Why Companies Like Uber Get Away With Bad Behavior
Why Companies Like Uber Get Away With Bad Behavior
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/opinion/travis-kalanick-uber-bad-behavior.html?action=click&contentCollection=Technology&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article
By RANDALL STROSS | JUNE 13, 2017
UBER has raised more money than any other tech start-up in history. It has achieved the highest valuation by far, almost $70 billion.
It has also undoubtedly lost more money, in less time, than any other young tech company. In 2016, it reportedly lost $2.8 billion, excluding separate, colossal losses in China, which it exited that year. Amazon, even in its darkest, loss-accumulating early years, was a piker compared with Uber.
If Uber’s investors have the stomach for these losses, that would seem to be their business, not that of the rest of us. Except Silicon Valley is viewed by many people around the world as not just the hotbed of technical innovation, but also as the place to see the most highly evolved business practices, the models most worthy of emulating.
Unfortunately, Uber has the unenviable distinction of being the one Valley company that should be emulated only on Opposite Day. No other company can come close to matching it in lawsuit headaches and embarrassing exposés chronicling maltreatment of its employees, contractor drivers and competitors, and deceiving local law enforcement, tax collection and other government agencies.
~ snip ~
