flootch

Regarding drivers, I feel there is an upside to the horrible treatment Uber doles out to drivers which is that Uber wants turnover, wants a driver to work for a year or so, and fears long term drivers who might have more of a claim to employment or be more invested in a lawsuit.

Obnoxiousness seems to be a characteristic quite ingrained into elite hacker culture

That was not my experience with the elite developers I have known. I find that behavior endemic and distributed like a bell curve throughout society.

It's not dark out at night, it's just that the earth has blocked the sun.

I didn't say Lyft was better (though it seems clear from settled lawsuits and FTC fines and police reports that Uber is much worse) the takeaway is that engineers are responsible for the output of their employers.

Engineers used to understand that and would debate taking positions in the military industrial complex, and would discuss the ethics of whistleblowing.

Go through my comments the past few days and witness today's engineers basically saying "Uber has been good to me, I am not responsible for the other parts"

Drivers have many anecdotes of:

+ initial bonuses not paid + hourly guarantees not paid

New upfront pricing allows Uber to change prices on every single ride (implicit surge) while not paying driver's surge rates

The FTC has fined Uber for telling drivers they could earn $90K a year driving

Uber tells drivers it takes a flat 25% commission, but booking fees turn that commission into 40%.

Uber cheats drivers.

actually it's the drivers that add all the value, the devs are the folks that enable the cheating. Susan Fowler was responsible for keeping the trains running on time.

How many laws does Uber have to break, how many drivers does Uber have to cheat, how many assaults on riders and drivers have to be committed, how much predatory pricing does Uber have to commit, how many labor laws does Uber have to flout, how much full time jobs does Uber have to undermine, how many people, riders, pedestrians and drivers does Uber have to kill

before this generation of engineers looks beyond the high tech goodness and high salaries they personally achieve to see the poison you enable by staying on with Uber?

ethics/shmethics it's a great job at an important company!

Thanks, very interesting article on how we got there.

Thank god for now that you are in error about that:

That’s the average amount of time, the company said, that users spend each day on its Facebook, Instagram and Messenger platforms (and that’s not counting the popular messaging app WhatsApp).

So that's not Americans it's users, and it's not FB, but I am hopeful that it's Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram, which I perceive for now are "task" based communications and sharing apps, not the "spam my friends and family with my political beliefs" stuff I don't want in nearly the amount that FB shovels at me.

You had me scared there for a moment, but I bet you are more right than wrong in your basic point It's probably the prime source of news in the western world. This is not to be underestimated.

Q: What are the ethical implications of an engineer taking on employment with Uber given what we know as factual regarding Uber's behavior and given the high demand for software engineers in today's economy?

Q: If you do not have family, and are reasonably healthy, what are the ethical implications of retaining a position at Uber and not resigning?

Eric couldn't find a single bankster guilty of anything in the 2008 meltdown, and he wasn't able to find anything wrong with Fast & Furious, so I have to disagree with you, his appointment will certainly provide the best outcome for Uber.

Laws, minimum wage and ethical treatment of employees are a huge barrier to innovation, and I for one am glad Uber has ripped that barrier down.

Did any of you folks talk about the enormously unethical ways you treat drivers? Those folks who are mostly poorer than you who do the actual work that provides value?

I find it laughable to hear Uber engineers cry about how unfairly Kalanick treats them.

Self-awareness 0.

Can you make it a multiplayer game played on phones, tablets, and watches, tvs, and cars? Okay, maybe not cars.

Yeah, retail, food, healthcare, transportation, maintenance, manufacturing, trash pickup, almost everything really. But nah, hell with anyone whose job ain't yours.

That's not true.

Berkeley allows student organizations to invite speakers. Berkeley is not allowed to discriminate against those speakers based on viewpoint.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/everyon...

The problem with this argument is that it was not Berkeley itself that invited Yiannopoulos. It was the Berkeley College Republicans, who are legally a separate entity. And as Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks explained, “long-standing campus policy permits registered student organizations to invite speakers to campus and to make free use of meeting space in the Student Union for that purpose.” So the issue is not whether Berkeley should have given Yiannopoulos a platform. It is whether Berkeley should have denied some of its students the ability to give him a platform. And “consistent with the dictates of the First Amendment as uniformly and decisively interpreted by the courts,” Dirks argued, “the university cannot censor or prohibit events, or charge differential fees.”

somebody were to tell Berkeley that they had to allow certain speakers,

Somebody has told Berkeley just that, the people speaking through the courts.

Here is more of the same from various Law Professors and Chancellors of UC

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/berkeley-milo-yiannopoulos-...

