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Comment by lucajona | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why the media and Silicon Valley seem to be gleefully awaiting the downfall of Uber. If Uber's business model is not financially viable then the free market will take care of that. But promoting the view that their "culture" is "rotten" based on a report from a disgruntled employee, or saying that their employees are being "exploited" based on one video from one driver is sanctimonious and vicious. Why is this necessary? The only answer I can come up with is that there is a political motivation, driven by neo-Marxism and the narrative that capitalism and big business are inherently evil.

I'm an Uber user, and I still love the service and the fiercely competitive way that Uber has transformed what was previously a protected and stagnant industry delivering poor service.

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Blaming this all on ideology is too easy an explanation.

There have been multiple reports by various uber employees (as well as 2 investors according to the OP) of a rotten culture. Add to that the leaks of taking huge losses, and people are seeing a company that isn't profitable and has some disastrous PR.

It doesn't help that the way they approach regulation, and the way they allegedly treat workers match up pretty well. They take an aggressive stance with both.

The narrative here is that a company that was once thought to be great is now showing some significant cracks.

They have also been around long enough that everyone in the industry knows someone who said "great product, shitty place to work", or something to that effect. We all knew there was _something_ a bit off, but didn't have a public, large-scale narrative to get behind.

>The only answer I can come up with is that there is a political motivation, driven by neo-Marxism and the narrative that capitalism and big business are inherently evil.

I agree that that kind of rhetoric is in vogue right now, but Uber is definitely not the hill I'd want to die on in making that point.

Well, there's the bit where the "free market" has kept valuing Uber at absurd levels despite it being not financially viable. Also that the report from the "disgruntled employee" dovetailed well with what people already knew about the company from word of mouth, and with gender politics issues that have been a problem in SF since forever. Also that the "exploited employee" isn't even an employee, since Uber is fighting like a cornered wolf in court to keep them classified as contractors so that they don't have any of the rights and benefits that they would otherwise be entitled to in a first-world workforce.

I mean, like the article said, Uber has done some great things, and the world will be better in its wake; ride sharing was a thing that needed to be invented, and it needed someone as forceful as Kalanick to be deployed. But if you honestly think that its modus operandi is standard fare, you're the one with the cynical outlook on capitalism and big business.

Why am I always reading that Uber is not financially viable? I haven't seen anyone proven this to be true. Take my trip tonight for example. Sunday night, 7pm, 5.17 miles and 16 min ride cost 17$. If you calculate the the cost, gas: about .50$, driver time: at 50$/hr fro 16 min ride is about 13$. The total cost 13.50, Uber gets 3.5$ for my ride. This sounds very good to me.

Uber's business practices have made me ashamed of the tech industry for several years now. Recent developments are just telling me they aren't only screwing drivers but some of their engineers too.

Their competition is also funded by big VCs and/or big corporations, there's no inherent problem with that. Not everyone who thinks Uber is a scumbag company is pushing some fictitious neo-Marxist agenda.

How are they actually screwing their drivers? Are they forcing, misleading or tricking the drivers?

If you believe all the bollocks you hear on HN, then the drivers are but poor helpless farmers who don't understand how complicated things like 'money' works, and who were forced at gun point to buy luxury cars to become a full time Uber drivers.

I will try to help you understand. Two years ago, Peter Sims asked: "Can we trust Uber?"[24]. The answer is no.

There's just way too much awful stuff going on at Uber to ignore all of it or claim everyone's distaste is political. (It's also silly to suggest that all of the media and/or Silicon Valley have the same set of ulterior motives.)

Here's just a sampling of Uber's misconduct. Some of these items cross categories, but I've tried to roughly divide them up.

