11 ms·

For an embattled company like this in a fiercely competitive industry, you need committed leadership and not a rotating cast of hired guns looking to make a qui

For an embattled company like this in a fiercely competitive industry, you need committed leadership and not a rotating cast of hired guns looking to make a quick buck. Kalanick has serious issues but he's demonstrated unquestionably forceful (and polarizing) leadership that mere "managers" will never be able to replace. I've been bullish on Uber despite all their mistakes and internal issues because at the end of the day, the guy at the top was irrationally emotionally committed to _winning_. Now I am a bear on Uber.

sidcool 9y ago
But does winning have to come at the cost of basic human dignity and law?
- chrissnell 9y ago
  Of course not, but there isn't another option for Uber. Second place isn't good enough, not with their burn rate. You need Ghengis Khan if you want to slaughter and conquer.
  - bluebombed 9y ago
    Making decisions at the cost of their employees' well-being didn't keep them in first place. Having a toxic work environment for women didn't put them in first place.
    - thanksgiving 9y ago
      > Having a toxic work environment for women didn't put them in first place. No, but that's not the point. How quickly we forget that we don't need dude bros to create a hostile environment for women. That GitHub situation was created by a woman, one who wasn't even an employee. We really don't give women enough credit. Toxic work environment is everywhere. Remember the spreadsheet that Googlers started to compare salaries? I'd argue the Apple-Google-X pact to not poach one another is worse than anything Travis could imagine. If there was crass behavior at Uber, I'm inclined to be more lenient because I think it is at a more primitive level than a well thought out plan to increase shareholder value by illegal collaboration to push down worker cost. If these people who criticize Uber really care about their employees, they will start publishing all details about how much salary and benefits and whatever money each employee makes. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    It's this slaughter and conquer mentality that has caused them so many problems. I mean Lyft's main selling point to consumers has been 'Uber without all the attitude.' If Uber had been a little more customer-focused and emollient a few years back, they'd have held onto a much larger slice of the ride-sharing market. Look at Google; they're firmly business-minded and have often butted heads with regulators and so forth, but most people like google, not least because of that 'don't be evil' branding and and their habit of giving people Nice Things.
    - kamaal 9y ago
      You make it sound like its an option. Its not. If your margins are razor thin. You have to be ruthless. That permeates to your culture. Do you things are any better at Amazon, Foxconn or other warehouse places?
      - BoiledCabbage 9y ago
        > If your margins are razor thin. You have to be ruthless. That has nothing to do with sexual harassment. And to imply that the two must be linked is false.
        kamaal 9y ago
        Neither did I mention that. Why did you associate those two things? Does 'highly demanding environment' == 'Harassment' to you? If yes then you have far bigger problems. Any demanding mission ever might be out of reach to you per your value system. Work conditions, overall demands of productivity et al will be brutal. And that ultimately gets to cause all sorts of other problems. People who just can't catch up with all the rush ultimately feel discriminated.
        sethrin 9y ago
        > People who just can't catch up with all the rush ultimately feel discriminated. Non sequitur. You're also generally espousing some pretty reprehensible ideas. We as a society do not take the view that business success overrides all soft concerns, especially with regard to their employees. If ruthlessness and discrimination is the grist that your mill requires, find another mill. Also please avoid working in management.
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  It often does, really.
  - chronic7ul 9y ago
    Correct. This is why you see almost no billion dollar "tech" companies coming out of Scandinavia or Europe in the past 10 years. The places with so called, work life balance.
    - francamps 9y ago
      Spotify? Edit: you did say 'almost'.
      - atupis 9y ago
        Mojang, Skype, Klarna, King and couple others. Sweden produces probably more unicorns per capita than any other country.
        tigroferoce 9y ago
        Don't forget Supercell and Nokia (which are Finnish). And it might not be a startup, but Ikea too.
        atlantique 9y ago
        Skype is Estonian.
        tskaiser 9y ago
        Skype (the company) was founded by Niklas Zennström, a swede. Skype (the software) was originally developed by estonians. The company is what is pertinent to the discussion :)
        aedron 9y ago
        It was founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (Danish) in equal measure. The software was based on Janus Friis' earlier work (the Kazaa p2p network). It was developed by an outsourced team in Estonia.
- csomar 9y ago
  What even is this question? Nothing "have" to come at the cost of anything. It's a matter of choices and people will make different choices. Morals are relative.
  - sidcool 9y ago
    That's a hyper generalization. Some morals like no tolerance against sexual harassment are not relative.
    - csomar 9y ago
      You mean legally? I'm pretty sure there are people on this universe that differ from you (and many of them act on it)
      - sidcool 9y ago
