In Video, Uber CEO Argues with Driver Over Falling Fares
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I'm no fan of Kalanick, but I thought he comported himself reasonably, taking the time to explain things from his perspective. He could have just said: "sorry no time". Instead he shook the driver's hand, tried to explain the logic of his moving down the luxury scale.
The fact that the footage of him with two women wasn't cut out is frankly disgusting and a total invasion of his privacy. He didn't do anything wrong except flirt a bit. How tawdry of Bloomberg to show that material.
What is wrong with newspapers nowadays? It seems the press decides someone's "fair game" and they just engage in the most blatant character assassination.
His comments here further that impression: he throws around jingoism in his awkward attempt to impress his companions ("every year is hard for Uber...") and is either uninformed or dishonest with regards to the driver's complaints.
The "footage of him with two women" could not be cut out because it is the entirety of this video. It's necessary both to prove the identity as well as adding context and body language.
The women aren't identifiable and him being out & about with two women could have been observed by anybody, and was probably observed by the people at whatever Super Bowl event he was visiting.
It's also hard to judge this without remembering that Uber employees had, for years, full access to any customer's ride data, and often used it for fun & stalking. They boasted about their ability to algorithmically tag "rides of glory", set out to punish a journalist by digging up private information about her, and collect data about user's positions not directly required for their actual service.
I fail to see how this is character assassination. It's a primary source – the video itself carries the meaning, and if that is damaging to his reputation, then the flaws are his and not something made up by any journalists. Likewise, I ain't reducing anyone's "bayesian priors" because the driver's credibility is completely irrelevant. He's not making any relevant statements of fact beyond those visible in the video.
And the first thing people do is debate the ethics of recording him.
Looking through his Wikipedia (ok, not a fantastic reference source ;) ) entry, there doesn't seem to be any mention of involvement (employment/directorships/etc) with financial institutions.
?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
Here's the info about their subprime lending:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11852940/uber-subprime-auto...
The problem is, I can't help but wonder if the current context for Uber, puts such emphasis on Kalanick's behavior, that even a normal night out with 2 women is judged negatively. I mean let's face it, he really didn't do anything wrong in the video. He flirted a bit, and tried to have a reasonable discussion with the driver.
When the conversation got out of hand, he left.
It's sad how often people with pitch forks look to even the most normal of behavior, to crucify someone.
Not really. Uber's actions are, certainly, but the opinions and actions of the CEO in his personal life are only of interest here because technology executives are the celebrities of Hacker News readers.
Well what do you know, at the time of writing this, it's the top comment!
> The fact that the footage of him with two women wasn't cut out is frankly disgusting and a total invasion of his privacy. He didn't do anything wrong except flirt a bit. How tawdry of Bloomberg to show that material.
It's relevant because he said things like this:
“That’s kind of how I roll. I make sure every year is a hard year. If it’s easy I’m not pushing hard enough.”
at a time when we're supposed to be trusting that Kalanick is fixing his company's culture...
> the most blatant character assassination
Where was the character assassination? They just reported on what happened in the video. The video is relevant to the public interest. Do you have a right to not be filmed in an Uber... maybe? I don't know. It's not my car, and the driver could need the film for their own protection. I think I would be okay with being filmed as long as it wasn't secret.
Would you be OK with the video being published on a major news site?
"Character is what you do when you think nobody will find out."
Edit: Also, you probably are being filmed elsewhere in any major hotel (lobby, halls, etc). And I've seen plenty of that footage end up on TV.
I think its unfair to say that simply by doing business with the general public, every CEO becomes a public figure.
That doesn't make it right. Clearly you would not be happy about it either.
I think the interesting part of this story is not Kalanick's character based on the video, but rather the business decisions Uber made and how that has impacted their drivers.
It appears Uber has benefited from people investing in fancy cars. If it was their business plan to mislead people into doing that and then force them to take Uber X rides, then that is wrong, though not illegal.
There is no such thing as privacy when you get to be that big. And frankly, any leader competent enough to run a business that big should already know that.
Regarding Uber black, another HN user points out,
> Travis is right on a technicality they did not lower Uber Black prices much if any. What they did instead was coerced Uber Black drivers to take Uber X request. Yes drivers can reject Uber X request, but if you reject a certain amount of Uber rides, they kick you off their system. Probably why the driver is complaining about going bankrupt, you need a luxury car to drive Uber Black, but if you're stuck picking Uber X fares you'll lose money.
That seems like semantics to me. The pay was lowered.
> In 2012, Uber Black cost riders $4.90 per mile or $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according to an old version of Uber's website. Today, Uber charges $3.75 per mile and $0.65 per minute.
Nip arguments in the bud, not at the leaf.
I like that attitude.
Bear in mind the start of this thread was discussing the driver being rude. You can call it "market forces" as much as you like, but if Uber is happy to sit back and let its drivers pay the price, its CEO can expect to be given a hell of a lot of abuse in return. And he'll deserve it. Don't expect to be treated well when you don't treat others well.
