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Basically my impression since i first heard about them. But many pushed them as just good old American "disrupters" of a "stale" market. That is until the fir

Basically my impression since i first heard about them. But many pushed them as just good old American "disrupters" of a "stale" market. That is until the first dirty underwear regarding office shenanigans were aired, and then the twittering classes did a one-eighty in their view of Uber. And from that point on the company has been circling the drain.

Consultant32452 9y ago
I think both are true. Uber paved the way to significant improvements in taxi-ish services. Even traditional taxi services have bumped up their game in the face of actual competition. If at the end of all this we just wind up with Lyft, Uber still deserves some credit there. With all that being said, I probably won't be happy with the outcome of the lawsuits surrounding the shenanigans either. What will likely happen is Uber will get some hefty fines. But the people who will pay those fines are Uber's customers (and potentially investors). The more focus we can put on criminal and civil penalties for the individuals involved, even if that meant literally every person in the company, the better.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
The myth that you can build a billion-dollar business without some shady dealings needs to die. Startups are usually faced with hard choices if they want to survive. Pretending like Kalanick himself endorsed sexual harassment is ridiculous. We don't know whether he knew, how much he knew, or how involved he was. All evidence points to "the trail of information stopped at HR." I think we like to pretend that startups should be completely moral and make no questionable decisions because of how awful companies have acted in the past. While it's true we shouldn't let history repeat itself, it's false to say that merely disrupting a market is worth criticizing. And this is what disruption looks like. Balancing morality/ethics with winning is incredibly difficult. You can be an upstanding person, thrust into the CEO chair, and still screw up. Then all of your mistakes are magnified to ridiculous proportions and people claim it's a pattern of behavior that they spotted from the start, but everyone else was too blinded to recognize. Sound familiar? Not even in Uber's case -- it's a story that's repeated itself over and over. The straightforward response is "Well, startups shouldn't act so disreputably then." I agree that you shouldn't do anything that brings harm to individuals, nor should you ignore a toxic culture at your company. But refusing to even try -- to say that if you're not perfectly honest or perfectly moral, that you shouldn't be allowed to build a company -- is a formula for letting the true snakes dominate the world. Honest people who make mistakes are better than assholes with a thirst for power. But you have to let them be willing to admit that they've made mistakes. Kalanick has done this.
- skellera 9y ago
  Sorry Travis. I don't think he meant it personally. Kidding aside, at those levels you have to manage all of that. PR is probably just as important as the tech.
- ethanhunt_ 9y ago
  Ironically the sister-post to your parent post complains about a vampire being killed in the 19th century, when it's the same mindset that caused that and that wants to crucify Kalanick. The five-minutes-of-hate culture and public lynching culture is dangerous and has to end. In a year some contrarian will post an article on Medium with the title "Kalanick was unfairly ousted" and it'll be posted on reddit/r/TIL and the tide will turn as all the people whose opinions are an expression of whatever made it to the frontpage of their favorite aggregators reverse their opinion to fit the status quo.
  - amrrs 9y ago
    Your prediction seems to be true already https://hackernoon.com/travis-kalanick-lost-today-hoping-to-be-found-fc4a7bad9779 https://hackernoon.com/travis-kalanick-lost-today-hoping-to-... Irrespective of this fair/unfair argument, what stands out is how we have completely forgotten the platform that Uber laid out to disrupt our commuting experience, just like Jeff B did with Amazon Store!
  - jazzyk 9y ago
    i am against Internet lynching, but there have been enough scandals and just plain toxicity coming out of Uber for several years now. I know it was not quite your point, but idolizing assholes like Kalanick - "they may be a bit flawed, but they are brilliant businessmen/women", quite prevalent in the US, ends up in a lot of companies run by sociopathic assholes. Leave the fawning to sycopanthic media, please.
  - Frondo 9y ago
    Jesus, this is a seriously overblown description of what's happened to the guy. He hasn't been lynched, he hasn't been jailed, he hasn't had his riches taken away from him. He's been asked to endure one consequence of years of behavior that many, many of us don't approve of. There's no "five minutes of hate" here, there's a lot of people in the world looking at someone who behaved badly, consistently, without showing any sign of changing their behavior, and saying "enough, you don't get to run a big business anymore". Maybe you don't give a shit about the kind of business the guy built, and that's up to you, you don't have to give a shit, but acting like the rest of us are a lynch mob is a ridiculous misrepresentation of the situation.
maxerickson 9y ago
Above and beyond the fray! Lots of people, even on Twitter, have been skeptical of Über for quite some time.

