Uber's many scandals are affecting recruitment at every level | Hacker News Reader

Uber's many scandals are affecting recruitment at every level

pando.com

46 pointsprostoalex18 comments

I personally turned down a second round interview at Uber over their, based upon information and belief, failure to adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

After hearing the stories of a handicapped friend, who happened to be attending Stanford, just attempting to get around town with a wheelchair, I decided I would never work for Uber.

For example, they labeled a vehicle as handicap accessible, and sent a tiny Acura RDX, which couldn't accommodate even a basic manual wheelchair. Their drivers were rude, disrespectful, resentful, and unkind.

She did not deserve that treatment.

They've made no real effort to comply with the ADA. And unfortunately, unlike the silly medallion laws they ignore, these violations are blatantly discriminatory.

I sent a letter saying as much to the recruiter when I withdrew my application.

This article is misleading. Yes, I know many of my friends who I respect who turned down opportunities at Uber due to cultural issues. At the same time, I also have many friends who I deeply respect who chose to join Uber and describe it as a positive and respectful workplace in which they are solving hard problems and having real impact. Almost without fail though, just through knowing a friend's personality, I can predict with 90+% accuracy whether they would be someone who would enjoy working at Uber.

But here's the thing, Uber doesn't need to hire every single talented person in the tech industry, it just needs to hire enough of them. And from the people I see being attracted to there every day, they definitely still have the clout to hire enough of them and attract the calibre of top tier talent to keep the service viable.

It's the same issue Facebook had during its growing years (and to some extent, still has today). Many of my friends looking for work then dismissed Facebook out of hand for it's perceived cultural issues and yet Facebook had no problems growing because enough people did fit the culture.

The real risk is not that it can't grow, it's that the cultural polarization only ever increases over time and the company becomes monocultural in a way that inhibits flexibility and it's ability to adapt. At the same time, that cult-like maniacally enforced conformity might be exactly what it needs to ruthlessly execute and crush competitors and markets until it becomes as entrenched in the world as Standard Oil or the Dutch East India Company.

Hmm -- so you're saying the various ethical concerns cited in the article: "assaults, privacy breaches, threats against journalists, abuses of drivers" -- are really just "cultural" issues?

Like whether you like to play table tennis, say.

I just had a friend who told me he left Uber - said it was the craziest place he's ever worked. Said that if youre not working 80 hours per week your poorly judged.

Had another friend say that he went through an intense interview process with them and was told he would be getting an offer the next day. Several days later he just received a rejection email.

Don't think it sounds like a nice environment - regardless of whatever interesting infra projects they are working on...

> Several days later he just received a rejection email.

Wow. That is rare nowadays. 30 years ago in silicon valley all companies sent at least a rejection form letter. Recently no one seems to take the trouble. Maybe just the last year or two it's gotten better.

No I think its because the recruiter said they were giving him an offer.

I like how pando deal with the posting, it's freely available for a day, here's our price if you want more access.

No popup while I'm reading it, not just a 1/4 of the article is displayed, very well done.

Indeed. "for just $10 a month." I generally like Pando, it's in my feed reader some place and they frequently catch my eye, but really I can't imagine paying $120 for this site. I can't imagine paying that much for _any_ site really. Maybe this is where we're heading now, hard to say, but I've just never found a site I'd be willing to pay that much for access. Maybe I'm not like most people in that I can't see the value? I always feel like "eh, I'll just go someplace else, this ain't all that important". I'm really hoping that sites with good original content figure out how to make it with ad blocking taking such a big bite out of revenue.

I think original reporting is worth paying for if the details in the premium content are valuable and go beyond what will be reposted, or if the story is written well enough that you retain valuable information better than you would from another source.

I visited Uber HQ recently. The chairs and desks in open office area are crumbled in each other. Uber employees joke about it and say it's "surge seating"!

I had two rounds of interviews with Uber. I asked how they provide productivity-enhancing space, space that is suitably quiet and private to enable bare minimum conditions for working on software, and there was no answer.

I'm sad at how recruiters have attempted to co-opt the word "collaborative" and try to repurpose it to mean "you can smell your colleague's lunch every time he takes a breath".

Open plan offices are not collaborative. They facilitate superficial interactions in which people try to give only the most shallow answers necessary to get the other person to go away, because everyone is so over-stimulated with constant interpersonal interaction.

These environments are interactive, for sure. In fact, they are relentlessly interactive. But collaboration is productive interaction. And open plan offices definitely do not provide that.

I noped out of the Uber interviews as soon as I learned that they don't view working conditions as a fundamental technology used for productivity. Even if the firm is financially successful (so far, mostly by society's failure to punish them for their blatant bad behavior) it's too much of a hell hole to possibly consider enduring.

As much as I despise Uber, it's hard to deny though that their sleazy tactics have paid off.

Uber vs. Lyft market share: https://pando-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2014/09/uber-v...

That data is over a year and a half old. Does it still apply?

Hasn't Lyft been accused of some pretty shady stuff too? I think it might be like Walmart versus Target, where the second largest tends to escape criticism.

Typical Pando clickbait

the article "You can read the whole post here." (regarding one woman's blog) but there is no link.

This article is just fart in the air.

The article seems to draw broad conclusions from a few anecdotes. I doubt many employees are turning down positions at Uber because of their principles, though they may be turning the positions down because the scandals make the company's future less certain.

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