In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment: relationships within a reporting chain are generally prohibited, for both legal, ethical, and practical reasons. Sex becoming part of the effective job description crosses both legal and ethical lines, and team effectiveness is hindered when people wonder whether someone is getting special treatment because they're sleeping with the boss.
A manager propositioned a new employee on her first day on his team -- asking not just for a date but for sex. That's way over the line.
Also, this isn't just a gendered thing -- Google the story of Keith Rabois resigning as COO of Square.
I don't understand how anyone could be unsure about that being harassment. It's about as clear-cut as you can get.
He should have been fired the day that surfaced. If someone who worked for me ever did something like that, they'd be out the door pronto. It speaks volumes that he wasn't, to the point which I am irrationally tempted to doubt the veracity of her claims.
Don't proposition anyone in your reporting chain. Don't flirt with them. Don't do anything with them. It's really not that complicated. If you are attracted to someone who works for you (it happens), do the adult thing and ignore it.
It's hard to just ignore feelings. You'll have biases. It'll show. (Eventually.)
Talk to HR (or your boss), get them (or you) a new team/manager.
Or if the feelings go away, then great, crisis averted, but it's rarely that simple.
That's not always possible (especially in a small startup) and I'd argue it's not fair to force them to change teams.
I also disagree with the notion that it'll show eventually. Usually if you consciously suppress them they'll go away pretty quickly.
While it probably the best advice it does sound a bit like pope's advice for the gay people: it is ok, if you do not act on it. Being unhappy is just an adult thing, I guess.
I am shocked, how is possible to get away with this toxic company culture.
Because they're "high performers".
Screw Uber. Just delete that app and never use it.
I'd like the think that eventually karma will catch up with Uber. Hard to think of a single positive thing to say about the company.
Here's my positive thing. Taking a cab to the airport from my house in Cambridge, MA runs about $42 before tip, so call it $48 or so.
An UberX costs $24.30 right now and UberPool costs $14.30 right now. Additionally, I can summon the ride more easily and get better feedback about the arrival time, giving me more confidence/less anxiety that I'll have a problem getting to the airport on time.
As a consumer, by reducing my cost by 50-70% while providing a marginally better service, I can readily find one thing positive to say about the company.
You could say the same about lyft, seemingly minus the illegal and immoral behavior, though they might get away with the same behavior due to not being in the spotlight as much as Uber
Sure. Being able to say a positive thing about Jane does not diminish the positive thing that I say about Susan.
Wait until no one else is in the market. Then have fun with your positive thing/thinking :)
I don't see that happening. There's no natural monopoly here and almost no barriers to entry. The moment Uber tries to leverage being the only one left, someone new will undercut them.
There will be a natural monopoly (or rather, a natural oligopoly) once the car makers all have their own autonomous carsharing fleets and sell cars only with an EULA that forbids ridesharing. The entry barrier for car manufacturing is way higher.
Ok, but a lot of companies are working on self driving cars.
If one company refuses to sell self driving cars to consumers/upstart ride sharing companies, then that means that ANOTHER self driving car company can makes 10s of billions of dollars by ignoring this rule.
Do you really think that not a single one of the multitude of self driving car companies would break the collusion agreement, if there is 10s of billions of dollars on the line?
>sell cars only with an EULA that forbids ridesharing.
It'd probably be leases, rather than sales - selling property gives the buyer more rights, which would make that sort of EULA problematic. Might be able to side-step it by a combination of forbidding commercial ride-sharing in order to keep the self-driving system up to date along with requiring up-to-date self-driving software to be road-legal.
i think you are right about the barriers to entry, but uber will have tremendous resources to kill/acquire any upstart. any prospective competitor is going to have to be very well-financed to deal with uber's ability to price them out of the market.
This is basically like saying "I don't see why someone couldn't just build a Youtube alternative. There's no barrier to entry, basically. You can just buy as many hard drives as you need if Youtube acts up!"
</i> Except the twenty gazillion dollars you need to get started anyway, and the fifty ga-jillion dollar incumbent you're stacked against who already, again, has leveraged their death grip on the market -- which is presumably why you were becoming a competitor at all, right? To fight that?
Why would you need twenty gazillion dollars? It's a business you can enter with a cell phone, a car, and a license. If you really want a smartphone app, you're looking at maybe six figures to build it and some pennies per active user per month to keep it running.
The comparison with YouTube doesn't work, because videos are not fungible. If there's a video you want to see, and that video is on YouTube, your choice is to use YouTube or not see it. If there's a place you want to go, you can use any transportation service that covers the area.
I'm having trouble thinking of a good comparison, because there aren't many markets that are this easy to enter. Maybe house cleaning would fit. If Homejoy had taken off, would there be any fear of it abusing a monopoly position, when anyone can trivially enter the market and compete on their level?
Uber can afford to subsidize your ride for the next 10 years or so. That doesn't mean it's long term viable, it just means that they're pumping money from one pot to another until the first one is empty and won't be refilled.
They've raised over $10B...
I'm willing to take a discount on cabs for ten years. That it's not sustainable does not make it not a net positive to me. (I don't think any of my money is in that $10BB they raised.)
That line of thinking seems to miss a lot of the negative externalities [0] of a hypothetical world in which Uber is dominant.
Just to take one example, Uber doesn't pay the same taxes as taxi companies. Localities will be losing out collectively on a lot of revenue. Aren't you affected if your city has to raise taxes to compensate?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative
I am overwhelmingly likely to save more on car services in the next 10 years than I am to pay in increased local taxes, leaving Uber/Lyft a net economic positive for me, even after considering that most of my Uber rides are expense-able to my company.
Uber is proving that car service is not a natural monopoly. If the dominant provider is taking too many liberties with pricing, someone else will come in to right the market.
I didn't intend to start a massive defense of Uber subthread, but to say there's no single thing positive about Uber I thought was a substantial overstatement.
> Uber is proving that car service is not a natural monopoly. If the dominant provider is taking too many liberties with pricing, someone else will come in to right the market.
This is complete nonsense. Car services have never been a monopoly, natural or otherwise; in every major city there have always been multiple car services. Uber's valuation is premised almost completely on the hope/expectation that they can become a monopoly and start exploiting their market position to the detriment of everyone.
Seriously, check out the Naked Capitalism series linked above. It lays out in great detail why Uber is not in any way an example of someone "coming in to right the market". They're wronging the market.
?? I said they're not a monopoly and you seem to violently argue against my text saying that they're not a monopoly. You've convinced me: I agree that they're not a monopoly.
Uber is losing money, believing they can make it up later somehow (presumably self-driving cars, possibly by taking a cut of a substantial percentage of the car service rides).
That's participating in the market, not wronging it, IMO.
No, they believe they can be a monopoly. There's no other way they can be profitable.
So.... You agree that the taxi market is NOT a monopoly?
As soon as Uber tries to become a monopoly, and raise prices, then Taxi cabs can start right back up again, and take back the market with lower prices.
Or ANOTHER VC company can come in, and subsidize prices, and knock Uber out.
As soon as Uber attempts to exploit the market, they are dead.
If the city is smart, they'll fill that hole by taxing Uber and other such services. If they're stupid then there's no end to the ways they can cause me to suffer.
They may not be able to. Many cities are subject to state laws about what can and cannot be taxed.
That 50-70% is a loss leader for Uber. Did you read the post of their financials? They are hemorrhaging money.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver...
Uber's biggest investor is Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund.[1] They don't have a problem with the company keeping women in their place. It may even be viewed as a plus, influencing an American company to adopt Saudi values.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/technology/uber-investmen...
I suspect even the most misogynistic investor will balk at the poor publicity like OP's story, and especially at the stack of harassment lawsuits that are sure to be in the pipeline if all these employees grievances are accurate.
how the fuck did Saudia Arabia investors make it into a conversation about SF company culture..
Saudi Arabia is keeping Uber alive. Without that $3.5 billion cash investment from last summer, Uber would be in serious financial trouble now. They wouldn't have been able to get the $2 billion loan that followed, and would have had to raise rates to stop the cash burn. That would have stopped their growth and cut their market share.
and none of that makes any difference to company culture. if it was toxic without money it wil be toxic with money.
To assume there is a disconnect between a company and the investors that fund it is pretty naive. For starters, major investors almost always get board seats, which means they have a direct say in managing the company. Besides that, there are numerous articles that discuss how taking VC money has ruined many companies - Zenefits is the most popular recent example.
VC momey doesnt ruin anything. shitty managers do.
any investor or board member whonis aware of the type of activity mentioned by OP would shut it down fast. their first responsibility is to protect the company, especially one about to go public, and that doesn't happen when you're getting sued repeatedly for hostile work environment and/or sexual harassment.
VC's main goal is for their investments to grow and grow fast. They know most of their companies will fail, and they don't want to waste their time on the companies that will only net them a modest return when they can focus more of their efforts on the company that will net them a 20x return. It's actually in a VC's best interest for you to either be a rocket ship or for you to fail completely, as mathematically it's the best use of their time for maximizing profits.
VC's aren't trying for all of their portfolio companies to be profitable - they're trying to fund 1 company that is going to be uber profitable. There's a saying from the dot com investment days - you either invested in Google or you didn't.
Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund isn't a VC. They're a late stage buy-and-hold investor.
Do you believe the behavior described in the piece is a result of Saudi investment? Your comment leans in that direction, which is quite an insinuation if that's not what you actually believe to be the case. If so, I'd like to know more about what leads you to believe it is, or is even likely. It seems to me that much more prosaic explanations are likely.
My reading is that their belief is that Saudi investors wouldn't care about such behaviour or consider it marginally positive, as a contrast with non-Saudi investors who might reconsider doing a deal given such information.
I think this sentence is implying something much stronger than that:
It may even be viewed as a plus, influencing an American company to adopt Saudi values.
I'm unsure what difference you see between "a plus" and "marginally positive" except I'm specifically pointing out it's probably a secondary consideration to profit.
Interesting take. The operative word for me is influencing. Thanks for pointing out in detail where you where getting your reading.
Investors pull the strings. The behavior isn't the result of an investment, but failing to implement procedures after the fact to stop future incidents definitely can be. Not through action, but through inaction.
Meaning, more ethical investors (also known as: Board Members) might say "We need to do something about this."
"Uber passengers were paying only 41% of the actual cost of their trips; Uber was using these massive subsidies to undercut the fares and provide more capacity than the competitors who had to cover 100% of their costs out of passenger fares." Is either mathematically incorrect or extremely misleading. You can't take Uber's cut of passengers payments (~18%) and then divide by Uber's costs to say "passengers were paying only 41% of the actual cost of their trips", as the bulk of the cost of the trip goes directly to the driver. If you take this into account the rider is actually covering about 80% of the total cost of the trip, with Uber subsidizing about 20% of the cost on average, which includes their massive infrastructure building and expansion efforts. This means that even break-even Uber at a 25% higher cost, or a 20% profit margin Uber at a 50% higher cost, is still cheaper (and more convenient and enjoyable) than a taxi.
In which case, isn't taking Uber and forcing them to eat that 50-70%, the ethical thing to do?
The 50% that you are forcing Uber to pay is 100% that is denied to Lyft, and additional pressure on drivers to keep the Uber app open and the Lyft app closed.
To be sure, ethical consumer choices are a luxury and consequently you'll have to pay extra to make them.
If your only concern is the sticker price, then that is a ethical choice that you're certainly entitled to make, but that also necessarily involves a choice not to account for what goes into that sticker price (parallels with e.g. Walmart), and thus is a pretty limited principle. Possibly limited to the degree that it is actually merely self-serving.
Are there any Uber competitors in your city?
It should cost them employment talent, which should be a factor against them versus other employers with less toxic work cultures, all else being equal.
They are used to break the laws, it's called disruption, I think.
Disruption doesn't necessarily imply illegal activity.
But Uber does.
Then that's the point that should be made, not some vague innuendo about an aspect of entrepreneurism in general.
In fact many current industries engage in illegal activities. Most often cartel behavior and price fixing.
Generally this behavior is not curbed already because it's hard to prove price fixing without having concrete information about the communication. Technically you don't need to have communication, but it's hard.
Sometimes all you need is one new vendor to enter the market place and not play by the old rules.
As someone who was truly frustrated with the taxi system for years, to the degree of refusing to use them hardly at all, I don't mind so much Uber breaking outdated laws (I do believe some kind of taxi commission is warranted in general) so much as the results of their business model: replacing one mafia with another. That a secondary effect is to flood the streets with even more batshit-awful drivers is proof that they aren't disrupting anything but taxi management and not hacks[1] in general.
1. http://answergirlnet.blogspot.com/2007/07/why-are-taxi-cabs-...
It could even be worded like this: Given most taxis across the world provide a dodgy service and hijack fees way above official metered levels (or hijack meters or add luggage fees or spend 20 minutes negociating the fare after you've made them aware you're in a hurry for a flight) to the point that most middle-class doesn't use them, ... is replacing this mafia with a batshit-awful company still a progress?
As long as the middle-class now can afford taxis on a regular basis, and the offer of drivers is in an all-time high, with better control of driver and passenger identities, then it's an economical plus for the society. Of course there's Lyft and Grab too.
Naturally, in some places the taxi service is 1000x worse than what I ever complained about, so in those places I can see the up-front pricing for Uber to be a little bit more of a revolutionary improvement.
I think overall the experience of taking a taxi is not going to change that much, but there's going to be a big repricing when Uber runs out of loss-leader. I imagine the dream is for inflation to absorb most of that by the time the axe falls, but uber/lyft/taxi pricing across the board will have to find an equilibrium. Or differentiators.
There is no pressure to change when they can continue to get billion-dollar handouts from Saudi billionaires no matter what happens.
probably because "Brilliant Jerks" are tolerated
Yup. There was the article a couple days ago about how employers should avoid the "brilliant jerks", and everyone in the comments was saying how they'd rather have the "brilliant jerk" than someone who was nice and mediocre (despite the fact that isn't the choice at all; there are plenty of people who are talented and not asshats). Well, when you make that decision, this is the kind of workplace you get.
> In case anyone isn't sure why the original interaction is harassment
Is there anyone that thought a manager asking their subordinate for sex isn't harassment?
Strictly speaking asking a subordinate for sex is not always a harassment (but very frequently is).
What are the scenarios where it is and isn't harassment?
I have not knowledge or experience in this area, so to me it looks you'd either have to use very vulgar language, do it repeatedly after being told it is unwanted or basically have negative intention. Else it's just an odd thing to do at workplace.
Note, I am asking this as genuinely curious foreigner from very un-PC culture. Not trying to be annoying or anything like that.
Appreciate your politeness in a such controversial topic.
Apparently, when the both persons are already in a romantic relationship, or are spouses (which can happen in a family business) it's not harassment. Thus, whether such offer is harassment or not is based on a subjective judgement of each party, rather than some hard-coded rule. In the case described by the author it was clearly harassment because one party perceived it so.
Even when it's not harassment and wanted by both parties, it still can be undesirable from a professional ethics perspective as it can affect morale of other employees. So it leaves very few cases when it's acceptable, but they do exist.
For the same reason that police can't ethically solicit sex from someone they've pulled over for a traffic violation: There's a power imbalance that unfairly biases the propositioner over the victim.
Even if the boss asks politely, the subordinate knows that their job -- and likely their financial stability -- ultimately depends on making the boss happy...
The fact that this harassment came from a reporting chain or not is irrelevant, no employee should have to undergo that kind of behaviour if it wasn't consented to in the first place.
Are people legitimately needing clarification on this?
Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. As has been pointed out below, HR that is staffed and incentivized by the company management only serves the interests of the management. A union is the only structure that can actually win demands for workers by organizing workers to withhold their labor.
It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leadership betraying the trust of workers and neglecting the demands of the most marginalized members (such as the UAW in 1941), but a union correctly structured and rooted in worker solidarity is the only proven way to fight management on these kinds of issues.
The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.
What? It's literally your right to vote to join a union. If a majority of coworkers vote for one, you've got a union. Look up the National Labor Relations Act.
Not only is this true, but the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. It's a huge exception to at-will employment.
I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started talking to the Tech Solidarity people. I'd always thought the reason nobody goes on strike is that you'd simply be fired for doing so. But, no! That was dumb of me! Striking --- really, most forms of employee protest against working conditions --- is protected federally.
I'm particularly interested in how these laws interact with the employment laws for salaried workers. In addition to it being unlawful (in most cases) to fire an employee for striking, it's also (usually) legally risky to dock a salaried employee's pay.
While technically true, the enforcement is up to the Department of Labor. Do you honestly believe that Puzder (now Acosta) is really going to enforce these rules? It's the whole reason they were chosen for the position in the first place.
No, enforcement is not up to the Department of Labor. If you're terminated for organizing and protesting against working conditions, your recourse includes the courts.
People should, of course, talk to labor lawyer before organizing. Tech Solidarity is working with several now, and collecting employment contracts from the best-known tech companies in order to provide standardized organizing advice.
Really? Alright I'll bite. They only promulgate the regulations that are enforced. And if you're being pedantic enough to insist it's the DoJ, then my point still stands under one led by Sessions.
Check out the statutes. The 8(a)(1) unfair labor practices have liquidated damages associated with them. You can sue in civil court over them.
Again, talk to a lawyer. I think you're going to find that you are not in fact required to convince the Trump administration of your rights.
> the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions.
I also learned about this from the Tech Solidarity people. The key here though is that actions are only protected if they're taken collectively by multiple employees. A single employee protesting can still be fired without recourse.
This is all totally true.
It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace.
I'm not saying it's right, just that it's true.
This is all totally true.
It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace.
I'm not saying it's right, just that I've seen it done. There is always a way to remove "difficult" employees regardless of protection laws.
So, I believe this, but what gives me comfort here is having seen companies try to performance-manage people out (for legit reasons!) and fail because of protected-class problems. As soon as you can credibly allege retaliation, your case gets 100x more expensive to dispose of. In two companies, one of which I had a senior role at at the time, I've seen the companies cave and pay out to make them go away.
