Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffjose | Hacker News Reader

Travis Kalanick's rise was the result of Silicon Valley's sincere yearning for an irreverent CEO when Steve Jobs passed away. We were collectively willing to overlook any blemishes in the young company, which set up for failure in the long run.

I sometimes wonder if Steve Jobs had still been alive, would he have been revered as much as he was in the 2010s? His management style would have sooner or later caused permanent damage to someone you and I personally know. And that's where we'd have drawn the line.

View on HN

I think it's important to notice that what you are talking about is a zeitgeist change. In the time that Jobs was building organizations the consensus was that work (particularly work by engineers with options) was a voluntary contract and if you didn't like how you were being treated you moved to another job.

The flip side to your point that no one articulates today is that some people with thicker skin like very challenging environments - like a Jobs-ian company that makes them feel like they are part of a a group of with real intensity that is changing the world, and Apple surely did.

Where we mess up today is in thinking that there is one right type of work experience for everyone.: the mythical "we" that you write about in "And that's where we'd have drawn the line."

Maybe it's better to have many diverse workplace cultures and let people chose among them based upon their individual wants and temperaments.

but not at the expense of offending anyone who is potentially not even part of that group

This. So much this. Diversity of workplaces is something we should celebrate, yet the media and activists are keen on converting every workplace into their ideal. Not everyone desires to work at the same company. Some people want to work at an Apple, some want to work at a s Google, some just want to work on a hippie commune/coop, and some want to work at a high pace, high states, only the toughest, most productive, most driven survive company like Uber.

If you don't like how a company is run, you have two options: 1) build the company culture of your dreams from scratch from first principles 2) let someone else do all the hard work of creating value and then show up later and colonize that company and try to change its culture to match your ideal. Hopefully, if you're enlightened you've given some though to how to maintain the positive aspects of that company's culture before you attempt to foist upon its employees your ideal of how it should function.

At the end of the day, employment is at will. If someone doesn't like the way a company is run, they should try to change it from the inside as an employee or move on to another company if they fail to change it. Outsiders, on the other hand, should stay out of it. If you don't like how a company is run, and you don't work there, fuck off. If you really want a company to be run differently, get hired there so your financial success is at least aligned with all the other employees before you try to influence the culture.

As it turns out, "employment at will" isn't "the end of the day". And "people on the outside" won't "stay out of it".

Because if they did, we'd still have slavery, 8-year-olds in coal mines, and women in the kitchen.

So I'll continue to make my opinion known, as a consumer no longer using Uber, as a citizen supporting laws mandating sane employment law, as a software engineer discouraging everyone from taking a job at Uber, and as an investor making sure none of his money ever ends up at Uber.

And luckily, CEOs are much further, generally, than these Randian fantasies of masculinity. They have, for example, mostly recognised that it costs them money to rely exclusively on white bros in their 30s with identical experiences.

> Because if they did, we'd still have slavery, 8-year-olds in coal mines, and women in the kitchen.

Which of these are examples of at-will employment? Your argument is a strawman.

Here is the wikipedia article on at-will employment for your edification:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

> rely exclusively on white bros in their 30s with identical experiences.

According to Uber's diversity report, the racial composition of its workforce approximately matches the racial composition of San Francisco, Santa Clara and Alemeda counties, and its gender composition is roughly in line with the industry average in the Bay Area and is really no different than the gender composition at companies like Google or Facebook.

a Jobs-ian company that makes them feel like they are part of a a group of with real intensity that is changing the world, and Apple surely did.

Yeap, it sure did:

We were reluctant to show it to Steve, knowing that he would want to commandeer it, but he heard about it from someone and demanded to see it. We showed it to him, and, unfortunately, he loved it. But he also insisted that Apple owned all the rights to it, even though we had developed it in our spare time.

Steve couldn't insist that Apple owned all of it, because Bill Budge wasn't an Apple employee at the time. But Steve could claim complete ownership of the interface card, which he said was developed with Apple resources. Burrell and I were pretty upset, because we did it on our own time and thought that we should be compensated, but it's really hard to argue with Steve, especially about money.

Can't you just feel the unity of the group? /s

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Apple_II_Mouse_Ca...

Part of that choosing company process, if it has to work, is that people criticize and talk openly. Like instead of using euphemisms like "challenging" when what they mean is "easy work but backstabbing culture" or "passionate" when they mean "a lot of signaling required". It may mean that yes, some companies are sexist and others are cringy ridiculous sjws, but now the moment you openly talk about either heaven help you.

Collectively, we don't openly criticize or nor attempt to fairly characterize cultures. We talk in euphemisms, like "alpha" when we mean "overbearing narcissistic jerk" or "laddish" when we mean "lazy jerk". We talk about "meritocracy" when number one advice for job seekers is "networking", whether you appear confident matters more then whether project you are responsible for is mess and who you are friend with matters more then anything in that company.

If people have to have fair chance to choose companies, then it needs to be fine for people who work or worked in those companies criticize without being punished for it. That is not exactly the case now - now you need to have good friends in that company to figure that out.

Nobody thinks Kalanick's brohaviour is in any way similar to Steve Jobs.

Jobs was (sometimes) hard on people when he felt it would lead to a better product. Kalanick allowed a toxic work environment to spread because he though it was funny.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com