their arbitration case, it defeats the whole point). This shift happened 2022 ish.
- philipallstar 7mo agoRemember, you should think of HR as a friend. Just not your friend.
- devsda 7mo agoOff topic. Did anybody read the linked fortune article about Uber ceo expecting people to work on weekends. It has that paid PR post and satirical piece vibes at the same time. With words like "unparalleled work ethic" working on weekends, wisdom and the part about checking emails right after waking up at 5 in the morning, I was expecting it to wrap up with a hint of obvious sarcasm but sadly it never came.
- polotics 7mo agoThis isn't off topic in as much as clearly it reveals how disconnected from reality that CEO is: "Khosrowshahi says: Just work hard, and success will follow. " ...is hilarious for a company like Uber, where the whole point of the business model is to optimize away drivers income so much that they will always be on the edge of something very much else than success, no matter how hard they work!
- wojciii 7mo agoUber is a failure here in this part of Scandinavia. They were made redundant by our lowmakers and try to run some kind of cab business in accordance with our laws.
- OutOfHere 7mo agoWhat ridesharing services thrive there? None as far as I know. The taxis in Scandinavia are in my experience a total scam with drivers charging absurdly high rates and taking the long route on top of it. The riders are worse off in every way.
- wojciii 7mo agoTaxis are not a scam. They are expensive because they have to pay people to drive for a living. You should ask to drive a specific route and know the area. This is the same in all countries.
- 7mo ago
- 10xDev 7mo ago[flagged]
- OutOfHere 7mo agoHow is one supposed to deal with a problem person then? Also, odds can be high that she will soon report you if you don't report her.
- anon-ex-uber 7mo agoIf you are a male, you sadly have little recourse. Just have to suck it up I guess.
- OutOfHere 7mo ago[flagged]
- hackable_sand 7mo ago[flagged]
- cindyllm 7mo ago[dead]
- zoklet-enjoyer 7mo ago"...I decided to share it because I think it illustrates something most employees don’t think about until it’s too late: HR exists to protect the company, not you." No shit
- 1024core 7mo ago> I was fired for following HR’s own verbal instructions. This is why, even when there are verbal instructions, politely request that they give you something in writing; you know, for your reference, just in case you forget ;-)
- barelysapient 7mo agoOr send your own email recapping the conversation.
- frankharv 7mo ago[flagged]
- GuinansEyebrows 7mo agowhy would you contact Uber's legal team to ask if you could file a lawsuit against them? do you think they would have any reason not to convince you to drop the matter?
- anon-ex-uber 7mo agoI wasn't asking if I could file a lawsuit. I sent Uber Legal a pro se demand letter indicating that I would be following up with further legal action unless a settlement could be agreed upon.
- OutOfHere 7mo agoSue them!
- vcryan 7mo agomaybe
- heavyset_go 7mo agoWait, did you really email Uber's legal team about this without doing it through your lawyer?