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-...
Tell me about it! ;-)
(Actually, it was still the best workplace I've ever seen, a few dbag partners screwed the entire company built on a man's principles and vision.)
I suspect what you say is true, this is a 'black mark'. Working for Uber? Maybe if you are in upper management, would it be a similar "black mark" but even then, are you going to blame every C_O for their scandals? Probably not all. As for the 98% of employees? I doubt working for Uber will seriously impact their next job (and much less all following jobs).
Just think, today we don't hold it against middle management or individual contributors who happened to be employed at Enron at the wrong time...
He had some trouble finding a job afterwards, and wound up working at a call center (where I met him). Seems folks didn't want to take the chance that he just might have been in on it, nor did they want to un-train a toxic culture out of him. Really was a shame as the dude was a joy to work with.
Do you have enough knowledge of recruitment in the energy sector to make that remark?
It's pretty weird to take into account only population of Tel Aviv and not the whole metropolitan area; and anyway, there are a lot of people working in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Givataym, Petakh Tikva and other cities around the center who actually commute from the north of the country or other regions.
Or maybe we just confuse cliches with averages and averages with individuals.
It turns out that in my anecdotal experience, every sales book I read from 'the greatest' advocated an honest, sustainable approach to customer relationship, because trust and word of mouth get you much farther than any immediate 'win' on a deal. The matter of the fact is that you don't want to ever be the sole 'winner' of a deal, you want all parties to win: otherwise no one will want to deal with you anymore at some point. Business isn't about winning, not even about sole profit, it's about sustainable profit, and honest cooperation gets you there.
Which fits my personal work experience as well --worked at Esprit de Corp (retail clothes) when I was younger and was among the top sellers, always telling the truth to customers; e.g. "these pants don't fit you, sorry I don't have anything else, please do check back on us often". Note: this was the brand's policy as well, that satisfaction was the real product we were selling, even if it did not always translate into an immediate sale. In the long run, I'm positive the trust we built was a key factor to making this brand top 3 worldwide sustainably (as far as the frontend is concerned, quality/price and having great stores in every major commercial location being the other two).
In this particular brand and in many of our competition (Zara etc.), not only would "pathological lying" be frowned upon as you'd expect from most (normal) human beings, it would be just about the worst sales tactics, ever, if you wanted customers to be satisfied, thus come back for more (which is the bulk of your profit in volume retail).
I wasn't there to see how things went at Uber, but from what I heard/read, it's obvious their culture was everything but sustainable.
Is that really true? There's a pretty meaningful distinction between someone who lies all the time as part of their profession and someone who lies out of a compulsion. It seems like being unable to stop lying would be a handicap.
But Wikipedia stayed near the top of search results. Something had to be done about Wikipedia, which was tracking the lawsuits, news stories, and regulatory actions. There was a huge effort by Banc De Binary to get the "bad stuff" out of their Wikipedia article. This resulted in one of the worst paid editing disputes in Wikipedia history.[1] We got to see their "hustle-oriented culture" in action. Eventually, all Banc De Binary editors were blocked.
The "hustle" was that the call center people claimed to be "brokers", acting on behalf of the customer and trading options on some exchange. In reality, there was no exchange and no third party on the other side of the transaction. The "broker" is a shill for the house. This is called a "bucket shop", illegal in the US and seldom seen since the 1920s.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...
The problem isn't scrappiness. It is when you push far past scrappiness and start breaking the law.
It is not just the "hustle" people don't like. People view their employees as sexist bigots. All the smart companies don't want people from that culture.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/zenefits-under-investigati...
It's about putting a "merit"ocracy in place that encourages people to backstab and generally act like jerks in order to get ahead.
It's about priorities. I'd rather work in a slightly less-profitable company if it didn't have a toxic work environment.
As much as that makes sense, it's also interesting considering that TFA makes it sound like people are leaving because of their dislike of that culture. And having trouble because they're being associated to the thing their fleeing.
If I had "Low Level Enron Employee" on my resume would the top executives' misconduct be a black mark I had to explain to future interviewers?
Is this really a thing?
Is it fair? No. Will some people do it anyway? Absolutely.
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/International/pope-benedict-dogged-naz...
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/21/498804659/former-wells-fargo-e...
And there's a difference between being scrappy and hustling.
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.
Although these issues are experienced everywhere, they appear to have a higher occurrence at Uber, so it makes sense to focus more on Uber than the industry as a whole.
> it's only fair to assume that they will come out of this mess and fix their problems as soon as possible
That's appears to be part of the issue with Uber - their culture of self-promotion at all costs. I have no doubt Uber will do whatever they can to make it through this mess. My major concern is that "whatever they can" is merely superficial change, like maybe firing some token dude who's only been there a month and saying, "See? We've changed!"
