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Travis Kalanick To Uber CEO Candidates: I'm 'Steve Jobsing' It And Will Return (recode.net)

Kara Swisher, reporting for Recode: Warring factions within factions, conflicting back-channeling, intense media scrutiny, questionable foreign influences and a capricious leader whose jarring moves leave everyone in a state of perpetual uncertainly. The Trump administration, right? Well, yes, but also Uber, as it nears its much anticipated decision on who will be its next CEO. And, according to sources, that top leader is not going to be a woman, as the board of the car-hailing company struggles to move forward. To add to the drama: Some directors worry that its former CEO Travis Kalanick -- who was ousted -- is trying to game the outcome in his favor, after he told several people that he was "Steve Jobs-ing it." It is a reference to the late leader of Apple, who was fired from the company, only to later return in triumph.

14 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. The difference is by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 2

    Steve Jobs was clearly a genius while Kalanick maybe has an MBA

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    1. Re:The difference is by Gr8Apes · · Score: 4, Funny

      Found an MBA!

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    2. Re:The difference is by whoever57 · · Score: 2

      Steve Jobs was a brilliant asshole.

      Kalanick is just like Jobs, except for the "brilliant" part.

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      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    3. Re:The difference is by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm not a part of the Cult of Jobs or the Cult of Apple, but I can acknowledge that Jobs was very good at determining what people would want before most people even realized it, and was technologically savvy enough to know when to attempt to push the product development such that it was viable and could be brought to market. He was also very good with at least evaluating interface design, don't know if that was more of a veto-power sort of thing or if he had a real hand in it, but either way, Apple products under Jobs generally had good design. That hockeypuck mouse on the first iMac stands out as the opposite, and I'm certain that we can find other glaring examples throughout the years, but by and large, both the software interfaces and hardware aesthetics were quite good, and were well liked by the nontechnical buying-public and even by some tech-savvy users.

      I don't see how anything in this relates to Uber. Apple is a products company, while ultimately Uber provides a service, and a service that once the phone app portion is concluded is not different enough from competitors' services to stand-out. The CEO of Uber trying to compare himself to Steve Jobs is like comparing Apples and Automobiles. It just doesn't make any sense.

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  2. Riiiight by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Travis continues to have delusions of grandeur, while pissing investors' money away. Steve Jobs actually built companies. This guy just spends other people's money.

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    1. Re:Riiiight by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2, Informative

      Pixar was a company he bought off from George Lucas, who needed cash after his divorce, that burnt through his money until Toy Story came along, and then took credit for something he had almost nothing to do with..

      When did he take credit for anything at Pixar except funding it for the initial 10 years? He never said that he did any of the work in those early years. For the first 10 years Pixar did run on Job's money, however, he engineered the first Disney deal that led to Toy Story. Jobs also took Pixar public. Jobs was CEO until Disney bought it out in 2006 which saw Pixar rise to be the juggernaut it is today. So Jobs did a lot for Pixar.

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  3. Pancreatic cancer FTW? by GrumpySteen · · Score: 3, Funny

    I mean, it's what Jobs would do....

  4. Real leaders don't imitate. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The thing that these sorts of people fail to realize is that real leaders don't imitate; they define.

    The moment somebody tries to replicate what a successful leader did, this person has inherently become a follower, meaning they can't be a leader.

    To make matters worse, the imitator likely couldn't even fully or properly imitate their inspiration, either. This means that the imitator will have a greater chance of failure than even the imitated leader did.

    This isn't just true for people. It's true for organizations and open source projects, too.

    Look at Firefox. It's like it has tried to imitate Chrome, the true leader among web browsers. But it's like the developers behind Firefox just don't "get" what makes Chrome the leader. So Firefox tries to mimic the look of Chrome, but it's never anywhere near as good as Chrome is.

    It's the same for GNOME 2, which tried to imitate Windows in many ways, and GNOME 3, which tried to imitate OS X. Neither version of GNOME could really compete with the desktop environment that was being imitated.

    Systemd is another example. It tries to imitate the Windows approach, but with Linux as the kernel. And it's a total disaster, in my opinion.

    A real leader, like Theo of the OpenBSD project, sets his own goals and his own direction. He doesn't try to mimic somebody else. He doesn't measure himself compared to others. He knows what he wants, and he gets it. He's a real leader, not an imitator.

  5. Just proved he's not CEO material by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The job of a CEO is to ensure the growth and financial success of a company. Poisoning the well of potential CEOs is a sure-fire way to spike that future growth. Not only does that prove you are NOT CEO material - it also means, Travis, you probably cost yourself several billion dollars. And guaranteed you will never come back because those with enough power/leverage to oust you will ensure you never return (lest they look like fools, and bring back a man who they not only rightfully pushed out - but one who negatively impacted the growth of the company once forced out).

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  6. Good on ya by mr.dreadful · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So Travis, you're going to go off, start another self-driving company that is technically more advanced, wait for Uber to be almost dead, and then be bought out and brought back by the original company as a hail mary? And then re-invent the smart phone, which arguably saved the company more then anything else did? *grabs popcorn*

  7. That's not "Steve Jobs-ing it". by shess · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Steve Jobs-ing it is "You're all fucking idiots, I'm out of here." It wasn't some big plan where he was going to go chill out in the woods for a bit and come back stronger. Jobs intended NeXT to take over everything, he was just 10 years or so too early.

    Further, "Steve Jobs-ing it" is selling all of your shares but one, because who wants to invest in idiots? Then after Apple acquired NeXT, he sold almost all of _those_ shares, too.

  8. Re:And then what? by Dog-Cow · · Score: 2

    He doesn't even have Jobs's ego. Ego usually describes a person's inflated idea of their own genius. Jobs really was about as good as he thought he was.

  9. It's for the best. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    The more assholes that die from ignoring medical advice from experts, the better off the world will be. (Sorry Apple fans but Steve was a real dick)

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  10. Re:Jobsing by sl3xd · · Score: 2

    who killed himself by trying to cure cancer using quack remedies rather than actual medicine.

    Steve did use actual medicine: he was diagnosed in 2003, and had surgery nine months later to remove the tumor. The particular type of cancer he was initially diagnosed for has an unusually good prognosis for Pancreatic cancer. He was one of the "unlucky" few for whom the surgery wasn't curative. The doctors apparently suspected the cancer spread to his liver, and they took the unusual step of replacing it. That put him on anti-rejection drugs.

    Because of the anti-rejection drugs his immune system is compromised: if there's any cancer left, the cancer cells grow completelyunchecked, and the prognosis is extremely poor; the only thing left at that point is palliative care (ie. make him comfortable while he dies).

    When medicine says "sorry, we can only make your death less painful", I can't fault anyone for turning to alternative medicine.

    Fuck cancer.

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