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Inside Uber's Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture (cnbc.com)
Excerpts from Mike Isaac's report for the New York Times: Interviews with more than 30 current and former Uber employees, as well as reviews of internal emails, chat logs and tape-recorded meetings, paint a picture of an often unrestrained workplace culture. Among the most egregious accusations from employees, who either witnessed or were subject to incidents and who asked to remain anonymous because of confidentiality agreements and fear of retaliation: One Uber manager groped female co-workers' breasts at a company retreat in Las Vegas. A director shouted a homophobic slur at a subordinate during a heated confrontation in a meeting. Another manager threatened to beat an underperforming employee's head in with a baseball bat. Until this week, this culture was only whispered about in Silicon Valley. Then on Sunday, Susan Fowler, an engineer who left Uber in December, published a blog post about her time at the company. [...] One group appeared immune to internal scrutiny, the current and former employees said. Called the A-Team and composed of a small group of executives who were personally close to Mr. Kalanick, its members were shielded from much accountability over their actions. One member of the A-Team was Emil Michael, senior vice president for business, who was caught up in a public scandal over comments he made in 2014 about digging into the private lives of journalists who opposed the company. Mr. Kalanick defended Mr. Michael, saying he believed Mr. Michael could learn from his mistakes.
loses money
sex fueled culture
no definitive product
It probably doesn't get highlighted in the hiring process. Most people don't brag about that in interviews - the misbehavior comes out later.
In most companies, someone pulls a stunt like any of the ones listed here, and they're quickly smacked down, or fired outright (depending on the incident). Judging by the rumors and reports of incidents at Uber, that wasn't the case there. Instead, HR seems to have been told to ignore and protect "high performers" in a penny-wise/pound-foolish policy that leads to the sort of culture like you see described. What happens is that when people don't get punished for the first few things, they start to realize that the normal limits don't apply, and the bad sorts start pushing the envelope. Eventually you get a workplace culture where all sorts of stuff is tolerated, and you wind up with a toxic work environment.
"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And my ex-manager (woman) was at a poker game at my house, raving drunk and after losing a hand to me, threw a handful of ceramic poker chips in my face as hard as she could. Not that it surprised anyone because she occasionally comes to work drunk. Not that anyone will do anything about it because she's a she.
And then there's the manager of our finance department (black woman) who doesn't feel unprofessional screaming at me on the phone and calling me names - while I'm on speaker phone with her - while people in other offices come to listen in amazement. She developed a billing workflow for our entire business unit, and after deploying it at the END OF THE QUARTER with no testing - which caused no end of headaches - I dug through to figure out the errors, drafted a corrective action plan to fix it and sent it to her - which culminated in this legendary phone conversation where she was screaming at me on the phone about how I was too stupid to figure out how to use the workflow...
I documented all of this, got supporting statements from my colleagues, and went to HR - who basically said that she's untouchable because she's a minority and a woman. I work for GE; not exactly a small-time company. We have all the expected training, HR-enforced compliance...hell, when someone does something that grabs the attention of a regulatory body in a bad way, people get fired. The people involved get fired. The people who weren't involved but heard about it punitive career action for not proactively taking steps to report it up the chain of command. The people who weren't involved and didn't hear about it, but were in a position that they theoretically SHOULD have heard or known about it get formally reprimanded.
But God help that there be a woman, or for double damage a minority woman...and rules go out the window.
So you think managers threatening to kill someone or calling them a homosexual slur is just fine? If I was in charge, there would be a whole lot of people being marched out the door. I certainly would never tolerate anything like that (I'm management now). Manager or regular employee, if you cannot behave with a modicum of decency and manners, then you won't long have a job anywhere I manage.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A homosexual slur is likely to get a very strong reprimand. Threatening to beat someone up or grabbing someone's breasts is almost certainly going to see you escorted off the premises. Uber sounds like one fucking terrible place to work.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Another manager threatened to beat an underperforming employee's head in with a baseball bat."
Now, that's what must be a highly motivating work environment :/
One must wonder how their hiring process works, i.e. letting such characters through the gates, since recent reports don't paint a pretty picture.
It's not the hiring process that's creating the problem, it's senior management. Management would have heard about the incident (or similar ones), and they had the ability to discipline both the manager to grabbed the baseball bat as well as his manager who didn't do anything about it. Instead they let the incident go, perhaps even laughing about it and treating it as an example of a passionate manager motivating his people.