Wait a minute, wait a minute: if I just decide I'm not going to work anymore, they can't fire me if I say it's because I'm protesting for higher wages? And they have to keep paying me?
Google "protected concerted action" and spend $75 on a consult with a labor law attorney. Some catches:
1. The protest has to involve more than one team member, and depending on circumstances that other person possibly can't be a manager.
2. The protest has to be defensibly about some kind of working conditions issue. You need a concrete, defensible ask.
3. You can in fact have your pay docked for not working, though you (probably) can't be fired. But remember, you're an FLSA exempt employee (if you're a developer), so you can make it difficult for them to dock your pay, too.
I probably wouldn't make the protest about higher wages.
Ehh, when my previous workplace was voting to unionize I wasn't able to vote because I was a remote worker, and didn't have the disposable income to fly in and vote... being disenfranchised is a drag.
Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry.
People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary". There's no reason that's what has to happen. Substitute "professional association" for "union" and you've got all the degrees of freedom you could want for us all to profit from organization without over-complicating our work lives.
So what organising principles should a software developer union have?
It's easy to say they could be anything we want it to be, but I'm not sure there's a real consensus on any particular principle.
Lots of people who talk about unions seem to value privacy protections for consumers, but there are clearly software developers writing this software who have a different view.
Ubers reputation has been trash for almost as long as Uber has existed, I feel like most people are there to get rich, do you expect those people to go on strike for a grievance that doesn't affect them?
Without a fair equity package, none of those employees are going to get any kind of payout from an exit. And given the number of fundraising rounds Uber has undergone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds and their difficulty in actually turning a profit: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... it seems a little questionable that anyone from the rank-and-file is going to get rich at Uber.
A union is what gives you the ability confront management about these kinds of things.
There are a lot of labor practices that most software developers would agree on changing: unpaid overtime, unreasonable on-call requirements, lack of transparency in equity compensation, unreasonably short windows for exercising vested stock options after leaving the company.
Thanks to the Fair Labor Standards Act, anyone who is a software engineer is exempt from overtime pay as long as they make at least $455/week on a salary basis.[1] Hint, I don't know any software engineers making less than $23660/yr.
It's a heinously stupid regulation, and it's one which was lobbied for heavily by the tech industry to reduce labor costs. But that is the federal law of the US currently, which means yes you can be required to perform unpaid overtime.
[1]: https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17e_computer.pdf
Not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with the person above, but just to clarify: the FLSA doesn't prevent tech workers from collectively bargaining to gain paid overtime as a condition of employment, it just determines the highest wage at which salaried workers are required by law to be paid overtime (which I agree is stupid, and should be a benefit all workers receive).
Yes, I'm aware. That's why I pointed it out as something that a union could change.
Note that you can cease to be exempt if your employer begins treating you as if you were hourly and not salaried --- for instance, docking your pay in small increments, for instance because you went on strike for half a day.
> Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country
Hah hah, very cute. A trivial proof that this claim is false: H-1B.
Indentured H-1B visa workers have absolutely zero leverage. American software developers are constantly reminded that if they don't behave and do what they're told that their jobs will be outsourced or they'll be replaced by H-1B workers. I say this as an ex-H-1B holder, who left the US six years ago for Australia (where I'm now a citizen).
Young American programmers will do well to read Norman Matloff's blog at https://normsaysno.wordpress.com/ where he exhaustively documents the abuse of American IT workers and ask themselves how they plan to make a living after the age of 40.
It's only leverage because software developers have no solidarity. So yes, an individual can be threatened by this, but in reality the US government only grants 65 000 H-1Bs per year; Such a threat could be made easily irrelevant by even a modicum of organizing.
This does not square even a little bit with the software employment market I'm familiar with, not only in California but in the Midwest.
If you believe that H1-B employees are abused in software development shops, that's all the more reason to organize.
> If you believe that H1-B employees are abused...
Of course that would never happen. All American business executives and outsourcing agencies only act with unimpeachable integrity and the highest ethical standards.
(Wait, what is the original subject of this thread again...)
I repeat, for all American programmers under the age of 35, read https://normsaysno.wordpress.com/ to see how your careers are being systematically undermined by your own industry and political leaders. Then make alternative career plans for when you're 40+. You'll thank me later.
> Then make alternative career plans for when you're 40+.
Your alternative careers plans can and should be the possibility of retirement.
It is extremely possible as a software engineer to save enough to retire by the time you're 35.
I think we're getting a bit of a "you see a trunk, I see a tail" view of a very large elephant here.
Think of the most scutwork of scutwork programming jobs in the industry, or even quasi-programming quasi-IT jobs like, I don't know, Sharepoint administrator at a regional insurance carrier or line programmer at a university (where most projects are "execute a SQL query to get a list of students in a particular course then, and this is the hard part, display it on a web page"). Tata doesn't simply manufacture billions of dollars in services revenue; actual companies pay them actual money to outsource work. Actual companies also pay actual money for Tata to send 6k engineers at $75k apiece to the US. That's like half-a-Google worth of engineers; add in Infosys and you approach a full Google, except at something like 30 cents on the dollar.
AppAmaGooBookSoft consume the H1B program in an entirely different fashion and Tata is more-or-less orthogonal to the startup world. You can fashion a career in software which never touches the ecosystem that Tata is a part of. You can also fashion a career in software which never touches AppAmaGooBookSoft, startups, or software development shops. These two worlds are separated by a titanic gulf in conditions and expectations, and transferring between them is difficult, for much the same reasons as transferring between social classes is difficult. This does not mean that either of the two worlds does not factually exist.
You might never have been explicitly threatened with "We can trivially replace you with cheaper foreign labor." You might not even know anyone who has been, depending on who you generally hang out with. I have been in the room when that threat was made, and (because life is hilarious!) I was the literal face of the threat.
Guest workers aren't a reason not to organize though, they're just a reason it might be more difficult to organize certain shops (though not impossible, take a look at the FLOC who has been able to organize thousands of guest workers).
I acknowledge that there are portions of the industry dominated by outsourced/offshore workers.
What I don't acknowledge is that the parts of the industry that aren't offshored are suddenly going to become offshored as a reaction to labor organization. The idea that strikers will be replaced with H1-Bs is a hollow threat.
> People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary".
The problem is that a significant number of the people who push "unions" (especially on places like HN) are actually trying to push for those things. Just look in this thread to find people arguing over whether there actually are large differences in developer performance.
If people want a professional association (I do!) let's call it that and avoid all this union talk. Think lawyers, not factories.
Hi, I assume you're talking about me (the person above expressing some skepticism about the 10x programmer thing). I'm actually open to be proven wrong, but I'm not sure that makes much of a difference in terms of how compensation is justified in the real world (again, ask your employer to provide justification for salaries if you think 10x programmers exist and they are paid as such). Whether or not I'm right, I'm one person with one vote in a union.
A professional association by contrast does not work to help workers in a workplace dispute. It is fundamentally an advocacy group for the profession itself and works to advance it by creating professional standards, lobbying, offering education and certification, etc. The AMA for example, does not engage in collective bargaining with the management of a hospital and has no legal right to compel such a thing under the NLRA. The AMA does however lobby politicians and puts its people on medical boards to limit the supply of doctors. Furthermore a professional organization works at the level of a single profession and doesn't organize workplaces in strikes, which is the major power of a union.
Unions can aggregate under federations that often resemble and provide the same function as professional associations, but a professional association provides almost none of the benefits of a union.
> I'm actually open to be proven wrong, but I'm not sure that makes much of a difference in terms of how compensation is justified in the real world (again, ask your employer to provide justification for salaries if you think 10x programmers exist and they are paid as such).
I've had a fairly thorough knowledge of salaries at many companies I've worked for (currently the founder of my own company) and I'm not sure what your point is. There was absolutely a large variation in salary and it clearly correlated with two factors: performance and negotiation ability. Why exactly do you think employers pay some engineers so much money? Out of the goodness of their hearts? It's due to measurable impact and differences. I've been places where I was producing more than the rest of the team in half the hours (I was in school at the time).
Your arguments about collective bargaining are precisely why I don't want a union. I sure as hell don't want you (or anyone else) bargaining for me or being tied to any generic salary formula. It's hard for me to imagine that if things were done democratically most engineers would vote for me to make what I do.
"It's hard for me to imagine that if things were done democratically most engineers would vote for me to make what I do." It sounds like you feel the current system works out very well for a few elite performers, in a way that the majority of workers would not be comfortable with if they had a say in the matter. I'm curious, how do you see the tension/balance between what benefits the majority of engineers vs. what benefits a small number of elite performers such as yourself?
I come down firmly on the side of meritocracy. If you're contributing a lot more value, you deserve to be compensated more. I've spent a decade honing my abilities and it's reflected in my skill level. It'd be unfair if that skill weren't reflected in my salary.
In fact, if anything I think top developers are underpaid in most of the industry. Outside certain organizations and areas, it's hard to break $200k as a developer—even when a senior developer can easily be 2x as effective as a new grad making $100k.
Also, to be clear, the current system is better for probably the whole upper half of engineers. It's not just elite performers who would see cuts if we moved to salary formulas. The problem I see is that humans have a well-documented tendency to hurt themselves if it means they can "punish" others as well: I can people voting for a $100k mandatory salary (while they're making $110k) just to spite me for making $200k.
