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The Fall of Travis Kalanick

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Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#121

Post by Balgair »

dawhizkid wrote: post #20
derwiki wrote: post #3

> “Until 2017, you could go into Uber on any given day and half the T-shirts were Uber T-shirts,” says one executive. “They disappeared overnight. People didn’t want to wear Uber stuff.”

Speaking for myself, I worked at Uber in 2015/2016 and did not wear Uber swag in public because I was afraid of awkward encounters with Uber drivers, which happened on several occasions sitting in the car when it somehow became known I was an Uber employee.

To be fair, the drivers are employees in a few countries nowadays :P

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#122

Post by Balgair »

platz wrote: post #40

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good…

Aside: Isn't Moore's Law dead, as strictly defined? We've been at ~.25TB to 1TB phones for a few years now.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#123

Post by DenisM »

Anderkent wrote: post #108
DenisM wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commoditizing labor is very disruptive and stuff, yet it drives down the price to commodity levels - right above subsistence. The entire gig economy is like this. And not just them either.

If there were better options available, people would work there. Folks drive ubers not because they want to contribute to the 'gig economy', but because that's the best option they have. Removing someone's best option never helps them.

Same argument can be applied to labor conditions in the factories 100 years ago. It was wrong then, and it might be wrong now.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#124

Post by twalla »

Balgair wrote: post #122
platz wrote: post #40

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good…

Aside: Isn't Moore's Law dead, as strictly defined? We've been at ~.25TB to 1TB phones for a few years now.

Moore's Law has to do with transistor density in integrated circuits. The analogue for storage is apparently something called Kryder's Law.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#125

Post by dang »

decacorn wrote: post #43
zwily wrote: post #2

If you’ve followed the Kalanick story till now, there’s nothing new in this article. However, it’s interesting to see it all put together. Anyone know what it’s like inside Uber today?

For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious, malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the n…

I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but please don't deface Hacker News by posting rage rants, and certainly please don't post the personal attacks you're alluding to here. Those things break the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You needn't hold any particular view to post here and relevant personal experience is always welcome, as long as discussion remains thoughtful. Your more factual comments in this thread have been fine.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#126

Post by rajacombinator »

platz wrote: post #40

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good…

Oh cmon. Travis may have demonstrated himself to be an unmitigated douchebag over the years but he’s still orders of magnitude above VCs on the scale of being a decent human. Being “despised and never trusted” by those guys is a good signal. Uber may have issues also, but they’re arguably much better than SV establishment companies in terms of screwing their userbase. Uber just doesn’t hide it behind “don’t be evil” BS.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#127

Post by mrgordon »

IWeldMelons wrote: post #118
mrgordon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, in San Francisco the bus costs $2.50 to $2.75 depending on how you pay. If two people want to go somewhere, thats at least $5. Instead I can get door to door service with Lyft for between $3.90 and $4.10 for the first person and an additional $0.90 for the second person. This means I typically come out slightly ahead with Lyft with two people and its way more convenient. Its great... for now. Who knows h…

3.90? Are you going like half a mile or what? Most of the city people usually have bus passes, because jobs are often far away.

Usually 1-2 miles. We don't need to do it every day so it isn't worth having a bus pass. If we wanted to do it daily though, there are ridesharing passes too. Some people pay like $20-25 a month for a pack of Uber passes that give a certain number of rides.

This is just talking about the daily commute. Say I want to go to the airport. Its $12-14 in a Lyft usually and about the same for two people on BART. Even if I had a bus pass for work, I'd still need to pay for either BART or Lyft and Lyft saves at least 45 minutes (including 15 minutes of walking to get to a station) for an approximately equal price so it ends up being a no brainer until prices go up.

Obviously if you go large distances then a commuter rail pass or maybe a bus pass would make more sense.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#128

Post by kahnpro »

misun78 wrote: post #54
harryh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is an unprofitable, non-public company with incredibly fierce competition that is expected to face enormous changes do to technological developments. Why in the world would you think it needs a peacetime CEO?

Peacetime doesn’t necessarily mean not being competitive. Uber is at a stage where it doesn’t need to bend the rules anymore. Read up on how Dara handled the Brazil legislation for example. Rather than fighting any regulation as TK may have, he effectively worked with the government to legalize and legitimize Uber. I expect him to do the same in London.

Bend the rules? Are you for real?

Uber not only deliberately and flagrantly breaks the law, but it developed systems to prevent police and regulators from doing their jobs.

Uber is like someone who wants to rob banks until he gets rich, and then use the money to stay out of jail and transition into legitimate business.

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#129

Post by Jasper_ »

meri_dian wrote: post #116
platz wrote: post #40

"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass, and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant Moore's Law style innovation. And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They didn't have to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted, for good…

Silicon Valley doesn't oppress the underclass, what a load of melodramatic nonsense. Most Silicon Valley companies have nothing to do with the underclass, and when they do it's usually in the form of making things like movies, TV shows and music more affordable (think Spotify and Netflix among others).

Wait, you don't think "the gig economy" of Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Doordash has anything to do with the underclass? That's the workforce that actually does the job that they consistently try to stifle and pay less under the guise of being "a tech company".

Re: The Fall of Travis Kalanick

#130

Post by Jasper_ »

Anderkent wrote: post #108
DenisM wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commoditizing labor is very disruptive and stuff, yet it drives down the price to commodity levels - right above subsistence. The entire gig economy is like this. And not just them either.

If there were better options available, people would work there. Folks drive ubers not because they want to contribute to the 'gig economy', but because that's the best option they have. Removing someone's best option never helps them.

Perhaps some of that $50 billion valuation can be used to pay their workforce a proper wage and give them benefits? Just a thought...
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