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Uber's VP of global vehicle programs is out
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- amputect 9y agoFTA: "Marakby’s departure comes not too long after Uber lost its head of comms, president, head of AI Labs, VP of growth and SVP of engineering." This feels like one of those things that's going to keep snowballing.
- _pmf_ 9y agoThe thing is: they have an obscene amount of capital just to keep their narrative alive. Sunk cost fallacy is not a concept that exists in the world of their investors.
- jplasmeier 9y agoDoes anyone have data on the departure of executives at other companies, past or present? Of course the reaction is that this is something like an exodus, but I would love to see data on exec-churn at similarly sized companies for comparison's sake.
- yeukhon 9y agoI don't think there's a public dataset for this, but would be a fun project for someone to crawl and figure out a number. My best offer is here Yahoo. Just before and after the announcement of acquisition, there was a bleeding of top executives from Yahoo.
- azemetre 9y agoMaybe Enron in their final years?
- Flammy 9y ago> Marakby’s departure comes not too long after Uber lost its head of comms, president, head of AI Labs, VP of growth and SVP of engineering.
- tyingq 9y agoI guess the upside is there's so much bad news, nobody has to know exactly why you left. Probably nobody wanted to leave right after Susan Fowler's post, for fear of being viewed as complicit in that mess and being ousted as a result. Edit: Bad wording. Not suggesting he was involved. Just saying now is a good time to go, earlier could have been awkward.
- Flammy 9y ago> Marakby joined Uber last April Or just waiting for that 1 year vesting cliff?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sk5t 9y agoWho's staying extra months for 1/4 of a hiring grant staked to an already sky-high valuation?
- hkmurakami 9y agoThey're on RSUs and have a comp structure with a heavy equity component. It totally makes sense to stay until the cliff. True vesting is delayed until an exit event. He won't have a tax hit.
- chambo622 9y ago> Uber told Auto News that it was not related to the lawsuit with Waymo. Okay
- techwizrd 9y agoHow is it possible for them to continue recruiting talent at this rate? How does the company provide a clear direction for employees when executives are fleeing?
- manicdee 9y agoI suspect that when everyone but you gets a team jacket, the direction is pretty clear?
- tyingq 9y agoComing up on 2 months since they hired Holder to investigate. I wonder how long that sort of thing usually takes. I assume they would want to get whatever press release that goes with that out of the way soon, to group all the bad news in the shortest cycle.
- yeukhon 9y agoI would ask whether the investigation will ever end or just die hoping the noise is gone.
- tyingq 9y ago"Opportunities for advancement have never been better. There's room, and real possibilities for internal promotion to key leadership positions"
- taneq 9y agoSure there's plenty of cheese on the ship now that most of the rats have left, but the klaxon in the background must still be causing a few doubts.
- scarlac 9y agoIt's simple: Not all people are aware of the scandals and issues within Uber. And some people just don't care.
- 9y ago
- techwizrd 9y agoHow is it possible for them to continue recruiting talent at this rate? How does the company provide a clear direction for employees when executives are fleeing?
- aresant 9y ago"If we are not tied for first [in autonomous vehicles), then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing." (1) http://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-...
- dexterdog 9y agoIt will be hard to be much cheaper since Uber is currently losing money hand-over-fist on a per-ride basis.
- Neliquat 9y agoThat train undoubtedly has a caboose.
- ChicagoBoy11 9y agoRight but now imagine someone with the same unit economics but that has completely wiped away the driver cost side. That's a much cheaper service right there, no?
- valuearb 9y agoI don't buy this. Unless you believe someone will get a monopoly on autonomous vehicles, at which point we should just shut down the patent office. Other than that, Uber and Lyft can just buy autonomous vehicles from the makers. The real problem is this changes their business model. The market will set the pricing, and the winner is going to be the one with the biggest brand, most installed apps, etc.
- nojvek 9y agoEither Uber is getting the cleanse it needs or Uber will our generation's pets.com
- nebabyte 9y ago> It’s also not clear if he left as a result of the sexual harassment allegations, but something tells me that scandal probably didn’t make him particularly pumped to stick around "I don't have any facts, sources, or even a quote to substantiate this, but hey, something tells me it's related" Dude could have left for any number of reasons. Stick to reporting the facts.
- friendzis 9y agoI disagree to a degree. There are feeds with minimal journalism that usually stick close to reporting bare facts. Journalism as opposed to reporting implies at least some level of commentary and surrounding context, both of which can easily be subjective. In this particular instance the context could have been provided in a better way, but it is context nevertheless.
- exelius 9y agoUber has a misogyny problem. Talk to anyone who works there (you'll be hard pressed to find many women). It's not a valley thing; they have offices nationwide and jokes about women being "on the rag" and such are common at all of the ones I've visited (done work for them as a vendor). The culture at that company is toxic and it comes from the top.
- celim307 9y agoYeah that's not a good enough reason to assassinate someone's character with zero proof
- empressplay 9y agoUber's autonomous vehicle program is DOA so I suppose this comes as no surprise, really
- ExactoKnight 9y agoIs there any way they can survive the lawsuit?!
- ChuckMcM 9y agoAll the departures can't help but make you wonder what is up. Something Scott McNealy told me about becoming a senior leader is this, "The higher you are in the company the more easily something you have no control over can get you fired." It isn't exactly intuitive but it builds on the notion of leadership that doesn't like the situation and wants to do something. I think Uber is navigating a really difficult time, some of the challenges are their own fault, some are situational, but the turmoil in the stories almost palpable. While it might be tempting for someone to leave thinking the ship is sinking, it could also be pretty powerful to be part of the leadership team that navigated through that time.
