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I don't think this requires a grand conspiracy to still make sense.

If you're an Uber employee that's been around for a while, you have significant value tied up in Uber stock. The senior management has long indicated little interest in going public, so in theory you have a lot of employees that are being prevented from becoming millionaires by their employer.

Worse, that stock is now decreasing in value (impossible to assess of course, but...) - might it not be better to leak all the things you've seen in the last few years and hurry the departure of the senior staff at Uber? Then you'll get a new set of executives who will be much more open to going public and making you rich. Maybe not as rich as you might have been before all this started, but it's better than terminal decline.

That's more or less where I am, actually; not that this is a conspiracy, but something simpler, more subtle and less organized.

I'm positing that the very real and very awful problems at Uber (again, to reiterate; those are the main issue here, I'm picking at side-issues...) have incidentally created an environment where some parties have powerful incentives to go in on Uber themselves.

"Ultimately the root of any conspiracy theory is a strong desire to believe that someone, somewhere, is competent at what they're doing." -Amy Dentata

Point taken :-)

But I don't think I'm advancing a conspiracy theory. There's a genuine crisis at Uber, and that's the important issue here; if a hundredth of what's been alleged is true then that's the main event here and all of this is really Valley inside-baseball navel-gazing. Let's not draw moral false equivalences here.

Still, as a student of Valley dynamics, one has to acknowledge that realpolitik exists whenever things go really wrong. Given that, it's worth wondering whether any parties can take advantage of those conditions, especially given the non-existent state of board oversight in tightly-held SV companies. Chris Sacca and Mitch Kapor have already gone to the press on this (publically), so it's not even that much of a reach.

This is, in some really grim ways, an opportunity which doesn't come around very often.

An opportunity to write a great screenplay and make a blockbuster movie.

There doesn't have to be a single actor who benefits for there to be realpolitik. It could be that the the company has pissed off a number of people on the way up (this is a virtual certainty), and now that they smell blood in the water, they're all coming out. Think "information cascade", not "nefarious actor".

That's actually what I was aiming to say, but the way I phrased it could unfortunately bear both interpretations.

Information cascade does not necessarily mean no nefarious actor or actors. While I'm not saying there IS a vast conspiracy to take down Uber, I too have felt that there is a concerted push for negative PR on Uber, with the timing of the releases of bad news a bit too neat. Uber's troubles have been on top of the news cycle for a few weeks now for various things.

That's a great quote that mirrors my thoughts. Even though conspiracies are very real, people that see conspiracies everywhere are really searching for order in a chaotic world.

The human mind is a superb pattern matching machine, to the extent that we perceive patterns even in random noise.

Interesting example: http://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/995095

While it's true that it's easy to imagine conspiratorial conduct is occurring when events are in fact coincidental, conspirators are quick to exploit that "healthy skepticism" and lead people into scoffing at the suggestion of the actual conspiracies that are underway.

Consider that "conspiracy theorist" is basically a pejorative these days. There are indeed some tinfoil hat wearers, but there are also a lot of people whose paranoia has been earned through experience and is more justified than it may appear at first glance.

I think the pendulum has definitely swung to the complacent side of things, and that people are more likely to assume coincidence when conspiracy is the correct explanation. I know the impulsive response here is "Hanlon's Razor!" and all that, but I feel that's better applied to keeping interpersonal relations friendly rather than explaining significant closely-timed organizational or social changes.

My experience with such changes at the organizational level has been that there are some key people who are very interested in ensuring that the people in the org believe an organic, coincidental, or otherwise autonomous change occurred, but they've actually spent months coordinating efforts to ensure that the desired changes occur. Politics is an inevitability any time you get more than 5 people in the same room.

We'd do well to hesitate and think before we laugh at the people who put forth "unofficial" narratives.

"Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by bungling." - Unknown

That literally everyone is incompetent is the grandest of anti-conspiracy conspiracies.

Of course there are competent people. I know I am, and so are most of the people I know.

The folk who conspired to cheat the emissions tests at VW are competent and organised; the folk at Uber who built the system to track cops are competent and organised; the folk at the NSA etc etc are competent and organised.

> This is corporate politics by insurgent means

Do you mind explaining that? I'm not sure I follow. It's obvious that a lot of dirt is coming out, but it seems to all be sourced internally. Or are you referring to people with media connections pushing the stories for more exposure (which I don't know if is happening or not)? I don't think there needs to be an explanation for why there's a lot of stories beyond it hitting the tipping point for many employees, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.

