Uber reported to the state that I was fired for "annoying a coworker."

It seems like this employee was in a no-win situation. If he engaged in the non-work-related conversation the co-worker was trying to initiate, he would have been fired. If he ignored the co-worker, they would have found a reason to fire him. Instead, he responded saying he was advised to keep communication to just work topics... and he was fired. The company was clearly planning on firing him for any possible reason.

His first mistake was complaining to HR about another employee griefing him. HR is always going to consider the initial complainer as "the problem."

> I was fired for following HR’s own verbal instructions.

This is why, even when there are verbal instructions, politely request that they give you something in writing; you know, for your reference, just in case you forget ;-)

This article is vague enough to be useless. No actual evidence of the convo from the author’s side. Seek an unemployment lawyer

Oof. Never ever ever ever report a female coworker as a male. Once the "sexual harassment" card gets evoked it is almost always over which can happen over literally nothing. Fighting it will make you look like the problem. Many such cases.

Off topic.

Did anybody read the linked fortune article about Uber ceo expecting people to work on weekends.

It has that paid PR post and satirical piece vibes at the same time. With words like "unparalleled work ethic" working on weekends, wisdom and the part about checking emails right after waking up at 5 in the morning, I was expecting it to wrap up with a hint of obvious sarcasm but sadly it never came.

The fact this person could not get an attorney to represent them says a lot.

Remember, you should think of HR as a friend. Just not your friend.

what could be the reason from the other side if we had to think of one?

why would you contact Uber's legal team to ask if you could file a lawsuit against them? do you think they would have any reason not to convince you to drop the matter?

What made HR act in this way? They clearly felt they were protecting the company by firing this person, but they've done nothing wrong and it's unclear they posed any kind of threat to the company. Certainly the complaint about his co-worker would not be perceived as a threat.

I will give some weight to the possibility that Uber HR are utterly disfunctional, but on balance I'm left with the impression there's more to this story than we're being told.

Shit, HR doesn't even exist to protect the company sometimes. Sometimes they get so cancerous that they start to operate as if the company works for them.

Hence my megacorp's most recent CEO fired the CPO, and hired a long time former company employee with no HR background to go clean house of the infestation of Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice-Vice Presidents in HR.

"...I decided to share it because I think it illustrates something most employees don’t think about until it’s too late: HR exists to protect the company, not you."

No shit

Paywall links shouldn't be allowed on Hacker News. It's not possible to subscribe to every service that could be theoretically be submitted. We're not all on $350k SV wages either.

That said it's hard to gauge this story as it's a one sided affair, author maybe 100% in the right but that can't really be determined.