6 ms·

Uber CEO advised employees on rules for a company celebration in 2013 memo

60 points by oli5679 9y ago

dwringer 9y ago
Well, might as well just bill me the $200 dollar puke charge right now then, since I read that.
orliesaurus 9y ago
Yes, unethical and all that. Who cares? We all claim to use Lyft on the internet anyway!
artursapek 9y ago
Some children never grow up ;)
TimeToFly 9y ago
Uber keep rising a bar for the shitty company every week. It's as degenerated as political elites of the west world. When you think they can't screw up anymore, they actually do. And people just get used to it while the company is pumping its revenues into marketing rather than growth and innovation.
nailer 9y ago
> The leaked memo paints an ugly picture of American frat-house culture peppered with sexism and laddish behaviour that permeates from the top down. How are these things sexist and laddish? If a heterosexual couple decide to have sex at a work event, then both people are equally culpable. Women are people and capable of making their own decisions. In cases where authority figures or no-explicit consent are involved, the letter makes clear that won't be tolerated.
- Angostura 9y ago
  I would say that the language is undeniably laddish throughout. And, to the extent that it is written for lads, it can be be construed as being sexist.
  - nailer 9y ago
    It is written for Uber staff who are about to go to a social event, and reminds them that: - The company expects a higher status of consent than required by law - Staff should not at all have sex with those they report to and this applies to everyone Saying it's "laddish" just seems like strange way to claim that any message conveyed in a non-formal tone is 'laddish' as somehow only men can understand or be the audience for such messages.
    - chasing 9y ago
      Yes, you are correct. When you strip out the laddish jokey stuff, it's reasonable advice. And you've written it in a way that's more fitting for a corporate environment. No one's complaining about the content of the line in question (thank god). People are complaining about the sexist, laddish, immature, and jokey tone.
      - dllthomas 9y ago
        > People are complaining about the sexist, laddish, immature, and jokey tone. Perhaps the people who most need to hear it will hear it better with such a tone?
      - nailer 9y ago
        Why do you think speaking casually and jokingly about sex is sexist?
    - metaphorm 9y ago
      ok, so skip those parts then. there's lots of other stuff in there that is objectionable. encouraging of drunken recklessness is what struck me as the most inappropriate part. the remarks about consent for sex seem like they're put their specifically because there was encouragement for heavy drinking and impaired judgment. it's kind of striking that they even felt a need to remind people that non-consensual sex is rape. they didn't use the word rape though, but perhaps they should have.
    - Angostura 9y ago
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Putting sexism to the side, do you not think this is laddish behavior?
  - user5994461 9y ago
    No. I think it's inappropriate behavior.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- makeitsuckless 9y ago
  If you don't have a culture of such infantile frat-house behaviour, you don't distribute such memos. It might surprise you, but this isn't how adults communicate, or want to be talked to. This is frat boys communicating to frat boys, making everyone else feel unsafe and unwelcome just by using this aggressively immature and tasteless tone. Full disclosure: I've just been fired from a similar company partly because I didn't tolerate the CEO and fellow managers communicating to my team in such an offensive way. Which obviously made me a bad cultural fit, as a grown up over the age of 40.
  - nailer 9y ago
    Google staff have sex after TGIF all the time. So do people at any company where staff spend a lot of time together. Making sure the company talks honestly and openly about these things, and does more than what is legally necessary to prevent harassment and rape is a good thing.
    - zentiggr 9y ago
      I'll bet any honest and open talk around Google probably sounds more like adults talking to each other respectfully, not already-half-drunk frat bro's going "Whoa, dude, hold up a sec!"
      - nailer 9y ago
        I didn't find anything 'disrespectful' or 'half-drunk' about the memo.
  - mdekkers 9y ago
    making everyone else feel unsafe and unwelcome just by using this aggressively immature and tasteless tone. Hey, speak for yourself please, don't drag me into this. I don't have a particularly high opinion of the personality of this Uber CEO, and I agree that it isn't a serious memo, and that it reflects "frat boys communicating with frat boys". However, it doesn't make me "feel unsafe" or "unwelcome". I find it genuinely perplexing how people can "feel unsafe" because of some random fools' mutterings. I am sure and confident of my own place in the universe. I would never allow someone like this guy to negatively affect my self-perception. Even though I don't agree with the tone, this language doesn't threaten me in any way. So please, cut it out with the appeal to a large support base - I am no frat boy, and as per your definition am thus part of the "everyone" you refer to, and that memo would not have made me feel unsafe and unwelcome.
- chasing 9y ago
  Here's the whole line item in Uber's e-mail: > 4) Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic "YES! I will have sex with you" AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML First: This is completely inappropriate to bring up in this way in a work environment. Second: When it comes to sexual harassment issues in the workplace, women are the main victims, which is probably why the Guardian reporter wrote that sentence as they did. Not only does this text give a green light to very questionable behavior (which will mostly or entirely be perpetrated against women by men), but it also implies that CEO Kalanick -- someone employees might take as a role model -- has and will continue to have sex with underlings, but just not on this trip. Yeah, it's probably a joke. If so, it's a dumb and inappropriate joke. And Kalanick was 37 when he wrote this. Not 22. Not some newb CEO. 37.
  - nailer 9y ago