It's like corruption in Russia, they didn't get that way by hiring corrupt government officials, they got that way by demonstrating, at the very top, that corruption was tolerated. That same baseball bat manager might have been a perfectly decent manager in a different organization, or weeded out if he couldn't play along, but put in an organization that didn't restrain his tendencies he becomes a menace.
I stole this Sig
The boob-grabber got fired, as CNBC fails to note (but BusinessInsider does)
The baseball bat thing is probably a reference to Scarface. Whether a manager actually was referencing the movie when making the "threat" or the person talking to the reporter was using it for inspiration for making shit up, I couldn't say.
It's what happens when you let sociopaths into senior management. The advice I received many years ago about "toxic employees" is that while companies should throw them out as soon as possible, quite often, because they have some sort of narcissistic personality, they ingratiate themselves with their bosses, move up the corporate ladder, where they become nightmares to everyone else and create an incredibly toxic environment. And they can significantly harm a company in the process, driving out talent along the way. I cannot imagine why any company would tolerate this kind of behavior, or would allow such a workplace environment to persist. Apart from the risks of expensive lawsuits, such a workplace will have low morale, wallow in inefficiency, and ultimately gain a reputation as a shit place to work.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
tech is a small world; make waves and you may not be working in your field again.
we have mostly killed unions and workers refuse to band together because... reasons. (shrug).
and so, there is no one to speak for the regular worker. not really, not anymore.
we need jobs to pay the bills. its pretty powerful to hold that over someone's head.
this is the unwritten rule. complain and you find yourself out of work and unable to GET work (in some extremes). now, if you are a white male and older than that magic number, you will try even HARDER to avoid being fired or making 'trouble' for managers at work.
until we get a proper balance of power, the worker will continue to be abused and have no real recourse. not in the US and CERTAINLY not in trump's US ;(
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
He likes rape.
You have just described our entire political and economic system. The "bad sorts" have pushed the envelope right to the top..
You are welcome on my lawn.
... make believe that you're some sort of Milo-like entity. And look where his big mouth got him.
A date to the junior high prom?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
So you think managers threatening to kill someone or calling them a homosexual slur is just fine?
Could be. Depends on context. Lots of people have told me they were going to kill me.. slurs are rarely invoked in a literal sense. Language isn't an exact science and like it or not language belongs to everyone. Not just you or a minority of perpetually offended loudmouths who demand language be (re)interpreted in ways that draw maximal offense.
Coupled with an agenda or specific worldview common understandings of messy imprecise language can be wildly distorted with ease.
Just because a person from one tribe swears profusely or lacks manners doesn't make them any more or less decent than individuals from another tribe with different customs.
If I was in charge, there would be a whole lot of people being marched out the door. I certainly would never tolerate anything like that (I'm management now). Manager or regular employee, if you cannot behave with a modicum of decency and manners, then you won't long have a job anywhere I manage.
You know nothing about this situation other than hearsay from a media article naturally biased towards hyperbole.
I heard a rather heated argument the other day at work. It was heated because the devs were up against a deadline, and the debate was (from what I gathered) whether to push a fix forward or not for the next release. Not once did I hear any rudeness toward other team members by those in the debate. Any swearing and most of the frustration was directed at the code and process, not other people.
More to the point, such a culture is set by the guys at the top. Our boss isn't the type to rant or yell at others, and in turn, everyone understands that such behavior doesn't belong at our company. Simple as that.
It's entirely possible to remain civil with fellow employees at all times, even when you're frustrated or tense. It's not exactly *necessary* for a company to behave that way to be successful, but all in all, I'm going to prefer working at a company in which people are expected to remain civil with each other.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
It's what happens when you let sociopaths into senior management.
Corporate management selects for only 2 things: sociopathy and ability to deliver results. The higher up the ladder you climb, the more that it becomes entirely about sociopathy. This is true of almost any large organization, but especially corporations. It's not clear how to fix this, given humans are what they are, but at least recognize the world you live in.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I wouldn't brush off someone threatening to beat my head in with a baseball bat. I'd be calling the cops.
Good idea, but if you don't have it on tape, it's your word against his, and the result is he gets a mild warning "say, Jim, you should be more careful in how you phrase things, ha, ha, some people are taking it wrong," while you get tagged as "too sensitive" and "not a team worker" and are the one let go at the next downsizing.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Oddly enough, one of the best teams I was ever on was a group where people didn't collectively have steel rods up their asses. It ran well and efficiently. Teamwork was excellent. The boss was demanding but did a very good job at cultivating talent being much more effective at genuine "social justice" than most people that like to whine about it loudly.
