Uber’s Complicit Board

https://mondaynote.com/ubers-complicit-board-9b3351cdee9

by robin_reala • 9 years ago

47 45 9 years ago

noncoml• 9 years ago

Uber is what it is today because the board and Kalanick had no ethics and complete diregard for the law since the beginning.

They showed that from their very early days. If you supported the company until last year, then you supported their behavior as a whole. You cannot have your pie and eat it too.

0xbear3• 9 years ago

I actually approve of some of that disregard for the law as it relates to the taxi industry. The law was utterly insane and I'm glad the likes of Uber and Lyft are challenging it.

taxicabjesus• 9 years ago

The law was utterly insane and I'm glad the likes of Uber and Lyft are challenging it.

Not all jurisdictions limited the number of taxis (via "medallions"/etc). Arizona had a limited number of regulations to protect people from blatant dishonesty (inaccurate meters, background screening for drivers, etc). Large taxi companies were trusted to regulate themselves, or the department of weights & measures helped single-car companies certify their meter's accuracy & verify vehicle safety, etc.

I drove for a large company because they'd spent decades building a brand that people trusted. They took care of the regulations, provided a clean well-maintained vehicle, and made a little off my efforts. I considered it an acceptable arrangement.

The company changed its leasing operation to unmarked vehicles that drivers can use with any of the apps. Their contracts (Medicaid patients to/from appointments, etc) pay better than non-surge uber fares, and their app is cheaper for riders than the upstarts'.

When uber cab is dead and gone, no one in Arizona will care.

ghughes• 9 years ago

It's possible to be OK with (or even approve of) a company defying local regulations that exist to prop up an entrenched legacy industry, and not be OK with a corporate culture where sexual harassment is condoned.

rdl• 9 years ago

Indeed. I don't even care exclusively about the sexual harassment solely as harassment; the problem is Uber was treating its team badly. The "jacket thing" was as bad as the rest, even though it wasn't harassment under any definition, for this reason.

TeMPOraL7• 9 years ago

And I do not understand this view (even though I see it often expressed). Is society such an abstract thing for people as to be irrelevant?

Frankly, we're talking about Uber hurting the livelihood of and exploiting lots of people worldwide, all for the sake of profits (the whole talk about "disrupting entrenched legacy industry" was always a PR bullshit, as evidenced e.g. by them breaking any law they didn't like, and not just those helping "taxi mafias") - and comparing that to them hurting the feelings of a few employees.

Frankly, this pile-up on Uber because of Susan Fowler story feels like a case of "arson, murder, jaywalking"[0] to me. I do appreciate it nonetheless, because maybe this will be enough to reach critical mass and finally kill off their business.

[0] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJay...

RickS• 9 years ago

I think it's worth making a distinction between their public and private conduct.

To be specific: I am okay with them skirting regulatory procedures. I consider this an extension of "move fast and break things". I am not okay with their purportedly rampant sexual misconduct. It is morally reprehensible and has no business value.

Roping both types of conduct under "their behavior" is a step too far, IMO.

alpha_squared• 9 years ago

I am okay with them skirting regulatory procedures. I consider this an extension of "move fast and break things".

If there were any statement that is a good summation of tech culture hubris, it's "move fast and break things." You can not and, more appropriately, should not apply that to law as a basis for your business. If you are doing something illegal in your resident locale, then you are doing something illegal and reprehensible. Full stop.

If you feel that law is unjust, then fight it in a court of law. However, intentionally breaking that law with no intention of fighting it on its merits of being just but rather on the merits of preferred business operation is a pretty clear violation of ethics. Regardless, the court's decision is ultimately what governs the upholding of a law. Being in violation of that is still illegal.

TeMPOraL7• 9 years ago

I'm totally for making that distinction. The harassment cases make them look like assholes, and it's a good example of how not to run a company. Their business behaviour is a good example of what companies should not be allowed to exist in a civilized society. Two different discussions to be had.

madeofpalk2• 9 years ago

I am okay with them skirting regulatory procedures

Encouraging citizens to break the law and then pay their legal fees and fines when they get in trouble is a little bit more than "skirting regulatory procedures"

kartan2• 9 years ago

Uber was a "car sharing" company. Then it realized that some customers were cheating and acting as pirate taxis. Uber saw that as an opportunity and created a business model based on that fact.

Their business model is based on abuse employee protection laws, and ignore professional drivers regulations and fighting against them in tribunals when caught.

Years later they continue calling themselves "car sharing" company, even that it has professional drivers which only income comes from them. All their business model is based in lies, legal trickery, abuse of power, etc.

So, why people is surprised by this? I call this effect "Digital Stupidity". e.g. Opening a letter or listening to a phone call are illegal without a warrant. But, oh wait!, we are opening digital mails and listening to digital phone calls: No problem. e.g. Paying below minimum wage and breaking employment laws is wrong. But, oh wait!, we are using an app to hire our employees on a digital contract, so no problem.

Breaking employee and customer protection laws is not a good business model, even in an App. The rest of the behavior can be explained by their business model lack of any morality.

* http://www.timesunion.com/allwcm/article/Judge-finds-NYC-Ube... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/19/uber-appe... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/28/uber-to-s... * https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/14/uber-appe...

timcederman• 9 years ago

Uber was a "car sharing" company. Then it realized that some customers were cheating and acting as pirate taxis. Uber saw that as an opportunity and created a business model based on that fact.

When I first used Uber it was black cars only. This was great - I'd learnt in the Bay Area that using black cars was cheaper than taxis, but finding a reliable company and getting it on demand was a PITA. Then Uber came along, awesome. Cheaper than what I was paying before, cheaper than a taxi, and on demand, with no tipping.

Then Lyft came along and Uber (AFAIK) copied them with Uber-X.

