Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O. • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#111

Post by nodesocket » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 5:59 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #41

This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.) IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out i…

I concur. This is a very poor decision all of which stems from the snowballing and mob mentality of the outraged.

Companies at this stage in an ultra competitive market (not talking about ride sharing, but self-driving) need their founders to lead and grow. It is just too early and critical to bring in a professional CEO. See Apple.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#112

Post by aaronbrethorst » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:00 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #73

kornish wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't kid yourself for a second that investors are kicking Travis out because of a moral imperative.

No, they're kicking him out because the public is coming to see it as a moral imperative that Uber needs to be held accountable in some way for their behavior. I don't really care if the investors have or follow their morals, as long as they are in some way strongly incentivized to behave in that manner. We can't make the people have morals, but we can strongly encourage them to act like they do.

Yep, agreed.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#113

Post by logicallee » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:00 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #41

This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.) IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out i…

can't they just cut their burn rate? I mean it's not like they own a fleet of cars they need to make car payments on and fill with gas to keep operating.... in theory there's no minimum spend to keep operating, is there? if (hypotehtically) they cut spend to approx. nil, and 95% of their drivers left, then 5% of their drivers would remain and they would be profitable... where does the "killing" of Uber occur?

Yahoo for example is coasting along at a market cap of 53.40B down from its high of over $125 billion[1]. In 1999 dollars. Is it "dead"?

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/yahoo-market-cap-over-time-20...

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#114

Post by sverhagen » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:00 AM UTC

slice_of_life wrote: post #38

Pushing a founder out is often a bad idea. This might very well be the beginning of Uber's demise. This won't be good for the company. All CEOs make mistakes even great ones like Gates with antitrust or Zuck calling users dumb-fucks. They weren't kicked out, they instead were allowed to come into their own. There's a distinct fire that a founder has for the company they founded. You can't hire that. Without this fire…

I pretty much can't stumble upon an article about Uber that's not about controversy. I know that kind of news sells better. But in my perception now Uber had the pendulum swung far off center. I've been shocked by their (reported) ethics, to the point of not purchasing their services. I know that consequence is not taken by a majority of people, but I do sense a more than average disgust for Uber's ethics. If you'd asked me, I'd have welcomed their demise. The only thing to turn that around for me is new leadership.

A woman for Uber CEO would be a good signal -- if the best candidate for the job happens to be one. Didn't Marissa Mayer recently resign from her job, and be available?

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#115

Post by kevmo » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:01 AM UTC

visakanv wrote: post #80

TheRealmccoy wrote: post #7

Susan Fowler is the giant killer of this century. Salutation!

She was the bullet in the gun that Uber held to its own head; they could've avoided it by not being a shitty place for women to work

Exactly. And this had been coming for years. A transgendered friend of mine starting working there in 2014. She quit within a week. It was only a matter of time.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#116

Post by necubi » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:01 AM UTC

rmason wrote: post #12

Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors behind this horrid behavior. Travis is not without his flaws but he created an awful lot of value for them. They pressure him into taking a sabbatical, then two days in they pull this cowardly act of firing him remotely. Not only was it a cowardly act, but it was the wrong thing to do for the business. It will lead to an epic destruction of value. Wo…

Wow -- I'm amazed to hear this sentiment. I'm personally proud that one of our VCs was involved.

Travis helped build an incredible company, but his disregard for the law, for his employees' well-being, for basic decency threaten to tear all of that down. Just in the past six months:

* Susan Fowler's blog post exposed a terribly broken HR system and a culture of sexual harassment that reached the very top. This has huge legal implications in addition to the obvious moral and ethical ones.

* Waymo's lawsuit could shut down Uber's self-driving car program, into which they have put hundreds of millions of dollars. There may be evidence that Travis colluded with Levandowski to steal Google's self-driving techonology.

* Uber is under investigation at several levels of government for their Greyball program to hide from law enforcement.

* On top of all this, Travis was videotaped cursing at a driver who complained about pay rates.

At this point, Travis had to go. It's going to be hard for Uber to recover from all this, but this is the first step. I hope that this becomes a lesson in SV that there are consequences to this kind of behavior, and that at some point the adults will step in.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#117

Post by hkmurakami » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:02 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #5

If Uber ends up going down in flames, unable to recover from the scandals and lawsuits, and Lyft prevails, it will be the most incredible change of fate in the business world this century or perhaps longer. The future of automobiles and transportation is still being swirled about, and it feels like Uber's downfall has blown the game WIDE open, ready for anyone (maybe Uber, maybe Lyft, maybe Tesla, Google, Apple, an a…

Pardon me for being somewhat rude, but your perspective suggests that you're perhaps relatively young?

IBM's recent demise, Lehman Brothers going down under, Enron, Arthur Anderson / Worldcom, the dismantling of Japanese mega conglomerates by the GHQ, Apple's 90's turnaround, the death of workstation companies, deregulation of US airlines, are all orders of magnitude more impactful than if Uber dies and Lyft prevails.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#118

Post by sharmi » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:02 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #41

This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.) IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out i…

Though not yet proven, wasn't a similar logic used by HR (or higher management) to justify not taking action against "star performers" for their transgressions?

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#119

Post by Cogito » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:02 AM UTC

abritinthebay wrote: post #68

blazespin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please investigate, not necessarily believe. Innocent til proven guilty still has some place in this world.. That being said, kudos to anyone courageous enough to speak the truth even at the risk of vilification.

Investigating starts with belief. You don't have to assume truth, just believe they mean their account, you assume good faith. Believe them and allow that belief to start the process of uncovering what the truth is. There's a reason Listen & Believe is a thing and it's not because anyone is saying "you should have unquestioned faith in what someone says".

I'm not sure what you mean here by belief, but it seems like a redefinition that causes the word to lose value.

"Believe" has always implied to me "understands to be true". How can I believe anything based only on the words of a single person? (Except trivial things like believing that they said something to you)

I have primarily heard the phrase "listen and believe" used by people who think it is impossible for certain kinds of people to understand the experiences of other kinds of people.

Following that argument, the claim is that if you assert an experience I am not capable of understanding then I must accept it, for I have no grounds to refute it.

This has always seemed like unquestioned faith to me, for I think any argument should be able to stand on it's own merit. Maybe I am missing some nuance to the argument, or perhaps there is more going on, but in any case 'believe' seems to be the wrong word.

Re: Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as C.E.O.

#120

Post by jmspring » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:02 AM UTC

rmason wrote: post #12

Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors behind this horrid behavior. Travis is not without his flaws but he created an awful lot of value for them. They pressure him into taking a sabbatical, then two days in they pull this cowardly act of firing him remotely. Not only was it a cowardly act, but it was the wrong thing to do for the business. It will lead to an epic destruction of value. Wo…

Travis himself has exhibited poor public behavior that was recorded by an Uber driver. That in itself reflects upon the company.

Yes his assertiveness and drive got them where they are, but sometimes companies do need to grow up.

Jobs was a consistent asshole expecting perfection. That is way different than emboldening a climate of harassment, degradation, etc. that took place under his watch. Having recent external c-level hires quit due to the revelations of "culture" speak much.

I hope Uber can continue. As someone who travels internationally on business, it's quite useful. Seeing him go, it's just one more example. Pincus felt screwed through how Tribe.net went through, set himself up in a sheltered position at Zynga and through a combination of "management style" and problems at the company had to step down.

The cultural issues made public between Zynga and Uber are way different, but in both cases you had CEOs that structured the holdings such that they could retain power despite turmoil.

Sometimes the turmoil is too great.

My last international trip, I used Lyft.