OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Choosing an Organization Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Identify an organization and situation you want to study over the remainder of the course.
2. Describe the organization and situation.

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Describe your organization.

I work at a tech company called Uber Technologies. They have several offices throughout
the U.S. generally used for providing electronic customer support, and "Greenlight Hubs"
(which offer customer service to riders and drivers in-person). Their overarching mission
is to "reimagine the way the world moves for the better" (2023, About Us). So far, in their
pursuit, they have created a range of products via technology that connects restaurants
and grocers with delivery drivers to serve existing patrons and gain new ones via
UberEats, connect riders with drivers via Uber, and connect large and small companies
with freight carriers via their Uber Freight app.

Describe how Describe your role in the organization (it can be internal or external).

My role in the organization is a Program Specialist and it is internal under the UberEats
line of business. The role itself is advanced customer support for high-level restaurant
partners. These requests will come from internal stakeholders typically after other teams
have failed to resolve their issues. We are required to provide white-glove customer
support and in doing so, turn poor experiences into positive ones. Additionally, we must
stay up to date with changes to our processes through multiple trainings and weekly team
meetings.

2) Describe the situation. (see the Canvas instructions for details, especially about how
your situation will be analyzed from five different perspectives over the next five
modules)

Uber has a hierarchical organizational structure and the most notable issue that I have
with the company isitsr managers. They are generally not supportive, work against you
instead of for you, and do not seem to take accountability for their lack of managerial
skills. They are more like dictators than leaders which can be frustrating when you are
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working to get ahead in the company, and your manager may need to vouch for you.
While team leads are great and have exceptional human, technical, and conceptual skills,
managers seem to be in a completely different world.
The last position that I was promoted to was similar to the level of a team lead, and it is
one of the higher positions within a sub-level of the support hierarchy. My manager at the
time suggested that I apply for the role. I applied and got the job however, there was no
guidance and no training for the position. Just an overview of what was needed weekly
and the tools that myself and my colleague would be permitted to use to complete the
work. We learned how to use many internal tools and others like Google Data Studio,
greatly enhanced our skills with other Google and Microsoft products, and facilitated
weekly meetings with stakeholders to provide them with updates (although we virtually
had the same updates every week due to the nature of the work). Later, when it was time
for our reviews, our manager graded us with lower than average scores despite constantly
checking in with them on ways to improve (which were always implemented) and
contributing to some major changes to company policies and the support workflow. It
simply seemed like we were being set up for failure and being graded based on the
manager’s opinion of us, instead of more objective features like the results we produced.
This situation highlights many of the issues within the frame of management at the
company.

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 Reference

About us. Uber. (2023). https://www.uber.com/us/en/about/