Narrative: Uber’s Culture is Toxic

Updated: June 23, 2017

Timeline:

Note: this narrative was the subject of the Weekly Narrative Video for the week of June 19-23, 2017. You can see the video on YouTube here, or view it embedded at the bottom of this essay.

Uber’s first six months of 2017 have to have been one of the direst half-years in any big tech company’s history: between political controversy, its treatment of women, its attempts to circumvent law enforcement, and its attitude towards drivers, the last few months have brought to a head just how awful Uber’s culture is both as regards its own employees and others from drivers to regulators. And if there’s one common thread in this Uber meltdown, it’s that Uber’s internal culture is toxic, and it’s toxic largely because of its CEO.

This isn’t actually a new thing – Uber has been accused of immoral and illegal behavior for years, and I have a whole separate narratives about its treatment of its drivers and its flouting of regulation which each cite histories of bad behavior. I also wrote back in 2014 about Uber’s competition with Lyft and the way in which its approach to that competition has fostered immoral and illegal behavior.

Let’s review the specific history here (there’s a detailed timeline with links to individual posts from its early-2017 meltdown above as well):

  • Uber offered one of the weaker and more equivocal responses among major tech companies to the Trump executive orders, reinforcing perceptions that Travis Kalanick was fairly happy with the administration’s policies
  • That, in turn, was made worse by perceptions that Uber was attempting to break a strike by New York City taxi drivers during the ensuing immigration protests, leading to calls to delete Uber, which resulted in 200,000 customer losses and ultimately Kalanick’s resignation from the Trump advisory council
  • Things got markedly worse for Uber when Susan Fowler, a former engineer at the company, posted a detailed but very measured account of her mistreatment while an employee, sparking a formal semi-independent investigation
  • It then emerged that recently installed SVP Engineering Amit Singhal had left Google under something of a cloud relating to sexual harassment claims, which in turn prompted his resignation from Uber
  • A video recorded by an Uber driver showed Travis Kalanick first arguing with the driver and then ultimately insultingly dismissing the driver’s concerns while storming off, reinforcing perceptions about his and Uber’s disregard for drivers
  • The New York Times reported that the self-driving car Uber had strongly implied was being driven by a human being while it ran a red light during Uber’s very brief stint of testing in San Francisco in late 2016 was in fact driving itself
  • Another senior executive resigned amid some more tenuous connections to past sexual harassment allegations.
  • As a result of all this, but especially the driver video, Travis Kalanick finally conceded that he needed to change, and subsequently announced that he was formally looking to hire a COO to help him run the company.
  • Two separate investigations by different law firms were then launched, on the one hand into specific allegations of wrongdoing within the company, and on the other hand into the culture that allowed those things to occur without repercussions. The investigation into specific actions resulted in the firings of a number of employees and less dramatic action against others, with quite a few cases still being investigated. The Eric Holder report, meanwhile, led to a 12-page report full of recommendations for change, which the board unanimously adopted.
  • Eventually, Travis Kalanick was pressured by investors to resign and stepped down as CEO, though as of this writing he remains fairly involved in the company, not least as part of the search committee to appoint a new CEO in his place.

The reality is that Kalanick is at the root of Uber’s cultural problems, which stem in part from his naturally combative and aggressive personality and in part from a prioritization of winning over all else at the company. Uber has essentially no moral cultural values at all – success in achieving its corporate goals is the single overriding value, and that has led it to both implicitly and explicitly devalue all else, including diversity, proper treatment of employees and drivers, respect for the law, and much else besides.

That raised a big question: is it possible for Uber to change while Kalanick remains in charge, given that he has made past promises to change both himself and Uber which remain unfulfilled? Is appointing a second in command – perhaps even a woman – going to be enough to change things? I’ve always been skeptical that sufficient change could come to Uber without a change at the top, but Kalanick remained one of only a handful of shareholders with the power to keep him in place, so absent a board revolt it seemed unlikely he would be pushed out. And yet even without a formal vote, pressure from enough big investors was enough to move him out of his role at the head of the company.

Uber’s biggest domestic competitor, Lyft, has appeared to take advantage of Uber’s troubles, first making hay out of the public backlash over the immigration orders and related issues, and then accelerating its expansion into new US cities. Early evidence suggests that its bounce from Uber’s meltdown may not have been either all that significant or long lasting though more recent evidence has suggested a greater impact.

Here’s the thing: Uber’s culture is toxic – there’s been ample evidence of that over the past few months. The narrative is, to that extent, an accurate one, and it’s also a powerful one which Uber will have to counter with real change. But Uber is also far from the only tech company with such a culture, and even if other tech companies’ cultures aren’t quite as toxic as Uber’s, they likely share some of the same hostility towards women, disregard for regulation, and a win-at-all-costs mentality which causes them to act in ways which are often immoral if not illegal. So there’s a risk that by focusing so much on Uber’s toxic culture, we ignore the fact that these issues are far more widespread and let other companies off the hook. So even as we allow the narrative about Uber’s culture to take root, we need to ensure that it doesn’t get seen as the exception rather than the rule.

For more on all this, see: