
The Fall of Travis Kalanick - choult
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-01-18/the-fall-of-travis-kalanick-was-a-lot-weirder-and-darker-than-you-thought
======
gwern
> After Uber’s lawyers insisted the company wouldn’t pay Kamel to clean up
> Kalanick’s personal scandal, Kalanick agreed to pay Kamel $200,000 out of
> his own pocket, according to a person familiar with the matter. “The meeting
> ended on a positive note, and Travis appreciated Mr. Kamel’s openness and
> forgiveness,” a spokesperson for Kalanick said in a statement.

For $200k for being lectured for a minute, I'd have a lot of openness (of my
wallet) and forgiveness too.

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derwiki
> “Until 2017, you could go into Uber on any given day and half the T-shirts
> were Uber T-shirts,” says one executive. “They disappeared overnight. People
> didn’t want to wear Uber stuff.”

~~~
dawhizkid
Speaking for myself, I worked at Uber in 2015/2016 and did not wear Uber swag
in public because I was afraid of awkward encounters with Uber drivers, which
happened on several occasions sitting in the car when it somehow became known
I was an Uber employee.

~~~
matte_black
Don't companies usually hand out t-shirt swag with their company names on it?

Most of the time that I see someone with a company logo on their shirt I do
not readily assume they work at that company.

~~~
mieseratte
I would never assume someone walking around with a North Face t-shirt works
for North Face but tech companies are obscure, especially outside of the big
tech cities. If I see someone wearing a t-shirt for a tech company in my city,
they more likely than not work for that company. If I saw someone with an Uber
shirt I would assume they work for them, and probably as corporate. I can't
say I've ever seen a driver wearing Uber swag.

Personally, most company swag I've worn once or twice and then throw in the
Goodwill bag. So it's possible there's some random folks wearing a $NoNameCo
shirt, but I'd wager they're just as likely recycled into something else.

~~~
Larrikin
As a receiver of a lot of SWAG, all of those company shirts become pajamas
until the day they go into the H&M donation bag. I can't imagine any situation
outside of working for that company where I would want to walk around
advertising for them on an uninspired shirt with their logo plastered on it.

I've gotten one single shirt from a hackathon I considered wearing based on
their well designed logo, but the entire back is covered in sponsors rendering
the entire thing garbage.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I can imagine one - I would gladly wear SpaceX swag everywhere I go. Hell, I'd
wear a SpaceX-themed tie.

Beyond that, I prefer to order t-shirts with my own design; $random-company
swag frequently ends up as home/nightwear for either me or my SO.

~~~
wand3r
SpaceX ran a promotion for employees where everything was 50% off. A few of my
friends worked there and I was broke so for 2.50 for cofee mugs, hats and
shirts was pretty attractive. I was a spacex brand whore for 6 months due to
poverty. Love tge company though, if you can ever tour that facility I cant
recommend it enough

------
telltruth
I never understood the outrage against video secrely taken by taxi driver
Fawzi Kamel. One can clearly see Kalanic was actually pretty humble, well
behaved and trying to answer his questions. But Fawzi kept making accusations
after another, cutting him off, not letting him answer, being very rude and
just not listening. Kalanik’s argument that he was running a business was a
legit. I just think people would have blamed Kalanik no matter what he did or
said.

Taking sabbatical was his definitely big mistake. But with his parents
situation he was also at the weakest point which VCs took full advantage of.

Overall, I am firmly in Kalanik’s side. Stupid VCs always want to get rid of
founder who is in to long term and replace him with someone who would get
exist fast. Kalanik was media’s punch bag for things he didn’t intended or
even didn’t do. But world needed him, industry needed him. Without him
politicians and unions would have eaten away any such companies before it
became bigger. Lyft is now ripping fruits seeded by Uber. Without his
audacity, Uber wasn’t possible.

------
zwily
If you’ve followed the Kalanick story till now, there’s nothing new in this
article. However, it’s interesting to see it all put together.

Anyone know what it’s like inside Uber today?

~~~
decacorn
For all the uber employees on here reading and defending their stake in the
company, the company culture is absolute garbage, it's truly crap. I was
interviewed in 2017 and treated like shit, and by that I mean the worst
professional experience in my life. I work at a reputable tech company with
very reputable people, and I have never experienced the kind of devious,
malicious behavior EVER. I can't wait to out the names of the two uber atg
employees responsible. Time's up, dickheads.

~~~
mattnewton
My only experience with the company was a mutual strong no after the rudest
phone screen of my life. I was trying to describe how a toy function like the
prompt I had just written would be perfect for property checking (a la
quickcheck) and the phone screener stopped me partway and berated me for not
“getting” unit tests.

~~~
swang
yep, somewhat similar experience

my interviewer was 15 minutes late to the call, didn't even know what position
i was applying for, didn't ask me at all about the assignment they made me do,
then ended my call early because they had to be somewhere. already knew i
didn't get the job but didn't even get back to me until a month later.

person still works at uber. pretty high up now. i guess i'm glad i didn't get
farther given all that came out afterwards.

------
DonHopkins
Shamelessly promoting Deepak Chopra on her wellness web site was inexcusable.
But proxying Kalanick while promoting "meditation wristbands" for drivers??!

