Some Uber Employees Balk at Travis Kalanick’s Exit
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I know for a fact that a lot of Uber employees nowadays can't talk freely outside about the fact that they work at Uber, when they used to be proud to talk about it just a couple of years ago.
I also know that many employees at Uber (men or women) are proud to work at the company, and again, too afraid to talk about it because the outside world will treat them like nazis.
Lastly, I'm pretty sure people will turn this into sexism discussion and call me a sexist, because they know no one can win over sexism. But I also know that if you ask Uber employees, most of them will say it's no different from working at any other tech company. But again, they can't say that out loud because they will be witch-hunted.
It's kind of sad that the Internet has become optimized for this type of witch hunt. A couple of years ago everyone wanted to get investment from Peter Thiel and "contrarian" beliefs were celebrated. But nowadays it's used as a tool for mockery because it's simply "hip" to talk shit about him. Same goes for Uber, not sure if you guys remember but if you think hard enough, just a few years ago Uber was celebrated as the "savior that fights for justice against the abusive taxi industry, even if it means operating in a gray zone". But nowadays media just loves to spin it as "Uber committed all kinds of illegal crimes, so the CEO has got to go"
Before I get downvoted to oblivion, let me emphasize that I'm not saying Uber is good. I'm saying we really need to stop witch hunt.
Also, this is as much a witch hunt as Uber is a paragon of feminism.
A couple months fear of being “witch hunted” is a small price to pay for what appears to be years of harassment women at the company had to endure.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Every employee has a different experience. A huge of chunk of Amazon's employees said they didn't recognize the type described in the New York Times. There is a huge bias when you're interviewing former employees. It is largely possible a number of theses former employees were actually low performing (hiring mistakes do happen) who deserved to be fired and/or had problems building relatinships with their fellow coworks/supervisors.
Uber's situation could be similar to Amazon's. I'm not saying Travis or Uber is completely innocent. I'm just saying we don't have all the facts and often times the media does get it wrong and have their own motivations to slant the truth.
"Some of us think that the similarities Uber has to other tech companies in this area is an indictment of these other companies, not an excuse for Uber."
and
"Uber is not just like every other company. That's seriously some "boys will be boys" type thinking to excuse the messed up behavior of a certain few."
It seems interesting (and characteristic of bellicose group discourse) that either of these arguments, which of course contradict each other perfectly, will do as well as the other. I think you hear each of them about as much. But generally not in the same place and never by the same person.
"[O]ther tech companies" doesn't include a magnitude and could very well have meant that it's "just a few other tech companies."
Also, some might disagree with the second statement, and the degree to which different people make either statement isn't "interesting" in the least. Except, of course, to folks looking to excuse Uber's behavior.
i don't understand why this statement was included. the internet is optimized for all sorts of things. also, before the internet, print/paper was "optimized" for witch hunts. and before that, there were literal witch hunts. it has been plenty optimal.
if there's proof, it's not a witch hunt. when david bonderman implied that women talk too much, that's not a witch hunt. here's a bunch more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/uber-trav...
i think you might be trying to say there's excessive PREJUDICE against people who work at Uber who have nothing to do with the sexual harassment, etc. but even on that level, it's unclear how much blame you should get if you remain complicit and support a group you know is willfully ignorant of issues like harassment. just because you and the person in the cubicle next to yours don't experience harassment doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Many companies, like Uber, have a hostile work environment for 50% of the workforce, and that is bad for everyone!
If you are not a target of the hostility, and you want to think about it selfishly, We are losing out on millions of our best minds until we solve this.
Seriously!?!
So you are saying it someone says "I work at Uber, it's not much different than any other tech company" they will be burned at the steak?
Your rank-and-file employees are not even going to get much more than a "oh really?" when they say "I work at Uber." I used to work for a company that is pretty shady that the majority of people has a very negative opinion on, much more so than Uber. When I said I worked there to others nobody said much of note and certainly nothing like "you're a Nazi." Actually, I take that back, one person said "I could never work there" and I replied with "I can understand why you'd feel that way." That was it!
Even if someone says something, receiving some very mild criticism for holding an unpopular opinion is not the end of the world, it's called life. It's not a witch hunt and you're not some sort of victim.
However, that should go hand in hand with recognition of parts of which you aren't proud. I don't understand the problem here.
There hasn't been much reason to be proud in many years. Yes, the technology is cool, but the market approach has been off from the beginning. Working for a company that consistently breaks the law as part of the business model is rarely something to be proud of.