Listen I think the meritocracy fetishization of SV is dumb and unjustifiable (again, if you really think this, propose a measurement or set of measurements that adequately explains salary and can be justified as representing "skill"), but standardizing pay is ultimately not a major interest of mine in forming a union.
You seem to believe there are separate stratifications of tech workers that do not have shared interests. Even though I pretty strongly disagree, you're in luck, a union is still what you want. You want a craft union that recognizes something like "senior engineers" as a collective bargaining unit. As long as you can justify that you constitute a real unit with a shared "community of interest" to the NLRB, you can still collectively bargain only with other senior engineers.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm confident that well-organized engineers working together could very substantially grow the percentage of company revenues that go to engineers, which would benefit both upper and lower tier performers by growing the pie. As for the way workers might punitively divide up that larger pie, it sounds like knucklesandwhich is more knowledgeable than me about craft unions and the ways they try to mitigate against that. Presumably high-performing engineers would be a powerful bloc within such an organizing effort/union, and could advocate effectively for their interests.
> A professional association by contrast does not work to help workers in a workplace dispute.
Some don't. Some do.
I am currently a member of one that does, up to and including litigating a case is appropriate.
Sure, this will often happen if litigation can set some precedent that benefits the profession as a whole. For example the AMA will take up cases that can challenge legal precedent on malpractice damages limits. Sometimes these disputes can be with management, but generally these kind of interventions are done as part of professional advocacy.
However a professional association is effectively limited in what it can do in a labor dispute because management has no obligation to collectively bargain with them, hence this is not really the purpose of professional associations.
> The AMA for example, does not engage in collective bargaining with the management of a hospital and has no legal right to compel such a thing under the NLRA. The AMA does however lobby politicians and puts its people on medical boards to limit the supply of doctors.
This is a common misconception.
The AMA does not limit the supply of doctors. The AAMC (used to) limit the supply of doctors, but (a) they have been trying for the last 10+ years to increase that, and (b) the actual number of practicing physicians is bottlenecked by funding for residency positions, which is funded by Medicare, not the AMA or AAMC. The AMA has actually lobbied to increase funding for GME, which would increase the supply of practicing physicians.
The AMA does not represent doctors in any meaningful sense - only 25% of physicians belong to the AMA, and only because membership is required for licensing the CPT codes that those doctors need for billing. The AMA does not consistently advocate for physicians' best interests, and in the last couple of decades, it has actually consistently sided against physicians' best interests.
The AMA _did_ lobby (I should have clarified that they no longer do this) to restrict medicare funding for residency: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/01/us/doctors-assert-there-ar...
http://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/29/business/curbing-the-suppl...
At one point the AMA had about 75% of American doctors as members but has declined for various reasons (growth of specialty professional associations, change of employment in which many doctors have gone from private practices to hospitals which has accompanied a change in political objectives, etc.). The AMA probably does still serve as a professional association in the interest of some segment of doctors, but I take your point that it definitely don't work for doctors writ large. This is actually a good example of why professional associations can be inadequate, because they fundamentally are limited to advocacy for a profession instead of working for gains for a workplace.
> The AMA _did_ lobby (I should have clarified that they no longer do this) to restrict medicare funding for residency
...twenty years ago, when we had the opposite problem. It still wasn't some act motivated by the desire to benefit doctors, even if that's the PR spin they used.
> At one point the AMA had about 75% of American doctors as members but has declined for various reasons (growth of specialty professional associations, change of employment in which many doctors have gone from private practices to hospitals which has accompanied a change in political objectives, etc.)
The move away from private practices was not the driving force behind the declining membership of the AMA. Quite bluntly, doctors stopped joining (unless they were forced to) because they did not support the AMA or its objectives. Why pay money to an organization that fights for causes you oppose?
Of course, this is only possible because (most) doctors are not required to be AMA members or pay membership fees if they choose not to, which is not true of people in most unions.
> The AMA probably does still serve as a professional association in the interest of some segment of doctors,
It does - it acts in the interest of the subset of doctors who are serving in administrative roles and are no longer practicing medicine full-time. That is to say, they advocate the interests of hospitals and payers, not practicing physicians.
> This is actually a good example of why professional associations can be inadequate,
It's not that they're "inadequate". It's that, in this case, they are literally fighting against the interests of the group they are (allegedly) advocating.
So really, the AMA is an argument against either professional associations or unions - doctors are unhappy with the AMA, and you certainly don't see them, by and large, advocating unionization in their practices en masse.
Sounds like American doctors need a real union, then.
I don't think shop rules are a good idea, or contractually mandated pay scales. I'm not interested in getting into the heads of every single person talking about unionization. It sounds like we agree, and should move on.
There is aprofesssional association, but I don't think many non-academics see it as such: the ACM, http://www.acm.org/about-acm/about-the-acm-organization
Yes but in this particular instance Uber recruits heavily in the Bay Area. If all workers in the Silicon Valley office refused to work and discouraged others to work for Uber it could be quite effective.
It's either unionize or a class action lawsuit. Silicon Valley tends to prefer the latter.
Many IT roles already fall under collective bargaining units (CBU), particularly in the public sector.
If stories like Susan's become common, and there is blatant gender discrimination, then the Government will have no choice but to acknowledge a private-sector CBU and Union.
That speaks to me. After salary negotiations, HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them.
They seemed to be there only to defend the boss and register me as a complainer. It took me several jobs and this post to learn that.
> HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them....
The thing you need to keep in mind about HR is this: they aren't there to help you, to have your back. They're there to protect the company from you. Incidental to that, they've traditionally managed the benefits the company is either required or chooses to give you, and acts as a place for you to take concerns such as sexual harassment. But even in those cases, their duty is to the company, not to any individual employee.
Yep. And I think it takes a while for that to sink in for young people. They are more idealistic and assume that things are set up to be beneficial to everyone. They aren't. HR is there to make sure there is no blowback on the company and they do a lot of shitty things to make that true.
I believe there are some good HR groups out there who truly do look out for the long term interests of their companies.
I think what's good for me, if I'm a hard worker, is also good for the company.
Certainly I'm my best advocate. Even a union couldn't do everything for me.
How does one protect oneself in cases of sexual impropriety then? This seems like a pretty dangerous flaw. To be completely honest I've always felt that HR has been the "police" of the workplace, there to keep issues like this from getting out of control (as it most certainly did in the case of OP). Now I feel much more exposed...
HR's role is to advise management on how to adhere to labor law. Often times they also handle record keeping for legal purposes, including reporting of sexual harassment. But they're not there to protect you. They're there to protect management from itself.
> How does one protect oneself in cases of sexual impropriety then?
Document, document, document. Not because you're going to sue, but because this is rarely a 1-off situation and when the class action comes around you will be prepared with ammunition.
Document everything then lawyer up. I noticed the OP never mentioned contacting a lawyer, which is a total "wow" after reading the story.
Bosses who harass employees and a culture that encourage such things present a much larger risk to the company than a single employee's complaints, so in a well-functioning company their incentives align with policing these issues. But it's still worth keeping in mind that their incentives are not your incentives, and if they have given up on keeping the company culture healthy, their interests will be oppossed to yours.
This is true, but I think you've overstating HR's loyalty to other individuals in the company.
When an employees places a complaint against another employee, neither of those parties is "the company", even when one is in management. If the subject of the complaint is breaking laws, HR (who has the company's back) is rightfully incentivized to show that person the door. That person is a liability, and the company will have to pay if it is sued for that individual's behavior.
If you're running the HR to mediate a personal fight, sure, there's a decent chance they'll side with the person with more organizational clout. But if you're bringing to light evidence of legal wrongdoing, HR is _absolutely_ supposed to be on your side. The company needs to know that, and protecting the company looks like firing the offending party.
> When an employees places a complaint against another employee, neither of those parties is "the company", even when one is in management. If the subject of the complaint is breaking laws, HR (who has the company's back) is rightfully incentivized to show that person the door.
Which is exactly what happens... When the harasser is not a 'Top performer' in a culture that claims to reward meritocracy.
HR has been fine with me.
Arranging the paperwork to ensign then arranging the paperwork to resign.
Forwarding some more paperwork for taxes, HMRC, benefits, pension and various things that pop up at times.
Arranging interviews, candidates feedback loop, on-site events, university recruiting events, some conferences, offers, etc...
Maybe I just have better than you guys.
The best way I've heard it discussed is that too many people focus on the wrong word in HR. It's not Human Resources, it's Human Resources. Understanding that seems to be the critical step in getting HR and understanding why they are the way they are.
Every time I hear advice along these lines (which is precisely every single time anyone talks about HR), I always wonder what these HR people are taught in school. I think they have Human Resources related majors in school right? And I'm assuming a good amount of the people in HR have studied that, so then is this what they learn in school? To treat employees like shit and lie to them? I'm really curious.
Are there any real efforts around this? A quick Google search doesn't show anything obvious.
I'm also curious if there are any historical examples of "white collar" workers unionizing.
