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Bill Gurley Is Leaving Uber’s Board

(www.nytimes.com)
198 points 101carl | 3 comments | 22 Jun 17 00:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.615s | source
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johan_larson ◴[22 Jun 17 01:32 UTC] No.14609498[source]▶
I remain flabbergasted by all of this upheaval at Uber. What's happening is the sort of housecleaning I would expect if the company had to file for bankruptcy or got caught flat out bribing judges or something. But really, what triggered all this was acting like jerks.

It seems to me, what should have happened (a long time ago) was that they got shut down for systematically breaking the law, or encouraging others to do so. That would have made sense.

But instead they are getting flayed alive by not much more than bad press for being jerks. Makes no goddamn sense.

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danaliv ◴[22 Jun 17 02:06 UTC] No.14609615[source]▶
A jerk is someone who borrows your car and doesn't pay for the dent he puts in the bumper. What happened at Uber was the creation of one of the most insanely hostile work environments in living memory, where flouting not just the law, but also basic standards of human decency, was not only accepted but encouraged at all levels of the company.
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hkmurakami ◴[22 Jun 17 02:13 UTC] No.14609638[source]▶
So basically all investment banking divisions should be treated with the same regard?

I find it strange that we seem to give finance a pass when they've engaged in this sort of behavior for decades.

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cf ◴[22 Jun 17 02:16 UTC] No.14609658[source]▶
Do we actually give the finance industry a pass? The fact that "Wall st" is a pejorative these days is some indication that's not the case.
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1. aioprisan ◴[22 Jun 17 02:23 UTC] No.14609691[source]▶
The fact that there are never any real consequences to Wall St actually tends to prove the opposite.
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2. graedus ◴[22 Jun 17 03:43 UTC] No.14609983[source]▶
Wall St has deeply and thoroughly captured all of the regulatory agencies charged with overseeing it, as well as most of the powerful organs of government, and thus sits comfortably above the law.
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3. malandrew ◴[22 Jun 17 16:33 UTC] No.14613401[source]▶
But not above the ire of the media. The media is just as money-corruptible as every other business enterprise and it found a shiny new toy to play with with Uber. There are likely orders of magnitude more workplace culture issues in finance, yet the media has largely moved past lambasting financial firms for that because it doesn't earn them enough eyeballs. Uber is only getting more attention for something many many many businesses are guilty of (and to a far greater degree) because no other company is as lucrative to write about.