Hacker News Reader

Comment by Allvitende | Hacker News Reader

While I do agree that the culture at Uber was toxic and ultimately Travis was to blame for that, on a human level I do feel for the guy. At the end of the day, he just lost his mother and now also his life's work for the foreseeable future. And damn that must suck.

View on HN

Maybe eventually, he will view it differently.

"Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

That's a really powerful quote from John Sculley.

> That's a really powerful quote from John Sculley.

/s/John Sculley/Steve Jobs/

Not sure why you're being downvoted - it's from Jobs' famous Stanford commencement speech. http://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/

Perhaps the original reply was (in a subtle way) pointing out that Sculley might not be as pragmatic about his own firing from Apple?

It could be sarcasm likening Kalanick to Sculley.

I'm sorry that you have had to use Hipchat so much that you know this and use it outside of it. A human can truly get used to anything.

I don't think that syntax is Hipchat-specific

It's originally from `ed` then `sed` then `vi`. It's been in use in email, Usenet, and IRC for a very long time.

Nomination for the Golden Keyboard Award in the Understatement of the Year category. <wink type=Usenet>

<esc> k dd

s/Hipchat/sed/

Goodness, I’ve never felt old until now.

Losing his mother, absolutely I feel terrible for him. But his life's work has largely consisted of chasing his own goals without consideration of anyone else. That this came back to bite him is karma, and I don't feel particularly bad about it.

I have sympathy for the guy on a personal basis. It sucks to lose a parent. I have none for the guy as a businessman. I wouldn't be terribly sad if Uber failed.

Well, he still has his billions and is on the board.

Is there any way to know how much he's taken off the table? The way Uber is going, I'd be shocked if he's worth billions in 5 years.

Uber isn't built on a tower of fraud like Theranos, it's a behemoth that changed how transportation works. Travis is going to be a billionaire many times over when the stock is liquid.

If it ever is.

He started a taxi service with a slick app to order rides. He was successful by willful criminality, disregarding inconvenient regulations and laws. His company can't retain employees and is burning cash. Their only viable path to profitability assumes no regulatory fallout or serious competition.

He did not change how transportation works. He got where he is through a combination of luck, good timing, and criminality masked as 'disruption'.

Travis is a piece of shit, but you seem confused about how much value Uber has provided the world. Even his most ardent critics are willing to admit that.

Have you ever spoken to an African American what it's like to hail a cab? Read the estimates on the number of drunk drivers taken off the road?

I feel bad about his mom, but losing the CEO? No, and in fact, Travis might be secretly glad. Anyone who is serious about this sort of thing must understand the reality of the control versus wealth founder's dilemma from day one. By giving up, he may be getting more as Uber becomes successful in a way he could not make it. His skill set, getting it to where it was, was critical and he just wasn't the right guy to get it to the next phase. Pretty much every single startup goes through this. The Gates and Bezos and Musks of the world are huge outliers.

WHat's more, is that any founder or CEO who doesn't embrace this reality should not be made CEO.

This is a really important point. The people that get a company from point A to point B are not always the people to get it from B to C, and rarely the people that get it beyond that.

Do you think he'll dry his tears with twenty dollar bills or will he use hundreds? He was responsible for a lot of terrible shit.

He can dry his tears with his giant piles of money.

Travis did not lose his life's work per say. He was forced out by investors while he still keeps all his shares and still remains the president of the board and has a huge say in choosing a successor who will likely be his puppet. The fact that pugnacious and aggressive Travis still controlled the board (along with two other founders who always sided with Travis) and did not fight this means Travis got some deal from the investors. The successor would be chosen by him and in a sense his puppet.

He didnt feel an iota of moral responsibility for the rape victim in India whose medical records were obtained by an uber exec and were shown to Travis. I find it hard to have sympathy for someone who couldnt do the same for another human being.

So the probability of a competitor inventing such a claim was literally zero?

> So the probability of a competitor inventing such a claim was literally zero?

Enlighten us, which competitor made such a claim?

Are you being willfully obtuse? They never said that a competitor did make such a claim. They said that it is not impossible that a competitor could have made a claim, so it's not unreasonable for someone to be, a priori, slightly skeptical of it.

Uber does have a strong competitor in India, a local company called Ola Cabs.

That is an extraordinary claim to make, especially when offered without citations. And especially when taking into account how India is effectively Rape Central. And yet you think he is being will fully obtuse?

Plus, it's not the orchestrator of the rape who is in question anyway. It's Kalanick's response, involving the alleged acquisition of the woman's medical records without her consent. And if true, that speaks to some despicable moral compass within Uber. Which isn't news anyway.

It's what Uber suggested, and presumably one reason they got her records.

" Uber executives discussed the possibility that the rape could be tied to one of its competitors in India — such as a taxi company or Ola, the largest Indian ride-hailing company — as part of a plan to sabotage Uber’s momentum in the region. One day after the rape was made public, Uber was banned by officials in New Delhi. "

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/technology/uber-india-...

Well presumably none, otherwise Uber would have exposed it. I'm just pointing out that it seems totally plausible for a company to hire someone to invent such a scenario. And especially in certain countries, it can't be hard to get away with it.

Uber may have been paranoid, perhaps because they know how easily they'd do such things? Or due to their general attitude?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com