[uberengineer123]

>It sounds like the abuse is pretty universal, from the article: "It was normal for guys to refer to other guys as fags when they didn't participate in private parties where sex and drugs were involved."

Full disclosure, I work at Uber.

I have been staying out of this until now, but this point particularly grinds my gears.

If I heard anything remotely like what was discussed in this article you bet your ass I'm going to speak up. I know people do not speak of me, but watching my entire company be vilified is a bit difficult and hard to not take personally. I work with a lot of fantastic engineers that would not tolerate anything remotely like the behavior outlined in this article for a second. That's the problem with gigantic companies though, things often happen in dark corners that aren't apparent to the rest of the organization. People want to conflate specific incidents with the state of the entire company.

I had one opportunity to speak up when my female teammate was being discriminated against, and I took it. It wasn't even blatant either, the guy could easily defend himself and say it's not a sexism thing, but that's what it was. He's a massive jackass too, but you can't fire people on the spot for being a massive jackass without a lot of evidence to back it up. I did my part.

I cannot speak for anybody else, but I can tell you in my corner of the Uber world I take this shit very seriously, and so does everybody else I work with. The bullshit that is going on is not representative of my team, and it's very very hard to not take this personally.

The problem I have is that everybody wants to chime in with how awful Uber is like they know something I don't. Now I'll admit, there's a lot I don't know about working at Uber, as I only know my corner of the company. If I'm saying that what does that say about everybody else? Do these people think for a second that I would have stuck around and stuck it out if I saw this bullshit going on first hand?

I'm not going to be the one that stands up and defends leadership, or HR, or whomever else, they can speak for themselves just as I speak for myself.

[debatem1]

I had a similar experience at a previous company I worked at, and a similar reaction. When people heaped criticism on them for sexism I essentially said "no way, I've never seen any of that, this is outrageous, you're slandering the good guys".

Well, as it turns out, they weren't. A female engineer I knew in passing wound up writing an essay similar to this one describing her horrible treatment at the hands of one of her coworkers and HR. I was shocked, but I also knew her well enough to know that she wouldn't make up something like that. She shared that story as her goodbye email from the company.

Even now, I'm baffled and angry about the response the company made. I don't know why it was handled that way, and I don't know why her coworker acted so wretchedly. It boils my blood, and mixed in with that and the bewilderment is a certain sense of shame that I had misplaced my trust so badly.

Anyways, I guess all of that is just a long way of saying that I hear where you're coming from and hope your experience ends better than mine did.

[uberengineer123]

Thanks, this is pretty much exactly what I'm going through, especially because I personally know Susan. It is outrageous to hear what has happened to her, and has affected me quite personally.

[grandalf]

It's great to hear that Susan's experience is not the case on every team.

Uber clearly does a lot of things very well, and although I posted in a different comment that perhaps Travis should go I think that the best outcome would be that the company can learn from these events and become better as a result.

[erikpukinskis]

> It's great to hear that Susan's experience is not the case on every team.

What? No it's not. If it was like that on every team, you would basically be describing hell. "Better than absolute hell" is nothing to celebrate.

[grandalf]

> "Better than absolute hell" is nothing to celebrate.

Well I think that it's useful in the midst of stories like this to realize that yes, most people are nice, kind, etc. Perhaps most Uber employees are like that. It should give hope to anyone who is working somewhere that should be better who is inclined simply to quit vs trying to make it better.

[erikpukinskis]

It's useful for people who are not under assault, for whom the worst aspect of this situation is that their egos are being threatened.

For people dealing directly with harassment it's a pointless distraction. Of course there are good people. Anyone who is dealing with harassment knows their are good people, because shitty people are harassing them. The difference is not an academic one for them, it's a material one.

For you, the scariest thing about this thread is apparently that someone might think everyone on earth is bad? No that can't be. Your priority is ensuring we all remember not all Uber employees are bad? You're worried about the reputations of non-harassing Uber employees?

Sorry, I'm struggling here. What's useful about reminding people amidst a harassment crisis that not everyone ja bad?

[anonymoose234]

>I had one opportunity to speak up when my female teammate was being discriminated against

>He's a massive jackass too, but you can't fire people on the spot for being a massive jackass without a lot of evidence to back it up.

