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Comment by cozzyd | Hacker News Reader

I especially like:

"Uber should consider moving the catered dinner it offers to a time when this benefit can be utilized by a broader group of employees, including employees who have spouses or families waiting for them at home, and that signals an earlier end to the work day."

Note to Linux users: this PDF looks terrible without msttcorefonts installed. I guess MS Word neglects to embed fonts? Also, as someone who is not used to seeing documents generated by MS Word, I'm surprised at how bad the typography is in general (although maybe this due to user error...for example it looks like hyphenation might be disabled.)

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As a family man, I couldn't agree more with this statement!

But if these are the sorts of recommendations in the report, it is a pile of trash. The whole point of the report is to identify and reduce misconduct. This is just irrelevant filler

> The whole point of the report is to identify and reduce misconduct.

No, that's not what Covington was hired by the board to give recommendations on, per the explicit description of the task they were given in the Introduction to the document here.

It was about ways to create an inclusive environment. This was one of many recommendations to do that.

If msttcorefonts solves it, then it'll just be relying on the fact that historically the PDF format guaranteed access to 14 basic fonts. The guarantee was that Helvetica, Courier, Times and a few others were always available, or metric-equivalent alternatives were provided, and almost any OS today meets that requirement.

  [cozzyd@cosmogenic]$ pdffonts The-Holder-Report-on-Uber.pdf 
  name                                 type              encoding         emb sub uni object ID
  ------------------------------------ ----------------- ---------------- --- --- --- ---------
  TimesNewRomanPSMT                    TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no     272  0
  Georgia                              TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no     274  0
  Georgia-Bold                         TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no     276  0
  Georgia-Italic                       TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no     278  0
  TimesNewRomanPSMT                    TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no      48  0
  Georgia-Bold                         TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no      49  0
  Georgia                              TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no      47  0
  Arial-BoldMT                         TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no      46  0
  Georgia-Italic                       TrueType          WinAnsi          no  no  no      53  0

If they move dinner earlier, the IRS may start taxing employees based on the value provided. Right now, these meals aren't taxable because they are for the convience of the employee. Moving them earlier show they are a really just a fringe benefit.

I don't really follow what you are suggesting. What would suddenly make them taxable? And, the IRS would tax employees because their employer pays for dinner? As in, it qualifies as income, somehow?

My former employer reimbursed our lunch as taxable income for this reason.

If your employer gives you goods and services, that may qualify as a taxable benefit. It is basically income. The point being so that the government still gets its share even if the company pays its employees in free stuff instead of money.

Why that would change based on time of day, I don't know, but tax rules are complicated around this sort of stuff.

What time is the dinner served?

8:15

wow! It was 6:30 iirc @ Google, which I already thought was just a ploy to keep employees there later. Breakfast ended at I believe 9:30.

I think it's 8:30 to 10 at my office.

Depends on the Google cafe.

A few started dinner at 6:00. I think most started at 6:30 but I wouldn't be surprised if a couple didn't start until as late as 7.

Breakfast ended at 10 but often it didn't actually close until food ran out. I think some had late breakfast going until 11.

Charlie's would close the doors, hard stop, at 10:00. I remember having to be let out by the back route, through the kitchen, a couple times because I was still in line for food when the doors closed.

This was Google NYC btw.

Such a weird recommendation. It's so variable. 8:15 would be perfect for me (2 year old and 2 month old at home). 8:15pm is after bed time. If the dinner started at 5pm, it wouldn't work for some parents, and for others 5pm might be way too early.

You can't please everyone, and sometimes trying to is worse.

8:15 is after my kids go to sleep, too, but I'd rather not commute home to spend time with them, and then commute back to eat dinner.

Would be easy if you live at Nema

Lil bit of an in joke. NEMA is a condo building sandwiched between the Uber and Twitter main offices.

I'm fairly certain that significant portion of their staff does live within a short Uber ride back to the office. Even those with families.

Besides, what are your kids going to eat?

I'm not understanding what you are saying. Are you saying working until after 8:15 is perfect for you so that you'll never see your family? Or that you'll go back to work to eat after your kids go to bed?

Both sound bad

So I guess I understood these dinners wrong. It's not like a social dinner? Or does this mean like company supplied dinner starts at 8:15pm?

I interpreted it as (non mandatory) social dinner's hosted by the company would start at 8:15pm.

I interpreted it as the dinner they provide for people working late.

No, this is a dinner they provide every day for people who are still in the office, presumably because they're working.

Your interpretation is wrong, I've been to Uber's office in SF and its dinners are big trays of catered food brought in late in the evening. They're dumped in the kitchens and employees who are still working can come by to get whatever they want.

Apologies if I'm naïve, but why are people still working so late? Are they working overtime or on call?

So they can get a free dinner? Or maybe they're just happy to work a bit late, avoid peak-hour traffic, and then head home?

