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Comment by yanilkr | Hacker News Reader

Actually time will solve this problem very easily. Uber does not have to do any thing differently. (Its not a recommendation).

Every successful company has these problems. Success attracts ambitious people and many of these high achievers accomplish their goals ruthlessly. In this process some other people who have different priorities feel left behind. Its just the way of life.

Take all the ambitious people and throw a challenging problem at them that can humble them other than that there is PR. PR expert will come out and tell you that not all teams in uber are bad, some of them are really good and the routine stuff we hear about any other big company.

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Not every successful company has the constant stream of horrible behavior emanating from it over the course of years.

Trying to normalize this as growing pains or bored ambitious people(?!?) or whatever is simply false. I don't work there, but know people who have, and left, because it was such a toxic place. The point of my comment was that this was emphatically not a PR problem - it is a culture problem that obviously comes from the top of the firm.

It is a PR problem because all the other people who did not have problems do not come out and say they like it there. If people come out and say I think uber is good to me they will look insensitive given the context of two women with bad experiences. PR will create a place where other people can speak out.

Over all churn rate in the valley is pretty bad, uber cannot doing any worse than the other companies there.

Not sure I agree with the premise, but I think there is a point to be made. When was the last time people griped about the absolutely horrible culture of Amazon and Facebook? It wasn't that long ago, but I don't hear anything any more. I don't even know what it's like to work at Amazon of Facebook (I had one friend who worked at Amazon years ago and loved it -- data point of one), but last year the general consensus around here was that you'd have to be an idiot to work in either of those places. 2 years before that it was Netflix. I heard they just chew you up and spit you out. Now? Not a heard a word for ages. Today it's Uber. Tomorrow it will be someone else and everyone will forget about Uber. If they are smart they will capitalise on our poor memories.

Were these horrible places to work (as commonly reported)? Are they horrible places now? Who knows (certainly not me).

None of the stories coming out of Uber sounds remotely like high achievers making lesser beings feel left behind. It sounds like a toxic culture with lousy management.

We do not know what the truth is. We can only speculate. If those allegations were true, I wish uber will come out and address them.

Uber itself is a victim here. They are going after some other big monopolies in the industry. It could be as simple as their mistakes are blown out of proportion to smear them by their competition. We see similar big co is bad stories once a while its not like Uber has a monopoly in treating employees badly.

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