Travis Kalanick reportedly sought to reassert control at Uber after ouster | Hacker News Reader

Travis Kalanick reportedly sought to reassert control at Uber after ouster

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67 pointsmgiannopoulos34 comments

For better or worse I think there are quote a few Uber employees that will support this move if it happens. The number of employees publicly speaking out for Travis is just the tip of the iceberg.

Case in point - a female friend just completed a round of interviews there and was shocked to find that multiple interviewers openly commented about how badly they wanted Travis back, and how the sexism scandal was overblown. All male employees I should point out.

Perhaps Uber employees are willing to buy out investors holding grossly overvalued Uber stock if they believe in Travis more than Uber's board does.

It's easy to hold an opinion when it's other people's money.

I think this is a great idea actually. They wouldn't be able to put together very much in the grand scheme of things (even 100 M raised from employees wouldn't even give them a point on the cap table) but it would be a strong signal at least.

> It's easy to hold an opinion when it's other people's money.

Is this is the only metric to warrant having an opinion?! Every stakeholder has a right to speak their mind. For the employees, they may not have the money to buy into the business but they do so via sweat equity (effort + time + risk).

Your attempt to trivialize their involvement amounts to nonsense for these reasons.

And they were clueless enough to say this to a female interviewee? Yikes! I hope she finds another opportunity :-(

Clueless implies they didn't know what they were doing, or what the outcome of doing that would be.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

This aphorism is called Hanlon's razor for the curious. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

I work at Uber. This behavior is totally inappropriate and I'm really sorry to hear your friend had this experience. My Twitter DMs are open (@codebutler) if you would like to share any more detail.

I appreciate that and I'll ping my friend to see if she wants to reach out.

Which behavior is inappropriate?

Well, what matters is the ratio of opinions. Is there anything to indicate that a majority of employees back him? Those that wanted him gone had no reason to speak up.

Worth noting: for better or for worse, companies are autocratic dictatorships or at best, oligarchies: opinions of employees do not matter much, unless such opinions somehow affect revenue.

I've found this video from 2011 to be kind of interesting in terms of illuminating how his history as an entrepreneur has shaped his attitude running Uber today (TL;DR - he failed and got screwed over a lot).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QrX5jsiico

video summary

   Scout 
   * preyed on by predatory vcs (sued by first vc to improve terms even after LOI expired;
     vc leaked lawsuit to WSJ to scare off other investors)

   Red Swoosh
   * cofounder tried to sell team behind his back;
   * team went without pay for multiple months
   * cofounder fucked up and didn't pay witholding taxes to IRS (NB: IRS can and will
     personally pursue officers of the company)
   * nearly went out of business multiple times
   * last eng quit via twitter / AOL saw this and spiked a deal
   * got a 4-way deal (worth watching at about 25:00 or so)
   * acquired by akamai for $23m

It's worth watching

Uber essentially was illegal and still is in many places, cab license and all. It needed to get so big, so fast to make it a fact. A typical Harvard MBA with a suit and tie would have failed. IMO they still need a guy willing to break the rules

Uber needs a CEO who can maintain the reality-distortion field. Otherwise, the valuation will collapse and they'll have trouble getting new investors.

Is there any evidence that kicking Kalanick helped Uber?

I am trying to determine what evidence I would expect to find after 47 days to either support or oppose this hypothesis.

Since it's a privately owned company, we don't have a lot of detail about either stock performance or revenue / profit, and even so, I'm not sure that you'd be able to attribute changes on this timeframe (either for the better or for the worse) to Kalanick leaving.

On the other hand, since it's privately held, arguably what helps Uber is that its investors (owners) are happy with it, and they requested that he leave. So, yes?

Kalanick is the majority owner, so maybe he'll come back on board.

The reason I ask is because I've heard that companies that kick their founders generally fail. I'm not sure how true that is, but people on HN said it was common during the bubble.

It could be true that 2017 is different, that times have changed and that to win Uber needs to move forward without Kalanick. But the employees generally felt that he was doing a good job. All in all, it's a confusing situation.

> The reason I ask is because I've heard that companies that kick their founders generally fail.

Possibly because that companies that are so screwed up internally that they have to kick their founder out are destined to fail. And kicking the founder out doesn't change their course enough to fix it.

  companies that kick their founders generally fail

Don't companies "generally fail" on average, period? (>50%)

If it was because of him, then by now it probably wouldn't matter much if he was kicked out, as he already built a certain type of culture inside the company. The company would pretty much have to be built from the ground-up to change all of that.

I guess time will tell. Before Travis left Uber was without a COO, CFO, CMO, SVP of business, and SVP of engineering. I recall reading something about how they were having trouble recruiting senior level execs willing to work with Travis. If kicking out Travis can result in Uber hiring competent execs across the board, then maybe.

Uber will be a very interesting company to look back in 20 years I feel. There are a lot of lessons in there, but not sure which ones yet.

Like it or not, only the founder cares about the company. So the founders attitude should be forced to change and not change the founder itself. If Uber brings Meg Whitman then she will do the same what she did to HP. Split in to multiple pieces (HPE, e.t.c) and then sell em all, because only the founder cares.

Uber must be his brainchild. Let him take care of it. Give him one more chance.

How many chances do you think he should be given?"

Frequently implied answer: "I don't really know but i feel it should be one more than the number of chances he's already been given and blown."

Not necessarily saying that's your opinion - it just aligns with other conversations I've had.

It's his company (literally, he owns the majority of stock), so I think the answer is "as many chances as he damn well pleases."

The majority as in 12%? It's not his company.

He owns shares with 10x votes, and thus the majority of the voting rights.

But that is not exactly the same as owning the majority of the shares or owning the company.

Doesn't he have the majority of stock? Can't he just make it so?

you can't keep a good man down

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