Narrative: Uber's Culture is Toxic
Each narrative page (like this) has a page describing and evaluating the narrative, followed by all the posts on the site tagged with that narrative. Scroll down beyond the introduction to see the posts.
Actually, Uber’s PR disasters aren’t that great for Lyft – Recode (Mar 7, 2017)
This is interesting data which confirms something that I’ve always suspected but never had more than gut feel to go on: that matters of principle rarely cause large scale and lasting changes in consumer behavior. In other words, even with the high profile and almost continuous coverage of everything going on at Uber at the moment, only relatively small numbers of people seem to be switching to Lyft, and they seem to be doing so fairly temporarily. The article cites spend data from a company called TXN which shows only a brief and switch of spending from Uber to Lyft in a couple of cities, which appears to represent roughly 5-10 points of market share at its peak. Convenience, habit, peer pressure and a myriad of other factors all likely weigh as heavily or more so in decisions to use a service or not, and Lyft’s big problem is that in many cities it’s simply not as big as Uber is. In the two cities cited here, it looks like Uber had two thirds and four fifths of spending at its nadir following the negative news, and that’s likely representative of many other cities where both operate (and of course there are still cities where Lyft doesn’t operate at all despite its recent expansion). That makes it tough to capitalize in a major way even when Uber appears to be stumbling significantly, especially because those stumbles haven’t affected the user experience in the slightest.
via Recode
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick just told staff he’s hiring a COO to help him – Recode (Mar 7, 2017)
Small follow-up on yesterday’s Information piece about Uber trying to hire a number two for Travis Kalanick. That news is now official, though Kara Swisher here also reports that Uber is looking to put another woman on its board, and that the board would prefer the COO to be a woman as well. That echoes both what I said here yesterday and what I implied last week in my Techpinions piece on CEOs and corporate culture: fixing Uber’s problems will be a lot easier with a woman in a senior executive role.
via Recode
Uber’s VP of product and growth Ed Baker has resigned – Recode (Mar 3, 2017)
My apologies if you’re getting sick of Uber news this week, but here’s yet another. This one is tough to read, because the tie to the current investigation and fallout from the Susan Fowler post is more tenuous than with Amit Singhal – there’s a brief reference to an allegation of impropriety in this report, but it’s not substantiated or detailed. And unlike Singhal, who had barely got his seat warm, Baker had been at Uber for three years and been an integral part of its growth over that time. In general, as that Information article I just linked to indicates, he’s been a very well respected member of the team at Uber, so I’m inclined not to over-emphasize the link to sexual harassment issues. It’s possible that the timing is coincidental, though it’s obviously a particular loss coming right now with everything else that’s going on.
via Recode
How Uber Used Secret Greyball Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide – New York Times (Mar 3, 2017)
I think there may have been one day in the past week when there wasn’t some new negative story about Uber, and that’s just based on what I’ve written about here. The latest is reporting from the New York Times that Uber has a program called Greyball which identifies app users who may not be who they seem and serves up fake cars or otherwise obfuscates the real activity going on with drivers in the area. Although there are some legitimate reasons for Uber to do something like this – for a time, competitors were frequently ordering and canceling cars – it was deliberately used to evade law enforcement in places where Uber was breaking local laws. Its statement in the article suggests it sees nothing wrong with this behavior, but characterizes this last scenario as “opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers”. One might, I suppose, make a similar argument about police running speed traps, but radar detectors are illegal in some places anyway. The legality of what Uber did here isn’t 100% clear, but it’s yet another example of Uber’s disregard for regulations and willingness to do almost anything to flout or circumvent them. On the other hand, it appears Uber’s PR department has lost the will to fight on yet another front and isn’t even disputing this story.
via New York Times
In Video, Uber CEO Argues With Driver Over Falling Fares – Bloomberg (Feb 28, 2017)
I know I used the phrase “another day, another ugly story about Uber” yesterday, but it’s literally another day and yet another story today. This time, it’s CEO Travis Kalanick recorded by one of his drivers who asked him some questions about pricing for the black car tier Uber offers. I’d actually argue that most of the conversation is pretty reasonable on Kalanick’s part, but right at the end he apparently loses his temper and we get to see how he really feels about all this, reinforcing the sense that Uber doesn’t really care about or understand its drivers and their needs. Here’s the point I made with regard to the sexual harassment allegations, and will make again here: as long as Kalanick himself doesn’t model the behavior he wants to see from his employees, the culture at Uber is never going to change, and it’s starting to feel like he simply can’t model that behavior because he doesn’t believe in it and isn’t capable of behaving in that way. If that’s really the case, that’s a pretty strong argument for him stepping down and allowing someone else to take over who can provide the cultural leadership his company needs – it’s hard to see how any of this gets better unless he does.
