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Comment by bgitarts | Hacker News Reader

Good for Travis and for founders in general.

He probably is the guy to run a business like Uber. In an industry rife with corruption that often resorts to bully tactics, you need someone who will not bend on vision and principles because of personal threats.

He could have sat back and avoided a public smear capaign and retire to nice life as a billionaire. Instead he choose to fight for what he believes is right.

One has to believe that given the options for him, the choice to resist is not about money for him. It maybe about ego and his desire to change the course of history, but the latter is probably good for Uber if he gets to stay on.

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We're seeing some of his principles are what landed Uber in this situation in the first place. So I'd be more careful with idolizing him. This is not the first or last drama from Uber. There are many other companies having similar impact in the world (or better) without using illegal methods.

Who do you mean "we"?

This sort of attitude is why tech has a reputation as a privileged boys club. These qualities may have helped in the early days but he also applied them internally and to great negative effect. How you can conveniently ignore that is beyond me.

There is a mountain of poor decisions that put Kalanick in the dog house. The culture he created at Uber is notoriously toxic, senior management has been either leaving in disgust or forced out over malfeasance.

Kalanick should gain some humility and leave it to the adults on his board to find someone who can run Uber responsibly.

'Responsibly' is a pretty subjective term in the context of Uber. If Kalanick had been running Uber by any conventional definition of 'responsibly', it would be a fraction the size it is today.

And it's still nowhere close to what I imagine Kalanick imagines. Short sighted investors will see Lyft, Ola, Grab, Didi as competitors. Kalanick will see private car ownership as competition. I have a feeling if he doesn't come back, Uber in it's current form is the best of it we will see. If Benchmark would have had 20% control over Facebook, it would be the best social network colleges ever had. Nothing more.

> In an industry rife with corruption that often resorts to bully tactics [...]

So you like him for fighting corruption with more corruption and ignoring laws left and right?

No. Just the part about fighting corruption.

It's not really "fighting corruption". It's elbowing in to the trough.

what a disappointing comment.

What about it is disappointing?

It's amazing to me how successful the smear campaign against the taxi industry has been. It's mostly a bunch of small business run by immigrants. But they're the corrupt ones who resort to "bully tactics." The MegaCorps dumping onto the market by operating at losses are the good guys/victims.

It's very reminiscent of how companies successfully smeared unions.

Taxi companies didn't have a great reputation before uber, though. Stories abound of long and circuitous routes, "broken" credit card readers and surly drivers. I'm not sure I've heard of too many cases of great customer service (though of course people talk more about negative experiences). It's also certainly true that Uber did not innovate on the model of "independent contractors" that do the actual driving.

I see a couple of possibilities. One is that the corruption in cab companies is similar to that in other industries, which people also smear (e.g. finance), and ridesharing PR plays that up. Another thought is that their "local" sketchiness (unclean cars, shady drivers) gives a sort of halo effect, so people are more willing to believe stories of in deeper corruption.

I guess they also tend to be (at least marginally) involved in local politics (to the extent that any local business is going to lobby local politics), and local politics tends to be more corrupt.

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