15 ms·

The Fall of Travis Kalanick

206 points by choult 9y ago

zwily 9y ago
If you’ve followed the Kalanick story till now, there’s nothing new in this article. However, it’s interesting to see it all put together. Anyone know what it’s like inside Uber today?
- misun78 9y ago
  Significantly better with Dara who understands the needs for a peacetime ceo. Happy to field any specific questions.
  - moxious 9y ago
    The media has reported on some fairly outrageous cultural excesses. Question -- did you experience these when Kalanick was there? Since Dara showed up, anything specific you can say about what was done and whether it "feels different" and how? In some places the CEO is a distant figurehead, and whatever his or her values, the day-to-day experience is more dominated by your local crew of < 20 people. In other places, culture is truly pervasive. I feel like the reporting is saying that culture is pervasive at Uber, but it would be interesting to hear an inside perspective.
    - uberemployee 9y ago
      What do you mean by cultural excesses?
    - misun78 9y ago
      Both? I experienced nothing anywhere close to the egregiousness mentioned in the media. But TKs ruthlessness, long work hours ethics was always omnipresent. It wasn’t so much top down mandated to work hard but the culture was there. Paradoxically managers at times would have to push the employees to take breaks, vacations etc. I personally relished that environment but understandable how those would other commitments would find it hard. Our compensation structure also encouraged working hard (and all the stress, burnouts and disappointments that stemmed from it) so even if an employee had all the freedom to leave work at 5 pm and do other things, unless you were ultra-efficient in the 8-9 hours at work (which some of the best engineers I worked with were), there was always a risk of missed incentives. In short, it felt like a great company for those who could manage these trade offs. For all others, it was stressful.
  - harryh 9y ago
    Uber is an unprofitable, non-public company with incredibly fierce competition that is expected to face enormous changes do to technological developments. Why in the world would you think it needs a peacetime CEO?
    - misun78 9y ago
      Peacetime doesn’t necessarily mean not being competitive. Uber is at a stage where it doesn’t need to bend the rules anymore. Read up on how Dara handled the Brazil legislation for example. Rather than fighting any regulation as TK may have, he effectively worked with the government to legalize and legitimize Uber. I expect him to do the same in London.
      - harryh 9y ago
        Your definition of peacetime/wartime does not conform to industry norms. Peacetime in business means those times when a company has a large advantage vs. the competition in its core market, and its market is growing. In times of peace, the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths. In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources including competition, dramatic macro economic change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth. The great wartime CEO Andy Grove marvelously describes the forces that can take a company from peacetime to wartime in his book Only The Paranoid Survive. https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/ https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/
        fpoijasw 9y ago
        Actually I agree with them here, it's much more peaceful now than before. When we were trying to break into China and facing against Didi that really seemed like we were at war. Like we would start a growth campaign and merely hours after we launch, Didi would launch the exact same campaign. Even after the merger I'm not sure if this is true but we found 16 employees who were on both Ubers and Didi's payroll.
        DenisM 9y ago
  - heymijo 9y ago
    Have you had any experience with Frances Frei? She seems to be a unique talent who seems genuine from her interviews. I'm curious how she is viewed within Uber and what impact she may be having.
    - uberemployee 9y ago
      FF is great. She is leading online courses for all Uber employees about business strategy and culture from real Harvard professors. It’s very educational for everyone. It’s a very unique opportunity for us because she is an expert on what makes companies great. Not just culturally but business strategy too. Having her as a key member of the team is an advantage that t companies don’t have because whereas other people are figuring things out on their own, she actually studied it and taught it. I hope she stays a long time to help mold this company into one of the greatest companies.
      - rhizome 9y ago
        She is leading online courses for all Uber employees about business strategy and culture from real Harvard professors Harvard only?
        heyyyouu 9y ago
        Yeah, that seems very close minded.
  - losteverything 9y ago