    > > 4) Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic "YES! I will have sex with you" AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML > This is completely inappropriate to bring up in this way in a work environment. Active consent is a good thing and always good to bring up at social events. Pretending that some staff don't have sex with other - particularly staff who spend long hours in the same environment - is naive and dangerous, since it stops issues like this from being addressed. Pointing out that not having sex with someone who reports you applies to EVERYONE is also important. > Not only does this text give a green light to very questionable behavior What questionable behavior does it give a green light to?
    - chasing 9y ago
      For me, it's the tone and the implication that the CEO does it. Which casts a jokey light on, y'know, telling employees to please not rape one another.
- leroy_masochist 9y ago
  I'd recommend reading the linked article, because there are some self-evidently laddish bits therein....such as, Uber explicitly mentioning in the pre-offsite email that Travis was not planning on having sex with any of his employees at the event and then cheekily tagging the sentence as #CEOLife and #FML. Or telling employees to "have a great fucking time" but "don't throw kegs off of tall buildings"....I mean, I read that as them pretty explicitly saying, "we expect you to get drunk and rowdy, just make sure to stop before you do anything that has legal repercussions". That's not laddish?
  - chrischen 9y ago
    If you trow a keg off a building, yes, but that statement seems like a joke. So if we make jokes about outlandishly wild behavior it's now not OK?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      So if we make jokes about outlandishly wild behavior it's now not OK? As a professional? No, it damn well isn't. Why is that difficult to understand? Hell, I would expect better of basically any grown adult over the age of 25. Oh wait, that explains everything...
      - chrischen 9y ago
        Seeing as how it was an internal uber memo, don't work for uber... I suppose you'd enjoy 1960s-era IBM, going to work in a suit, and other dull things, some other people don't.
        zzalpha 9y ago
        It says a lot that you think the only alternative is "1960s-era IBM, going to work in a suit, and other dull things"... Personally, I simply prefer to surround myself with people who've grown out of the phase where they value weekend benders and banging co-workers.
- gadders 9y ago
  If you set aside the language, the text: >>Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic “YES! I will have sex with you” AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Is pretty sensible advice.
  - vorotato 9y ago
    That's correct, yes. The language and the attitudes that it implies are the problem here.
- zentiggr 9y ago
  If I received anything like this in a work context, my first reaction would be "WTF?". Apparently I am either too old or too well behaved to think that anyone who is capable of writing and sending this to work subordinates should be in a management position at all.
indogooner 9y ago
More dirt being dug up. I so wanted to work for Uber purely because of technical opportunities but reading all this and talking to some mates there now I am not so sure. People do point it out to me that this is a team thing but if the CEO is indirectly encouraging this boorish behaviour I am not sure how many teams would be impervious to this.
bluetidepro 9y ago
This reads like an Onion article. How is this a billion dollar company? This just absolutely blows my mind that any of this was actually said. It's also interesting to think that if this sort of stuff had came out when it actually happened, I guarantee that Lyft would have a lot more of an upper hand in that race. Sadly, since it's about 4 years late, I wonder sometimes if they just have too much of a market share to really get a hit from even terrible press like this. Does anyone have any numbers on how this bad press this year has been hitting them?
- endorphone 9y ago
  How is this a billion dollar company? One could argue that this is one of the reasons they become a billion dollar company: They disregarded laws and norms and just did whatever, getting away with it because of a tech halo. If the company had started with a conservative legal foundation, it would have been one of dozens of small taxi hailing apps. They said to hell with it and a lot of people got rich.
  - chasing 9y ago
    Hard to prove a counterfactual, so it could also very well be the case that they are successful in spite of these failings, not because of these failings.
    - endorphone 9y ago
      The very foundation of the company that we are discussing is something that was illegal in virtually every jurisdiction that they entered. There is a very legitimate argument to be made that it was a very large scale criminal enterprise. We know that this reality impacted much of their operations, including high level active evasion of authorities. It isn't terribly surprising that traditional corporate norms weren't strictly followed in their operations or behaviors. This is true whether we believe their actions were ultimately for the public good or to bring regulations forward.
      - 9y ago
ploggingdev 9y ago
Original source : https://www.recode.net/2017/6/8/15765514/2013-miami-letter-uber-ceo-kalanick-employees-sex-rules-company-celebration https://www.recode.net/2017/6/8/15765514/2013-miami-letter-u... Can a moderator change the url?
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  I appreciate the change, but it definitely broke some discussion. The quotes here and accusations of a hit piece are mostly being made against the Guardian's editorializing, not Recode's simpler publication.
charia 9y ago
