The media has reported on some fairly outrageous cultural excesses. Question -- did you experience these when Kalanick was there? Since Dara showed up, anything specific you can say about what was done and whether it "feels different" and how?
In some places the CEO is a distant figurehead, and whatever his or her values, the day-to-day experience is more dominated by your local crew of < 20 people. In other places, culture is truly pervasive. I feel like the reporting is saying that culture is pervasive at Uber, but it would be interesting to hear an inside perspective.
Both? I experienced nothing anywhere close to the egregiousness mentioned in the media. But TKs ruthlessness, long work hours ethics was always omnipresent. It wasn’t so much top down mandated to work hard but the culture was there. Paradoxically managers at times would have to push the employees to take breaks, vacations etc. I personally relished that environment but understandable how those would other commitments would find it hard. Our compensation structure also encouraged working hard (and all the stress, burnouts and disappointments that stemmed from it) so even if an employee had all the freedom to leave work at 5 pm and do other things, unless you were ultra-efficient in the 8-9 hours at work (which some of the best engineers I worked with were), there was always a risk of missed incentives. In short, it felt like a great company for those who could manage these trade offs. For all others, it was stressful.
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.
Your definition of peacetime/wartime does not conform to industry norms.
Peacetime in business means those times when a company has a large advantage vs. the competition in its core market, and its market is growing. In times of peace, the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths.
In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources including competition, dramatic macro economic change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth. The great wartime CEO Andy Grove marvelously describes the forces that can take a company from peacetime to wartime in his book Only The Paranoid Survive.
Actually I agree with them here, it's much more peaceful now than before. When we were trying to break into China and facing against Didi that really seemed like we were at war. Like we would start a growth campaign and merely hours after we launch, Didi would launch the exact same campaign. Even after the merger I'm not sure if this is true but we found 16 employees who were on both Ubers and Didi's payroll.
FF is great. She is leading online courses for all Uber employees about business strategy and culture from real Harvard professors. It’s very educational for everyone.
It’s a very unique opportunity for us because she is an expert on what makes companies great. Not just culturally but business strategy too. Having her as a key member of the team is an advantage that t companies don’t have because whereas other people are figuring things out on their own, she actually studied it and taught it.
I hope she stays a long time to help mold this company into one of the greatest companies.
Dara couldn’t be more perfect for who we need as a CEO right now and going forward. Culture is definitely shifting toward a more normal work life balance. Things were crazy for many years with how much people worked but for the most part it was out of excitement. Many, many people were overworked however and burnt out. That culture of squeezing out every ounce from everyone is gone, for the better. It’s not sustainable.
Frances Frei is a former Harvard Business School professor and arranged for several HBX classes from Harvard professors on business strategy that were very interesting and helpful. Having her as a guide as to how a great company should be behaving is a huge asset.
TK was great and built the entire industry but he overstepped his abilities and became his and Uber’s worst enemy.
I’m assuming after the SoftBank deal closes many long time employees will be gone. And why shouldn’t they, they are worth millions at this point, but only number in the hundreds. And this happens to all companies in the same situation, like google, Facebook, Dropbox, etc.
Overall the pace has slowed dramatically and has a big company feel. But the majority of people, myself included, are fiercely proud of the work that we do and the product that we have built.
The food could be better, though. Maybe after we become profitable? (This is an internal joke to all Uber employees)
> Frances Frei is a former Harvard Business School professor and arranged for several HBX classes from Harvard professors on business strategy that were very interesting and helpful.
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 names of the two uber atg employees responsible. Time's up, dickheads.
I’m sorry you had a terrible interview experience. In 2017 we hired Gayle Laakmann McDowell (CTCI author) to train engineers on how to interview better and how to design better interview questions that weren’t biased. She held many sessions so hopefully our interviewing experience improves but it’s a skill that needs constant training.
My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not “getting” unit tests.
i went through a number (again i am refraining to be specific in order to mask my identity) of interviews, let's just say between 2-10 interviews. The rudeness I experienced was 10X worse than your situation, so I really feel for you.
my interviewer was 15 minutes late to the call, didn't even know what position i was applying for, didn't ask me at all about the assignment they made me do, then ended my call early because they had to be somewhere. already knew i didn't get the job but didn't even get back to me until a month later.
person still works at uber. pretty high up now. i guess i'm glad i didn't get farther given all that came out afterwards.
Honest question. How do you know it's a company-wide culture issue if you haven't worked there? In my experience, teams at Uber are pretty insular with only occasional interactions outside their groups.
this situation involved several people. possibly an entire team.
I also believe I was the target of an information-hunting initiative within uber, which was revealed publicly last year. I believe I was only interviewed to gain as much information about the company i was working for at the time. The recruiter was not listed on any uber database, and may not have even been officially a recruiting lead. after several probing questions about the company i was working for at the time, it became pretty clear the atg group had more of an interest in gaining info on the company rather than hiring me. extremely unprofessional. but that wasnt even the worse part.
Wow, that's appalling. I'm really sorry to hear that. I know there's a competitive intelligence group somewhere in Uber, and given the ultimatum email specifically targeted at that group that I mentioned in my other comment, I guess it doesn't come as a complete surprise.
I do have a copy of an email about the newest policy governing competitive intelligence gathering from Salle Yoo (head of legal) from late august 2017. Skimming through it, what you described would be in blatant violation of probably half of the document. Not to mention that it flies in the face of basic human decency.
Yea, not much I could do in the situation. I didn't want to raise any flags because I didn't want it get out in the public and I especially didn't want the company I was working for at the time to know I was interviewing elsewhere.
It was very shocking why they were asking very specific technical questions regarding how the company I was working for at the time was addressing. Let's just say it relates to the infamous Uber-Waymo case. That was my red flag, about 30 min - 1 hour into the whole interview process.
I interviewed at the Pittsburgh office early 2017, and it was a great experience. Granted, I did not get the job, but I feel like the technical portion was fair and not an unpleasant experience.
I was interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst professional experience in my life.
Something is up with SF Bay Area corporate culture. There are many taboos -- things you just don't do -- which I only saw broken in my career once I arrived in the Bay Area.
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.
Another Uber employee here. I can confirm that whereas opinions of Travis were a mixed bag, Dara is pretty much universally liked. He's very serious about doing things the right way, and him taking the initiative to address the previously-under-covers 2016 leak gets my utmost respect.