It actually worked better than a climate of terror inspired by threats of litigation.
Despite the apparent "evil locker room atmosphere", people didn't push individual tolerances too much. Any real nonsense would have been dealt with most severely. If there was a problem you dealt with it then and there.
This Uber situation is basic leadership fail rather than a lack of political correctness or decorum.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> so in your mind, treating people the way you would want to be treated is fascism?
That is such a stupid way to put things. You have no idea how people want to be treated. You very likely couldn't handle being treated the way that that many of us would happily tolerate or even prefer.
That's not even getting into the interesting stuff.
You would melt into a puddle of goo if I applied the Golden Rule you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I had an issue with my manager once (not about sexual harassment, but about an ethic issue since one of the company value is conduct business with uncompromising integrity and professionalism) and I went to the HR. The HR wasn't very helpful and unless I want to make a big issue out of it, there is nothing they are willing to do. The best they could do is if the manager decide to retaliate and there is a paper trail, then they might do something about it. Reading between the line, they infer I should transfer out and that's what I did. I went and talk to other people that dealt with HR before and they schooled me on the true function of HR.
The purpose of HR is not to help you the individual employee. The true purpose is to protect company from liability and any issues that might result in hurting company's profitability. In Uber's case, the HR did exactly that, protect the company from loosing "high performing" manager since Fowler is just another engineer that they could have replaced. In their view, she is nothing special and would only hurt company's profitability while losing a "high performing employee" that would help the company make money. So they would do anything to help sweep the problem under the rug. I'll bet once the investigation has concluded, they would make an example out of that manager and make some cosmetic changes. Once this blows over, everything will back to the same ol' same ol'.
Send the bigot to Venezuela and Somalia instead? Why keep those assholes around? Just because he's the CEO's college drinking buddy doesn't mean he's worth keeping around. Awww, did the executive whine when he got laid off, send him to Uzbekistan!
This is a WORKPLACE, you have to be part of a TEAM. If you start fighting amongst yourselves and shouting abuse because your mother never taught you how to behave in public, then you deserve to be fired.
Now let's sing along together. Uber(tm), Uber(tm), Uber Alles...
Awww, did someone call you a faggot? He's a meanie!
There's solid data showing that suicide rate is higher among bi- and homo- sexual youth (teens and young adult) than among their heterosexual peers.
This is believed to be strongly linked to the difficulty of feeling accepted. The more a young individual with an unorthodox sexuality and/or gender identity feels rejected by the surrounding society, the higher the risks of suicide.
Check again the summary, it was not a young internet shouting homophobic slurs at a senior officer, it was the other way around.
By keeping a climate were "being [homophobic slur]" is considered as a bad thing, that senior officer is actively contributing in a small part in the lack of self acceptance and higher suicide rates among non-heterosexual young people.
It's not about being ridiculously excessively nice to people so they feel special snowflake.
It's avoid to keep a general situation were young persons feel so much rejected by the society that suicide seems a better alternative.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've been sued by a former employer who I had felt it necessary to quit without notice with a wife that was 9 months pregnant and no job prospects in sight. I think I understand the implications of what I'm saying here. Try to get a job when your last employer is lying about you, basically accusing you of all sorts of unethical behavior and threatening to sue prospective employers if they hire you. It was a bad time, a new baby, medical bills and paying a lawyer, but staying would have been worse so I'm glad I quit. I had good reasons to quit and having stuff thrown at me one morning and being verbally threatened was the last straw so I was no longer their employee that afternoon.
NEVER abide a bad situation if you have *any* other options. If you are in a hostile environment like this one (or the one I was in) run, don't walk, away as fast as you can. I know I kept telling myself it would get better, just a little longer, they will eventually come around. Chances are they won't and what was once a daily ball of stress and abuse never got better. In the end for me, it was a mess of lawsuits, lawyers and legal fees, which resulted in me getting paid some lost wages and their dropping all their claims.
So, I do kind of understand what I'm advising folks to do... It's not easy and yes it affects your professional career in the short term, but long term, you have to deal with this garbage sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the worse it gets when you try to unwind all the garbage. So deal with it now.
Seriously, if garbage like described in the article is going on, they NEED to be sued, or at least threated with legal action. Sure, get yourself another job if you can stand it before hiring a lawyer, but don't delay. Do something, ASAP.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101