It looks to me that people are piling on, just because.
Those who loathe Uber can only wish to witness Kalanick learn humility by holding only the ashes of Uber he ignited and then burned!
Of course, maybe there's a lot of interest because of seemingly irrationality of management in handling this situation?
Human nature!
.edit: down-vote city for calling HNers human? Or what? Just curious. Don't really care about the points.
.edit²: removed a bit of the blanket from that statement. Pardon the initial poor wording!
"This is one of those times when steering into the skid might have been the wrong move."
"I think Uber needs to post an ad for a new President more than a Senior Software Engineer..."
"How about UberEatsDicks? Can we work on that product together? It sounds pretty good for you guys. Right up your alley."
"Facebook must hate me to suggest this post. LOL"
"Haha, no thanks. http://www.theverge.com/.../14664474/uber-sexism-allegations ."
IE, They mostly screwed over corrupt taxi monopolies.
Similar to a sort of Tony Stark character, Uber was an asshole, but they were OUR asshole. Fighting for insanely low customer prices and fighting against a bigger enemy, which is the terrible existing taxi industry.
The stuff that has happened recently is about having an awful company/engineering culture, and isn't in any way morally defensible.
This is what happens without worker solidarity.
In other words, they played us like fiddles.
But a quick succession of PR disasters has made the narrative difficult to control:
November 28, TechCrunch: Uber begins background collection of rider location data [1]
December 1, NPR: Uber Now Tracks Passengers' Locations Even After They're Dropped Off [2]
December 14, TechCrunch: Uber's self-driving cars start picking up passengers in San Francisco [3]
December 14, Video: Driverless Uber runs red light in downtown San Francisco [4]
December 14, TheHill: Trump Names Elon Musk, Uber CEO to Advisory Team [5]
December 16, The Verge: Uber is stubbornly refusing to apply for a $150 permit for its self-driving cars [6]
December 21: ReCode: Uber has stopped its self-driving pilot in SF after the DMV revoked its cars' registrations [7]
January 30, TechCrunch: Lyft surges to the top 10 on Apple's App Store following the #DeleteUber campaign [8]
February 19, Susan J. Fowler: Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber [9]
February 19, The New York Times: Uber Investigating Sexual Harassment Claims by Ex-Employee [10]
February 23, Bloomberg: Alphabet's Waymo Alleges Uber Stole Self-Driving Secrets [11]
February 24, "Amy Vertino": I am an Uber survivor [12]
March 3, The New York Times: How Uber Used Secret "Greyball" Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide [13]
Specifically, the #deleteUber affair stemmed from a series of misunderstandings, but generated more public ire than most of Uber's unambiguously overt actions. This widespread public upset made further revelations about Uber's culture more repulsive, even if they were upsetting enough in their own right. This also makes it easier to pile on less consequential pieces of bad press, like the few we've had in recent weeks about other high-ranking executives leaving for unrelated reasons.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/28/uber-background-location-d... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13085098 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13175531 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13180172 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13175928 [6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13198277 [7] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13234265 [8] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13527482 [9] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13682022 [10] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13684439 [11] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718586 [12] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747414 [13] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13785564
Living in NYC, I've been asking friends and friends of friends (it makes for good social fodder) about whether or not they plan to change and I have yet to hear anyone who actually cares and has changed their behavior (ie shifted to cabs or lyft). Not a statistically significant sample size but NYC is as liberal as it gets when it comes to issues like these.
Also, anecdotally, I can say that in my group of friends a lot of people have switched.
Immediately I try to cancel my Uber account. Nope your locked in there is no cancel button. Have to wait days to cancel. Uber knows about this hack and their response is it's the customers fault for not using an uber strong password. Then my best friend leases a car from Uber and in the long run he finds out he has leased his car from what it feels like the mafia.. except it's the Uber mafia.
Burn Uber burn.. I will never use your filth again!
I've asked my lyft drivers in san francisco if they've noticed any difference in ridership lately (they almost all drive for both uber and lyft), and heard things like 'yeah, all the women are taking lyft now.'
Is it really as dramatic as all that? Just seems like ragging on uber is 'a viral topic' right now. Likely thanks to the couple of articles this past while that've no doubt made the rounds on FB/etc.
Once it's "old hat" people will go back to business as usual, albeit uber's steadily increasing prices and myriad other issues mean people'll always have that negative aftertaste (and possibly switch to other services or cutting back on ridesharing for a while)
Waves of hate for companies are nothing new; not saying Uber's not going to have enduring hate too but I don't think this is anything "different" than what I'd've expected. Just look at United right now.
Why Uber is still alive is something that makes me worry about what chances the rule of law has vs. VC money.
I have some concerns about the effect they have on diversity (given how tightly you can target them). But the results seems to be really good.
Recently, they started spamming me with lots of %-off offers[1]. Just a datapoint; it could be unrelated marketing efforts. Or it could be that they're feeling it.
[1] Their mailing list was also broken and ignored my unsubscribe request, so given that they seem too incompetent to run a mail server, now anything they send me bounces.
Even United CEO apologized, but sexual harassment is no biggie I guess for Uber.
Good luck Uber.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/10/united-ceo-passenger-disrupti...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/united-airlines-ceo-apol...
I'm in the middle of a two week trip in San Francisco staying with people who live here. Out of about a dozen people who've called rides for themselves or the group while I've been around, 100% were Lyft. Out of all the ridesharing vehicles I've seen in the city, less than one in five had Uber logos, and maybe less than one in ten. No drivers we talked to complained about Uber, some were even very complimentary, but I get the feeling the tide has completely turned in the Bay Area and there's no home field advantage at home.
And FWIW, everyone I know is aware of the Uber issue, while almost none read Hacker News. This story is definitely not primarily fueled by HN at this point, if it ever was.
Personally, I've had the "how do you like Uber/lyft" conversation during a ride enough times to never bring it up directly, but regardless it comes up frequently.
I don't think drivers are looking to badmouth the company, but drivers everywhere in the world are at least slightly aware of what's going on and often in need of a shared subject to talk about with passengers.
Alphabet wants its lawsuit against Uber to play out publicly
https://www.recode.net/2017/4/11/15254028/alphabet-oppositio...
Between Google investing $258M in Uber and then getting their IP ripped off by an ex-employee (now at Uber) whose company Google had bought, Levandowski and Uber pissed off the wrong deep pocketed company.
Wait, so... They're implying that Levandowski didn't violate his agreement, but that Uber is liable for using trade secrets...?
Unless those files were marked as theirs (which you'd think Levandowski would have scrubbed if he made them part of Otto's docs), I can't see how that'd be a winning strategy for them. hmm
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about the case and am not a lawyer
Regardless, this sounds like quitting rather than being fired.
https://www.recode.net/2017/4/11/15265176/uber-communication...
It's linked to within the TC articles...
But, I definitely think the execution could've been a lot better. Sure, be aggressive with pricing, influencing public policy and marketing but to persist with it and taking it beyond subtlety is a silly, distracting move. By going the other extreme in curbing monopolies, they have alienated hard-working drivers who are feeling the heat now. Drivers tell me they work longer hours for lower payouts. Many of them are unable to make enough to pay back loans taken out to purchase their cars.
I'm not sure if this was due to demands imposed by investors on aggressive expansion and growth or if it's something that Uber consciously chose to do. Either way, I fear the worst and that this will be an another short-lived experiment.