I got in just a month before TK stepped out, shortly before the Holden report, and Liane Hornsay and Frances Frei joined. Since then, the company implemented a crisis hotline where you can anonymously report abuse, it ran courses about what's considered inappropriate behavior, and there's a huge overhaul going on with regards to the cultural values and the performance appraisal process. Frances was particularly vocal about the inadequacy of the top 3 bottom 3 system that was in place before.
I mentioned this before elsewhere, but when Liane had a board member step down the afternoon after he made a sexist comment in a all-hands meeting, it spoke volumes about how serious they were about setting new norms at Uber.
I also recall seeing an email a few months ago that basically said that whoever was working on any competitive intelligence project involving spying was to halt all further work effective immediately. The culture of doing things right is definitely becoming a thing.
> “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.
I would never assume someone walking around with a North Face t-shirt works for North Face but tech companies are obscure, especially outside of the big tech cities. If I see someone wearing a t-shirt for a tech company in my city, they more likely than not work for that company. If I saw someone with an Uber shirt I would assume they work for them, and probably as corporate. I can't say I've ever seen a driver wearing Uber swag.
Personally, most company swag I've worn once or twice and then throw in the Goodwill bag. So it's possible there's some random folks wearing a $NoNameCo shirt, but I'd wager they're just as likely recycled into something else.
As a receiver of a lot of SWAG, all of those company shirts become pajamas until the day they go into the H&M donation bag. I can't imagine any situation outside of working for that company where I would want to walk around advertising for them on an uninspired shirt with their logo plastered on it.
I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering the entire thing garbage.
SpaceX ran a promotion for employees where everything was 50% off. A few of my friends worked there and I was broke so for 2.50 for cofee mugs, hats and shirts was pretty attractive. I was a spacex brand whore for 6 months due to poverty. Love tge company though, if you can ever tour that facility I cant recommend it enough
I did this to a man at a San Jose dog park that was wearing a Netflix shirt. It turns out he just got it from the local Goodwill and had no connection to Netflix.
Almost all of my t-shirts, and a good chunk of my polos are random swag from various conferences or trainings, and all of the baseball caps I wear on a regular basis are (Red Hat used to give out really nice ones).
I couldn't really give a shit what I look like most of the time, however, so your mileage may vary. But I don't have to buy t-shirts...
I've been at a couple of companies where a large number of employees wore company branded items. I was flabbergasted to learn that the clothing items were not swag but purchased items. Of the 2 companies, one had world wide name recognition, but the second definitely did not.
Cisco does that and it’s freaking expensive like $100> for a hoodie the gear they sold on the employee store was decent hoodies were Columbia soft shells were TNF but man that swag was expensive.
I enjoy where I work, and would happily wear company-logo shirts every day. Unfortunately, I can't just buy a _single_ company-logo shirt, as they are only sold as part of the marketing-swag portal that requires Large Batches (20+?).
I'm shocked that, as an employee, there's no "company store" where I can buy an extra $Company coffee mug, t-shirt, polo shirt, etc.
I once worked at a company where the dress code required collared shirts, but the dress code stated that any company-branded items were exempt from the policy. The company had branded T-shirts to give to customers as loyalty rewards/promo items, so we bunch of us pooled together on a batch order. Cost about $2 a shirt and was dress code compliant, which was great for those of us who commuted by motorcycle!
Often times the internal schwag is made by name brand outfits. The stuff they give out can be lowest bidder stuff. Also designs can be somewhat different for the internal vs external versions.
That said, perh for many smaller cos both are one in the same.
Also from the end of 2016 the company encouraged not wearing Uber swag. We had few employees, in I think the middle East, attacked by taxi drivers. They were wearing Uber swag.
What's it like to show up to work at Uber? Do people just sit there miserably while they constantly remind themselves that a "big payday" is on the way like some kind of perverse mantra?
What if the pay day never comes? How will it look when your resume says you stayed at Uber well after everything has been revealed?
If your question is sincere, it's nothing too different from going to work to any other company, especially with Dara getting to act like the good cop.
People historically went to work in any number of unethical organisations, including industrialised mass murder, human experiments, knowingly poisoning or defrauding people..the list is endless, and it was just any other job to them.
The structure of an organisation means nobody feels individual ethical responsibility, they are just doing their job after all.
In fact, I would say most corporate employees feel like that about the large anonymous bureaucracies they work in, but there is still a good number of people for whom this is unacceptable, the type that ends up saying no to hush money, the type that whisteb-lowers, the type that ends up being shot for part of a resistance against a dictatorship, and so on.
People again and again do this even though it often has terrible consequences for their personal fate, and I think this is the exact same kind of person who does not want to hire or work with the other type, the one that just does their job.
It does to me. Specifically, it says the person either tolerates or contributes to what is widely regarded as one of the most toxic work cultures in software; same goes for Amazon. Up to me to determine whether they're the former or latter. Granted, when they joined and when they left and why makes some difference, but it's still not a great starting place for a candidate.
This reply right here is why I turned down Uber when a recruiter reached out to me. I have no moral qualms about a company that ignores taxi laws, but the irrational reputational damage has been done, no matter how much they cleaned up the workplace.
Hiring is already enough of a mind game with without adding "worked for a company the tech press loves to shred every chance they get" to my list of worries.
Wow tell me what company you're recruiting for. I'll make sure to never apply there. This is really priveleged thinking, I've worked for Google, Amazon, and Uber, and two start ups. Let me tell you the engineering culture aren't all that different across all orgs I've worked at. It's really simplistic and naive of you to take what you hear on the media as truth. It's only "widely regarded" because Uber is under heavy scrutiny, because of the industry we operate in. Tell me what company do you work for? If all of media put a magnifying glass over you and all your coworkers, I'll gauarntee, you'll soon be widely regarded as toxic. If your company is even remotely successful, I'll gauarntee that the media will find or spin up a business malpractice of some kind.
Hey, look, it's okay. You're most likely a good person. You're getting paid well, working on a world-changing thing, and have lots of smart people around you. Don't let one Internet comment ruffle your feathers too much. :)
It's really simplistic and naive of you to take what you hear on the media as truth. It's only "widely regarded" because Uber is under heavy scrutiny, because of the industry we operate in.
Right. It's not as if journalism has been a paragon of ethics and civic mindedness of late.