> The so-called “Miami letter”, obtained by technology site Recode, is infamous within Uber and set the tone for company culture with a series of dos and don’ts, backed by threats such as “URGENT, URGENT – READ THIS NOW OR ELSE!!!!!” and “You better read this or I’ll kick your ass”. > Fourth on the list of don’ts was: “Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic “YES! I will have sex with you” AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. > “Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML [Fuck My Life].” > Kalanick also advised that there would be a “$200 puke charge” and that Uber did “not have a budget to bail anyone out of jail”. Uber employees were also advised not to “throw large kegs off of tall buildings”. > However, employees were told to “have a great fucking time” and that it was a celebration for launching in Uber’s 50th city and for reaching a $1bn run rate. > The leaked memo paints an ugly picture of American frat-house culture peppered with sexism and laddish behaviour that permeates from the top down. At the time Uber had 400 employees, a similar letter was sent out by Kalanick to employees when the company had 1,800 employees. By the time it had hit 4,000 employees Rachel Whetstone, the now departed head of communications, had taken over with a more subtle and respectful tone. I'm a bit confused here, at least with the excerpt that's being discussed/referenced. What Kalanick wrote is informal and with a tone that is arguable less mature than what would be expected from a company the size of uber when the letter was written. At the same time, from what I can see it seems to just something HR would send out to employees. "Yes means yes, nothing means no and don't sleep with your boss/direct suboordinate." I'm a bit confused at how this memo paints, "paints an ugly picture of American frat-house culture peppered with sexism..." Yes, uber's culture seems to encourage sexism to run rampant. Yes, Travis Kalanick is not a ceo with great pr skills. That said, I think it's a bit far to call this informal hr letter written by a startup ceo as, "painting a culture of sexism." I can see how the, "frat boy" culture that this letter came from could be something that encourages sexism and discriminatory behavior. This article isn't about that though. It's arguing that this letter and it's "guidelines" paint a picture of sexism. The subtitle: >Guidelines about having sex with employees paints picture of sexism at under-fire company that comes directly from CEO Travis Kalanick This article seems to just want to reiterate what's been said in a dozen previous articles, but since they didn't have any new information they decided to go for low hanging fruit in the uber trainwreck.Bashing uber just for the sake of bashing uber.
dilemma 9y ago
If you read the entire email, it's actually not that bad.
chrischen 9y ago
Clear author bias, and straining to make something out of nothing. > "giving information about everything from vomiting (a $200 “puke charge”) to drug use" The supposed information on drug use was a clear statement of zero tolerance on drug use, something no doubt intentially left out of that sentence to paint a picture.
uberratti 9y ago
Employee of almost three years here. Uber is not my first rodeo. I previously was one of the very first employees at another fast growing startup where I worked for about three years. Uber was already past the days where it had the environment in that email, but I experienced an environment like the one in that email at my last startup because I was there at the beginning and lived that early growth. I'm glad Uber was past that by the time I joined because as much as I enjoyed that environment at the time, I was looking for something more mature after riding that bull once. I was also looking to engineer systems at scale instead of MVPs. I read the comments here and I can only shake my head and think they were written by armchair quarterbacks who don't know what a hypergrowth company looks like. Comraderie and informality in the early days is par for the course. You need that informality to help make the type-A high stress environment not only tolerable but fun and motivating. People burn out without it. This isn't an immature CEO. This is a CEO whose attitude and demeanor has changed with the company to match the kind of leader the company needed at the time. Zuckerberg was the same way. Leading a company from the early days where it's a few people in a house to 14000 employees across the globe requires a superhuman person that evolves to match what the company needs to succeed in the moment and then go to the next level. Uber turned 7 years old very recently. It is easily the fastest growing company in the world. It still is the fastest growing company in the world (as much as some people, often with conflicts of interest, media included, wish it were not). I honestly see very little difference between Travis and Zuck and Uber 2017 and Facebook 2009. Both had similar early cultures. Both had cultures that changed as the companies matured. Both had some missteps along the way for which they were rightly criticized. Both were remarkably effective at learning from their mistake and correcting and moving forward. If you think that Uber 2017 is the Uber of 2014, you're very wrong just like it's absurd to think Facebook of 2009 was like Facebook of 2006. Uber of 2018 is going to be a very different place just like Facebook 2010 was. Not only the organization will be different but the leaders in those years were different. Zuck evolved with the company and so has Travis. Both were the right kind of leader at the right time and they change as leaders as necessary. In the meantime, I will wait for the peanut gallery to point at an example, any example, of a company that can grow and succeed like a Facebook or Uber in the same time frame without evolving first from the type of culture we're criticizing now, and without the kind of leader we are criticizing right now. 1 to 14000 over 7 years is superhuman leadership. And while the leader might not be perfect at 7 years, they have more than proven themselves capable of evolving over and over again if they can lead orgs with that growth. Honestly, I kind of disgusted by the ageist comments that think that because he's ~40 that he will never change and must still be the person in that email. I don't recognize the Travis in that email myself as that was a Travis that existed before I joined. That said, I do recognize an email written by the kind of leader that was the right leader at the right time for the type of company Uber was a year before I joined (and less than a quarter of the size of when I joined).
Bartweiss 9y ago
There's a lot of stuff here, but I'm surprised no one emphasized this gem: > We ... have organized a local grassroots movement to help bring Uber to Miami. #MiamiNeedsUber It's not often you see a company directly admit to "organizing a grassroots movement" designed to boost their product. It's such a bizarrely sincere line that you'd almost think Kalanick believed a corporate-organized movement counts as 'grassroots'.

