What's it REALLY like to work at Uber?
At the risk of beating a dead horse, is Uber still a frat house filled with assholes or a professional place of business? Is sexual harassment/discrimination still a problem? I may be interviewing there (will find out soon), but I don't want to bother if it's still a toxic atmosphere. This is for a software engineer job BTW. Can any Uberers chime in?
Uber was never a frat house filled with assholes. Stop playing into the hands of the media. But yes, the pockets where things were not professional enough, it has gotten better.
If I were playing into the hands of the media (or clinging to that "we're sorry for being sexist" meeting where that one board member complained that women talked too much), I wouldn't even bother asking. I'm glad the bad seeds are being swept away. I presume there's not too many of them left?
Right. The REALLY bad seeds were all fired last year. The rest were retrained. The culture has pretty dramatically shifted — and potentially for worse — to be more softer and WLB focused. Most of the concerns internally now tend to be around finding the right balance and shifting the pendulum more to the middle. Hope that helps!
So you'd say it's a professional workplace and not a frat house?
Not a frat house but just racist apparently
At the very least, it can be a good place to practice your interviewing skills.
Not a frat house full of assholes, sexual harassers, nor racists. Worked here for 3 years; I’m a woman of color; I’ve had mostly positive experiences. If anything, it’s just a competitive, intense, and stressful place, though it has mellowed out a bit since last year.
+1
How relaxed is it? Can you get your job done in half a work week and chill?
It's better. The frattiness was with the top leaders who are all gone now (TK, Ed Baker, Emil M), and a lack of basic HR rails. There are still a shit ton of politics but that's a bit of a different problem. Dara is generally a mature pro. Less of a free for all in product.
I joined 6 months ago and I love it here... working with a bunch of intelligent and talented folks and learning a lot...