Uber's head of communications is leaving the company

I do think it's stupid we had and continue to have laws that say it's illegal to offer someone a paid ride if you notice that they need one with your own senses ("hailing"), as opposed to via a phone call or app notification.

Maybe many people share this view, and that solves the mystery: people haven't only started caring recently about the local regulations; they started caring about the completely different issues that only recently came to light: backoffice culture problems, reckless administration of the self-driving car project, worsening conditions for unskilled freelancers generally, etc. That explains how it could be that suddenly lots more people are averse to Uber, and yet no more people care about taxi businesses or their legal moats than before.

What matters is the drivers.

And as soon as rates go up on Uber, people can switch to something else.

All you need is a car and a taxi medallion(the price for which has gone into the ground) , and you too can compete with Uber if they raise prices.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-profit-and-loss...

People were saying the same thing 5 years ago, but I've still got my 5$ taxi rides.

And that makes racism more acceptable?

Also I guess you are not familiar with The Atlantic.

It is a 160 year old institution, it is very well-respected. Past writers include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Harriet Beacher Stowe. It does not trade in Clickbait.

As a responsible citizen of a civilized society however, one should be interested in how such a service comes to be, and what it means to people involved and the society at large.

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BTW. I'm founding a biotech startup now; we provide personalized medication for free, OTC, ordered through our mobile app. We can do that because of our innovative manufacturing model, which involves doing BSL-4 level work with pathogens in our garage. I.e. we're disrupting the corrupt dinosaur regulations to provide a cheaper and better service.

The worst part about that situation is that the driver made an excellent point: "You have the business model in your hands, but you chose to buy everybody a free ride!"

The metrics I'd like to look at would be harassment complaints, harassment claims on anonymous survey for witnessing, being a victim of, or participating in harassing behavior, and reports from HR outlining frequency of complaints and the results of those complaints.

If you could compare these metrics to industry standards I think you could make a credible case one way or the other. Eg Uber employees report harassment more frequently on anonymous surveys than to HR. This suggests Uber culture does not sufficiently encourage reporting harassment. Or, uber HR rejects sexual harassment claims more frequently than similar companies, suggesting they have problems investigating such complaints, etc.

I also found the story of sexual harassment at uber believable and outrageous, but that doesn't mean it's a systemic problem.

Not mine. What's your point?

>I don't think you understand how public opinion works.

I know how internet mobs work.

My problem with conspiracy theories is that they always take the following form:

1) Event X occurred.

2) I can't imagine how X could have happened other than if Y is true.

3) Therefore Y is true.

Here's how it looks like with UFOs:

1) I saw a streak of light travelling very quickly across the night sky.

2) I cannot imagine what terrestrial phenomenon could have caused it.

3) Therefore Aliens.

I don't know why the proportion of women in that specific organization fell. Was it because sexism or sexual harassment caused them to quit? Was it because of differential hiring, where over a period of time more men were hired? Was it because more women got promoted out of the 'organization'? Was it just a statistical glitch? I don't even know what an 'organization' is in that context.

And at the end of it all, you're still just using a sample of one to justify a conclusion. Not only a sample one, but biased sample of one giving one side of the story. Again, she seems very credible, but because you weren't there, and you don't know the full-story you really have to refrain from asserting strong conclusions.

What is happening here looks like typical behaviour of an internet mob on a righteous crusade and it makes me uncomfortable, because I've seen this countless times. Inevitably real people end up getting hurt because you want to virtue signal to others and take some cheap shots..

They have some criteria to exclude people from the bad lottery (disabled people and their care takers, unaccompanied minors), and then may apply a ranking based on booking class, frequent flyer status, and check-in time.

But here, the claim is that pax were chosen randomly.

Many people have good reasons to be on a plane, and this passenger being a doctor should not have any bearing on the resolution of the problem at hand (except insofar as it should've compelled other pax to take the 800 USD and hotel room and volunteer for disembarkation).

In my view, the Independent article gives the "received wisdom", while the article you linked is from a (self-professed) non-expert reading the conditions of carriage and doing some hairsplitting there.

Edit: Independent, not Telegraph

As for the 4 employees - there is staff travel for personal reasons (ID travel, interline discount, heavily discounted, stand-by), where you have lower priority than paying pax. There is booked staff travel, where you have intermediate priority. But then there is travel for operational reasons (positioning), where you have higher priority, because if you don't get there, a whole planeload of pax (and more, due to knock-on effects) won't fly. So, the number of available seats was reduced, and insofar it was overbooking.

And certainly all this should have been sorted out before boarding, no doubt, and normally is. (Apparently only 6 in 100,000 pax or so are IDB, by the way.)

But imagine a seatbelt turns out to be broken, or the wind is so strong that they have to load more fuel and reduce weight, or whatever. Then there's a seat less, for operational reasons, and someone has to leave, even if they had boarded already.

If a plane has X seats, but the carrier has assigned X+4 bums for those seats, then it's a case of overbooking.

2. Companies (or any entity, really) should resist attempts to circumvent rules by cheating, e.g. by throwing a tantrum at the check-in counter when you don't get an upgrade. So, when the Involuntary Denied Boarding lottery comes up, and you don't get a seat, do you think it would be ok to force your way onto the plane and refuse to get off, in the hope that they might chose someone else? If not, how would you deal with such a case?