Campus officials at Berkeley recognized that Yiannopoulos had a First Amendment right to speak. Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks rightly resisted demands, including from Berkeley faculty, to ban Yiannopoulos’ appearance.Even the expression of hate is constitutionally protected; court cases have addressed this very issue on college campuses in the past. Although hate speech unquestionably causes harms, it nonetheless is expression that is covered by the First Amendment. We therefore strongly disagree with those who say that campus officials at Berkeley could keep Yiannopoulos from speaking because of his hateful and offensive message.

Second, campuses must do all they can to ensure that audience reactions against a speaker are not allowed to silence the speaker. Free speech can be undermined, not only by official censorship and punishment, but also by individuals who seek to disrupt or shut down others when they attempt to exercise their rights. If officials do not work to prevent or punish disruption then there will be a “heckler’s veto” of all unpopular or controversial speakers, and this is not consistent with free speech principles. Campus officials have a duty to protect the free speech rights of protesters, but they must also protect speakers and prevent heckling. Apparently, this, too, occurred at Berkeley. Staff members spent weeks planning extensive security arrangements, including bringing in dozens of police officers from nine other UC campuses.

Third, there may be situations where controlling the audience proves impossible and there is no choice but to prevent a speaker’s presence to ensure public safety. This should be a last resort taken only if there is no other way to prevent a serious imminent threat to public safety. This appears to be exactly what occurred at Berkeley, where the riotous demonstrators could not be controlled. In such cases, authorities should do all they can, after the fact, to identify and punish those who used violence and violated the law, and should assess how different security arrangements might be more effective in preventing future disruptions. Campus officials should also do what they can to reschedule the speaker for another time.

By Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the School of Law, University of California, Irvine and Howard Gillman, Chancellor, University of California, Irvine

I encourage you to level up on your knowledge of and defense of free speech rights. Your repeating your mistruths may be part of the problem.

“I was literally the only female in this classroom with 30 men,” says Needell. “They open their textbooks and there’s Lena, and all the men start giggling. You just feel like ‘Oh, my gosh, this woman is being materialized (in a textbook)…’

What does "being materialized" mean? (marginalized? objectified? material-girl-alized?)

What year was it that all the men started giggling at that particular picture of Lena?

In order to draw attention to the sexism inherent in the use of the picture, Needell and co-author Rachel Ward recently published a paper where they rejected the use of Lena.

How is it sexist to use that picture, which is g rated, of Lena? Is it sexist to note that even across species, one sex (not always the female) is often what humans, cross culturally, agree is "prettier"? If it's not, then why would it be sexist to use a picture of an attractive woman in a paper?

http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Prettiest-Science-Nancy-Etcof...

Would it be exploitative of the scientists that write these papers to use their writing talents and skills to draw their readers in? Or to create well designed graphs that clearly and quickly communicate their points and draw the eye?

I have no problem with the authors using a picture of Fabio. I am trying to understand the claim that using a picture of Lena is somehow sexist.

(In my day it was a male baboon with a penis on its face that was the classic image.)

Uh, go read the wiki if you don't know what self-victimization is, or why contemporary feminists are (correctly) accused of it, or how it presents itself in this rah rah look what the girl did against all odds and oppression of men account of her hackathon win or in Rachel Sklar's quote:

“This is a terrific story, and proof that young girls are an untapped resource of innovation,” said Change The Ratio co-founder Rachel Sklar, when we told her the news. “More and more role models in the space are showing girls like Jennie (who is now one herself!) that this is a place for them, and for their talents. And now organizations like Girls Who Code are providing the infrastructure to get there. The floodgates have opened — the ratio is changing.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_playing

Victim playing (also known as playing the victim or self-victimization) is the fabrication of victimhood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy or attention seeking.

And if it still isn't clear to you, have someone read to you what others, including women, have written in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5636111

In all these threads, and around the web, and in meatspace too, many women, from all sorts of backgrounds repeat the same messages, and contemporary feminists dismiss them or worse, call them chill girls and queen bees. http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2012/09/10/a-note...

This sort of contemptuous, dismissive, insulting, ignore them, pat-them-on-the-head-and-tell-them-to-stfu behavior is what passes for state of the art contemporary feminist argument. And better, it's is deeply reflective of the sort of patriarchal argument that contemporary feminists claim to be against but actively work to implement for themselves.

http://phawrongula.wikia.com/wiki/Witch_of_the_Week

See also https://www.google.com/search?q=wikipedia+american+women+nov... and ask yourself, if you favor scholarships, contests, special projects for American Women Novelists, but presumably not for American Men Novelists, why shouldn't American Women Novelists be cloistered into a pink ghetto category? The sponsors of such projects are saying women are lesser creatures that cannot be expected to compete with men and need special protection, special incentives, special prizes, and special attention.