60 points by oli5679 9y ago

dwringer 9y ago

Well, might as well just bill me the $200 dollar puke charge right now then, since I read that.

orliesaurus 9y ago

Yes, unethical and all that. Who cares? We all claim to use Lyft on the internet anyway!

artursapek 9y ago

Some children never grow up ;)

TimeToFly 9y ago

Uber keep rising a bar for the shitty company every week. It's as degenerated as political elites of the west world. When you think they can't screw up anymore, they actually do. And people just get used to it while the company is pumping its revenues into marketing rather than growth and innovation.

nailer 9y ago

> The leaked memo paints an ugly picture of American frat-house culture peppered with sexism and laddish behaviour that permeates from the top down. How are these things sexist and laddish? If a heterosexual couple decide to have sex at a work event, then both people are equally culpable. Women are people and capable of making their own decisions. In cases where authority figures or no-explicit consent are involved, the letter makes clear that won't be tolerated.

Angostura 9y ago
I would say that the language is undeniably laddish throughout. And, to the extent that it is written for lads, it can be be construed as being sexist.
- nailer 9y ago
  It is written for Uber staff who are about to go to a social event, and reminds them that: - The company expects a higher status of consent than required by law - Staff should not at all have sex with those they report to and this applies to everyone Saying it's "laddish" just seems like strange way to claim that any message conveyed in a non-formal tone is 'laddish' as somehow only men can understand or be the audience for such messages.
  - chasing 9y ago
    Yes, you are correct. When you strip out the laddish jokey stuff, it's reasonable advice. And you've written it in a way that's more fitting for a corporate environment. No one's complaining about the content of the line in question (thank god). People are complaining about the sexist, laddish, immature, and jokey tone.
    - dllthomas 9y ago
      > People are complaining about the sexist, laddish, immature, and jokey tone. Perhaps the people who most need to hear it will hear it better with such a tone?
    - nailer 9y ago
      Why do you think speaking casually and jokingly about sex is sexist?
  - metaphorm 9y ago
    ok, so skip those parts then. there's lots of other stuff in there that is objectionable. encouraging of drunken recklessness is what struck me as the most inappropriate part. the remarks about consent for sex seem like they're put their specifically because there was encouragement for heavy drinking and impaired judgment. it's kind of striking that they even felt a need to remind people that non-consensual sex is rape. they didn't use the word rape though, but perhaps they should have.
  - Angostura 9y ago
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Putting sexism to the side, do you not think this is laddish behavior?
- user5994461 9y ago
  No. I think it's inappropriate behavior.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
makeitsuckless 9y ago
If you don't have a culture of such infantile frat-house behaviour, you don't distribute such memos. It might surprise you, but this isn't how adults communicate, or want to be talked to. This is frat boys communicating to frat boys, making everyone else feel unsafe and unwelcome just by using this aggressively immature and tasteless tone. Full disclosure: I've just been fired from a similar company partly because I didn't tolerate the CEO and fellow managers communicating to my team in such an offensive way. Which obviously made me a bad cultural fit, as a grown up over the age of 40.
- nailer 9y ago
  Google staff have sex after TGIF all the time. So do people at any company where staff spend a lot of time together. Making sure the company talks honestly and openly about these things, and does more than what is legally necessary to prevent harassment and rape is a good thing.
  - zentiggr 9y ago
    I'll bet any honest and open talk around Google probably sounds more like adults talking to each other respectfully, not already-half-drunk frat bro's going "Whoa, dude, hold up a sec!"
    - nailer 9y ago