    What are two things uber is scared of? E.g., for a long distance company fear was the cell phone. ($22B revenue to $8B in a five year stretch)
    - sjg007 9y ago
      An open source ride summoning tool? Maybe powered by a cryptocurrency?
      - yellow_postit 9y ago
        Let’s call it BitConnect!
    - misun78 9y ago
      1. Not rebuilding our reputation/changing things for the better. 2. Not competing in self-driving.
- misun78 9y ago
  Forgot to mention I’m an Uber employee.
- uberemployee 9y ago
  Dara couldn’t be more perfect for who we need as a CEO right now and going forward. Culture is definitely shifting toward a more normal work life balance. Things were crazy for many years with how much people worked but for the most part it was out of excitement. Many, many people were overworked however and burnt out. That culture of squeezing out every ounce from everyone is gone, for the better. It’s not sustainable. Frances Frei is a former Harvard Business School professor and arranged for several HBX classes from Harvard professors on business strategy that were very interesting and helpful. Having her as a guide as to how a great company should be behaving is a huge asset. TK was great and built the entire industry but he overstepped his abilities and became his and Uber’s worst enemy. I’m assuming after the SoftBank deal closes many long time employees will be gone. And why shouldn’t they, they are worth millions at this point, but only number in the hundreds. And this happens to all companies in the same situation, like google, Facebook, Dropbox, etc. Overall the pace has slowed dramatically and has a big company feel. But the majority of people, myself included, are fiercely proud of the work that we do and the product that we have built. The food could be better, though. Maybe after we become profitable? (This is an internal joke to all Uber employees)
  - jonny_eh 9y ago
    Just walk to Orench Beyond for lunch every day.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - redorb 9y ago
    is the joke that one day you'll be profitable? or the food?
  - jackgavigan 9y ago
    > Frances Frei is a former Harvard Business School professor and arranged for several HBX classes from Harvard professors on business strategy that were very interesting and helpful. Which classes?
- decacorn 9y ago
  For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the names of the two uber atg employees responsible. Time's up, dickheads.
  - fpoijasw 9y ago
    I'm sorry to hear this. Can you describe what happened?
    - decacorn 9y ago
      No, not at this time. I'm going to make sure the two tech bros get what they deserve, extreme public shaming.
  - uberemployee 9y ago
    I’m sorry you had a terrible interview experience. In 2017 we hired Gayle Laakmann McDowell (CTCI author) to train engineers on how to interview better and how to design better interview questions that weren’t biased. She held many sessions so hopefully our interviewing experience improves but it’s a skill that needs constant training.
    - decacorn 9y ago
      I'll just say this: there is a systemic behavior of tech bros treating everyone like they are the king of the hill and everyone else are peasants. The only way to solve THAT problem is purging the tech bros. Sorry, a big name new hire won't address the situation I experienced. Period.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not “getting” unit tests.
- lhorie 9y ago
  Another Uber employee here. I can confirm that whereas opinions of Travis were a mixed bag, Dara is pretty much universally liked. He's very serious about doing things the right way, and him taking the initiative to address the previously-under-covers 2016 leak gets my utmost respect. I got in just a month before TK stepped out, shortly before the Holden report, and Liane Hornsay and Frances Frei joined. Since then, the company implemented a crisis hotline where you can anonymously report abuse, it ran courses about what's considered inappropriate behavior, and there's a huge overhaul going on with regards to the cultural values and the performance appraisal process. Frances was particularly vocal about the inadequacy of the top 3 bottom 3 system that was in place before. I mentioned this before elsewhere, but when Liane had a board member step down the afternoon after he made a sexist comment in a all-hands meeting, it spoke volumes about how serious they were about setting new norms at Uber. I also recall seeing an email a few months ago that basically said that whoever was working on any competitive intelligence project involving spying was to halt all further work effective immediately. The culture of doing things right is definitely becoming a thing.
derwiki 9y ago
> “Until 2017, you could go into Uber on any given day and half the T-shirts were Uber T-shirts,” says one executive. “They disappeared overnight. People didn’t want to wear Uber stuff.”
- dawhizkid 9y ago