        And that's because morals are not policed. People will always abuse power. Hence Laizze free is impractical and we all need oversight.
        csomar 9y ago
        I think you mean policing "law" better. Policing "morals" is not possible since as I mentioned morals are relative. It is a dangerous thing if Police or state actors act on moral rather than law.
    - _jal 9y ago
      I can't think of a way to take this statement that makes it true. I don't know how old you are, but public morality towards sexual harassment just in the U.S. has changed in my lifetime. (For the better, although it is currently ugly and messy, as these changes always are.) Even attitudes about what constitute harassment vary by culture between similar cultures. Compare Italy and Germany.
- TheCondor 9y ago
  It probably doesn't have to come at that cost, it's just not unusual for it to. If you peal back the layers, probably most rapid growth, hard driving large companies have left a wake of upset and screwed over people behind it. Nobody "gives" you a hundred billion dollar company.. Uber's leadership was just particularly inept at pivoting from "scorched earth" to a slightly less savage strategy. This will be an interesting pivot to watch, I've been kind of betting with myself when will the first week come with no news or good news for uber. I thought they'd have spun up the pr machine months ago, talking about co2 saved by carpooling or something. Giant company, currently fixed runway, all eyes on it and damaged culture. If uber doesn't die, the next CEO is a superstar.
  - dnautics 9y ago
    Being an asshole (in some senses of the word) is necessary, it's just incredibly difficult to compartmentalize the good aspects of being an asshole (holding people to tough promises and standards, being unflinching in stating the truth to people's faces no matter how impolitic or uncomfortable) from the bad aspects of being an asshole (bullying, abuse of power).
- _jal 9y ago
  "Behind every great fortune is a great crime" - Balzac (kind of[1].) [1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune-crime/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune-crime/
watwut 9y ago
Yeah, but winning meant becoming big while loosing money and saddling company with long term problems. Investors likely care about the money thing more.
- kamaal 9y ago
  There is no easy way for these people to make money. Not unless they start charging their customers some multiples of price higher than they are doing currently. Here in India, I go by the office cab to home everyday. I generally chat with the drivers as to why they don't drive for Uber/Ola etc. The answer is they need to make a good 1300 rupees on a round trip to be profitable, at a minimum of 6 trips per day. A trip with Uber/Ola etc costs 300 rupees(With pool). But even then! So that's like these people need to start charging a minimum of 5x extra to make profits. At that price these people are no longer a viable means of transport. To be profitable you need to back to the yellow taxi medallion thingy all over again. EDIT: Fix a mistake.
  - marvin 9y ago
    That's less than one order of magnitude (10x), but of course the point stands.
    - mncharity 9y ago
      Another definition of 1 oom is anything between sqrt(10) and sqrt(10)*10. Basically 3 to 30. 2 oom, 30 to 300, and so on. So if the (now edited) original intent was exponential, "more like 10x than 1x (or 100x)", then calling 5x an oom is fine. If the intent was linear, then yes, rounding 5x to 10x is 100 percent error (difference/actual). :)
      - marvin 9y ago
        Huh, interesting. Wasn't aware of that :)
Steko 9y ago
> Now I am a bear on Uber. I'm headed in the opposite direction and reinstalling the Uber app tonight. This is a very convincing capstone to a 180 degree course correction away from everything I disliked about Uber. I also hope Travis can learn and come back and lead the company again in the future.
matt4077 9y ago
Please don't further this narrative that sexually harassing women and his general brohaviour are good for business. They are not. There are ways in which being an asshole ay be good for founders (cf Steve Jobs). Kalanick is just an asshole, and even take-no-prisoner ask-forgiveness-later businesses run much better with a bit of attention to human decency.
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  has Kalanick himself ever harassed women? I'm genuinely asking, I haven't followed the Uber story closely but I thought the harassment accusations weren't aimed at the CEO. I don't think anyone's suggesting that sexually harassing women is good for business.
  - dsg42 9y ago
    Boob-er anyone? http://www.gq.com/story/uber-cab-confessions?currentPage=1 http://www.gq.com/story/uber-cab-confessions?currentPage=1
  - qb45 9y ago
    I don't think he has been accused of doing it personally. It also is weird that matt4077 repeatedly contrasts Kalanick with Steve Jobs in this thread, despite Apple having been accused many times of mean culture, sexism, harassment and cover-ups too.
  - bjacobel 9y ago
    When another executive (probably illegally) obtained medical records of a woman who was raped by a driver in India, Travis viewed the records and repeatedly aired his belief internally that the whole thing was a setup by a rival company and no rape had occurred. https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-india-assault-rape-medical-records https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-indi...
    - Sacho 9y ago
      This is not sexual harassment.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

sidcool 9y ago

But does winning have to come at the cost of basic human dignity and law?