      I didn't find anything 'disrespectful' or 'half-drunk' about the memo.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  making everyone else feel unsafe and unwelcome just by using this aggressively immature and tasteless tone. Hey, speak for yourself please, don't drag me into this. I don't have a particularly high opinion of the personality of this Uber CEO, and I agree that it isn't a serious memo, and that it reflects "frat boys communicating with frat boys". However, it doesn't make me "feel unsafe" or "unwelcome". I find it genuinely perplexing how people can "feel unsafe" because of some random fools' mutterings. I am sure and confident of my own place in the universe. I would never allow someone like this guy to negatively affect my self-perception. Even though I don't agree with the tone, this language doesn't threaten me in any way. So please, cut it out with the appeal to a large support base - I am no frat boy, and as per your definition am thus part of the "everyone" you refer to, and that memo would not have made me feel unsafe and unwelcome.
chasing 9y ago
Here's the whole line item in Uber's e-mail: > 4) Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic "YES! I will have sex with you" AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML First: This is completely inappropriate to bring up in this way in a work environment. Second: When it comes to sexual harassment issues in the workplace, women are the main victims, which is probably why the Guardian reporter wrote that sentence as they did. Not only does this text give a green light to very questionable behavior (which will mostly or entirely be perpetrated against women by men), but it also implies that CEO Kalanick -- someone employees might take as a role model -- has and will continue to have sex with underlings, but just not on this trip. Yeah, it's probably a joke. If so, it's a dumb and inappropriate joke. And Kalanick was 37 when he wrote this. Not 22. Not some newb CEO. 37.
- nailer 9y ago
  > > 4) Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic "YES! I will have sex with you" AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML > This is completely inappropriate to bring up in this way in a work environment. Active consent is a good thing and always good to bring up at social events. Pretending that some staff don't have sex with other - particularly staff who spend long hours in the same environment - is naive and dangerous, since it stops issues like this from being addressed. Pointing out that not having sex with someone who reports you applies to EVERYONE is also important. > Not only does this text give a green light to very questionable behavior What questionable behavior does it give a green light to?
  - chasing 9y ago
    For me, it's the tone and the implication that the CEO does it. Which casts a jokey light on, y'know, telling employees to please not rape one another.
leroy_masochist 9y ago
I'd recommend reading the linked article, because there are some self-evidently laddish bits therein....such as, Uber explicitly mentioning in the pre-offsite email that Travis was not planning on having sex with any of his employees at the event and then cheekily tagging the sentence as #CEOLife and #FML. Or telling employees to "have a great fucking time" but "don't throw kegs off of tall buildings"....I mean, I read that as them pretty explicitly saying, "we expect you to get drunk and rowdy, just make sure to stop before you do anything that has legal repercussions". That's not laddish?
- chrischen 9y ago
  If you trow a keg off a building, yes, but that statement seems like a joke. So if we make jokes about outlandishly wild behavior it's now not OK?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    So if we make jokes about outlandishly wild behavior it's now not OK? As a professional? No, it damn well isn't. Why is that difficult to understand? Hell, I would expect better of basically any grown adult over the age of 25. Oh wait, that explains everything...
    - chrischen 9y ago
      Seeing as how it was an internal uber memo, don't work for uber... I suppose you'd enjoy 1960s-era IBM, going to work in a suit, and other dull things, some other people don't.
      - zzalpha 9y ago
        It says a lot that you think the only alternative is "1960s-era IBM, going to work in a suit, and other dull things"... Personally, I simply prefer to surround myself with people who've grown out of the phase where they value weekend benders and banging co-workers.
gadders 9y ago
If you set aside the language, the text: >>Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic “YES! I will have sex with you” AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. Is pretty sensible advice.
- vorotato 9y ago
  That's correct, yes. The language and the attitudes that it implies are the problem here.
zentiggr 9y ago
If I received anything like this in a work context, my first reaction would be "WTF?". Apparently I am either too old or too well behaved to think that anyone who is capable of writing and sending this to work subordinates should be in a management position at all.