  Speaking for myself, I worked at Uber in 2015/2016 and did not wear Uber swag in public because I was afraid of awkward encounters with Uber drivers, which happened on several occasions sitting in the car when it somehow became known I was an Uber employee.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Don't companies usually hand out t-shirt swag with their company names on it? Most of the time that I see someone with a company logo on their shirt I do not readily assume they work at that company.
    - mieseratte 9y ago
      I would never assume someone walking around with a North Face t-shirt works for North Face but tech companies are obscure, especially outside of the big tech cities. If I see someone wearing a t-shirt for a tech company in my city, they more likely than not work for that company. If I saw someone with an Uber shirt I would assume they work for them, and probably as corporate. I can't say I've ever seen a driver wearing Uber swag. Personally, most company swag I've worn once or twice and then throw in the Goodwill bag. So it's possible there's some random folks wearing a $NoNameCo shirt, but I'd wager they're just as likely recycled into something else.
      - Larrikin 9y ago
        As a receiver of a lot of SWAG, all of those company shirts become pajamas until the day they go into the H&M donation bag. I can't imagine any situation outside of working for that company where I would want to walk around advertising for them on an uninspired shirt with their logo plastered on it. I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering the entire thing garbage.
spaceflunky 9y ago
What's it like to show up to work at Uber? Do people just sit there miserably while they constantly remind themselves that a "big payday" is on the way like some kind of perverse mantra? What if the pay day never comes? How will it look when your resume says you stayed at Uber well after everything has been revealed?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  If your question is sincere, it's nothing too different from going to work to any other company, especially with Dara getting to act like the good cop. Source: know quite a few Uber employees.
  - naturalgradient 9y ago
    Well, that is the thing right? People historically went to work in any number of unethical organisations, including industrialised mass murder, human experiments, knowingly poisoning or defrauding people..the list is endless, and it was just any other job to them. The structure of an organisation means nobody feels individual ethical responsibility, they are just doing their job after all. In fact, I would say most corporate employees feel like that about the large anonymous bureaucracies they work in, but there is still a good number of people for whom this is unacceptable, the type that ends up saying no to hush money, the type that whisteb-lowers, the type that ends up being shot for part of a resistance against a dictatorship, and so on. People again and again do this even though it often has terrible consequences for their personal fate, and I think this is the exact same kind of person who does not want to hire or work with the other type, the one that just does their job.
- derwiki 9y ago
  I don't think it looks bad on a resume. Anecdotally, all of the candidates I've interviewed who work at Uber presently have been quite good.
  - mLuby 9y ago
    It does to me. Specifically, it says the person either tolerates or contributes to what is widely regarded as one of the most toxic work cultures in software; same goes for Amazon. Up to me to determine whether they're the former or latter. Granted, when they joined and when they left and why makes some difference, but it's still not a great starting place for a candidate.
saas_co_de 9y ago
This story is not over yet.
dawhizkid 9y ago
I'm curious on his take on cryptocurrency. TK has spent his entire career in the P2P space (file sharing before Uber). I wouldn't be surprised if that is his next move...
platz 9y ago
"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good reason—They didn't have to give him all that venture capital. But they saw him as an expendable probe, so they cynically gave him money, to see how much law-breaking he could get away with in the name of their disruption activities. That was hubris—and nemesis is well on the way." - NEXT17 | Bruce Sterling | Live from 2027
- Anderkent 9y ago
  How does Uber 'oppress the underclass'? Puhlease.
  - mrgordon 9y ago
    In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down or reduced in service by pricing fares artificially low for a period of time. This enables them to then exercise monopoly pricing power on the market (or oligopoly with Lyft or whatever local competitor) and ultimately harms the lower classes. Thus the $5 splurge for an Uber instead of the $2 bus hypothetically becomes the $10 Uber with no alternative short of driving yourself. I'm not super convinced by this argument but it is a reasonable argument. Especially given that Uber wields billions in venture capital specifically to systematically underprice both regular taxis and public transit options.
    - eric_the_read 9y ago
      I haven't seen this actually happen, though. In Denver, at least, RTD has been expanding routes and light rail service (albeit slowly, but that is most definitely NOT Uber's fault), even as Uber, Lyft, etc. have become more popular.
      - mrgordon 9y ago
gwern 9y ago
> After Uber’s lawyers insisted the company wouldn’t pay Kamel to clean up Kalanick’s personal scandal, Kalanick agreed to pay Kamel $200,000 out of his own pocket, according to a person familiar with the matter. “The meeting ended on a positive note, and Travis appreciated Mr. Kamel’s openness and forgiveness,” a spokesperson for Kalanick said in a statement. For $200k for being lectured for a minute, I'd have a lot of openness (of my wallet) and forgiveness too.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
The SoftBank deal will make Kalanick a billionaire. I wouldn't exactly call that a "fall". A lot of bad behavior but it seems like that behavior is being rewarded handsomely.
DonHopkins 9y ago
Shamelessly promoting Deepak Chopra on her wellness web site was inexcusable. But proxying Kalanick while promoting "meditation wristbands" for drivers??! >"Even in top-level conversations where Kalanick appeared to be absent, other executives and board members suspected that Huffington was serving as his proxy. The founder of the Huffington Post was a constant presence at Uber’s offices, making suggestions that seemed to promote her new wellness company, Thrive Global Holdings LLC. For example, she wanted to put “nap pods” at driver hubs and give drivers meditation wristbands. Huffington’s company received $50,000 in consulting fees from Uber. The perceived self-dealing didn’t go over well internally, and she had the money returned, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Huffington says that Thrive provided services at cost, and that Huffington refunded the fees when events required her to take on a more active role at Uber."
freech 9y ago
> And in New York, a small union called the New York Taxi Workers Alliance declared that there would be no taxi pickups from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport. > For Uber, that would create extra demand at the airport, which meant it could charge more—but this would probably cause a backlash. That had happened before when the company let its “surge pricing” algorithms do their thing. So the New York managers decided to be good citizens and suspend surge pricing for the night. > If the company wasn’t price gouging this time, maybe it was trying to break up the JFK strike. That's actually the opposite of what disabling surge pricing does. It makes sure that drivers aren't paid enough to bother picking up passengers there, so it protects the strike. People are idiots. Uber should start a campaign featuring polar bears cruising around or something (or maybe make fun of trump on their twitter account if they have to save money) instead of trying to fulfill the publics demands.
- londons_explore 9y ago
  People prefer unavailability of something to it being available at a high price. If you walk into a gas station and they say "sorry, we're out of gas" - no worries, try the next place. Whereas if they said "we're low on gas, so you have to pay $100 per gallon", there would be public outcry. People would fill up then refuse to pay. People would be forming a mob outside the station. Rational? No. But it's the way people think, and companies need to adapt to it.
telltruth 9y ago
I never understood the outrage against video secrely taken by taxi driver Fawzi Kamel. One can clearly see Kalanic was actually pretty humble, well behaved and trying to answer his questions. But Fawzi kept making accusations after another, cutting him off, not letting him answer, being very rude and just not listening. Kalanik’s argument that he was running a business was a legit. I just think people would have blamed Kalanik no matter what he did or said. Taking sabbatical was his definitely big mistake. But with his parents situation he was also at the weakest point which VCs took full advantage of. Overall, I am firmly in Kalanik’s side. Stupid VCs always want to get rid of founder who is in to long term and replace him with someone who would get exist fast. Kalanik was media’s punch bag for things he didn’t intended or even didn’t do. But world needed him, industry needed him. Without him politicians and unions would have eaten away any such companies before it became bigger. Lyft is now ripping fruits seeded by Uber. Without his audacity, Uber wasn’t possible.
irascible 9y ago
Man becomes billionaire by exploiting a legal loophole, and fucking taxi drivers out of decades of investment into the taxi medallion system.. story at 11. Fuck TK

