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It feels plainly obvious that Uber is run by assholes, and that anyone who works there has a black mark on their resume forever. But that's how it feels. Is L

by alrs 12y ago

It feels plainly obvious that Uber is run by assholes, and that anyone who works there has a black mark on their resume forever. But that's how it feels. Is Lyft just better at PR?

untog 12y ago
If Lyft are better at PR then Gett must be as well - because Uber did the exact same thing to them a few months ago, allegedly. At a certain point you just have to apply Occam's Razor and realise that Uber is run by a collection of assholes.
- potatolicious 12y ago
  Not allegedly - Uber owned up to it but refused to punish any of the staff involved, saying only that they were "overzealous". http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/technology/social/uber-gett/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/technology/social/uber-gett/ At this point Uber can't reasonably claim that these were rogue employees. It's pretty obvious to everyone that this is officially sanctioned. [edit] Side note: this is not the first time a YC company has been caught engaging in highly unethical business behavior (see: AirBnb marketing). What is YC, and other investors, doing to curb this kind of behavior? Or is this level of abuse tolerated because money? [edit2] Bah, brain farted, Uber is indeed not a YC company.
  - minimaxir 12y ago
    YC has addressed instances of egregriously bad marketing, such as the InstallMonetizer incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 Although, many companies that use baity "growth hacking" strategies are indeed YC, but that's a seperate issue.
    - makomk 12y ago
      Oh yeah, they "addressed" that all right. pg argued it was OK that a company they'd supported and helped fund was paying software makers to bundle unwanted software into installers and tricking users into installing it by, amongst other techniques, disguising the prompt to install the crap as a EULA acceptance screen. (But hey, it's no big deal because the screen "has a decline as well as an accept button, and if the user declines, no software is installed" - doesn't matter that the decline button's carefully designed to make users think it'll cancel whatever installation they were actually intending to do.)
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - onan_barbarian 12y ago
    see also: "A little bit naughty" There's always been a bit of ambiguity about the sort of rule-breaking ("hacking") that is and isn't encouraged in these sort of start-ups. One person's hack is another person's unethical behavior. I know a couple folks who founded a YC company and self-reviewed their awesome iPhone app, acquiring some imaginary children in the process...
  - austinheap 12y ago
    At the accelerator I was in, this kind of behavior was encouraged. Not to this same degree of "unethical" but we had 'courses' on how to do this effectively. It's called being scrapy, right? (lulz) And to answer your question, it's completely tolerated. Just look at the iOS store and the massive botnets that used to plague it. Every major company hired botnets to game the charts. Welcome to the Valley. Edit: sorry, they called this "growth hacking".
  - selmnoo 12y ago
    Uber is not a YC company. Though, YC staff (including Sam Altman) do tend to speak highly of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101. pg also used to effusively praise Uber: "Uber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it" -- https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856
madeofpalk 12y ago
I'm not sure if saying Uber is run by assholes, esp. when each city has their own team that operates pretty independantly. I know and have met with a few times the Uber team in my local city and they're quite nice and normal people - definitely not assholes. There is however, a strong culture of 'hustle' (I've heard that exact word a couple times) within the company that I guess could encourage people looking the other way at this behaviour.
badusername 12y ago
I suspect that there is a bit of smart PR from Lyft here as well. It seems like a sympathy-for-the-underdog card being played here. I've used both services quite heavily, and talked to tons of drivers. Drivers seem happy with both the services. I wonder if Uber is just getting big enough that some media names love to take sides. Knowing many people at these companies, I'm not sure if we are objectively assessing this situation.
- nyrulez 12y ago
  Hmm the CNN article clearly says: "Uber acknowledged the tactics went overboard.". And this was for the exact same issue, 6 months ago. Are you saying Uber is trying to be nice to rivals be falsely acknowledging that they are assholes ?

by alrs 12y ago

It feels plainly obvious that Uber is run by assholes, and that anyone who works there has a black mark on their resume forever. But that's how it feels. Is Lyft just better at PR?

untog 12y ago

If Lyft are better at PR then Gett must be as well - because Uber did the exact same thing to them a few months ago, allegedly. At a certain point you just have to apply Occam's Razor and realise that Uber is run by a collection of assholes.

potatolicious 12y ago
Not allegedly - Uber owned up to it but refused to punish any of the staff involved, saying only that they were "overzealous". http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/technology/social/uber-gett/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/technology/social/uber-gett/ At this point Uber can't reasonably claim that these were rogue employees. It's pretty obvious to everyone that this is officially sanctioned. [edit] Side note: this is not the first time a YC company has been caught engaging in highly unethical business behavior (see: AirBnb marketing). What is YC, and other investors, doing to curb this kind of behavior? Or is this level of abuse tolerated because money? [edit2] Bah, brain farted, Uber is indeed not a YC company.
- minimaxir 12y ago
  YC has addressed instances of egregriously bad marketing, such as the InstallMonetizer incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5092711 Although, many companies that use baity "growth hacking" strategies are indeed YC, but that's a seperate issue.
  - makomk 12y ago
    Oh yeah, they "addressed" that all right. pg argued it was OK that a company they'd supported and helped fund was paying software makers to bundle unwanted software into installers and tricking users into installing it by, amongst other techniques, disguising the prompt to install the crap as a EULA acceptance screen. (But hey, it's no big deal because the screen "has a decline as well as an accept button, and if the user declines, no software is installed" - doesn't matter that the decline button's carefully designed to make users think it'll cancel whatever installation they were actually intending to do.)
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- onan_barbarian 12y ago
  see also: "A little bit naughty" There's always been a bit of ambiguity about the sort of rule-breaking ("hacking") that is and isn't encouraged in these sort of start-ups. One person's hack is another person's unethical behavior. I know a couple folks who founded a YC company and self-reviewed their awesome iPhone app, acquiring some imaginary children in the process...
- austinheap 12y ago
  At the accelerator I was in, this kind of behavior was encouraged. Not to this same degree of "unethical" but we had 'courses' on how to do this effectively. It's called being scrapy, right? (lulz) And to answer your question, it's completely tolerated. Just look at the iOS store and the massive botnets that used to plague it. Every major company hired botnets to game the charts. Welcome to the Valley. Edit: sorry, they called this "growth hacking".
- selmnoo 12y ago
  Uber is not a YC company. Though, YC staff (including Sam Altman) do tend to speak highly of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8100101. pg also used to effusively praise Uber: "Uber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it" -- https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/222462460978937856

madeofpalk 12y ago

I'm not sure if saying Uber is run by assholes, esp. when each city has their own team that operates pretty independantly. I know and have met with a few times the Uber team in my local city and they're quite nice and normal people - definitely not assholes. There is however, a strong culture of 'hustle' (I've heard that exact word a couple times) within the company that I guess could encourage people looking the other way at this behaviour.

badusername 12y ago

I suspect that there is a bit of smart PR from Lyft here as well. It seems like a sympathy-for-the-underdog card being played here. I've used both services quite heavily, and talked to tons of drivers. Drivers seem happy with both the services. I wonder if Uber is just getting big enough that some media names love to take sides. Knowing many people at these companies, I'm not sure if we are objectively assessing this situation.

nyrulez 12y ago
Hmm the CNN article clearly says: "Uber acknowledged the tactics went overboard.". And this was for the exact same issue, 6 months ago. Are you saying Uber is trying to be nice to rivals be falsely acknowledging that they are assholes ?