"Pirate taxis"? What are you talking about?

kartan2• 9 years ago

"Pirate taxis"? What are you talking about?

I refer to them running an illegal taxi operation.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_taxicab_operation

* http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/19/uber-declared-an-...

* http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-ubertech-court-idUS...

* https://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2016/12/28/uber-to-be-...

ClassyJacket3• 9 years ago

Does anyone know what on Earth the motivation was for Uber to limit their market to only black cars for such a long time? Or ever, for that matter?

icebraining4• 9 years ago

Their business model is based on abuse employee protection laws

If you mean the contractor vs employee, they followed the same model as the existing taxi companies. There was no employee protection. If anything, Uber may (inadvertently, for sure) increase the employee protections that have been lacking for decades.

This article from 1995 (a bit early to be a submarine for Uber) shows well the "employee protection" that cab drivers had: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/09/nyregion/driving-a-taxi-di...

TeMPOraL7• 9 years ago

After all the current mess gets resolved and the dust settles down (hopefully with Uber kicking the calendar), we'll still need to have a serious conversation about how was this allowed to happen in the first place.

Uber built their business on utter disregard for the rule of law. In the process, they highlighted just how poor - or unwilling - local governments are at enforcing their own rules. This needs to get fixed, hopefully before the next wave of "laws are for losers" "entrepreneurs" hits.

x0x0• 9 years ago

The taxis, in sf at least, are pieces of human shit. I had a badly broken leg (multiple surgeries, 10 months on crutches including a reinjury) and they were horrible to me, even though I took 8-10 cabs/week. So I was deeply grateful for uber because -- and this is a miracle compared to sf taxis -- they actually came, or if they weren't going to, they told you! That's it! I was willing to pay 2-3x just for that. SF taxis: "we'll be there in 15 minutes", which was utterly unrelated to arrival time and destroyed your ability to plan your day at all.

I've put these stats on here before, but even though I called a taxi every day to go to work -- stats are in an xlx not on this laptop, so this is approximate -- the 80% wait time was approximately an hour, for someone who lived at 22/valencia and wanted to go to soma. And they regularly just didn't show up ever. Or threw tantrums if I didn't shoot down two flights of stairs, but it was totally cool for them to come an hour after being called. And the card readers 'broke' all the time -- but when you refuse to go to an atm and tell them their choice is to take a card or take $0, lo it's a miracle! The card machine starts working! I had more than one driver get pissy they weren't tipped after they tried to make me crutch over to an atm to pay them. Or one who didn't start the meter and tried to charge me $30-ish for a ride that normally cost $16.

Oh, and try getting a cab Thurs or Fri night to go home.

It's particularly amazing that a government sponsored monopoly would treat the handicapped this way.

In conclusion, fuck yellow cab in particular, but also fuck green cab and arrow. This is why no-one cared that uber ran a taxi service. Because it was ludicrously better.

I stuck with Uber for a long time because they made my life work for the second half of the injury, but finally switched to lyft 6 months ago.

TeMPOraL7• 9 years ago

One thing that I realized in the recent Uber threads, by reading stories such as yours, is that regular taxis in the US (in particular in SF and NYC) must really, really suck. I can understand the popularity of Uber there, if things were really as bad as it seems from reading HN. Maybe taxi regulations in the States are really that broken.

But at some point, Uber expanded overseas, and took their laissez-faire attitude to regulations to places where taxis were kind of OK, and the laws were reasonable. That behaviour is much less forgivable there - because there isn't even a fig leaf of civil disobedience to hide behind, it's obvious money grab through anticompetitive behaviour.

potatolicious• 9 years ago

Agreed, though I hope that any serious post-mortem about the Uber debacle include not just the regulatory failure that led to Uber's abuses, but also the regulatory failure that led to Uber's existence in the first place.

Part of why local governments were unwilling to enforce the law against Uber was because the citizenry wanted the Uber product, and wanted it badly. The pace at which Uber grew is not just indicative of the absurd funding they had, but also how broken the status quo was in the taxi industry.

Local governments were largely unable to enforce the rule of law in this area because the law-abiding option had become utterly and completely indefensible.

In Seattle there were popular protests in favor of Uber, that's how badly the product was wanted.

I think there's a larger lesson here about poor governance being corrosive to the rule of law - at the end of the day, if things get bad enough, the law becomes words on a page rather than the rule of the land. That's a scary thought.

The taxi industry pre-Uber was universally reviled. Many comments here illustrate it, and they're not wrong. Strict supply limits created a market where competition was all but unnecessary, while would-be competitors had no legal ability to operate.

My (admittedly simplified) take is this: years of complete regulatory and governance failure around for-hire cabs created fertile ground for companies cavalier or dismissive about transport law. Companies cavalier or dismissive about transport law turn out to be cavalier or dismissive about other areas of law, to no particular surprise. While Uber can and should be held to account for all of its abuses, another Uber (or worse) will simply reoccur unless the underlying governance failure is fixed.

TeMPOraL7• 9 years ago

I don't know why you were downvoted. I totally agree. FWIW, Uber's activities did highlight quite a lot of things that were wrong with taxis - especially in the US, from what I hear (not that taxis in Europe are perfect, but I don't see that many horror stories about them).

I think there's a larger lesson here about poor governance being corrosive to the rule of law - at the end of the day, if things get bad enough, the law becomes words on a page rather than the rule of the land. That's a scary thought.

Yeah, and that's why I blame local governments for a lot in this debacle. It's their job to make sure a) laws make sense, and b) laws get enforced. Uber should be held responsible for a lot of things, but that's orthogonal to the fact that so far they really haven't been, and allowing that is damaging to the very perception of the rule of law.

Uber’s Complicit Board

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