1000 people have "liked" the posting including Zuckerberg and a number of women have commented in support of TK.
EDIT:
This is from the FB poster, Margaret-Ann Seger. Other women seem to confirm her perspective. If it were truly a sexist culture as was claimed then you wouldn’t be seeing these testimonials. It suggests that despite everything, something else is going on.
“Thank you for creating a culture where- as a woman- it was okay to, no, encouraged to speak up. This is one of my oft less-told anecdotes, but I feel it's appropriate given the circumstances. Before Uber, I was at Facebook. I left Facebook because I was told that I was too aggressive. Pushing too hard, wanting to move too fast, challenging the status quo a bit too much. The amazing part is that coming to Uber was like a homecoming. I could be who I truly am, without being labeled an "aggressive" woman. I could push on assumptions, move quickly, do whatever work needed to be done whether it was "in my area" or not, question leadership in an open, earnest environment. It was like a breath of fresh air. I don't think people realize how unique this is. This company truly listens to every voice, from the VPs all the way down to the junior PMs like myself. Thank you. Thank you for listening and creating an environment where the best answer truly does win.”
Fascinating.
One group of women saying the culture in Uber is corrosive? Well that's rumour and innuendo.
But another group of women saying it's fine? Well, then that's just the way it must be!
Confirmation bias much?
Here's the thing: There was an investigation. By Eric frickin' Holder. Not exactly a legal slouch. Out of that came nearly fifty recommendations for ways to fix the culture.
Are we to believe Holder was just full of it? That it was all manufactured? All because 6% of the Uber headcount think things were fine?
Edit:
Incidentally, those women that are supportive of Kalanick could easily be explained by survivorship bias. That is, the women that ended up in groups that didn't suck, or could handle the culture, stuck around while the rest left.
I never suggested rumor or innuendo. But it is sexist to not believe not a single woman but a number of women who come out and support TK. Women know even if they have not experienced it directly (e.g. "the grapevine") if it were a sexist environment. It is sexist to discount the FB poster, Margaret-Ann Seger and the many other women who have come out in favor of TK. Ms. Seger even suggests the cultural difference which favors her personality in her post where she said she was too aggressive for the FB environment but fit right in with Uber.
Eric Holder would not be my first choice to investigate a corporate culture. There are professionals who have both MBAs and who are clinical psychologists that even specialize with hi-tech companies who also see patients on an individual basis. Eric Holder is not a clinical psychologist, has no clinical experience, is not an expert in corporate culture let alone the unique culture of the hi-tech startup firm.
These people have the clinical and business experience to deal with corporate cultures and those that specialize in hi-tech firms understand that unique environment.
Disclose, I have worked with such a specialist.
I have worked in Israel and the culture there can be off-putting to many in the US, especially those from the west coast. Intel, which employs 10,000 in Israel, even offers cross-cultural classes between West Coast and Israeli culture. Many people would consider Israelis very pushy (Hutzpah is the term). Israelis are very direct and many people don't like that. I happen to love that but adjust for different people.
In summary, it is sexist to discount the opinions of women who worked with TK. Eric Holder is not a clinical psychologist nor an expert in hi-tech culture. He is no industrial psychologist. It is strange that a non-professional would be chosen to investigate the organization.
Something else was going on.
ROFL. I could literally replace the word "support" with "do not support" in this sentence and it would be an equally valid argument.
A bad one. But equally so.
Read my comment again. I already explained why both groups of women could be right.
Something else was going on.
You're confirmation bias is showing again...
It is suggesting that these women's feelings should not be taken seriously.
You are either pregnant or not. You can't be both.
As I mentioned earlier, Eric Holder is a lawyer, the issue has do do with emotions and Eric Holder has absolutely no clinical training let alone clinical training for this specific kind of environment. That makes him unqualified to make judgments.
The question is why wasn't a specialist brought in. Someone who has the clinical training and business training who has experience dealing with hi-tech startup cultures brought in for an evaluation. It makes everything highly suspect.
I am not denying that some women and others may have been put off by the culture. Or that there may have been some specific cases of abuse. But clearly there was no culture of sexual abuse.
It simply cannot be that Ms. Sanger and a number of women were highly supportive of an environment that promoted sexual abuse. They are not crazy, they are not in denial. It was not a pervasive culture.
There is something else going on and to do everyone justice, don't use an unqualified lawyer to investigate, use a qualified industrial psychologist with extensive clinical training. Use the right person for the job.
