Usually toxic work environments are a symptom of an underlying issue-they resemble the people who created it. Even if they are nice, grossly overlooking toxic individuals might be part of a results over process type of mentality.
Another possibility is Uber is fucked and people are kicking the can down the road based on chauvinism. Reading her nightmare reminds me of this quote from The Sopranos.
"Money flows uphill, shit flows downhill." - Tony Soprano
We all know how DiMeo crime fmaily met it's fate. While great at navigating diplomacy and making a thriving organization, Tony's downfall was not realizing eventually the shit no longer has any room to flow downwards and the leader finds themselves neck deep in it before it's too late.
During my exit from a previous employer over a CEO whose sexual misconduct makes Uber look like the ACLU, one of our investors gave me the advice that "the CEO sets the culture". The context there was that if the CEO and I didn't see eye to eye on something, that was never going to change while this person was CEO.
In the time since, I've found that advice to be so reliably true that it's one of the core things I use when deciding employers. A kind, pragmatic, ego-free CEO is mandatory for a culture that values the same. Likewise, the personality flaws in a CEO will propagate downward through the staff because everyone looks up to the CEO to signal what does and doesn't fly.
Anecdotally, I expect that Uber will not change while Travis is employed there, and as long as he makes more money than the lawsuits cost, (most of) his investors will find that perfectly agreeable.
...if the CEO and I didn't see eye to eye on something, that was never going to change while this person was CEO.
This advice may be reliably true but I would also argue there are major exceptions. For example, take founder & ceo of any billion dollar company and you will find that they evolved drastically (in good and bad ways) over the years. Zuckerberg has radically transformed himself from an immature frat boy to a charitable, intelligent billionaire CEO. I am sure people who have known him over some period of time would disagree with your investor's line of thinking.
Totally agree with your point about zuckerberg. Zuckerburg evolved over time, but the culture did not, to my knowledge, radically diverge from zuckerberg. Facebook as a whole made that same cultural journey to maturity, which I think only reenforces the point.
Re: "founders can change" - I don't think it's the role of the staff to wait around while a guy spends years in management learning not to be a dick. If they put up with it, and it happens, fine that's great, but it doesn't impact the linkage between CEO and culture.
I don't think anyone will deny the linkage between CEO and culture. The prior comment was pointing out that CEO's can change, and culture will change alongside, hence refuting this statement "that was never going to change while this person was CEO."
You can attach a subjective label to anyone anywhere. But since words mean things, people can generally suss out how close they are to being an accurate description or not.
That may be true, but it doesn't really change the outcome -yes, you could stick around and hope the CEO does a Zuckerberg, but realistically the best strategy is to move on.
Once I found out Evan Spiegel is banging Miranda Kerr, I became determined to ruin Snapchat by purchasing far out of the money put options with my measly tax free savings account barely amounting to 1 ten-thousandth of his post-IPO net worth.
I think we'll see - and I'm hoping that he does - but people with power overall tend to have a very bad habit of making empty promises in the face of criticism.
How do you know (asking seriously, since I work alone 99% of the time) when somebody is sexist (or any other ist) or if he/she is just a generally unpleasant person?
Also, I got to say that if I'm in the same room with a woman who has a very visible cleavage I will look into the ceiling to avoid even the vague notion that I'm looking into their breasts.
> How do you know (asking seriously, since I work alone 99% of the time) when somebody is sexist (or any other ist) or if he/she is just a generally unpleasant person?
Neither is mutually exclusive or objective. Someone can be sexist and be a pleasant person and someone can be an unpleasant person, but not sexist.
Similarly, someone can be unpleasant and racist to one person, but be pleasant and not racist to another.
There's not solid way to determine these things. If you're not in a position where you're being scrupulously watched over for signs of being an ist, then just try to be a good person instead of being not a sexist, or not a racist.
> Also, I got to say that if I'm in the same room with a woman who has a very visible cleavage I will look into the ceiling to avoid even the vague notion that I'm looking into their breasts.
That sounds more like social anxiety/ conditioning.
Sometimes, it's not too important to use the right synonym for "asshole". If, for whatever reason, you think that an equal-opportunity asshole is imprecisely labeled a sexist, well ... is that worth arguing over?
Unfortunately managers also tend to be a product of their environment. I've seen female managers/leads take extremely male-centric sexist positions on issues just because it's the way they've learned. In other words, they had become "one of the boys" and were expecting other women under them to do the same. I've come to assume it's especially true of Women on their 40s or so who have been in the tech industry for a while; a generational problem if you will.
Part of keeping the company free from liability is not enabling massive sexual harassment problems that end up causing multi-million (or billion) dollar (possibly class-action) lawsuits.
Even an ultra-strict "HR only does what's good for the company" should lead to them preventing sexual harassment issues due to legal landscape.
HR has to operate within the constraints of the larger organization.
Under normal circumstances, HR tries to get the organization to behave reasonably, and employees to not get too upset about it, during or after their period of employment. The actions of both are actually out of their control, but they push both ways. It is a classic case of responsibility without authority.
If the organization refuses to take HR concerns seriously, then you get the result you see at Uber. The only thing that HR can do is try to get employees to toe the company line. Good HR people will leave. But there is always someone left to do the job. (It is just like death marches in software development. Which also seems to be a problem at Uber.)
so this time they failed - is throwing mud on the Internet the only way of settling this? Or just most convenient and with best chance of payout? Something smells fishy here - many many people see the big pile of money at Uber and get some ideas
That does not excuse them just as it would not excuse males. It is important to hold women to the same standard even in this area. Moreover, some women are abusive even without males teaching them that.