> Do you mind explaining that? I'm not sure I follow.

This is obviously highly speculative, but Uber is a really leaky ship right now. This could be solely coincidence, but I am positing that – potentially – someone who wants increased influence at, or to increase pressure on, Uber may see opportunity here. To that end, they might be spinning parts of the narrative through their press relationships.

In other words: never let a crisis go to waste...

Ah, okay. That's what I thought you might have been referring to, but the term "insurgent means" is unique enough and vague enough that it piqued my interest enough to make sure. :)

Well, it's not business-as-usual, that's for sure.

I think it's just as likely that the people with grievances to air are far more likely to be listened to once an initial scandal breaks. As soon as the first tale hit the mainstream news, every editor and reporter suddenly had a reason to publish an otherwise ignorable story.

Top execs leaving is more easily explained. This is the time if you have skeletons in your closet, assuming the internal investigation is real, before your dirty laundry is aired in the national news. And if you see this as Uber's death knell better to bail before it tarnishes your own rep to have worked there.

> And if you see this as Uber's death knell better to bail before it tarnishes your own rep to have worked there.

Even if it's not Uber's death knell, as top exec it's probably better to bail now.

You can take your "I ran X at Uber" managerial propaganda and cash in on that for a better position. An Uber IPO probably isn't going to be life-changing amounts of money anymore for these levels of people even with the sweet deals that the hoi polloi would never get, so time to move on.

> I think it's just as likely that the people with grievances to air are far more likely to be listened to once an initial scandal breaks.

I think both things can be true at once.

Perhaps you're thinking about it too deeply.

Maybe it's just the other employees who are (finally) sick of all the shit?

It's got to be embarrassing for the engineers who work there. It used to be a pretty prestigious/sought after place to work. Now it's tarnished.

> Those tactics don't work unless the dirt exists

Dirt exists, this is obvious and well documented, and Uber does not even denies it. Now the tactics you are talking about are purely hypothetical. There is no need for a Machiavellian plan to exist for all downfalls and catastrophies (although sometime there is one.)

So what exactly is "corporate politics by insurgent means"?

Investors have functionally no say in how Uber is run (so they can't raise issues in the boardroom); competitors want Uber dead.

Two groups with incentive to get the composition of the boardroom changed.

A lot of people who don't believe that Uber's business strategies have a place in a civilized society - so that's a third group for you.

I'd bet on Thiel. Not only has he pulled these sort of PR moves in the past, but Founders invested in 3 Lyft rounds (including leading its B round).

That seems veryyyyy speculative. Uber doesn't need any help hanging itself.

...And anyone with a brain will realize that the fastest way for the hanging to proceed, is to give Uber plenty of space, time, and rope.

This is corporate politics by insurgent means, so I wonder who is emptying their opposition research briefing against Uber and why.

[citation needed]

The fact that it could be doesn't mean it is. Firms can collapse under the weight of their own bad decisions without any outside engineering, and Uber has pissed off lots of people over a long time.

>The key question is: who benefits?

The women engineers who won't get harassed at companies that crack down on bad behavior to avoid sharing Uber's fate. It's a massive conspiracy by the Society of Women Engineers to bring down the worst parts of tech culture.

What does one call a conspiracy that you agree with? A campaign?

Uber is not in real trouble, most people that use Uber don't know it is going on or don't even care

Which might even matter if this were a profitable business. But it's not. I expect that these "ride share" services will stay around but I also suspect that a lot of people who have developed expectations around them at their current subsidized pricing are in for a surprise when they become 2x or 4x more expensive.

I kind of disagree, I know several people who stopped using Uber entirely because of all the recent scandals.

10000% leaving bc of accusations AGAINST him. I know first hand. This guy doesn't deserve an ounce of benefit of the doubt. Lucky he was able to "resign" but I think people are smart enough to put two and two together.

Lyft?

Uber's female and minority employees?

Absolutely the most important group affected here.

Never underestimate human stupidity.

Other companies who can hire their talent.

I actually don't believe all these stores are going to affect Ubers customer potential that much. Just like McDonalds aren't being affected despite one of their biggest hurdless is dealing with bad PR.

Most consumers don't care or know about these things.

Where it's really going to affect Uber is with regards to attracting talent.

> The key question is: who benefits?

The employees because they'll have to pay more for talent?

The market's invisible-hand benefits. If this corporation is toxic, then it fails and in it's place will come a better, more ethical, more resilient corporation.