There's plenty of currently existing unions for professional trade workers. The SEIU, IFPTE, CWA, IBEW, etc. are American unions which represent scientists, engineers, legal assistants, technicians, physicists, nurses, etc. Largely these careers have low union density (as a result of poor uptake of unions throughout the US), but there are plenty of countries (for example many Nordic countries) where its much more common to see these professions unionized.
If you're interested in learning more about how to do this, I suggest you look into one of the following orgs:
- Tech Workers Coalition (https://techworkerscoalition.org/) based in the Bay Area who holds a monthly organizing meeting in SF
- Tech Solidarity (https://techsolidarity.org), which has been holding meetings in a bunch of metropolitan areas for educating tech workers about organizing
The Director's Guild, Writer's Guild, and Screen Actors Guild, along with the various professional athlete unions, would be good examples of how it could be done.
I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize.
I'm simplifying it a bit but if you don't like your job, just grab a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and apply to big companies. The big companies pay very well, have good benefits and interview everyone because of the need for a high head count
First of all, it should be all tech workers that unionize, not just software engineers. And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have.
I suggest you seek out other opinions if you believe tech workers are under-worked. Perhaps this is the case at your job, but the majority of tech workers I know and have worked with are tired of having to put in hours on nights, over the weekends, etc. They're tired of "unlimited vacation" policies not actually guaranteeing them any time to take a vacation. I've had a boss prevent me from leaving at 10PM once before. I mean its not exactly a new realization that many of the most trendy perks for tech companies are ruses to get workers to stay extra hours at the office, that tech companies pursuing the youngest workers often leads to a culture where there's little differentiation between work and company time, etc.
Not to mention that tech workers are often asked to do dubiously ethical things by management. We're asked to automate away the positions of other employees, asked to be lax on security or privacy standards, etc.
Whether or not you believe there are any demands to make, I kind of find it bizarre to suggest that workplace democracy is something tech workers shouldn't demand.
Unions originated as a way to commoditise labor. It has since grown into a way to keep out freelance competitors, and to force employers into doing things (both of which I don't agree with). In terms of commoditsing labor, tech is a very skill specific profession with no cookie cutter employee to sell, which makes it a bad candidate for unions.
It doesn't really matter what unions become in certain cases, does it?
Unions were reinforced by the NLRA to enable workers to bargain collectively. That can mean a lot of things
A union for software engineers is a blank slate. It hasn't been done before. It could be anything someone makes of it.
That's... not true. I was in a unionized software development shop at L3 communications in Camden. It was... different. Having a published document showing how the "top performers" were going to get a 3.5% raise this year while the average people would only get 2.5% was odd. Counting my hours (including signing out for lunch and getting management approval for overtime) was very different. Getting paid overtime was nice!
The problem is that if I had stayed there for thirty years, I would have been pretty much guaranteed to make good money. By changing jobs a couple times, I made that same money in 2. So... people who are capable of getting better jobs and willing to risk change simply left, while people looking for stability or who had trouble getting jobs simply stayed. This didn't lead to the type of environment that I enjoyed working in. Your mileage may vary.
Camden, in the UK? Thanks for sharing your experience. Any sort of unionized IT environment in the U.S. is an absolute rarity, if such things exist at all. I don't deny that unions would add an additional layer of complexity and will have unintended drawbacks. But if there were union shops in tech, then at least there will be options for tech workers to choose between stability and rapid growth. Certainly providing the former will help in addressing the ageism in Silicon Valley.
This notion that there is a wide distribution in engineer competency has come under a lot of criticism for many reasons (not the least of which being that its often used as a cover for discrimination on the basis of gender): https://lwn.net/Articles/641779/ If you believe there to be such a wide distribution in talent and that salaries at your company are commensurately paid, I suggest you ask your employer if they will disclose every employee's salary and the justification for them.
Even if this we take this for granted, its completely untrue that all unions commoditize a trade by flattening pay. There are plenty of unions that have chosen not to put standardized salaries in contracts or have advocated tiered salary agreements or merit pay. Whether or not these are good things, they are things that unions have done and should dispel with the notion that unions are inflexible towards these concerns by workers.
As for your concern that unions "force employers to do things", well I suggest you consider all of the ways your employer can coerce you to do things and whether you actually have a mutualistic relationship. Many workers don't feel that they do.
Rock stars don't need unions.
No, but they do need industry-savy managers and agents working for them to ensure they get the best deal.
Yes, they have their own union. Which is the opposite of a union.
Sounds like someone hasn't heard of the American Federation of Musicians.
Or the RIAA, even the mega crops of the industry have a union.
> Or the RIAA, even the mega crops of the industry have a union.
...which hardly can be said to be acting in the best interests of either small-time musicians or big stars.
The RIAA actively seeks to withhold royalties from musicians and intentionally makes it very difficult to collect them. A number of big-name stars sued them over this some years back, unsuccessfully.
No, but they act in the best interests of their members.
Those aren't rock stars...
> And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have.
Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors. Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory.
> Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors.
The beauty of a union is there doesn't have to be an objective definition. A union gives you a democratic voice to advocate for what you think is fair. Without organized labor power, your voice is completely ignorable.
> Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory.
This is a completely naive understanding of what finding a job is like. Leaving a job can be a strike against a person in the hiring process, not to mention it consumes a lot of time, leaves someone uncompensated and without benefits during the process, etc. This also assumes engineer competency is something we can effectively gauge in the hiring process or otherwise (just search "hiring" on hacker news to get the general sentiment among engineers about how good we are at this).
Imagine if this was the suggestion given to factory workers and coal miners and the early 20th century (not that I think the worker conditions are comparable, but its illustrative of how naive it is to believe that market forces are sufficient for providing fair compensation). This is a marginalist's definition of "fair" that doesn't jive with any real human person's.
The real question is why you are so fervantly against having a democratic voice in the workplace.
How is it a beauty? Stupid decision made by 1000 people is better than by one? At least if I make stupid decision I am to blame and I can fix it. If 1000 people make it, I have 1/1000 of infuence (in fact even less if I am not eloquent or persuasive) and can't change anything. Talk about ignorable. I certainly don't need a "democracy" to take my decisions for me. There's a place for it as we can't each personally decide about national defence or building interstate highway, but I can certainly talk to my boss.
As an individual you have virtualy zero chance of effecting any change - I have how ever got several thousand people a better pension at British Telecom (I was the secretary for one of the larger BT union branches)
My experience suggests the opposite - I've successfully effected change of my personal conditions several times, without help of any unions. So did many other people I know personally.
Of course, it is natural for union officials to see themselves as benevolent godlike figures distributing goods to the plebes. But this particular plebe is doing just fine without you and would like to continue as long as possible without any unions.
And BTW guess what I found as looking up BT pensions on Google?
https://www.ft.com/content/5505d45e-ac29-11e6-ba7d-76378e4fe... BT has second-worst funded pension scheme in the world
Are you sure you've told the members of your union about that? Who would be left holding the bag when this thing blows up? Would it be you, or would it be those thousands of people who got unfunded pension promises? Or would it be UK taxpayers who would be forced to pay for it?
Sounds like unions are a creaky old institution that's ripe for an update. If only there was an industry that goes around innovating things.
Ah Lies dam lies and Pension valuations - the current pension valuation rules are designed by accountants to make it easy for companies to shut them down.
On one valuation the BTPS is in surpluss
Oh and I am an activist not a full timer ;-)
I didn't study the BT issue, but I read a bunch about how California did their pension valuations, and it's a circus. They basically just assume the fund would earn what they want, and project based on that. And needless to say, they assume they're market geniuses. And when it becomes dangerously underfunded, they just screw the newcomers - basically make a Ponzi scheme out of it by making new contributions finance the gaps for the old-timers and have new member to accept much worse conditions then the old ones.
How about this pack of lies? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-28/ny-teamsters-pensio...
I'm sure these people were very happy with their union reps, and their union reps were very proud of it. Until it turned out their pensions are unfunded. And now the taxpayers have to pay their pensions.
> The beauty of a union is there doesn't have to be an objective definition. A union gives you a democratic voice to advocate for what you think is fair. Without organized labor power, your voice is completely ignorable.
This is silly; non-union employees have a democratic voice and the ability to advocate for "what they think is fair", and their voices aren't completely ignorable or else everyone would make minimum wage.
Perhaps there is some gross advantage to collective bargaining, but unions (in the U.S. at least) seem to discourage productivity, competition, and common sense while fostering corruption. These costs drive employers toward automation or outsourcing, thereby eliminating the very jobs they purport to protect. In my view, the cost of unionizing is too high for all but the most extreme circumstances.
> This is a completely naive understanding of what finding a job is like. Leaving a job can be a strike against a person in the hiring process, not to mention it consumes a lot of time, leaves someone uncompensated and without benefits during the process, etc. This also assumes engineer competency is something we can effectively gauge in the hiring process or otherwise (just search "hiring" on hacker news to get the general sentiment among engineers about how good we are at this).
You're conflating efficiency with fairness. Also, there's no need for an employee to quit before beginning to look for another job.
> Imagine if this was the suggestion given to factory workers and coal miners and the early 20th century (not that I think the worker conditions are comparable, but its illustrative of how naive it is to believe that market forces are sufficient for providing fair compensation). This is a marginalist's definition of "fair" that doesn't jive with any real human person's.
