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Trump-Style Tactics Finally Stopped Working For Uber (buzzfeed.com)
BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith describes a three-year-old meeting that Uber held -- which saw several influencers including actor Ed Norton among attendees -- as the beginning of the ride-hailing company's long slow meltdown. Later today, the company is expected to announce that its CEO Travis Kalanick would be temporarily stepping away, and his closest lieutenant is all set to hand his resignation. On Sunday, the company held a board meeting, which according to several journalists, lasted for nearly seven hours. The meeting capped a difficult stretch for the ride-hailing company, which is trying to weather an investigation into its workplace culture, a lawsuit by Google parent Alphabet over the alleged theft of self-driving car trade secrets, a federal probe into its business practices, and the recent departures of top executives. Back to Ben: At the dinner (which took place three years ago), Emil Michael, the right hand of CEO Travis Kalanick, heatedly complained to me about the press. The company, he told me, could hire a team of opposition researchers to fight fire with fire and attack the media -- specifically to smear a female journalist who has criticized the company. I suggested to him that this plan wouldn't really work because the story would immediately become a story about Uber behaving like maniacs. "Nobody would know it was us," Michael responded. "But you just told me!," I replied. [...] Instead of making any meaningful changes, Uber simply pressed on for years. It found both continued growth and accumulating scandals. Many of its crises, like those remarks to me, were tinged with misogyny, whether sexual harassment of its engineers or pulling a rape victim's medical files. After one of those engineers, Susan Fowler, stepped forward with a blog post detailing systemic sexual harassment and discrimination -- a post that was followed up by a series of devastating stories by The New York Times, Recode, and others -- the company invited former Attorney General Eric Holder to lead an internal investigation. Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Michael is set to resign, and Reuters reported Kalanick will take a leave of absence ahead of what's expected to be a deeply damning Holder report. (Kalanick is also coping with a family tragedy.) They will leave having built the most valuable private company in the world. But it is a company whose cultural darkness is inseparable from its place as the icon of the tech boom. Uber -- and the boom -- have been defined both by massive new conveniences and by a corporate culture that is aggressive, paranoid, and dismissive of, in particular, complaints from women; a culture of enemies lists and cavalier approaches to the law. Emil Michael told Uber employees Monday that he has left the company.
Finally, weapon has been found that shall sink the Battleship Uber. Legislation couldn't do it, Taxi's couldn't do it, running story after story about how evil they are on Slashdot couldn't do it.
Time to call in the feminists.
Fucking sorted.
Someone please remind me why BuzzFeed is being treated like a legitimate news agency? Their click-bait posts were sometimes funny, but their news is almost always biased and poorly done. This headline and story is a great example. I assume when they launched their "news" agency they just borrowed content writers from their existing pool of people and called them journalists. "Trump-style"? Really? It's about Uber and they take shot after shot at Trump. Then have the nerve to basically call Fox News all liars. The article writer, Ben Smith, is the "editor-in-chief" and to have this incoherent drivel coming from the guy at the top says all that needs to be said about BuzzFeed "News".
As much as I hate to side with, "not appropriate for Slashdot" crowd, this seems more fitting for Slate or Salon.
Using this as a template we can look forward to seeing stories on intrigue and corporate politics at Dillards, because, you know, they use computers in their Point of Sale systems.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
these are Nixon-style tactics!
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
There may be good reporting in here but the Trump bashing shows how petty they are. I want neutral reporting.
Uber faced a legitimately wrong uphill battle in their business model, that of established taxi companies with government granted monopolies barring their entry into the market. They have a reasonable product that may do us all some good, but rather than addressing legitimate concerns they tried to be as slimy as existing taxi companies.
Legitimate concerns that led to establishment of granted monopolies (in some places) were drivers preying on tourists and strangers, drivers who did not have insurance, drivers who themselves were dangerous (criminal or mentally impaired), poor conditions of the vehicle, etc. These have been legitimate and widespread concerns in various points in history, and if you travel to certain places abroad you know that taking a taxi is a somewhat dubious affair that we have significantly less issues with here.
Uber did not wish to address these concerns in their business model, instead focusing on the various strong-arm tactics their competitors were using and shouting down anyone who pointed out the problems. I'm ignoring the "toxic work environment" stuff, I have no way of evaluating whether that is real or made up bullshit, my friends on the inside suggest more of the latter than the former. If instead they had managed to address the issues at hand, I am fairly certain that they would have won. It may be appropriate for their management to be replaced, it seems like they are most guilty of having chosen the wrong strategy, and their apparently devotion to the religion of Libertarianism may have led to their own failure, rather than working with the world as it actually is.
Yep, who cares if their vehicles are powered by a forsaken child, out of sight, out of mind!
That's why sweatshops in Asia, Mexico, and Africa exist, because you don't have to see it. Heck, you don't care that much about polluted water in Michigan. Or prescription drug overdoses in West Virginia.
How did flamebait from buzzfeed ever get posted to the front page of Slashdot?
Call the Slashdot 1-800 support line and open a ticket. Or click through the Help link to chat with a live Slashdot editor. They'll help you right out.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Uber will eventually die on its own, because it is unsustainable.
