Travis Kalanick the controversial CEO of Uber has resigned today. He has certainly had an eventful tenure with the company both good and bad. But after a seemingly endless series of scandals, which ranged from sexual harassment to a general toxic work environment, a group of Uber's largest shareholders asked for his resignation on Tuesday. Here's a look back at times when Uber was behaving badly.
The CEO arguing with a driver
In February 2017 Travis Kalanick himself was caught by a dashcam recording showing the CEO arguing with his Uber driver about lower fares. As the ride ends, the driver brings up the topic of falling fares for the Uber Black business. This is where Kalanick loses it.
"You know what? Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame everything in their life on somebody else.
"Good luck!"
That was the end of the argument as Kalanick leaves the car. But the video of the exchange went viral, and we all got a look into how Kalanick treats his drivers.
Sexual Harassment
Also in February 2017 a former Uber engineer, Susan Fowler, posted a personal blog entry detailing the blatant sexual harassment she endured while at the company. The entire post which can be viewed here, explains how the harassment started on her first full day of work by her direct supervisor.
"It was clear that he was trying to get me to have sex with him, and it was so clearly out of line that I immediately took screenshots of these chat messages and reported him to HR."
It goes on and tells how HR chose to not to take any action since the supervisor "was a high performer" and "was probably just an innocent mistake on his part".
After the blog post drew considerable attention in Silicon Valley, Uber did order an investigation into Ms. Fowler's and other's claims of sexual harassment, and even hired former Attorney General Eric Holder to lead the investigation. This investigation lead to 20 Uber employees being fired in June 2017.
#DeleteUber campaign
Recall back to the time surrounding the Inauguration of Donald Trump. Shortly after taking office, the new president issued a travel ban from several Muslim majority countries. This was hugely unpopular among the more liberal and progressive areas of the country. As the news of the travel ban spread, impromptu protests started popping up at airports all across the United States.
In support of the protests, Taxi drivers of New York City decided to halt pickups at JFK airport for a period of time.
In response, Uber decided to turn off surge pricing at JFK airport.
The reaction from Uber riders was almost immediate. #DeleteUber started trending on social media as protesters and riders encouraged each other to delete the Uber app as well as their Uber account.
While the campaign didn't do any long term harm to the company, it was estimated that 500,000 people did delete their Uber account in protest.
Embedding code to Evade Law Enforcement
As early as 2014, Uber has included code called Greyball as part of its app as a way to deny service to certain people using the ride sharing service.
One of the uses of Greyball was to identify drivers that it believed were also driving for its main competitor, Lyft, and to not match them with any riders.
The more troubling use of Greyball was to deceive local law enforcement. In areas where Uber was not allowed by law, Greyball was used to determine if a potential rider was a member of law enforcement and prevent them from hailing a ride. And the methods used to make these determination wouldn't seem out of place at the NSA or in a Jason Bourne movie.
According to a New York Times investigative report in to the matter, the methods included:
Geofencing. Uber would create a digital map that identified the locations of city government offices. If a potential rider attempted to hail a ride from the area around a government building, Greyball would flag the individual as a possible law enforcement agent.
Mining credit card databases. If Uber identified a credit card as being associated with a government agency or police union, it would flag that individual in Greyball.
Identifying devices. Since government agencies would often buy cheap cellphones for use in sting operations, Uber employees would visit electronics stores to obtain model numbers for inexpensive phones and input those model numbers into Greyball.
Searches of social media. Uber employees searched social media profiles to identify possible law enforcement agents. Uber then flagged those individuals in Greyball.
Eyeballing. Greyball would determine if a potential rider had been opening and closing the Uber app numerous times without calling for a ride.
Extreme Surge Pricing
Every Uber user has a horror story about being the victim of surge pricing. Surge pricing is the policy of multiplying the fare by some multiple based on the demand of riders in a given area and the supply of drivers near by. Surge pricing of two, three and four times are relatively common especially on Friday and Saturday nights. But it can sometimes get up to eight and nine times during certain times like Halloween or New Years Eve.
One expensive example of surge pricing is for a Golden, CO resident who took Uber 18 miles home one Halloween night to the tune of a $539 fare.
Even more extreme was a ride in the Los Angeles area at 7.75 times the normal rate. The 21 mile trip ended up costing $814.
But the record might go to an Edmonton, Alberta resident. On New Years Eve, a rider used Uber for his 63 kilometer (about 50 miles) journey home. The surge pricing at the time meant the fare was multiplied by 8.9 times, resulting in a bill of $1115 Canadian (about $837 US dollar at the time of this writing).