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1. "There was no problem, nobody stole anything"
2. "OK fine we knew he stole, but he said he deleted it and we believe him"
Doesn't the flat out lie in #1 completely destroy any sort of admission in statement #2 that conveniently suggests they're off the hook?
Didn't they originally deny that there was any sort of wrongdoing? If so then why should we believe them now? What I mean is 1. "There was no problem, nobody stole anything" 2. "OK fine we knew he stole, but he said he deleted it and we believe him" Doesn't the flat out lie in #1 completely destroy any sort of admission in statement #2 that conveniently suggests they're off the hook?
Travis Kalanick is clearly an adrenaline junkie. I understand the start-up CEOs need to be bold but he seems to completely lack the ability to evaluate and minimize risk. Good strategy isn't just about winning every battle, it's also about avoiding the battles you don't need to fight. Travis seems like he's never seen a fight he won't jump into. It's wild.
That reminds me of Sun Tzu. It also reminds me of, I forget who, maybe Jobs, who said not to even compete, just make your competition irrelevant. Ie. Find a way to not even have to fight the battles.
Didn't they originally deny that there was any sort of wrongdoing? If so then why should we believe them now? What I mean is 1. "There was no problem, nobody stole anything" 2. "OK fine we knew he stole, but he said he deleted it and we believe him" Doesn't the flat out lie in #1 completely destroy any sort of admission in statement #2 that conveniently suggests they're off the hook?
Well there's a slight difference, it seems like now that Kalanick has left, they want to use him as a scapegoat, and the narrative here is that Uber as a whole didn't know until now. So theoretically, 1 & 2 could both be true, albeit 2 would be more like "Kalanick knew but didn't tell us".
Edit: Pardon my cynicism - I'm just a bit suspicious with things like this :-)
One of the key points is buried a few paragraphs in. > "Uber, though, says Kalanick told Levandowski not to bring any of the Google information with him to Uber... The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them." I have no way of knowing if the above is true, but if so, it paints Kalanick in a far more…
It sounds more like they decided to throw Levandowski under the bus. Whether any of that is true or not, they know that it's already an established fact that Levandowski had the disks with Google information and they can't keep pretending they didn't know. The only reasonable course of action is for them to admit that they knew, but that Levandowski was the sole bad actor, and they didn't want anything to do with the…
One of the key points is buried a few paragraphs in. > "Uber, though, says Kalanick told Levandowski not to bring any of the Google information with him to Uber... The filing asserts that Levandowski destroyed the disks containing Google's material not long after Kalanick told him that Uber didn't want the information on them." I have no way of knowing if the above is true, but if so, it paints Kalanick in a far more…
If I were a CEO and a potential new hire told me he had stolen confidential information, there's no way I'd hire him. Even ignoring lawsuits, I'd be worried that he would turn around and steal my confidential information.
Once someone admits that they are willing to steal information and basically sell it to other companies there really is no excuse to hire them unless you really want that information. You can't trust them not to steal from you in the future, and even if you don't use the information it's going to be hard to prove that fact if the theft eventually gets discovered.
To be blunt the fact that Travis supposedly told him to destroy the information doesn't make him look much better to me at all. Knowing that Levandowski straight up stole from Google and hiring him anyways makes Travis look either ridiculously incompetent or straight up malicious.
Worst case scenario was that Kalanick not only knew this, actually planned it with Levandowski.
Reasoning behind the $680M acquisition could be very important.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14612196