206 points by choult 9y ago

If you’ve followed the Kalanick story till now, there’s nothing new in this article. However, it’s interesting to see it all put together. Anyone know what it’s like inside Uber today?

misun78 9y ago
Significantly better with Dara who understands the needs for a peacetime ceo. Happy to field any specific questions.
- moxious 9y ago
  The media has reported on some fairly outrageous cultural excesses. Question -- did you experience these when Kalanick was there? Since Dara showed up, anything specific you can say about what was done and whether it "feels different" and how? In some places the CEO is a distant figurehead, and whatever his or her values, the day-to-day experience is more dominated by your local crew of < 20 people. In other places, culture is truly pervasive. I feel like the reporting is saying that culture is pervasive at Uber, but it would be interesting to hear an inside perspective.
  - uberemployee 9y ago
    What do you mean by cultural excesses?
  - misun78 9y ago
    Both? I experienced nothing anywhere close to the egregiousness mentioned in the media. But TKs ruthlessness, long work hours ethics was always omnipresent. It wasn’t so much top down mandated to work hard but the culture was there. Paradoxically managers at times would have to push the employees to take breaks, vacations etc. I personally relished that environment but understandable how those would other commitments would find it hard. Our compensation structure also encouraged working hard (and all the stress, burnouts and disappointments that stemmed from it) so even if an employee had all the freedom to leave work at 5 pm and do other things, unless you were ultra-efficient in the 8-9 hours at work (which some of the best engineers I worked with were), there was always a risk of missed incentives. In short, it felt like a great company for those who could manage these trade offs. For all others, it was stressful.
- harryh 9y ago
  Uber is an unprofitable, non-public company with incredibly fierce competition that is expected to face enormous changes do to technological developments. Why in the world would you think it needs a peacetime CEO?
  - misun78 9y ago
    Peacetime doesn’t necessarily mean not being competitive. Uber is at a stage where it doesn’t need to bend the rules anymore. Read up on how Dara handled the Brazil legislation for example. Rather than fighting any regulation as TK may have, he effectively worked with the government to legalize and legitimize Uber. I expect him to do the same in London.
    - harryh 9y ago
      Your definition of peacetime/wartime does not conform to industry norms. Peacetime in business means those times when a company has a large advantage vs. the competition in its core market, and its market is growing. In times of peace, the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths. In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources including competition, dramatic macro economic change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth. The great wartime CEO Andy Grove marvelously describes the forces that can take a company from peacetime to wartime in his book Only The Paranoid Survive. https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/ https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/
      - fpoijasw 9y ago
        Actually I agree with them here, it's much more peaceful now than before. When we were trying to break into China and facing against Didi that really seemed like we were at war. Like we would start a growth campaign and merely hours after we launch, Didi would launch the exact same campaign. Even after the merger I'm not sure if this is true but we found 16 employees who were on both Ubers and Didi's payroll.
      - DenisM 9y ago
- heymijo 9y ago
  Have you had any experience with Frances Frei? She seems to be a unique talent who seems genuine from her interviews. I'm curious how she is viewed within Uber and what impact she may be having.
  - uberemployee 9y ago
    FF is great. She is leading online courses for all Uber employees about business strategy and culture from real Harvard professors. It’s very educational for everyone. It’s a very unique opportunity for us because she is an expert on what makes companies great. Not just culturally but business strategy too. Having her as a key member of the team is an advantage that t companies don’t have because whereas other people are figuring things out on their own, she actually studied it and taught it. I hope she stays a long time to help mold this company into one of the greatest companies.
    - rhizome 9y ago
      She is leading online courses for all Uber employees about business strategy and culture from real Harvard professors Harvard only?