Uber isn't a charity. I don't condone Uber's culture or whatever the CEO may or may not have done to create such a workplace but you have to understand that Uber is a business, like any other, out to maximize profits. Everyone seeks to maximize profits, and if the market calls for changes, then you make those changes lest you give up market share to your competitors.
No, but it functions in a society, and shouldn't be under the mistaken belief that it is immune to societal change.
We can all agree that self-driving cars and automation in general are a positive technological development. But what if it results in mass unemployment? It's short sighted to say that Uber only has to seek to maximise profits - it also has an interest in there being a large customer base with money available to use their product. Presumably it would also prefer that those customers are not rioting and trashing vehicles in the street.
This is a mini version of that. Uber has screwed over this driver, and he is justifiably angry about it. "Well, we'd lose market share if we don't do it" is not a winning argument to anyone except other advantaged rich people.
By that token, their drivers aren't charity workers either. If we put aside the inter-personal aspect of the video (which is contentious to say the least) this, to me, espouses the fundamental flaw in Uber's approach to their business: they have no respect for their workforce.
Unless they can get their self-driving cars working in time (which is another contentious subject), I suspect their eventual failure if it comes will be due to how they treat their drivers. Personally, I use Lyft because (a) in SF Lyft and Uber availability is more or less fungible and (b) I got tired of Uber drivers giving me an earful on how badly Uber treats them. Lyft drivers, in my experience (which is anecodtal, but I take at least 5 Lyfts per week and often 10+) are reasonably happy about their work. After the recent news I went ahead and deleted my Uber account, but that was an easy decision to make since I never use them anyway.
Driver ads, however, display successful-looking models quoting some unrealistic (as frequently pointed out by quite a few news sources) dollar amounts, and let's face it, the clientele it's targeting is very removed from robotics/AI development, unlikely to have an economics degree (or speak fluent English, for that matter) or disposable income to trade up / trade down their vehicle of choice to reflect the strategy of the day.
Your argument can be rewritten to apply to Countrywide Mortgage and fake Viagra peddlers, does that make those businesses right?
If customers are voting with their wallets that they want more UberX and less Uber Black, then Uber Black drivers should be faced with a choice of chasing volume or margins, not forced to subsidize customers.
That is not how capitalism works. Uber drivers are responsible for both fixed and variable costs. The marginal revenue of a fare might be less than the marginal cost and the decision to accept a fare needs to be made by the driver. If Uber drivers do not have the ability to make revenue management decisions they cease to be contractors. Uber is misleading its drivers and the IRS by labeling its drivers as contractors and passing losses onto them.
But if you expanded the list of duties to be sufficiently large and indefinite ("gardening and whatever else I need"), then a court might rule that you have created an employment relationship and are responsible for providing various other benefits.
So it would seem to favor the "employee" classification if Uber had a long history of "oh, and you also need to take these other requests ... oh, and support spotify integration now ... oh and you have to auto-accept requests before you're done with the current."
You are right that some drivers going bankrupt is how the market would correct, but forcing them to take uberx fares at below cost is a dreadful idea and definitely not free market economics. If anything, it's like a govt regulation that requires businesses to do some stuff below cost to still be in the game.
Uber works so that each seat (or pair, or row of seats) is operated by a single driver, mostly at their own personal risk – with the operator of the plane controlling a lot of the equation.
Normal airlines assume an aggregate risk of the entire demographic and seasonalities of air travel. If customers suddenly stop traveling business, the airline can do something about it (lower prices, improve service, better marketing, and so on). With the Uber model, there's not so much a single driver can do, but they carry a lot of the risk.
What happens when you look at it like this; A Uber driver must accept some % of request sent their way (any class), but if you want to be sent uber black request then you must have an appropriate car.
I feel like you are looking at it from a top down view, vs a bottom up view. I am not saying ether view is right or wrong. I just find it hard to follow the logic to how that makes them employees.
But I have struggled with the employee argument from the start, so I am a bit bias at this point.
A big part of why I think people feel the way you do is because the system is programmed, and automated. If i was a guy looking for contractors to do jobs for me naturally people who were more consistently available and that I have worked with in the past would get jobs before people who can only be available "whenever". The only difference is that was some sort of decision I made in my head vs a system who had thresholds programmed.
What I feel like uber has done is automated the process of hiring contractors for on the spot jobs. And somehow people don't like the automation of it, or the rules. I feel like the solution is simple. Don't drive for uber if you don't like the terms. Go get a taxi medallion if you want to make your own rules, or drive for one of the competitors.
> To bring supply back in line with demand, some drivers who used to drive Uber Black should either leave or downgrade
Sure, or some passengers who used to want a cheaper UberX but find it unavailable should either resort to alternative methods or upgrade to UberBlack - market equilibrium can be found in either direction.
Why? If I were a driver, you can be sure I would be filming everyone. Does that mean I would have no credibility?
