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posted by on Monday March 20 2017, @07:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the golden-parachute-time dept.

As reported at Recode:

Jeff Jones, the president of Uber, is quitting the car-hailing company after less than a year. The move by the No. 2 exec, said sources, is directly related to the multiple controversies there, including explosive charges of sexism and sexual harassment.

Jones, said sources, determined that this was not the situation he signed on for, especially after Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announced a search for a new COO to help him right the very troubled ship.

That was not the reason for Jones' departure, sources said, even though it meant that Kalanick was bringing in a new exec who could outrank him. Instead, these sources said, Jones determined that the situation at the company was more problematic than he realized.

[...] (UPDATE: Jones also confirmed the departure with a blistering assessment of the company. "It is now clear, however, that the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber, and I can no longer continue as president of the ride sharing business," he said in a statement to Recode.)

Also at Bloomberg and The New York Times.

Third exec gone in one month.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Celestial on Monday March 20 2017, @09:43PM (14 children)

    by Celestial (4891) on Monday March 20 2017, @09:43PM (#481799) Journal

    Yes, but at nearly twice the price of Uber and Lyft.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday March 20 2017, @10:29PM (13 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Monday March 20 2017, @10:29PM (#481822)

    Why don't those drivers eat dirt, use their kids to clean and repair the cars, and sell their organs to pay the license fees?
    Why don't cities stop regulating taxis and just let anyone with a car grab anyone hailing on the side of the wannabe-taxi-clogged streets? They can stop bus/train services to save money and some room on/for roads!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:15PM (9 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:15PM (#481839)

      Where I live, it costs $35 to take a taxi 10km to the airport. Is that a reasonable price?

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Monday March 20 2017, @11:41PM (2 children)

        by Zz9zZ (1348) on Monday March 20 2017, @11:41PM (#481850)

        It is more about the time it takes. At 50km/h with little traffic that does seem quite high, but how long does that trip really take with traffic etc? I don't know the average cost of operating the vehicle, but it is not insignificant. Also, you can't assume taxis are running at all times so prices have to be adjusted to account for dead time.

        Personally I think this is one of the issues with capitalism, it is all about how much you can screw your customers out of. There are decent and honest people who give fair prices, but then there are the greedy jerks who screw other people over. How do you know if the taxi ride is at a fair price? If it isn't you rarely have much of an alternative. How can anyone find out if the taxi service owners are colluding to set prices artificially higher?

        With capitalism the idea is that no single company gains too much of the market, thus they must compete otherwise the other business will siphon off their customers. In practice this doesn't work for a lot of products / services. I am not advocating communism, or a complete dropping of capitalism, but obviously the system is broken. As many have pointed out, rolling our taxes back to pre 50s-70s levels (not sure on exact dates) seemed to do a decent job at keeping large businesses in line. With higher tax brackets there is less incentive to squeeze every drop of profit possible; often done to the detriment of works, customers, or the environment, or even the company's own future welfare. If you only get to keep 5-10% of any profit gains (once you reach high levels of profit / income) then there isn't much motivation to bend the rules or treat people poorly. Basically it boils down to capitalism rewarding immoral behavior, and so many of the checks and balances against this have been destroyed.

        --
        ~Tilting at windmills~
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:58AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:58AM (#481919)

          It is more about the time it takes. At 50km/h with little traffic that does seem quite high, but how long does that trip really take with traffic etc?

          More detail: I live in a small city and the airport is straight down the highway. No traffic whatsoever. 100 km/h the whole way. $35 bucks for 10km drive down the highway with no traffic. That's insane.

          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by In hydraulis on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:06AM

            by In hydraulis (386) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:06AM (#481950)

            But who's really profiting here? Certainly not the driver. It's either the taxi company, or the airport itself via access / gate tolls.

            It's a bit disheartening to see bus / train fares spike at the airport as they do:

            --- $3.60 --- $3.60 --- $4.20 --- $4.20 --- $28.40 --- $4.20 --- $4.80 --- $4.80 ---

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 20 2017, @11:44PM (5 children)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Monday March 20 2017, @11:44PM (#481852) Homepage

        No, not really, in San Diego you can get a Lyft for that distance for less than $10.

        Cabbies were fucking bums anyway. When called they took an hour more to show up (if they bothered to show at all) and were expensive as fuck.

        Uber and Lyft lit fires under their fucking asses, but the cat's out of the bag. If cabbies weren't already so shit at both quality and cost Uber and Lyft would be the services charging ridiculous fees for on-demand usage rather than the sensible alternative. I'm usually pro-union, but fuck man, cabbies' unions really make me wonder. Of course, cabbies are rarely White (and mostly from Africa or the Middle-East), so lack of manners at least makes sense.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:04AM (3 children)

          by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:04AM (#481898)

          Of course, cabbies are rarely White (and mostly from Africa or the Middle-East), so lack of manners at least makes sense.

          Oh please: even back in the days of all-white cabbies in the northeast US, they were infamous for their rude manners. That profession just seems to attract extremely rude people for some reason. And strangely, in my experience at least, Uber/Lyft seem to attract friendlier and better-mannered people, even though I've had rides with non-white people, including one Lyft guy who was definitely from Africa. It's not the ethnicity, it's something about the way American cab companies are managed and run.

          • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:05AM (2 children)

            by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:05AM (#481924)

            Odds are that your Uber/Lyft guy doesn't have 10 to 30 years of driving shitty people through shitty traffic as a reason to be an ass himself.

            • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:41AM (1 child)

              by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @03:41AM (#481957)

              Maybe, but the obviously not-American-born cabbies I've been with who were also not old enough to have decades of experience driving shitty people around didn't have very good manners or demeanors either. As I said, it seems the cab companies just attract people with crappy personalities.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:41AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @11:41AM (#482054)

                Imagine being the guy who goes around the street selling life-saving medicines. Now imagine dealing with patients who don't want to take the medicine, which is what a lot of travelers look like - drunk, argumentative, dismissive etc. Now imagine they think they are paying you a lot.

                I am not defending bad behavior, but that's how taxi drivers look at themselves.

        • (Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:26PM

          by Zz9zZ (1348) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @06:26PM (#482296)

          Please slap yourself in the face. REALLY hard. You're a racist shit and you need to knock some sense into yourself.

          --
          ~Tilting at windmills~
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:33PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:33PM (#481847)

      Why don't idiots stop depending on a gigantic federal government to be their substitute parents and manage every last detail of their entire lives for them?!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:53PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 20 2017, @11:53PM (#481861)

        Why don't idiots stop depending on a gigantic federal government to be their substitute parents and manage every last detail of their entire lives for them?!

        Yeah, right. Why don't those idiots build their own roads and run their own taxi companies?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:31AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @02:31AM (#481934)

          Yeah, right. Why don't those idiots build their own roads and run their own taxi companies?

          Their "disruptor technologies" like Klingons! They are not some freeloaders getting people to use their own cars for free while getting paid less than McD's! This is why the proper name for these "ride services" is "Scab-cabs". Even where cabbies don't have a union, it is appropriate because of all the scab tissue you find lying on the seats.