You are both anecdotally and factually incorrect. Go on LinkedIn and set past company to Uber. Most engineers (and nearly 100% I personally know) are either at Netflix, Facebook or Google. These companies in fact set targeted recruitment tactics in 2017 for Uber employees. I got emails from every company imaginable when the Susan Fowler report came out.
Anyone who is miserable has already left in 2017. Many long time employees are waiting for SoftBank deal to close before leaving which makes sense. They deserve to be enriched for their hard work. But they are only a couple of hundred employees at most. We have 15,000+ employees and 3,000 engineers.
I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done at Uber. I have no worries about finding my next job. I have a laundry list of companies who have contacted me since Jan 1, 2018, including FANG.
If the company doesn’t want to hire me because of where I work, I’m happy to not work for anyone who makes snap judgements based on resume line items. That’s basically like excluding people because of the city they grew up in, the school they went to, or the football teams that they support. I’m happy never working for or alongside people like that.
You think bias against someone living in a particular city is comparable to bias against someone voluntarily working for a company with an unprecedented reputation for unethical behavior top to bottom stretching back years and years?
My cohort of friends, many of whom are hiring managers, won’t even patronize Uber, much less hire someone who voluntarily worked there without demonstrably showing signs of serious soul searching about the ethics of the company.
Uber is marching toward $10 billion in annual sales. That's the size of Salesforce.com, which has 25,000 full-time employees.
3,000 engineers is not particularly out of line. It's certainly not ludicrous. It's a very large, global business, that is likely to get a lot bigger yet.
> That’s basically like excluding people because of the city they grew up in, the school they went to, or the football teams that they support.
Obviously it isn't. You don't choose the city you grow up in, and you have a limited choice over the school you go to. Football team is perhaps the closest in your list - if you support a team that has repeatedly cheated to win games then perhaps it's not unreasonable to judge a person based on their loyalty to that team.
To be clear, I'm not actually that convinced in the argument to not hire Uber employees based on their employment record. But we should at least represent the argument correctly.
>I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done at Uber. I have no worries about finding my next job. I have a laundry list of companies who have contacted me since Jan 1, 2018, including FANG.
Given that your name is "uberemployee"... and that your comment history shows you are for lack of a better term an uber jingoist, I have to ask...
How do I know you're not some HR shill trying to do damage control?
I'm curious on his take on cryptocurrency. TK has spent his entire career in the P2P space (file sharing before Uber). I wouldn't be surprised if that is his next move...
"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 reason—They didn't have to give him all that venture capital.
But they saw him as an expendable probe, so they cynically gave him money, to see how much law-breaking he could get away with in the name of their disruption activities.
In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down or reduced in service by pricing fares artificially low for a period of time. This enables them to then exercise monopoly pricing power on the market (or oligopoly with Lyft or whatever local competitor) and ultimately harms the lower classes.
Thus the $5 splurge for an Uber instead of the $2 bus hypothetically becomes the $10 Uber with no alternative short of driving yourself.
I'm not super convinced by this argument but it is a reasonable argument. Especially given that Uber wields billions in venture capital specifically to systematically underprice both regular taxis and public transit options.
I haven't seen this actually happen, though. In Denver, at least, RTD has been expanding routes and light rail service (albeit slowly, but that is most definitely NOT Uber's fault), even as Uber, Lyft, etc. have become more popular.
Fewer people ride public transit when ridesharing is available. Ridesharing actually substitutes more for public transit than for driving, which means it puts more people into small vehicles and creates more pollution and congestion. Whether you see it in growing Denver or not, less riders ultimately means less fares, less funding, and less service.
Thanks, that was the sort of article I was hoping for. I am surprised to see Denver winning best transit in America, though; it still takes me 2-3x the time to travel light rail or bus than driving. Sometimes the convenience is worth it, but usually not.
Yeah I think ultimately NYC still has the most usable transit network. I am not sure the details of the award without searching but they had it plastered up inside the buses when I was there. It probably gets good user ratings because its been improving as opposed to NYC which is overwhelmed with riders and maintenance. I did notice Denver had a lot of buses compared to most places in America, but it is still a car culture after all.
> In the medium term, they get public transit systems shut down
This sounds like grade-A bullshit. At best rideshare services reduce the use of personal cars and compete with taxi services, but they can't or won't compete with mass transit.
Moreover the upper or even middle class aren't exactly the target market of public transportation services. If anyone was switching from public transportation to rideshare services, that would be the class you assert is being oppressed, which makes absolurely no sense.
First of all, I don't think your tone is very kind or conducive to a productive conversation.
You state with no evidence whatsoever that rideshare services "can't or won't compete with mass transit" while the truth is that millions of people decide between the two on a daily basis. In places like NYC and SF where transit is viable, it is widely used by the lower, middle, even upper middle classes. It has become much more prevalent to simply take Lyft to work every day (some employers just pay for it) which leaves less people on MTA or BART. That hurts funding for maintaining extremely expensive public transit systems which often leads to cutbacks in service during tough times as "we can't support the long hours with so few passengers"
Yes some of the lower class benefits from ridesharing (in the short term at least) and I acknowledged there were two sides to the argument. But ultimately if people get some cheap rides for a few years but then have to choose between expensive rides or degraded public transit, then they've almost certainly lost out unless driverless cars or some other innovation saves the day.
I do not understand how it is possible. Public transit is soo much cheaper. In many cases, it is just unaffordable for someone to switch from taking the bus to Uber.
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 how long it will last at these prices?
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.
False. Everyone who decides to use a bus/train instead of a Lyft counts as a public transit user. In aggregate, our decisions determine how many riders use public transit. It serves no purpose to ignore anyone who rides less than 30-40 times a month (which is around what you need to break even on a pass)
> For example, in San Francisco the bus costs $2.50 to $2.75 depending on how you pay.
According to Google, sfmta fares are $2.25 per adult. Those fares however are for single trips for sporadic users. Those are don't represent mass transit users. People who use mass transit with some relevant frequency use it with enough to justify paying for a monthly pass, which sfmta's goes for between $68 and $80 a month.
Please don’t start a conversation with a rude tone and then cite incorrect info to “correct” the facts that I provided.
As I’ve already mentioned, Lyft and Uber have frequent rider passes too so it isn’t fair to compare a single Lyft ride to the cost of a monthly bus pas per ride.
