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Comment by decacorn | Hacker News Reader

For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the names of the two uber atg employees responsible. Time's up, dickheads.

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I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but please don't deface Hacker News by posting rage rants, and certainly please don't post the personal attacks you're alluding to here. Those things break the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't hold any particular view to post here and relevant personal experience is always welcome, as long as discussion remains thoughtful. Your more factual comments in this thread have been fine.

My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not “getting” unit tests.

i went through a number (again i am refraining to be specific in order to mask my identity) of interviews, let's just say between 2-10 interviews. The rudeness I experienced was 10X worse than your situation, so I really feel for you.

yep, somewhat similar experience

my interviewer was 15 minutes late to the call, didn't even know what position i was applying for, didn't ask me at all about the assignment they made me do, then ended my call early because they had to be somewhere. already knew i didn't get the job but didn't even get back to me until a month later.

person still works at uber. pretty high up now. i guess i'm glad i didn't get farther given all that came out afterwards.

> the company culture

Honest question. How do you know it's a company-wide culture issue if you haven't worked there? In my experience, teams at Uber are pretty insular with only occasional interactions outside their groups.

this situation involved several people. possibly an entire team.

I also believe I was the target of an information-hunting initiative within uber, which was revealed publicly last year. I believe I was only interviewed to gain as much information about the company i was working for at the time. The recruiter was not listed on any uber database, and may not have even been officially a recruiting lead. after several probing questions about the company i was working for at the time, it became pretty clear the atg group had more of an interest in gaining info on the company rather than hiring me. extremely unprofessional. but that wasnt even the worse part.

Wow, that's appalling. I'm really sorry to hear that. I know there's a competitive intelligence group somewhere in Uber, and given the ultimatum email specifically targeted at that group that I mentioned in my other comment, I guess it doesn't come as a complete surprise.

I do have a copy of an email about the newest policy governing competitive intelligence gathering from Salle Yoo (head of legal) from late august 2017. Skimming through it, what you described would be in blatant violation of probably half of the document. Not to mention that it flies in the face of basic human decency.

Yea, not much I could do in the situation. I didn't want to raise any flags because I didn't want it get out in the public and I especially didn't want the company I was working for at the time to know I was interviewing elsewhere.

It was very shocking why they were asking very specific technical questions regarding how the company I was working for at the time was addressing. Let's just say it relates to the infamous Uber-Waymo case. That was my red flag, about 30 min - 1 hour into the whole interview process.

I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life.

Something is up with SF Bay Area corporate culture. There are many taboos -- things you just don't do -- which I only saw broken in my career once I arrived in the Bay Area.

I’m sorry you had a terrible interview experience. In 2017 we hired Gayle Laakmann McDowell (CTCI author) to train engineers on how to interview better and how to design better interview questions that weren’t biased. She held many sessions so hopefully our interviewing experience improves but it’s a skill that needs constant training.

I'll just say this: there is a systemic behavior of tech bros treating everyone like they are the king of the hill and everyone else are peasants.

The only way to solve THAT problem is purging the tech bros. Sorry, a big name new hire won't address the situation I experienced. Period.

I interviewed at the Pittsburgh office early 2017, and it was a great experience. Granted, I did not get the job, but I feel like the technical portion was fair and not an unpleasant experience.

I'm sorry to hear this. Can you describe what happened?

No, not at this time. I'm going to make sure the two tech bros get what they deserve, extreme public shaming.

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