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Uber is facing internal staff unrest as it attempts to implement a three-day-per-week return to office (RTO) mandate and stricter sabbatical eligibility. An all-hands meeting late last month descended into acrimony as staff flooded the online meeting chat with queries about why the mandate was being enacted. How is five years of service not a tenured employee? Especially when burnout is rampant in the org, read one message that was reviewed by CNBC. Following the meeting, Nikki Krishnamurthy, Ubers chief people officer, issued a memo saying staff had crossed an acceptable line during the call. Its unclear if there has been any disciplinary action to date. But the dissatisfaction displayed during the call wasnt a one-off; the general demeanor of the companys 31,100-person staff has dropped in recent months, says one Uber employee who was on the contentious call. (The staffer was granted anonymity to speak freely about the organization’s morale.) I felt it from the performance review/promo cycle, the staffer says. I heard a lot of complaints about unfair evaluations. I’ve been a top performer since I joined, and I got a similar evaluation. So it wasn’t personal to me. But I had senior and staff friends leaving. That general malaise and unhappiness came to a head during the heated all-hands meeting last month. The return to office was discussed on the call, and received badly by Uber staff. The messages were flowing crazily fast, the anonymous staffer told Fast Company. The general discontent was crystal clear, they added, but the scale and speed at which comments were being typed made it difficult to keep track. I even tried to download the chat logs, but they are not available to download, the employee explained. On the call, a recording of which was obtained by CNBC, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said: We recognize some of these changes are going to be unpopular with folks. Krishnamurthy deemed some of the employees responses unprofessional and disrespectful. Of those the staffer could see, the queries were mostly fair questions about the reason [for the RTO] and not disrespectful, as Uber’s chief people officer claimed, in their opinion. The queries centered around how RTO benefits were being cut for staff while total compensation for the executive team was being tabled at the same time. A spokesperson for Uber said in an emailed statement: Its hardly a surprise that not everyone was thrilled about changes to remote work and sabbatical policies. But the job of leadership is to do whats in the best interest of our customers and shareholders. Being in person more frequently is better for collaboration, innovation, and company culture. Uber instituted anchor days in 2022, with employees expected to work in the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Starting in June, theyll be required to be in the office Tuesdays through Thursdays. After the COVID-19 pandemic created the norm of working from home, companies are starting to increasingly ask employees to return to the office as they adjust to a competitive artificial intelligence-fueled world and economic concerns. Folks want some autonomy, some control over their life, says Cary Cooper, an organizational behavior professor at the University of Manchester in England. Employers that are mandating to have to return to the office all the time are just going to lose talent. Simple as that. Cooper adds that companies that foist a return-to-office mandate on their staff are signaling their lack of faith in employees. They’re communicating: We don’t trust you, he says. We think your working from home means youre going to go out, play around, dick off, and come back and work for a couple hours. It communicates, We dont value you, and dont trust you. In last month’s meeting, the employee says, there were also a lot of questions about transparency and asking whether Dara was following the do the right thing and one Uber values, referencing the company’s explicit commitment to act properly and prioritize the well-being of the team, respectively. The general tenor of the online meeting chat was that executive-level staffers didn’t understand the level of unhappiness, the employee says. Instead, Khosrowshahi was laser-focused on broader goals for the company. Dara was introducing a prioritization and strategy framework we should all follow, the staffer says. During his presentation, many messages in the chat were saying that that was the wrong moment to talk about that, because we all wanted answers about the recent changes. For its part, Uber has managed to grab strong demand despite concerns that customers are shying away from rides and food deliveries. The company said this week that it had $11.5 billion in revenue in its most recent quarter. It also predicted that bookings for its current quarter would increase more than Wall Street expected. Still, shares had fallen as much as 5% in after-hours trading on that report.