indogooner 9y ago

More dirt being dug up. I so wanted to work for Uber purely because of technical opportunities but reading all this and talking to some mates there now I am not so sure. People do point it out to me that this is a team thing but if the CEO is indirectly encouraging this boorish behaviour I am not sure how many teams would be impervious to this.

bluetidepro 9y ago

This reads like an Onion article. How is this a billion dollar company? This just absolutely blows my mind that any of this was actually said. It's also interesting to think that if this sort of stuff had came out when it actually happened, I guarantee that Lyft would have a lot more of an upper hand in that race. Sadly, since it's about 4 years late, I wonder sometimes if they just have too much of a market share to really get a hit from even terrible press like this. Does anyone have any numbers on how this bad press this year has been hitting them?

endorphone 9y ago
How is this a billion dollar company? One could argue that this is one of the reasons they become a billion dollar company: They disregarded laws and norms and just did whatever, getting away with it because of a tech halo. If the company had started with a conservative legal foundation, it would have been one of dozens of small taxi hailing apps. They said to hell with it and a lot of people got rich.
- chasing 9y ago
  Hard to prove a counterfactual, so it could also very well be the case that they are successful in spite of these failings, not because of these failings.
  - endorphone 9y ago
    The very foundation of the company that we are discussing is something that was illegal in virtually every jurisdiction that they entered. There is a very legitimate argument to be made that it was a very large scale criminal enterprise. We know that this reality impacted much of their operations, including high level active evasion of authorities. It isn't terribly surprising that traditional corporate norms weren't strictly followed in their operations or behaviors. This is true whether we believe their actions were ultimately for the public good or to bring regulations forward.
    - 9y ago

ploggingdev 9y ago

Original source : https://www.recode.net/2017/6/8/15765514/2013-miami-letter-uber-ceo-kalanick-employees-sex-rules-company-celebration https://www.recode.net/2017/6/8/15765514/2013-miami-letter-u... Can a moderator change the url?

Bartweiss 9y ago
I appreciate the change, but it definitely broke some discussion. The quotes here and accusations of a hit piece are mostly being made against the Guardian's editorializing, not Recode's simpler publication.

charia 9y ago

> The so-called “Miami letter”, obtained by technology site Recode, is infamous within Uber and set the tone for company culture with a series of dos and don’ts, backed by threats such as “URGENT, URGENT – READ THIS NOW OR ELSE!!!!!” and “You better read this or I’ll kick your ass”. > Fourth on the list of don’ts was: “Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic “YES! I will have sex with you” AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command. > “Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML [Fuck My Life].” > Kalanick also advised that there would be a “$200 puke charge” and that Uber did “not have a budget to bail anyone out of jail”. Uber employees were also advised not to “throw large kegs off of tall buildings”. > However, employees were told to “have a great fucking time” and that it was a celebration for launching in Uber’s 50th city and for reaching a $1bn run rate. > The leaked memo paints an ugly picture of American frat-house culture peppered with sexism and laddish behaviour that permeates from the top down. At the time Uber had 400 employees, a similar letter was sent out by Kalanick to employees when the company had 1,800 employees. By the time it had hit 4,000 employees Rachel Whetstone, the now departed head of communications, had taken over with a more subtle and respectful tone. I'm a bit confused here, at least with the excerpt that's being discussed/referenced. What Kalanick wrote is informal and with a tone that is arguable less mature than what would be expected from a company the size of uber when the letter was written. At the same time, from what I can see it seems to just something HR would send out to employees. "Yes means yes, nothing means no and don't sleep with your boss/direct suboordinate." I'm a bit confused at how this memo paints, "paints an ugly picture of American frat-house culture peppered with sexism..." Yes, uber's culture seems to encourage sexism to run rampant. Yes, Travis Kalanick is not a ceo with great pr skills. That said, I think it's a bit far to call this informal hr letter written by a startup ceo as, "painting a culture of sexism." I can see how the, "frat boy" culture that this letter came from could be something that encourages sexism and discriminatory behavior. This article isn't about that though. It's arguing that this letter and it's "guidelines" paint a picture of sexism. The subtitle: >Guidelines about having sex with employees paints picture of sexism at under-fire company that comes directly from CEO Travis Kalanick This article seems to just want to reiterate what's been said in a dozen previous articles, but since they didn't have any new information they decided to go for low hanging fruit in the uber trainwreck.Bashing uber just for the sake of bashing uber.