Here in London I've assumed that cabs are always filming.
Considering that he did change the price from under the driver, and that is very likely what did indeed bankrupt the guy, I don't blame him from acting out in any way he can.
The fact that the CEO just screams out "BULLSHIT" when he points out the price decrease which affected him and that his only response just makes me lose respect for him completely.
Kamel: “We started with $20.”
Kalanick: “Bullshit.”
Kamel: “We started with $20. How much is the mile now, $2.75?”
Not sure referring to California laws follows here. It's for a different reason.
To me this is a very classist oppinion. Normal people are filmed as they take the bus, ride the subway, go on the elevator, walk through the graveyard (seriously), go shopping, so why should a rich person who can afford a cab be granted an exclusive right to privacy which the rest of us don't have? If we promote this case due to the expectation of privacy that only serves to create this devide between rich and poor in which only the rich can afford privacy rather than a precident in which everyone deserves it.
What are you talking about? Normal, non-rich people totally have the same expectation of privacy when they take a cab. Would YOU be ok if your cab driver films you without any knowledge? A taxi/uber/lyft is a rented private car, it is not the same as public transportation.
Most taxis I've been in the past, oh, let's say 15 years, have had interior/passenger cams.
Edit: This seems to back up my understanding that most states are 1-party consent. http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-co...
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
This isn't true, and even if it were---cabs are private spaces; that's what you're paying for. Subways, elevators, busses are shared public space.
The CEOs being disconnected with the masses is bad, but so is the masses assuming that somehow THEY know just the right thing the CEO should have done without being privy to any of the data that a CEO has access to.
It's not too different from the arrogance you see on HN.
> Travis is right on a technicality they did not lower Uber Black prices much if any. What they did instead was coerced Uber Black drivers to take Uber X request. Yes drivers can reject Uber X request, but if you reject a certain amount of Uber rides, they kick you off their system. Probably why the driver is complaining about going bankrupt, you need a luxury car to drive Uber Black, but if you're stuck picking Uber X fares you'll lose money.
You can't force contractors to take lower fare rides and then still claim the high ground of "we didn't lower your fares to X"
Even when said "free markets" cause people extreme hardship?
Maybe teaching economics in primary school could solve this problem.
You're peering through time with rose-colored glasses.
American history is littered with instances using the press to smear and undermine the oppositions, whoever it may be.
The Founding Fathers, a number of them with close ties or financial stakes in printing press businesses, used it regularly to peddle an agenda.
Appearance and opinion have long mattered. Because they are really the only things we have on which to judge. Everyone has their own personal view and influencing that is the goal. Not truth. Never in the history of the nation has actual truth-seeking been the goal of the powers that be in politics or media.
Ideas like we're now in a "post-truth" world are bizarre. It's nearly a truism of the species to use a pedestal to smear enemies and endear to us our fans.
A relative of mine was a chief of a fire department. During a nasty contract battle, he had people picketing his home -- a miserable experience for his family at the time.
But... he was a public figure and the protestors were on a public sidewalk.
When you're a public figure that carefully nurtures a bad-boy, asshole image and attitude of privacy bordering on contempt, you shouldn't expect kid gloves.
Sorry, why should we care about the driver's "credibility" here? Are you alleging the video has been doctored?
There are legitimate reasons why this is done in a taxi: preventing people running away from payment, engaging in harassment or other bad behavior, or claiming you refused to pick them up for reason X when you had a good reason to not pick them up. From what I know of Uber, these reasons all apply to their drivers as well.
IMO the most incriminating thing in this video Travis did is that cornball shimmying in the back seat.
This is exactly how entrepreneurship works - you take risks, sometimes enormous risks with huge capital investments, and it doesn't pan out. Sometimes it does work out and you reap great rewards for a long time.
The driver signed up for this and the gamble didn't work out... now he's blaming Uber?
But driving for Uber isn't entrepreneurship. You don't control your marketing, brand, you don't acquire your own customers, no control over price or business model, etc. Drivers are really just cogs in the service, provide a car, drive the routes, get paid.
You can't "lose" $96,000 by being a driver...
Not identifying with Uber drivers as entrepreneurs is a very classist attitude.
He is a ruthless, greedy, ignoramus, misogynistic pig who needs his ass handed to him and Uber to crumble before his eyes!
It's definitely illegal. It's not immoral to film it necessarily, it is maybe immoral to release it without permission. But at some point you have to admit that it becomes "public interest" to leak information, even if it transgresses those moral standards. As an extreme example, if you had managed to covertly film Kim Jong Un, giving insight into the inner workings of the hermit kingdom, would it be immoral to make it public?
If you are upset about pay, you go to your manager or in the case of Kamel, you go work for a competitor Lyft. You have every right to voice your complaints but don't be surprised when they fall on deaf ears.
EDIT:
Furthermore, there is no good reason that a CEO should not work for the board as well as for their employees and their customers. Or maybe it's that the board should be looking out for their employees and customers. Either way, somebody should be listening to guys like Kamel so that outbursts like this don't have to happen.