Monthly passes have also gone up $12-14 compared to what you cited. The bus is a great deal if you pay prices from 5 years ago ;)
Think about it this way: if you already own a car, why would you use ridesharing? Taking a uber instead of public transit because you're late, or because it's faster than taking 2 buses to some one-off destination, however, seems entirely reasonable.
> Think about it this way: if you already own a car, why would you use ridesharing?
To avoid traffic, to avoid parking problems, to avoid driving drunk, to avoid leaving your car unattended in a dubious neighborhood, to avoid parking costs, etc...
BART never solved the last-mile problem before ridesharing. The nearest station is a 10-minute walk to a 20-minute bus ride after a 30-minute wait. And that's a pretty direct 4 mile trip, from most locations it'd be worse. Driving myself isn't even an option unless I get there before dawn because BART can't keep up with demand for parking.
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.
Factories were a huge improvement over peasantry/starvation actually. Yes, they were still horrible, and we've improved since; but there was a reason people moved en masse to the industrial towns.
I suggest Polanyi's The Great Transformation if you want to find out more about this.
Valuation is not revenue nor any other form of money. They don't actually have $50 billion. At best you could claim the markets expect the future worth of the company be on average around $50 billion (modulo preferential stock impact, so actually a bit less).
So, basically Amazon is a form of Charity then; they basically have "no form of money" under that perspective. (Dispite knowing the fact they could turn on the money spigot at any time if so desired)
Amazon is a publicly traded company, so their valuation isn't really impacted by preferential stock. Also, if you think amazon has access to 1.6 trillion dollars, you're crazy.
VC-driven Silicon Valley innovation is directly aimed at making money.
The fact that money making overlaps significantly with oppressing the underclass is not the fault of Silicon Valley, though SV isn't doing anything to help. It's a side effect of the fact that we are in an extremely demand constrained economy.
Demand constrained economy is a fancy pants way of saying "everyone is broke so they can't buy anything so why make anything for people to buy?" Below the upper middle class, nobody has any expendable income. That means there are few customers for things designed... well... for customers. That means entrepreneurs can't make money selling things to people unless they're luxury goods, and that's a tough market to break into. (Juciero wasn't such a dumb idea from this perspective. VCs aren't stupid. It was a gamble on creating a new luxury market for the top ~10%. Better executed it might have succeeded.)
As a result Silicon Valley (along with every other industry) must turn elsewhere for customers. Elsewhere is advertisers, propagandists, oppressive regimes, etc., hence surveillance capitalism. The other alternative is to try to find ways to crush margin ("disrupt" as its been redefined to mean) out of some existing industry, which usually means slashing wages and killing jobs and ultimately making the demand constrained economy problem worse.
The ultimate blame for this situation goes to Washington for pushing supply side economics in a demand constrained economy and to New York for abandoning productive capitalism in favor of financial gambling and bubble inflation.
> that means entrepreneurs can't make money selling things to people unless they're luxury goods
"[Moore's law] is ending. It hasn't quite ended yet, but in ten years it'll be obvious that it's over.
Apple is selling jewelry. That's what they sell.
And there is no singularity of California. There is.. I mean Intel could not make it pay. I mean I saw them struggle to keep Moore's law alive.. they were heroes about it - it didn't work."
.
> The ultimate blame for this situation goes to Washington for pushing supply side economics in a demand constrained economy
"The mausoleum for Moore's law. They couldn't make it pay under the Washington Consensus, and their version of global neo-liberalism. They just couldn't make it pay.
So now Silicon Valley is becoming Detroit, because that's the logic of American industrial development. Tech has lost its charmed life. Even the Apple AppStore has died.
It's quite like the space race after the American moon landing, or it's quite like the end of a Californian Gold Rush. This is California's DNA, and time passes for everyone, and consequences always arise.
Stuff that seems revolutionary and disruptive in 2017 is mostly frills for rich people."
It's quite like the space race after the American moon landing, or it's quite like the end of a Californian Gold Rush. This is California's DNA, and time passes for everyone, and consequences always arise.
Do you happen to know that California is still dealing with the environmental effects of the gold rush?
Uber massively empowered the underclass by destroying the taxi cartels. Lyft exists because of Uber. Even if one argues that Uber deserves to be punished for its various sins, the revolution they helped spark will improve transportation over time. Just demolishing the medallion racket alone is a vast improvement for the underclass, of which pretty much all taxi drivers belonged. Pre-Uber, Taxi drivers were more like indentured workers, with between little and zero hope of ever owning or controlling anything. Medallion prices in New York City reached $1+ million before Uber tanked the scheme.
Not sure why this comment was voted down, it's actually quite true, as I was a NYC resident for 25 years and my dad drove a cab there as well.
Uber the company may have been egregious in many ways, but along with Lyft and the iPhone and their interpretation of the TLC laws they were able to bring competition to a much needed market and displace the old monopoly that taxi owners had. Which by the way, were much worse on their employees than Uber ever was.
It's also important to note that the experience of using Uber/Lyft is much better than a taxi:
1. You can get back lost items
2. You have some idea that the driver picking you up is professional
3. You have recourse against a bad ride
4. Likewise, it's a two way street, as a rider the driver now also knows that you are going to act appropriately
5. Convenience of being picked up where you are
6. Convenience of not having to explain how to get a to place that isn't often frequented by taxis
7. Convenience of never having to take your wallet out
8. Overall better quality cars, both in terms of comfort and safety since they are newer and more well maintained
Stop repeating this, it is wrong. Uber copied Lyft, Uber was initially another high end black car/limo service, the whole history was documented on TechCrunch articles, here is one to start: https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going-to-...
App based rideshare brokering would have happened one way or another. If it hadn't been Uber or Lyft it would have been someone else, or possibly many others. Nobody in particular deserves special credit for coming up with the idea. Although Uber was quite exceptional in their aggressive growth and willingness to challenge the law. I think without Uber and specifically Kalanik, it wouldn't have happened as fast.
Huh? Part of your comments is wrong. Lyft existed before Uber as zimrides. Not only that Lyft and another competitor Sidecar pioneered ride sharing - Uber started out as a black car service and borrowed it's current business model from those two. Even more, Lyft was the first to take on city regulators, when Uber was still a black car service and Uber initially opposed the move to make ride sharing legal and only jumped on the bandwagon when it looked like Lyft was going to succeed and eat Uber for lunch. It's actually the other way around- Uber exists because of Lyft (source of all this - the Upstarts by Brad Stone which I'm currently reading). But everything else you said I agree with: Taxis were just plain awful.
