The following is a list of news articles (with excerpts) on Uber and its scandals.
#deleteUber / #uberSurvivor / #uberVictims / #uberStory
These articles show that Uber appears to foster a toxic corporate culture that is rife with systemic sexism and sexual harassment, among other crude behaviors.
They show Uber's apparent disregard for public safety and disrepect of its drivers, as well as disregard for traditional taxi drivers.
They call into question the character of CEO Travis Kalanick, who appears tone-deaf, out-of-touch, and either clueless or complacent in his company's abusive culture and practices. CEOs are responsibile for laying the foundation of their company's culture. The buck stops here.
The point of this document is to provide a resource that contains all of this information all in one place.
This is embarassing for Silicon Valley and shines a light on its worst problems. The tech industry can and should do better. Tech workers must reject this kind of culture.
If you are a consumer, you can use this to decide if you still want to support this company or delete your account. You can delete your account here.
If you are a tech worker, you can use this to determine if you want to work at this company. If you are contacted by a recruiter, refer them here to explain why you are not interested in working for Uber.
On my first official day rotating on the team, my new manager sent me a string of messages over company chat. He was in an open relationship, he said, and his girlfriend was having an easy time finding new partners but he wasn't. He was trying to stay out of trouble at work, he said, but he couldn't help getting in trouble, because he was looking for women to have sex with.
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It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being “his first offense”, and it certainly wasn’t his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his “first offense”. The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.
On a bright and windy day last summer, while working on some updates to Uber’s driver payment system, Mike#2 proposed an idea which to me seemed as unfair to the drivers. It would block the payments to the driver if a customer complained about the ride before a ride ends. Fortunately, this never made it into the app. When we were brainstorming this idea, I openly spoke up against it. I told them that it was unethical to block a driver’s payments without researching the complaint to make sure it was the driver’s fault. Many of the Uber drivers in some countries do not own the cars they drive. They are owned by rich people who give the drivers a fixed monthly salary and take the money Uber pays the drivers from their bank accounts. So, if a payment is blocked because of a customer complaint, the drivers may go home without the pay they need to feed their families. When I voiced my concern, Mike#2 looked at me and said "There is no place for ethics in this business sweetheart. We are not a charity." I was upset to hear such an insensitive comment. I repeated my point and this time, I raised my voice to show that I was unhappy with his attitude. Visibly angry, Mike #2 covered the microphone of the conference phone, he reached over to hold my hand tightly and told me to stop being a whiny little bitch. Two of the men in the room looked at each other and laughed while the rest of the men, like me, were shocked.
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Travis is well known to protect high performing team leaders no matter how abusive they are towards their employees.
My manager refuses to accept any feedback; She told me not to wear a tank top; She sneered at me when I told her about the technical problems of my service; and she has banned me from working from anywhere other than my desk to supposedly “ensure that I am collaborating with the team” — even when the team is not present.
Interviews with more than 30 current and former Uber employees, as well as reviews of internal emails, chat logs and tape-recorded meetings, paint a picture of an often unrestrained workplace culture. Among the most egregious accusations from employees, who either witnessed or were subject to incidents and who asked to remain anonymous because of confidentiality agreements and fear of retaliation: One Uber manager groped female co-workers’ breasts at a company retreat in Las Vegas. A director shouted a homophobic slur at a subordinate during a heated confrontation in a meeting. Another manager threatened to beat an underperforming employee’s head in with a baseball bat.
Uber’s SVP of engineering is out after he did not disclose he left Google in a dispute over a sexual harassment allegation
Amit Singhal has left his job at Uber as its SVP of engineering because he did not disclose to the car-hailing company that he left Google a year earlier after top executives there informed him of an allegation of sexual harassment from an employee that an internal investigation had found “credible.”
On Sunday evening, Mr Kalanick responded to the allegations.
"I have just read Susan Fowler's blog. It's the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey, our new Chief Human Resources Officer, to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations."
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says the company has hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to probe allegations of sexism
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick sent a memo to his employees today, announcing a series of moves to quell the growing outrage over serious allegations of sexism and sexual harassment at the car-hailing company.
In it, he said he hired outside counsel, led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, to investigate the charges by a former female engineer and also the wider cultural problems across Uber.
Jeff Jones, the president of Uber, is quitting the car-hailing company after less than a year. The move by the No. 2 exec, said sources, is directly related to the multiple controversies there, including explosive charges of sexism and sexual harassment.
Ms. Holzwarth, who described the bar in vivid detail in an interview with The Information, said she and Mr. Kalanick left less than an hour after the men in Uber’s group picked some women to sit with. She doesn’t know what happened after she left.