      - heyyyouu 9y ago
        Yeah, that seems very close minded.
- losteverything 9y ago
  What are two things uber is scared of? E.g., for a long distance company fear was the cell phone. ($22B revenue to $8B in a five year stretch)
  - sjg007 9y ago
    An open source ride summoning tool? Maybe powered by a cryptocurrency?
    - yellow_postit 9y ago
      Let’s call it BitConnect!
  - misun78 9y ago
    1. Not rebuilding our reputation/changing things for the better. 2. Not competing in self-driving.
misun78 9y ago
Forgot to mention I’m an Uber employee.
uberemployee 9y ago
Dara couldn’t be more perfect for who we need as a CEO right now and going forward. Culture is definitely shifting toward a more normal work life balance. Things were crazy for many years with how much people worked but for the most part it was out of excitement. Many, many people were overworked however and burnt out. That culture of squeezing out every ounce from everyone is gone, for the better. It’s not sustainable. Frances Frei is a former Harvard Business School professor and arranged for several HBX classes from Harvard professors on business strategy that were very interesting and helpful. Having her as a guide as to how a great company should be behaving is a huge asset. TK was great and built the entire industry but he overstepped his abilities and became his and Uber’s worst enemy. I’m assuming after the SoftBank deal closes many long time employees will be gone. And why shouldn’t they, they are worth millions at this point, but only number in the hundreds. And this happens to all companies in the same situation, like google, Facebook, Dropbox, etc. Overall the pace has slowed dramatically and has a big company feel. But the majority of people, myself included, are fiercely proud of the work that we do and the product that we have built. The food could be better, though. Maybe after we become profitable? (This is an internal joke to all Uber employees)
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  Just walk to Orench Beyond for lunch every day.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- redorb 9y ago
  is the joke that one day you'll be profitable? or the food?
- jackgavigan 9y ago
  > Frances Frei is a former Harvard Business School professor and arranged for several HBX classes from Harvard professors on business strategy that were very interesting and helpful. Which classes?
decacorn 9y ago
For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the names of the two uber atg employees responsible. Time's up, dickheads.
- fpoijasw 9y ago
  I'm sorry to hear this. Can you describe what happened?
  - decacorn 9y ago
    No, not at this time. I'm going to make sure the two tech bros get what they deserve, extreme public shaming.
- uberemployee 9y ago
  I’m sorry you had a terrible interview experience. In 2017 we hired Gayle Laakmann McDowell (CTCI author) to train engineers on how to interview better and how to design better interview questions that weren’t biased. She held many sessions so hopefully our interviewing experience improves but it’s a skill that needs constant training.
  - decacorn 9y ago
    I'll just say this: there is a systemic behavior of tech bros treating everyone like they are the king of the hill and everyone else are peasants. The only way to solve THAT problem is purging the tech bros. Sorry, a big name new hire won't address the situation I experienced. Period.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not “getting” unit tests.
lhorie 9y ago
Another Uber employee here. I can confirm that whereas opinions of Travis were a mixed bag, Dara is pretty much universally liked. He's very serious about doing things the right way, and him taking the initiative to address the previously-under-covers 2016 leak gets my utmost respect. I got in just a month before TK stepped out, shortly before the Holden report, and Liane Hornsay and Frances Frei joined. Since then, the company implemented a crisis hotline where you can anonymously report abuse, it ran courses about what's considered inappropriate behavior, and there's a huge overhaul going on with regards to the cultural values and the performance appraisal process. Frances was particularly vocal about the inadequacy of the top 3 bottom 3 system that was in place before. I mentioned this before elsewhere, but when Liane had a board member step down the afternoon after he made a sexist comment in a all-hands meeting, it spoke volumes about how serious they were about setting new norms at Uber. I also recall seeing an email a few months ago that basically said that whoever was working on any competitive intelligence project involving spying was to halt all further work effective immediately. The culture of doing things right is definitely becoming a thing.