The linked article, by associating risk with merely being employed at Uber, does the industry a favor by helping uber to do the Right Thing and protect itself by protecting its employees.
The real change that needs to happen, is that people that work at Uber are safe. What better way to make that happen then threaten Uber's ability to hire and retain talent?
I assume this is in reference to Amit Singhal. I don't think "some token dude" is a good characterization of the Senior Vice President of Engineering, and while that was a good sign it's very much not all Uber is doing.
I work at Uber, and many of us are quite fired up about holding the company to account. While there are definitely things we can critique, it does seem that the situation being taken seriously and we're all hoping (and, with reservations, expecting) that there will be real change.
MSM hit jobs seem to be increasingly frequent, although it is an old tactic. I think (or at least hope) more people are starting to see through it now though. But the MSM is subtle and many reports that might not seem it are actually hit pieces as well. Sometimes it is as subtle as the phrasing of a single line in an otherwise ordinary article.
About ten years ago, one of our local papers did a 23 piece series on a pile of dirt with trace amounts of old pesticides in a middle school. Everyone at the school was transparent and forthcoming and the health rick of this temporary pile of dirt was beyond miniscule. That's not just my opinion. I interviewed the toxicologist who authored the newest and toughest environmental regulations.
That local journalist had successfully push vague innuendo that hijacked many parent's worst fears and sense of outrage and they ended up firing the superintendent. Based on the models, the increased risk of cancer from being exposed to these pesticides were something around 1/250,000. Your normal risk of cancer is between 1/3 to 1/2. Many of these parents were convinced their kid's health faced an imminent threat and the photos of their outraged faces reflected that.
But they sold a lot of papers running that series and I'm sure it was the boost that journalist needed to make it to the next level.
People may have worked there for a variety of reasons and/or in different team. Let alone that stuff like Stockholm syndrome exists for a reason.
Note the above rant doesn't excuse illegal or discriminatory behavior. I'm just addressing the simplistic "hustle = bad" argument.
So people who like to stop working (you know, weekends, nights, etc.) need not apply? How did the world ever progress when we had companies willing to quit bugging people with inane busywork? So much of "hustle" is "look at me I'm emailing at 9:30 PM I must be super dedicated!"
"eh, we can always do it later" - I think this is what some people hear when somebody who's played the game before says "we can take the time to do it right" - they know that in the long run you get a better product and they won't be stuck issuing hotfixes at 2 AM. Sometimes you need to get to MVP quick, true, but sometimes the arbitrary deadline that a dudebro pulled out of their ass is just that.
Going without consensus is also one way companies (esp. small ones) implode or do unethical and illegal things.
What is more, this hustling approach discounts brand perception and PR. We see the effects. You may be fast, but if you damage your brand badly enough in the process you might have as well not have done anything.
I've worked with some nerds who were awful mean-spirited tyrants, and some bro dudes who were really kind and sweet.
If you substitute the gender or the color of "young, white physically fit dude" you get blatant racism or sexism.
If someone did something wrong, then hold that against them. Being biased against someone's color or gender isn't ok.
I agree. If I did have a bias against white males I might consider it technically racism or sexism, but not blatant.
In my view it's simplistic to think of bias based on gender or race as sexism or racism without considering the larger societal context. Can a historically dominant gender/race in a given society feel the occasional isolated sting of racism and/or sexism? I believe they can, but I also believe it's a false equivalency to view that with the same lens as the often systemic and institutionalized racism and sexism faced by those in the marginalized minority.
The whole point of interviewing and reading resumes is to filter people out (or in) based on their experience. If recruiters start tossing out resumes because they mention Uber that's not "discrimination" in any powerful sense; it's simply caution in the light of recent events.
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?
If the above reasoning is prejudice, does that make prejudice a good thing?
Statistically some ethnic groups are more likely to have a criminal record. Don't just assume - go ahead and check.
Is it more effort? Yes. That's why we call it "the right thing to do" and not "the convenient thing to do".
>Can somebody explain the fault in my reasoning please?
The fault is in insisting that you have to come up with an answer.
I think the biggest lesson I learned in grad school was learning not to make decisions with inadequate data. And rooting out those who do.
Many different publications pile on to vulnerable targets in order to catch up with reader interest. See Fatty Arbuckle, Lindy Chamberlain.
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...
So yeah, I can't really imagine applying that judgement to people who never had the time/position to shape the culture.
My faith in humanity has been instantly restored by 10% :)
What bothered me was all the back stabbing. Those are strong black marks for me against anyone that has worked in management in Uber.
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.
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.
"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.)
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.
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.
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.