See my previous statement about exceptional circumstances, and take care not to confuse a depressed economy with unfair allocation of resources (although both a shrunken economy and anti-competitive practices contributed to poor conditions during the Great Depression). Maybe market forces alone aren't enough to guarantee fair distribution, but your analogy doesn't demonstrate as much.
> The real question is why you are so fervantly against having a democratic voice in the workplace.
This isn't my position, so I'm not sure how to answer your question... It sounds like you're conflating unionization with "having a democratic voice in the workplace"?
> If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal.
In an idealized market, yes. But given incidents like this, it seems like some employees must be being treated for more fairly than others -- which suggests there's no fairness at all.
I was speaking about fairness across the economy, not fairness within the company. For every Uber there are a dozen companies that actively seek out female employees for diversity purposes. I'm not aware of any data that suggest gender discrimination in the United States (and no, the wage gap is not an example of discrimination, as almost all of it is known to be caused by differing aggregate priorities between the sexes).
The difference between our points of view seems to be the degree to which we regards Uber as an outlier. I don't; it's one of many companies with this very different "fairness"; so I don't think we can take the market at face value.
Perhaps. I'd love more data on the subject. The data closest data I'm familiar with pertain to fair compensation between genders (not necessarily sexual harassment); and these data suggest that all but 4% of the wage cap can be explained by differing priorities between the gender (women prefer safer work with more flexibility rather than a high salary); the other 4% could be attributable to discrimination, misogynistic conditions, or other choice-related variables for which the studies didn't control. If so many companies were as bad as this article describes, I would expect that 4% number to be much larger (there are other explanations, but they don't seem very plausible to me). At any rate, we probably need better data (or maybe the data exist, but I'm not aware of them?).
Flexibility in job position is a matter of industry -- since one can not take a skill everywhere -- so looking at data that is across all industries won't speak to how fair (or not) the market is with regards to a particular role/salary/conditions combo.
> I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize.
I happen to agree that, relative to other industries, we're overpaid and get to live pretty lavishly for the little sacrifice that working on building systems with code entails.
That said, when you look at the value we generate for the people we work for, and remember how we are necessary to their wealth generation, I think it's worth having a conversation about organizing.
I don't think the value you generate actually matters in regards to compensation though. What matters is how easy you are to replace.
It does, because value generated helps with your best alternative to negotiated agreement. Specifically, there's more money floating around trying to woo freelancers, technical cofounders, etc.
Also, it sets their BATNA as well - how much value they miss out on while working on replacing you.
> Also, it sets their BATNA as well - how much value they miss out on while working on replacing you.
Ah I never thought about that.
I don't really get what you mean with respect to more money to get freelancers and such. Isn't the compensation of freelancers directly related to how much they would have to pay employees anyway? After all, I can only assume that if it's significantly cheaper to hire an employee, they would do so.
I would have thought too that freelancers have some special skillsets, which make them less easy to find, and thus less replaceable as well, but I don't have any data to back that up.
It matters. The floor is how easy you are to replace. The ceiling is the marginal value that you provide to the company. Considering how incredibly high that marginal value is, there is a lot of upward pressure at the top of the scale.
"I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked"
Given how much money these companies make directly off of our work, and given the prevalence of death marches across the industry, I cannot take this position seriously.
Doctors, lawyers, professional athletes, and leading Hollywood actors and actresses might all be overpaid relative to other professions, and yet they all have professional organizations, even unions, representing them. What makes software engineers so exceptional?
What do we, collectively, as tech workers want?
More equity?
Well, for instance, some amount of power to bargain for better treatment and basic protections, like say a healthy/safe workplace where you don't have to worry about being harassed by a superior and then ignored by HR.
Right now, companies like Uber can treat workers poorly -- apparently at a policy/organizational level even -- because the only thing they feel they have to fear is a bit of bad PR. No one has these workers' backs. HR is concerned with protecting the company. And the workers likely don't have the time, money nor stamina to fight a huge corporation with a lawsuit.
That's why workers need to band together to look out for one another. The deck is already stacked against them.
> Doctors, ... might all be overpaid relative to other professions, and yet they... have professional organizations, even unions, representing them
Doctors do not have professional organizations or unions representing them.
The AMA is frequently mis-cited by people not familiar with the industry as a union, but it's not one at all. Only 25% of doctors are members of the AMA (most of them only because they require licenses to CPT codes, which the AMA has a monopoly over) and the AMA does not advocate for physicians' interests.
In no meaningful sense does the AMA "represent" doctors at large.
The AMA doesn't advocate for physician interests? How so?
As a student member of the AMA, I can attest that they aren't the most effective organization, but they do plenty to further physician interests.
I think what you're likely getting at is how heterogenous physician interests are considering each specialty.
> The AMA doesn't advocate for physician interests? How so?
The AMA sometimes does things that align with doctors' interests, but only incidentally. It's allegiance is to itself as an institution, not to doctors, and it will further its own interests over doctors' every time the two collide.
As one example listed upthread, they advocate increasing the supply of physicians to lower physician salaries, which is directly against doctors' interests but in line with their own. Similarly, their stranglehold over CPT codes undeniably harms physicians and places them under even more control of payers' interests, but because it provides the AMA with a monopoly stream of revenue, the AMA clutches to it.
> I think what you're likely getting at is how heterogenous physician interests are considering each specialty.
I wasn't, but incidentally, that's the exact problem that unions do have. The leadership has the incentive to throw minority group interests under the bus in order to appease the majority of its membership. Closed shops (the AMA would not be one) are the most ruthless, because the only alternative their members have is to find employment in another industry altogether.
I agree that in its current state, the AMA does not do a whole lot for physicians. However, I would argue that if more physicians took an active interest in policies that benefitted all specialties, the AMA wouldn't be this shell of an organization that benefitted themselves more than others.
That being said, maybe sticking with state organizations might be a more fruitful endeavor.
Additionally, while physicians are a heterogenous bunch, there are many issues that almost all physicians agree with. Use the AMA to collectively lobby for those, and stick to the specialty organizations to push for more individual issues.
> Additionally, while physicians are a heterogenous bunch, there are many issues that almost all physicians agree with.
Physicians seem to have collectively decided that there aren't enough of those to justify the drawbacks of unionizing.
That's just in the US though. There's a whole world out there that is not the United States.
The British Medical Association certainly claims to be a trade union.
https://www.bma.org.uk/about-us/bma-as-a-trade-union
And they have engaged in collective action - e.g. the junior doctors strike.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/01/what-you-nee...
Pilots too.
The Apple / Google / Adobe / Intel etc antipoaching lawsuit seems to indicate otherwise.
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...
I think the average software engineer is underpaid relative to the value that they deliver to a company and the economy in general. Relative to other professions, sure. But I think that if a tech company makes enough to (in one instance) pay out dividends, they have spare cash to raise wages or provide bonuses to those that generated the value in the first place.
Agreed, I think relatively high compensation is something engineers can get caught up on when discussing the idea of unionizing (though its worth noting that we're paid salaries closer to electricians and plumbers than we are to specialist doctors, not that this is really apples to apples in terms of education required).
Even though we earn good wages, its relatively easy to see that workers are not often reaping the benefits of surplus value and have no ability to weigh in on determinations of how that value is allocated. More importantly, the advantages of a union are not limited to being able to negotiate a better salary, there are lots of workplace conditions that can be pretty oppressive in the tech industry, and unions offer the ability to improve all of them.
>I think the average software engineer is underpaid relative to the value that they deliver to a company and the economy in general.
People see the sticker price of things and do some napkin math, but I'd be willing to bet in most cases, if that employee were to make the product on their own (with no help or resources or existing customers), they would not be able to make the same amount of money because they would have to face "new company" risks and statistics. That is pretty bleak.
Underworked - with all the unpaid OT going on and they aren ot overpaid when compared to other professions
Great idea. Go work at a company like, say, Uber?
And easily switch to similar prestigious company like Stripe.
Right on brother (sister?)! Most in the industry are believing the management story and working their asses off for a dream that's rarely realized. And when it is, they don't see nearly the payout their more business savvy peers do. The model might be closer to doctors and lawyers than auto workers, but it's clear to me that industry wide solidarity could result in great standard of living and working condition improvements.
I think if this post teaches us anything, it's that the system works very well, at least for well-performing software engineers. In this case, Susan found a better job with a different company where she presumably won't have to face the same levels of confusion and mistreatment. Unionization seems to come with its own cultural (and procedural) baggage, so I'm wary of invoking needlessly.
Suffers in kafkaesque work environment for a year... gets new job. The system works!
I am utterly persuaded at this point that the software industry workers need a union.
Software engineering hiring practices are profoundly flawed; this is something a union could address at an industry level. It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck when, say, $sales_guy two tables over is paid minimum wage + commission (disclaimer: I have no knowledge of this occurring at my current company; it happened to a sales guy I know, however). A company of people work together, and should share in the returns as they cover each other's deficiencies.
I'm comfortable asserting that while there are issues with traditional unions, it's possible to improve and make better organizations.
