from Hacker News

Uber's 'hustle-oriented' culture becomes a black mark on employees' résumés

by anandsuresh on 3/8/17, 2:45 AM with 188 comments

• by Animats on 3/8/17, 5:48 AM

  It can be worse. Something similar is happening to the "binary option" industry in Tel Aviv, Israel. A "binary option" is a bet on whether some financial indicator will go up or down. While there are such things as real binary options on real exchanges, the ones sold from phone banks in Tel Aviv are bets against the house. The house sets the odds and usually wins, and even when they lose, most binary option shops don't pay up. 80% of investors lose everything. In Israel, it's illegal to scam Israelis this way, but completely legal to scam the rest of the world.

  The scale of this industry is substantial. It's doing at least $1.2 billion a year in income, and that's the part that pays taxes in Israel. This has been going on for almost a decade, and the scam was growing rapidly.

  Then, in 2016, the jaws began to close. The US CFTC won a big case against the biggest binary option firm in Israel, Banc de Binary. They had to pay back everybody who lost money and pay huge damages. (Banc de Binary once offered $10,000 to anyone who would remove that info from their Wikipedia entry. That attempt backfired, badly.) Then there was a 15-part expose in the Times of Israel, titled "The Wolves of Tel Aviv".[1] Now, finally, there are more investigations and a bill to make it illegal to run this scam out of Israel. Banc De Binary ceased operation a few weeks ago. (Or at least they disappeared, removing their sign from the Banc De Binary Tower.) At least four other binary option "brokers" have gone out of business in recent weeks.

  As a result, there are lots of layoffs. Scamming people from a phone bank was a good-paying job. The companies liked to hire recent immigrants to Israel who could speak the languages of their target countries fluently. English and Arabic were the most popular languages. A lobbyist for the binary option industry, testifying before a committee of the Knesset, claimed that there are 20,000 people employed in binary options in Israel, and 60,000 people indirectly. "You see the building boom right now in Tel Aviv? Well, you can just say goodbye to that because most skyscrapers in Tel Aviv will be empty. There will be no one to fill them up." There's even a claim from the binary option industry that shutting down this scam will increase terrorism, because it will take away the income of thousands of Arabs.

  So 20,000 scammers are becoming unemployed, in a city of only 400,000 people. A former employee of a binary option company faces a far worse black mark than being from Uber. The binary option salespeople are full time con artists. Nobody legit in finance is going to hire them. Getting any legit job will be tough.

  (World's smallest violin plays.)

  [1] http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-wolves-of-tel-aviv-israels-...

• by ziszis on 3/8/17, 3:40 AM

  This is a classic halo effect [1]. A positive halo was "Google is making lots of money and they have 20% time. So, smart companies should do this." This is a negative halo "Uber is experiencing lots of bad PR and hustling is part of their culture. So, smart companies should stop being scrappy."

  The problem isn't scrappiness. It is when you push far past scrappiness and start breaking the law.

  [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

• by patgenzler on 3/8/17, 8:40 AM

  This piece is another cheap "strike it while the iron is hot" hit job to get attention. Yes, Uber seems to be having serious culture issues but the underlying problems of sexism and favoritism towards "high achievers" are industry-wide - not just limited to Uber. They have a lot at stake - it's only fair to assume that they will come out of this mess and fix their problems as soon as possible.

  Uber employees, both current and former, will have no problem getting good offers - tech companies have biases but are smart enough not to mass generalize. The fact that they "made it into Uber" far outweighs any speculation around Uber's culture.

  The real black mark is the "hit job oriented" culture of media. They need to step back and rethink what they stand for.

• by am_i_down on 3/8/17, 4:18 AM

  Willingness to generalize an entire group seems far more deserving of a black mark.

• by linkregister on 3/8/17, 6:32 AM

  This should be marked as an opinion piece. I struggle to find the data to back this article. Even the recruiting agency interviewed for the article gave a wishy washy answer.

  It may be unfair to make a "black mark" on every journalist at The Guardian, but after the false "WhatsApp considered harmful" stories, I am unable to take anything they print at face value. Response by moxie: https://whispersystems.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoo...

• by spudlyo on 3/8/17, 7:08 AM

  It would be tempting to vote no on an otherwise qualified candidate citing "culture fit" who has Uber on their resume and a whiff of "bro dude" about them. Ultimately though I hope I'd resist that temptation, because people deserve the benefit of the doubt; even young, white, physically fit dudes who enjoy sports and previously worked at Uber.

  I've worked with some nerds who were awful mean-spirited tyrants, and some bro dudes who were really kind and sweet.

• by bgutierrez on 3/8/17, 3:55 AM

  Culture shapes how individuals behave, and people will change to accommodate new cultures. They might come in with bad habits, but the only reason I would look at their last company's behavior was if that person had been their early or high enough to shape that culture.

• by dandare on 3/8/17, 8:46 AM

  > “To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to work with someone who did well in that environment,” he said. “If you did well in that environment upholding those values, I probably don’t want to work with you.”

  My faith in humanity has been instantly restored by 10% :)

• by Twirrim on 3/8/17, 6:50 AM

  Outside of the deplorable sexual harassment stuff, it wasn't the "hustle" that bothered me in that infamous blog post

  What bothered me was all the back stabbing. Those are strong black marks for me against anyone that has worked in management in Uber.