As I said before, I have dealt with such a highly qualified individual. I use awareness of cognitive biases in my work where unlike Uber, cognitive biases can kill people.
Something else is going on. A properly trained industrial psychologist with clinical training and who knows the hi-tech startup environment should investigate.
When it comes to whether Uber possesses a sexually abusive workplace environment, You are either pregnant or not. You can't be both.
This is perfect example of a false dichotomy.
Corporate culture is not some monolithic thing.
Uber is a 15,000 person company. Individual departments and reporting chains likely varied significantly. That there may have been groups or departments in Uber that did not share the corrosive culture experienced elsewhere in the company is not only within reason, but to be expected.
I am not denying that some women and others may have been put off by the culture. Or that there may have been some specific cases of abuse. But clearly there was no culture of sexual abuse.
Do you work at Uber? Have you experienced their culture first hand? What, precisely, makes you qualified to make this determination, thus invalidating the claims of others who do have first-hand experience at the company and have said otherwise?
You have not addressed at all the fact that they did not use a professional to investigate these claims.
> "What, precisely, makes you qualified to make this determination,..."
I don't have to work there. People such as the FB poster Margaret-Ann Seger and many other women who work there have been very upset about his firing. Just read the comments for Sanger's post on FB -- those written by women who support TK. There are 1,800 likes 350 shares, 65 comments to her FB post alone.
Google for the name "Margaret-Ann Seger" and you will see there are recall petitions and other positive comments by other women about the culture there.
You simply can't have these kinds of testimonials from women in there was a truly toxic culture there. Your issue is not with me, but the women who testify in TK's favor.
Culture does mean culture -- it means something endemic throughout. Undeniably there were cases just as there were cases in other tech firms. But to discount the words of the many women who work there supporting TK and his kindness and leadership is in itself discounting their opinions which is sexually abusive.
Yes, obviously, many if not most Uber employees liked Travis. He built a huge company and made them a lot of money (on paper). He was an extremely effective businessman in spite of his personal shortcomings.
If you have 70, 80, or 90% of the company signing a petition then let's write some articles. For now, nothing to see here.
His mistake was not being technical or creative enough to scale the company's service without scaling the headcount.
The specific symptoms are not particularly interesting or novel. In fact they were entirely predictable and the company is surprisingly good for how poorly it was built.
There are a number of major pitfalls every company must avoid. He failed to avoid a fatal one.
Why? Even when driverless cars are standard, why does Uber need to spend the money building their own driverless car program, instead of just buying driverless cars from the manufacturer like the rest of us will do? Their business plan doesn't require them to build the technology, just use it. It would be like if Miss Cleo in 2003 foresaw the future was smartphones, and thought the best way to proceed was to start her own smartphone manufacturing company—instead of just making sure that she could get called from the smartphones that others were going to make.
They do this now; it's called "leasing". But if they're going to stop selling cars and only lease them, why wait? It's a bookkeeping detail that's unrelated to the car itself.
Cars depreciate in value so heavily, I don't know why auto manufacturers would want to adopt 100% of that loss—but there isn't anything currently stopping them.
The two other specific failures that also are hard to defend:
1) Rape report from the case in India - TK should have fired the exec for the violation of privacy and disrespect to the victim. The fact that he saw the report and didn't do much about it is a failure.
2) Otto mess - not going to assume he knew or did not know but it's a failure of judgement to drive that acquisition without properly making sure he didn't expose the company to such a high degree of legal risk.
At the end of the day, his reputation for risk and brashness cuts both ways. I lean towards believing he's someone who will do what it takes to win and I respect that. If you get caught though, be prepared to suffer the consequences if you cut a few corners getting there.
* BTW this shit isn't unique to Uber - anytime $BBBs are on the line, people will do things they might normally not do.
A toxic culture really isn't one that deserves loyalty, and Kalanick inarguably built a toxic culture into the fabric of Uber. He's not the only one, but he's ultimately the responsible party. If you want to kill a toxic culture that starts at the top, you simply can't leave him in charge.
It isn't surprising to me that ~1000 people in an organization would want the toxic culture to continue. There's a small subset of people who thrive in a toxic culture, and they, obviously, don't want it to go away.
I'm sure some of these folks just like the guy and never had any problems with him, personally, perhaps because they're a young white male. Those folks probably aren't actively defending the toxic culture of Uber; they're just naively assuming that because they didn't experience it, it doesn't exist and that Kalanick is the victim of a smear campaign.