>A company of people work together, and should share in the returns as they cover each other's deficiencies.
This is not an economically rational way to behave, so it's not sustainable for a company to do this and keep talent for high market-value positions. People are compensated based on the minimum required to get them to join and stay at the company, so their compensation is going to be driven by the market value of people with their skills.
Very small companies may be able to afford to pay every employee the cost of a principle software engineer (or whatever the highest position they have is), but this falls apart extremely quickly if the company needs lots of customer support positions or lots of sales people. They end up having to cut compensation to all of the high-end positions and subsequently lose anyone good enough to get jobs that pay market rate.
The majority of companies don't have the profit margins to throw away an extra $100,000 or whatever it takes per employee annually to pay everyone the top position market rate.
>It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck
What do you say to people that spend years of their life getting advanced degrees in math/physics/CS/whatever that make them experts in the subject matter the company is working on? "That sounds hard, here's the same paycheck as the undergrad working next to you who knows almost nothing in the field."
You're jumping to conclusions I didn't advocate for...
There's no reason one person who contributes one thing gets to scrape by and one person who contributes another gets to live like a prince. Sales pay the bills of SW devs; SW devs make what Sales sells. Both should be comfortably compensated.
Good luck. I'll never join. I know what you guys want (because enough of you have stated it on HN): no more H1Bs and to make sure I never find a job again because I'm a foreigner. I'll scab that union till kingdom come.
Actually I'd prefer if my country would just naturalize you instead of running you through an exploitative guest worker program that hedges your visa status on continued employment. I have absolutely no desire to prevent you from getting a job (and I'd like the union to have a spot for you and ensure you share in the benefits we create by collectively bargaining).
Sure, you might. But any such union will have a large number of disaffected people and as HN has shown, a large number of these people blame H1B workers.
Their problem is that this visa exists. My problem is getting naturalised. Our incentives are not aligned and they've made that clear.
I want no part of it and I will actively participate in union busting to the greatest of my ability for this reason.
I don't think you can achieve greater than 2% penetration amongst employed engineers and I know that your system will threaten the 1.7% of engineers who are H1B workers. I think I'm in a reasonable position here and I'm not about to weaken myself. And I think everyone else is going to work through the same calculus.
Sorry, it's not you. It's who are likely going to be your comrades.
No comrades of mine would see guest workers or immigrants as a threat. I wouldn't join a union that didn't stick up for all workers, regardless of their citizenship status.
Maybe we have different perspectives on how popular the anti-immigrant position is in tech (and how many neo-reactionary/dark enlightenment dipshits there are), I guess I'd just ask that you keep an open mind about this and make a decision if and when workers approach you to join a union. I certainly wouldn't knock you for opposing a group that doesn't have your interests at heart, but the union I want to form would take solidarity seriously and would explicitly go to bat for women, people of color, lgbtqia people, disabled people, and immigrants.
Very well. Fair enough.
I would advise any other immigrant reading that if they are approached by union representatives to demand a clause guaranteeing permanent residence reform and removal of the 7% limit before any anti-H1B action is taken. In the absence of this clause, all Indian and Chinese workers (at the least, and everyone probably) are placing themselves at risk of deportation.
Refusal to add such a clause or delay in doing so is evidence of actively undermining your interests.
> No comrades of mine
Ouch. Was that choice of word deliberate?
The parent comment used that word choice.
> It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leadership betraying the trust of workers and neglecting the demands of the most marginalized members (such as the UAW in 1941), but a union correctly structured and rooted in worker solidarity is the only proven way to fight management on these kinds of issues.
Thats why the IWW exists, and they desperately need members. They refuse to cooperate with big business and government, and are based on decentralized worker solidarity and principles of direct action, not the capture of state power. If a union derives its power from the state, it is easily corrupted and subverted.
https://iww.org/unions/dept500/iu560
https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/want-to-unionize-developer...
Good god... I just Google'd the IWW. Their website looks, at a glance, like a militant extreme left group. From the hard white-and-red on black colour scheme through to a photo of two people in fatigues carrying AK-style weapons next to an advert for a highly politically charged event.
If they want more members, they might want to tone down the "militant" imagery. I'm uncomfortable being associated with that.
The IWW has a long history, and pioneered the American labour movement, being practically the first union to admit women and blacks. It has not been a stranger to government repression in this period, and is decidedly anti government and view all political solutions with distrust. Instead they advocate for direct action. If you don't have anti-authoritarian/anarchist leanings, you probably won't fit in with the philosophy of the IWW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Everest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Outrage
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html?_r=0
Love the wobblies, and from what I understand they've organized one of the few existing tech workers unions, the IWW 560. Definitely very interested in organizing with them.
Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing.
First they need articulable set of goals, based on a sound principled base. With such a base, to unionize or not is an implementation detail. But a union without guiding principles would be exactly the morally bankrupt negotiation tool unions are often accused of being. A union should never be more important to the unionized than the ideals it implements. Because if it ever is, the workers no longer control the union, the union controls the workers.
To that point, I have yet to see "tech" at large, or even software engineers seriously discuss principles for the purpose of a principled professional life. I hear complaints about individual things that are negative on the face have moralistic reasoning applied after the fact. But no guiding vision.
Just like we assume the people in movies poop [0] even though we never see it, an "obviously" unacceptable thing happening leads to have conversations resting on unspoken assumptions that someone solved what a professional environment is off-screen. If we want demands for what a work environment should be like to be taken seriously, we have to figure it out. Upfront, on-screen, and to create something people can believe in.
to combat this kind of thing
fight management on these kinds of issues.
Can you articulate what the KIND of issues are? The category can easily be labeled with synonyms for "bad" and easily have things like a misogynistic work environment placed within the category, but WHAT IS the category. What are the defining lines?
If every developer took the time to figure out what they believe in, or adopted the (e.g.) ACM Code to their professional life, it might not even take a union.
[0] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobodyPoops
it is interesting that sex is the hot button. in general we special case sex in the US. While I dont mean to say sexual harrasment isnt a real problem, its interesting to me more philosophically that propositioning for sex is ultra problematic but propostioning for a platonic relationship is less so, or drinking, or anything else beyond strict job fulfillment labor. its obviously a problem when a power dynamic is abused but I would argue there is a weird puritanical nature to seeing a sexual proposition as preposterous but an unwanted platonic advance as largely benign
I would say that if the manager asked her out on a platonic date on her first week, that would be almost as wildly inappropriate.
My experience at a former company was that the management would plan a group happy hour and there was a ton of pressure to participate. This in particular hurt those that had families or other priorities and advantaged those that were younger and more willing to drink. I was young and willing enough to go along with drinking but personally felt this was more a requirement since so much in the way of promotions and getting put on the best projects was who you knew on top of technical competency. I will say the dynamic is different when its a one on one socializing vs team outings but in general I think its quite complex. There is no doubt that what happened is wrong, kept happening and constitutes sexual harassment, but its weird to me that sexual harassment so overwhelmingly gets attention when the cultural problems with orgs like this are so much deeper.
Not just sex, but sex in an "open relationship," presumably as "backup booty." It's hard for me to understand why she didn't immediately start trying to GTFO, but instead stuck around for a year and tried to make things work. Save transcripts and screenshots, find a new job, then sue at leisure.
You really can't think of a reason why someone would want to stay at a company like Uber? Salary? Stock options? Career path? Career security? Coworkers? The early belief that HR would help correct this? She did end up leaving the company after trying to fix it. Your not understanding why she stayed for so long is part of the problem.
> Salary? Stock options?
Are they really so much above typical Bay Area rates?
> Career path? Career security?
Plenty of people are still hiring in the current bubble, and she's an SRE, not an auto specialist or something.
> Coworkers?
Like the one who dropped his pants?
> The early belief that HR would help correct this?
Of which she was quickly disabused.
I think the downvotes might be from people who want to be super careful about victim-blaming.
But I agree with you that we should be training people to detect bullshit early on and to just get the fuck out in those situations. Labeling her actions as rational and healthy is probably not helpful either.
You both should sit this one out. Talk to your women engineer friends to get a better understanding of the situation.
This isn't a sports match. What's wrong with what I said?
Because she shouldn't have to get the fuck out. I don't understand why that is hard to understand.
Of course she shouldn't have to get the fuck out. Of course Uber shouldn't have such shitty policies. You're reading things that aren't there.
Her actions are rational; she followed the relevant protocols, policies and laws, just as a machine would.
Ask some women about this post, and listen to what they tell you. Don't argue, just absorb.
Yes, of course her actions were rational as she followed protocol. But then they became irrational when she decided to stay, even after she found out that nothing would be done about the harassment, after she found out how backwards and stupid the Uber's policies are.
If it helps, try pretending that she was treated this way because she was black. Would she still be "irrational" to want to stay in a job and earn a good wage without harassment and degradation?
Would I have quit? You bet. But you have to understand that my freedom to do so is conditioned by a few assumptions:
1) I have the financial freedom to quit.
2) Working conditions are appreciably better at competing companies.
3) I'm able to land another job with comparable pay.
4) Quitting won't have negative repercussions on my future career.
Can you say, unequivocally, that all these conditions (and more) are met for her? I can't. Nobody knows that but Susan.