Consultant32452 9y ago

I think both are true. Uber paved the way to significant improvements in taxi-ish services. Even traditional taxi services have bumped up their game in the face of actual competition. If at the end of all this we just wind up with Lyft, Uber still deserves some credit there. With all that being said, I probably won't be happy with the outcome of the lawsuits surrounding the shenanigans either. What will likely happen is Uber will get some hefty fines. But the people who will pay those fines are Uber's customers (and potentially investors). The more focus we can put on criminal and civil penalties for the individuals involved, even if that meant literally every person in the company, the better.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

The myth that you can build a billion-dollar business without some shady dealings needs to die. Startups are usually faced with hard choices if they want to survive. Pretending like Kalanick himself endorsed sexual harassment is ridiculous. We don't know whether he knew, how much he knew, or how involved he was. All evidence points to "the trail of information stopped at HR." I think we like to pretend that startups should be completely moral and make no questionable decisions because of how awful companies have acted in the past. While it's true we shouldn't let history repeat itself, it's false to say that merely disrupting a market is worth criticizing. And this is what disruption looks like. Balancing morality/ethics with winning is incredibly difficult. You can be an upstanding person, thrust into the CEO chair, and still screw up. Then all of your mistakes are magnified to ridiculous proportions and people claim it's a pattern of behavior that they spotted from the start, but everyone else was too blinded to recognize. Sound familiar? Not even in Uber's case -- it's a story that's repeated itself over and over. The straightforward response is "Well, startups shouldn't act so disreputably then." I agree that you shouldn't do anything that brings harm to individuals, nor should you ignore a toxic culture at your company. But refusing to even try -- to say that if you're not perfectly honest or perfectly moral, that you shouldn't be allowed to build a company -- is a formula for letting the true snakes dominate the world. Honest people who make mistakes are better than assholes with a thirst for power. But you have to let them be willing to admit that they've made mistakes. Kalanick has done this.

skellera 9y ago
Sorry Travis. I don't think he meant it personally. Kidding aside, at those levels you have to manage all of that. PR is probably just as important as the tech.
ethanhunt_ 9y ago
Ironically the sister-post to your parent post complains about a vampire being killed in the 19th century, when it's the same mindset that caused that and that wants to crucify Kalanick. The five-minutes-of-hate culture and public lynching culture is dangerous and has to end. In a year some contrarian will post an article on Medium with the title "Kalanick was unfairly ousted" and it'll be posted on reddit/r/TIL and the tide will turn as all the people whose opinions are an expression of whatever made it to the frontpage of their favorite aggregators reverse their opinion to fit the status quo.
- amrrs 9y ago
  Your prediction seems to be true already https://hackernoon.com/travis-kalanick-lost-today-hoping-to-be-found-fc4a7bad9779 https://hackernoon.com/travis-kalanick-lost-today-hoping-to-... Irrespective of this fair/unfair argument, what stands out is how we have completely forgotten the platform that Uber laid out to disrupt our commuting experience, just like Jeff B did with Amazon Store!
- jazzyk 9y ago
  i am against Internet lynching, but there have been enough scandals and just plain toxicity coming out of Uber for several years now. I know it was not quite your point, but idolizing assholes like Kalanick - "they may be a bit flawed, but they are brilliant businessmen/women", quite prevalent in the US, ends up in a lot of companies run by sociopathic assholes. Leave the fawning to sycopanthic media, please.
- Frondo 9y ago
  Jesus, this is a seriously overblown description of what's happened to the guy. He hasn't been lynched, he hasn't been jailed, he hasn't had his riches taken away from him. He's been asked to endure one consequence of years of behavior that many, many of us don't approve of. There's no "five minutes of hate" here, there's a lot of people in the world looking at someone who behaved badly, consistently, without showing any sign of changing their behavior, and saying "enough, you don't get to run a big business anymore". Maybe you don't give a shit about the kind of business the guy built, and that's up to you, you don't have to give a shit, but acting like the rest of us are a lynch mob is a ridiculous misrepresentation of the situation.

maxerickson 9y ago

Above and beyond the fray! Lots of people, even on Twitter, have been skeptical of Über for quite some time.