chrissnell 9y ago
Of course not, but there isn't another option for Uber. Second place isn't good enough, not with their burn rate. You need Ghengis Khan if you want to slaughter and conquer.
- bluebombed 9y ago
  Making decisions at the cost of their employees' well-being didn't keep them in first place. Having a toxic work environment for women didn't put them in first place.
  - thanksgiving 9y ago
    > Having a toxic work environment for women didn't put them in first place. No, but that's not the point. How quickly we forget that we don't need dude bros to create a hostile environment for women. That GitHub situation was created by a woman, one who wasn't even an employee. We really don't give women enough credit. Toxic work environment is everywhere. Remember the spreadsheet that Googlers started to compare salaries? I'd argue the Apple-Google-X pact to not poach one another is worse than anything Travis could imagine. If there was crass behavior at Uber, I'm inclined to be more lenient because I think it is at a more primitive level than a well thought out plan to increase shareholder value by illegal collaboration to push down worker cost. If these people who criticize Uber really care about their employees, they will start publishing all details about how much salary and benefits and whatever money each employee makes. Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  It's this slaughter and conquer mentality that has caused them so many problems. I mean Lyft's main selling point to consumers has been 'Uber without all the attitude.' If Uber had been a little more customer-focused and emollient a few years back, they'd have held onto a much larger slice of the ride-sharing market. Look at Google; they're firmly business-minded and have often butted heads with regulators and so forth, but most people like google, not least because of that 'don't be evil' branding and and their habit of giving people Nice Things.
  - kamaal 9y ago
    You make it sound like its an option. Its not. If your margins are razor thin. You have to be ruthless. That permeates to your culture. Do you things are any better at Amazon, Foxconn or other warehouse places?
    - BoiledCabbage 9y ago
      > If your margins are razor thin. You have to be ruthless. That has nothing to do with sexual harassment. And to imply that the two must be linked is false.
      - kamaal 9y ago
        Neither did I mention that. Why did you associate those two things? Does 'highly demanding environment' == 'Harassment' to you? If yes then you have far bigger problems. Any demanding mission ever might be out of reach to you per your value system. Work conditions, overall demands of productivity et al will be brutal. And that ultimately gets to cause all sorts of other problems. People who just can't catch up with all the rush ultimately feel discriminated.
        sethrin 9y ago
        > People who just can't catch up with all the rush ultimately feel discriminated. Non sequitur. You're also generally espousing some pretty reprehensible ideas. We as a society do not take the view that business success overrides all soft concerns, especially with regard to their employees. If ruthlessness and discrimination is the grist that your mill requires, find another mill. Also please avoid working in management.
King-Aaron 9y ago
It often does, really.
- chronic7ul 9y ago
  Correct. This is why you see almost no billion dollar "tech" companies coming out of Scandinavia or Europe in the past 10 years. The places with so called, work life balance.
  - francamps 9y ago
    Spotify? Edit: you did say 'almost'.
    - atupis 9y ago
      Mojang, Skype, Klarna, King and couple others. Sweden produces probably more unicorns per capita than any other country.
      - tigroferoce 9y ago
        Don't forget Supercell and Nokia (which are Finnish). And it might not be a startup, but Ikea too.
      - atlantique 9y ago
        Skype is Estonian.
        tskaiser 9y ago
        Skype (the company) was founded by Niklas Zennström, a swede. Skype (the software) was originally developed by estonians. The company is what is pertinent to the discussion :)
        aedron 9y ago
        It was founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (Danish) in equal measure. The software was based on Janus Friis' earlier work (the Kazaa p2p network). It was developed by an outsourced team in Estonia.
csomar 9y ago
What even is this question? Nothing "have" to come at the cost of anything. It's a matter of choices and people will make different choices. Morals are relative.
- sidcool 9y ago
  That's a hyper generalization. Some morals like no tolerance against sexual harassment are not relative.
  - csomar 9y ago
    You mean legally? I'm pretty sure there are people on this universe that differ from you (and many of them act on it)
    - sidcool 9y ago
      And that's because morals are not policed. People will always abuse power. Hence Laizze free is impractical and we all need oversight.
      - csomar 9y ago
        I think you mean policing "law" better. Policing "morals" is not possible since as I mentioned morals are relative. It is a dangerous thing if Police or state actors act on moral rather than law.
  - _jal 9y ago
    I can't think of a way to take this statement that makes it true. I don't know how old you are, but public morality towards sexual harassment just in the U.S. has changed in my lifetime. (For the better, although it is currently ugly and messy, as these changes always are.) Even attitudes about what constitute harassment vary by culture between similar cultures. Compare Italy and Germany.
TheCondor 9y ago
It probably doesn't have to come at that cost, it's just not unusual for it to. If you peal back the layers, probably most rapid growth, hard driving large companies have left a wake of upset and screwed over people behind it. Nobody "gives" you a hundred billion dollar company.. Uber's leadership was just particularly inept at pivoting from "scorched earth" to a slightly less savage strategy. This will be an interesting pivot to watch, I've been kind of betting with myself when will the first week come with no news or good news for uber. I thought they'd have spun up the pr machine months ago, talking about co2 saved by carpooling or something. Giant company, currently fixed runway, all eyes on it and damaged culture. If uber doesn't die, the next CEO is a superstar.
- dnautics 9y ago
  Being an asshole (in some senses of the word) is necessary, it's just incredibly difficult to compartmentalize the good aspects of being an asshole (holding people to tough promises and standards, being unflinching in stating the truth to people's faces no matter how impolitic or uncomfortable) from the bad aspects of being an asshole (bullying, abuse of power).
_jal 9y ago
"Behind every great fortune is a great crime" - Balzac (kind of[1].) [1] http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune-crime/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/09/fortune-crime/