As soon as everyone realizes that fact that most Uber drivers actually LOSE MONEY when you figure in the low rates they pay people combined with the total cost of driving for them (insurance, gas, auto maintenance, etc) most honest figures come up with either less than minimum wages or you are actually losing money on the deal.
Uber is a scam.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
But, you know.....the people getting those nice, convenient rides at reasonable prices, couldn't care less about all this.
An awful lot do. As you say, many (perhaps most) aren't even really aware of how disastrously awful the company is, but plenty of them, once they find out, stop using Uber.
What's not to hate about Uber from a Progressive point of view
Forget "progressive". What's not to hate from a fundamental human decency point of view?
...because of this The Late Show is unwatchable.
Followed by:
Since hating Trump is the in thing though it has lifted his rating up past the other late night hosts.
...
Does not compute.
"Trump-style tactics?"
Quotes like that (although not surprising coming from super-leftist Buzzfeed), just make it obvious that this is part of a concerted journalist smear campaign.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Umm no. Uber claimed not to be taxi company thus did not have to follow those regulations. Nor did they have drivers, so didn't need to follow labor....seriously fuck off.
Similar pattern to most IT fads: the fanboys harp on a few key issues and convince suckers and PHB's that those few factors are the bee's knees. Over time they find out the hard way that every factor is important, not just the ones the fanboys highlight and exaggerate.
Just because factors like insurance, lawsuits, cleaning up puke, and mechanical maintenance don't show up in the first Uber paycheck doesn't mean they don't matter in the longer run.
It makes me sound like a fuddy-duddy at work, but I'm usually right because I've seen the same pattern for decades. People are suckers. The inexperienced just don't know how to look at a wide array of factors when evaluating something, and their egos and/or shiny UI objects prevent them from listening to those who can. (On the plus side, reinventing the wheel is great job security, although you start to feel like Sisyphus.)
Uber might survive, but their halcyon days are probably behind them as reality winds its way into their market.
Table-ized A.I.
Uber's problem is they circumvent all the legal protections (mandatory insurance for driver,car & unemployment, minimum wage laws, health care,etc, etc) by illegally declaring their employees contractors. When cities fought back by investigating Uber they obstructed justice by dodging police with a complex algorithm.
Uber breaks social and legal contracts left and right. They're competitive edge is that they got away with it when everyone else doing it got shut down.
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There is a difference in "bad things happen to workers in foreign countries" and "bad things happen to workers here, in the enlightened, forward thinking first world nation that I live in!"
As a current Uber driver, I hate Uber too, but not for the same reasons others do.
Uber/Lyft actually save lives. This fact shouldn't be underestimated. Talk to any longtime bartender or policeman in an area that allows Uber and Lyft and they'll tell you that Uber/Lyft have made a huge impact on the reduction of drunk driving accidents. This is the real benefit to society. And I don't care if you're a Democrat, or a Bernie Sanders supporter, but trying to outlaw or regulate Uber/Lyft out of existence is sheer insanity if you really claim to care about your fellow human beings.
With that said, the CEO of Uber has autistic tendencies and lacks emotional maturity. While Trump is a compulsive liar, Uber's CEO (Travis) is a compulsive truth-sayer (but not in a good way either). And I'm not saying this lightly. For instance, Uber's CEO has spoken to a dinner with hundreds of journalists and told them that Uber was doing opposition research into journalists that were critical of Uber. Now, he didn't say that to threaten journalists, he just said to explain his strategy (which he really should never have). And I don't care that probably most large corporations do use opposition research and compose extensive dossiers on whoever they deem an enemy of the company, I'm sure that many of them do. As an executive, it's just not something that you should just blurt out and say, especially to other journalists.
But that too is not the reason I hate Uber. The reason I hate Uber is because the company has no human empathy for any of its drivers. For instance, when Uber deactivates (fires) a driver, it does it while the driver may still be driving a passenger and it does it in the most dangerous way possible. It just logs you out of the driver app (and it doesn't let you log back in). That's it. So imagine, you're a passenger, you're in the car of an Uber driver, you're about halfway towards your destination on some freeway, and suddenly, the trip gets canceled, the driver won't get paid for having picked you up, in fact, he just got fired. Who does that? Seriously? Not even Walmart will fire their employees when they're in middle of a transaction with another customer. And if the employee was unstable to begin with, that's why you're firing him, then all the reason you shouldn't do that when your associate/employee is in a car alone with your customer. Plus, it's not like Uber is a new company anymore. Uber was founded six or seven years ago. Six or seven years, in my opinion, should be enough to rectify such an issue.
And the second reason I hate Uber is wage theft. Now, I won't go into the details. There is a class action lawsuit on this issue. That is the main reason Uber changed its terms of services with its drivers three weeks ago. But now instead of telling its drivers, sorry, we made mistake, we're sorry we stole the money we owed you and lied about what riders were actually paying us. Uber is now doubling down by essentially telling us, from now on, the amount the rider is paying us has no relation to the amount that we'll be paying you. This is a take it, or leave it, deal. If you don't accept the new terms of services, you can't drive for us anymore.