I don't even know where to begin, everything I learned through my experience at Uber was basically a confirmation of things NOT to do when managing a team, building a new org, developing new processes, and implementing policy changes to external customers. Perhaps it's given me valuable insight into what doesn't work.
The company grew quickly and has reached a size, in my opinion, that isn't considered a "start up" anymore. However, the tenured folks there still had that "move fast, break things" mentality without realizing that now their mistakes have a cascading affect across 100s of people working in their org. I'd like to have seen more strategic and intentional decisions versus experiments (sometimes even ignoring data) based on "intuition." I also continued to see people being handed roles only because they were there at the right place, right time.
Middle management was the worst I've seen with first-time managers who had little understanding of how they should serve their team. There was no trust between my team and my manager although we got along well outside of work. With this type of management, there was no accountability into one's work and very little (if at all) individual goals.
Dara's All Hands were usually inspirational, but I rarely felt proud about my work. I wasn't challenged and felt like I was wasting my time, not being able to contribute in a more meaningful way. My skills and experience wasn't put into good use.
All of my coworkers are miserable in their roles and feels stuck. I pray that they will be able to dig themselves out of this hole and find something more engaging. The benefit was also SO BAD and management continued to ignore and delay a proper response despite MONTHS of effort from team members across the US to bring this topic to the forefront. When I left the company for a new job, my new salary literally increased by more than 3x of what I was getting at Uber.