watwut 9y ago

Yeah, but winning meant becoming big while loosing money and saddling company with long term problems. Investors likely care about the money thing more.

kamaal 9y ago
There is no easy way for these people to make money. Not unless they start charging their customers some multiples of price higher than they are doing currently. Here in India, I go by the office cab to home everyday. I generally chat with the drivers as to why they don't drive for Uber/Ola etc. The answer is they need to make a good 1300 rupees on a round trip to be profitable, at a minimum of 6 trips per day. A trip with Uber/Ola etc costs 300 rupees(With pool). But even then! So that's like these people need to start charging a minimum of 5x extra to make profits. At that price these people are no longer a viable means of transport. To be profitable you need to back to the yellow taxi medallion thingy all over again. EDIT: Fix a mistake.
- marvin 9y ago
  That's less than one order of magnitude (10x), but of course the point stands.
  - mncharity 9y ago
    Another definition of 1 oom is anything between sqrt(10) and sqrt(10)*10. Basically 3 to 30. 2 oom, 30 to 300, and so on. So if the (now edited) original intent was exponential, "more like 10x than 1x (or 100x)", then calling 5x an oom is fine. If the intent was linear, then yes, rounding 5x to 10x is 100 percent error (difference/actual). :)
    - marvin 9y ago
      Huh, interesting. Wasn't aware of that :)

Steko 9y ago

> Now I am a bear on Uber. I'm headed in the opposite direction and reinstalling the Uber app tonight. This is a very convincing capstone to a 180 degree course correction away from everything I disliked about Uber. I also hope Travis can learn and come back and lead the company again in the future.

matt4077 9y ago

Please don't further this narrative that sexually harassing women and his general brohaviour are good for business. They are not. There are ways in which being an asshole ay be good for founders (cf Steve Jobs). Kalanick is just an asshole, and even take-no-prisoner ask-forgiveness-later businesses run much better with a bit of attention to human decency.

beaconstudios 9y ago
has Kalanick himself ever harassed women? I'm genuinely asking, I haven't followed the Uber story closely but I thought the harassment accusations weren't aimed at the CEO. I don't think anyone's suggesting that sexually harassing women is good for business.
- dsg42 9y ago
  Boob-er anyone? http://www.gq.com/story/uber-cab-confessions?currentPage=1 http://www.gq.com/story/uber-cab-confessions?currentPage=1
- qb45 9y ago
  I don't think he has been accused of doing it personally. It also is weird that matt4077 repeatedly contrasts Kalanick with Steve Jobs in this thread, despite Apple having been accused many times of mean culture, sexism, harassment and cover-ups too.
- bjacobel 9y ago
  When another executive (probably illegally) obtained medical records of a woman who was raped by a driver in India, Travis viewed the records and repeatedly aired his belief internally that the whole thing was a setup by a rival company and no rape had occurred. https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-india-assault-rape-medical-records https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-indi...
  - Sacho 9y ago
    This is not sexual harassment.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]