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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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.

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