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.
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"
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!
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.
Must be nice to be a woke young webdev able to ignore how Uber mistreats the poor, and the POC. How Uber breaks laws. How Uber uses VC money to undermine taxi drivers who are paid a living wage, how Uber uses VC money to undermine public transit that serves the poor, blind and disabled.
Did Fowler or anyone in this thread apart from jacquesm discuss the massively unethical ways Uber treats drivers and breaks the law and undermines society?
No, all you pinheads care about is how Uber treats the very privileged engineers who enable all that unethical behavior.
What happened to Fowler is inexcusable.
It's a scorpion and the tortoise story and she should be ashamed of herself for ever working for Uber in the first place.
What the hell do they teach engineers these days? In my day we knew we were ethically complicit in the output of our employers.
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.
> 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
> 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.
> 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.