Two More Executives Are Leaving Uber, Drivers May Unionize (nytimes.com)

First the resignations. "The beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber," the company's former president told Recode on Sunday, announcing his resignation. "The departures add to the executive exodus from Uber this year," writes The New York Times. An anonymous reader quotes their report. Brian McClendon, vice president of maps and business platform at Uber, also plans to leave at the end of the month... Raffi Krikorian, a well-regarded director in Uber's self-driving division, left the company last week, while Gary Marcus, who joined Uber in December after Uber acquired his company, left this month. Uber also asked for the resignation of Amit Singhal, a top engineer who failed to disclose a sexual harassment claim against him at his previous employer, Google, before joining Uber. And Ed Baker, another senior executive, left this month as well.
Jones left Uber after less than six months, though McClendon's departure is said to be more amicable. "Mr. McClendon, in a statement, said he was returning to his hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, after 30 years away. 'This fall's election and the current fiscal crisis in Kansas is driving me to more fully participate in our democracy -- and I want to do that in the place I call home."

In other news, the Teamsters labor union plans to start organizing Uber's drivers into a union, after a Washington judge rejected Uber's attempt to overturn a right-to-unionize ordinance passed by the city of Seattle.

Comments

Re:Union City Blue

[monkeyzoo]

Karma is a bitch, eh?
How shitty must this corporate culture be for all these people with great positions at an innovative, cutting edge, and super fast growing company to leave?
These departures apparently validate all the coverage about what a soul-less, morally bankrupt company it is.

Failure is always an option

[geekpowa]

I for one am glad to see the wheels starting fall off this libertarian corporate experiment. It's heartening to see signs of failure in an institution whose core principals are deeply entrenched in base human behaviours such as bullying, hypocrisy and total indifference to adverse impacts to others (including it's own people).

Re:Failure is always an option

[geekpowa]

I do own a company. It is a small operation but I have a couple of fulltime staff and all the trimmings. In prior roles I led teams of dozens of engineers. It is possible to operate ethically and profitably. One perk is fierce client and staff loyalty.

Re: Failure is always an option

[dunkelfalke]

I used to work for a smallish German company where the CEO always said that if anyone is to join a union he would close the shop and reopen in Switzerland. He also ignored many laws and regulations and the wages sucked. 5 years after I was fired half of the employees was new. Now I am working at a company of the same size, automatically belong to a professional association, earn almost twice as much even though there are no bonuses, the CEO follows all laws and regulations and even does charity work. Many of my colleagues have been at the company for 20 years. Guess where I like it better?

Re:The end?

[rtb61]

Likely reason for the departures at high level, they believe the company will implode prior to the IPO cash in, so no reward for staying. They would be spitting chips, greed at the top, delayed the IPO too long and now it is too late. No matter how bad, the banksters still would have been able to scam a high price at IPO but executive departure would be indicative that they do not expect the company to get there and then can make more money by taking their skills and built up knowledge elsewhere.

Re: cart before the horse?

[radiumsoup]

There is a very low bar to entry when becoming an Uber driver, and so I would hazard to say that the vast majority of people who want to drive for Uber are already driving for Uber. So, if Uber were to suddenly drop all the current drivers, there would be no great rush of new drivers trying to fill the void. Just the opposite would happen, actually. The Uber drivers who had just been let go would switch to another service, and the folks who try to hail an Uber will be told there's a 2 hour wait for a car and so will simply take 10 seconds to close their Uber app and open their Lyft app instead. There's no possible way Uber could survive cleaning the slate like that.

Re:The end?

[Billly Gates]

Uber got through because the Taxi and Limo companies got greedy and so did their employees. Unions and bribery and tax revenue created an artificial market. Now capitalism created a solution that should have been fixed.

Re:The end?

[BarbaraHudson]

First, if programmers had had enough guts to unionize, they wouldn't have been in the position of having to train their H1B or offshore replacements. But no, unions are for blue-collar workers (blue collar jobs) and pink collar jobs only - white collar workers are too good for that.

Second, how long will it take to pass a law banning drivers from forming a union? Probably about as quickly as Indiana passed a law banning cities from regulating airbnb rentals. Welcome to Trumpville, where money counts for more than people, and you are nothing if you're "just" a citizen.

Re:The end?

[fluffernutter]

If you're competent and enjoy spending your personal time networking, on job interviews, and climbing the corporate latter maybe you're fine without a union. Some of us are competent and just want a job and not worry about the other external bullshit.