- yeukhon 9y agoChaos could be opportunity for some, indeed. But usually outsiders will be brought in to stabilize the situation (company surgical doctors) and there will be little room to grow except those remain absolute loyal to the real boss (in this case, the investors, as the CEO himself is in a disarray).
- Analemma_ 9y agoEspecially when Uber is by far the most valuable unicorn and you'd think these guys would want to stay on for their IPO payday. Maybe they know it's not happening?
- yeukhon 9y agoI don't think Uber can go IPO any time soon. The financial of Uber is very bad. Bank is happy to manage the IPO, but the stock will probably be very unstable or fail to single digit if Uber continues to lose that much of money. If a company lives on investment money, the stock is useless.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoI believe it would not serve them well to consider its 'unicorn' status, as that emphasizes what might be its biggest challenge, justifying its alleged value, and losing money at the rate they do. Most (if not all) of the companies that went Chapter 7 (complete liquidation) in the dot com boom were like Uber, racing to grow their place into a profitable level of business through private placements. When people stopped believing they could do that, they stopped participating in the equity rounds, and the cash burn was so horrendous that they couldn't slow down if they wanted to. The only possible outcome was a complete flameout, and with no access to capital, and a business model that didn't make money yet, all they could do was go home. Maybe insiders see something like that coming, maybe not, but I have worked in companies that were going to really existentially tough times and it isn't fun. It's actual work. You really learn who is a fair weather soldier when that happens.
- dingo_bat 9y agoI hope uber doesn't fail. I don't want to buy a car :(
- goldbeck 9y agoAre lyft etc... non-options? Personally, I'd love to see the most predatory of the on-demand ride services flame out because of bad PR and an unsustainable (and did I mention predatory?) business model.
- dingo_bat 9y agoWe don't have lyft in Bangalore. We have Ola, but it is crap compared to uber.
- netsharc 9y agoWhat's preventing Uber customers to gather a few phone number of Uber drivers, and if Uber dies, to message them directly for a ride? It's a bit of a hassle, admittedly, but if you can contact the providers directly...
- eddieroger 9y agoThe fact that Uber facilitates payment, for one, and that's handled external and prior to the ride, so you don't have to worry about the hassle at the end. Also the infrastructure around tracking who needs a ride and where they are is nice.
- dingo_bat 9y agoHow many drivers' numbers will I collect? I need the app to contact the nearest driver. Also, the pool service is highly difficult to recreate without the infrastructure uber provides. You'd basically have to start another uber.
- linkregister 9y agoIs the rate of executives departing greater than at a similar-sized tech company? I'm skeptical that I'm being fed a narrative meant to drive readership. I don't mean to say that there is a conscious intent by media, but it could be a feedback loop of public interest which increases reporting about a subject. Maybe it's wrong to doubt this, but I've been misled plenty of times by journalists committing the base rate fallacy, weaving unrelated events into a narrative, etc.
- hackuser 9y ago> Is the rate of executives departing greater than at a similar-sized tech company? This seems like a big stretch. Can you name a company that has lost its "head of comms, president, head of AI Labs, VP of growth and SVP of engineering" and now the VP of Global Vehicle Programs? Not that they should be held to the same standard, but the allegations in the parent are based only on suspicions without any factual foundation - we'd be very disappointed in journalism that did the same.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- whatusername 9y agoJust because the Junior Vice President of CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet has left - does not mean there's a problem with the org itself. For one -- you'd have to know how many other VP's there are in the org.
- traskjd 9y agoWell, in the case of CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet, it would be a problem since the Junior Vice President was the only employee :)
- eddieroger 9y agoWell, head of AI and SVP of engineering could be representative of an internal shift in focus, so relatively easily explained - maybe they weren't moving fast enough with autonomous vehicles? Head of comms is easy too - lots of press recently, so this could be anything from vanilla burnout to a replacement of someone who can handle it better. VP of Growth could also be as simple as they're not growing at the rate expected, so someone has to take the hit. Could all of it be related to the same thing, and that thing being their culture? Sure. But couldn't it also just be that these things happen, and everyone is so focused on Uber that it's getting an inappropriate amount of attention and analysis for things that really do just happen on their own from time to time? I'd argue yes.
- AJRF 9y ago"In the past few months, a gazillion people have left Uber. Ok, a gazillion is a bit of an exaggeration" TechCrunch is so trashy.
- thomasgaukel 9y agoNone of the "scandals" so far matter. Those are just due to Silicon Valley political correctness nonsense. The real story that people are missing here is that the Uber business model does not work fundamentally. They're losing money in every transaction, and no, they won't make it up on volume. This is a plain and simple business failure, not a company culture failure.
- sidcool 9y agoThis article makes a lot of assumptions on the reasons. And hopes people buy it.
- davidgerard 9y agoThis is a reblog. The source: http://www.autonews.com/article/20170417/MOBILITY/170419851/uber-loses-another-top-executive-as-marakby-departs http://www.autonews.com/article/20170417/MOBILITY/170419851/...
- headhuntar 9y agoI think we should look at who in the executive is still around. Sometimes the group leaving and the group staying have different visions. The group leaving could have not agreed with Uber's current vision and the group staying refused to change or vice versa.