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Uber's head of communications is leaving the company
- chejazi 9y agoI love how this was upvoted #1 in 11 minutes with no comments. Clearly many people just want to watch uber burn.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- HenryBemis 9y agoI have a mother and a sister and a wife and a daughter. OF COURSE I want companies like Uber to burn when sexual harassment is a standard practice and "bosses" either look the other way or chip in.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- FabHK 9y agoGood sentiment, but just want to highlight that one ought to be against sexual harassment even when one doesn't have a sister or wife or daughter, just as one ought to be against racism or sexual discrimination even if one doesn't have people of other races or sexual orientations in the immediate family.
- macspoofing 9y agoStandard practice? That's a big claim substantiated by nothing. Uber has thousands of employees, the ancedontal account that came out looked credible but there's nothing that says it is pervasive. Does Uber even skew from the mean when it comes to harrassment compared to other tech companies or companies in general? It looks to me that people are piling on, just because.
- mustacheemperor 9y ago>the ancedontal account that came out looked credible but there's nothing that says it is pervasive Other than the fact that corporate HR "investigated" the literal screenshots of Susan being sexually propositioned by her supervisor the day she joined the company and determined there was nothing wrong, right? I sure fucking hope that skews form the mean when it comes to harassment. Your words are chosen so carefully. "Anecdotal...looked credible..." The same words I'm sure HR had in their oops-we-got-caught presentation for Travis.
- macspoofing 9y ago>Your words are chosen so carefully If they look carefully chosen it's because I'm trying to keep an objective perspective on this. Susan's account looks credible, and as far as I can tell Uber messed up, but how do you extrapolate that to a systemic problem? This whole thing looks like a typical internet pile-up. Uber screwed up in a specific instance, and now everybody wants to take a free hit. >I sure fucking hope that skews form the mean when it comes to harassment. Well does it? Out of the countless shrill blog posts and news articles on this, did anybody investigate if this is really a systemic problem at Uber?
- tomlock 9y agoCould you help me understand what evidence would indicate to you that there was a systemic problem at Uber?
- ImSkeptical 9y ago
- mrits 9y agoYour wife, mother, or sister could depend on their job at Uber. Some of them might have picked up their whole family and moved across the country to work there. Your reasoning is ignorant and I'm happy it is just the vocal minority that want a company to burn down because of mistakes in their leadership.
- jobu 9y agoPeople tend to hate companies that behave badly.
- paul7986 9y agoRun by frats bros who are blind to their luck and lack all humility. Who treat everyone whose not their bro like trash including customers, employees, contracted workers, other tech companies, etc... Those who loathe Uber can only wish to witness Kalanick learn humility by holding only the ashes of Uber he ignited and then burned!
- enahs-sf 9y agoI love a good self-driving car tire fire.
- puzzle 9y agoMaybe? It's also significant that Rachel had to handle a lot of huge fires while at Google, all over the globe: China, the Street View Wi-Fi incident, the European reception of privacy policy changes, the Books lawsuits, antitrust actions and a lot more. Yet, she couldn't survive two years at Uber.
- dba7dba 9y agoNone of the Google PR issues were result of a CEO straight up acting like you know what... So no comparison there.
- fratlas 9y ago.
- amaks 9y agoWhat about Lyft, Didi Chuxing, etc. etc.?
- richforrester 9y agoHN consists of mostly humans. Unfortunately, even the smartest and most unbiased ones amongst us aren't entirely immune to sensationalism, so some of us might have voted for reasons other than hate. Human nature! .edit: down-vote city for calling HNers human? Or what? Just curious. Don't really care about the points. .edit²: removed a bit of the blanket from that statement. Pardon the initial poor wording!
- fooker 9y agoYou might not be aware, but a substantial portion of HN readers are robots from the future. Calling them 'mostly human' is somewhat insulting.
- AstroChimpHam 9y agoPeople downvoted you because you're saying they want Uber to burn due to sensationalism and not because it's a genuinely bad company. It sounds condescending and probably pissed people off.
- richforrester 9y agoFair enough, I'll remove a bit of the blanket from that statement. Thanks for the answer!
- AstroChimpHam 9y agosure :)
- btym 9y agoAs long as Kalanick is still there, it can burn.
- r00fus 9y agoNothing more fascinating than a slow train wreck. Of course, maybe there's a lot of interest because of seemingly irrationality of management in handling this situation?
- sidlls 9y agoI don't know about "wanting" anything like that, but it's a pretty sad statement about our society that Kalanick is going to walk away from this basically without any real negative consequences. The fact that he isn't already gone is terrible, in my opinion.
- rectang 9y agoKalanick will end up money ahead, just like the Wells Fargo execs.
- fernly 9y agoUm, "In total, the bank has fired five senior retail bank executives, including Tolstedt, over the scandal and has imposed forfeitures, clawbacks and compensation adjustments on senior leaders totaling more than $180 million, including $69 million from Stumpf and $67 million from Tolstedt." [1] http://fortune.com/2017/04/10/wells-fargo-clawback-stumpf-tolstedt/ http://fortune.com/2017/04/10/wells-fargo-clawback-stumpf-to...