Out of curiosity, what did you meant by male centric position?
I meant a sexist position that benefits men. Like someone being told that "girl, I never had any respect from men in my career, so don't expect any either" (this was not said from a manager to me, it was part of a conversation a woman I know had with her boss).
But that results in MBA culture! ::nerd shudders::
It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
>It's a source of constant amazement to me that people who will drill incessantly on red-black trees won't put in a modicum of effort to learn even a little bit about the inherently more complicated business of managing people.
This isn't really an issue if you promote an engineer to mgmt when they have demonstrated that can manage people, rather than before and assume they can grow.
There's an alternative: put them in management and enforce mandatory management training.
A former employer of mine had a rule that anyone at a "management level" (including engineers of a certain rank, even if they weren't actually managing anyone) had to complete a set of training courses within a certain period of being promoted. As an engineer entering management, I found the courses to be surprisingly useful in terms of understanding and managing people and so did others. Classes like communication, negotiation, basic finance, employment law, etc.
Then HR decided they were useless and stopped offering them. And they went back to the state the GP is complaining about...
I would highly recommend this. I didn't understand why a WBS made sense to do or how to keep a list of risks, but after attending a project management class it made sense. Not only that, but as we worked through a project in the class, it enforced how tasks and communication work properly for projects.
Basic finance and negotation are a must.
It's amazing how many people don't have much training in these skills.
I'm not assuming anything: I'm saying that there's an answer to the question of how you put an untrained person into an unfamiliar environment: train them.
Whether or not a good/bad X can be retrained into a bad/good Y is a wholly different question.
That's a fair point, but I think that clean idea can be messy in practice.
For one, engineers rarely manage people before they are managers. They might lead a team or be a product manager, etc., but those have different (albeit overlapping) challenges from managing people.
Another important factor is that in small or fast-growing companies, there's often not a formal promotion to manager. One day, you're the solo dev or maybe the you're senior dev of some secondary system. That system gets unexpected popularity/traction, and your manager starts throwing resumes or new recruits in front of you. And before you know it, you're managing a team, still trying to lead code reviews but also dealing with personnel issues, manage timelines, etc. You weren't really promoted. You were just the person in charge of this thing, and the thing grew underneath you. I'm not saying that's ideal, but it's something I've seen fairly often.
You've got a chicken and egg problem here. The only way to train an engineer in this scheme is to have him manage people without having a clue, which necessarily implies breakage for the people working under him: definitionally a new person entering a specialized role has no idea how to carry out said role.
The only thing that fixes this is extensive training before promotion -- but this is anathema in modern corporations.
Not really, say you are a manager and you want to groom a good engineer to become a manager as well. Step one is, can they manage their own projects, step 2 is can they manage a project with 1 other, step 3, several others. Once they can do that and display moral and technical leadership, they are ready to be a manager.
>The only thing that fixes this is extensive training before promotion
When it comes to leadership and people skills, training can increase chances of success, but does not guarantee it by far.
Another way to learn is to work for a great manager and pay attention, or work for a crappy manager and see the consequences of mistakes. The latter is painful, but also more instructive than the former.
I appreciate the appeal of Starship Troopers style leadership: "everybody drops, everybody fights" is wonderful for morale, but everyone needs to go read the book to see what needs to happen before it is organizationally feasible.
In the Troopers universe, promoted troopers are sent to a grueling OCS course that trains them to understand the ins and outs of leadership. NO technology organization I have been exposed to has had a similar training course for new promotes; leadership skills are assumed to blossom overnight upon promotion.
You're asking the wrong questions/ missing the bigger picture. Plus personality disorders are not always negative[0].
The underlying condition is "culture." Companies higher people with similar values that'll fit right in and "go with the flow." Now, how do we make it so the culture of fledgling companies does not turn into a frat house?
Restricting the freedoms of these types to start business will not work.
Get your engineers who want to go into management to get a MBA (regular, part time, or executive). Eng background with a MBA is IMHO one of the best combinations around.
Managing people & businesses isn't something you're born with, it's something you learn and train. Just like coding, but sometimes way harder.
Full disclaimer: I have a computer engineering undergrad and a MBA, so take my opinion with a lot of salt :)
If comments on any thread that mentions whiteboard interviewing are anything to go by, many engineers refuse to drill incessantly on red-black trees, too.
There are plenty of engineers who ended up as a good managers. The problem is that management roles attracts people who seek control and power over others and can not get it otherwise. Some companies see the above as leadership material, promote them and crrate hell for everyone else.
It seems that all cultures have foundations that never go away.
How about partial acculturation? Has it successfully been done before? Has a company ever managed to completely change their inner workings without becoming something unrecognizable?
I'm not asking for Borg-style assimilation: I'm asking for basic management standards followed by all managers.
Upper management's pervasive refusal to pay anything more than token lip service to this standardization makes 99% of technology organizations a political hell to work in.
HR is not there to protect you or help you. They are there to protect the company. Sometimes protecting the company happens to mean helping you, and sometimes the HR people are good people who look for solutions that makes everyone happy. But don't count on it.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything that the manager is doing wrong. We can debate whether the manager is effective at her job, but it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism.
The only citation I can find relevant to the claim of sexism is that she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work. It may very well be that a tank-top is inappropriate attire at Uber's workplace. At IBM and many other companies, it certainly would be inappropriate, and it doesn't sound out of place at all for a manager to ask an employee to wear more professional clothing.
The employee writing this is openly hostile to HR about her manager and for reasons I can't understand. "All of the insolence and harassment I face has damaged my views of Uber and made it really difficult to continue working here." Because she was asked to work at her desk and not wear a tank-top?