The implication of this is that you also have experience at Uber working with somebody who is unfireable despite being a "massive jackass" and engaging in sex discrimination against at least one female employee there, while you were around as a witness. It's good that you spoke up when he acted like that, I don't mean this as a personal attack on you or your coworkers specifically. But your anecdote here reads like one more story confirming issues with Uber's management/HR, even though you've intended it otherwise.

[achow]

He clearly mentioned "It (sexism) wasn't even blatant either..".

In every company there are 'Jackasses' (selfish egotist managers, politically malevolent colleagues etc.) who can never be fired for their specific ways of 'jackassery'. In this Uber narrative it was not anyway implied that this person was always sexist jackass.

I'm just being respectful of the anonymous Uber engineers who are speaking up. This would only lead to goodness for the existing female employees who are there in Uber and other companies.

[uberengineer123]

Thanks for speeaking up for me, this is exactly what I meant. It is really hard to stand up by myself against the deluge of negativity, thanks.

[achow]

It is funny.

Here you are perhaps doing the same (vocalizing on behalf of silent majority of good individual engineers at Uber) and the HN crowd is piling on to you; perhaps no different behavior than what they are trying to preach against.

[chris_wot]

After reading about the egregious violations of privacy, threats against journalists, flagrant violations of the law in many countries and cities around the world and the fact that the top man of Uber was willing to serve under a Trump presidency, I don't think you can be too surprised about all the negative comments!

[uberengineer123]

I feel like you didn't really read my post. You don't fire somebody the first, or even second, time they mess up. There are plenty of people at plenty of companies that /should/ be fired, but have not yet because you generally don't fire somebody without overwhelming evidence. This is not a problem exclusive to Uber.

Despite the fact I pretty clearly explained the problem, you still read into it the way you wanted the narrative to be read.

[barleymash]

Just because you don't think someone should be fired without "overwhelming evidence" (California is at-will, of course you can fire someone for being a massive jackass that makes/made sexist comments), doesn't mean your anecdote doesn't corroborate the sentiments of this article. Despite the fact that you felt like you dealt with the situation, it still shows that this type of thing happens at Uber, even in "your corner of the company", and that it likely happens more than you know -- when you aren't around, around others who are less likely to speak up, etc.

[uberengineer123]

>(California is at-will, of course you can fire someone for being a massive jackass that makes/made sexist comments)

There are more considerations like whether you're willing to pay unemployment, or open yourself up to a lawsuit depending on the circumstances.

[grokas]

So basically, Uber is LESS willing to risk a lawsuit for firing bad/sexist/asshat employees and MORE willing to risk a lawsuit from employees who bear the brunt of the abuse.

Oh yea thats right. As other have discussed, its because Uber is a juggernaut corp who will out-spend the legal competition anyway, so Uber doesn't care.

I appreciate your defense that "it isn't everyone" and "I am an Uber engineer and I stand up for women/gays/minorities", but I'm not sure we are getting at the larger picture here.

Its the movers and shakers at the top who need to start setting the right example instead of protecting their golf buddy who is making 6 figures. You have done your part, but this needs to go all they way up to the top.

You'd think they would at the very least care about the bad press in terms of quarterly/yearly earnings and the potential loss of customers/drivers because of the PR fallout.

[anonymoose234]

If the "mess up" is deliberately discriminating against somebody over a protected class like sex, I think firing them immediately is a fair and arguably ideal action to take. I would be surprised if this wasn't the standard operating procedure in most companies.

I assumed from the phrase "massive jackass" in your post that cruel behavior from him was typical and dramatic enough to be a marked pattern. Most companies /are/ willing to fire people who repeatedly disrespect and are cruel to their coworkers. It's part of a bare baseline that you need to maintain to have a decent work environment for your employees. You and the woman he discriminated against makes at least two separate eye witness reports to an egregious offense (protected class discrimination), and I assumed from your description of him that his cruelty wasn't just exposed to you two.

[uberengineer123]

You're making a lot of assumptions. You assume that the interaction where he was discriminatory took place with my teammate. That's not the case, it was a comment made to me and only me. I recorded and documented it's something that was followed up on.