dilemma 9y ago

If you read the entire email, it's actually not that bad.

chrischen 9y ago

Clear author bias, and straining to make something out of nothing. > "giving information about everything from vomiting (a $200 “puke charge”) to drug use" The supposed information on drug use was a clear statement of zero tolerance on drug use, something no doubt intentially left out of that sentence to paint a picture.

uberratti 9y ago

Employee of almost three years here. Uber is not my first rodeo. I previously was one of the very first employees at another fast growing startup where I worked for about three years. Uber was already past the days where it had the environment in that email, but I experienced an environment like the one in that email at my last startup because I was there at the beginning and lived that early growth. I'm glad Uber was past that by the time I joined because as much as I enjoyed that environment at the time, I was looking for something more mature after riding that bull once. I was also looking to engineer systems at scale instead of MVPs. I read the comments here and I can only shake my head and think they were written by armchair quarterbacks who don't know what a hypergrowth company looks like. Comraderie and informality in the early days is par for the course. You need that informality to help make the type-A high stress environment not only tolerable but fun and motivating. People burn out without it. This isn't an immature CEO. This is a CEO whose attitude and demeanor has changed with the company to match the kind of leader the company needed at the time. Zuckerberg was the same way. Leading a company from the early days where it's a few people in a house to 14000 employees across the globe requires a superhuman person that evolves to match what the company needs to succeed in the moment and then go to the next level. Uber turned 7 years old very recently. It is easily the fastest growing company in the world. It still is the fastest growing company in the world (as much as some people, often with conflicts of interest, media included, wish it were not). I honestly see very little difference between Travis and Zuck and Uber 2017 and Facebook 2009. Both had similar early cultures. Both had cultures that changed as the companies matured. Both had some missteps along the way for which they were rightly criticized. Both were remarkably effective at learning from their mistake and correcting and moving forward. If you think that Uber 2017 is the Uber of 2014, you're very wrong just like it's absurd to think Facebook of 2009 was like Facebook of 2006. Uber of 2018 is going to be a very different place just like Facebook 2010 was. Not only the organization will be different but the leaders in those years were different. Zuck evolved with the company and so has Travis. Both were the right kind of leader at the right time and they change as leaders as necessary. In the meantime, I will wait for the peanut gallery to point at an example, any example, of a company that can grow and succeed like a Facebook or Uber in the same time frame without evolving first from the type of culture we're criticizing now, and without the kind of leader we are criticizing right now. 1 to 14000 over 7 years is superhuman leadership. And while the leader might not be perfect at 7 years, they have more than proven themselves capable of evolving over and over again if they can lead orgs with that growth. Honestly, I kind of disgusted by the ageist comments that think that because he's ~40 that he will never change and must still be the person in that email. I don't recognize the Travis in that email myself as that was a Travis that existed before I joined. That said, I do recognize an email written by the kind of leader that was the right leader at the right time for the type of company Uber was a year before I joined (and less than a quarter of the size of when I joined).

Bartweiss 9y ago

There's a lot of stuff here, but I'm surprised no one emphasized this gem: > We ... have organized a local grassroots movement to help bring Uber to Miami. #MiamiNeedsUber It's not often you see a company directly admit to "organizing a grassroots movement" designed to boost their product. It's such a bizarrely sincere line that you'd almost think Kalanick believed a corporate-organized movement counts as 'grassroots'.