>"Even in top-level conversations where Kalanick appeared to be absent, other
executives and board members suspected that Huffington was serving as his
proxy. The founder of the Huffington Post was a constant presence at Uber’s
offices, making suggestions that seemed to promote her new wellness company,
Thrive Global Holdings LLC. For example, she wanted to put “nap pods” at
driver hubs and give drivers meditation wristbands. Huffington’s company
received $50,000 in consulting fees from Uber. The perceived self-dealing
didn’t go over well internally, and she had the money returned, according to a
person familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Huffington says that
Thrive provided services at cost, and that Huffington refunded the fees when
events required her to take on a more active role at Uber."

------
spaceflunky
What's it like to show up to work at Uber? Do people just sit there miserably
while they constantly remind themselves that a "big payday" is on the way like
some kind of perverse mantra?

What if the pay day never comes? How will it look when your resume says you
stayed at Uber well after everything has been revealed?

~~~
uberemployee
Anyone who is miserable has already left in 2017. Many long time employees are
waiting for SoftBank deal to close before leaving which makes sense. They
deserve to be enriched for their hard work. But they are only a couple of
hundred employees at most. We have 15,000+ employees and 3,000 engineers.

I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve done at Uber. I have no worries about
finding my next job. I have a laundry list of companies who have contacted me
since Jan 1, 2018, including FANG.

If the company doesn’t want to hire me because of where I work, I’m happy to
not work for anyone who makes snap judgements based on resume line items.
That’s basically like excluding people because of the city they grew up in,
the school they went to, or the football teams that they support. I’m happy
never working for or alongside people like that.

~~~
mercutio2
You think bias against someone living in a particular city is comparable to
bias against someone voluntarily working for a company with an unprecedented
reputation for unethical behavior top to bottom stretching back years and
years?

My cohort of friends, many of whom are hiring managers, won’t even _patronize_
Uber, much less hire someone who voluntarily worked there without demonstrably
showing signs of serious soul searching about the ethics of the company.

~~~
ajiang
Seriously? That sounds like quite an exaggeration. Do you believe, in earnest,
that all 15,000 people that work at Uber are not worth hiring?

------
freech
> And in New York, a small union called the New York Taxi Workers Alliance
> declared that there would be no taxi pickups from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on
> Saturday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

> For Uber, that would create extra demand at the airport, which meant it
> could charge more—but this would probably cause a backlash. That had
> happened before when the company let its “surge pricing” algorithms do their
> thing. So the New York managers decided to be good citizens and suspend
> surge pricing for the night.

> If the company wasn’t price gouging this time, maybe _it was trying to break
> up the JFK strike_.

That's actually the opposite of what disabling surge pricing does. It makes
sure that drivers aren't paid enough to bother picking up passengers there, so
it protects the strike.

People are idiots. Uber should start a campaign featuring polar bears cruising
around or something (or maybe make fun of trump on their twitter account if
they have to save money) instead of trying to fulfill the publics demands.

~~~
londons_explore
People prefer unavailability of something to it being available at a high
price.

If you walk into a gas station and they say "sorry, we're out of gas" \- no
worries, try the next place.

Whereas if they said "we're low on gas, so you have to pay $100 per gallon",
there would be public outcry. People would fill up then refuse to pay. People
would be forming a mob outside the station.

Rational? No. But it's the way people think, and companies need to adapt to
it.

------
Overtonwindow
_The SoftBank deal will make Kalanick a billionaire._

I wouldn't exactly call that a "fall". A lot of bad behavior but it seems like
that behavior is being rewarded handsomely.

------
saas_co_de
This story is not over yet.

------
platz
"Silicon Valley innovation now is directly aimed at oppressing the underclass,
and everybody knows it and can see it. They hate Uber. People hate Uber. It
means the death of the era of good feelings that came with this constant
Moore's Law style innovation.

And that was an unforced error, by Silicon Valley. It was in their DNA. They
didn't _have_ to give Travis Kalanick, a guy they despised and never trusted,
for good reason—They didn't _have_ to give him all that venture capital.

But they saw him as an expendable probe, so they cynically gave him money, to
see how much law-breaking he could get away with in the name of their
disruption activities.

That was hubris—and nemesis is well on the way."

\- NEXT17 | Bruce Sterling | Live from 2027

~~~
adventured
Uber massively empowered the underclass by destroying the taxi cartels. Lyft
exists because of Uber. Even if one argues that Uber deserves to be punished
for its various sins, the revolution they helped spark will improve
transportation over time. Just demolishing the medallion racket alone is a
vast improvement for the underclass, of which pretty much all taxi drivers
belonged. Pre-Uber, Taxi drivers were more like indentured workers, with
between little and zero hope of ever owning or controlling anything. Medallion
prices in New York City reached $1+ million before Uber tanked the scheme.

~~~
inkaudio
Stop repeating this, it is wrong. Uber copied Lyft, Uber was initially another
high end black car/limo service, the whole history was documented on
TechCrunch articles, here is one to start:
[https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going-
to-...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/zimrides-lyft-is-going-to-give-uber-
some-lower-priced-competition/)

~~~
Fricken
App based rideshare brokering would have happened one way or another. If it
hadn't been Uber or Lyft it would have been someone else, or possibly many
others. Nobody in particular deserves special credit for coming up with the
idea. Although Uber was quite exceptional in their aggressive growth and
willingness to challenge the law. I think without Uber and specifically
Kalanik, it wouldn't have happened as fast.

------
dawhizkid
I'm curious on his take on cryptocurrency. TK has spent his entire career in
the P2P space (file sharing before Uber). I wouldn't be surprised if that is
his next move...

