- Accelerated the shift to self driving cars. That deserves serious credit.
If you consider corporate espionage and theft of IP "accelerating the shift" but how much of what Uber was marketing were they actually responsible for?
Is it purely a price sensitivity thing? Is it a simplicity/convenience thing? Is it just because summoning an Uber became hip among a certain demographic whereas taxis weren't? It would be useful data because there are possibly useful public policy responses that could address why people drive drunk in some cases.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/business/uber-drunk-drivi...
Yup. Telling grunts that they're "entrepreneurs" as an excuse to not pay them is a very old scam.
Back in 2010-2011, I was unemployed, and I was constantly getting messages (mostly via CareerBuilder) from life insurance companies saying they had sales positions for me. They sounded sketchy, largely because they were all hitting me up when I had no sales background whatsoever, so I looked some of them up.
The reports were... not pleasant. Ripoff Report was full of complaints about these companies [0]. Some examples:
- You had to pay to receive training.
- You are expected to drive around to lots of places as part of your job, at your expense.
- You are legally classified as a franchise, so they don't have to pay you like an employee.
- Compensation is 100% commission, plus the money you make by recruiting other people (pyramid scheme much?).
- People complained that their job largely consisted of repeatedly harassing unionized companies who went with the life insurance provider associated with their union. They were ordered to attempt union busting as part of their job.
- Sales goals were set up to be impossible to meet, you are given no support whatsoever to help you reach your goals, and the people above you in the pyramid would frequently berate you, call you an idiot, and tell you that you're a hopelessly terrible salesman.
Oh, and here's the real kicker: once they got wind of people using Ripoff Report to complain, they would astroturf fake reviews. The reviews are often striped: every negative review is immediately followed by a positive review accusing the previous reviewer of having a personal vendetta against the company because they sucked at being an entrepreneur and didn't know how to grow their own business and said that they were just jealous of all the successful entrepreneurs the company has grown.
[0] Here's one of them: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/liberty-national-life-in...
- reduced drunk driving rates by 1/3
Not going to argue with that one, it is good.
- enabled nearly 200K drivers to become entrepreneurs
I used to work in direct sales, aka multi level marketing. They too called the people there "entrepreneurs". Those very people your describing as "entrepreneurs" have been suing Uber for missing money. When confronted by one of these drivers about money Kalanick embarrassed himself. It is a gig, barely a job and not "entrepreneurial"
- provided a valuable service to millions of customers
So do tobacco companies, but we wouldn't qualify that as something good. Doing buisness and having customers requires that you do this.
- Accelerated the shift to self driving cars. That deserves serious credit.
Newco/waymo lawsuit? Is that what your suggesting? The only one who is getting close to this in a meaning way is tesla. They are the only ones with the data and the drive to do it.
Lets talk about other things uber has done
- sexual harassment issues (theres a lot here unpack it at your leisure)
- India rape case and the file floating around corporate offices
- Its creepy data surveillance programs
- Its programs to avoid law and code enforcement (greyball)
- Its program to track lyft drivers (hell) also totally counter to the "entrepreneurs" idea of them
- Its continued flouting of regulation and the law (just file the paperwork like everyone else)
These are the less than stellar things that uber has done to burn through investors money in an attempt to secure their market share. Was it needed? I don't know? Does it paint a pretty grim picture that Uber is a company that is willing to do anything to get ahead? It sure looks like it. Kalanick is the ONE constant in all of this, for him to be unaware of all or most of this would make him derelict in his duties as CEO, for him to be aware of all of it doesn't make him look like a good human being.
The icing on the cake is the lactation room incident (see: http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/06/08/uber-ceo-does-a-riff-o... ). At this point we go from sketchy possible evil CEO to something that looks like it is right out of HBO's Silicon Valley, only in the show the scene would end with him throwing out a woman who was using the room for its intended purpose to put a fine point on its insanity.
Kalanick might have done a lot of good, on a lot of fronts, he also might have been aware of all of the above and either done nothing or actually encouraged it. Uber might succeed, but at this point it is living under a microscope and the odds are that it will be one of the biggest private implosions in the valleys history.