Read a little more carefully. The problem here isn't really "sexism", it's that "Tina" has an insecure personality that feels threatened by the people on her team, and thus is marginalizing everyone on it who sticks out in an attempt to establish dominance.
You're correct that a good manager could make a comment about a tank top being inappropriate attire at a given office. But note when Tina said this: it was when the author was talking to another manager to leave the team. Tina isn't giving constructive advice; she's trying to stop the author from forming relationships with other managers. Note also, that Tina led the feedback with disparaging Mark, by saying that Mark was staring at the author's breasts. The implication is "Mark doesn't have your best interests in mind, he's simply a pig; I have your best interests in mind by telling you to cover up, which is advice I think you need to hear."
"that "Tina" has an insecure personality that feels threatened by the people on her team, and thus is marginalizing everyone on it who sticks out in an attempt to establish dominance."
Maybe 'Tina' is a bad boss, but to take one employees gripes and accept a face value that she has they behavioural awareness to know her boss is 'insecure' is a stretch too far.
Sometimes, people look at bold and arrogant people and say 'oh, they must be insecure', when maybe they're just plain old jerkoffs.
I see a story of a generally crappy boss, but that's not entirely uncommon in the world. In fact, it's common.
The issue I think would relate to how it's either systematic or not at Uber.
> Maybe 'Tina' is a bad boss, but to take one employees gripes and accept a face value that she has they behavioural awareness to know her boss is 'insecure' is a stretch too far.
I would agree with you if the author of the article put forth 'insecurity' as an explanation. But she didn't; that was my interpretation of the claims presented in the story as they were written. And yes, I did take them at face value, just for the purpose of illustrating that it's plausible to wonder if there's more going on here than tank tops.
I mean, the author doesn't exhibit any behavioral awareness. The author presents one email she wrote to HR as a complaint, claims HR did nothing about it, labels her boss and HR as sexist, and says things need to change. She's more concerned with the atmosphere at Uber that allowed her complaint to be ignored than anything else.
>it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism.
>she was asked not to wear a tank-top to work
She was not "asked not to wear a tank top to work". Her manager directly linked her (sane) clothing choices to the implication of promiscuity and its impact on her career, with an anecdote about one of her previous coworkers social habits and underwear.
That's inexcusable.
The employee's email is not "openly hostile to HR". She is descriptive of a hostile situation, and upfront about its impact. There's perhaps some subjectivity here, but I don't think it's nearly the same thing.
Your comment seems to do some gymnastics to trivialize a story full of conduct that, if true, is unambiguously improper.
I've re-read this, and re-reviewed the definition of sexism which is quite broad.
I think the case could be made that the manager was actually displaying sexism towards Mark. How? By believing/saying that his decisions would be motivated by what kind of top the author was wearing. This is clearly an old stereotype of males and pretty much definition sexism.
Her manager also comes of as an ass in this article; not sure what's true though.
"Don't wear revealing/sexy clothing" seems to be a common requirement at many jobs, and not sexist at all - though clearly it would be tailored specifically to the (inappropriate) clothes an individual is wearing.
I work in the financial sector. In the summer months especially, it is common to see women dressed in sleeveless tops. I would argue that sexualizing one's peers is much more unprofessional than dressing for comfort.
Tank tops seem to be pretty normal in jobs where a lot of young women work (except in positions that deals directly with customers). Judging by what I have seen women wear last year.
If it seems too revealing to someone, that someone is probably spending all time with males or old women only.
> Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't see anything that the manager is doing wrong. We can debate whether the manager is effective at her job, but it seems clear to me this is not an example of sexism.
As a man, I have never had a single manager comment on the clothes I've chosen to wear at work... Or had my attire compared to a guy playing ping-pong in a speedo.
I witnessed male worker fired on the spot for wearing jeans to work instead of slacks (general motors). I was also once given a warning when my belt and shoes did not match (black and brown).
I went to a business college, and we were taught to dress professionally, I think we spent a full day on the topic in "business communications" course. We most definitely discussed that cleavage should not be shown and dress length should be appropriate. I worked in this college as a tutor, and we also required button-up shirts, tucked in, with a belt, and dress shoes, even though we made minimum wage. "Dress for respect"
I am with you. The manager may not be nicest person around, but I don't think they did anything wrong really. Tank tops are inappropriate office attire IMHMO and this girl does not want to accept that.
At what point is a manager allowed to tell an employee their clothing is inappropriate for work? What line must be crossed before that happens? Ever? Are they ever allowed to say "that outfit is inappropriate"?
Why is it sexism? Perhaps she was the only one with a distracting body? How do we know non-female workers didn't get a talking to for wearing certain clothing?
How do we know it's not jealousy or personal vendetta?
My body being distracting to you should be your problem not mine. Unless the guys are criticised for wearing young guy fashion (or looking attractive) too.
Okay, I'm a guy, I'll show up for work on Monday completely naked. If any of my coworkers so much as glances downward I'll let that sexist swine hear about it. Should be cool, right? It's THEIR problem, after all.
It's a workplace. You don't just do whatever you feel like doing. You closely manage your appearance, demeanor, and conversation to be as helpful and productive as possible. You don't tell rude jokes because they might not be in others' taste. You don't leave trash lying around because some of your coworkers might be bigger neat-freaks than you. You don't sing to yourself loudly at your desk, blast music from your workstation without headphones, or wear a shirt that says "Go Fuck Yourself" on it. These aren't rules that are being enforced on the general population. They're a code of conduct for a cohort of like-minded people who are voluntarily working under that contract of behavior to accomplish something. We're trying to get work done here. It's not about restricting you, it's about enhancing the productivity of the whole. A manager should try their best not to make somebody feel self-conscious about what they're wearing - it's distracting and unpleasant. But that employee shouldn't put their manager in a situation where they feel like they have to mention it. Any given person, garment and culture might be on one side of that line or the other. It's a two-way street. You sacrifice hundreds of freedoms every day you go to work. Dress code isn't magically excluded just because men are more prone to visual distraction than women.
