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.
The reason certain minorities are protected is in part because the reason for discrimination is because of race, gender, or other attributes they were born with and cannot change.
The choice of where to work is just that--a choice. Choices have consequences. If you willingly accept continued association with a known group of bad actors, it's reasonable that someone might judge your character poorly for that choice.
I wont hire someone from google, because they have hyper creepy dossiers on everyone. I wont hire from FB, because they were bros in the past, have privacy problems and also have creepy dossiers on everyone. I wont hire from apple, because how could someone support an asshole like steve jobs? I wont hire someone from amazon/AWS, have you seen how they treat their warehouse workers? I won't hire someone from microsoft, they were monopolist assholes! I wont hire someone who worked at a chinese company, they act even worse than all of the above!
I won't hire someone who moved to large powerful country X, because they could immigrate to europe and not support such a bad government with their tax dollars. I wont hire a person who moved to city X, because they generate the housing disaster displacing poor people. I wont hire a religious person, becaue religion has done horrible things. I wont hire a non-religious person, because they have no morals.
I won't hire a guy who stayed at media-hated company for X years even though I have no idea what their personal situation was. Maybe if they left, their green card would be delayed for a year a two. A year of someones life is nothing right? Maybe the 100 person team at their 10-50k employee company was really nice and had none of the toxic crap reported by the media.
It's a dangerous road to judge people like that, lest you be judged the same, in secret.
As if majority of Uber workers thought "hey, I could offend women and do shit there, I want to work for them!". And sure all programmers value workplace image over technical challenges?
It's as reasonable to think ex-Uberist is douche as that ghetto-looking dude stole a bicycle on the way to job interview. Possible? Yes. More likely than average citizen? Yes. Reasonable?
If people would be (soft-)forced to steer clear from anyone who might look like a bad actor, it'd suck big time. Want to take down opponents? Spread some rumours and people are afraid to work with them. Or companies would be over-the-top to look good instead of focusing on what they actually do. Github and their diversity team comes to mind.
> And sure all programmers value workplace image over technical challenges?
No, but then they've made a decision and sometimes those come back to haunt you. That said: I wouldn't dismiss someone from a position just because they've worked at Uber, but I would ask "pointed questions" to quote the article. At the end of the day you will have to work with that person and I'd rather work with nice people than not.
If you willingly accept continued association with a known group of bad actors
Speaking of which, what's the polite euphemism YC now uses to describe its relationship with Peter Thiel? and how likely is anyone to believe they're continuing that in order to stand on principle vs. baser reasons?
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.
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".
Well, yes, that's why it's a protected category. It's the fact that it's a protected category that distinguishes it from non protected categories. That's the distinction and that's why the same doesn't apply there as for any random thing.
If you substitute "poor programming skills environment" it suddenly makes sense. That's the thing with substitutions. They change the meaning.
I'm all in favour of letting people discriminate on these grounds. They're the people reducing their own hiring pool. Everyone else is going to evaluate the candidates directly for culture and consequently have a competitive advantage.
> If you substitute "poor programming skills environment" it suddenly makes sense
Why would it? From my experience, companies with poor code quality are great to poach junior-to-mid programmers. They're super happy to jump the ship and they're well aware of code smells and problems poor code causes.
> I'm all in favour of letting people discriminate on these grounds.
Would you discriminate based on person himself or because he dared to work for company you don't like?
Those people were not borne and bred at Uber, many are talented people who were poached from other "high status" companies. It may be the "culture" at Uber makes some people do dumb things, but it seems to follow that if they behaved well while at other well managed companies that they would become good assets under a positive management structure elsewhere.
Data are useful, but interpretation is more murky. You are interviewing the people who don't want to work at Uber anymore. The people who might not "fit in" (following your logic) are the people who aren't interested in leaving.