Depends on where, really. Some places had real taxi mafias, other had taxi market that got stuck in the 80s, yet others had well-functioning taxi services.
But "destroying the taxi cartels" wasn't a good thing, because it replaced an imaginary taxi mafia (that supposedly spanned cities) with a single taxi mafioso that's a global corporation. Uber tried to paint itself as an underdog fighting the establishment, but the truth is that in this battle, it's Uber who was the only large player. That's how they won, too - they could strategically allocate funds to beat taxi networks on a city-by-city basis.
I'm not going to defend all taxis. I happen to live in a place with nice cabs, but I've heard plenty of horror stories from elsewhere. But - ironically, as I warned years ago, back before Uber was a frequent guest of newspaper headlines, but right about time when their rotten-to-the-core culture became visible in their dishonest and unethical behavior - this is a story of unleashing a monster. We should have slain it long time ago, before it got the chance to grow. Alas, here we are.
> But "destroying the taxi cartels" wasn't a good thing, because it replaced an imaginary taxi mafia (that supposedly spanned cities) with a single taxi mafioso that's a global corporation.
This is simply bullshit, through and through. Uber, at best, is just a middleman that provides billing services. Those performing the service are local corporations that are free to pick whichever billing service they want. In fact, after Uber started to cover my region the local cab companies were quick to setup a competing service. With them, other multinational ridesharing services started covering my region as well. In two occasions I took a ride whose driver stated he also worked through two Uber competitors.
This is a huge improvement over the old cartel system.
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.
This has been coming down the pike since at least 2012, in days when Sidecar was still a big deal. One good practice all the world religions and philosophies worth a damn tell us: Keep checking your level of smug. Put a dipstick into your smug-sump and read off the level, because it is directly correlated with your douchebag index!
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".
The proliferation of companies like that has probably increased the total number of jobs available in the economy. I don't see that as a bad thing.
If you have a problem with wages, then you really have a problem with the whole economic structure of our society. Most of those companies couldn't exist if they paid their grunt workers more so it's not like they have much of a choice.
There's a number of economists (not to mention the actual drivers of those services) who argue that these companies are bringing up the underclass by offering work opportunities to those who otherwise would find employment very difficult.
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.
What does Sterling mean by the “underclass”? That usually refers to the street criminals, permanently unemployable, and others who have fallen off the bottom end of the formal economy.
But the argument Sterling seems to be making seems like it more naturally would apply to the working class; while the underclass may be oppressed and SV may play a role, the way he ties Uber in just doesn't seem to connect to underclass as opposed to working class oppression.
yeah, I think he's playing a little fast and loose with the word underclass here. Perhaps it's simply for dramatic effect. However the main point to me doesn't hang on exact parsing of this word - one could imagine related terms (working class, the have-nots, the little people, the proleteriat) with similar effect. It does matter exactly who he's talking about, but parsing this differently is not exactly at the level of Refutation of the main point. the whole theme is rather high level and abstract to begin with, anyway, which is not quite at the level of precision of concrete examples.
> After Uber’s lawyers insisted the company wouldn’t pay Kamel to clean up Kalanick’s personal scandal, Kalanick agreed to pay Kamel $200,000 out of his own pocket, according to a person familiar with the matter. “The meeting ended on a positive note, and Travis appreciated Mr. Kamel’s openness and forgiveness,” a spokesperson for Kalanick said in a statement.
For $200k for being lectured for a minute, I'd have a lot of openness (of my wallet) and forgiveness too.
Shamelessly promoting Deepak Chopra on her wellness web site was inexcusable. But proxying Kalanick while promoting "meditation wristbands" for drivers??!
>"Even in top-level conversations where Kalanick appeared to be absent, other executives and board members suspected that Huffington was serving as his proxy. The founder of the Huffington Post was a constant presence at Uber’s offices, making suggestions that seemed to promote her new wellness company, Thrive Global Holdings LLC. For example, she wanted to put “nap pods” at driver hubs and give drivers meditation wristbands. Huffington’s company received $50,000 in consulting fees from Uber. The perceived self-dealing didn’t go over well internally, and she had the money returned, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Huffington says that Thrive provided services at cost, and that Huffington refunded the fees when events required her to take on a more active role at Uber."
> And in New York, a small union called the New York Taxi Workers Alliance declared that there would be no taxi pickups from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
> For Uber, that would create extra demand at the airport, which meant it could charge more—but this would probably cause a backlash. That had happened before when the company let its “surge pricing” algorithms do their thing. So the New York managers decided to be good citizens and suspend surge pricing for the night.
> If the company wasn’t price gouging this time, maybe it was trying to break up the JFK strike.
That's actually the opposite of what disabling surge pricing does. It makes sure that drivers aren't paid enough to bother picking up passengers there, so it protects the strike.
People are idiots. Uber should start a campaign featuring polar bears cruising around or something (or maybe make fun of trump on their twitter account if they have to save money) instead of trying to fulfill the publics demands.
People prefer unavailability of something to it being available at a high price.
If you walk into a gas station and they say "sorry, we're out of gas" - no worries, try the next place.
Whereas if they said "we're low on gas, so you have to pay $100 per gallon", there would be public outcry. People would fill up then refuse to pay. People would be forming a mob outside the station.
Rational? No. But it's the way people think, and companies need to adapt to it.
I never understood the outrage against video secrely taken by taxi driver Fawzi Kamel. One can clearly see Kalanic was actually pretty humble, well behaved and trying to answer his questions. But Fawzi kept making accusations after another, cutting him off, not letting him answer, being very rude and just not listening. Kalanik’s argument that he was running a business was a legit. I just think people would have blamed Kalanik no matter what he did or said.
Taking sabbatical was his definitely big mistake. But with his parents situation he was also at the weakest point which VCs took full advantage of.
Overall, I am firmly in Kalanik’s side. Stupid VCs always want to get rid of founder who is in to long term and replace him with someone who would get exist fast. Kalanik was media’s punch bag for things he didn’t intended or even didn’t do. But world needed him, industry needed him. Without him politicians and unions would have eaten away any such companies before it became bigger. Lyft is now ripping fruits seeded by Uber. Without his audacity, Uber wasn’t possible.