derwiki 9y ago

> “Until 2017, you could go into Uber on any given day and half the T-shirts were Uber T-shirts,” says one executive. “They disappeared overnight. People didn’t want to wear Uber stuff.”

dawhizkid 9y ago
Speaking for myself, I worked at Uber in 2015/2016 and did not wear Uber swag in public because I was afraid of awkward encounters with Uber drivers, which happened on several occasions sitting in the car when it somehow became known I was an Uber employee.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Don't companies usually hand out t-shirt swag with their company names on it? Most of the time that I see someone with a company logo on their shirt I do not readily assume they work at that company.
  - mieseratte 9y ago
    I would never assume someone walking around with a North Face t-shirt works for North Face but tech companies are obscure, especially outside of the big tech cities. If I see someone wearing a t-shirt for a tech company in my city, they more likely than not work for that company. If I saw someone with an Uber shirt I would assume they work for them, and probably as corporate. I can't say I've ever seen a driver wearing Uber swag. Personally, most company swag I've worn once or twice and then throw in the Goodwill bag. So it's possible there's some random folks wearing a $NoNameCo shirt, but I'd wager they're just as likely recycled into something else.
    - Larrikin 9y ago
      As a receiver of a lot of SWAG, all of those company shirts become pajamas until the day they go into the H&M donation bag. I can't imagine any situation outside of working for that company where I would want to walk around advertising for them on an uninspired shirt with their logo plastered on it. I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering the entire thing garbage.

spaceflunky 9y ago

What's it like to show up to work at Uber? Do people just sit there miserably while they constantly remind themselves that a "big payday" is on the way like some kind of perverse mantra? What if the pay day never comes? How will it look when your resume says you stayed at Uber well after everything has been revealed?

kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
If your question is sincere, it's nothing too different from going to work to any other company, especially with Dara getting to act like the good cop. Source: know quite a few Uber employees.
- naturalgradient 9y ago
  Well, that is the thing right? People historically went to work in any number of unethical organisations, including industrialised mass murder, human experiments, knowingly poisoning or defrauding people..the list is endless, and it was just any other job to them. The structure of an organisation means nobody feels individual ethical responsibility, they are just doing their job after all. In fact, I would say most corporate employees feel like that about the large anonymous bureaucracies they work in, but there is still a good number of people for whom this is unacceptable, the type that ends up saying no to hush money, the type that whisteb-lowers, the type that ends up being shot for part of a resistance against a dictatorship, and so on. People again and again do this even though it often has terrible consequences for their personal fate, and I think this is the exact same kind of person who does not want to hire or work with the other type, the one that just does their job.
derwiki 9y ago
I don't think it looks bad on a resume. Anecdotally, all of the candidates I've interviewed who work at Uber presently have been quite good.
- mLuby 9y ago
  It does to me. Specifically, it says the person either tolerates or contributes to what is widely regarded as one of the most toxic work cultures in software; same goes for Amazon. Up to me to determine whether they're the former or latter. Granted, when they joined and when they left and why makes some difference, but it's still not a great starting place for a candidate.

saas_co_de 9y ago

This story is not over yet.

dawhizkid 9y ago

I'm curious on his take on cryptocurrency. TK has spent his entire career in the P2P space (file sharing before Uber). I wouldn't be surprised if that is his next move...

platz 9y ago

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good reason—They didn't have to give him all that venture capital. But they saw him as an expendable probe, so they cynically gave him money, to see how much law-breaking he could get away with in the name of their disruption activities. That was hubris—and nemesis is well on the way." - NEXT17 | Bruce Sterling | Live from 2027

Anderkent 9y ago
How does Uber 'oppress the underclass'? Puhlease.
- mrgordon 9y ago
  In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down or reduced in service by pricing fares artificially low for a period of time. This enables them to then exercise monopoly pricing power on the market (or oligopoly with Lyft or whatever local competitor) and ultimately harms the lower classes. Thus the $5 splurge for an Uber instead of the $2 bus hypothetically becomes the $10 Uber with no alternative short of driving yourself. I'm not super convinced by this argument but it is a reasonable argument. Especially given that Uber wields billions in venture capital specifically to systematically underprice both regular taxis and public transit options.
  - eric_the_read 9y ago
    I haven't seen this actually happen, though. In Denver, at least, RTD has been expanding routes and light rail service (albeit slowly, but that is most definitely NOT Uber's fault), even as Uber, Lyft, etc. have become more popular.
    - mrgordon 9y ago