- rectang 9y agohttp://fortune.com/2017/04/10/wells-fargo-carrie-tolstedt-clawback-net-worth-fortune-mpw/ http://fortune.com/2017/04/10/wells-fargo-carrie-tolstedt-cl... "Tolstedt, on the other hand, is losing 54% of the $125 million pay package she was originally entitled to when she retired." How savage! Cutting Tolstedt's pay to several tens of millions of dollars.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoYes, I do want to watch Uber burn. I've been waiting for that many years now. The whole sexual harassment is frankly just a tip of the iceberg with them, and not particularly the important one. Breaking laws and abusing people is their business model, and this needs to stop.
- adpirz 9y agoIs there any type of publicly available market research that shows if any of this Uber press is having an effect on its ridership?
- peatmoss 9y agoRidership is pretty closely guarded. Don't expect Uber to willingly release anything that could even be used to infer what ridership might be.
- HenryBemis 9y agoIf they go public, they will HAVE to release their financial statements (audited & signed off) and then we will be learning what is what.
- Phlarp 9y agoThey can't go public under PR siege.
- tpinckard 9y ago'IF' - https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Laconic_phrase https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Laconic_phrase
- azernik 9y agoProtip - if you add "this is a laconic phrase" to the end of a laconic phrase, it ceases to be a laconic phrase.
- forgotmysn 9y agoya no chance of that happening any time soon
- chimeracoder 9y agoUnder Section 12(g), they probably should have had to report this information anyway, even without going public. However, it seems they've found an "innovative" way to skirt that part of the law: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business_law/2016/01/uber-and-section-12g.html http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business_law/2016/01/uber-a...
- HenryBemis 9y agoThe resistance to change and make things right is sooooo big that all else will quit except the ones who have the real power to make that change.. while pushing all others overboard. Even United CEO apologized, but sexual harassment is no biggie I guess for Uber. Good luck Uber.
- apengwin 9y agoUnited's CEO didn't apologize http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/10/united-ceo-passenger-disruptive-belligerent.html http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/10/united-ceo-passenger-disrupti...
- Bahamut 9y agoThe CEO backtracked on that today after seeing the stock plunge: http://newsroom.united.com/news-releases?item=124755 http://newsroom.united.com/news-releases?item=124755
- throwaway91111 9y agoHe apologized today calling it "truly horrific".
- FabHK 9y agoHe shouldn't have apologised (the immature belligerent dude on the plane should). However, he has apologised now, bowing to the relentless social media pressure, which appears to come mostly from people that don't know much about aviation law, airline operation, or anything related to this incident, from what I can see. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/united-airlines-ceo-apology-us_us_58ed299ce4b0c89f9122368e http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/united-airlines-ceo-apol...
- joshuamorton 9y agoI'm curious: what makes you believe that the man was "immature" and "belligerent"? Eyewitness accounts and videos seem to imply that he was not, and as more facts have come out, I'm becoming more and more convinced that what United did may was a violation of their own policies, and perhaps the law.
- dpflan 9y agoThis is basically a wrapper around a more informative / contextual article from Recode about the same issue: https://www.recode.net/2017/4/11/15265176/uber-communications-head-rachel-whetstone-departs https://www.recode.net/2017/4/11/15265176/uber-communication... It's linked to within the TC articles...
- nullnilvoid 9y agoUber just cannot catch a break. The brain drain is just the beginning. I am waiting to see how Waymo lawsuit pans out.
- dpark 9y agoUber has caught a million breaks. They just keep willfully screwing up.
- ejlangev 9y agoPeople definitely want to watch Uber burn as some have forever, but something seems to have shifted. I've been seeing facebook ads for Uber engineering for the last 1-2 years but recently looking at the comments on them they're 100% negative. A sampling: "This is one of those times when steering into the skid might have been the wrong move." "I think Uber needs to post an ad for a new President more than a Senior Software Engineer..." "How about UberEatsDicks? Can we work on that product together? It sounds pretty good for you guys. Right up your alley." "Facebook must hate me to suggest this post. LOL" "Haha, no thanks. http://www.theverge.com/.../14664474/uber-sexism-allegations http://www.theverge.com/.../14664474/uber-sexism-allegations ."
- throwaway91111 9y agoBarely related, but Facebook seems like a TERRIBLE place to advertise for hiring.
- personjerry 9y agoWhy?
- MichaelBurge 9y agoMy guess: You're targeting people who waste their precious time on Facebook. And if they don't value their own time, they probably won't value yours either.
- seattle_spring 9y agoThat's incredibly arrogant, to say the least.
- throwaway91111 9y agoWho clicks on ads? Who goes to facebook to look for jobs? Why would you pay per click for a job posting? The cynical part of me suspects this will enable monocultures and discrimination. Just doesn't make sense.