> perhaps because they're a young white male
Really? This is such a mean generalization of 1000 people who you have never even met...
Have you been following the Uber story, at all, over the past several years?
No wonder there was a culture of apparently unrestrained adolescent male aggression. An adolescent male helped shape the guidelines.
Does working hard absolve you of misdeeds?
To understand it from the inside, the best source I've seen is Susan Fowler's post "Reflecting on one very strange year at Uber". https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-on...
I mean theres everything from marketing, to customer support, to ground operations, to engineering, to site reliability, to infrastructure, to product, to internationalization to partnerships to HR to design to recruiting to leadership to driver onboarding to Uber Eats to self-driving...there are A LOT of moving parts in A LOT of different countries.
It is incredibly difficult to scale an operation like Uber and it takes a lot of people, time, and money.
There is a big difference between running a global business and a toy side project that someone pushed up to Heroku...and no..."b..b..but I can just add more servers" is not a valid scaling strategy for a business.
I know my comment is a bit more harsh than necessary but it's borne out of a pent up frustration after seeing a 100 of these same comments directed at every company in existence.
I'm angry, sad, flustered, confused, but mostly just heartbroken. The only appropriate thing to say right now is thank you, Travis. Thank you for inspiring not only your own employees but an entire generation of entrepreneurs. Thank you for inspiring us to think bigger, faster, and higher-impact than anyone has ever dared to think before.
Thank you for creating a place where no idea was too crazy. When we told you that in order to make the product accessible for our international riders we would need to accept cash payments, you weren't thrilled but you were willing to give it a shot. When your employees told you that we needed to change some aspects of the internal culture, you were sad but you were all ears. Building the best possible product, the best possible company- it requires humility. Admitting you might be wrong and being open to change. I was always impressed by how truly humble you were.
Thank you for creating a place so passionate about bringing affordable, reliable transportation to the whole world that your employees all over the globe were willing to hop on planes, get on Zoom calls at bizarre hours of the day, manually onboard thousands of drivers, stand on street corners handing out flyers to riders, and build last-minute stunt products to help celebrate the communities they were a part of. I've seen firsthand the impact this product has had worldwide and the universal fire and passion that Uber employees all over the world have to constantly improve it, to always be serving drivers and riders better, and to perpetually push closer and closer to truly making transportation as reliable as running water, for everyone, everywhere.
Thank you for creating a culture where- as a woman- it was okay to, no, encouraged to speak up. This is one of my oft less-told anecdotes, but I feel it's appropriate given the circumstances. Before Uber, I was at Facebook. I left Facebook because I was told that I was too aggressive. Pushing too hard, wanting to move too fast, challenging the status quo a bit too much. The amazing part is that coming to Uber was like a homecoming. I could be who I truly am, without being labeled an "aggressive" woman. I could push on assumptions, move quickly, do whatever work needed to be done whether it was "in my area" or not, question leadership in an open, earnest environment. It was like a breath of fresh air. I don't think people realize how unique this is. This company truly listens to every voice, from the VPs all the way down to the junior PMs like myself. Thank you. Thank you for listening and creating an environment where the best answer truly does win. And thank you on behalf of your riders and drivers. You've created millions of earning opportunities for drivers all over the world. From the part-time student teacher driver to the full-time driver in India, these are real economic opportunities at an unprecedented scale. I'm always amazed talking to drivers in India or Indonesia or Mexico or Kenya- their story is not too dissimilar from the drivers I talk to on my way home from work in SF. Uber has allowed them to build a better life for their family- to send their kids to school, to work more flexible hours so that they can be there for their family. Not to mention the newfound mobility that Uber affords millions upon millions worldwide. Elderly folks & teens can now access their city, stress-free. People can go out for a drink- or three- and get home safely without endangering those around them. Uber is fundamentally reshaping people's transportation habits and how they interact with their cities. This kind of impact would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, but we've made it a reality- thanks to your vision.
So thank you. We've mis-stepped at times- I'll be the first to admit that Uber is not perfect. But the positive impact you've had on this company, and the world, is truly inspirational.
Goodbyes always suck. Thanks to the OG Builder.
You're a judge in this trial. You've heard the prosecution make a very eloquent case. You've been convinced. You've delivered your verdict. And the sentence has been executed.
But wait. Didn't we skip a step? Is there a missing step in this procedure? Perhaps that's a good exercise for the reader.
Some people just like to be told what to do I guess.