I work 6am-10pm one day a week voluntarily, though I work for myself. I avoid traffic, parking is easier, and I get the office to myself without distractions for about 6 hours.

From what I saw it's part of the company culture. Managers were there late so of course their subordinates didn't want to leave and be seen as not working as hard.

Also there's no concept of overtime with salaried fulltime employees. You might work 100 hours in a week and you're still taking home the same paycheck as if you worked 40 hours. That's just the way corporate America works.

They're working late so that they'll still be at the office when the free food comes. That's the point of the late free food.

Isn't it fair to say that it would be easier to have the dinner before people go home from work? Not saying the recommendation is wise entirely, but I'd be shocked if 6:30 didn't work better for the vast majority of parents.

There is no office dinner time that is compatible with employees going home _to have dinner with their families_.

The point of an office dinner is to replace any alternative dinner.

When I worked in SF I was just glad to see my family before my daughter went to bed, let alone having dinner with them.

So is that a good thing? Did it make you a better employee, or increased your efficiency, or gave you room to think so you could make better decisions?

SV is so misguided in equating working hard and being at work, it is crazy. Perhaps just me, but I can get 10-times more done when I know that my daughter is happy (having played together), than when I am stuck working while she is spending time with a nanny instead.

Anyway, to each their own.

No, I don't think that's a good thing at all. Not having dinner with my family was just a foregone conclusion. Even if I show up at 6 AM you're getting dirty looks if you leave at 5, because half of engineering doesn't show up until 10:30.

I'm not saying it's right or good, I'm just saying it's reality.

The implicit pressure is going to be "you have to stay for the team dinner," even if the dinner is "optional." So given that assumption, I would much rather the dinner happen at 6:30 and get home to my family than at 8:30. That way I would at least see my wife before she went to bed (let alone my daughter).

Thanks for the clarification and you're 100% here. I wonder if people realize the kind of environment they are creating using these implicit triggers, or because everyone shows up and seems happy, the issue isn't addressed until it completely blows up, like in Uber's case.

Wouldn't that mean that you wouldn't go home until after your children are in bed?

I was maybe misinterpreting the dinner, but I was thinking go home then come back.

Then why not eat dinner with your family while you're home?

I believe it was interpreted as a non-frequent, social non-mandatory dinner for the company, which is nice to attend so that you stay in touch with the company. And by social dinner I mean a get together event as opposed to just eating food for the sake of quelling hunger.

As a parent (6 year old) I totally see where he's coming from.

Correct.

I'm in a unionized position for a provincial government. Working late is very foreign to me.

In that context, then yeah, I can see that. Given the board, it's usually assumed that people are looking at it from a SV point of view, and so the assumption is that it's the "regular dinner" that gets brought in every night.

Yep. I asked about work life balance when evaluating offers and my future manager told me "Just look at the delta between when breakfast ends and dinner starts. For us, it's 8 hours. For Uber, it's something like 11."

It might be an inconsequential recommendation. But it is representative of the broader culture.

And yes, it's absurd that silicon valley tech companies feed us three meals a day. That HBO show Silicon Valley is a documentary not a comedy.

Isn't the purpose of dinner to "feed" those who stay late knowing there is food and know that they won't have to go hunting outside to see what joint is still open (specially in the suburban campuses) rather than being a venue to feed staff on their way out (home, etc.)?

From that PoV 7-ish makes sense. I know I would not stay around till 7 just for a freebie dinner if I didn't have anything to do.

Well, yes, I think "don't directly reward and incentivize staying too late at work" is the whole point of the recommendation. E.g. "signal the end of the work day."

One option that the company I currently work for does is to provide dinners in to-go that are either cold sandwiches or leftovers from lunch (which is free). That way, if one has to stay late, you aren't forced to have chips for dinner, while avoiding the signaling of having an actual dinner service.

I agree that providing dinners is kind of symbiotic. The worker gets free dinner and in return the employer gets outsized compensation in the form of work (symbiosis is not equal). That said, I never feel obliged to stay just because there is dinner served. I'm quite sure at places I've worked it's not even a tacit thing. I do know people who "hang out" just to get a free dinner and then leave --and again the company knows this and to my knowledge there is no frowning upon that (of course, if everyone did it, I'm sure it would become frowned upon).

This is a great idea. Especially if they're leftovers from lunch, to avoid waste.

At least at Google's NYC office, it was socially acceptable to work until dinner-time, have dinner at work, and then go home. (Or so it was reported to me.)

Font rights are ridiculously complicated. Word probably plays it safe and never embeds, because it's so easy to break a copyright.

MS fonts have the embedding permission bit set, IIRC.

Isn't the whole point of catered dinner to give people an incentive to work longer hours and have them be taken care of if they're staying at work pretty late? It's not a free meal, it's an incentive to work into the night. It's optional, you can go home if you want. What's the issue? Some people make the tradeoff to spend their life at work, others make the tradeoff to have a family and go spend time with their kids. This gets pretty philosophical, but should we be reducing the freedom of choice and mandating what the correct lifestyle should be for people?

When I visited for dinner one time there were barely any people there taking advantage of it, and the food was actually quite good, so it anecdotally didn't even feel like a systemic issue of people "feeling the pressure to stay at work until 9pm".

> What's the issue?

The issue is sexual harassment.

We're talking about the dinners here, you're derailing.

I think you're missing the focus. Obviously, catering dinners for employees at 8:15 PM has created an environment that encourages sexual harassment, otherwise this would never have been included in an investigative report. An example, which isn't given in the report, is a male employee taking a female employee to a catered dinner after work hours and making advances.

Regardless of how a company drains the life out of its employees with overtime, if they create 'perks' that married people can also participate in, or a larger bunch, there is less risk of this happening.

The advice about dinner catering is in the context of reducing sexual harassment in the workplace and has nothing to do with anything else.

A male employee can have a pizza delivered too. A catered dinner has nothing to do with harassment, the recommendation was to promote inclusivity, but was tone deaf as to the purpose of the dinners.

Well, isn't it great to have enough capital to hire an attorney general to make flatteringly vague, stupid advice that has nothing to do with the reason he was hired.

Sounds a bit naive to me.

Um no.

> '...to conduct a thorough and objective review regarding “the specific issues relating to the work place environment raised by Susan Fowler, as well as diversity and inclusion at Uber more broadly.”'

Note the bit about "diversity and inclusion at Uber more broadly." So you are derailing and it is you who is missing the focus. The report is clearly not just about sexual harassment. You would know that if you read the report.

Don't act oblivious. The impetus for Eric Holder's hiring to investigate Uber's workplace environment was sexual harassment. The wording is intentionally vague to try and soften the allegations which are damning. The fact that Holder is paid by Uber means he won't slam the company, but clearly the advice is meant to prevent them from getting their asses sued in the future.

And to my point "diversity and inclusion at Uber more broadly" can directly discourage sexual harassment, which was the critical issue in the investigation.

If you don't give a shit about the allegations, why read the report?

> If you don't give a shit about the allegations, why read the report?

The report had several purposes, and the parts related to addressing specific allegations rather than general culture are not published. So, reading the published part of report has nothing to do with caring about the allegations, since the published part of the report is the recommendations which were specifically called for to address inclusivity generally, rather than the investigation results addressing specific allegations of misconduct.

And if your core complaint is that they should be serving dinner at 8:15 PM, then what should Holder's recommendation be to prevent sexual harassment from occurring in situations like I described?

How do you in your mind divorce advice for "general inclusivity" from specific allegations of misconduct. It sounds like you think the company is just wasting money to be flattered.

Obviously the company has severe issues with its culture.

Reading the report and saying "why should they change anything" sounds like denialism or defense.

These are like conditions of their parole. If they had the responsibility to handle things like late-night catered dinners, they wouldn't need the former attorney general to tell that that it is a "no no."

> Isn't the whole point of catered dinner to give people an incentive to work longer hours and have them be taken care of if they're staying at work pretty late? It's not a free meal, it's an incentive to work into the night. It's optional, you can go home if you want.

I take it as a signal that you're only perceived by the company to be "working into the night" if you're physically in the office at 8:15 pm. If you're the parent that gets in early or logs back on remotely after putting your kids to bed, you might be working just as much, but your efforts will be less visible to managers who won't see you putting in "face time" by staying for dinner.

Having to be coddled and protected when already having the best compensated and cushiest job on the market. The local tech scene is definitely its own little parallel universe, I'll give you that.

It sets an expectation. I've never been in an environment where "optional" late-night things like dinner were truly optional. There's an expectation set that you're working at least as late as the dinner, and probably after, regardless of results or the value you're providing to the company.

People scoff at these types of things, but these kind of expectations put a lot of pressure on people, and they can have real negative effects. My uncle worked at a place where everyone stayed until 9pm. Technically you could leave whenever, but it was frowned upon, and you wouldn't get a good review. Ultimately his wife left him, he got depressed, and then the company laid him off.

Forcing everyone to leave work early in the day puts a lot of pressure on people to come into work early. That's just as bad. The problem is the pressure, not the mealtime.

Or, you know, base your decisions on results and business value rather than which particular hours you want to ensure asses are in seats for.

This must be a Valley thing. My company (in NYC);provides dinner at 8PM Monday - Thursday, but the office is usually a ghost town by 7. Of course, we don't really provide breakfast or lunch either.

You can click on the "original PDF" link that opens:

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3863782/The-Holde...

It looks much better on Linux.

Only if you have the correct (non-embedded) fonts :)

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