Mr. Michael’s call prompted her to discuss her concerns with Uber’s top public relations executive Rachel Whetstone and Mr. Kalanick, among other people. She described and provided correspondence of those conversations for this story.
“I’m not going to lie for them,” she said in an interview with The Information this week. In the interview, she described Mr. Kalanick as “part of a class of privileged men who have been taught they can do whatever they want, and now they can.”
She said she wouldn’t have considered speaking publicly had Mr. Michael not attempted to “silence” her.
The program, involving a tool called Greyball, uses data collected from the Uber app and other techniques to identify and circumvent officials who were trying to clamp down on the ride-hailing service. Uber used these methods to evade the authorities in cities like Boston, Paris and Las Vegas, and in countries like Australia, China and South Korea.
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But unknown to Mr. England and other authorities, some of the digital cars they saw in the app did not represent actual vehicles. And the Uber drivers they were able to hail also quickly canceled. That was because Uber had tagged Mr. England and his colleagues — essentially Greyballing them as city officials — based on data collected from the app and in other ways. The company then served up a fake version of the app, populated with ghost cars, to evade capture.
For anyone who’s snagged a ride with Uber, Ward Spangenberg has a warning: Your personal information is not safe.
Internal Uber employees helped ex-boyfriends stalk their ex-girlfriends and searched for the trip information of celebrities such as Beyoncé, the company’s former forensic investigator said.
“Uber’s lack of security regarding its customer data was resulting in Uber employees being able to track high profile politicians, celebrities, and even personal acquaintances of Uber employees, including ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, and ex-spouses,” Spangenberg wrote in a court declaration, signed in October under penalty of perjury.
Consumers and lawmakers are expressing concern about privacy after Uber said it is investigating one of its executives for allegedly tracking the private travel records of a journalist without her permission.
The revelation came after an Uber executive floated the idea of running opposition research on the personal lives and families of journalists who are critical of the company.
Then, a funny thing happened. One night, a couple of years ago, I was in an Uber SUV in NYC, headed to Penn Station to catch the train to Washington DC when I got a text message from a tech socialite of sorts (I’ll spare her name because Gawker has already parodied her enough), but she’s someone I hardly know, asking me if I was in an Uber car at 33th and 5th (or, something like that). I replied that I was indeed, thinking that she must be in an adjacent car. Looking around, she continued to text with updates of my car’s whereabouts, so much so that I asked the driver if others could see my Uber location profile? “No,” he replied, “that’s not possible.”
At that point, it all just started to feel weird, until finally she revealed that she was in Chicago at the launch of Uber Chicago, and that the party featured a screen that showed where in NYC certain “known people” (whatever that means) were currently riding in Uber cabs. After learning this, I expressed my outrage to her that the company would use my information and identity to promote its services without my permission. She told me to calm down, and that it was all a “cool” event and as if I should be honored to have been one of the chosen.
We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints. Beyond Mr. Levandowki’s actions, we discovered that other former Waymo employees, now at Otto and Uber, downloaded additional highly confidential information pertaining to our custom-built LiDAR including supplier lists, manufacturing details and statements of work with highly technical information.
We believe these actions were part of a concerted plan to steal Waymo’s trade secrets and intellectual property. Months before the mass download of files, Mr. Levandowski told colleagues that he had plans to “replicate” Waymo’s technology at a competitor.
About three seconds after the light turned red, an Uber self-driving car can apparently be seen traveling through the red light at moderate speed as a pedestrian walks across the intersection on the right side of the intersection.
In its blog Wednesday, Uber wrote it launched self-driving vehicles in California without self-testing permits from the DMV because it has drivers in the vehicles. “We have looked at this issue carefully and we don’t believe we do (need permits),” Uber wrote.
The experiment quickly ran into problems. In one case, an autonomous Volvo zoomed through a red light on a busy street in front of the city’s Museum of Modern Art.
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But even though Uber said it had suspended an employee riding in the Volvo, the self-driving car was, in fact, driving itself when it barreled through the red light, according to two Uber employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements with the company, and internal Uber documents viewed by The New York Times. All told, the mapping programs used by Uber’s cars failed to recognize six traffic lights in the San Francisco area. “In this case, the car went through a red light,” the documents said.
Another case where lying has made a situation much worse. Everyone now knows the truth — their self-driving car was caught running a red light in downtown San Francisco — and the company’s (already questionable) credibility is shot.
Uber has been told its self-driving cars are illegal - but it is refusing to take them off San Francisco's roads.
Other companies testing autonomous technology in California, such as Google, have applied for and obtained the permit which costs $150 (£120) for 10 vehicles.
But in multiple emails to the DMV, Anthony Levandowski, vice president at Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group and the company’s top executive in charge of autonomous technology, argued that what it was doing did not meet the legal definition of autonomous vehicle testing, spurring a brain-bending debate over the letter of the law. The debate ended inconclusively, and Uber ultimately launched its doomed public pilot without ever notifying state regulators of its intentions to invite members of the public into the backseat of its self-driving cars.
“In their minds, they really thought they weren’t autonomous,” Jessica Gonzalez, assistant deputy director of public affairs at the DMV, told The Verge. "But we decide what’s autonomous. And under our regulations, it was."
From Waymo’s filings, it seems that they have Levandowski dead to rights on stealing their LiDAR designs. That alone should be enough to bring Uber’s self-driving car program to a halt and cause some big problems for Levandowski. California’s Trade Secrets law is weaker than other states, but if successful, Waymo will be able to seek an injunction, damages, and attorney’s fees. Because all law is securities law, the SEC may also be able to bring a case against Uber (similarly to their case against Theranos).
Uber is suspending its entire self-driving car program while it investigates a crash involving one of its vehicles in Tempe, Arizona.
The ride-hailing company confirmed the crash after a photo was posted on Twitter showing an Uber SUV Volvo on its side next to another dented car with broken windows.
No one was injured, Tempe police told Bloomberg News. The Uber vehicle was not found to be fault, as another car failed to yield the right of way.
New York taxi drivers have their own response to President Donald Trump's immigration ban: A strike.
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In response to the strike, Uber tweeted late Saturday that it would suspend surge pricing for rides to and from the popular airport.
Uber's actions during President Trump's immigration ban Saturday stirred an impromptu wave of people deleting the ride-hailing app from their phones, while the company's chief rival made a donation to fight the blockade.
Uber angered some users by temporarily canceling surge pricing for rides from New York's JFK Airport, which taxi drivers were briefly boycotting to voice their opposition to Trump's "inhumane and unconstitutional" action.
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Angry users viewed the move as a bid to undercut taxi drivers who voluntarily relinquished lucrative fares to join the protest against the temporary detention of foreigners who were denied entry to the U.S. after arriving on planes.
That’s because there has been a backlash against Uber in response to accusations that the ride-hailing service intended to profit from a protest on Saturday against President Trump’s executive order banning refugees and immigrants from certain countries from entering United States.
Uber maintains that its intentions were misunderstood. That hasn’t stopped the online movement — spurred almost entirely through Twitter — of people deciding to delete their Uber accounts.
He disputes that prices on Black in particular are dropping, and quickly gets mad — he claims that people like like Kamel "don't like to take responsibility for their own shit" and are trying to blame others for their own problems.
Kamel, 37, has been driving for Uber since 2011 and wants to draw attention to the plight of Uber drivers. The video shows off Kalanick's pugnacious personality and short temper, which may cause some investors to question whether he has the disposition to lead a $69 billion company with a footprint that spans the globe.
Uber Gave Contractors Burner Phones And Credit Cards To Create Fake Lyft Accounts And Recruit Drivers
Earlier this month, Lyft and Uber got into a war of words over shady recruitment processes and anticompetitive tactics used in the literal “street fight” over drivers in markets that the two compete in. Based on a story in The Verge today, Uber’s recruiting tactics included the systematic use of contractors to request rides and try to lure away the competition’s drivers with fake Lyft accounts.
But there was another matter disturbing the employees: Mr. Kalanick himself. He had joined Mr. Trump’s economic advisory council in December. After the immigration order against refugees and seven Muslim-majority countries, many staff members wondered why Mr. Kalanick was still willing to advise the president.
When I tease him about his skyrocketing desirability, he deflects with a wisecrack about women on demand: “Yeah, we call that Boob-er.”
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There was also a PR misfire in September when a political organizer claimed (via Twitter and a post on Uber's website) that her Uber driver choked her. Police were at the scene, but no charges were filed. The story might have ended there, except that Kalanick's callous directive about how to handle the fallout—he blamed the media for suggesting Uber was “somehow liable for these incidents that aren't even real in the first place”—was accidentally made public. When asked about it now, he repeats flatly that the incident “just didn't happen” and passes on the chance to walk back his remarks.
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Kalanick: “I'm spending a lot of time with city officials in Miami when I would much rather be at the Shore Club. Or the SLS.”