Uber is (for some: becoming) a great place to work, contrary to what you may have heard

Uber
rational_

Go to company page Uber

rational_
Jun 17, 2017 621 Comments

(Folks this is just a FYI from an Uber engineer. This is not a PR post - this is a voice from people who feel unfairly judged to be bad people)

What may seem surprising to some: Uber has a great work environment with many talented, hard working folks who are respectful to each other. And solving hard problems - having a huge positive impact on society - providing a platform to millions of people to earn off it and moving things efficiently in the world, reducing pollution/congestion, etc.

It may seem weird and self-serving to say this - but it has to be said since the media has unfairly painted a picture which is polar opposite of what is actually inside and what is real.

Note that Susan Fowler blog talks about a few people - while the company has 15,000 employees!! The blog post was generalized from 2-4 folks to 15,000 by the media which I feel you can understand was crazy.

But: Uber accepted fault and has tried to do a lot to become a lot better. Their deep investigations resulted in firings of 20 people and warnings to other people, so we got rid of all kinds of bad apples. Uber has added a lot of processes in HR so that any complaints do not get missed in the future.

We are also working hard on improving the workplace culture now. (Rapid growth had caused certain problems).

There were some values being used to justify bad behaviors which have been removed.

Uber is now becoming a very employee friendly company.

They are even changing the entire perf review process based on employee feedback. Which frankly I have never seen any other company do even though the perf review process is broken at most companies.

Company is working hard to improve diversity and inclusion (its numbers were comparable to other Silicon Valley companies even then it was unfairly blamed, but we are now aiming higher)

We are trying to make Uber 2.0 the best company to work for. No kidding.

We have been the fastest growing and most disruptive startup, now we are taking employee culture head on.

I have worked in top tier companies in the Silicon Valley for past 15+ years. And I have never seen a company try to do much to listen to employees and improve.

(Now a plug, feel free to ignore: This is the best time to join Uber 2.0 as we are trying to make the company the best ever ;) )

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 TOP 621 Comments
  • You don't want us to generalize Susan's experience to the rest of the company. Why are you then telling us to generalize your experience to the rest of the company?

    I'm also guessing you are not a girl working at Uber, could be wrong.

    That being said. There is a difference between deciding things need to change because you are getting bad PR vs pushing changes when employees come to HR complaining about sexual harassment.

    There are many companies that are not filled with angry sexually frustrated dbags. Why take the risk when you are in demand and most companies pay top dollar?
    Jun 17, 2017 21
    • @Hung I guess you could call it prejudice. I, as many other engineers do, have a negative picture of Uber painted on my head. Uber employees have worked very hard over the years to paint this picture. You can say that those are probably just some toxic unhappy employees doing the damage but that still leaves the fact that Uber employees enough toxic people to drown out the many good ones they have on the ship. I sure hope things go better for them but the cards are stacked. The media loves a good Uber story, they have a target on their back. They worked hard to dig a hole and now they have to work twice as hard to climb out.

      A blind post saying everything is fine and things are getting better is not even close to undoing the damage.
      Jun 18, 2017
    • Uber
      b.b.8

      Go to company page Uber

      b.b.8
      "everything is fine"? at the moment, probably no. "things are getting better"? Yes. I'm sorry you have this picture in your mind.. let's take another close look 6 months from now.
      Jun 18, 2017
  • Amazon
    Jeff Bezоs

    Go to company page Amazon

    Jeff Bezоs
    Susan Fowler was an entry-level employee who could barely last one year at her job. Instead of doing actual work, she spent most of her time self-promoting, playing the diversity card, emailing HR, squabbling about jackets, writing her book, and taking remedial CS classes. As many problems as Uber may have, Susan Fowler is the last and least credible person on earth who could convince me that Uber had a bad environment.
    Jun 17, 2017 14
    • Uber
      offended

      Go to company page Uber

      offended
      Seriously, a book written by someone in her first job while still taking CS classes, who would bother to read?
      Jun 17, 2017
    • Amazon
      Jeff Bezоs

      Go to company page Amazon

      Jeff Bezоs
      She claimed multiple times in her blog that she's an expert, and how her team needed her and later how her transfer was unfairly blocked. You should see her interview and judge her expertise for yourself:

      https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/why-you-should-standardize-your-microservices

      She shows a very superficial eng. knowledge, with lots of incorrect assumptions, e.g. "people forget that microservices have a lot in common with distributed systems" (wut?), "biggest tech challenge is the divide between dev and ops" (o rly?), etc. It's really cringeworthy.
      Jun 18, 2017
  • Uber
    schema

    Go to company page Uber

    schema
    Not everything is good yet, and I can only speak of myself.
    but I personally feel it's miles better than Amazon now. I feel happy at Uber. We will be unfairly judged, it's okay.
    Jun 17, 2017 3
  • Stop working at Uber if you ever want another job again. Many companies blacklist Uber on resumes, the cultural toxicity just isn't worth the risk.
    Jun 17, 2017 21
    • Uber
      rational_

      Go to company page Uber

      rational_
      OP
      Uber's interviews are tough - and most engineers here are top class, like other top tier companies. In fact a lot of them have come from other top tier companies.
      Jun 18, 2017
    • Uber
      tquG20

      Go to company page Uber

      tquG20
      Can someone please bring me upto speed and tell me what is Hubspot ??
      Jun 19, 2017
  • Uber
    Mail

    Go to company page Uber

    Mail
    Its getting better, but honestly I fear we are gonna become over sensitive and start rewarding cry babies with an agenda. The core of Uber us hustle and meritocracy, let's keep that intact.
    Jun 17, 2017 2