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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the bye-bye dept.

The New York Times reports:

Travis Kalanick stepped down Tuesday as chief executive of Uber, the ride-hailing service that he helped found in 2009 and built into a transportation colossus, after a shareholder revolt made it untenable for him to stay on at the company.

Mr. Kalanick's exit came under pressure after hours of drama involving Uber's investors, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, who asked to remain anonymous because the details were confidential.

Earlier on Tuesday, five of Uber's major investors demanded that the chief executive resign immediately. The investors included one of Uber's biggest shareholders, the venture capital firm Benchmark, which has one of its partners, Bill Gurley, on Uber's board. The investors made their demand for Mr. Kalanick to step down in a letter delivered to the chief executive while he was in Chicago, said the people with knowledge of the situation.

[...] Mr. Kalanick's troubles began earlier this year after a former Uber engineer detailed what she said was sexual harassment at the company, opening the floodgates for more complaints and spurring internal investigations. In addition, Uber has been dealing with an intellectual property lawsuit from Waymo, the self-driving car business that operates under Google's parent company, and a federal inquiry into a software tool that Uber used to sidestep some law enforcement.

Uber has been trying to move past its difficult history, which has grown inextricably tied to Mr. Kalanick. In recent months, Uber has fired more than 20 employees after an investigation into the company's culture, embarked on major changes to professionalize its workplace, and is searching for new executives including a chief operating officer.

According to The Register:

Kalanick led Uber into fights on many fronts. The company had a strategy of entering markets without regard to regulation, earning it lawsuits all over the world. During one such lawsuit, Uber breached privacy laws. The company also stands accused of stealing self-driving car technology and deliberately targeting government officials who sought to investigate it.

The BBC notes:

Surely the most dramatic fall from grace the start-up world has ever seen, a scalp so big it will have chief executives across this city sitting bolt upright, and thinking: "If Travis can get booted out of Uber... no-one is safe."

What started out as a PR inconvenience has left the company without, to name just a few, a chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief technology officer and chief financial officer. Uber is in tatters, engulfed by its own aggression.

Mr Kalanick embodied his company's prevailing attitude: success at all costs. It saw Uber dominate the ride-sharing world, his chutzpah enabling the company to attract investment so effectively that last year Uber alone raised more money than the entire UK start-up scene.

But in doing so he didn't play fair. He created a company that deceived local regulators, neglected the well-being of employees, wound-up drivers, troubled investors, obtained a rape victim's medical records and allegedly stole trade secrets from a rival.

See also: c|net


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:17PM (#529156)

    Given you're comparing it to New York subways, I don't think you understand the scope or scale of what Uber has done. In many places in the world transportation is an extremely corrupt industry. Criminal and government corruption/collusion are extremely common. I mean this is a very big deal - people have been killed over this industry. Uber, somehow, has managed to compete in spite of this - and has gone out of their way to keep their driver's safe. And I have no idea how they've done it. Certainly the various tools such as the much maligned 'Greyball' have played a meaningful role.

    We also have some of this corruption in the US, though it's almost entirely peaceful. But here too, companies don't just come in and start offering dirt cheap prices without major corrupting influences coming into play. Getting around this corruption and backroom dealing against your company is not something they teach you in MBA programs. CEOs, as a management/executive role, I'd agree are relatively irrelevant. However, what Kalanick provided was vision, capability, and the willingness to see what was necessary to achieve results even when it was rather outside the box - to say the least. Nearly all of the greatest companies were built on these sort of personalities. And they all also tend to start their decline the moment they leave. Microsoft's Bill Gates, Apple's Steve Jobs for instance. Those companies are large enough that they can run on inertia for many years before reaching, but Uber is not. And the board has taken no time in starting to destroy the company. Enabling tipping is something that is universally disliked and will only harm the company by destroying one of its competitive advantages for very minimal gain.

    These leaders of companies are not valuable because they're good businessmen but because of their ability to do something unique. Jobs for instance didn't do anything revolutionary, but he had this unique ability to somehow stay one step ahead even if he was just marketing and reshaping the work of others. Apple today, however isn't even doing that and is instead just coasting on his successes. Their one attempt at post-Jobs innovation, the Apple Watch, was a flop that everybody knew would be a flop. You have to give it to Cook for being to go with what he genuinely felt was right, but the problem is he's just not made out of the same stuff as these other people capable of bringing a company from zero to the top.

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