Steve Jobs wasn't just an asshole, he was a phenomenally effective CEO. The problem with Kalanick isn't that he's brusque-- it's that his company isn't making money.

When Steve Jobs was 40, which Travis Kalanick is now, he had been kicked out of the first company he founded (Apple), and his second company (NeXT) was failing miserably. Pretty much everything that Steve is remembered fondly for -- his success at Apple and Pixar -- came after 1995.

> Pretty much everything that Steve is remembered fondly for -- his success at Apple and Pixar -- came after 1995.

I strongly disagree. I think Steve is more remembered for the Macintosh than for the iMac/iPod/iPhone/iPad, at least amongst HN readers and the like.

You're changing the subject. You imply Travis isn't a good CEO because his company is losing money, whereas Steve Jobs was "was a phenomenally effective CEO." At the age of 40, he most certainly was not.

The core presumption of my argument is that Uber isn't really succeeding as a company in the way that Apple (or even NeXt) did at the same "age." There are a lot of articles out there making the case that Uber's current business is not sustainable, and I tend to agree.

If NeXt wasn't profitable, it was because their sales hadn't yet caught up with their fixed engineering costs. Uber's unprofitability isn't because they're waiting for sales to grow large enough to cover the cost of their engineering operation, it's because they're heavily subsidizing the unit costs of their business.

Travis is already successful. He is worth billions.

So being a successful human being is gauged solely on the size of one's bank account?

No, but saving thousands (millions?) of lives through philanthropy goes a long way towards making up for being kind-of-a-dick-sometimes.

So its OK to act crappy now as long as you do something philanthropic later with the money you made while treating people badly? What is that called humanity arbitrage?

I don't think that basic human decency is something you should keep in a ledger to run credit and debits against.

If you got rich wholly or partly through wrong doing I don't understand how you can assign them any of the credit for giving some of it away.

Imagine if I mugged you for $100 and gave $20 to the red cross?

Terrible strawman. Travis didn't mug anyone.

The driver in the video claims otherwise.

And his claim is ridiculous. Do you actually have a point to make?

Years from now, he will donate to charity and do philanthropic things and all will be forgotten. Just like another billionaire we know.

I'm not sure. Unlike other millionaires and billionaires (lot of them donate money), Bill is actually working directly on the fields and giving almost all his time to improving Health and Education in the world. That's something big and I really appreciate him for that. Had he been 'only' giving money, I wouldn't be moved much.

For all you know, zuck and Travis will do the same in future.

Not sure if you know how many companies and lives, gates made bankrupt with his shady business practices. No different from Travis here.