Honestly, how many other companies, government agencies, or other organizations would hold up under the kind of coordinated, orchestrated drubbing that the media has dished out to Uber over the last couple of months?
Uber is a glorified cab dispatch organization, desperately fishing around to try to convert some of the insane valuation they enjoy into something more valuable. For years the media has made Uber their darling -- the oft restated misnomer about a "sharing economy" -- giving it what would likely calculate to billions in free press. Retelling the tales about the grand new world for drivers, with endless riches. The new standards of excellence for passengers.
So now the bad parts are the narrative. To dredge up another trite saying, live by the sword die by the sword.
The potential of Uber is a worldwide brand with super efficient dispatch. Do you really think it costs them more than a few cents to dispatch rides? There isn't any cab dispatcher in the world with remotely their economies of scale.
But in the end you've literally said that Uber isn't a cab dispatcher, but they're a super efficient cab dispatcher. Aside from that not being remotely true (their economics are absolutely abysmal), being a worldwide brand is close to meaningless. The overwhelming majority of rides happen locally.
Uber's primary beachhead has been a complete disregard for regulations. This may be justified in many cases, but it led to the corporate culture that is now eating it from the inside.
This pattern of stories about Uber is very familiar and very predictable. It starts with a single, note-worthy story. Based on the reception of that story, other employees (former or current) are emboldened to leak information of their own to the media/write their own blog post/etc. That story feeds another leak, and so on, and so forth. At this point I don't doubt for a second that numerous people inside Uber want Travis gone, and consider the short term bad press to be worth it in order to achieve that goal.
There's no conspiracy here. Just the media reporting things they are told by people in the know. If there were other ways to get rid of Travis (more diverse stock ownership, or, dare I say the word: unions) people would probably go for that route. But when you shut all that off your employees will use the press as a last-resort pressure release valve.
Uber did those shitty stuff itself. Media did exactly what it supposed to do, to spread the information to a wider audience here.
How many others, besides Kalanick, can you name off the top of your head?
Thought so.
Given the volume of comments mentioning their role in the committee I've seen on HN, I'd say that HN users are probably at least as likely to know about Elon Musk being on the committee (and unlike Kalanick, staying on it.)
And Musk and Kalanick are the two that have been high profile media figures as part of startup media strategy; most of the rest are big blue-chip finance and manufacturing CEO, who despite leading more powerful firms, normally have lower media profiles.
Not a lot of people seem upset about Musk's presence on the committee, or about anyone else's for that matter.
Funny. I'm sure it's all just a coincidence, or karma, or a spontaneous self-organizing feeding frenzy, or something.
Now, Kalanick actually managed to draw more attention by creating additional news by his dramatic resignation, but as far as criticism of the initial decision, I don't see any evidence he was treated differently than Musk; often, the two were mentioned together in both news articles and criticism.
So. What about the other 18 members? Why isn't anyone on HN or elsewhere attacking them?
There are 17 other members.
> Why isn't anyone on HN or elsewhere attacking them?
HN specifically has a tech-industry-startup focus, plus the other people are exactly the kind of people you'd expect to be supporting an authoritarian corporate plutocrat. Their role is a dog-bites-rabbit story.
Who is the conductor?
Extraordinary claims and all that. We've had enough of this hand wave-whispering of dark plots for one year.
If you are not going to name the bad actor you think is pulling the strings, don't make the claim.
In what way would other companies fail?
This is completely unrelated to Uber's cultural and ethical problems.
My comment was "Actually, that's not true."
Same thing happened to RIM a few years back. None of this is personal. It's just a domino effect.