EDIT: Spleling
Founders tend to maintain their seats at the table because they were the guys to originally build the table in the first place, and thus have political privilege.
I ask this in all seriousness: what qualities make for a good leader assuming the ideals of capitalism? I understand many people here will say they would prefer to work for a moral leader who can handle criticism and adapt to make sure his employees are taken care of, but do those leaders perform better at growing companies quickly? I guess what I'm asking is for data - are assholes more likely to be successful CEOs? Or maybe they're better at the early stages when growing a company, or perhaps they're better at the later stages when a company needs to deal with regulations, or maybe they're always the worst. What data is there for this apart from anecdotes?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/1-in-5-ceos-are-p...
>"The study of 261 senior professionals in the United States found that 21 per cent had clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. The rate of psychopathy in the general population is about one in a hundred."
They should have applied the same standard to both groups, but instead used a very loose definition for the professionals, and a very stringent definition for the general population.
"The Psychopath Test" is a great book on this subject, and recommended reading on it; all these popular blog posts are just meaningless polemical drivel.[1]
[1] http://www.payscale.com/career-news/2015/04/why-a-disproport...
E.G. We used to have a general manager at where I worked some 30 years ago who handled a time theft case this way; he brought the guy into his office with a manager, laid down the time theft amount and days time theft occurred and gave the guy two options. Walk out the door, or work and pay it back; if you choose to be dishonest we have no use for you, leave. If you choose to be honest, pay it back, show me you can be a moral person, we're even. That person chose to pay it back, and they stayed with that company some 20 additional years.
Any other quality is secondary. You don't have to know a library of algorithms or what the latest and greatest API is to be a great leader or even a competent programmer. Those things are distractions from understanding the fundamental theories and best practices of computer science anyway, and a lot of it is technological imperialism delivered through marketing to management already very aware technology needs to be inhibited for them to stay employed.
Another very large organization I worked for had a standard software they had deployed all over the organization, and one department, a lab, had a bar-coding requirement for data entry to eliminate very costly problems that traced back to the lab. It wasn't my department's job to build infrastructure for them, and they had budgetary constraints that kept them from updating. I suggested they ask the staff to change the font of the text to a bar-code font which is something after doing 5 minutes of google research, I discovered the app allowed. I closed out the ticket and referenced that as a suggestion, and gave them the ticket to reference later. Lo and behold, 2 months later, they get a estimate for $50,000. This organization is one of the biggest employers in the US, and routinely mergers with another company about once every other year. There is no leadership in their organization, and we all suffer for it.
It was only after being berated for a minute or two and interrupted that Kalanick's composure started to crack. Before then, I don't think anything Kalanick could have said would have mollified this driver. He had an axe and he was going to grind it. Kalanick could have handled it better, but he didn't totally melt down either.
And I think the guy is pretty terrible in general.
You don't get to challenge everyone in your life who makes decisions that directly or indirectly affect you.
Where did you get that idea?
I believe the first amendment disagrees. If you have a grievance with someone, it is absolutely within your right to tell them. In fact, I'd argue that a healthy, functional society relies entirely on people being completely honest with each other.
And the driver is not an employee. Yeah, I know this has been discussed a lot of times, but the way Uber is set up, there's absolutely no reason for Kalanick to give an Eff about the driver's situation.
And indeed: the loyalty cuts both ways. Uber drivers can immediately drop Uber and simply work for Lyft. They have complete and utter independence from the Uber company.
Its just the nature of how Uber has been set up. I understand the driver's frustration, but what more does the driver expect?
Considering that, without the drivers, Uber doesn't have a product, I cannot agree with that statement.
"Its just the nature of how Uber has been set up. I understand the driver's frustration, but what more does the driver expect?"
For the CEO of Uber to act like a human being. But given the news recently, that's far too much for anyone to expect.
I'm not sure what humans you're interacting with but the CEO of Uber acted just how I'd expect myself or any of the other people I know to act when confronted by someone being antagonistic while I'm trying to go home after an evening out.
Be unhappy with him if you want but don't try to paint it as human. You either want the CEO of Uber to act like a politician or a saint, not a human.
For the greater majority of Human History, slaves and concubines were normal. I have very little faith in what a "human being" can and should do.
Except, you know, "being a human"
> loyalty cuts both ways. Uber drivers can immediately drop Uber and simply work for Lyft. They have complete and utter independence from the Uber company.
That's actually not that different from being an employee, where you can usually quit on short notice and start working somewhere else as well – at least on the lower end of the market.
But it's wrong to consider these relationships as symmetrical in terms of power. Uber (or any employer) has vastly more power over an individual driver than the other way around. That's because loss of the gig can mean financial ruin for the driver, but the company wouldn't even notice it.
That's why unions are needed to create a balance of power.