Man becomes billionaire by exploiting a legal loophole, and fucking taxi drivers out of decades of investment into the taxi medallion system.. story at 11. Fuck TK
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadAnyone know what it’s like inside Uber today?
In some places the CEO is a distant figurehead, and whatever his or her values, the day-to-day experience is more dominated by your local crew of < 20 people. In other places, culture is truly pervasive. I feel like the reporting is saying that culture is pervasive at Uber, but it would be interesting to hear an inside perspective.
Why in the world would you think it needs a peacetime CEO?
Peacetime in business means those times when a company has a large advantage vs. the competition in its core market, and its market is growing. In times of peace, the company can focus on expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths.
In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources including competition, dramatic macro economic change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth. The great wartime CEO Andy Grove marvelously describes the forces that can take a company from peacetime to wartime in his book Only The Paranoid Survive.
https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceowartime-ceo-2/
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.
She seems to be a unique talent who seems genuine from her interviews. I'm curious how she is viewed within Uber and what impact she may be having.
It’s a very unique opportunity for us because she is an expert on what makes companies great. Not just culturally but business strategy too. Having her as a key member of the team is an advantage that t companies don’t have because whereas other people are figuring things out on their own, she actually studied it and taught it.
I hope she stays a long time to help mold this company into one of the greatest companies.
Harvard only?
E.g., for a long distance company fear was the cell phone. ($22B revenue to $8B in a five year stretch)
2. Not competing in self-driving.
Frances Frei is a former Harvard Business School professor and arranged for several HBX classes from Harvard professors on business strategy that were very interesting and helpful. Having her as a guide as to how a great company should be behaving is a huge asset.
TK was great and built the entire industry but he overstepped his abilities and became his and Uber’s worst enemy.
I’m assuming after the SoftBank deal closes many long time employees will be gone. And why shouldn’t they, they are worth millions at this point, but only number in the hundreds. And this happens to all companies in the same situation, like google, Facebook, Dropbox, etc.
Overall the pace has slowed dramatically and has a big company feel. But the majority of people, myself included, are fiercely proud of the work that we do and the product that we have built.
The food could be better, though. Maybe after we become profitable? (This is an internal joke to all Uber employees)
Which classes?
The only way to solve THAT problem is purging the tech bros. Sorry, a big name new hire won't address the situation I experienced. Period.
my interviewer was 15 minutes late to the call, didn't even know what position i was applying for, didn't ask me at all about the assignment they made me do, then ended my call early because they had to be somewhere. already knew i didn't get the job but didn't even get back to me until a month later.
person still works at uber. pretty high up now. i guess i'm glad i didn't get farther given all that came out afterwards.
Honest question. How do you know it's a company-wide culture issue if you haven't worked there? In my experience, teams at Uber are pretty insular with only occasional interactions outside their groups.
I also believe I was the target of an information-hunting initiative within uber, which was revealed publicly last year. I believe I was only interviewed to gain as much information about the company i was working for at the time. The recruiter was not listed on any uber database, and may not have even been officially a recruiting lead. after several probing questions about the company i was working for at the time, it became pretty clear the atg group had more of an interest in gaining info on the company rather than hiring me. extremely unprofessional. but that wasnt even the worse part.
I do have a copy of an email about the newest policy governing competitive intelligence gathering from Salle Yoo (head of legal) from late august 2017. Skimming through it, what you described would be in blatant violation of probably half of the document. Not to mention that it flies in the face of basic human decency.
It was very shocking why they were asking very specific technical questions regarding how the company I was working for at the time was addressing. Let's just say it relates to the infamous Uber-Waymo case. That was my red flag, about 30 min - 1 hour into the whole interview process.
Something is up with SF Bay Area corporate culture. There are many taboos -- things you just don't do -- which I only saw broken in my career once I arrived in the Bay Area.
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.
I got in just a month before TK stepped out, shortly before the Holden report, and Liane Hornsay and Frances Frei joined. Since then, the company implemented a crisis hotline where you can anonymously report abuse, it ran courses about what's considered inappropriate behavior, and there's a huge overhaul going on with regards to the cultural values and the performance appraisal process. Frances was particularly vocal about the inadequacy of the top 3 bottom 3 system that was in place before.
I mentioned this before elsewhere, but when Liane had a board member step down the afternoon after he made a sexist comment in a all-hands meeting, it spoke volumes about how serious they were about setting new norms at Uber.
I also recall seeing an email a few months ago that basically said that whoever was working on any competitive intelligence project involving spying was to halt all further work effective immediately. The culture of doing things right is definitely becoming a thing.
Most of the time that I see someone with a company logo on their shirt I do not readily assume they work at that company.
Personally, most company swag I've worn once or twice and then throw in the Goodwill bag. So it's possible there's some random folks wearing a $NoNameCo shirt, but I'd wager they're just as likely recycled into something else.
I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering the entire thing garbage.
Beyond that, I prefer to order t-shirts with my own design; $random-company swag frequently ends up as home/nightwear for either me or my SO.
I couldn't really give a shit what I look like most of the time, however, so your mileage may vary. But I don't have to buy t-shirts...
I'm shocked that, as an employee, there's no "company store" where I can buy an extra $Company coffee mug, t-shirt, polo shirt, etc.
Often times the internal schwag is made by name brand outfits. The stuff they give out can be lowest bidder stuff. Also designs can be somewhat different for the internal vs external versions.
That said, perh for many smaller cos both are one in the same.
What if the pay day never comes? How will it look when your resume says you stayed at Uber well after everything has been revealed?
Source: know quite a few Uber employees.
People historically went to work in any number of unethical organisations, including industrialised mass murder, human experiments, knowingly poisoning or defrauding people..the list is endless, and it was just any other job to them.
The structure of an organisation means nobody feels individual ethical responsibility, they are just doing their job after all.
In fact, I would say most corporate employees feel like that about the large anonymous bureaucracies they work in, but there is still a good number of people for whom this is unacceptable, the type that ends up saying no to hush money, the type that whisteb-lowers, the type that ends up being shot for part of a resistance against a dictatorship, and so on.
People again and again do this even though it often has terrible consequences for their personal fate, and I think this is the exact same kind of person who does not want to hire or work with the other type, the one that just does their job.
