Uber News: Many Employees Plan On Leaving Company Despite Policy Changes
Even after the Uber’s internal investigation concluded and CEO Travis Kalanick said he was taking a leave of absence, the company’s employees are not convinced with its new policies. Workers at Uber went on Blind, anonymous community chat app, Tuesday to talk about their skepticism about the company’s plan to change its ways, according to Business Insider.
On the app, 103 employees responded to a poll after the company’s all-hands meeting Tuesday. In the poll, 70 percent of workers said the meeting did not change their attitude toward the startup. Thirty-one percent said their attitude hadn’t changed and they will leave, while 44 percent said their attitude toward the company wasn’t changed by what they heard and that they planned to stay. The poll also found 19 percent of respondents said that before the meeting they had planned to stay but after it they decided to leave, and only nine percent said they were convinced by the meeting and decided to stay.
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At the company’s corporate culture meeting Tuesday, board member David Bonderman made a sexist remark after Arianna Huffington, who is also on Uber’s board, spoke about how one woman on a board increases the likelihood that more women would join a board. Bonderman then interrupted and said: “Actually, what it shows is that it’s much more likely to be more talking.”
Uber employees spoke about Bonderman’s comments on the app, some saying he was "embarrassing us," according to Business Insider, which was able to see some comments on the app. Workers also used the words "personally offended" when talking about Bonderman’s comments. Bonderman apologized and resigned after his comments on Tuesday.
The dissatisfaction from Uber employees comes after Kalanick said he was leaving for an unspecified amount of time from the company.
"If we are going to work on Uber 2.0, I also need to work on Travis 2.0 to become the leader that this company needs and that you deserve," he said in an email to employees obtained by BuzzFeed.
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His departure follows the end of an internal investigation led by former Attorney General Eric Holder. The probe was launched after a former employee wrote a blog post detailing her sexual harassment experience during her time at Uber. Kalanick’s leave also comes after the recent death of his mother.
“For the last eight years, my life has always been about Uber,” Kalanick said in the letter. “Recent events have brought home for me that people are more important than work, and that I need to take some time off of the day-to-day to grieve my mother, whom I buried on Friday, to reflect, to work on myself, and to focus on building out a world-class leadership team.”
Kalanick said the leadership team will watch over Uber while he’s gone, and added he will be “available as needed for the most strategic decisions.”
Uber has had a tumultuous year. The company has been criticized for its wild work culture, its Greyball tool, which collected data to evade authorities and operate its services illegally, and for a video of Kalanick arguing with a driver. Uber was also was hurt by the #deleteUber campaign earlier this year and its dispute with Waymo over self-driving technology.
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