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E-Commerce
A study has confirmed what we all suspected: K is officially the worst text you can send. It might look harmless enough, but this single letter has the power to shut down a conversation and leave the recipient spiraling. According to a study published in the Journal of Mobile Communication, K was ranked as the most negatively received response in digital conversationsworse than being left on read or even a passive-aggressive sure. The study found that the single-letter reply often signals emotional distance, passive-aggressiveness, or outright disinterest. Despite its brevity, K carries surprising emotional weight. Adding an extra lettermaking it kksoftens the tone of the reply entirely. Variants like ok or okay, while still cold, tend to be interpreted as neutral or merely formal. Many of our day-to-day conversations happen over text, which means there are now unspoken codes of conduct to follow. Opening up about your emotions but dont want to sound too serious? Make sure to add lol to the end of those texts to show youre just in a silly, goofy mood and not suicidal. Giving advice to a friend that you dont want to be held accountable for? Add an idk at the end of the sentence to mitigate culpability. Non-verbal cues like tone, facial expressions, and body language can be difficult to convey via our phones, leaving the door wide open for misunderstanding and misinterpretation. Sometimes generational differences also impact how we send and interpret texts. In some cases, textual miscommunications can be relationship killers, research has found. Some texters recognize the power of k and are willing to weaponize the letter to serve their own motives. One X user called it the digital equivalent of slamming the door while making dead eye contact. Another added: K is short for youre dead to me. Others advocate for the convenience of the single-letter response: Ive learned that rather than replying with a wall of text explaining how you feel, you should just type K and hit send. No sense in wasting your valuable words. Many suggested other similarly anxiety-inducing replies. Text her hes busy see how triggered she gets lol, one X user suggested. No lies told there Thumbs up is a very close second for me, another added. A third countered: I raise you we need to talk.
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E-Commerce
SoundCloud is facing backlash after creators took to social media to complain upon discovering that the music-sharing platform uses uploaded music to train its AI systems. According to SoundClouds terms of use, unless a separate agreement states otherwise, users explicitly agree that your Content may be used to inform, train, develop, or serve as input to artificial intelligence or machine intelligence technologies or services as part of and for providing the services. These terms appear to have been added to SoundClouds website in February 2024. Futurism was the first to report on artists concerns. Musical duo The Flight brought attention to the terms this week, alerting fellow creators. Ok then . . . deleted all our songs that we uploaded to SoundCloud and now closing account, the duo posted on Bluesky. Another user replied: Thanks for the heads-up. I just deleted my account. A SoundCloud spokesperson says the company believes AI can help expand artist’s creative output, but must be used with consent, attribution, and fair compensation. “SoundCloud has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from our platform for AI training purposes,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “In fact, we implemented technical safeguards, including a ‘no AI’ tag on our site to explicitly prohibit unauthorized use. The February 2024 update to our Terms of Service was intended to clarify how content may interact with AI technologies within SoundClouds own platform. Use cases include personalized recommendations, content organization, fraud detection, and improvements to content identification with the help of AI Technologies.” Tech companies have increasingly relied on public and private content to train AI systems, which require vast amounts of data to function effectively. To reflect this, companies have been revising their terms and conditions to include clauses about artificial intelligence and generative AI. In November, X updated its terms of service to allow training of its machine learning and AI models on user content. The Federal Trade Commission warned in February 2024 that companies risk violating the law if they quietly alter their privacy policies to use customer data for AI training without proper notice. “It may be unfair or deceptive for a company to adopt more permissive data practicesfor example, to start sharing consumers data with third parties or using that data for AI trainingand to only inform consumers of this change through a surreptitious, retroactive amendment to its terms of service or privacy policy,” the agency said in a post. Critics of such AI policy changes are urging companies to implement more transparent opt-out options or, ideally, require users to opt in. Like many other tech firms, SoundCloud has been embracing AI. In November, it launched six new AI tools designed to meet a wide range of creative needs. At that time, SoundCloud also announced it had joined AI For Musics Principles for Music Creation With AI” pledge, committing to uphold ethical and transparent AI practices that respect creators rights. SoundCloud is paving the way for a future where AI unlocks creative potential and makes music creation accessible to millions, while upholding responsible and ethical practices,” CEO Eliah Seton said in a November blog post. “Were proud to be the platform that supports creators at every level, fuels experimentation, and empowers fandom.” Update: This article has been updated to include comment from SoundCloud.
Category:
E-Commerce
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