I understand you don't mean to, but you're coming awfully close to blaming the victim. Her quitting would have done nothing to change the environment except to reinforce the culture further, and we have no window into her personal reasons for staying. The point that everyone in this subthread keeps harping on is that they are not at all relevant. Period.
That she stayed is completely immaterial. That's -- legally -- her choice. The fact that, by choosing to stay employed, she was subjected to repeated sexual harassment and misogyny is as deplorable as it is illegal.
It seems you're speaking to whether her staying has potentially positive outcomes for others. My read of the comments upthread is that they're viewing the events through the lense of what's good for her personally and immediately. Which, as an aside, I suspect is how most Americans view conflicts with management of any stripe.
My read of this is that most on this thread would say that it would be commendatory for her to stay and fight for change, but 100% ethical for her either to stay in her situation hoping for improvement or leave for a better place to be, and that in her shoes they would opt for the latter.
To me this would not meet the plain language meaning of 'blaming the victim', but I recognize that plain language is not always so plain. I would like to better understand if it is victim blaming and, if not, if there are ways you know of to communicate the distinction being drawn above well. If it is, could you highlight what makes it so? Obviously it is not your responsibility to help me learn to communicate, but I would appreciate it if you did.
And just to make sure it's clear: the behavior of the other employees mentioned is illegal and unbelievably unethical, and I am not in any way condoning or making excuses for it.
smhost said that her actions became "irrational when she decided to stay" after her initial interactions with HR turned out so badly. My point was that we have no idea why she stayed, nor is it even remotely relevant.
People who say "Well I would have left" when they hear a story of abuse are missing the point entirely. By focusing on what they would have done in the victim's place, they're re-framing the event as somehow the victim's choice and thus, at least partially the victim's fault.
That is a form of victim blaming. Full stop.
Focus on the abuse. Leave the victim out of it. Without context, you can't know what you'd do in the same situation. As I noted, if I -- a white, well-to-do male with no debts and no professional entanglements -- suffered that type of abuse, I would have left. But that's irrelevant, because she's not me. To say that she should have left, or that she was "irrational" for not doing so is to make a mountain of assumptions about her situation.
As noted in TFA, she was young, on a sponsored scholarship, and in the middle of writing a book. To switch jobs immediately could have had lasting career implications, cost her an education, and ruined her ability to finish the book. Surely those considerations weighed on her decision to stick it out.
Without insight into her personal affairs, we can't know how much pressure she felt to stay in the job in spite of the abusive environment. Ultimately, whether she left or not is totally immaterial.
Hmm. Thanks for taking the time to respond, but I'm still not clear on this. It's possible I'm beyond help.
I can see how the statement that it was irrational of her to stay makes potentially invalid assumptions. It seems appropriate to me to asterisk that with something like "if my boss did this to me I'd leave", which I suppose is how I was reading the earlier statements anyways.
Having said that, the amended statement seems innocuous to me and could be read positively ("I wouldn't be as tough as she is in this situation"). Reading the rest of your response it seems this kind of what-if is the core of the issue to you. Is that correct?
You're really twisting the GP's words there. Converting a sentence condemning her for being "irrational" into one claiming "I wouldn't be as tough as she is in this situation" is a mighty big leap. Even as you amended it ("if my boss did this to me..."), it's still irrelevant and focuses on the victim's behavior after the harassment, not the act itself.
Now, if what you want to say is "I wouldn't be as tough as she is...", then simply go for it. It's still irrelevant, but can at least be construed as supportive to the victim.
The original statement -- that she was "irrational" for staying -- cannot, and is wildly inappropriate.
> By focusing on what they would have done in the victim's place, they're re-framing the event as somehow the victim's choice and thus, at least partially the victim's fault. That is a form of victim blaming. Full stop.
I think I understand what you're saying, but that's a pretty extreme stance and one that I don't agree with. You seem to be saying that a person's actions and decisions can not possibly have any effect on the situation, simply because the situation is undesirable and because the person is a victim. That view removes any notion of agency in the person in question. It removes the acknowledgement of free will and offends the dignity of the individual as an architect of their life. It's a kind of extreme infantilization.
Now, before you're led to believe that I'm advocating some kind of honor killing of adulterers, let me assure you that I absolutely am not. I find that extreme to be completely abhorrent and void of reason. From my vantage point, I believe that I'm standing precisely in the middle of the two extremes, being careful not to fall into the trap of either view.
Nope. You're the one leaping to extremes. I'm saying it's blaming the victim. A crime took place, and she was its victim. To question her reaction after the crime is, literally, blaming her for any remaining harassment. You can call it "acknowledging her free will" all you like.
Now, some victims share more of the blame for their situation than others. But without any insight into their reasons for tolerating abuse, it's presumptuous to assume someone has total agency to change their circumstances. She did some calculus and concluded that the costs to leave were steeper than staying.
That was her choice but, as I've said a half dozen times already, it's completely irrelevant. If I'm mugged, it's no less a crime if I also happen to be black or gay or in the "wrong" part of town. Regardless of her reasons for staying, what happened was wrong, and no person should be forced to make the choice she did.
If you actually read what I said, you'd realize that you're arguing against something that you made up in your head. At this point, there's no reason for me to believe that you will even bother trying to understand my point of view, but I'll give it one last go.
If you're mugged, the crime is a crime by the very definition of a crime. Since you seem to think that I'm an idiot, I'll point out that the victim's identity doesn't play into the definition of a crime. The mugger deserves to be punished according to the laws that we've agreed on as a society, and this is true whether you're a purple Martian or a lizard person.
But none of that has anything to do with the fact that it was your actions that brought you into the situation. Only you have the power to be where you are. Whether you were ignorant of there being a mugger down the street is irrelevant to the fact that it was you who walked there. It's not an extreme statement, upon hearing that you were mugged, to suggest that you avoid that street from now on, to try a different route, and be more vigilant in the future. It's not an extreme thing to say that it's unwise to go down the same street again.
You're twisting my words into making it sound as if I'm saying that a mugging never occurred, or that mugging is not a crime.
> It's hard for me to understand why she didn't immediately start trying to GTFO, but instead stuck around for a year and tried to make things work.
Some possibilities:
- Because she's loyal to her co-workers
- Maybe still not jaded enough to jump ship at the first reason
- quite possibly didn't have another job lined up to jump ship to
A year isn't all that long, and if things had been turned around who knows she might still be working there today. Obviously they have not, things have gone rapidly downhill so she made the right choice in abandoning Uber but you really can't fault someone for trying to fix things before they give up.
A year is a typical vesting schedule for stock options though.
I read nothing about options in the article, did she mention those somewhere else?
I didn't either, but I mean, that's a very typical reason for people leaving near 1 year after a startup. And I'm almost certain Uber is offering some kind of equity package to engineers.
Sure, but until there is a liquid market that's worth $0. Who will you sell your newly vested shares to?
It's not worth $0. At least not according to the IRS. But you're right, it's certainly a big gamble, although every year people rumor that Uber is going to go public.
Or you sell them on the secondary market, depending on the rules for the stock.
Can't you hold on to the shares even after you leave? Why would you have to sell your shares when they are newly vested? Especially if you chose to have 40% deducted right away.
Or maybe she has endured sexist bullshit for her entire career, and she is used to having to brush some of it off in order to follow her chosen career path.
I guess I don't have that kind of loyalty to brand-new co-workers. She seems like she had the reputation and skills to land an interchangeable SRE position with good pay. My boss immediately propositioning me as a secondary member of an "open relationship" is creepy enough to outweigh a whole lot of loyalty and/or money. It's commendable to try to fix a dysfunctional work environment, but if the boss essentially drops his pants in front of you and is not fired, things are probably broken beyond repair.
Some companies also require repayment of signing bonuses/relocation if the employee leaves within a year. So that gives people incentive to try and make the best of things even if they would have otherwise left.
There is certainly something to see there.
There were multiple articles on HN relating to the Uber offers and contracts, which showed they gave terrible conditions and dangerous traps.
By the way, she said in the article that she was doing a CS degree, sponsored by Uber, and they retracted the grant at the last minute.
From TFA: "I was enrolled in a Stanford CS graduate program, sponsored by Uber, and Uber only sponsored employees who had high performance scores."
Much though the dude was a terrible person (and fireable for doing that at work) please don't assume that all open relationships are similarly unethical. It doesn't need scare quotes any more than being gay does.
> I was enrolled in a Stanford CS graduate program, sponsored by Uber, and Uber only sponsored employees who had high performance scores. Under both of my official performance reviews and scores, I qualified for the program, but after this sneaky new negative score I was no longer eligible.
She had sponsorship in a graduate program at a great school. Eventually this was allegedly ruined in a retroactive performance review change. It seems like it was roughly a few weeks after that when she left.
On top of that Uber appears to be a huge addition to her relatively short (public)work history. Now she's at Stripe. Hard to fault the logic of sticking things out if they weren't getting too crazy.
People are always having to weigh risk and adversity against reward. This is why the power dynamic between superiors and subordinates is such a huge factor in company HR policies and it's taken so seriously; from corporate US to the military. The situations that can arise can be quite complicated and messy.