Hiring is already enough of a mind game with without adding "worked for a company the tech press loves to shred every chance they get" to my list of worries.
Wow tell me what company you're recruiting for. I'll make sure to never apply there. This is really priveleged thinking, I've worked for Google, Amazon, and Uber, and two start ups. Let me tell you the engineering culture aren't all that different across all orgs I've worked at. It's really simplistic and naive of you to take what you hear on the media as truth. It's only "widely regarded" because Uber is under heavy scrutiny, because of the industry we operate in. Tell me what company do you work for? If all of media put a magnifying glass over you and all your coworkers, I'll gauarntee, you'll soon be widely regarded as toxic. If your company is even remotely successful, I'll gauarntee that the media will find or spin up a business malpractice of some kind.
Right. It's not as if journalism has been a paragon of ethics and civic mindedness of late.
Uber has many good, decent people, but there is definitely some guilt by association.
Guilt by association is just you being naive.
You might be right.
But there are many people making hiring decisions who are just as naive as I am, so the Uber brand doesn't help.
I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done at Uber. I have no worries about finding my next job. I have a laundry list of companies who have contacted me since Jan 1, 2018, including FANG.
If the company doesn’t want to hire me because of where I work, I’m happy to not work for anyone who makes snap judgements based on resume line items. That’s basically like excluding people because of the city they grew up in, the school they went to, or the football teams that they support. I’m happy never working for or alongside people like that.
My cohort of friends, many of whom are hiring managers, won’t even patronize Uber, much less hire someone who voluntarily worked there without demonstrably showing signs of serious soul searching about the ethics of the company.
3,000 engineers is not particularly out of line. It's certainly not ludicrous. It's a very large, global business, that is likely to get a lot bigger yet.
Still nothing to scoff at.
Obviously it isn't. You don't choose the city you grow up in, and you have a limited choice over the school you go to. Football team is perhaps the closest in your list - if you support a team that has repeatedly cheated to win games then perhaps it's not unreasonable to judge a person based on their loyalty to that team.
To be clear, I'm not actually that convinced in the argument to not hire Uber employees based on their employment record. But we should at least represent the argument correctly.
Given that your name is "uberemployee"... and that your comment history shows you are for lack of a better term an uber jingoist, I have to ask...
How do I know you're not some HR shill trying to do damage control?
/I say this half jokingly
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 reason—They didn't have to give him all that venture capital.
But they saw him as an expendable probe, so they cynically gave him money, to see how much law-breaking he could get away with in the name of their disruption activities.
That was hubris—and nemesis is well on the way."
- NEXT17 | Bruce Sterling | Live from 2027
Thus the $5 splurge for an Uber instead of the $2 bus hypothetically becomes the $10 Uber with no alternative short of driving yourself.
I'm not super convinced by this argument but it is a reasonable argument. Especially given that Uber wields billions in venture capital specifically to systematically underprice both regular taxis and public transit options.
Fewer people ride public transit when ridesharing is available. Ridesharing actually substitutes more for public transit than for driving, which means it puts more people into small vehicles and creates more pollution and congestion. Whether you see it in growing Denver or not, less riders ultimately means less fares, less funding, and less service.
This sounds like grade-A bullshit. At best rideshare services reduce the use of personal cars and compete with taxi services, but they can't or won't compete with mass transit.
Moreover the upper or even middle class aren't exactly the target market of public transportation services. If anyone was switching from public transportation to rideshare services, that would be the class you assert is being oppressed, which makes absolurely no sense.
You state with no evidence whatsoever that rideshare services "can't or won't compete with mass transit" while the truth is that millions of people decide between the two on a daily basis. In places like NYC and SF where transit is viable, it is widely used by the lower, middle, even upper middle classes. It has become much more prevalent to simply take Lyft to work every day (some employers just pay for it) which leaves less people on MTA or BART. That hurts funding for maintaining extremely expensive public transit systems which often leads to cutbacks in service during tough times as "we can't support the long hours with so few passengers"
Yes some of the lower class benefits from ridesharing (in the short term at least) and I acknowledged there were two sides to the argument. But ultimately if people get some cheap rides for a few years but then have to choose between expensive rides or degraded public transit, then they've almost certainly lost out unless driverless cars or some other innovation saves the day.
It doesn't make sense to say ridesharing "can't or won't compete with mass transit" when its literally the main thing it competes with.
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 how long it will last at these prices?
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.
You hardly count as mass transit traffic if your only use is sporadic and it covers close to a walking distance.
According to Google, sfmta fares are $2.25 per adult. Those fares however are for single trips for sporadic users. Those are don't represent mass transit users. People who use mass transit with some relevant frequency use it with enough to justify paying for a monthly pass, which sfmta's goes for between $68 and $80 a month.
Please don’t start a conversation with a rude tone and then cite incorrect info to “correct” the facts that I provided.
As I’ve already mentioned, Lyft and Uber have frequent rider passes too so it isn’t fair to compare a single Lyft ride to the cost of a monthly bus pas per ride.
Monthly passes have also gone up $12-14 compared to what you cited. The bus is a great deal if you pay prices from 5 years ago ;)
To avoid traffic, to avoid parking problems, to avoid driving drunk, to avoid leaving your car unattended in a dubious neighborhood, to avoid parking costs, etc...
I suggest Polanyi's The Great Transformation if you want to find out more about this.
And, well, they actually make money.
The fact that money making overlaps significantly with oppressing the underclass is not the fault of Silicon Valley, though SV isn't doing anything to help. It's a side effect of the fact that we are in an extremely demand constrained economy.
Demand constrained economy is a fancy pants way of saying "everyone is broke so they can't buy anything so why make anything for people to buy?" Below the upper middle class, nobody has any expendable income. That means there are few customers for things designed... well... for customers. That means entrepreneurs can't make money selling things to people unless they're luxury goods, and that's a tough market to break into. (Juciero wasn't such a dumb idea from this perspective. VCs aren't stupid. It was a gamble on creating a new luxury market for the top ~10%. Better executed it might have succeeded.)
As a result Silicon Valley (along with every other industry) must turn elsewhere for customers. Elsewhere is advertisers, propagandists, oppressive regimes, etc., hence surveillance capitalism. The other alternative is to try to find ways to crush margin ("disrupt" as its been redefined to mean) out of some existing industry, which usually means slashing wages and killing jobs and ultimately making the demand constrained economy problem worse.