If tech companies were to ever have a dress code, it would be jeans, a graphic tee and a full sleeve hoodie. Or a collared shirt. The hoodie might still be required.
This is an easy way to drive away talent. Myself, and I feel, many others, would gladly take a similar job where the culture and dress were relaxed, instead of fixed. The fix is to hire socially competent people, and be clear to them when they are pushing it early and often.
It wouldn't stop me from joining a company that's clearly better than the rest. But engineers have a lot of comparably good options in hub cities, so it's reasonable to be picky about small stuff - we can afford to be. A formal dress code does have real downsides: it (1) costs money, (2) wastes closet space (it's a premium in NYC!), and (3) makes biking to work or otherwise living a pre-/post-work active life more of a pain.
Here in Seattle absolutely everyone would give you dirty looks. I don't trust anyone in a suit, and I don't think they make a man look anything other than sleazy.
Different cultures, different perceptions. Tech culture as a whole does not share the NYC mentality that suits are a reasonable norm. Dress codes just don't jive with a need for authenticity. Give me the weird guy wearing a kilt over the slick sales guy in a suit any day.
I'm fairly active and don't care for feeling hot in the summers or restricted in general. Feel free to rock your own suit, but it's not a "mistake" to disagree with you.
It is not about being forced to wear clothes. It is about working with a management team who is so incompetent that they would do something so stupid as implement a dress code.
That's a reasonable accommodation in a high school, where students are expected to have out-of-control hormones and not-fully-developed judgment.
In a professional office, if you have a grown-ass adult who is critically distracted by the sight of bare arms, that's their problem, not anyone else's. If they can't manage the barest scraps of self-control, they need to consider a different line of work.
It's not just high school, I'll use professional sports as a quick (but not all-inclusive) example.
The Bill Belichick and Nick Saban enforce strict behavior and dress codes for their employees to simply eliminate distractions. Break the rules and they fire you. They're the most successful "mission oriented" teams of the past two decades.
Uniforms contribute to the sense of "unity in direction" that the best companies have. They should be something that you're proud to wear as a signifier of your work, see IBM in the 70s and 80s.
> Uniforms contribute to the sense of "unity in direction" that the best companies have. They should be something that you're proud to wear as a signifier of your work, see IBM in the 70s and 80s.
Do people really believe this? Funny, at my workplace, we effectively don't have a dress code (we did have at a point, but nobody really cared much, so it's pretty much dead). But my company is probably very embarrassed if I tell somebody my salary, because it doesn't want me to do it.
So, until I can display my salary proudly, then we can talk about wearing my "uniform" proudly.
"Dress code" is a tool for social control, and people are slowly wisening up to that.
"Tina" is preying on the author's nascent anxieties about how her male co-workers perceive her body, clothing choices, etc. It's a form of harassment that's pretty obviously tailored to the author's gender (how many men report anxieties about being taken less seriously because they show too much skin?).
The modern use of the word "sexism" includes gender-tailored harassment. It's a broader term nowadays than just "holding a belief that women are worse at X".
I also don't think sexism is limited to gender1 < gender2.
That said, I think you're argument's too broad. If you want to call it harrassment, call it harrassment, but I don't get sexism.
> (how many men report anxieties about being taken less seriously because they show too much skin?).
How many guys wear tank tops at work? Some do. In order for your criteria to be consistent, you're saying that if a man were to wear a tank top at Uber and his boss told him not to wear a tank top, that it'd be sexist? I think that's what you're saying. If so, that's a slippery slope as it would lead to ALL dress codes being discriminatory.
> In order for your criteria to be consistent, you're saying that if a man were to wear a tank top at Uber and his boss told him not to wear a tank top, that it'd be sexist?
no... the exact opposite. it's sexist because, presumably, the manager would not try to reprimand and/or embarrass a male for a tank top.
to neutronicus' broader point though, i can't imagine anyone ever making these remarks to a male at all. because there are double standards when it comes to dress and skin. not trying to get political... like, there's no social expectation for men to hide their breasts at the beach.
"gender-tailored" is apt. it wouldn't even cross someones mind to say this stuff to a guy.
It was a comment based on her appearance (and assumedly how 'sexy' she was dressing). That's the reason.
If a Male manager told her she probably isn't doing well because of how she dresses (and she dresses reasonably) that would be sexism, so it's the same thing if it's another women doing it.
On the scale of sexism this isn't as bad as the other things reported about Uber (she wasn't propositioned for example), but I believe you could argue it as sexism (IANAL, you'd need to one tell you for sure).
Thanks for sharing your perspective. Your comment has broadened my perception of sexism beyond "Can this person win in court?"
> If a Male manager told her she probably isn't doing well because of how she dresses (and she dresses reasonably) that would be sexism, so it's the same thing if it's another women doing it.
Yet, this isn't what happened! ;-)
According to the author's own words. Manager in a 1:1 a) asked if the author noticed the lack of eye contact with the other manager b) tentatively asked if the author thought it was because of the tank top and c) suggested the author wears long sleeves. The author's convinced the tank top isn't an issue because she gets ice cream with the subordinates.
