131–140 of 164 posts
While I do agree that the culture at Uber was toxic and ultimately Travis was to blame for that, on a human level I do feel for the guy. At the end of the day, he just lost his mother and now also his life's work for the foreseeable future. And damn that must suck.
A commenter in another thread put it very well: you can have as many voting shares as you like, but you aren't in control of your company until you're profitable.
You are never in control of your company unless you don’t have employees.
It is productive to discuss how founders like Zuckerberg and Kalanick retained majority voting rights, because that's meaningful even if you use a pithy definition of control that makes it virtually impossible to achieve. Similarly we can talk about the class of shares Snap issued which do not allow shareholders to control the company.
When you abstract legitimate insights like "executives at pre-profitable/public companies can't rely on voting rights for security" to "no one has control as long as customers are a thing", you preempt a lot of very useful discussion. You've defined away the controversy.
In retrospect, it is interesting to see that a reflective blog post from an engineer ended up in the casualties of CEO, most of the senior leadership and a few board members. Maybe the cracks were already there but nevertheless it has been surreal seeing this unfold in the space of 5 months. It is almost like watching the butterfly effect in action.
I'm reminded of the Hemingway quote: "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." Without diminishing the impact of Susan Fowler's blog post, Uber has already been "going bankrupt" slowly for years before this point. I has been surreal watching this unfold, but I'd hesitate to compare it to the butterfly effect - unless we're talking about many, many butterflies over a long period of time ;) I do…
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Uber isn't built on a tower of fraud like Theranos, it's a behemoth that changed how transportation works. Travis is going to be a billionaire many times over when the stock is liquid.
He started a taxi service with a slick app to order rides. He was successful by willful criminality, disregarding inconvenient regulations and laws. His company can't retain employees and is burning cash. Their only viable path to profitability assumes no regulatory fallout or serious competition. He did not change how transportation works. He got where he is through a combination of luck, good timing, and criminalit…
Have you ever spoken to an African American what it's like to hail a cab? Read the estimates on the number of drunk drivers taken off the road?
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There is literally no catch. I just launched this as an offshoot from my main startup, and I have no plans for direct monetizing of Read Across The Aisle. The only way that I benefit is that this app raises awareness for my other startup. See my response to a sister comment for more details!
But why would the WSJ consent to this? I find it exceedingly hard to believe that they don't get anything in return.
To be honest, I've been surprised at the interest this project had received from major media companies. We actually were almost acquired by a large media company that wanted to build a new brand and put Read Across The Aisle as a central part of it.
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I'm reminded of the Hemingway quote: "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." Without diminishing the impact of Susan Fowler's blog post, Uber has already been "going bankrupt" slowly for years before this point. I has been surreal watching this unfold, but I'd hesitate to compare it to the butterfly effect - unless we're talking about many, many butterflies over a long period of time ;) I do…
Isn't part of the butterfly effect narrative that a number of things were already balanced at such a delicate point that they could be tipped?
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He created a service that reduced drunk driving rates by 1/3, enabled nearly 200K drivers to become entrepreneurs, provided a valuable service to millions of customers, and accelerated the shift to self driving cars. That deserves serious credit.
Lets take this point by point: - reduced drunk driving rates by 1/3 Not going to argue with that one, it is good. - enabled nearly 200K drivers to become entrepreneurs I used to work in direct sales, aka multi level marketing. They too called the people there "entrepreneurs". Those very people your describing as "entrepreneurs" have been suing Uber for missing money. When confronted by one of these drivers about mone…
Yup. Telling grunts that they're "entrepreneurs" as an excuse to not pay them is a very old scam.
Back in 2010-2011, I was unemployed, and I was constantly getting messages (mostly via CareerBuilder) from life insurance companies saying they had sales positions for me. They sounded sketchy, largely because they were all hitting me up when I had no sales background whatsoever, so I looked some of them up.
The reports were... not pleasant. Ripoff Report was full of complaints about these companies [0]. Some examples:
- You had to pay to receive training.
- You are expected to drive around to lots of places as part of your job, at your expense.
- You are legally classified as a franchise, so they don't have to pay you like an employee.
- Compensation is 100% commission, plus the money you make by recruiting other people (pyramid scheme much?).
- People complained that their job largely consisted of repeatedly harassing unionized companies who went with the life insurance provider associated with their union. They were ordered to attempt union busting as part of their job.
- Sales goals were set up to be impossible to meet, you are given no support whatsoever to help you reach your goals, and the people above you in the pyramid would frequently berate you, call you an idiot, and tell you that you're a hopelessly terrible salesman.
Oh, and here's the real kicker: once they got wind of people using Ripoff Report to complain, they would astroturf fake reviews. The reviews are often striped: every negative review is immediately followed by a positive review accusing the previous reviewer of having a personal vendetta against the company because they sucked at being an entrepreneur and didn't know how to grow their own business and said that they were just jealous of all the successful entrepreneurs the company has grown.
[0] Here's one of them: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/liberty-national-life-in...
"The culture at Uber is Toxic."
I keep hearing this. Yes, there are clearly some sexual harassment issues, I'm not sure it's systemic. I lived a couple of blocks from Uber's HQ's on 10th/Market and I went to lots of meetups there. People I met were happy and proud of the company.
As for the rest of the events, such as Greyball, etc. I don't consider that toxic, I consider that disruptive. Had Uber not have done that, the lobbyists for the Taxi industry would have kept the status quo.
It was Uber, pushing hard, that changed the world, for the better. That's how the world changes, people pushing hard and breaking the rules when they know the rules are wrong.
I also personally worked with Travis and I know his personality. He pushes hard, he works hard, he wants to win. That may be because he's had some really tough losses too (Scout, RedSwoosh [1]). I have a lot of respect for him, being an entrepreneur is tough, especially when it's raining.
[1] Although he had an exit, it was a slog ~7-year slog where he lost funding and was, at one point, alone.
While I do agree that the culture at Uber was toxic and ultimately Travis was to blame for that, on a human level I do feel for the guy. At the end of the day, he just lost his mother and now also his life's work for the foreseeable future. And damn that must suck.
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Rape? When did that happen?
Probably a reference to the lackluster background checks performed by Uber et al. Closest aggregator of data I found seems to have a very anti-ride-sharing view ("We are an initiative of the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association"), but here it is nonetheless: http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/rideshare-incidents