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Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Will Be Offered the Job as Uber's New CEO (recode.net)

Kara Swisher, reporting for Recode: The board of Uber has voted and wants Expedia Dara Khosrowshahi to be its next CEO. But here is a shocking twist for those who have had to endure this awful, messy and convoluted process: He has not been officially offered the job as of 15 minutes ago, said sources. Still, most expect him to take it and he appears to be the one person dueling factions of the board can agree on. Unknown until now, Khosrowshahi was the third candidate -- after Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman and former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. Khosrowshahi is considered the "truce" choice for the board, which has been riven by ugly infighting between ousted CEO Travis Kalanick and one of its major investors, Benchmark. Benchmark had backed Whitman, while Kalanick had backed Immelt. Sources said that going into this morning, after Immelt withdrew his name from contention when it was clear he would not win the job, Whitman had the upper hand in the race for the job. But she also wanted a number of things -- including less involvement by ousted Uber CEO Travis Kalanick and more board control -- that became too problematic for the directors, said sources.

22 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What's his leadership style like? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

    It's weird to see someone bring up this problem with Pale Moon, because I just downloaded it for the first time last week to see if it is a good candidate to replace Chrome. I liked Firefox before it copied Chrome's interface, so was hoping for some old school Firefox vibes.

    Maybe I was too late to enjoy the party.

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  2. Re:Immelt? Whitman?! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    If Meg Whitman had taken the Uber CEO job, I wondered what that would have meant for the future success of HP after she split the company into two.

  3. Re:I'm disappointed... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    This Douglas Adams sounds depressing. I think I'll go buy new shoes instead.

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  4. Re:I'm disappointed... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    That sounds boring anyway, and probably only appeals to a very small subset of the population.

    Out of all the books I've recommended on Slashdot, "I'm Feeling Lucky" got 1,300+ clicks and sold 12 copies. There's a lot of interest in the early history of Google.

  5. Re:I'm disappointed... by houghi · · Score: 1

    If she becomes the CEO of Uber, I am going to work for them, just so I might be sexually harassed by her. As of 15 minutes ago, they have not yet been officially informed about me starting there.

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  6. Meg Whitman by doctorvo · · Score: 3, Funny

    Oh, please, let it go to Meg Whitman! Let Meg Whitman demonstrate how female power can transform an evil, hated corporate empire into a loving, kind, progressive transportation company! Please! Let her do for Uber what she has done to, I mean for, HP!

  7. Re:I'm disappointed... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    If she becomes the CEO of Uber, I am going to work for them, just so I might be sexually harassed by her.

    How will you distinguish yourself from all the other bootlickers who have the same idea?

  8. Re:What's his leadership style like? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    Profitability is passe.

    The problem with profitability is what to do with the profits? The choices are stockpiling like many Fortune 500 companies are doing or investing in ever riskier assets to find the highest ROI.

  9. Re:What's his leadership style like? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    They're not???

    Nope.

    When did this happen?

    1990's

    I mean, if you can't have sex with them...what's their use?

    Eye candy. You can look at them in the eyes but no drooling, no touching, and no mansplaining.

  10. Re:What's his leadership style like? by mi · · Score: 1

    You can look at them in the eyes but no drooling, no touching, and no mansplaining.

    Well, that's one way to solve the global warming and the overpopulation problems... And the endangered species one too — except for the one species, which has grown so smart as to consider sex wrong.

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  11. OT: old school Mozilla vibes by mi · · Score: 1

    was hoping for some old school Firefox vibes

    Go for Seamonkey. Especially, if you use Thunderbird too — you'll save lots of RAM and some diskspace...

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  12. Re:What's his leadership style like? by jimbo · · Score: 1

    I tried Palemoon once but went back to Firefox. I realized I really don't care whether it looks like Chrome or not as long as it works. I'm very flexible, even a bit indifferent with UIs, as long as they can perform the tasks I need done.

    Also this is a very exciting time for Firefox, over the next year a lot of very interesting components will be merged from Project Quantum and the speedups should be substantial.

  13. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by swillden · · Score: 2

    Given how many issues Uber has had with sexism and the "bro culture"

    Whether they have such issues or not is none of our business. Do they deliver good service at a good price is what should concern us.

    You're certainly welcome to make that your only basis for evaluation. In terms of my day to day transactions, I agree with you. But there are larger issues, and many people do choose to care about them.

    I understand the argument that a company that does not discriminate will be more economically effective than one that does, and that over time the former will win and the latter will lose. I even believe it's correct. But we have ample evidence that "over time" doesn't mean a few years, but rather means at least a few generations.

    so long as nobody is forced to work there. And no one is — not in this country, not since early 1860-ies

    You should read Douglas Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name. Black slavery was clearly not effectively abolished until the 1940s, not the 1860s. It was reduced, clearly, and the situation has continued to improve, but any evenhanded analysis of the history of blacks in the US serves to support my point that market forces alone are insufficient to fix the inequalities we'd like them to address on any time scale faster than centuries. And market forces were not enough in that case, either, else we'd never have needed the Civil Rights Act and related legislation.

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  14. Re: I'm disappointed... by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

    Lol so blatant. Thanks mods.

    I'm stuck with the stupidest trolls on Slashdot.

  15. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by alvinrod · · Score: 2

    And market forces were not enough in that case, either, else we'd never have needed the Civil Rights Act and related legislation.

    The Civil Rights Act had nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with striking down Jim Crow era state government laws that made it impossible for market forces to exist. When you had state-mandated segregation, how the hell can a market function? If the law says it was illegal to allow white and black people to ride in the same train car (this is the famous Plessy v. Ferguson case) then how can the market offer an integrated solution?

    You can't blame the free market for failing to do something when the government has made it illegal for the market to even try. Nor do I think its entirely fair to assume everything will be fixed as quickly as you would like it and which I don't think government policy can do any better than the market. Former slaves and their children would have started with next to nothing, especially considering that in many states it was illegal to teach them to read. It may well just take generations to build up the human capital necessary to see blacks on the same footing as whites. That's just the reality of the situation, and it's quite clear that state governments spent a good deal of time making it far more difficult for black people to succeed. You can't fault the market for that.

  16. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    It is out business if they are breaking the law. Don't you have employment laws covering hostile workplaces and sexual harassment?

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  17. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by mr.mctibbs · · Score: 2

    So it's ok for them to discriminate as an employer, but not for me to discriminate as a consumer?

    Hypocrisy is just, super trendy lately.

  18. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by swillden · · Score: 2

    The Civil Rights Act had nothing to do with market forces and everything to do with striking down Jim Crow era state government laws that made it impossible for market forces to exist.

    True, but an analysis assuming a purely rational and efficient market would indicate that separate and equal options would have arisen. Sure, trains would have to have separate cars for different races, but it was societal attitudes, not economics, that caused those cars to be so different. Note that the argument that the difference arose from differences in ability to pay doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

    The reality in the Jim Crow south was that business owners were expected not only to segregate (as required by law), but also to offer lesser services to blacks. Offering the same level of service would have been legal, but provoked criticism, ostracism and a loss of white business. The market in that case actually selected against equality, because a significant (and relatively wealthy) segment of the customer base actively boycotted businesses that attempted to provide it. Other extra-legal elements of the Jim Crow system, such as restricted access to banks, and the constant sub-rosa threat of judicial or non-judicial violence against uppity blacks ensured that black business ownership was suppressed.

    Nor do I think its entirely fair to assume everything will be fixed as quickly as you would like it and which I don't think government policy can do any better than the market.

    Businesses are run by people, and the range of options that those people consider when deciding how to participate in the market are determined by the societal context. I agree that market forces are a powerful mechanism for changing society, and that government really isn't, but what government can do is exactly what it did in the case of the Civil Rights Act... make it illegal to offer differentiated services based on old distinctions that we wish to eliminate. That prevented social pressure from being able to make businesses offer lesser services to blacks.

    It may well just take generations to build up the human capital necessary to see blacks on the same footing as whites.

    That argument would hold more water if it weren't for the fact that other immigrants, arriving with similar low levels of education and other forms of human capital, climb much faster. I don't completely dismiss the notion that there are elements of black culture in America that are anti-progress, indeed I think it's easy to point out that the bone-deep skepticism of the establishment which prevails in much of black culture (and which is entirely understandable given the history of incredibly-pervasive hypocrisy in that system that was so blatant in the era between reconstruction and the end of Jim Crow, and is still not wholly eliminated) is extremely negative. But I don't think that fully explains the situation today, either, mainly because new black immigrants who arrive without the same cultural baggage, also see retarded progress up the social ladder.

    That's just the reality of the situation, and it's quite clear that state governments spent a good deal of time making it far more difficult for black people to succeed.

    And there's a good argument that many federal programs intended to help them succeed are so wrongheaded that they do exactly the reverse as well.

    You can't fault the market for that.

    I don't fault the market for any of it. The free market is a powerful optimizer that seeks the outcome that customers -- especially the customers with the most money -- want. But when what the monied customers want is social inequality, the market can't fix that. Not by itself.

    Note that that isn't the Uber situation. In the Uber situation, most of the money -- investors and customers -- see the sexism and bro culture as a negative. Were the board to take a -- wh

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  19. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by swillden · · Score: 1

    but any evenhanded analysis of

    Nice. So, any analysis that disagrees is automatically not evenhanded

    I did not make that claim. If you have reference to good analysis that finds otherwise, cite it.

    else we'd never have needed the Civil Rights Act and related legislation.

    If anything, that legislation has proven itself a remarkable failure 50 years later. For all the "reverse" racist laws and policies, for all the self-flagellation of the Whites, the dissatisfaction among Blacks is still remarkably high — indeed higher now after the first Black President, than it was before.

    Should have left it to the market-forces.

    Your conclusion does not follow from your observations, mostly because your observations are very shallow. Also, you are engaging in a blindingly blatant false equivalency. I won't attempt to address all of the problems in your statement, but I'll pick just one: the fact that black dissatisfaction appears to be higher after the first black president was elected. Note that I'm not claiming to offer an authoritative explanation of that fact, but just a plausible explanation which suggests a completely different conclusion than the one you're uncritically assuming.

    I think the reason that black dissatisfaction has increased is because blacks saw the election of Obama as a turning point in race relations, as evidence that the country really was ready to listen to their concerns about the extensive and systemic oppression under which they live. Prior to that point, they had focused instead on the slow, steady improvement they were seeing, but Obama's election seemed to indicate a step change. In particular, a change that indicated that they were now free to speak out about issues they hadn't previously felt it was safe to speak about.

    But the step change didn't actually happen. The system didn't suddenly become fair and evenhanded, and when blacks complained about old injustices what they got was a backlash. Anyone who thought that white supremacy was dying learned that there was a lot more of it than anyone had realized. This backlash resulted in the election of wink-and-nod racist as president, with the full-throated support of lots of open and outspoken white supremacists. The more cynical -- and racist -- blacks took this as confirmation of what they already thought they knew, and the more optimistic blacks felt their hopes crushed.

    So I am not in the least bit surprised that blacks are more dissatisfied. They achieved a triumph of progress, only to have their hopes dashed by discovering that it doesn't really mean what they thought it would, and that in fact their situation is even worse than they thought it was. That'll disappoint even the most optimistic.

    And how in the world can you possibly equate the dissatisfaction we see today with the open, bald-faced oppression that existed in Jim Crow? That's mind-boggling.

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  20. Re:I'm disappointed... by aicrules · · Score: 1

    I'm sure there are a lot of people interested in that topic. But probably very few who would buy a book for it considering ....the internet...

  21. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by swillden · · Score: 1

    For someone, who offers no citations of his own, it is a tad too rich to demand that of others.

    I did, actually. I mentioned an on-topic book, which is very much about economic/racial incentives in the post-reconstruction south. You really should read it.

    Life itself is neither fair nor evenhanded.

    We don't have to leave things the way we find them, and the inability to reach perfection is no reason not to strive for improvement.

    The point was, the government's intervention in the fates of minorities did not achieve its results. It was and remains a failure.

    I must have missed where blacks are still slaves (chattel or debt peons), or still segregated.

    I'm comparing what we have today with what we would have had, had we simply let the market forces sort things out.

    No, you're comparing what we have today with where you fantasize we might have been... in spite of the fact that the market made little progress on fixing the issues in a century. It wasn't until FDR put a stop to the use of trumped up charges to create slaves for hire in the 40s (something he did only to defang Nazi propaganda, actually), and LBJ pushed through and aggressively enforced the Civil Rights Act that significant progress was made.

    I'm a strong believer in the power of free market economics, but markets optimize for the desires of the customers with the money, not for overall social good. In most cases, those two things are the same, which is why capitalism has proved to be the best way of providing for everyone. But in some cases, they're not the same. In the south, the customers with money wanted to keep the black man down, and they used both their votes and their dollars to do it.

    If you want proof of that, think about what a purely market analysis would predict of an environment in which "separate but equal" was the law, but racial hierarchy was absent. Clearly, business owners would have had economic incentive to compete for both black and white customers in separate sides of their establishment, and would have found it most cost-effective to offer the same goods and service in both. Or if the economic differences in the segregated classes were large enough, they would have offered lesser services to the poorer class, at a lower price. What actually happened was that any white business owner who offered equal treatment or lower prices for blacks would find his white clientele vanishing -- or find his business or home vandalized and himself and his family ostracized. Black-owned businesses were suppressed through other, mostly extra-legal means like redlining and denial of credit (note that a rational, efficient market should have wiped out those practices, but didn't). The customers demanded that blacks be treated as lesser humans, and the market responded accordingly by providing separate and unequal services.

    The fact is that the market worked perfectly well, it just didn't produce the outcome that you would like to suppose.

    And, yes, the "Jim Crow" laws should've been declared simply unconstitutional — unfortunately for all, the Federal government's intervention went much further than that...

    It had to. Merely rolling back the laws would not have affected the intent of the southern states to suppress and oppress blacks. It only removed one method. There were many others which also had to be shut down.

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  22. Re:Whitman would be a better choice, IMO by mi · · Score: 1

    markets optimize for the desires of the customers with the money, not for overall social good

    There is no difference between the two. If somebody wants to dine in a Whites-only restaurant, it is — should be — up to the owner, whether he wants the business of the racists or that of the Blacks (and those joining them in a boycott).

    Merely rolling back the laws would not have affected the intent of the southern states to suppress and oppress blacks.

    How do you know?

    There were many others which also had to be shut down.

    Nope. The official discrimination had to be abolished. Everything else amounts to prosecuting thought crimes — things made illegal by the accused's alleged thoughts. We surrendered substantial personal freedoms — such as the freedom of (not) association and even that of speech — in the hope of racial harmony. 50 years later we still have neither the freedoms nor the harmony. Do we deserve either?

    It has already proven pointless and I argue, that it was not merely that, but also harmful. The recent housing crises was due to that and have the grossly unfair admission policies in various universities, which openly discriminate against Whites and Asians. Similar discrimination is encouraged in the work-place — Uber is seeking not just a good CEO, but one who'd make it less likely, the company will be prosecuted for "discrimination" of women.

    It is stupid, unfair, and inefficient — just like everything a government does...

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