To me, the author's drawing wild conclusions. Maybe her manager knows something or heard another manager make an off-hand comment about the dress code. I would appreciate that advice so I can decide for myself whether to make a simple adjustment to my wardrobe.
> Maybe her manager knows something or heard another manager make an off-hand comment about the dress code.
then they either have an unclear dress code which they enforce in an unprofessional and inconsistent manner, or two sexist managers.
> I would appreciate that advice so I can decide for myself whether to make a simple adjustment to my wardrobe.
dress in whatever makes you most comfortable (and abides by your company's dress code). if someone has something to say, they're kind of a dick. if someone has something to say they wouldn't say to the other gender, they're a sexist kind of a dick.
It would be sexism if it was directed only at women which is not specified in the blog post. If you're meeting with another manager for a transfer, its probably a good idea not to wear a tank top both sexes included.
> It would be sexism if it was directed only at women [...]
So if a manager has a department composed of 100% of one gender they can't make sexist comments about their employees' clothes because there isn't someone of the opposite gender to see if it's 'sexist'?
It sounds a lot like things I've heard used as examples of sexism in lawsuits against companies before, so I'm willing to believe that it is sexist (sounds like it fits in my mind) and I believe it's what the writer was referring to in the title (whether others think it is sexism).
The manager wasn't telling male workers to wear long sleeved shirts, so that's the most obvious one. It was also obviously the last straw. Often in stories like these the last straw seems pretty stupid compared to a larger problem. People have a breaking point but it's often a small thing that puts them over it, the straw that broke the camels back.
Although the story doesn't spell out the gender of everyone on the team - the statistics of 11 engineers implies she could be the only female - only controlling her work behavior (where and when she can work), but not her coworkers (that they can work from home), if all her coworkers are male, is pretty sexist. And it may be indicative a deeper - and more pervasive - problem of sexism (for example, she was regularly managed differently because she was female, which sounds like the case) that was the main problem for her.
Where does it say the manager "wasn't telling male workers to wear long sleeved shirts?" Even if so, how's that sexist? To say that something's sexist because a man gets different advice than a woman with no context is unacceptable criteria for sexism.
Re: WFH, she's a junior employee (graduated in 2015) whose boss told her to "be at [her] desk to 'ensure that [she's] collaborating with the team and getting the support [she] need[s]."
She's complaining about getting reprimanded for "working from home for one hour in the morning." That sounds like she was expected to be in the office and didn't clear ahead with her manager. Why was she WFH for just one hour? How's the reprimand sexism?
Taking her claims at face value, she's not making a strong case for sexism.
> Where does it say the manager "wasn't telling male workers to wear long sleeved shirts?" Even if so, how's that sexist? To say that something's sexist because a man gets different advice than a woman with no context is unacceptable criteria for sexism.
I'm saying she was told to wear a long sleeve shirt. I find it exceedingly unlikely a man was told the same thing and she didn't hear about it (especially as the male employees were joking about it with her, it seems likely they would have told her). Hence, only she was told that, which is a sex based (a protected class) restriction on clothing.
> She's complaining about getting reprimanded for "working from home for one hour in the morning."
Something everyone else on her team did that day. You are right we don't have enough context. But I'm saying it's (reasonably) possible. Suppose she was the only female on the team (likely) and there was a male coworker who was also a similarly experienced junior dev (possible). If she is told not to work from home, but he is allowed to, she is told to work at his desk, he can work anywhere, she is told to work on thanksgiving, he is not... that is straight up sexism. Even without those conditions the tone of the emails could have also implied it in each of those instances (to be clear those instances are all reported by her, but her coworkers actions and identities are not).
So yes, it could be just a bad manager. But it sounds like she told HR a lot of times she thought it was sexism with no response. Regardless of if it was or wasn't sexism, HR did nothing. That puts the blame on Uber, rather than just a shitty manager. And that means Uber can't say whether it was or wasn't sexism, because they didn't bother enough to care to investigate it. All of which speaks poorly of Uber.
I think there is a deeper problem here with HR. Uber didn't care enough to figure out whether it was sexist or not (or even care enough to do anything about it at all). That means Uber is sexist simply by not caring enough to check (regardless of whether this was or wasn't sexism).
* As always a lot of caveats apply: If sexism is defined as legally culpable discrimination of a protected class (rather than looser social definitions, or even broader sociology definitions). If we take her statements at face value.
Just because she's female doesn't mean her sex is the reason. With such a sample, there are probably many distinguishing features for every one of the group. What if she was the only Jainist in the group, would it be religious discrimination?
It's also possible "inappropriate" clothing depends on the person in question. E.g. if I'm overweight and wear really tight fitting clothing, that might be more distracting than someone in good condition.
It could also be jealousy, unrelated to sex.
Everyone's assumption might be right, given Uber's culture. But this story isn't really conclusive by itself. Now if there were many female engineers with a lot of diversity among them under this manager, and only female engineers were banned from some work environments, then that'd be stronger evidence of sexism.
> What if she was the only Jainist in the group, would it be religious discrimination?
If it had to do with her religious practices, yes. If she was singled out for no other given reason and she was the only one and the decision maker had made comments on her protected class status related to it... yes (if it walks like a duck...)
> E.g. if I'm overweight
Not a protected class without a medical note classifying it as a disability. Bad example.
The better example would be a Hijab (religiously protected class, distracting clothing), which yes, she has a right to wear as long as it doesn't directly interfere with her work (e.g. assembly line or something); just saying it is distracting does not count.