gwern 9y ago

> After Uber’s lawyers insisted the company wouldn’t pay Kamel to clean up Kalanick’s personal scandal, Kalanick agreed to pay Kamel $200,000 out of his own pocket, according to a person familiar with the matter. “The meeting ended on a positive note, and Travis appreciated Mr. Kamel’s openness and forgiveness,” a spokesperson for Kalanick said in a statement. For $200k for being lectured for a minute, I'd have a lot of openness (of my wallet) and forgiveness too.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

The SoftBank deal will make Kalanick a billionaire. I wouldn't exactly call that a "fall". A lot of bad behavior but it seems like that behavior is being rewarded handsomely.

DonHopkins 9y ago

Shamelessly promoting Deepak Chopra on her wellness web site was inexcusable. But proxying Kalanick while promoting "meditation wristbands" for drivers??! >"Even in top-level conversations where Kalanick appeared to be absent, other executives and board members suspected that Huffington was serving as his proxy. The founder of the Huffington Post was a constant presence at Uber’s offices, making suggestions that seemed to promote her new wellness company, Thrive Global Holdings LLC. For example, she wanted to put “nap pods” at driver hubs and give drivers meditation wristbands. Huffington’s company received $50,000 in consulting fees from Uber. The perceived self-dealing didn’t go over well internally, and she had the money returned, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Huffington says that Thrive provided services at cost, and that Huffington refunded the fees when events required her to take on a more active role at Uber."

freech 9y ago

> And in New York, a small union called the New York Taxi Workers Alliance declared that there would be no taxi pickups from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport. > For Uber, that would create extra demand at the airport, which meant it could charge more—but this would probably cause a backlash. That had happened before when the company let its “surge pricing” algorithms do their thing. So the New York managers decided to be good citizens and suspend surge pricing for the night. > If the company wasn’t price gouging this time, maybe it was trying to break up the JFK strike. That's actually the opposite of what disabling surge pricing does. It makes sure that drivers aren't paid enough to bother picking up passengers there, so it protects the strike. People are idiots. Uber should start a campaign featuring polar bears cruising around or something (or maybe make fun of trump on their twitter account if they have to save money) instead of trying to fulfill the publics demands.

londons_explore 9y ago
People prefer unavailability of something to it being available at a high price. If you walk into a gas station and they say "sorry, we're out of gas" - no worries, try the next place. Whereas if they said "we're low on gas, so you have to pay $100 per gallon", there would be public outcry. People would fill up then refuse to pay. People would be forming a mob outside the station. Rational? No. But it's the way people think, and companies need to adapt to it.

telltruth 9y ago

I never understood the outrage against video secrely taken by taxi driver Fawzi Kamel. One can clearly see Kalanic was actually pretty humble, well behaved and trying to answer his questions. But Fawzi kept making accusations after another, cutting him off, not letting him answer, being very rude and just not listening. Kalanik’s argument that he was running a business was a legit. I just think people would have blamed Kalanik no matter what he did or said. Taking sabbatical was his definitely big mistake. But with his parents situation he was also at the weakest point which VCs took full advantage of. Overall, I am firmly in Kalanik’s side. Stupid VCs always want to get rid of founder who is in to long term and replace him with someone who would get exist fast. Kalanik was media’s punch bag for things he didn’t intended or even didn’t do. But world needed him, industry needed him. Without him politicians and unions would have eaten away any such companies before it became bigger. Lyft is now ripping fruits seeded by Uber. Without his audacity, Uber wasn’t possible.

irascible 9y ago

Man becomes billionaire by exploiting a legal loophole, and fucking taxi drivers out of decades of investment into the taxi medallion system.. story at 11. Fuck TK