The ultimate blame for this situation goes to Washington for pushing supply side economics in a demand constrained economy and to New York for abandoning productive capitalism in favor of financial gambling and bubble inflation.
I encourage you to watch the talk, if you're willing to stomach his gen-x sensibility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2O_fxmrP_Q
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> that means entrepreneurs can't make money selling things to people unless they're luxury goods
"[Moore's law] is ending. It hasn't quite ended yet, but in ten years it'll be obvious that it's over.
Apple is selling jewelry. That's what they sell.
And there is no singularity of California. There is.. I mean Intel could not make it pay. I mean I saw them struggle to keep Moore's law alive.. they were heroes about it - it didn't work."
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> The ultimate blame for this situation goes to Washington for pushing supply side economics in a demand constrained economy
"The mausoleum for Moore's law. They couldn't make it pay under the Washington Consensus, and their version of global neo-liberalism. They just couldn't make it pay.
So now Silicon Valley is becoming Detroit, because that's the logic of American industrial development. Tech has lost its charmed life. Even the Apple AppStore has died.
It's quite like the space race after the American moon landing, or it's quite like the end of a Californian Gold Rush. This is California's DNA, and time passes for everyone, and consequences always arise.
Stuff that seems revolutionary and disruptive in 2017 is mostly frills for rich people."
Do you happen to know that California is still dealing with the environmental effects of the gold rush?
Uber the company may have been egregious in many ways, but along with Lyft and the iPhone and their interpretation of the TLC laws they were able to bring competition to a much needed market and displace the old monopoly that taxi owners had. Which by the way, were much worse on their employees than Uber ever was.
It's also important to note that the experience of using Uber/Lyft is much better than a taxi: 1. You can get back lost items 2. You have some idea that the driver picking you up is professional 3. You have recourse against a bad ride 4. Likewise, it's a two way street, as a rider the driver now also knows that you are going to act appropriately 5. Convenience of being picked up where you are 6. Convenience of not having to explain how to get a to place that isn't often frequented by taxis 7. Convenience of never having to take your wallet out 8. Overall better quality cars, both in terms of comfort and safety since they are newer and more well maintained
But "destroying the taxi cartels" wasn't a good thing, because it replaced an imaginary taxi mafia (that supposedly spanned cities) with a single taxi mafioso that's a global corporation. Uber tried to paint itself as an underdog fighting the establishment, but the truth is that in this battle, it's Uber who was the only large player. That's how they won, too - they could strategically allocate funds to beat taxi networks on a city-by-city basis.
I'm not going to defend all taxis. I happen to live in a place with nice cabs, but I've heard plenty of horror stories from elsewhere. But - ironically, as I warned years ago, back before Uber was a frequent guest of newspaper headlines, but right about time when their rotten-to-the-core culture became visible in their dishonest and unethical behavior - this is a story of unleashing a monster. We should have slain it long time ago, before it got the chance to grow. Alas, here we are.
This is simply bullshit, through and through. Uber, at best, is just a middleman that provides billing services. Those performing the service are local corporations that are free to pick whichever billing service they want. In fact, after Uber started to cover my region the local cab companies were quick to setup a competing service. With them, other multinational ridesharing services started covering my region as well. In two occasions I took a ride whose driver stated he also worked through two Uber competitors.
This is a huge improvement over the old cartel system.
That's the bullshit they try to sell to the taxmen. It isn't how it works in reality, though.
This has been coming down the pike since at least 2012, in days when Sidecar was still a big deal. One good practice all the world religions and philosophies worth a damn tell us: Keep checking your level of smug. Put a dipstick into your smug-sump and read off the level, because it is directly correlated with your douchebag index!
If you have a problem with wages, then you really have a problem with the whole economic structure of our society. Most of those companies couldn't exist if they paid their grunt workers more so it's not like they have much of a choice.
But the argument Sterling seems to be making seems like it more naturally would apply to the working class; while the underclass may be oppressed and SV may play a role, the way he ties Uber in just doesn't seem to connect to underclass as opposed to working class oppression.
For $200k for being lectured for a minute, I'd have a lot of openness (of my wallet) and forgiveness too.
I wouldn't exactly call that a "fall". A lot of bad behavior but it seems like that behavior is being rewarded handsomely.
>"Even in top-level conversations where Kalanick appeared to be absent, other executives and board members suspected that Huffington was serving as his proxy. The founder of the Huffington Post was a constant presence at Uber’s offices, making suggestions that seemed to promote her new wellness company, Thrive Global Holdings LLC. For example, she wanted to put “nap pods” at driver hubs and give drivers meditation wristbands. Huffington’s company received $50,000 in consulting fees from Uber. The perceived self-dealing didn’t go over well internally, and she had the money returned, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Huffington says that Thrive provided services at cost, and that Huffington refunded the fees when events required her to take on a more active role at Uber."
> For Uber, that would create extra demand at the airport, which meant it could charge more—but this would probably cause a backlash. That had happened before when the company let its “surge pricing” algorithms do their thing. So the New York managers decided to be good citizens and suspend surge pricing for the night.
> If the company wasn’t price gouging this time, maybe it was trying to break up the JFK strike.
That's actually the opposite of what disabling surge pricing does. It makes sure that drivers aren't paid enough to bother picking up passengers there, so it protects the strike.
People are idiots. Uber should start a campaign featuring polar bears cruising around or something (or maybe make fun of trump on their twitter account if they have to save money) instead of trying to fulfill the publics demands.
If you walk into a gas station and they say "sorry, we're out of gas" - no worries, try the next place.
Whereas if they said "we're low on gas, so you have to pay $100 per gallon", there would be public outcry. People would fill up then refuse to pay. People would be forming a mob outside the station.
Rational? No. But it's the way people think, and companies need to adapt to it.
Taking sabbatical was his definitely big mistake. But with his parents situation he was also at the weakest point which VCs took full advantage of.
Overall, I am firmly in Kalanik’s side. Stupid VCs always want to get rid of founder who is in to long term and replace him with someone who would get exist fast. Kalanik was media’s punch bag for things he didn’t intended or even didn’t do. But world needed him, industry needed him. Without him politicians and unions would have eaten away any such companies before it became bigger. Lyft is now ripping fruits seeded by Uber. Without his audacity, Uber wasn’t possible.