- kgu 9y agoThe invigorating fervor of social justice
- tomlock 9y agoIt confuses, sickens, and amuses me that people could get the world so twisted in their heads that "social justice" could become a phrase applied negatively to people, movements and feelings.
- btym 9y agoYou see, anyone who wants people to treat each other with respect and kindness is an "SJW" who shouldn't be taken seriously.
- FeepingCreature 9y agoIf SJW made their points with kindness and respect, the term would not exist.
- Mz 9y agoI envy your succinctness.
- genericpseudo 9y agohttp://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tone_argument http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tone_argument
- FeepingCreature 9y agoIt's not unreasonable to expect that people who ask for respect and kindness behave respectfully and kindly. Like, "if you're not even gonna bother, why should I?"
- genericpseudo 9y ago
- amaks 9y agoI'd guess there is too much shit storm at Uber for their PR head to handle.
- hashmymustache 9y agoNothing seems to elicit more emotional vitriol than a piece about Uber these days. Not sure exactly what is going on.
- Akujin 9y agoYa'll are seriously over estimating the influence hacker news has on regular people. Uber unfortunately still has brand recognition and home field advantage. Most people have no idea about the sexual harassment issues and for now their bottom line is hardly taking a hit. Here in Philly people are still using Uber for the most part.
- harlanlewis 9y agoSurprising to me is how often it gets brought up by drivers. Personally, I've had the "how do you like Uber/lyft" conversation during a ride enough times to never bring it up directly, but regardless it comes up frequently. I don't think drivers are looking to badmouth the company, but drivers everywhere in the world are at least slightly aware of what's going on and often in need of a shared subject to talk about with passengers.
- dahart 9y ago> Uber unfortunately still has brand recognition and home field advantage. I'm in the middle of a two week trip in San Francisco staying with people who live here. Out of about a dozen people who've called rides for themselves or the group while I've been around, 100% were Lyft. Out of all the ridesharing vehicles I've seen in the city, less than one in five had Uber logos, and maybe less than one in ten. No drivers we talked to complained about Uber, some were even very complimentary, but I get the feeling the tide has completely turned in the Bay Area and there's no home field advantage at home. And FWIW, everyone I know is aware of the Uber issue, while almost none read Hacker News. This story is definitely not primarily fueled by HN at this point, if it ever was.
- azernik 9y agoHacker News was the initial seed, but it went viral through multiple other social media and traditional press outlets. Non-techies in my social circles (including ones outside of California) noticed, they just don't always see Lyft as a decent option in their local markets.
- lukasb 9y agoSince the head of communications is definitely to blame for all the negative press recently, I think this is a great move that shows Uber is committed to fixing its problems. Really impressed by Travis Kalanick's bold leadership here and I predict smooth sailing from here on out.
- azernik 9y ago... sarcasm? I think? Regardless, this sounds like quitting rather than being fired.
- CalChris 9y agoIt seems that Google, rightfully in my opinion, wants Uber to burn as well. Alphabet wants its lawsuit against Uber to play out publicly https://www.recode.net/2017/4/11/15254028/alphabet-opposition-uber-arbitration https://www.recode.net/2017/4/11/15254028/alphabet-oppositio... Between Google investing $258M in Uber and then getting their IP ripped off by an ex-employee (now at Uber) whose company Google had bought, Levandowski and Uber pissed off the wrong deep pocketed company.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nebabyte 9y ago> “Anthony Levandowski is not a defendant in this case. Nor is this an employment dispute between Waymo and Mr. Levandowski,” reads the opposition. “Uber is the defendant in this case, and Uber is responsible for its own misconduct.” Wait, so... They're implying that Levandowski didn't violate his agreement, but that Uber is liable for using trade secrets...? Unless those files were marked as theirs (which you'd think Levandowski would have scrubbed if he made them part of Otto's docs), I can't see how that'd be a winning strategy for them. hmm Disclaimer: I don't know anything about the case and am not a lawyer
- azernik 9y agoNo. There are two disputes - Levandowski wrongfully took the documents (which Google may or may not pursue - I don't know what's happening there), and Uber wrongfully used them. They're saying that the arbitration agreement only applies to the dispute Google has with Levandowski directly, not to the separate dispute they have with Uber.
- beedogs 9y agoI'd get off the Titanic, too, before it sank.
- roystonvassey 9y agoI love the idea of Uber and what it did to urban commuting, around the world and especially where I live (South India, where private transport for hire was monopolised by auto-rickshaws). But, I definitely think the execution could've been a lot better. Sure, be aggressive with pricing, influencing public policy and marketing but to persist with it and taking it beyond subtlety is a silly, distracting move. By going the other extreme in curbing monopolies, they have alienated hard-working drivers who are feeling the heat now. Drivers tell me they work longer hours for lower payouts. Many of them are unable to make enough to pay back loans taken out to purchase their cars. I'm not sure if this was due to demands imposed by investors on aggressive expansion and growth or if it's something that Uber consciously chose to do. Either way, I fear the worst and that this will be an another short-lived experiment.