Honestly, how many other companies, government agencies, or other organizations would hold up under the kind of coordinated, orchestrated drubbing that the media has dished out to Uber over the last couple of months?
Uber is a glorified cab dispatch organization, desperately fishing around to try to convert some of the insane valuation they enjoy into something more valuable. For years the media has made Uber their darling -- the oft restated misnomer about a "sharing economy" -- giving it what would likely calculate to billions in free press. Retelling the tales about the grand new world for drivers, with endless riches. The new standards of excellence for passengers.
So now the bad parts are the narrative. To dredge up another trite saying, live by the sword die by the sword.
The potential of Uber is a worldwide brand with super efficient dispatch. Do you really think it costs them more than a few cents to dispatch rides? There isn't any cab dispatcher in the world with remotely their economies of scale.
The economy of scale is a ruse that doesn't actually exist in the business, and this is very well tread ground so I'm not going to repeat it. For Uber's amazing efficiency, despite not owning the cars, paying for the fuel or normal labor costs, or even the insurance in most cases, and then taking 20% of the fare....they're losing insane amounts of money. The calculation doesn't seem to work out.
But in the end you've literally said that Uber isn't a cab dispatcher, but they're a super efficient cab dispatcher. Aside from that not being remotely true (their economics are absolutely abysmal), being a worldwide brand is close to meaningless. The overwhelming majority of rides happen locally.
Uber's primary beachhead has been a complete disregard for regulations. This may be justified in many cases, but it led to the corporate culture that is now eating it from the inside.
Sigh. There is no "coordinated, orchestrated" campaign against Uber by the media. The media will pretty much pounce on any story they are given, provided it checks out.
This pattern of stories about Uber is very familiar and very predictable. It starts with a single, note-worthy story. Based on the reception of that story, other employees (former or current) are emboldened to leak information of their own to the media/write their own blog post/etc. That story feeds another leak, and so on, and so forth. At this point I don't doubt for a second that numerous people inside Uber want Travis gone, and consider the short term bad press to be worth it in order to achieve that goal.
There's no conspiracy here. Just the media reporting things they are told by people in the know. If there were other ways to get rid of Travis (more diverse stock ownership, or, dare I say the word: unions) people would probably go for that route. But when you shut all that off your employees will use the press as a last-resort pressure release valve.
How has it been coordinated? Most of these things, like worker harassment which was reported on twice, once perpetrated by a childish CEO who is still in charge, is self inflicted. Travis didn't have to join Trump's Tech Advisory Committee either, that was a choice he made.
> Around twenty people signed on to Trump's advisory committee, many of them very well-known figures in the tech and manufacturing industries.
How many others, besides Kalanick, can you name off the top of your head?
Given the volume of comments mentioning their role in the committee I've seen on HN, I'd say that HN users are probably at least as likely to know about Elon Musk being on the committee (and unlike Kalanick, staying on it.)
And Musk and Kalanick are the two that have been high profile media figures as part of startup media strategy; most of the rest are big blue-chip finance and manufacturing CEO, who despite leading more powerful firms, normally have lower media profiles.
Musk has gotten quite a bit of flack (in general and on HN specifically) about it; now, unlike Kalanick, he defended the decision and stick with it rather than resigning on the eve of the first meeting.
Now, Kalanick actually managed to draw more attention by creating additional news by his dramatic resignation, but as far as criticism of the initial decision, I don't see any evidence he was treated differently than Musk; often, the two were mentioned together in both news articles and criticism.
OK, so let's say Musk and Kalanick have received a similar amount of flak for associating themselves with the Trump committee. First, that's not even remotely true (and no, I can't be bothered to perform a statistical survey, at least not for free); and second, it would obviously be counterproductive for qualified industry figures to turn down an opportunity to make their voices heard in government, regardless of any other controversies the President may be embroiled in at the moment. Criticizing people merely for taking an interest in their government's policymaking process is absurd.
So. What about the other 18 members? Why isn't anyone on HN or elsewhere attacking them?
> Why isn't anyone on HN or elsewhere attacking them?
HN specifically has a tech-industry-startup focus, plus the other people are exactly the kind of people you'd expect to be supporting an authoritarian corporate plutocrat. Their role is a dog-bites-rabbit story.
I haven't used Uber since about the third crisis of their own making. Even if it IS a coordinated attack, they launched it themselves, and plenty of folks turned away from the service before the media had a chance to finish their conspiracy plans.
You say that as if Uber didn't have it coming, or that it's not Uber's fault. Every single thing that has come up is a direct result of Uber's actions and culture, things that the CEO is ultimately responsible for.
I think a lot of people have always had a negative view of Travis Kalanick and Uber's business practices, but they enjoyed the convenience of the service just enough to look the other way. Between the soaring valuation and recent events, that balance has shifted to the point where some people now refuse to use the service. At the same time, there is a lot of schadenfreude by people who disagree either with the valuation, or Travis Kalanick and the company's ethos. The media is just tapping into this interest with their coverage, as is their nature to do. So if anything, I'd say it's more like karmic retribution than a coordinated smear campaign.
I think there may be a disconnect between the "a lot of people" I'm referring to, and who you may have in mind. I'm referring to people at large who are aware enough of technology to follow who Uber is, and observed their business practices and Kalanick's predilection for libertarianism. You would seem to be referring to a much more select demographic, such as those who would have been in attendance at Startup School.
The comment was "I think a lot of people have always had a negative view of Travis Kalanick and Uber's business practices, but they enjoyed the convenience of the service just enough to look the other way."
It's not a smear campaign; it's a feeding frenzy. When public perception shifts one way or another, the stories follow to cover it in that angle (though you'd expect at some point there'd be some contrarian hot takes that take an apologist stance towards Uber, maybe something like "Don't blame Uber. Blame the tech industry/gig economy/etc."). There's something rotten at the company, so journalists will naturally shift to cover it and dig up every juice piece of mud they can rake.
Same thing happened to RIM a few years back. None of this is personal. It's just a domino effect.
And you can find hundreds of CEO's with the same characteristics.
I hate uber for breaking the laws and calling it disruption, but obviously media smells the blood and this attack gets s lot of attention and pageviews so they keep pouring the oil to fire.
Good. I'm tired of there being so many positive feedback loops for individuals and companies practicing bad/malicious ethics, and/or failing at even the most basic compassion/egalitarianism.
