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So... not very independent. Holder has advocated for Uber in the past, we know he has a relationship with upper management already, which suggests it may not b

• deleted 10y ago
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• flootch 10y ago
  Eric couldn't find a single bankster guilty of anything in the 2008 meltdown, and he wasn't able to find anything wrong with Fast & Furious, so I have to disagree with you, his appointment will certainly provide the best outcome for Uber.
  • falcolas 10y ago
    I think he is referring to a finding in Uber's favor by a biased party being bad in the public eye.
  • CalChris 10y ago
    One was found guilty, but point taken. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-banker-jail-financial-crisis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/magazine/only-one-top-ban... None were found guilty in Britain as well. Nor did Congress enact any meaningful reform. Hell, Arizona has re-elected John McCain and he was a bag man for Charles Keating. Seems like no one, Justice, Congress or the American people want to hold people accountable.
    • bboreham 10y ago
      > None were found guilty in Britain as well. Interested to know why you exclude Jay Merchant, Alex Pabon, Peter Johnson et al from your count.
      • CalChris 10y ago
        Thanks. The article I read was from before those convictions. And given the relative sizes of our countries, y'all did a much better job of holding people accountable. We clearly didn't. After Enron, many people (not enough) went to prison. Arthur Anderson was shut down with huge job losses. White collar jobs. Politicians and the Justice Department have no stomach for that. Maybe they have a point. In the 30s, a lot of good banks went down as a contagion spread. In 2008, it was already bad and no one but no one wanted that. Lehman was more of a hit job favor for Goldman Sachs, but also a visible sacrifice. But no one wanted the 30s again.
    • flootch 10y ago
      Thanks, very interesting article on how we got there.
  • brobinson 10y ago
    His refusal to provide documentation related to Fast & Furious also earned him the honor of being the first cabinet member ever to be found in contempt of Congress
  • grandalf 10y ago
    > the best outcome for Uber It's OK if it's the best outcome, so long as those who broke the law are fairly punished. At this point, I'm not aware that Susan has initiated a lawsuit, so I'm guessing she'll be contacted with a settlement offer. This is a great example of how allowing a douche to act in a way that everyone knows violates sexual harassment laws can cost a company money and reputation. If you're someone's boss, don't talk about sex with them unless you are sure they will be happy to have that conversation and won't have second thoughts within the statute of limitations.
    • davedx 10y ago
      If you are someone's boss don't proposition them, period. It is an abuse of power.
      • grandalf 10y ago
        Of course! My point was that even if you acknowledge some possible gray area, it's still a stupid thing to do.
  • mdip 10y ago
    > best outcome for Uber. Based on your comment, I'm inferring that your view is that the best possible outcome for Uber would be a situation where a sham investigation is performed, valid accusations are suppressed, they can claim everything's OK and continue business as usual (and that this is the outcome Uber desires -- and they may very well desire this, I'm certainly suspicious). If that's an incorrect read, then please accept my apologies for what follows because that's what I'm addressing in this response. At this point "the genie is out of the bottle". Every major (and many minor) news source has reported on Sarah Fowler's allegations. There's no going back so some sort of response has to be made to what's being alleged. I see two possible, obvious, options: Suppress/obstruct/lie and distract with a sham investigation. Settle quietly with any accusers with strong NDAs. Come back in a few weeks with findings that are as transparent as mud or get in front of it, probably still settle quietly with accusers/NDAs, communicate internally and externally extremely strong policies addressing this sort of behavior and operate with a nearly "zero tolerance", weed out the bad actors and revisit/measure success at regular intervals. The best possible, long term outcome for Uber would be to get to the truth of what is happening in a way that is as public and transparent as possible. Then "move heaven and earth" to correct it, continuing to operate as publicly as possible about the outcome. This is a "sharing economy" company where riders and drivers alike are being asked to put a great deal of trust in an entity that looks very untrustworthy at this point. Assuming the allegations are true, what's going on over there is all kinds of bad, and not just for the victims of harassment/discrimination. Sarah Fowler's allegations extend far beyond her personal experiences. The biggest red flag that I saw was the ineptitude and powerlessness exhibited by HR. Without a strong HR department with the ability to independently take action on ethical failures like