Uber Board to Discuss CEO Absence, Policy Changes: Source

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165566/Mark-Zuckerb...

All the company needs is some pressure to shore up some long overdue culture debt. This is the fastest growing company in history after all. Not every aspect of the company was going to come out of the over perfectly baked when you grow that quickly. Uber isn't the first successful startup with this issue and it won't be the last.

Replacing the leader would be a terrible mistake. I'm not a religious person, but I do wish more people were familiar with the lesson taught in the parables of the Lost Son, Lost Sheep or Lost Coin. Redemption is always possible. Society as a whole would be much better off if we gave more people a chance to redeem themselves. Not considering people capable of redemption and considering people deserving of punishment without mercy is the reason we (the United States) have the disaster that is the largest incarcerated population in the World.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son

"Being ruthless" is not double edged sword - it is simply unethical behavior that gives you advantage. That is all there is to it. More ethical CEOs face challenges too, pretty much the same challenges.

While Travis is not scamming anyone, the methods are similar. Get rich by exploiting barely legal methods, unethical ways and ride to the fame using someone else money.

Sounds like some guys during the prohibition if they could have filed for an IPO.

I also agree strongly with another poster that the current vein of media focus on Uber is suspicious. It makes me worry about lazy reporting --any story about Uber gets noticed, no matter how irrelevant-- and also about who is actively funding an anti-Uber PR campaign - big established taxi companies, possibly? As time goes on, the media's approach makes me more and more sympathetic towards Travis and Uber, not less.

However... everyone should have some standards. It should be possible to run a high-achieving company without requiring or tolerating behaviour ranging from sexism to overt harassment. And the recent example of a rape victim's medical records being acquired and shared is particularly egregious - irrespective of their suspicions, that was well beyond a line, and the perpetrator should have been immediately fired.

I'm always a fan of the newspaper test - don't do anything you'd be ashamed of appearing on the front page of a major newspaper. Many of the things that Uber are criticised for, they'd probably be (rightly) proud of being publicised. But not all.

It's true, I haven't condoned obtaining the confidential medical records of a rape victim by my direct report, ignored dozens of sexual harassment complaints by my employees, or attempted to suppress an HR complaint about me taking my managers to an escort bar in Korea.

I am being deliberately facetious, but your argument "what have you done lately?" is a double edged sword. Yeah, nobody here has done what Travis did running Uber - including all the shit (both proven and allegedly).

If you don't like how a company is run, you have two options: 1) build the company culture of your dreams from scratch from first principles 2) let someone else do all the hard work of creating value and then show up later and colonize that company and try to change its culture to match your ideal. Hopefully, if you're enlightened you've given some though to how to maintain the positive aspects of that company's culture before you attempt to foist upon its employees your ideal of how it should function.

At the end of the day, employment is at will. If someone doesn't like the way a company is run, they should try to change it from the inside as an employee or move on to another company if they fail to change it. Outsiders, on the other hand, should stay out of it. If you don't like how a company is run, and you don't work there, fuck off. If you really want a company to be run differently, get hired there so your financial success is at least aligned with all the other employees before you try to influence the culture.

Yeap, it sure did:

We were reluctant to show it to Steve, knowing that he would want to commandeer it, but he heard about it from someone and demanded to see it. We showed it to him, and, unfortunately, he loved it. But he also insisted that Apple owned all the rights to it, even though we had developed it in our spare time.

Steve couldn't insist that Apple owned all of it, because Bill Budge wasn't an Apple employee at the time. But Steve could claim complete ownership of the interface card, which he said was developed with Apple resources. Burrell and I were pretty upset, because we did it on our own time and thought that we should be compensated, but it's really hard to argue with Steve, especially about money.

Can't you just feel the unity of the group? /s

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Apple_II_Mouse_Ca...

Collectively, we don't openly criticize or nor attempt to fairly characterize cultures. We talk in euphemisms, like "alpha" when we mean "overbearing narcissistic jerk" or "laddish" when we mean "lazy jerk". We talk about "meritocracy" when number one advice for job seekers is "networking", whether you appear confident matters more then whether project you are responsible for is mess and who you are friend with matters more then anything in that company.

If people have to have fair chance to choose companies, then it needs to be fine for people who work or worked in those companies criticize without being punished for it. That is not exactly the case now - now you need to have good friends in that company to figure that out.

thats how they want to become profitable.

You can't be serious. Hiring private investigators to stalk journalists? Promoting sexual harassment in his company? Obtaining the private medical records of someone raped by one of their drivers?

"These journalists have a vendetta against Travis that is not in my view reasonable. I will continue to use Uber if only to spite the press."

So nothing wrong with sexual harassment, then?