Uber's Silicon Valley Employees May Be Looking to Jump Ship (fortune.com)

Some San Francisco-based recruiters and executives at Uber's rival companies told the Financial Times in a Monday article that the number of Uber employees looking to leave the ride-sharing company has spiked. From a report: "One of the main reasons is lack of faith in senior leadership," one unnamed recruiter that previously worked with Uber told the FT. The news comes as the company weathers waves of criticism regarding its leadership, political stance, and internal culture. An Uber spokesperson told the FT that its current level of departures has been normal.

Comments

Re:My nose smells BS

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't leave a 6 figure job because of "lack of confidence in management." You just don't. You milk that puppy until it's dry.

If you're good enough to command a 6-figure job, then you're good enough to make it fairly easy to find an alternative employer if you don't like your current one. And anyway, what's being reported here is a desire to move jobs, not actual movement.

Plus, at the end of the day Uber is already profitable in the US. They are bleeding money competing for market share in Europe and China. The whole "profitable in the US" thing escapes the headlines but the are making bank here and they will outside the US too once the market share fight is over.

Profitability has nothing to do with it. The "lack of faith in leadership" that is being referred to is not about whether its profitable or not; it's about the repeated and on-going ethics issues that are coming out of the company.

But since you raised profitability, the counter argument should be obvious: Uber is pouring all its money into self-driving technologies. That's how it sees its future, and it's right -- without that, Uber will always be just a taxi company with dodgy employment practices.

But Google has launched a suit against them claiming that they stole the technology. That suit basically screws Uber and makes them irrelevant, no matter what happens. Google clearly believe they have a strong case, but Uber are screwed even if Google don't win.

Law suits like this can take a decade or more to meander through the court system. The stakes for both parties are too high for either to admit defeat, so no matter who is winning, there will be endless appeals. And until it's resolved, Uber will be seen as a thief. Whether that's fair or not is ultimately up to the courts to decide, but the reputation they've built up of being amoral and arrogant makes the claim very easy to believe, so the mud sticks.

The problem for Uber is that all the time they're fighting this case, it distracts them from actually developing the technology. By the time the case is resolved, assuming it goes in their favour and they manage to catch up, they will already have lost the race to market.

Google has put them in a position from which they cannot win.

Re:My nose smells BS

[HornWumpus]

It all comes down to options vest date. If you options won't vest till after the company is sure to be dead and gone, their is no more bet to be made. Strike price matters too, but if you aren't going to get near to vesting for another 3 years, and you know it's a house of cards run by clowns? (I don't know this, just supposing.)

Best bet might be to move along in a nice orderly fashion, before Uber becomes a resume stain.