Notably, sleeveless clothing is not a fireable piece of clothing unless it is for everyone. And since it seems exceedingly unlikely that this manager is saying the same thing to her male employees (especially as the male employees are joking about it, it seems likely they would have told her), it is sexist discrimination.
> It could also be jealousy, unrelated to sex.
Except no, it was pretty clear it would have to be related to her being female if that was the case (because unless the guy was bi-sexual, it's unlikely she would be getting jealous at a male coworker doing the same thing).
> Everyone's assumption might be right, given Uber's culture. But this story isn't really conclusive by itself. Now if there were many female engineers with a lot of diversity among them under this manager, and only female engineers were banned from some work environments, then that'd be stronger evidence of sexism.
Yes, but we don't have many female engineers (~15%) to ask. And many of them report sexism quite often when leaving the field entirely. Seems a bit of a chicken and an egg if it wasn't for the fact that both the chicken and the egg are very clear about the problem when asked.
You are right. It may not be sexism. And just a shitty manager. Even so, parts of it seem like they could be sexist. She is calling it sexist. And it is representative of a shitty culture either way. And the sexism charge could have been avoided by simply having better management practices. It's almost like if you don't protect your employees bad things (like sexism, racism, etc.) can happen.
> The manager wasn't telling male workers to wear long sleeved shirts, so that's the most obvious one
You don't know that.
In general if dress codes are sexist, they're sexist against men. Women have a much broader repertoire of appropriate clothing (skirt or pants, blouse or shirt, tie or no tie) than men (pants, shirt and tie, suit optional).
No we don't. But we do know the other people in the office made jokes about the manager telling the author to cover up. I think they might have shared a "Don't feel bad, she told me to cover up too" story if they had been told that.
> In general if dress codes are sexist, they're sexist against men.
Most offices I have worked at do not require men to wear suits and ties. Also, if you wanted to wear a skirt management wouldn't be able to get upset at you unless your contract specifically said you would follow the company dress code without a lawsuit. Also, I've seen men wear kilts to an office before, and that's also a protected class.
All this reminds me of the Australian Army's response to this kind of thing. "The standard you walk past is the standard you accept." Not sure if it worked but it was a compelling talk.
All of those things she lists are not really sexism. The only one that even comes close is the lady telling her not to wear a tank top. Honestly, I agree too. I think tank tops are not appropriate office attire. This girl just needs to grow up and learn that her appearance does matter. I feel like her manager was actually giving her some good life advice and being real with her.
Comes from culture which celebrates dudes who refused ties and oftentimes is proud of not trusting people in business wear (e.g. tie).
I mean it seriously, if everyone wears business, then it is what it is. If you wear flip flops and metal t-shit, thensuring female street wear should be fine too.
Besides that, tech culture seems to be all proud about rejecting attire formalities and about business being stupid for insisting on them.
Is this what happens when a company gets too large too fast? I've only worked at small companies that would not be able to afford the waste generated by a manager like this Tina character. (Who has time for 6 hours of meetings?)
I mean, I can imagine that characters like Tina existing in the world, hiring them, promoting them to management, and then learning that they have problems like this. It's hard to screen for these sorts of personalities a priori, and it can be difficult to fire them quickly also once that problems start manifesting. That could happen anywhere.
What's particularly odd about these stories coming out from Uber is that there are so many of them in a single company.
I'm not sure culture itself explains it. Even if you assume that "Uber has an evil culture", you would think that they would still be incentivized to keep turnover caused by bad management down.
> What's particularly odd about these stories coming out from Uber is that there are so many of them in a single company.
No, it's not. When toxic ideas are given a place at a company, only people who are toxic will embrace the toxic ideas enough to survive as managers. The non-toxic people either knuckle under, but don't fully "live the values" of the company, which shows. Or, they leave or are "managed out" of the organization.
Toxic management seems to happen when a company's management lives in an echo chamber made up of only themselves, and more than one member of that group has a personality disorder.
I had a similar experience with, sadly, a company with whom Y-Combinator leaders are still involved. The words "If you don't want to work in the way we want to work, you should just leave right this minute in good grace or you'll lose the fight and you'll be unemployable" (said in a meeting, by a C-level leader, in answer to an innocuous and helpful question) still echo in my mind.
Plus, problems like this are known by many but talked about by few. One person goes public, and that triggers years of similar experiences that have been built up suddenly flooding out.
Is this what happens when a company gets too large too fast?
Not exactly. You need a few more magic ingredients -- like a heavy dose of the standard "Move fast, break things (and rules, and people)" + "Valuations über alles" SV ethos (topped off with, a well, cringingly bro-ish name like "Uber" to begin with) to get to the exquisite place where Uber has come to find itself, thus far.
Regarding the tank top comments, this is why companies have company policies regarding things like dress code. It's different to have a policy that applies to everyone (eg, no sleeveless tops) vs selectively admonishing one person's clothes.
If only.
With some corporate cultures there is little to no value placed on retention. In fact, as crazy as it sounds, employees are seen as a liability. This was especially obvious during the great offshoring wave of the last decade where companies couldn't wait to shed loyal-yet-expensive employees with long work histories with replaceable contract workers on the other side of the world. We all know how well that turned out.
Microsoft's (in)famous "rank&yank" comes to mind, where the employees of each department were annually scored for performance and lowest 10% were let go. Unfortunately this was copied by quite a few other companies. In this environment, absolute performance is not enough to keep one's employment, only relative performance among peers. Therefore, it is best to work with knuckleheads, easily outperformed, than with a group of geniuses where a constant struggle will exist. Perhaps it's advantageous for the company (doubtful, as even MSFT abandoned this practice) but it's highly destructive to cultures and individual's careers.
