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>Are you proposing that companies should not be allowed to hire someone from the outside to fix severe culture issues? Not exactly, just that they shouldn't be

by Arizhel 10y ago

>Are you proposing that companies should not be allowed to hire someone from the outside to fix severe culture issues? Not exactly, just that they shouldn't be able to offer them generous golden parachutes. Of course, I'm not so sure about the legality of this, but perhaps within corporate law a law could be made that companies aren't allowed to promise enormous sums of money to people when they fail to fix the problem, and the company is now in dire financial straits. When the company is having severe financial difficulty, the first dibs should go to anyone it owes money to, not someone they promised a big golden parachute to in case he couldn't turn it around. >I gather that if it were up to you, you'd sentence Uber to death instead of giving them a shot at redemption. Absolutely. The good people should have found new jobs by now; all accounts now show this company to be truly toxic, at many levels (not just "a couple people"). They should not be rewarded with a shot at redemption. Now, if they can find someone willing to take on this challenge of turning the company around, who is willing to assume a great deal of risk in doing so (at least risk not getting paid much for it), then that's fine. I just don't think they should be allowed to offer a golden parachute if that person fails. Then, such people can evaluate such offers based on the true risk of the situation, instead of knowing they'll be safely off with their golden parachute if they can't make it work.

smallgovt 10y ago
Thanks for clarifying. The negative impact of such a decision wouldn't just be on Uber employees, but also the 500,000 drivers actively using their app; on average making $30K per year. A large fraction of these people are probably depending solely on this income to make ends meet. In an ideal world, there'd be an immediate replacement for Uber for all these drivers to switch over. However, we all know that's wishful thinking. At best, capacity would only be halved, which still means you'd effectively be letting go of 250K people tomorrow. Imo, even if your goal is to enact maximum punishment on Travis and Co, doing so THROUGH punishing the company is a really destructive way to accomplish said task.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  You think Uber drivers can't just switch to the competition at the drop of a hat? Lots of them already work for both Uber and Lyft at the same time! They're the absolute last people I'm worried about hurting here. There are other "ride-sharing" companies out there, you know. And when Uber is clearly going down the drain, more competitors will pop up in anticipation of taking advantage of the situation.
  - smallgovt 10y ago
    What percentage of customers/drivers do YOU think would switch over to Lyft et al? From my experience in growth/marketing, I would bet there would be around 50% drop off, but I could definitely be wrong! These things are hard to guess. (Customers need to switch as well as drivers) Even a 1% drop off leads to 5000 people let go. Anything substantial would lead me to strongly considering other avenues of redemption. To be sure, I'd want to better understand the magnitude of effect here before saying that sentencing Uber to death is "absolutely" the right thing to do.
    - Arizhel 10y ago
      >What percentage of customers/drivers do YOU think would switch over to Lyft et al? Um, all of them? If Uber went under, what choice would they have? Why would customers give up on Uber/Lyft and go back to cabs, when there's at least one company that does almost the exact same thing and is a direct competitor? Why would they refuse to install the Lyft app, when they've already shown they're willing to install the Uber app? And why would drivers not go to work for the competition, esp. with a giant void left by Uber in the market? I'm sorry, I think your argument is ridiculous. Right now, I'm eating some spaghetti for dinner that I just made. It's made with Brand X spaghettin and Brand A of sauce. Now if either of these brands suddenly went under and disappeared from the supermarket aisles, do you think I'm going to just stop eating spaghetti altogether? That's insane. And even that would make more sense than this Uber scenario. Uber is just a way to get you from point A to point B, and has succeeded so far because it's both cheaper and more convenient, in most cases, than the incumbent services. People aren't going to suddenly stop needing to get transported places without Uber around, nor are those incumbents improving enough to get them back, at least in many places (if they were, Uber would have a large loss of ridership there already). And Lyft is already there (in many markets at least), offering the exact same service as Uber, frequently with many of the same drivers. Why wouldn't people switch? There's only two reasons: 1) ignorace (easily countered with some advertising, plus word-of-mouth from drivers during Uber's last days), and 2) lack of availability of Lyft or other competitors in certain locations (I believe Toronto does not have Lyft for some odd reason). At least with my spaghetti example someone might say they love sauce brand C so much that they just wouldn't bother making much spaghetti without it and would eat other stuff.
deleted 10y ago
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by Arizhel 10y ago

smallgovt 10y ago

Thanks for clarifying. The negative impact of such a decision wouldn't just be on Uber employees, but also the 500,000 drivers actively using their app; on average making $30K per year. A large fraction of these people are probably depending solely on this income to make ends meet. In an ideal world, there'd be an immediate replacement for Uber for all these drivers to switch over. However, we all know that's wishful thinking. At best, capacity would only be halved, which still means you'd effectively be letting go of 250K people tomorrow. Imo, even if your goal is to enact maximum punishment on Travis and Co, doing so THROUGH punishing the company is a really destructive way to accomplish said task.

Arizhel 10y ago
You think Uber drivers can't just switch to the competition at the drop of a hat? Lots of them already work for both Uber and Lyft at the same time! They're the absolute last people I'm worried about hurting here. There are other "ride-sharing" companies out there, you know. And when Uber is clearly going down the drain, more competitors will pop up in anticipation of taking advantage of the situation.
- smallgovt 10y ago
  What percentage of customers/drivers do YOU think would switch over to Lyft et al? From my experience in growth/marketing, I would bet there would be around 50% drop off, but I could definitely be wrong! These things are hard to guess. (Customers need to switch as well as drivers) Even a 1% drop off leads to 5000 people let go. Anything substantial would lead me to strongly considering other avenues of redemption. To be sure, I'd want to better understand the magnitude of effect here before saying that sentencing Uber to death is "absolutely" the right thing to do.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    >What percentage of customers/drivers do YOU think would switch over to Lyft et al? Um, all of them? If Uber went under, what choice would they have? Why would customers give up on Uber/Lyft and go back to cabs, when there's at least one company that does almost the exact same thing and is a direct competitor? Why would they refuse to install the Lyft app, when they've already shown they're willing to install the Uber app? And why would drivers not go to work for the competition, esp. with a giant void left by Uber in the market? I'm sorry, I think your argument is ridiculous. Right now, I'm eating some spaghetti for dinner that I just made. It's made with Brand X spaghettin and Brand A of sauce. Now if either of these brands suddenly went under and disappeared from the supermarket aisles, do you think I'm going to just stop eating spaghetti altogether? That's insane. And even that would make more sense than this Uber scenario. Uber is just a way to get you from point A to point B, and has succeeded so far because it's both cheaper and more convenient, in most cases, than the incumbent services. People aren't going to suddenly stop needing to get transported places without Uber around, nor are those incumbents improving enough to get them back, at least in many places (if they were, Uber would have a large loss of ridership there already). And Lyft is already there (in many markets at least), offering the exact same service as Uber, frequently with many of the same drivers. Why wouldn't people switch? There's only two reasons: 1) ignorace (easily countered with some advertising, plus word-of-mouth from drivers during Uber's last days), and 2) lack of availability of Lyft or other competitors in certain locations (I believe Toronto does not have Lyft for some odd reason). At least with my spaghetti example someone might say they love sauce brand C so much that they just wouldn't bother making much spaghetti without it and would eat other stuff.

deleted 10y ago

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