
Six contenders to be Uber's new CEO - utkarshs12
http://thehill.com/policy/technology/339257-six-contenders-to-be-ubers-new-ceo
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startupdiscuss
There are two types of contenders:

1\. Successful ones who have to be convinced that they should risk their
reputation and take on the headaches at Uber.

2\. Less successful ones, where you have to convince the current Uber decision
makers to give them a shot.

I think the field is narrower than this article suggests.

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blackkettle
and this may be even more problematic that it appears.

the ones from category one might have difficulty knowing what to do - unless
we're talking about the lyft CEO they know success from something other than
uber. that might not necessarily be good.

the ones from category two might have the same trouble as one, but add to that
that they will have to compete/convince the board of probably every little
move.

and if they don't do something fairly dramatic, fairly quickly, the good
people at the mid and lower levels will start to flee for greener pastures.

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startupdiscuss
Who suggests these contenders?

They seem somewhat arbitrarily selected. I don't think it is credible to
suggest, for instance, Sandberg. I don't think it is remotely plausible that
she would be interested in the position.

It would be interesting if the reporting revealed a little more about the
decision/justification.

~~~
forgotmysn
there was a report last week, i dont remember who published it, that Arianna
Huffington, who sits on Uber's board, was pushing for Sandberg. the report
strongly suggested that she had no interested in leaving fb, as you mentioned,
but i dont think her addition to the list was arbitrary.

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stickfigure
Am I the only one sitting here thinking that maybe one of the qualifications
for the position should be someone with _some domain knowledge or experience_?
Yeah, that's probably hard to come by, but this doesn't sound like the
author's even trying.

Despite all the public hand-wringing, Uber's problem isn't all the bad press.
The problem is that it's an immature business that hasn't figured out how to
make money yet. It doesn't matter how progressive the captain is or how happy
the crew is or how much fanfare the trip gets if they still steer the ship
into an iceberg.

Maybe the theory is that the head of a company that big doesn't really need to
know the problem domain, just be a "good manager"? That's hard for me to
believe; it certainly hasn't been true at any scale I have experience with.

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ceejayoz
Right now, the required domain knowledge and experience at Uber is "quietly
running a large company without controversy", not "knows a bunch about taxis
and self-driving cars".

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davidiach
If they hire someone for image reasons, Uber is going to fail badly.

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ameen
I'm pretty sure the board will do just that. I'm looking forward to Yahoo 2.0

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Animats
Since Marissa Mayer is being considered, that's a very real possibility.

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nunez
didnt she successfully prop up Yahoo enough to get sold to AOl? given that
uber's investors badly want this to go public, she seems like a potentially
good person to do that with

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jasallen
Seems like Uber would be a big step _down_ for Sandberg.

~~~
pwthornton
Agreed. I'd be shocked if she did this. FB is a premiere tech company. She's
second in command there. If she leaves, it would be to be first in command at
another premiere company.

Uber is a startup that doesn't make money (actually loses quite a bit per
ride), has just been rocked by a major scandal and doesn't posses any sort of
tech or business process that is really unique. There is nothing that Uber
does right now that another startup could just copy.

They lose money on each ride, and it's incredibly unclear how they will make
money outside of trying to run taxis companies out of business by subsidizing
fares with VC money and then jacking up fares when there is no more
competition.

~~~
encoderer
> it's incredibly unclear how they will make money outside of trying to run
> taxis companies out of business by subsidizing fares with VC money and then
> jacking up fares when there is no more competition

If you look at the numbers, all they need to do to reach profitability is
increase fares by 7% without increasing the driver's cut.

I'm not suggesting they can just do that overnight without impacting their
competitive position, but it's not "incredibly unclear" to me.

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hn_throwaway_99
"Raising fares 7% without increasing the driver's cut" is a complete fantasy
at actually should emphasize how unprofitable Uber is. In many other
transportation industries, 7% is just about the _total_ profit margin - if
companies in these other industries could raise their revenue by "just" 7%
they would double their income. They don't because they can't.

~~~
encoderer
I disagree. The average $15 fare becoming $16 will just absorb a lot of
consumer surplus that Uber is leaving on the table for competitive advantage.
Cabs are still generally more expensive.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
And you don't see Lyft as seeing an opportunity to sell for $15?

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encoderer
Actually I think the bigger threat would be lyft charging $16 and paying the
drivers more. But outside of a few big American cities Uber dwarfs lyft so
they would need to scale up before they could really threaten

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dokein
I like how it's possible to go from contributing nothing to Yahoo (whose value
was basically proportional to their share in Alibaba minus a small bit) to
being a top contender for CEO at another company.

~~~
r00fus
Well, let's just say this CEO is going to play the role of John Sculley or Gil
Amelio as a placeholder CEO until Travis's _glorious_ return, then maybe it
makes sense.

I mean, take a look at Leo Apotheker at HP - he was a complete fall-guy.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> I mean, take a look at Leo Apotheker at HP - he was a complete fall-guy.

What? Apotheker wasn't a fall guy - he made plenty of awful, horrible
decisions all on his own, like the Autonomy purchase and his ruminations about
divesting the PC business.

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foobaw
Sheryl Sandberg or Marissa Mayer would be a huge win for Uber. I've worked
with both of them, and know that they will bring extremely positive changes.

~~~
praneshp
I worked under Marissa at Yahoo, and am happy to state (with my real name
attached to this comment) that

1\. She was a good person, and went out of the way at times to make employees
feel good.

2\. She was a terrible boss, who would pass edicts like "our cubicle walls
will be cut to 50% of their tomorrow", and pass it off as "because natural
light is better for you".

3\. I believed as an employee that she cherry-picked data to support pet
beliefs like hiring at selected schools, banning remote work and closing
satellite offices.

4\. She had a preference for ex-Googlers/ex-Google APMs

She would definitely bring positive change in terms of the scandals, but any
competent HR department that has the company's long term interests in mind can
do that, no?

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rokhayakebe
Re 2: If you are dealing with anything north of 5 people any permanent
decision is likely to upset a percentage of your staff. Just because some
dislike your decision that that does not make it less sound.

Re 4: You have your preference as well, so does Google, IBM, Yahoo and the
small law firm where I work. Everyone does when it comes to hiring.

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Relys
Re Re 2: The problem that I am seeing here is the lack of logic and thought
put into the justification behind such a drastic change. Noise levels in a
typical cubical environment are distracting enough to the average engineer.
Same issue with the remote work policy. What it boils down to is a leader who
creates "edicts" based on a personal preference or "cherry picked" facts
rather than reason, logic, market research, A/B validation testing, etc.

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misterbowfinger
Why not internally promote one?

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ProAm
They're trying to clean house.

