Regarding drivers, I feel there is an upside to the horrible treatment Uber doles out to drivers which is that Uber wants turnover, wants a driver to work for a year or so, and fears long term drivers who might have more of a claim to employment or be more invested in a lawsuit.
> Obnoxiousness seems to be a characteristic quite ingrained into elite hacker culture
That was not my experience with the elite developers I have known. I find that behavior endemic and distributed like a bell curve throughout society.
This account has been abusing HN by using it exclusively for political arguments. It has also been posting personal attacks. Neither of those are allowed here, so we've banned it.
I live in a city where Uber is just rolling out (Calgary), and I can say new drivers is not something a company would want. Many don't know how to use the GPS, or connect with a customer. Just today I had set a pin to a pick up location. The driver took a wrong turn thinking I was at location X and not location Y. I called him and tried to direct him to where I was. He seemed to get lost, then he just canceled his trip.
actually it's the drivers that add all the value, the devs are the folks that enable the cheating. Susan Fowler was responsible for keeping the trains running on time.
but what you said is "the devs enable the cheating". that sounds like you're accusing the developers, specifically, of some kind of malfeasance due specifically to the developers.
if you have something against Uber (there's a lot wrong with how they do business), you should state that, and state it clearly, and probably state it in a discussion thread where it would be more on topic.
I think @flootch has a point. The question is, are Uber's employees -- and not just the upper management -- complicit in a scheme (of knowingly exploiting their drivers) that blows the internal scandal out of the water? And if yes, would their participation compromise the merit of any claims for personal redress? Don't have an answer, not beating my breast...
How many laws does Uber have to break,
how many drivers does Uber have to cheat,
how many assaults on riders and drivers have to be committed,
how much predatory pricing does Uber have to commit,
how many labor laws does Uber have to flout,
how much full time jobs does Uber have to undermine,
how many people, riders, pedestrians and drivers does Uber have to kill
before this generation of engineers looks beyond the high tech goodness and high salaries they personally achieve to see the poison you enable by staying on with Uber?
ethics/shmethics it's a great job at an important company!
I drove Yellow Cab in Houston for a few tough months in Houston while I was in school and the taxi business is far worse than anything I've heard at Uber -- especially for those doing day-leases. The taxi business is more blue collar by comparison with Uber. I am definitely not defending Uber -- I am saying that Uber is getting this press because the situation affects educated (mostly white) liberal engineering type while taxi business practices often go unnoticed because taxi employees aren't typically the demographic that starts blogs or talks to The NY Times -- nor do they raise VC money thus entangling them in SV politics and media.
I never once saw a female taxi mechanic -- the only female employees I ever saw were grizzled old dispatchers too tough to take any crap or the occasional girl out of college working as a marketing assistant. Operations was almost exclusively men -- the mechanics in the yard were all men.
Pay attention to how taxi companies try to 'sell' cars to drivers at insane terms to were drivers would have to work 5 days out of a week just to pay the note. Try scratching a day lease car and watch how the repair costs get taken out of your money (despite also paying for "insurance" to cover such things.) Yoy get robbed when picking up a dispatch passenger and lose all your money -- too bad, you still have to pay the day lease. I get it -- drivers are independent contractors -- however any criticism of Uber ought to be tempered by a fair assessment of the industry they are ostensibly replacing.
I didn't say Lyft was better (though it seems clear from settled lawsuits and FTC fines and police reports that Uber is much worse) the takeaway is that engineers are responsible for the output of their employers.
Engineers used to understand that and would debate taking positions in the military industrial complex, and would discuss the ethics of whistleblowing.
Go through my comments the past few days and witness today's engineers basically saying "Uber has been good to me, I am not responsible for the other parts"
> how many people, riders, pedestrians and drivers does Uber have to kill
I don't think you can really pin accidents on Uber.
Then again their drivers are constantly fucking up traffic, so maybe.
I agree with you though. But people worship the founder, the guy who built the company. They just see him as a maverick, a guy standing up for corruption and breaking taxi monopolies.
Sure they actively flout regulations put in place for good reasons and seem like a pretty scummy company, but that valuation!
