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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.
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.
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.
It appears that the media has decided to dig up every little thing to kill them. So it only matters if consumers stop using it.
I think the people who are going to drop Uber already have. But I also don't think most people really care that much right now.
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).
Honestly it matters quite a lot if Uber was really actually profitable, or if it was only profitable because a certain class of employee (ie, the driver) was willing to be hoodwinked into basically not even making cab-driver wages while suffering wear and tear on their own personal vehicle, versus actually being profitable with its own model.
It seems that Uber's long-term goal was to do away with having drivers operating their own cars, but unfortunately for them, they've tried to define the self-driving car market as-implemented too long before it's really ready to be implemented. They've gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar too, as it appears they stole self-driving technology developed at great expensive by someone else, and if they can't use any of those self-driving developments then they're probably doomed.
I can see the appeal, summon a self-driving car and it takes you where you want to go, then summon another one when you want to return. I can see trying to be the one to get out in front of it too, to ride the wave of success that might well come from it. You've got to get the timing right though, and the timing isn't right yet.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Alternatively, once a company is circling the drain, the most skilled employees who can get jobs easily elsewhere are the first to jump. The plodders go down with the ship.
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.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
"It's hard to find much of a precedent for Uber's losses. Webvan and Kozmo.com—two now-defunct phantoms of the original dot-com boom—lost just over $1 billion combined in their short lifetimes. Amazon.com Inc. is famous for losing money while increasing its market value, but its biggest loss ever totaled $1.4 billion in 2000. Uber exceeded that number in 2015 and is on pace to do it again this year [2016]."
Bloomberg
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
And that's why libertarianism is a crime against humanity and the market CANNOT be allowed to set wages unregulated - because wages are NOT just another consumable in a market. They are parts of people's LIVES. Human BEINGS.
You know what the key thing about human beings is ? THeir the PURPOSE. Their why we have economies. The economy exists to serve the people NOT the other way around. And never EVER denigrate workers for being greedy - because you know what ELSE workers are ? Consumers.
Good fucking luck selling ANYTHING in a market full of underpaid workers - because underpaid workers = consumers without money = no demand = no customers = bankrupt business.
Labour, like everything else in the economy - must be sold at a profit to be sustainable - and if the market won't pay a profitable price for it - then it cannot be sustained. But UNLIKE everything else in the economy - if the labour market collapses because the demand is too low -then EVERY OTHER BUSINESS COLLAPSES WITH IT.
Because labour is not JUST a commoddity - it's also the business that provides all the buying power to consumers, the business that pays nearly all the taxes and funds all the government services and infrastructure - including roads and the military and the police and the judges. It's the fundamental business upon which all other economic activity relies.
Make it unprofitable - and there is no economy, because you cannot have an economy without customers.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Mathematically you are incorrect.
Milton Friedman published a proof on this with price settings theory. Capitalism benefits everyone. It is a 2 way street a buyer and seller.
Economies serve those who want to make money and those who want to buy products and services. Labor it is those who want to earn money and those who need a service provided.
If you do not like this then go to North Korea or Cuba and see how they live compared to your country. As the money moves through the market faster the higher the wages of those who want to work and those who sell things both benefit. Everybody is greedy man. Of course businesses want to maximize their value. Of course YOU want to maximize your value and work less. Consumers want cheaper products and more of them. The balance is achieved based on scarcity.
http://saveie6.com/
Mathematically you are incorrect.
LOL nope.
You can prove whatever you want if you choose the axioms. If your assumptions about human behaviour are not modelled correctly then your proofs may be mathematically consistent but they won't have any bearing on the real world.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think you're seriously overestimating the strategic thinking capabilities of the people behind Uber. They haven't, up until recently, had even an R&D interest in developing driverless cars, and there is little chance they can realistically compete with Tesla, Ford, Google, VW, etc, even if they could raise another couple of billion in cash to burn. The likelihood of them coming from behind and beating the others to a viable driverless car solution is zero.
Further, what exactly do they have that will maintain their market position? An app? How easy is it for Google to turn the 'book Uber' button in google maps into a 'book google car'? If anything, they have worse than nothing - they are beholden to the company that is well ahead of them in the technology they desperately need to have a viable business model.
What I think Uber has been for quite a while now (granted, I don't think this was the original plan) is a financial bubble milking machine. Unless the board is actually delusional, the only viable strategy behind them entering the driverless car development race was to keep the IPO price at stupid levels. And if it wasn't for the PR disasters coming out of Uber on an almost weekly basis now, they would have been obscenely successful in achieving this.
Like Enron?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Au contraire, billion-dollar businesses can disappear in a flash. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC is one such example - he owes $170 billion in restitution, based on a fraud of over $60 billion. At one point he was the largest trader of NYSE-listed stocks in the world, doing up to 15% of all trades. $740 million a day in trades isn't chicken feed.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.