this, the company, itself, cannot be trusted. I've been lucky to be part of companies that had strong, established guidelines that extended beyond the protections of the law coupled with HR departments that had the authority to act independent of management[0]. I know of specific cases where popular, top performing managers were removed despite the desires of C-level executives. Policies left little room for interpretation, required yearly re-agreement (with really annoying and specific tests) and required reporting even of witnessed harassment (with teeth -- if you were a witness, failed to report and were found out, you were subject to termination with cause). Companies that do not demand such obvious ethical behavior are almost certainly suffering from many forms of employee ethical lapses. Corporate culture that actively suppresses reporting of unethical/discriminatory and harassing behavior (through the inaction of HR), cause the "good people" to leave (or stay, but in a state of demotivation and without a chance that they'll ever stand up), and leave the company run by people you can't trust. Again, assuming these are true allegations, this is a far worse place to be than the position of a company having to apologize for bad behavior, settle some lawsuits and take the necessary action to restore confidence in what they're doing. Attacking it head on comes with the immediate risk that the dirty laundry will be aired for all to see, customers will lose confidence in the company and they won't be able to regain trust quickly enough after the bad actors are rooted out and the problem is corrected, but the alternative is like a pot of soup set to boil. At some point, the multiplication of bubbles accelerates until it rapidly boils over and in this case that might not be something that can be recovered from. It's also possible we're witnessing that pot boiling over right now. [0] I was never in HR, but had near family-level friendships with a higher-up in that department who shared information that they almost certainly should not have with me.
• matt4077 10y ago
  I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. At that level, corruption, either because of sympathies or financial interests, actually become less common: there is so much outside scrutiny of your work, and any failure will forever be tied to you, that it's in Holder's long-term interest to do a good job. He must be operating under the assumption that the author of that blog post will sue if his investigation appears tainted, and it's unlikely shoddy work by him could survive "the harassment trial of the century" (with dozens of lawyers and investigators using their power of discovery). But yeah, the optics aren't great. They could've chosen someone like Michael Garcia who has proven his independence. I'm almost inclined to suspect incompetence by now. Anyway, does it matter? Uber is subsidising each ride at a rate of about 50%, operates in a market with literally no barriers to entry and is saddled with the burden of having investors and lenders expecting some return on the dozens of billions they burned through. People have finally realised it's a frat house run by red-faced chauvinists and it's only a matter of time until the financial music stops and investors realise this Ford Ponzi only has two seats. Prediction: Uber will go under within the next 12 months, it will be revealed that they've been most creative in their bookkeeping and there'll be a sudden need of a few extra beds in some federal sweaty-white-collar prison.
  • andrewvc 10y ago
    Holder may do a great job but even the appearance of impropriety must be avoided in these cases. Holder should have declined; Uber should have found someone else.
  • koolba 10y ago
    I'll take the other side of that bet any day of the week. I'm not disputing your assessment of the company culture or the VC fueled pricing. They're spot on. I just think there's no viable competitor (at the moment) to truly challenge them.
    • rorykoehler 10y ago
      They don't need one viable competitor. Many smaller/regional ones will do the trick just fine. I travel all over the world without using Uber. This year I used them in Lisbon and now Taipei. Since Taiwan shut them down I just using a taxi booking app. Deleted Uber account yesterday. Never coming back. There is always a convenient alternative.
• LordHumungous 10y ago
  Why does Uber have so many people from the Obama administration? I believe David Plouffe also works for them.
  • fleitz 10y ago
    Have you seen the politics around what they do?
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Uber is in the complex position of engaging in civil disobedience and direct political action in order to give consumers the freedom to choose new transportation options (which includes, but is not limited to Uber). As such, hiring a bunch of political operatives is necessary. It also illustrates a big flaw in capitalism. Uber is spending a lot of money fixing government, and after they spend the money their competitors can come in and reap the benefits for free. I truly don't understand why so many investors are giving them money to throw at what is essentially altruism, but I'm glad they are.
