Isaac, Mike - Super Pumped : The Battle for Uber by Isaac Mike

Isaac, Mike - Super Pumped : The Battle for Uber by Isaac Mike

Author:Isaac, Mike [Isaac, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
Published: 2019-08-05T20:26:46+00:00


The tone of Uber’s culture was being set from the top. Kalanick knew what he wanted in his employees—who were mostly white, male, and in their twenties—and made his hiring decisions based on that instinct. The result was a workforce that largely reflected Kalanick himself.

Every global office was unique. Kalanick wanted to empower his workers—“let builders build,” according to the Uber company value—and urged employees to be responsible for their own fiefdoms. Yet still, because Uber had hired thousands of Kalanick clones, many satellite offices had flickers of similarity.

Southeast Asia, for instance, was a hotbed of partying for Uber operations employees and managers. Cocaine and booze were common, as was harassment—and even worse.

One female employee in Uber’s Malaysian office was heading home from work one evening in 2015, when she noticed a group of men following her. It was a local gang, she realized, and began frantically texting people for help. One of those people was her boss, the local Uber general manager. She said that she needed help, and that she was scared she was going to be raped.

As her ride home continued, her manager responded: “Don’t worry, Uber has great health care,” he texted. “We will pay for your medical bills.”

The Thailand office at the time was perhaps even worse, a toxic workplace where drug use and visits from sex workers were not unheard of. No one from Uber kept the behavior in check.

One particularly raucous evening, a bunch of Uber Thailand employees were up late drinking and snorting coke, a semiregular occurrence at that office. One female Uber employee with the group had decided she didn’t want to do drugs with her colleagues, and tried to abstain. Before she could leave, her manager grabbed the woman and shook her, bruising her. Then he grabbed the back of her head and shoved her face-first into the pile of cocaine on the table, forcing her to snort the drugs in front of them.

The New York office was largely defined by its machismo, sexism, and aggression. São Paolo saw angry managers throwing coffee cups across the room or screaming at employees when they weren’t happy with results. It wasn’t unheard of for managers to sleep with subordinates.

These dark events rarely led to consequences for management, and other employees—if they knew about the wrongdoing—either ignored the problems or squashed their concerns. But for many, the drawbacks did not outweigh the excitement. Even if they had to white-knuckle it through bad times, there was a pervasive feeling that Uber, the world’s preeminent ride-hailing service, would soon become a global behemoth on the order of Google, Amazon, or Apple. Uber had billions in the bank, was poaching top talent from companies across the Valley, and had its sights set on conquering international markets. When employees’ restricted shares vested, they would earn an absurdly sweet payday.

Kalanick’s fortieth brithday was a bash he wouldn’t forget—a multi-yacht party in the Aegean sea featuring top shelf booze and a group of models flown in for good measure. By the end of 2016, life was good for Travis Kalanick.



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