> they actively flout regulations put in place for good reasons
I suspect the downvotes are coming from people like me who don't think that taxi regulations were ever put in for a good reason. Taxi medallions and city restrictions on taxis have always been pure rent-seeking behavior.
I phrased it poorly then. They seem to do what they want, flouting both outdated taxi medallion regulations and others which were put in place for reasonable reasons.
Taxi medallion regulations and others were not put in place for reasonable reasons. They were put in for crony "government-granted-monopoly" reasons.
They maybe "flouting" laws, but they still follow taxi laws, in that they can't be hailed by hand. They are electronically ordered, which the law categorizes as something different. They're lawful, they just made the taxis look really stupid. :)
Thank god for now that you are in error about that:
> That’s the average amount of time, the company said, that users spend each day on its Facebook, Instagram and Messenger platforms (and that’s not counting the popular messaging app WhatsApp).
So that's not Americans it's users, and it's not FB, but I am hopeful that it's Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which I perceive for now are "task" based communications and sharing apps, not the "spam my friends and family with my political beliefs" stuff I don't want in nearly the amount that FB shovels at me.
You had me scared there for a moment, but I bet you are more right than wrong in your basic point It's probably the prime source of news in the western world. This is not to be underestimated.
Q: What are the ethical implications of an engineer taking on employment with Uber given what we know as factual regarding Uber's behavior and given the high demand for software engineers in today's economy?
Q: If you do not have family, and are reasonably healthy, what are the ethical implications of retaining a position at Uber and not resigning?
A: If the engineer has any reasonable alternatives (which they should have, as you're pointing out) it's somewhat indefensible on moral terms. Maybe, possibly, you could count this news as indication that the process is working as expected and defer judgement for a while.
More importantly, though: it's completely stupid to join Uber now. It's pretty clear that the work environment has always been the sort of thing that kills any humanity people may have had. With this investigation, the backstabbing will only get worse. You'll get there (without any knowledge of the internal structure) and have to navigate a maze while it's on fire.
Somewhere above, I'm also making the case of an upcoming Uber->Under transformation. They were burning cash as if Elon Musk was trying to escape from the Federal Mint. Now, their revenue is taking a hit and investors won't touch them with a 10-foot pole in an open relationship.
Apart from engineers, their management may at the verge of collapse: If your vesting is nowhere in sight (and I believe Uber's vesting is tied to exit scenarios, so good luck with that), it's time to cut your losses before Holder's successor starts the actual investigation. If there's anything suspicious with their finances (which people have long been speculating about, considering they stopped publishing them), you don't want to be an innocent guy/gal in a guilty org.
I joined Uber as an engineer last year. Professionally this is the best thing to happen to me. I work with great engineers, i learnt a lot from them. There are people from diverse backgrounds, people for top CS universities to people without any formal CS education but who are 2-3x better than most engineers i have seen. That said, it is not the place for everyone, things move really really fast. Lots of engineers are from Google & FB. Some tooling is inadequate but that is normal for any young company
I like TK, he is honest & anti-burecracy (which is very important for engineers). We have weekly town hall & he answers all sort of questions from employees with honesty that i haven't seen in my previous companies.
I feel Uber is going through growing pains since they grew too fast. They have hired/hiring managers from bigger companies who will help them transitioning into a mature company.
Eric couldn't find a single bankster guilty of anything in the 2008 meltdown, and he wasn't able to find anything wrong with Fast & Furious, so I have to disagree with you, his appointment will certainly provide the best outcome for Uber.
None were found guilty in Britain as well. Nor did Congress enact any meaningful reform. Hell, Arizona has re-elected John McCain and he was a bag man for Charles Keating.
Seems like no one, Justice, Congress or the American people want to hold people accountable.
Thanks. The article I read was from before those convictions. And given the relative sizes of our countries, y'all did a much better job of holding people accountable. We clearly didn't.
After Enron, many people (not enough) went to prison. Arthur Anderson was shut down with huge job losses. White collar jobs. Politicians and the Justice Department have no stomach for that.
Maybe they have a point. In the 30s, a lot of good banks went down as a contagion spread. In 2008, it was already bad and no one but no one wanted that. Lehman was more of a hit job favor for Goldman Sachs, but also a visible sacrifice. But no one wanted the 30s again.
