They are not. There are ways in which being an asshole ay be good for founders (cf Steve Jobs). Kalanick is just an asshole, and even take-no-prisoner ask-forgiveness-later businesses run much better with a bit of attention to human decency.
I'm sort of baffled by seeing someone say this in a comment that's supportive of Steve Jobs. Are there tons of "the human decency of Steve Jobs" stories I've missed? Because I would have said that I've never heard of Jobs showing even a scrap of that, and it worked out pretty well for him.
The things happening under Jobs were different than the things happening under Kalanick, sure. But I don't see where that's a function of anything like decency - it just looks like a cultural difference in what kind of inhumane hostility was happening. Jobs was a perfectionist, but he was also manipulative, cruel, and dishonest in ways totally distinct from that.
I don't think anyone's suggesting that sexually harassing women is good for business.
It also is weird that matt4077 repeatedly contrasts Kalanick with Steve Jobs in this thread, despite Apple having been accused many times of mean culture, sexism, harassment and cover-ups too.
https://www.recode.net/2017/6/7/15754316/uber-executive-indi...
I've commented all over this thread (as a sister comment points out) because it appears there is a narrative that his attitude towards his employees misbehaviour is at least closely linked to the personality traits that allowed him to be successful. That can be seen, I believe, by the many comparisons to Steve Jobs, for whom it's accepted more widely that it was often hard to work for him because of his perfectionism, but that this was a necessary trait for his success.
The danger here is that people (mis)understand the situation and start excusing inexcusable behaviour, or even imitate it, because they think it's linked to success. It is not. You have to separate the strip-club-going bravado from the other law-breaking, which could at least in theory explain Uber's success.
Honestly, this feels like a white-wash. Jobs was exceedingly demanding, but that's hardly unique. Jobs was also dishonest, secretive, and simply cruel to the people around him. This comes up over and over, even in his non-business interactions.
I agree that it's an error to lionize Kalanick's behavior. But it's also wrong to say that Jobs' behavior was radically different, or that Kalanick's party-boy bravado is clearly separable from his disregard for the law. Realistically, I think we'd be better off admitting that an urge to ignore boundaries usually applies across many topics.
If Jobs was more capable Kalanick, I don't think that was a function of his nastiness somehow being more noble. He seems to have simply brought a lot more skill to his task.
Like any good late-stage US capitalist, he outsourced it.
so he was standing over watching with approval as his employees were accosted? I doubt it. I think what's more likely is he didn't know about the extent of harassment (or didn't care, if you want to be cynical) and the initial HR non-response was likely just a really poor quality HR department designed to manage PR rather than solve employee problems. Organisations are more than just their CEO and while you can lay plenty of blame on him for allowing such a poor quality workplace culture to evolve, that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a big fan of sexual harassment in the workplace.
I bet you do, because nobody in their right mind believes that, and you are obviously attempting to cast the notion that a CEO might know what happens in their company as absurd.
Or do you also think that others believe oversight committees on BoDs literally stand over the managers and nod or grimace?
If he didn't know what HR was up to, he was incompetent.
> that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a big fan of sexual harassment
And... exactly nobody I've read here or anywhere else has asserted that. If you want to argue, do so in good faith.
If he didn't know what HR was up to, perhaps he wasn't the director in charge of HR? You can't expect a CEO to know 100% of what's happening in a larger company.
> And... exactly nobody I've read here or anywhere else has asserted that. If you want to argue, do so in good faith.
> ... managed HR's nonresponse to it.
your quote seems to imply that he went out of his way to make sure HR did nothing about the harassment. I'd be inclined to argue incompetence (or just a lack of ground-level micromanagement) over malice.
Unless the facts on the ground are very different than what we've heard, Uber HR had a policy of protecting some people accused of harassment because they were highly valued. In other words, a decision somewhere was made that policy was to prefer key-player retention over the risk of lawsuits, because, obviously, that sort of policy is pretty much guaranteed to lead to lawsuits[1].
I have a great deal of difficulty imagining the HR exec who doesn't realize that - that would be beyond incompetent, well in to senility[2]. I also have difficulty imagining the HR exec who will personally take on the risk of mandating policy about balancing disparate business risks (slowing down by losing productive harassers vs. lawsuits and bad press). That can end careers, and anyone capable of landing a management job at an Uber is exceedingly unlikely to take that risk without taking it up the food chain.
Finally, I find it remarkable that so many people are willing to credit the man with extraordinary genius in business execution while simultaneously arguing his incompetence when it happens to absolve him of shitty behavior.
And with this, I'm done with discussing things I didn't say.
[1] Moving on to speculation, making that choice makes perfect sense in an environment with a value system emphasizing winning at any cost and burning down anything in the way. If they thought first-mover advantage was literally everything and they thought they had enough money to weather any resulting legal problems, that's the rational choice. And especially if you think you're the smartest guy in the room and can get away with it. Not unlike hypothetically deciding to gaslight regulators or steal IP from competitors or invade medical privacy to discredit opponents. For example.
[2] I don't know about other states, but in California, HR for firms over some number of employees are legally required to ensure employees have been trained on sexual harassment law. I'm sure it takes other forms, but generally we get to watch these awful law-firm Flash videos of cartoons being either awkward with or awful to each other, and then have to answer questions about which actions are harassment in order to make sure we paid attention.
Nowhere has he said this. You're conflating two very different issues. No one is disputing that he is an asshole, etc. OP was making a different point.