...and ignoring that Uber is structured specifically to make the board toothless – proof: major VCs invested in Uber have to resort to public blog posts because they can't get answers nor actions using the standard tools of corporate governance...
...there's nothing wrong with faulting people for immoral but legal actions they take. Uber and its ilk are inflicting harm on the lower middle class by driving down the income and security of taxi drivers. The spoils go to middle-class customers (now) and VCs (theoretically, someday). Is that a good deal for society overall? Nobody knows. Wal-mart has similarly driven down prices and arguably made life easier for many people. It's also killed Main Street, created an underclass of employees earning minimum wage, and led to the consolidation of power within oligopolies in many markets.
It's not a sustainable solution because boycotts and other means of regulating companies without the power of law just don't work. But there's nothing wrong with it. In fact, it's probably a necessary on the way to actual regulation by laws.
Why? Seems like we should be holding them responsible in any way we can (even if that's just talking bad on a message board) for their bad actions. I don't know why we need to give them a pass on actions we don't deem moral just because it's legal.
The story is that TravisK raised his voice while being secretly filmed by one of the drivers. There's no story about a CEO just leaving a cab.
When someone tells you how to do your job better, and that someone is not even qualified to do that job, you'll also get angry.
Kalanick was off the clock, clearly on his way home and in a social setting. The driver could have really capitalized on the moment. He could have opened a productive and respectful conversation by saying he was a very early driver and had some feedback - good and bad - asking to sit down at a more appropriate time. That had far more likelihood of achieving any progress.
But maybe he didn't want progress. Maybe he just wanted the satisfaction of venting to the CEO.
However, I've had more borderline experiences with Lyft than Uber, mostly related to basic cleanliness of the car. Drivers have always been great though.
This sounds a lot like mortgage crisis. There, borrowers said they didn't understand the terms of loans that had changing rates (ARMs), and banks said they didn't mislead anyone because the terms were in the contract.
These fights explain why we have government regulation and education to sort things out. We can't have the rich constantly taking advantage of the poor, and we can't have the poor be so uneducated as to not understand the risk of a NINA loan. It isn't good for the growth of the country.
I believe it simply sets you to inactive temporarily, because you're obviously not picking up rides and you're slowing down the rider matching process.
There's some balance between punishment and keeping the rider experience pleasant. I don't want to wait 10 minutes to get matched because of nearby lurking Uber Black cars passing on my Uber X request.
If a driver ignores several requests in a row, they're clearly taking a break. It's a feature, not a punishment.
Uber has a solution in place to deal with this, and it's surge pricing.
Imagine being pitched an engineer job at an engineer salary with company later expanding into haircutting business and ducking your bonus for not generating enough haircuts.
My app sometimes says there are no Uber X available in my area, but 5 or 6 Uber Black. How could that be possible unless the Black were not automatically signed up for X?
Perhaps things have changed.
However a) I can't just call him adhoc b) he's good so he's busy. So sometimes I don't get him. Then I just plan on a Lyft.
1). The title doesn't match the contents. Instead of reporting on the specifics of the fare changes, Newcomer rehashes the more prominent Uber scandals and some short commentary on TK's "short temper."
2). A very short paragraph (around 1/20th the article) breifly elaborates on the fares:
> And the gig has gotten harder for longtime drivers. In 2012, Uber Black cost riders $4.90 per mile and $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according to an old version of Uber's website. Today, Uber charges $3.75 per mile and $0.65 per minute. Black car drivers get paid less and their business faces far more competition from other Uber services.
3). The video transcription selectively takes out parts and fudges others:
> "Kalanick begins to lose his temper."
> Omitting the civil conversation preceding "But people are not trusting you anymore"
The following is just my personal anecdote: I have an immigrant in my family who's just like the driver. He's not interested in "fighting over a good idea, which sometimes means admitting that his isn’t the best one," but looking to assert his ideas onto anyone who takes his argument-bait.
Additionally, it's plain rude to engage in this sort of thing with a stranger.
You may want to rephrase that, because it sounds an awful lot like you're attributing "stubbornness" to the fact that this guy's an immigrant.
>Additionally, it's plain rude to engage in this sort of thing with a stranger.
He's not a stranger. He's the boss.
Yeah, I get the feeling that people who have a big problem with Fawzi's tone here are really saying "you don't talk to the boss that way!" But you know, maybe you SHOULD talk to the boss that way.
I am. This sort of behavior is common among older people from the country my family member -- and I -- emigrated from.
> He's not a stranger. He's the boss.
That's a bit of an exaggeration. Travis isn't directly overseeing this specific driver's operations (ignoring the whole "Uber is a contractor not an employer").
But he isn't my boss.
> I have an immigrant in my family who's just like the driver...
Sounds kinda racist.
I'm sure Travis can spare 10 minutes in his 70 billion dollar lifestyle if this guy's life has been ruined.
And based off what we know of Uber's values, attitudes, and CEO, the driver was probably right and Travis-bro deserves some rudeness to bring him back down to Earth.