His refusal to provide documentation related to Fast & Furious also earned him the honor of being the first cabinet member ever to be found in contempt of Congress
It's OK if it's the best outcome, so long as those who broke the law are fairly punished. At this point, I'm not aware that Susan has initiated a lawsuit, so I'm guessing she'll be contacted with a settlement offer.
This is a great example of how allowing a douche to act in a way that everyone knows violates sexual harassment laws can cost a company money and reputation.
If you're someone's boss, don't talk about sex with them unless you are sure they will be happy to have that conversation and won't have second thoughts within the statute of limitations.
Based on your comment, I'm inferring that your view is that the best possible outcome for Uber would be a situation where a sham investigation is performed, valid accusations are suppressed, they can claim everything's OK and continue business as usual (and that this is the outcome Uber desires -- and they may very well desire this, I'm certainly suspicious). If that's an incorrect read, then please accept my apologies for what follows because that's what I'm addressing in this response.
At this point "the genie is out of the bottle". Every major (and many minor) news source has reported on Sarah Fowler's allegations. There's no going back so some sort of response has to be made to what's being alleged. I see two possible, obvious, options: Suppress/obstruct/lie and distract with a sham investigation. Settle quietly with any accusers with strong NDAs. Come back in a few weeks with findings that are as transparent as mud or get in front of it, probably still settle quietly with accusers/NDAs, communicate internally and externally extremely strong policies addressing this sort of behavior and operate with a nearly "zero tolerance", weed out the bad actors and revisit/measure success at regular intervals.
The best possible, long term outcome for Uber would be to get to the truth of what is happening in a way that is as public and transparent as possible. Then "move heaven and earth" to correct it, continuing to operate as publicly as possible about the outcome. This is a "sharing economy" company where riders and drivers alike are being asked to put a great deal of trust in an entity that looks very untrustworthy at this point. Assuming the allegations are true, what's going on over there is all kinds of bad, and not just for the victims of harassment/discrimination. Sarah Fowler's allegations extend far beyond her personal experiences. The biggest red flag that I saw was the ineptitude and powerlessness exhibited by HR. Without a strong HR department with the ability to independently take action on ethical failures like this, the company, itself, cannot be trusted.
I've been lucky to be part of companies that had strong, established guidelines that extended beyond the protections of the law coupled with HR departments that had the authority to act independent of management[0]. I know of specific cases where popular, top performing managers were removed despite the desires of C-level executives. Policies left little room for interpretation, required yearly re-agreement (with really annoying and specific tests) and required reporting even of witnessed harassment (with teeth -- if you were a witness, failed to report and were found out, you were subject to termination with cause).
Companies that do not demand such obvious ethical behavior are almost certainly suffering from many forms of employee ethical lapses. Corporate culture that actively suppresses reporting of unethical/discriminatory and harassing behavior (through the inaction of HR), cause the "good people" to leave (or stay, but in a state of demotivation and without a chance that they'll ever stand up), and leave the company run by people you can't trust.
Again, assuming these are true allegations, this is a far worse place to be than the position of a company having to apologize for bad behavior, settle some lawsuits and take the necessary action to restore confidence in what they're doing. Attacking it head on comes with the immediate risk that the dirty laundry will be aired for all to see, customers will lose confidence in the company and they won't be able to regain trust quickly enough after the bad actors are rooted out and the problem is corrected, but the alternative is like a pot of soup set to boil. At some point, the multiplication of bubbles accelerates until it rapidly boils over and in this case that might not be something that can be recovered from. It's also possible we're witnessing that pot boiling over right now.
[0] I was never in HR, but had near family-level friendships with a higher-up in that department who shared information that they almost certainly should not have with me.
Did any of you folks talk about the enormously unethical ways you treat drivers? Those folks who are mostly poorer than you who do the actual work that provides value?
I find it laughable to hear Uber engineers cry about how unfairly Kalanick treats them.
> Obnoxiousness seems to be a characteristic quite ingrained into elite hacker culture
That was not my experience with the elite developers I have known. I find that behavior endemic and distributed like a bell curve throughout society.