 What episode we on 11 almost start everything like that Welcome to off-topic episode 11. Yes 11 11 um these episodes go to 11 these episodes go to 11 They may go further. We actually might be changing it We realize is keeping a weekly schedule for this and other things might be difficult We are keeping vlog Thursday for sure, but this is a We're not feeling the love from you guys Sorry, sorry Throw us some more love and maybe we'll change our mind It's a lot of work Doing this so we're trying to decide how we're gonna proceed Well, they're not we're gonna do this every Tuesday or we're gonna break it down and maybe only do it Once every two weeks or once a month depending on the articles come hold on me just the microphone I was pointing at the wrong direction anyways I probably sounded really loud when we first started that could Tom sounded like he was in tin can Yeah, I may have sound like a tin can hopefully I sound better now that being said let's get started We're gonna we decided to dedicate the way he's Tom and I'm Marv. Oh, yeah We keep forgetting to introduce ourselves. So this guy and Marv helps to remember these things He helps you remember the episode numbers and my name. Well, it's in his name. It's It's uber important. It's uber important today's topic. That's gonna make sense in a second And they have made sense when they read the title maybe So we decided I've been wanting to rant about this because well uber they've been in the news a few times a lot of times a whole lot of times They're gonna news again. I'm actually good. They don't know I don't think there's ever time when uber is in the headline and it's a good headline, right? Yeah Yeah, we'll start with the fact when you look up uber protests and legal actions They have a they have their legal actions broke down by country and city Because of the shenanigans that this company has bold and we're gonna leave links to all this So we're not trying to just bash them based on speculation. No, they're clearly an awful company. It does awful things and They have an entire it is embedded in the DNA of that company. I think so. Yeah I I don't know. They just think they can get away with whatever they want. I guess Well, they're not wrong They are still in business I was just I mean you we had a bunch of links right before we went on I was I was just looking at one Of the I was the ubers self-driving car that just like They live blew through red lights with the red lights like like bumped into people riding bicycles and Like this is in California in California finally said like uber look you you have to take that off the road You can't do that anymore and uber blamed human error. Now. How do you blame? Human error for a self-driving car running a red light. We go in. Let's go a little further It that actually is like how their company culture works. So well Like what do you mean we blow red lights? Yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, and we can always start out with the sexual conduct memo and not what you're thinking like companies do have policies on this but uber That's a memo on how many of literally the wording is how many employees you're allowed to bone At the parties they outline these things because in case you weren't sure those are the words of the memo Yes, these are you are allowed to bone no more. You are allowed to bone No more or no fewer than Yeah, wow. Well, it's it's not really a HR policy It's I like the way you call it the sex guide for employees and it's as bad as you think We're gonna leave links to all the stuff in there My god, there is just so much wrong with the company and it's it's just so what is the number? How many employees are you alone? I think it's only one per you're allowed to bone one employee per event I think that's what it says in her event Yeah, well what constitutes an event well I love how they titled it. So the title of the email that they sent out to all the staff was urgent comma urgent Read this now or else with many exclamation points Then the next part of it is you better read this or I'll kick your ass I mean who wouldn't want to read a memo from the CEO of a funded company, right? Billions of dollars. It says things like this. Oh Oh My gosh. Oh, yeah. Oh, here it is. You are allowed to the number of course You're allowed to bone is one per place of employment per place of employment. Yes So there's only one rule by the way, and that's the number of coworkers You're allowed to bone which is one per place of employment. Yes This is a different number than the number of co-workers You would bone if the opportunity came knocking if you change jobs and work with the group of co-workers Your your counter resets So this is well outlined. This is not in my HR manual No, no, and I even did a class on HR Wow, which you know what we should do Well, we got to get Brett on here. He's the HR guy and have a review. Yes We should have him on for this episode. I don't recall there's my HR teacher And he is hysterical as far as I know our company does not have a policy in place at all Well, most complaints came about Steve's we just put Steve in charge of HR and a complaint staff. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, that's how it works Yeah, I don't know. Yes. Wow So moving on the counter resets. It's like there's there's more incentive to get promoted But I guess also there's incentive to get demoed. I suppose Like I kind of she's yeah, you know what I think I'm gonna I'm gonna get demoted to change to that department So I can reset my counter. Yeah. Well, don't worry on that same type it So they decided because uber has a lot of data on people doing things This is also something they decided it was a good idea the one night stand quantified and visualized by uber They yeah, they calculated people who were doing one night stands and where they were going and put that data Aggregated on there and they called them rides of glory. They thought that was yes I remember okay. Yeah rides of glory try to erase that from their history But thank you way back when machine you can still read the craziness and that somehow someone thought that was a good idea to out