The footage with the girls, while incredibly awkward, is nothing more than a flirtatious conversation. Now, fair enough that the driver realises he has the CEO of Uber in his car and wants to talk about his situation as a driver, and I give props to Kalanick for actually taking the time to listen and explain.
Did the ending clip not paint Kalanick in the best light? Sure, but keep in mind that in this situation he is a guy in his private life who has been blindsided and accused of ruining this guys life, with, what it seems like from other posts here, lies.
If telling the guy he needs to take responsibility for his own choices instead of looking to blame someone else is the worst thing that Kalanick could say to anyone, then there really isn't a story here from my point of view.
Also, Bloomberg should really take a good hard look at themselves for posting that video without cutting out the conversation with the women. Posting that section of the video is the kind of disgusting shit that TMZ and other gossip rags would pull.
Oh come on, he's the CEO of Uber and he took an Uber. Probably every single Uber driver in the country if not the world knows who he is. If he doesn't have an expectation of being recognized and asked about the business he should hire non-Uber private cars. This isn't someone tracking him down on the street and sticking a mic in his face. It's completely fair game.
And if he took a Lyft, a private limo, or drove himself, that would be even worse publicity. Right now no matter what he does he'll get people sniping at him, just like on this board. It's a herd mentality where you pick on perceived weakness, and it's always ugly.
> Probably every single Uber driver in the country if not the world knows who he is.
Does every single McDonald's worker in the world know what the CEO looks like?
I'm not saying he shouldn't take Ubers. I'm responding to the comment "he is a guy in his private life who has been blindsided". He should have every expectation that any driver he gets might ask him about the business, even harshly. It's completely fair game. It's his job to deal with it without losing his cool.
> Does every single McDonald's worker in the world know what the CEO looks like?
The cult of personality around Kalanick is huge, and he is making daily decisions in a volatile industry that directly affect the lives of tens if not hundreds of thousands of drivers. They are very likely to be following his every move in the news. In any case it doesn't matter how many drivers recognize him, all I'm saying is that he should have no expectation of privacy if he takes an Uber. Drivers are very likely to recognize him and should have every right to ask him tough questions.
I don't think he's in the public eye that way. The courts take a very specific view on who is or is not in the public eye. Also, he did engage with the driver until the driver got belligerent. Should he have just brushed off the driver with "I don't talk business during off hours?" The driver was not letting this go.
> The cult of personality around Kalanick is huge
Citation needed. I couldn't pick him out of a lineup, and I use uber daily, just like I couldn't pick the CEO of ATT out of a lineup.
Basically, the driver was behaving unprofessionally. If you were a limo driver or a waiter at a nicer restaurant, you get fired if you acknowledge the customer's status or fame at all. That sort of thing is not done and horribly intrusive.
Personally, I believe whether you're the janitor or the CEO of a company there are moments in your life which should be considered personal-life rather than "a good time to talk about your company".
And no, it isn't someone hunting him down in the street, but taking advantage of a guy, whether a person is a CEO or not, by blindsiding them with questions while they are with company and then sending the recording to a news company in a very TMZ-ish manner, irregardless of whether permission was given for filming, is as good as sticking a mic in his face and in no way is fair game.
- Contractor-not-a-contractor employment merely pushes costs and risks on to the worker. We all end up paying for the worker's social safety net, and costs of doing business (Such as insurance premiums, for example).
- Not Uber-specific, but technically-not-full-time employment that just barely allows employers to bypass benefits owed to full-time employees needs to be fixed. See Walmart and how they help employees sign up for government benefits as part of their on boarding in some areas.
In the end, somebody is paying for these costs. Why shouldn't it be the companies doing business?
Interesting how it ends with "Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own actions"
Why should it be the companies doing business? Just because someone happens to work for Walmart/Uber/whoever, I don't see why it means that employer suddenly becomes responsible for meeting any particular set of needs that person might have.
If we, as a society, decide that there should be minimum standard of living for citizens than we should fund that from taxes paid by all.
I agree, this is the other - perhaps bette - solution. But the corporations that reap huge benefits from public education, infrastructure, healthcare, etc. (and those who currently disproportionately profit from those corporations) need to start contributing their fair share.
Exactly. We have allowed companies to externalize entirely too much risk/responsibility onto the public - from "too big to fail" banks to companies that use "creative" labor classification to save money on health plans and benefits to advertisers that collect reams of sensitive information but are not held to account when that information leaks.
That said, it's hard to determine exactly how to prevent this from happening, and even harder to fix. My current best estimate is that either Uber needs to stop being a market and function as a full fledged company, or supply and demand should be made independent. This could be done by, for example, splitting Uber into a company advertising the services of drivers, and a separate company that buys these services for their customers. This should in theory allow for more competition.
Because that's not fair to those of us who work independently. Why should an "employee" get subsidized healthcare but not a struggling business owner? You're saying the only companies worth having are ones big enough to negotiate with insurance companies?