* Culture problems: The sexual harassment described by your "disgruntled employee" has been backed up and verified by others.[1][19] Its culture has been described as a constant battle between warring factions with managers openly backstabbing and abusing other managers and employees.[7] It hires executives who have ongoing harassment claims against them, then forces same executives to resign unceremoniously.[17] Its culture has been purposefully designed to cause employees to work against each other.[18] It blcoks employees from chatting on anonymous apps.[21]

* Corporate governance problems: It behaves anti-competitively in ways that are dubiously legal in order to sabotage competition.[2] It is also alleged to steal from other companies.[3] Its executives have suggested 'digging up dirt' on journalists in order to silence them, spurring a Congressional inquiry.[8] It offered drivers money to show them paystubs from competitors.[12] It also tries to prevent drivers from driving for any other company, even though it insists said drivers are 'contract employees.'[14] It has been and is being sued by numerous state governments over its business practices.[22]

* Exploiting users and ignoring privacy: It tracks/tracked one-night stands.[9] It collects users' location data in the background when the app is off.[10] It has been subject to FTC complaints over its tracking behaviors.[11] It lures drivers in with promises of big fares, then changes those fares arbitrarily to screw said drivers over and save riders money.[13] It is alleged to have mislead users by showing 'phantom cars' on its app.[16]

* Outright and attempted law-breaking: Uber breaks laws all around the world to enrich itself, including allegedly trying to deceive government officials across the world.[4] It refused to acquire a mandatory permit from the government until faced with public pressure.[5] It refuses to treat its drivers as true employees, even though legally they are considered such in many jurisdictions, and only complies when faced with court orders.[6][20] It attempted to investigate the plaintiffs in a class-action suit against it via methods that may have been illegal.[15]

All of this together helps explain why even Peter Thiel, himself not a particularly sterling gentleman, considers Uber "the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley."[23] I am gleefully awaiting Uber's downfall, as you say, because it is a legitimately evil company. Big companies aren't inherently evil. Uber is a big company which happens to be evil. If even a couple of the items in each category are true, Uber is engaging in a variety of illegal and morally unacceptable practices. I don't see how you can suggest, in the face of this much evidence to the contrary, that all of this is purely political.

And by the way? There's much more where this came from. This is just a smattering I could find in 20 minutes.

[1] https://medium.com/@amyvertino/my-name-is-not-amy-i-am-an-ub... [2] http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/26/6067663/this-is-ubers-play... [3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-23/alphabet-... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-... [5] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/03/uber-rethinks-defiance-... [6] https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/17/uber-drivers-deemed-employ... [7] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/22/technology/uber-workplace... [8] http://www.franken.senate.gov/files/letter/141119UberLetter.... [9] http://www.marketplace.org/2014/11/18/business/final-note/ub... [10] https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/28/uber-background-location-d... [11] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/uber-ftc-... [12] http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/01/27/24830634/uber-is-... [13] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/som... [14] http://www.recode.net/2016/11/28/13768756/uber-driver-deacti... [15] http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/10/12127638/uber-ergo-investi... [16] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/30/uber-deni... [17] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/27/technology/uber-sexual-ha... [18] https://qz.com/918582/uber-is-designed-so-that-for-one-emplo... [19] https://medium.com/@contactkeala/sexism-at-uber-from-female-... [20] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37802386 [21] http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-blocks-anonymous-chat-ap... [22] http://www.mercurynews.com/2014/12/09/biz-break-san-francisc... [23] http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/18/technology/uber-unethical-pe... [24] https://thoughts.siliconguild.com/can-we-trust-uber-c0e793de...

I would discount what Peter Thiel says about Uber, because he is a significant investor in Lyft via the Founders Fund:

http://foundersfund.com/company/lyft/

That's fair, and to be fair, Lyft does some scummy stuff, too.

But while he might have ulterior motives, I'm not sure he's wrong.

The other part is that Uber's internal culture being rotten has not yet impacted their customers. Perhaps it will later on, but at the moment it doesn't seem likely to bring about business failure.

The "one video from one driver" prompted people to look into the driver's claims, and it turns out Uber is squeezing the drivers more.

This was posted here earlier: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-travis-kalanick-drivers-...

> The only answer I can come up with is that there is a political motivation, driven by neo-Marxism and the narrative that capitalism and big business are inherently evil.

I downvoted you because your argument is a false dichotomy (could be true but caused by something else) with no evidence. If you're going to make outlandish claims you need evidence to back it up.

Consider that the media is a part of the free market, that the free market is not rational, and that this is its way of self-correcting.

Because it drives traffic. Traffic is money.

Most "news" these days, especially tech news, is just tabloids for people who think reading about celebrities is beneath them.

Do you learn anything useful from following these stories? No, but it makes you feel better about your own life and the company you work for. Sure we might be profit-driven megallomaniacs, but at least we're not Uber, right?

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