    • te_chris 10y ago
      "fixing government"
      • r00fus 10y ago
        Is that what they call lobbying these days?
    • jethro_tell 10y ago
      Uh, it's not a sit in for the right to use the same schools as the taxi companies, it's a calculated money grab. It's a bet that they can make enough progress before they go under. Sure, they saw the writing on the wall first, and I don't think anyone thinks this isn't where we will be in a few years, especially with self driving cars, but they're not MLK and co. They're a business that's intentionally breaking rules to make money. Edit: The rules they are breaking may be silly, but they aren't fighting a moral cause. I guess this is the natural progression of corporations are people too.
• devoply 10y ago
  Let's play devil's advocate. Companies don't generally want cultures like these. This may be P/R, but at the same time do expect management to do something about the toxic culture. It's not as if it's in the best interest of the big wigs to have a dysfunctional management culture for their own sakes. If they are looking out for their pockets, they will do something about this... the problem is these sorts of cultures once they develop are very difficult to do something about.
• mk77 10y ago
  Whats the best outcome? Just curious what people think would be a good outcome short term.
  • obstinate 10y ago
    Good outcome would be: * Determine what happened, and disclose. * Offer compensation to Ms. Fowler, if warranted, and a public apology. * Concrete changes in policy that would prevent this happening in the future. Longer term, events like these should happen less at Uber.
    • grandalf 10y ago
      Excellent points. The whole thing wreaks of grossly incompetent HR staff, as well as a management team that was unaware of the very real legal risks that allowing this sort of culture creates. The guy who did it may be eccentric and totally harmless to everyone who knows him, but none of that matters if there is evidence that a persistent harassment problem was not dealt with. No matter what the circumstances, it's risky for a company to keep someone employed who has not completely rectified any problematic harassment behavior after receiving a single warning.
    • fragmede 10y ago
      Uber undoubtedly previously had a code of conduct that states this behavior is unacceptable but oh, look; here we are. Changing a couple words in the policy doc? Not good enough. If Uber actually wants to change, then heads need to roll. By which I mean fire a bunch of people and take away their options. A manager or three for inappropriate behavior; a bunch of people in HR, either for hushing up the problems in the first place ("Oh, this is the first time we're hearing about this." lol, really?) or for being incompetent at their job (specifically, opening them up to a huge lawsuit). Whether Uber is willing to go that far is entirely up to them, just like it's up to me to determine if I'd even bother reinstalling the app.
      • mdip 10y ago
        I'll second that HR comment. Honestly, I'd be considering expunging the entire team at this point. Assuming the allegations are correct, they violated the law directly in some cases and where they didn't, they ensured that ethical lapses went unpunished, reporters of ethical lapses were punished/threatened and that this was basically effective policy of the organization. Staff within the company will never be comfortable with reporting incidents to that team unless all of management, anyone directly involved in these allegations and (probably) most of the HR staff is replaced. Hiring a good, well known, HR manager to rebuild the organization would be the next, good, step. Policies and codes of conduct are like laws. If they're unenforced, they don't exist.
• rayiner 10y ago
  Internal investigations are not government prosecutions. They are an investigation by the company of what its employees did or are doing. "Independent" means independent of the employees, not impartial to the company. Such investigations are typically carried out by a firm familiar with the company and its operations. Evidence acquired in an internal investigation is sometimes presented to the government to try and convince it not to prosecute. In that role, you generally want someone with credibility. At the same time, the lawyers doing the investigation are intensely protective of their credibility. Unlike any given client, the lawyers are repeat players with the government. And while the government double-checking your work won't uncover a single isolated instance of fraud, those odds change over repeated trials.
  • tragic 10y ago
    That's the theory. It is not always the practice.[0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hacking_scandal#Harbottle_and_Lewis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_International_phone_hac...
• lowbloodsugar 10y ago
  I have finally deleted the app from my phone and installed Lyft. Its honestly not as good, but its good enough after taking this into account. I'll be talking to the five people who have installed Uber because of me too, three of whom are women.