via Bloomberg
Uber’s SVP of engineering is out after he did not disclose he left Google in a dispute over sexual harassment allegation – Recode (Feb 27, 2017)
Another day, another ugly story about Uber. This time, it’s that its brand-new SVP of engineering, who joined Uber just last month, appears to have left Google under a cloud surrounding allegations of sexual harassment. There was an initial investigation and apparently some planning towards firing Singhal, but as he resigned proactively those plans were never carried out, which certainly helped keep the allegations under wraps. But Singhal apparently failed to inform Uber of these circumstances when he left, and he’s now been asked to resign from Uber. I suspect that, were Uber not having the month it’s having, Singhal might have survived, but in the circumstances there was no way he could be allowed to stay. Singhal’s hiring was seen as a coup when he arrived (see the comment linked above), and it’s into such a senior role I wonder how Uber is going to fill the gap. Clearly, it though that was less important than making a quick, clean break here.
via Recode
Uber’s Car Was Driving Itself When it Ran a Red Light in San Francisco – NYTimes (Feb 24, 2017)
During the very brief period when Uber’s self-driving cars were operating in San Francisco, one of them ran a red light. However, the company at the time engaged in some audacious spin and claimed the car was being driven by a human at the time and that the incident just highlighted the benefits of autonomy. Now, however, the Times is reporting that the car was supposed to be driving itself at that time and the human driver merely failed to intervene in a timely fashion. If validation were needed that the California DMV made the right decision when it stopped Uber from testing its cars without a license, here it is. But this is also yet another case of Uber acting like the rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to it, and outright lying when it gets caught. And that in turn makes it very hard to believe it when it claims it’s in compliance with rules, and it only has itself to blame. What a terrible few weeks for Uber, pretty much all of its own making.
via NYTimes
Waymo Sues Uber over Stealing of Confidential Information (Feb 23, 2017)
Alphabet autonomous driving subsidiary Waymo is suing Uber and its Otto subsidiary over alleged stealing of confidential information by Anthony Levandowski, who was one of the early executives at Waymo and subsequently left abruptly in early 2016 and immediately unveiled a self-driving truck company, Otto. That company, in turn, was acquired just a few months later by Uber. Waymo has done some fairly detailed investigate work that’s outlined in the complaint, and discovered that six weeks before Levandowski’s resignation, he downloaded lots of files from Waymo’s servers, and it argues that these in turn informed Otto’s (now Uber’s) LiDAR designs. As this blog post from Waymo says, fierce competition in autonomous driving technology is a good thing – it’s pushing the market forward rapidly and leading to some great innovations that should benefit consumers. But there are obviously lines companies shouldn’t cross as they compete, and this would be one of those, if it’s proven to be true. This is the second lawsuit in recent weeks involving employees moving between autonomous driving companies – the first involved Tesla and a startup. In both cases, the allegation is in part about stealing proprietary information. Given that Uber is already dealing with the fallout from a sexual harassment and discrimination blowup in the past week and still reeling from the #deleteUber campaign, this is terrible timing, but may also be a sign that the company’s aggressive stance on competition is hurting it in more ways than one.
via Waymo (full complaint here)
A former Uber employee’s disturbing claims of workplace sexism reignite calls to #deleteUber – Recode (Feb 20, 2017)
On the one hand, this is an awful set of accusations regarding Uber and a culture of misogyny and damaging internal politics, and on the other I suspect most people who follow Uber won’t be surprised. The company has long been known for a bro culture which starts at the top with Travis Kalanick, and it seems to have done very little to change that culture. Corporate cultures are very powerful things, and very hard to change once established. Uber early on created a culture of intense competition both internally and externally – a culture where winning at all costs is what matters – and no matter what executives have said in formal settings since, their early actions have spoken much louder, and it appears that the culture at Uber is deeply toxic, especially for women. Travis Kalanick has predictably responded with feigned outrage, despite the fact that at the very least his direct reports were aware of the specifics here, and of course he’s directly responsible for the company culture that allows these things to happen. I’m glad an investigation will be led by Arianna Huffington, who is outside the hierarchy at Uber but on its board, and I’m very curious to see what it shows. A whitewash will go down terribly, but anything short of a serious shakeup is likely to be seen as insufficient.
via Recode (Susan Fowler’s full post here, and Kalanick’s Twitter response thread is here, while Arianna Huffington’s short tweet thread is here)
Uber’s public Q&A with drivers was a disaster – The Verge (Feb 17, 2017)
Uber’s relationship with drivers has often been contentious, and it appears that even when the company is trying to “listen” to its drivers more, things often go wrong, as in this case. The big problem is that there are simply too many deep-seated frustrations and problems in Uber’s relationship with its drivers for them to be substantively addressed during such a public Q&A session, and Uber’s management should have known this. Without first establishing a level of trust and ongoing communication over a longer period of time, these occasional opportunities become venting sessions for drivers who feel like they’re not being heard, which makes them unproductive for all concerned. Uber needs to do better at really listening to its drivers regularly (something it sounds like Jeff Jones does at least try to do semi-regularly in smaller groups), but more importantly it needs to get better at actually addressing their big concerns.
via The Verge