• by employee8000 on 3/8/17, 5:17 AM

  I'm being contacted around 3 times a day for the last couple of weeks from a laundry list of companies so I don't think the article is true. Not all orgs at uber have/had a bad culture and the engineering teams are fantastic. Many people love working at Uber, but clearly something needs to change, and they are, for the better.

• by ryandrake on 3/8/17, 5:32 AM

  Having worked at companies with varying degrees of "hustle" culture, I have to say I prefer (and I know others who prefer) the hustle, the energy, the sense of urgency, the culture of always being present and checked in. If you've got in-born hustle, it's tough to work around people without it. Once lack of hustle takes hold, it spreads like a virus through a company, and soon everyone comes down with this "eh, we can always do it later" attitude about everything. People start not taking deadlines seriously, start worrying more about taking time to build consensus rather than being quick and decisive. Roll in late to meetings, etc. You can even see it watching foot traffic--non-hustlers physically walk slower through the halls. Companies that hustle aren't for everyone but let's not condemn it. It's good to have a variety of work cultures available because different personalities work better in different environments.

  Note the above rant doesn't excuse illegal or discriminatory behavior. I'm just addressing the simplistic "hustle = bad" argument.

• by badusername on 3/8/17, 11:34 AM

  Blah - seems like a sensationalist clickbait article, just cashing in on the current media cycle.

  I'm honestly more shocked at the myopic discussion in this thread, quite lacking in understanding the range of motivations of people who work there. I'm a long-time engineering employee, and seen a lot of ups and downs. To build a service that was used by a few thousand in one city to millions all over the world has been one of the most exciting jobs I've had, with great feats of engineering and operational execution. Numbers don't lie that we've built a reliable service - the negative media cycles don't hurt the business. There have been a ton of growing pains, with a lot of agenda-driven empire builders, bro-ey-ness, and general lack of careful cultural development that have contributed to the current situation, and left quite a few rankled employees in its wake. Whether it will come out strong from this situation is up to the strength of the leadership, and we'll see what the remedy holds.

  FWIW, I have seen a huge uptick in recruiter inbounds in the last few weeks (understandably), with all the best names Facebook, Google, Amazon and Tesla on the list.

• by dep_b on 3/8/17, 2:45 PM

  I don't think everybody that works at Uber joined because of their hustle culture, was part of that while working there or even knew about it while they worked there. I've seen many companies in my life and I was always amazed about some of the stories I heard at the water cooler about people I'd never expect in places I never expected.

  If you're not part of the water cooler circle, focus on your work and the problems you are solving and have a nice bunch of direct colleagues and a manager that's not a big jerk (to you and anybody you see him/her interact with at least) you really might be surprised about hearing this stuff.

  If you join Uber in 2017 or later then I feel you might deserve a stigma. But somebody hacking on the API 10 hours per day and minding his own business? Not so much.

• by kazinator on 3/8/17, 3:55 PM

  Befitting of Uber, they stole the "Uber way" and called it their own

  "Develop an incomplete solution and beat them to the market" is, of course, the Google Way, the Microsoft way, the Bell Labs way, the IBM way, ..."

  Time to market is important.

  “A lot of them have told me that they’re having a hard time finding something new.”

  I'm not convinced that this is because they are tained by Uber. It could be that the property "having worked at Uber" carries a statistical bias with "hard to employ elsewhere" simply because perhaps Uber was blindly on-boarding toms, dicks and harriets off the street. (Maybe the way they get drivers at the bottom of the org chart permeates how they staff the rest of it.)

• by coryfklein on 3/8/17, 6:12 PM

  Bob: Worked at Uber for 3 years

  Joe: Worked at LinkedIn for 3 years

  With only this information, which person is more likely to engage in backstabbing or sexual harassment?

  With the information available to me, the answer seems clear: Bob

  Can somebody explain the fault in my reasoning please?

• by throw2016 on 3/8/17, 1:47 PM

  This is simple to deal with. Uber has picked up a 'roguish' reputation.

  This is how it plays out. In an year or 2 'tainted' management is ejected replaced by new management with folks who have the right reputation and say all the right things. They can then move into respectable territory pretty quickly.

  For now it suits the decision makers to play this out to their maximum advantage.

• by crispyambulance on 3/8/17, 2:59 PM

  The "black mark" certainly doesn't apply to all employees. As one of the recruiters indicated, Uber in the work history might prompt pointed behavioral questioning of candidates.

  I suspect it might be more of an issue for high-level execs and possibly project/program managers, but you have to screen for assholery for those titles regardless of where they come from.

• by digi_owl on 3/8/17, 6:45 PM

  I find myself "bemused" how while Uber was playing fast and loose with all kinds of regulations they were just good buys disrupting a rotten old boys system.

  But now that accusations of sexual harassment at the office has been aired, they are suddenly "unclean".

  Almost makes one wonder if the whole "feminism/women's rights" terminology has been hijacked and weaponized by some entity that could not care one bit about actual women, but are using the terms and methods for social assassination objectives.

• by menacingly on 3/8/17, 1:34 PM

  I keep waiting for the massive PR siege against Uber to fizzle out but it apparently has marathon legs

• by ungzd on 3/8/17, 1:47 PM

  Blackmark-oriented culture is problem too.

• by atonse on 3/8/17, 3:56 AM

  30 years ago these same aholes would've gone to Wall Street. Now they go to Silicon Valley Instead. No surprise that some companies get infected with them as a result.

• by tatotato on 3/8/17, 5:59 AM

  It's worse when you have a black mark on your record for actually hustling.