Uber is a ship of Theseus.

Lots of early people left since the Travis days. Since then, fixing the reputation damage has been a big focus in the company. Safety center, electric fleet commitments, DEI, Ukraine initiatives, etc, are all newer initiatives in that vein.

"Do the right thing" is now a company core value plastered all over the offices.

Even the "off the shelf stuff doesn't meet our needs" culture alluded in the article has given way to adopting 3rd party solutions more (e.g. Slack replacing uChat, Oracle partnership, etc). Lots of things have changed over the years.

> "Do the right thing" is now a company core value plastered all over the offices.

That is great, I love slogans on posters. But if they were serious Uber would invite Spike Lee to their HQ to ward off the evil spirits.

Ask and you shall receive: https://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-spike-lee-celebrate-brook...

Kek. Well, we can rest easy, Uber good now. :P

> Safety center, electric fleet commitments, DEI, Ukraine initiatives, etc,

Two of these things are not like the other two.

uChat actually saved Uber a lot of money by the way. Slack is way more expensive and it would not meet the requirements of Uber at the time, i.e. anyone being able to chat with anyone (including the famous global Pool Party room with every single employee in it). Also Slack had an issue with Uber's scale, having messaging alerts for services that would not reliably show up that engineering would use to detect outages.

uChat was based on Mattermost as I recall which was open source, and saved Uber several million dollars plus over its lifetime course.

I was not directly involved in its development but I (started and) ran the engineering blog, and also Uber's open source program for a time where this partnership occurred.

It is funny how some of these examples are floating around about build vs buy, but uChat actually was a good deal while it lasted.

Ultimately Uber decided they didn't need everyone talking to each other all at once and so bit the bullet and paid more for Slack.

I’m not arguing as it’s pointless online and with people who get so emotional at Uber. But you can find lots of news pieces that makes every company look bad posting one or several isn’t really saying anything about the employees who worked at the company.

You seem to get defensive. The management deciding to go the illegal route (and yes, "morally flexible" is appropriate) doesn't say anything about you. I just don't understand how you can defend the older management, which seems to be the point of your original comment.

Only on HN would you find people bending over backwards to support the taxi monopoly just to try to prove Uber was somehow immoral.

Seriously, dude, the “taxi monopoly” everyone gets on about was in very few markets.

In places like, IDK, Phoenix all you needed to be a taxi was a certified meter, rates posted on the side of your car, a sticker which they gave you when you fulfilled all these requirements and, here’s the big one which allowed Uber/Lyft to undercut everyone, commercial insurance.

If your drivers don’t have to pay for expensive insurance and you can sell your product for under the actual cost it’s no big surprise you can gain a large foothold against the “taxi monopoly”.

Whenever I get back to Phoenix and take a Lyft I always talk to the drivers to see how things are working out for them after the “monopoly” was broken and, from what I can gather, they’re getting paid fewer peanuts than I did driving a cab and have to maintain their vehicles at their own expense. Sure, tell me how “the warranty covers all that”, they aren’t killing their resale value by putting in a million miles and the $0.50 fuel surcharge for a 23 mile trip helps out when gas prices are over $4/gal.

Only on HN…

Seriously, dude, you should educate yourself on the taxi industry.

Ok, educate me…

I drove cabs for nine years but fully admit I’m no expert so lay down your wisdom.

You drove in Phoenix for nine years? What's the taxi industry like in SF? or NYC? or London?

Yeah I thought so.

Though so what?

You’re the one who claims to know what they’re talking about yet make zero effort to support your claims.

Honestly, I’ve never heard anyone claim taxi drivers were getting rich but can tell you they weren’t universally getting exploited like the pro-rideshare propaganda was telling you. Back before Uber/Lyft I could work less than half the time, have a roof over my head and food in my belly plus got to spend time doing things I enjoyed like shaving yaks. After, not so much, all the “excess income” got siphoned off and went nowhere because VC money was subsidizing the push to bankrupt the competition.

Only job in my life where I had my income cut (to keep the insurance contracts which were the only thing making us money) and I’m not exactly a young pup.

Walmart (supposedly, no real evidence) does the same thing and everyone complains but some Silicon Valley companies do it and we’re supposed to cheer them on?

Yada, yada, predatory pricing, horay!!!

Let me guess. Your education consists of some dramatic articles and podcast episodes about the cabal?

We read the same articles dude. Don’t act smarter than you are because you have Twitter.

You're right. The taxi cab industries was a wealth generator for the drivers. Drivers were spoiled with the industry's magnanimity until Uber destroyed one of the best paying employers in history. It was so sad, and all the taxi customers revolted against Uber when it happened.

> The taxi cab industries was a wealth generator for the drivers.

It literally was…

Maybe not on the scale of “I’m gonna make a wrapper on top of this chatGPT API and be a billionaire” but you could survive with very little effort if that’s your jam.

Why didn't they just spend couple billion to buy those medallions out? And then rent them digitally out?

Because they limit the number of medallions to create artificial scarcity. Meanwhile Uber created hundreds of thousands of jobs throughout the US, millions around the world, because there was demand for cheap ridesharing that was more reliable than the taxi cabs.

AirBnB and Uber were the same company breaking similar local rules.

AirBnB is illegally operating in tons of areas. Knowingly. Systemically.

And yet where is all the negative press?

Don't believe press narratives and try to put everything into context.

You really could make any company look bad or good if you wanted. There are a lot of actors, and a lot of different ways to slice it.

I think Uber and AirBnB were both aggressive, I suggest there should have been more regulatory pushback everywhere, but only for public good as a lot of mayors were just interested in backing this group or that, not really thinking about the true benefits of constituents.

Finally we have to consider the net benefit, and even while I think both companies have overplayed their hands, I do think there's a general benefit. It seems that regulations around Taxis and Hotels were far too onerous, and the surpluses lost to those de facto oligarchic situations were quite a lot. I'm grateful that both those companies shook things up, even at the cost of a bit of shenanigans.

Shenaniganically, I'm just pleased that the rat that scurried across my pillow at midnight in an Airbnb (that the host and company have both decided to continue right on doing nothing new in response to my reporting) decided not to bite me.

Mind you, rat bites can be pretti nästi...

Never travel without your friendly cat. They make a great traveling buddy and would appreciate the hunt.

People are very positive about AirBnB even where it is a cancer because given the opportunity, most people would jump at the chance to own some rentals and get a part of that action.

> AirBnB is illegally operating in tons of areas. Knowingly. Systemically. And yet where is all the negative press?

I know it’s against the rules but… have you been living under a rock?

It would be harder to find good press methinks.

There is press about 'illegal AirBnBs' but not attacking Chesky like they attack Travis. I'm not saying it's the 'same situation' at all, but rather, they have a different public brand/image despite a lot of similar business practices.