The ride-booking firm is reportedly considering a three-month leave of absence for CEO Travis Kalanick. Here’s how things have gotten to that point.
With Uber’s troubled corporate culture being poked and prodded by none other than the nation’s former Top Cop, ex-Attorney General Eric Holder, and its executive ranks being culled like so many ill-fated deer, the reported possibility that bad-boy CEO Travis Kalanick may be getting a three-month timeout from his board of directors is like the cherry atop one very messy sundae.
Then again, maybe Kalanick needs a break, even if it’s imposed from on high: Like no other tech CEO in recent memory, the pugilistic 40-year-old native of LA has stepped in it over and over again. In the process, says his critics, he has created a toxic workplace laced with sexual harassment and following a mantra of kicking butt and, as stated in one of its core company values, “always be hustlin’ .”
Here are Kalanicks’ Seven Deadly Sins (with several more left on the editing room floor) :
Bad-mouthing From the Back Seat
Probably the least classy thing Kalanick has done so far in his ride-hailing reign took place one February evening in the back of Uber driver Fawzi Kamel’s car. In a video that captured the incident, Kalanick is seen arguing after Kamel complained about what he saw as Uber’s legacy of continually lowering earnings for drivers. It was ugly, and Kalanick later issued a mea culpa, but by then the damage was done and the video had gone viral.
After snapping at Kamel and telling him to “take responsibility” for his own problems, Kalanick’s argument picked up steam, with the CEO tossing obscenities and dismissively blowing off Kamel and his personal point of view.
Hiring a Self-driving Car Guru Who Later Self-Imploded
One of Kalanick’s biggest hires turned to be one of his worst. When he brought Anthony Levandowski on board at Uber earlier this year, he figured he’ d found the expert who could propel Uber into a self-driving future. After all, Levandowski had built Google’s self-driving car in the project known as Waymo. He then founded Otto, a company that makes self-driving kits to retrofit big rig trucks. But after Kalanick’s company bought Otto in 2016, things started to quickly go bad. Really bad.
The rock-star engineer Kalanick had brought on board was accused of stealing trade secrets when he left his Google job. Last month, United States District Judge William Haskell Alsup banned Levandowski from further work on Otto’s Lidar technology on the basis of having breached the confidentiality of former employer Waymo. By the end of the month, Uber had fired Levandowski for failing to cooperate with investigators.
Telling Employees How to Vomit and How to Have Sex
Just last week, as Uber was still reeling in the wake of firing 20 employees after an investigation into nearly 200 sexual harassment and misconduct claims, a leaked memo from 2013 came back to bite Kalanick in the rear.
The memo, obtained by Recode, laid out advice for employees taking a company trip to Miami. In sharing these tips with his posse of “Uberettos, ” Kalanick managed to trash Miami’s transportation system which, he eloquently put, “sucks ass.” He warned employees “Do not have sex with another employee UNLESS a) you have asked that person for that privilege and they have responded with an emphatic “YES! I will have sex with you” AND b) the two (or more) of you do not work in the same chain of command.”
Finally, Kalanick wrote that there would be a “$200 puke charge” for any vomiting done in public.
Incurring the Wrath of Tim Cook
According to a lengthy New York Times profile earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook once personally chewed out Kalanick for the Uber app, which he said violated Apple’s privacy rules. Cook even threatened to remove it completely from Apple’s App Store. The problem was that in an effort to stem driver fraud in China Uber had devised a system that would identify iPhones even after they’ d been wiped and the Uber app had been deleted. Cook was not happy and he told Kalanick in a meeting: “So, I’ ve heard you’ ve been breaking some of our rules.”
What added insult to injury, The Times reported, was the fact that Uber had also written software that ensured that anyone accessing Uber from Apple’s headquarters would see a different and more benign version of the app, “without the bits of code that tracked iPhones after they had been wiped.” Having its mobile app 86ed from the App Store could have proven disastrous for the multi-billion-dollar startup and Kalanick was reportedly “shaken” by being called to the carpet by Cook.
Having Your First Startup Sued into Oblivion
First hearing the clarion call from Startup Land in 1998, Kalanick joined two friends in LA to found Scour, a multimedia search engine, and Scour Exchange, a peer-to-peer file sharing service which, like Napster, allowed users to digitally share music and media files through legally dubious means. In 2000, the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, and the National Music Publishers Association brought a $250 billion lawsuit against Scour, alleging copyright infringement. Scour filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from the lawsuit.
Trying to Get Your Ex-Girlfriend to Keep Quiet
Last March, one of Kalanick’s top lieutenants contacted the boss’s ex-girlfriend, musician Gabi Holzwarth, regarding an HR complaint that had been lodged by a female Uber manager after a 2014 incident at a Seoul karaoke bar involving several company execs. While the caller, Uber VP of Business Emil Michael, disputed Holzwarth’s account, the ex-girlfiend told HuffingtonPost that she felt she was being pressured to keep quiet.
“I don’ t want to be silenced or lie for somebody else, ” she said. “It made me feel uncomfortable. “ [It was a] tough three weeks of hiding their secret.”
Striking Back at Your Customers When They Get Mad at You
Uber’s use of so-called “surge pricing, ” where the company raises ride prices at a time when people are more desperate for that ride, has angered Uber customers for years now.