However, once Kalanick's retort essentially becomes "you're not taking personal responsibility and blaming others (ie., me)" he loses me. It's a fair discussion up till that point and each party's argument is reasonable (even if the tone isn't polite). What does Kalanick know about the driver's situation that he can say that?
When taken along with current news regarding Uber's culture, this doesn't look very good for Uber and Kalanick as a person.
[0] I'm not judging it based on its merits because I am not in the know regarding the numbers of the issue.
One can argue that these small business owners / contractors should have had the foresight not to do business on someone else's platform, but this strikes me as a bit Malthusian. Going through bankruptcy is no small price to pay for this lesson. Hopefully the next Facebook or Uber will have to promise some degree of stability (the same way I am very wary of working with SaaS startups), but I'm not optimistic - there's a fool born every minute.
And sure rates went down, but it's still 3X the price of UberX. It didn't go down precipitously. From $4.90/1.25 to 3.75/0.65 won't cause someone to lose $97k and probably he got more activity overall. I agree with the CEO that this guy sounds like he's blaming Uber for his problems, when there are plenty of UberBlack drivers making hand over fist otherwise the drivers wouldn't be there. My wife's last UberX driver said he was making $3k/week.
You agree to surveillance when you enter the car. Just like a taxi, a bus, a train or a trolley.
You actually don't have an "expectation of privacy" in these spaces either. So a drone cam or telephoto lens is okay too. That's where state law is interesting.
California is actually surprisingly permissive for photographers and videographers.
Which state laws are you reading?
This is not an absolute thing. For example, a shoe cam to look up skirts doesn't fly just because you're in a public space.
The driver probably bought a few cars and runs a "small business" over Uber. He had dreams of making big money fast. It didn't pan out.
I understand the anger and frustration, but not the placement of blame.
I've been working it for Lyft since December. The lot has about 170 spaces. Lyft and Uber can each queue up 100 vehicles so some would have to park on streets.
Before #deleteuber, I would come in with 90+ drivers ahead of me. I'd have to wait an hour. I would watch Uber drivers arrive after me and leave before me. And the lot was always full while the airport had arriving passenger traffic.
Since #deleteuber, it's much different. LAX seems to be in Prime Time much of the time. But here's the weird thing, the lot is like half empty. There's like 20 cars in the lot that fly only the Uber branding (and plenty flying both logos on their Uber-leased Priuses). I haven't waited more than 10 minutes to get dispatched, except at like 2AM when the passenger air traffic tapers off. On most of my LAX dispatches in the last week, I couldn't even reach a parking space and park before getting dispatched. And this arriving with sometimes as low as 50 drivers ahead of me, and typically 80 or more.
The most incredible time, I arrived at LAX. It was Prime Time in the airport. The app told me the queue was full and to leave. I drove slowly down Jenny Street, the app flipped to 98 ahead of me. I entered the lot, followed the traffic jam of Lyft drivers trying to get to the designated parking area. It took like three minutes. I was dispatched as I entered the parking area. I took the short cut through the fence to exit the lot and picked up my fare.
But here is the clearest indication to me that Lyft completely owns LAX now. I arrived, parked, ran to the porta potty and took a leak. 3 Uber drivers were hanging out near that end of the lot, talking to each other. I got my dispatch while walking to my car. I picked someone up, took them to Marina Del Ray, came back, got dispatched again and those same 3 drivers were still killing time talking to each other.
Not asking in support/opposition of uber. Genuinely curious about what are some ways drivers could get into so much trouble?
Also, for all we know there could be a sign in the black car that says, "Smile you're on candid camera!".
I don't know whether California is a two-party consent state, and the specifics of what that requires are different state to state anyway.
If it was your car and someone got in and recorded you, then I'd say that's more clear cut. But if you get into someone else's car do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy?
As a passenger, I think I'd be happy to have an example made of a driver who recorded and then published video and audio of a private conversation without consent. I've said and done plenty of things in the back of an Uber/Lyft/taxi that I wouldn't want the whole world to see.
Having issues with Uber's practices is fine, and talking about them publicly is fine—but a driver who makes and leaks illegal recordings is not someone I want to ride with. Throw the book at him, IMO, and frame it as standing up for riders' privacy.
EDIT: Er, scratch that. Didn't realize there was audio attached. I think audio might be the incriminating factor in the two party consent thing. I mostly just wanted to make a bad pun.
However, CA does make an exception for recording "in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded."
You could certainly make an argument that this douchebag might reasonably expect audio to be recorded in his company's driver's cars. Not so sure you could make that argument for the other passengers.
Interestingly, Bloomberg could be sued (or prosecuted; $5000 fine) for distributing the recording if it indeed falls under CA's wiretapping laws.
1. What does "two female friends" have to do with driver's argument with Kalanick? Should've cut that out. I read it as slimy ad hominem to reinforce bias on Uber's culture. Uber might have some culture problem, but it is completely unrelated with driver's issue.