I reject this thinking and am saddened people think women cannot compete on an equal footing with other humans.

Disagreeing with the nonsense that passes for argument at feminist websites doesn't make me a troll.

Quite the contrary, it places me squarely in the majority these days. Figure my life out? Feminism needs to figure out why so many people (including me) agree with so many feminist goals while disagreeing with feminist tactics.

Exsqueeze me?

Two people disagree with you what the consensus of that discussion was. Both people provide links. You did not.

Who is more likely remembering the discussion correctly? The folks that provide links to it, or the person that vaguely remembers it?

And we are trolls and you are not?

This must be feminist logic, because I see this sort of stuff at feminist websites everyday.

Recently we had that female Mozilla employee whose code (for a personal project, no less) was made fun of by three semi-prominent developers on Twitter. The consensus on HN was that there was nothing wrong with her code, but that she was being picked on solely for being a girl.

I think that was your consensus, but here is the thread, my very brief rescan of that doesn't indicate to me that her being a woman was the issue, the consensus seems to be that twitter makes it trivial to be an asshole, and many people are happy to jump in.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5106767

In general I see lots of assertion that men in tech treat women terribly, but not much evidence. The evidence that is there usually points to events that took place before employment.

In this case, our 17 year old heroine clearly faced no jerks in tech, though it is likely she faced jerks in high school.

And it's not at all clear to me that any abuse she has suffered as female nerd in high school is any worse than the abuse male nerds face.

See http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-...

Women aren't frail damsels that need your condescending efforts, or need your overly protective assumptions that are mainly patriarchy disguised as a cape to help them cross a puddle that you can manage.

The key to more women in tech is outreach and education, not patronization and tales that they are frail, and need protection and special treatment.

You can have the last word, but next time, try reading the link I share with you.

Going with your explanation, then what happened is the same as when any kid, boy or girl, whose parent is a well connected, relatively well off scientist, shows up at the science fair with the home made electron microscope, or the genetically engineered puppy, or the cloned javelina.

And yes, it would be good to give everyone, regardless of gender or age such opportunities.

Heh, I thought that was your job.

If you actually are interested, see this post and all of the comments: http://www.thepowerbase.com/2013/04/github-graciously-helps-...

I admit I don't understand the downvotes.

danilocampus invited me to a comment war, I graciously declined with a bit of humor.

“This is a terrific story, and proof that young girls are an untapped resource of innovation,” said Change The Ratio co-founder Rachel Sklar, when we told her the news.

It seemed this young woman acted identically to any young individual interested in tech.

Learned about tech. Lived tech. Talked tech. Practiced, practiced, practiced.

Didn't need any self-victimizing pink ghetto look at me give me an advantage because I'm a poor damsel in tech crapola.

What ever happened to the developer who lost his job?

Human resource professionals say they've seen recent college grads text or take calls in interviews, dress inappropriately, use slang or overly casual language, and exhibit other oddball behavior.

If only we could convince the human resource professionals that earth is doomed and there was an effort underway to recolonize another planet.

Raganwald's entire post begs the question:

Begging the question (Latin petitio principii, "assuming the initial point") is a type of informal fallacy in which an implicit premise would directly entail the conclusion

Moreover, in the poisoned atmosphere that surrounds this question, it seems "dangerous" to even raise the notion that the premise deserves a good challenge.

It seems all too often that pointing out the assumptions, the bad measurements, the poisoned atmosphere, or heavens, a disagreement over the validity of the premise or the reasonableness or fairness of the conclusion leads to name calling and bullying.

Hmm. I'm a bit surprised Microsoft hasn't created a Windows Phone launcher to go along with that.

ObFuturamaLaughHarder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FopyRHHlt3M

Instead of showing me a graph of gold price versus bitcoin price, at a time when analysts say gold has declined due to a lack of inflation in the world, as well as the Cyprus crisis, you should show me a graph of total amount of gold held as a store compared to total amount of bitcoins held as a store as that would demonstrate people actually switching out of gold for bitcoins.

Until then, I'm going to assume this is either a post of ignorance or perhaps just HN spam.

fwiw (maybe nothing) I know what you mean about finding certain job postings off-putting. For myself, I don't think it has as much to do with the job posting itself as much as it may have to do with how I am feeling about myself at the moment, and how much I hate the rest of the world.

I can understand and won't argue about your being a woman and being put off by "the guy" language. I'd probably feel the same way, if only because I am 50 and "the guy" seems very young.