Uber and The Leather Jackets

Am I the only one who wants to see all those Uber engineers break into “Grease Lightning”?

It has been a while since Susan Fowler shared her reflection on a strange year at Uber. And indeed, that was a strange year. Since the more recent news that Uber’s President has now quit as well, there have been rumours of people staying on board just to wait for company shares.

While the culture of Uber is certainly becoming well-known, perhaps it was not intended to be for its many mentions via #ubersurvivor.

And yet, in all this uber-madness of horror stories on how NOT to run a company culture, there’s one situation I can’t stop thinking about — The leather jacket story.

I mean, if everyone at the office wears the same leather jacket, doesn’t that look super weird?

If you haven’t yet come across the Susan Fowler story, here’s a brief synopsis of the leather jacket situation (one can’t make this kind of stuff up):

The Uber Leather Jacket Story

• Uber wanted to buy leather jackets for all of their engineers in an apartment.
• Uber has a lot of manly engineers.
• Uber get a great bulk discount on 100+ manly leather jackets.
• Uber doesn’t have a lot of female engineers.
• Uber didn’t get as much of a discount on 6 female leather jackets.
• Uber didn’t think it was fair that the women’s leather jackets were more expensive than the men’s jackets.
• Uber buys 100+ leather jackets for the men.
• Uber buys 0 leather jackets for the 6 women working in the apartment.
• Uber thinks it’s being fair.
• Uber is being a douche.

I think most people will agree that the issues here go deeper than both money and leather jackets. When you are buying 100+ jackets and can’t justify adding just 6 more for a slightly higher cost per jacket for your female employees, that’s not even close to good business. It’s blatant discrimination and the makings of a workplace culture gone mad.

Why Uber wants to buy leather jackets for their engineers is still a great mystery to me.

Nonetheless… Uber now has an office where all of the engineers are wearing the very same leather jacket.

Does anyone have a picture of them all at work? I’d be forever grateful to actually see this, because I can’t seem to get it out of my head! It’s too funny.

Just imagine 20 engineers in the same room, wearing the same leather jacket. Even 20 engineers wearing different leather jackets would look super fucking weird, right?!

Imagine them going out for lunch. All together. Side by side in the same fucking leather jacket. Walking down the street. Phones out to test the latest updates, someone might even call an Uber to take them to their destination, but each passerby keeps turning their head just waiting/hoping for them to break out into a flash mob song and dance;

“Why, this car is auto-matic. It’s system-matic. Its hyyyyydro-matic. Why, it’s Uber lightning!”

And sadly, it doesn’t happen. Nothing exciting happens at all. They just walk around like a bunch of jack asses in their matching leather jackets.

Maybe the Uber engineers are the greaseballs of our time. Perhaps Uber really is casting an all-male musical, one that gets people to fall in love so they can be put into an antiquated societal structure and fed a bunch of nonsense. It’s a slippery slope.

Wake up, Uber. I know what you are trying to do to your company.

You have become a chauvinistic leather jacket wearing douche.

You might have a black edition car, Leather Jacket, but you will never be as cool as John Travolta.

Not even close.

Can anyone get me a picture of those leather jackets? Can anyone call Uber?