2. Does driver's argument have any basis? The piece merely draws attention to Kalanick and driver's tension - is Bloomberg now a TMZ for business world?
I'm very disappointed in Bloomberg.
On Kalanick's side, he is entirely correct that Uber has to compete in a very competitive market and most of that competition is in price. If Uber didn't compete on price, they would sign their own death warrant.
On the driver's side, he took a risk in going for an Uber black car and he probably wasn't fully aware of that risk. He seems justified in feeling upset at how exposed he is to market forces that are outside of his control.
Given that, perhaps Uber should better inform drivers of that risk and offer some way that drivers can buffer themselves from that risk. For example, Uber could offer drivers some sort of insurance against rate changes. This would incentivize Uber to be more careful about rate changes since they would pay a penalty if the delta is too big and it would stabilize the rate for drivers -- there are a lot of variables to play with here to make the outcome mutually beneficial.
Starting a tech business with better ideas, and working harder and smarter than the Old Boys with Money (and taxi medallions) is the one of the last ways anyone, like a Zuckerberg, can climb the ladder, without selling out their own hacker spirit as we call it. The fact that the CEO would sit and dish strategy in a frank manner is something I find commendable, and seems to part of this guy's nature.
But if Uber goes down in flames for this petty PR play after burning through billions in VC money to acquire the market share they are rapidly losing, no young founder, heck no man or woman who hasn't trained in corporate lawyer dark arts is going to be allowed to run these innovative startups who need huge amounts of capital to be sunk initially for a long term payout.
Welcome to the world of "cool program! the grownups will take it from here kiddo."
With that said, I still think, in this video, the driver was on the wrong side and Travis was not. In fact, Travis starts replying in a fairly equanimous way, and loses it only after the driver starts blaming Travis for everything. If the driver has such a problem with Uber, he should not be driving for it!
You would have been the "awful" kind of slaver back in the day.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13758241 and marked it off-topic.
GP's point at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13757973, where they illustrate a few externalized costs, which also seem reasonable to criticize, received pushback that companies don't have to do nothin' for their employees but reap the profits, which is a bad position to take, IMO.
People use the term "un-American" too much these days, but the person I was responding to went way beyond that into anti-civilization.
There is no way that the person I was replying to could possibly be a slaver, so I wasn't attacking them personally. I was connecting their position to that of slavers who would just as soon let their slaves die in the fields from overwork, dehydration, or any number of other things that "shouldn't be the boss' responsibility."
The only group of highly disgruntled drivers are the ones who lived in the overpriced period of black cars that existed before Uber came into the market.
The driver probably spent $97K on a luxury car expecting to be able to make the prevailing black car driver wage at the time.
Uber did a great service to consumers by democratizing driving services, and now money flows to so many other people and does tremendous benefit to society.
I'm glad Travis stood up for himself. Maybe if that driver had been more rational and less inclined to gripe about other people's successes causing his life to be miserable, he might have started Uber. He likely had a big advantage over Travis in terms of familiarity with the industry and would have made fewer mistakes early on.
2. I have been a big Supporter of Travis Kalanick since last 2-3 years, just for the fact that he's willing to take harsh steps to win. This ultimately helps Uber. Uber's Drivers are not its employees, it doesn't want them to treat them like employees. As more drivers enter the market, supply starts increasing faster than demand and therefore prices must decrease. Since Driving is low barrier profession, its relatively easy to replace them and accumulate them with Uber's model. In this conversation Kalanick is seemingly busy with friends, therefore much less interested in discussing details of his decisions.
Why would you do that? These drivers are just "taking harsh steps" to ensure their safety and the safety of their property. I thought you were all for that.
Edit: also why should Uber be allowed to dictate what equipment its "not employees" can and can't use in their own car?
Uber should be trying to protect its costumers from privacy violations, so it should take steps to ensure drivers are not using anything that would hurt costumers physically or by any other way. I understand the some of the recent privacy issues in Uber have come from its employees and not from drivers, so It should also be trying to get rid of destructive employees as well.
Sir/Madam, I don't really want to be offensive.
And I know that this is a stupid comparison, but I cannot help myself and I need to ask:
Would you apply the same logic to Hitler? He took really harsh steps to win. And it would've ultimately helped Germany. Other people were not German citizens after all (like drivers are not Uber's employees so who the hell cares). Right?
I mean, I understand Travis. He has a billion dollar business now. I totally get that he might decide to say you know what, fuck the drivers, I'm doing this. There are huge interests for him to make this decision. Maybe (probably) you and I would've done the same.
But I don't understand why would you be a big supported of him? Why would you cheer for someone who is mal intended to win? You have 0 stakes in his winning.
Again, I didn't mean to offend. I genuinely want to understand why would someone with 0 stakes support an ill intended person.
Edit: I'm not necessarily saying Travis is ill intended. But the parent says he supports him only because he is harsh, therefore not caring about any other point.