71–80 of 142 posts
There is a podcast called The Dollop where one person essentially teaches another person about a particular subject. They recently did Uber and it was eye-opening to see just how shady this company has always been. I am not a fan of Uber but after listening to this I will never use them again. Podcast link: http://thedollop.libsyn.com/271-uber
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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…
Here is the problem, because there is only one of two arguments you can make. 1. He was so inept as CEO that he was unaware of all (it is a big list) the shady things putting the company he was the majority share holder of at risk that he deserves to be fired and have it crash and burn. 2. He was aware of the bulk of the shady things, that makes him complicit. As an endorser of Ubers lager pattern of behavior and ove…
Accusations of shillage without evidence also isn't allowed here, for what it's worth. You didn't accuse, but the sentiment is annoying. I think "apologist" is the word you're looking for.
Your comment is like fallacy bingo. E.g. false dichotomies are rarely enumerated as "1" and "2", but I suppose that makes it easier to call out.
The most straightforward third option is that it's very hard to manage 14k employees or be aware of what all of them are doing. It's not a minor thing to overlook, but again, the information flow stopped at HR.
As for Greyball, it's possible that some lieutenant got it into their heads to use that program to evade regulators, rather than Kalanick himself. Remember, the program was developed under false pretenses.
The "Hell" program was developed to get insights into their competitor. Contrast this with their "Heaven" program which is a god's-eye view of every Uber on the road. They pushed it much too far by abusing Lyft's API, but collecting info about a competitor is a pretty standard thing for a startup to do.
The list goes on.
There is a podcast called The Dollop where one person essentially teaches another person about a particular subject. They recently did Uber and it was eye-opening to see just how shady this company has always been. I am not a fan of Uber but after listening to this I will never use them again. Podcast link: http://thedollop.libsyn.com/271-uber
Wow, interesting stuff. I have not used Uber for a long time. Lyft is my goto app.
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I agree that the entire Levandowski mess is completely Kalanick's fault. He was in completely control when he hired him, and presumably overincentivized him with a $250 million pay package. But that's a completely different issue than the original point. The point is that there was no conspiracy to steal Waymo's trade secrets. There was no conspiracy to use Waymo's technologies in Uber self-driving cars, who already…
I do not know that there was no conspiracy, and neither do you unless you have nonpublic information. We have a very narrow slice of information that has been filtered through the legal process. Your particular slant on the story is great, enjoy. At least you've dropped the cheap media bashing; that was my primary point.
Emphasis mine. Does anyone else find this to be particularly odd wording for 2016/7? When was the last time anyone here that is tech savvy use multiple disks for storage of anything? Desktop and laptop hard drives can now hold multiple terabytes of data and thumb drives now hold in excess of one terabyte. Plus, most people now use drives not discs. Most laptops don't even contain disk drives and haven't for years.
I'm probably alone here, but this detail alone makes this heresay seem suspicious to me. Did anyone else find the mention of multiple discs in 2016/7 odd as well?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
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!
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The media wants to tell any story that gets attention. Complaining about the media is a distraction, but at least here there's the amusement of accusing the media of conspiring to tell the story of a conspiracy that doesn't exist. The contempt charge is less material to the story you are interested in talking about, but looks rather important to me. And we don't have proof of anything - Maybe Kalanick got cold feet p…
I agree that the entire Levandowski mess is completely Kalanick's fault. He was in completely control when he hired him, and presumably overincentivized him with a $250 million pay package. But that's a completely different issue than the original point. The point is that there was no conspiracy to steal Waymo's trade secrets. There was no conspiracy to use Waymo's technologies in Uber self-driving cars, who already…
I'm not quite sure what to make of that. He's so desperate to win at self-driving cars that he'll hire Levandowski, even though Levandowski has proven himself to be shady? He's "telling" Levandowski (with a wink) to destroy the files, really meaning "keep a copy at home, don't let it ever touch our work computers, but keep feeding us the information"? Or what?
I guess, at a minimum, the fact that Uber tried to delay this information from getting into the court case means that it isn't innocent. (Or they're afraid that it looks bad enough that it's really going to cost them. But delaying disclosure makes it look bad, too...)
Why does the media keep calling Levandowski a plain old engineer? If Levandowski qualifies as a nameless engineer the title should read "Waymo filing says engineer knew engineer had Google info." Levandowski is a well known tech entrepreneur and was before this case, he wasn't just some worker bee Uber hired to sling code that stole IP from Google before leaving. It sort of feels like the VW emissions scandal being b…
Yeah, I always do a double-take when I read engineer, because I take it to mean that it was some other engineer, because obviously if it was Levandowski, they'd have mentioned him by name. He's literally the protagonist of this whole drama, and they keep referring to him as 'engineer'. WTF.
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Wow, interesting stuff. I have not used Uber for a long time. Lyft is my goto app.
Had there been no Uber, there wouldn't have been Lyft. Uber is not just the first-comer or pioneer but it also fought most of the first-fights with city officials and Taxi unions which actually gave confidence to Lyft for their survival!
Headline choice is editorializing - the actual quote "Mr.Kalanick conveyed to Mr. Levandowski in response that Mr. Levandowski should not bring any Google information into Uber and that Uber did not want any Google information. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Levandowski communicated to Uber that he had destroyed the discs"
> This would obviously be a strong piece of support for Waymo’s case, since it establishes a timeline in which Uber was aware of Levandowski’s alleged actions even prior to finalizing their acquisition of Otto, which would in turn mean that Uber can’t claim to be completely separated from Levandowski’s actions.