In the Susan Fowler case, at least, her manager changed a good review to a poor one to avoid losing her to another team. So I'm not sure that a blanket "if you lose too many people" policy is necessarily a good thing.
Because retention can be too subjective. If you lose a lot of bad people then retention is not a bad thing. If you start to lose good people then what was the common reason? Not willing to pay? Company culture? Team culture?
Company I work for retention can be factored in but the ability to rate your boss is given each year and if that comes back negative along with poor retention than that is reason for further action.
Let's face it, some clothes that women wear are distracting for men, including a tank top. It is an animal instinct to look at beautiful women and be attracted to them. It is like putting a chocolate infront of you and saying you cannot eat it. Of course, you will resist but it will make focusing harder for you.
A tank top doesn't make a woman beautiful. It makes some women more attractive yes. If you are too distracted by it, it's you who are to blame for lack of self control. Find ways around that, it's called character building you'll find it useful in life in general.
Well, good for you if you are perfect and there is nothing that distracts you but willpower is a limited resource and self-control consumes that resource. Try it yourself and put something that attracts you in front of you and start working. It will lower your productivity.
Self control can be practiced. Do not blame her for waring a tank top. It's better to try to grow as a person and not remove everything that challenges your personality from your surroundings.
Also she has freedom too. A tank top is not out of the ordinary.
Given that there are more physiological indicator that a person doesn't wash themselves, let alone there is a legitimate impact on health and safety when someone refuses to do so, it should be clear that this is not even close to being an apples to apples comparison.
> If you are too distracted by it, it's you who are to blame for lack of self control. Find ways around that, it's called character building you'll find it useful in life in general.
Cool. Likewise, if you are a woman distracted by guys staring at your boobs, it's you who are to blame for lack of self discipline. Find ways around that, it's called character building you'll find it useful in life in general.
Do men rape every women they find attractive on the street?
We are human because we can resist the urge. Yes, women will be attractive to men and vice versa, its biological, but a tank top and I guess nowadays yoga pants are quite normal.
Not getting promoted because you wore tank top a couple of times is like saying to a guy "you wear shorts and your calves are sexy, so we won't promote you". The fact that a female manager says that means, sexism is rooted deep in "Uber"
The point is self-control requires will-power that is not unlimited and if you need to be productive it is not good to spend your will-power on other stuff.
Sexism is rooted in Uber because two women from a company with 6700 employees wrote a post how they felt discriminated?
Definitely not defending Uber here - but does anyone else notice that the people who are complaining are usually the people who don't come from traditional computer science backgrounds? Susan has a Physics degree, and this individual has a psychology degree with a bootcamp past. My experience with bootcamps graduates aren't that great, so maybe there's a chance the managers aren't happy with their performance, hence the behavior.
But the recruitment bar for everyone is roughly the same, no? If non-CS graduates generally are worse (which might be true), only the best of them get hired.
This only makes sense if interviewers prefer non-CS graduates.
Yes, the hiring bar is the same. But as many of us know, the coding interview can be passed with practice so bad engineers are practically indistinguishable from good engineers with extensive amount of practice. The real issues come from when these bootcamp grads are in the workforce when the problems aren't so black and white.
This particular situation would be tough at any company as they would be reluctant to let "Tina" go as it would scew their numbers even worse given the ratio of female/male eng. in management roles. Also a person with that type of attitude is very likely to retaliate against the company.
>> I know this is completely untrue because I wear this tank top almost every day and am close with him and members of his team (we eat lunch together and even go on the occasional run for ice cream).
After a while, it beats you down, and you feel so bad that you can't leave. You kinda feel you aren't deserving of working in a respectful environment.
This is aside from other things like not feeling like you can get another job, or having bills/bonuses that you'd have to repay, etc.
Agreed. Unless you have significant ownership stakes in the company, killing yourself with overtime is never rewarded. It just becomes the normal, and when you finally do cut back, everyone seems disappointed.
While I don't doubt the rest of the article, I will say as a former Uber intern (this past summer) the vast majority of us were not overworked. I (and most of my fellow Uber interns) worked between 40-50 hours a week, and we were paid hourly (with overtime being paid at 1.5x base pay).
Money hides all sorts of problems. Nothing would have ever happened to Madoff if the economy didn't tank and thus break his pyramid scheme. A company can be incredibly dysfunctional and if they're in a lucrative enough market they can still be 'successful'.
These are possibly fair gripes, but they're not at all uncommon in the rest of the world, even outside of tech.
'My manager doesn't respect me'. Well ... my bet is that 20% of the entire world feels this way.
'Banned from other offices'?
Most companies have many offices and they usually expect people to work primarily from their own workspace.
I worked in a fortune 50 with many offices and I was not allowed to work remotely or from some other building, unless meetings etc. That said, maybe the rule is applied unfairly? But it's conceivably entirely within the managers authority to do that.
As for the 'tank top' ... that one's tricky. But no female in my F50 work experience ever wore a tank top. There was no dress code, they just didn't do it. There are many places wherein it definitely would not be allowed. That's a tricky one ... I think it would have mostly to do with what was 'the norm' a the company, and what role is being played, in what context. But yeah, it's tricky.
>During that same meeting, we gave “anonymous feedback” on Post-it notes. She read off each Post-it and addressed each person that wrote the “anonymous feedback” if she knew who it was. She has done this multiple times, and each time it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. The “anonymous” part of the feedback must be lost on her.