I understand you're outraged at people for their discriminatory behavior but you need to recognize you don't know the facts.

[int_19h]

You could do one thing to prove the point about not defending leadership and not standing up for this kind of bullshit right away. It sounds like "Mike #2" ought to be sufficiently unambiguous for Uber employees to identify, so can you name that person?

[uberengineer123]

There are nearly 2000 engineers at Uber, with people coming and going every week. I'm not even sure I know the /team/ the author is writing about.

Practicality aside, how stupid do you think I would have to be to start a massive witchhunt against somebody who has had allegations made against them by an anonymous person?

[daveguy]

> Practicality aside, how stupid do you think I would have to be to start a massive witchhunt against somebody who has had allegations made against them by an anonymous person?

They weren't talking to you they were talking to the person who asked for the witch hunt.

Although somebody does know exactly who this is and never should have let it slide. Those of you with your head down, it's time to go over your boss's head and say something.

[uberengineer123]

>They weren't talking to you they were talking to the person who asked for the witch hunt.

That's the same person I replied to. I think you took my comment to be in reply to another comment of the same depth.

[daveguy]

My bad. I misjudged the indents.

[krenoten]

As much as I would love to see "Mike #2" publically castrated, there is a fairly high chance of causing an innocent person significant grief by going down this path. Please don't trigger a witch hunt. Justice must be discharged with tremendous care to protect the innocent.

[someonenice]

Its the way the HR responds that is of more concern than how other engineers respond.

[Camillo]

How do we know you're a Uber engineer and not some rented astroturfer? You better balance some binary trees for us right now, son.

[watwut]

Blatant sexism is quite high bar. IMO, most of it is in grey area where whoever is thinking that way can easily deny everything. There is usually aspect of being unsure whether you are really discriminated against or whether it is that you are really doing something wrong and needs improvement.

In any case, it is good you took the opportunity to speak up. Even if the company does not change anything, knowing that it is not all colleagues who consider you to be less helps to put things into perspective. For me personally, when something similar happened, it mattered a lot. Not just felt better, but really made difference in how I seen my position, how I was confident afterwards and how I trusted colleagues in general.

I am trying to say that the action like yours may have positive impact on colleges even if you did not seen it.

[crux]

You, with the rest of us, have been treated to more than enough coverage of the issues at Uber to know that this isn't a series of isolated incidents.

If you really wouldn't stand for this sort of thing, then quit your job.

[uberengineer123]

I don't get this. You don't know anything about working at Uber except secondhand accounts. Where do you get off dictating morals to me? You don't think I'm a person that stands up for what's right?

You know nothing about what I'm doing, who I am, or anything about working at Uber except the worst of the worst. Yet here you are acting condescending, because you've read a bunch of newspaper articles you're morally superior.

I tremendously resent comments like yours. I hope you consider how offensive your comments are.

[kmonsen]

I agree with this, it is easy to tell others what they should do. You should never quit rashly over something like this anyway, figuring out a long-term exit; maybe.

Also you are very right it is hard to say for anyone if we would have done what you have, very easy to imagine ourselves doing the right thing but so much harder in the moment.

[inferiorhuman]

Ehhhhh it's not as if this is the first time Uber has repeatedly been in the news for abusive behavior. You guys have a reputation of being vile to a really diverse group of people (drivers, tech types, news media). FFS Uber is a company whose core values are thumbing their nose at the rule of law (rah rah disruption... gag).

So, no, I'm not going to suggest you quit your job. Hell, I don't even think you condone the nasty behavior coming out of your employer. But, by working at Uber, you are very directly helping a company that is about as far away from "do no evil" as possible. You're directly contributing to making the world a worse place and that sucks. That's pretty offensive to me. You're aiding and abetting a company that absolutely feeds into the anti-tech narrative in the Bay Area and that is personal. And, yes, I resent that.

[piva00]

What is your opinion on the reports about Travis ignoring red flags on this kind of behaviour inside Uber?

[unholiness]

I agree, but for people to step up and complain, there needs to be a system around them that supports it.

The crazy part about these stories is not that Uber has a few awful people, and it's not that there aren't people who will speak up and complain. The crazy part about these stories is that HR seems to be systematically supporting the few awful people and antagonizing the people who speak up and complain.