This sorta happened to me once in high school, in 10th grade English class. Our teacher (a highly religious female), near the end of the school year, had us write down our comments and criticisms anonymously. One big complaint a bunch of people had was how she talked a lot about her religion and church experiences in class. Being a public school, even though it was close to the Bible Belt, it was inappropriate and a lot of students were uncomfortable with this, and apparently commented about it (I was one of them). So she addressed this in the next class, defending herself and also commenting that she knew who many of the commenters were by their handwriting. So much for anonymity.
I believe some people complained to the administration, because she wasn't there the next year.
It's really strange how people in a position of power will solicit "anonymous" feedback, and then when they don't like the criticism will figure out how to identify the complainers and use that against them.
Anyway, the problem I have with this "sexism" claim here is that this anecdote doesn't seem to paint Uber itself in a bad light at all, and doesn't even have any complaints about bad behavior by any men (did I miss something?). It just complains about a single female boss. She sounds like a horrible boss, to be sure, but a crappy female boss telling you to not wear a tank top isn't really what I think of when I hear about a company that has a "culture of sexism". All the complaints this woman has are about this one boss, that's it, and also probably HR's refusal to do anything about it.
Honestly, this doesn't surprise me at all about the boss, and I don't think it's indicative of a major "sexism" problem within Uber, just another data point showing how crappy their management and especially HR are, but that's not a problem unique to Uber at all. Personally, I'll bet that the female boss isn't as pretty as this woman, or somehow views her as a threat. I've heard tons of stories about women in the workplace attacking other women, and many of these I heard from my now ex-wife (who I'm on good terms with). She has a bunch of stories about being singled out for abuse not from men, but other women, probably because she was prettier than them and didn't play their stupid social games. She had coworkers literally verbally attack her (screaming at her even), and even though she didn't do anything to instigate this or escalate or even respond, she'd get called into HR and treated as though she had started the problem somehow. (Other coworkers would then testify in her defense that the other woman was nuts, and then HR would then just tell her to "try to get along" and that "Julie is a little touchy" or some BS like that, instead of actually dealing with the toxic employee.) Strangely, she has no stories of abuse from men in the civilian workplace, but she was in the Air Force for a little while and had a few problems there, including an attempted rape (by someone she thought was a friend) wherein she stabbed the guy in the abdomen with her keys, but overall got along just fine with both men and women and got a bunch of commendations. But when she moved to the civilian world, she had no end of trouble with female coworkers and useless women in HR.
Explain how the parent can be called racist please. I get that he may have assumed a culture (distinct from race) based on social cues. Stop yelling racism at everything, it waters down a very real issue. Half the comments in this thread are like yours, virtue signalling without critical thought.
Unfortunately, it's still not unheard of in many countries. Usually the people thinking it keep it to themselves and try to avoid conflict in the workplace, mind. And most people don't think it at all - it's only when you have toxic workplace culture that this sort of thing happens.
Do you honestly think that's what I'm asking or just want to be confrontational? (I re-read my question and I don't believe that's what I'm saying, but I'm not a native english speaker).
To clear my question: If I'm being really mean to you how can you confidently say that it is because I have bias against your gender or your race and not because a) I'm mean to everybody or b) I don't like you in particular (which is the case so far).
Same case: If somebody hates my guts is it because a Mexican dude or is it because I'm like, insufferable? I guess that if he says "Go back to Mexico, you beaner" the answer is clear, but if you instead downvote everything I post… how could I tell if it's either or both?
The general gist of the responses is it doesn't matter that much - if someone is being terrible, outside of a specific legal context that should be enough to determine how you react to their behavior. If you are asking about that specific legal context, it would be good to clarify that. In either case though it will probably sound like you are trying to discount the complaints of the author.
There IS something inherent about culture that leads to a greater incident rate of sexual harrasment. Most likely these are not racial Indians born and raised in US culture, who I would expect to have a sexual misconduct % no different from their white or black peers, but immigrants from India where there are higher incidents of sexual misconduct then Western nations at the moment.
Amazon has some notoriously harsh environments, but my understanding is they're harsh due to (perhaps unreasonable) work rigor, rather than issues with sexual harassment by management, yes?
None of what she described is sexism. Even the tank top thing, maybe barely. Her manager made a good point - maybe her career isn't progressing as fast, because she dresses very casually, and people don't take her as seriously. I don't think I've ever seen a girl in tech wear a tank top (not that I would mind, just pointing it out).
If I'd be an engineer or manager at Uber now I'd quit before this whole thing blows up in their face. If you leave now then you can credibly distant yourself from this shit show, but afterwards it will be much more difficult.
If you've got Uber on your CV I would not hire you, no matter how talented you are. No talent is worth the risk of poisoning the team and potentially driving out my other talents.
> If you've got Uber on your CV I would not hire you, no matter how talented you are. No talent is worth the risk of poisoning the team and potentially driving out my other talents.
Or perhaps 90% of the Uber folks just simply force to stay because they are bound by immigration, etc. I don't think "will never hire X from Y because of poisoning Z" will always stand.
I have heard that from many individual said similar comments such as "will not hire from Amazon, will not hire from FB, will not hire from MSFT", but as the company grows, you don't even got that choice. Because recruiters will find them and will get them in. Can you say that to every hire you made in a company with the size of 10000+ ?
Another possibility is Uber is fucked and people are kicking the can down the road based on chauvinism. Reading her nightmare reminds me of this quote from The Sopranos.
"Money flows uphill, shit flows downhill." - Tony Soprano
We all know how DiMeo crime fmaily met it's fate. While great at navigating diplomacy and making a thriving organization, Tony's downfall was not realizing eventually the shit no longer has any room to flow downwards and the leader finds themselves neck deep in it before it's too late.