people who did this so Okay, you want to do this? I got no problem with it But I don't know that the company should take this and draw it up and put it on the web as a Article about you and your ride of glory. I assume they were assuming It was a ride of glory if they knew they dropped you off there at like 10 o'clock last night and picked you up there Yeah, stay at seven and then drove you home or something. Yes. This is something they did That's exactly what they did as a matter of fact And wow yeah, so that was that was a thing to the offer any kind of discount or promotion Ride glory Like any ride before seven o'clock a.m. And from the same place you were dropped off the night before Yeah, right so that was a rides of glory. That was an incident they had as well By the way, this is all from the previous CEO. They have a new CEO who Um, I feel bad for it. I don't feel bad for guy. He took the job. He took the job He took the job. He knew what he was being handed. Yes, and he's had to uncover all this He's been very forthcoming. So this is not a reflection on the current management. Yeah, this is how they got to where they are So let's run down the next list of scandals. They have they called themselves boober You uber CEO Travis and this is the guy face backlash ever a sexist joke about increasing Desirability telling yes query from we want to call it boober just crazy wow Now this is where they just get dirty underhanded is So let's get off the sex topic with them Targeting the competitor so they decided the best way to compete is not to have a better product But by to waste the time of your competitors So they went to lift and they would have uber people Wasting lift users time by a baking booking foot Baking booking fake rides. There we go. Yeah to tie up the lift drivers That way when your lift driver wouldn't be available because they were busy chasing rides that weren't real because they had uber people Scamming them. They would then go and have an uber available for that. So there's Yeah, a little bit of underhand they got caught doing that oops Let's see. So what's the next thing the God views can't a little bit executive You know Michael suggested digging up dirt on journalists and spreading personal information about a female reporter who is critical of the company He later had to apologize for this It was also really overhead a God view technology allowed the company to track user location raising privacy awareness One manager had access profile reported without our permission. This actually goes to a bigger problem They were tracking everything from celebrities reporters And digging up dirt on them and that is the government's job uber that is the government you stay out of that You're in trouble because they don't like competition. That's something the government does here in America Do that's the NSA's job you? Yes Yeah, so they decided to be known as saying and not regarding completely disregard everyone's privacy and not to mention digging up dirt on reporters who were reporting on the fact that you're a douchebag of a company and Yeah, and then your answer to it is well, could we be how could we be more douchey? Yeah, exactly It's the same thing is like well, you know what we could try to better ourselves, but instead instead I have an idea where the reporter go. Let's talk about that. Let's out her and chase her You got to wonder if there's just one guy in every like uber board meeting who suggests that who's like What if we just were better and everybody's like shut up Gary? Can we make this more awful I think we need to go the opposite direction Yeah, it wasn't one of these Fraudingly impersonates. Yeah, this is the fraudulent person each writers hat hacking into competitors networks and unlawful wiretapping This is also something that's emerged from there is being investigated I at least this is speculative, but no one's shocked by it Yeah We're at the point where their ubers not shocking at all the letters written by a lawyer for former uber employee Who claims he was unlawfully demoted and later fiber the company the letter includes copious details Off the group within uber that allegedly set up spy on competitors and collect your trade secrets By the way, don't worry if this may or may not be true on competitors But what we do know is true is they're being sued by Waymo Google's car driving company for stealing documents So they're they're in battle in an intentional lawsuit over that as well Like there's a pattern of behavior. We're seeing this the cover took over CEO dude Good luck Hope the paying you well. Yeah like like a lot Oh He may just be like a sacrificial lamb though They're gonna they'll bring him in so that he can he can be the new guy who gets it's like the Friday dump that like Like government agencies do like yeah, they put all the news They don't want you to care about like on Friday because nobody pays attention then so we'll have this new this new CEO He will have to you know Dump all the the crap that we still have that people haven't found out about and then they can get rid of him and maybe yeah You know and then they start their counter over again Yes, like changing departments and the problem is they can't as a company there They have a lot of money and they have a lot of market share. Yeah, and the investors, you know Put this guy in charge to help clean this mess up. That's why they're at it's not like in None of these candles are enough to close it just shows how awful of a company they are But they're so big of a company they're like this juggernaut in the market that just keeps moving forward despite absolutely Yeah, I mean it's almost like you could just replace their name with aquifax That's for next week. That's for next week. It's it's like the opening of Silicon Valley the show Silicon Valley It's very true. It's like the big uber balloon. Yes, it's just bumping like everything else out of the way Yes, you know like if tried to get a little bigger to just bumped it and squashed it and like that is uber That is absolutely uber. Yes spying on Beyonce December of 2016 They have a testimony because they spied on Beyonce politicians and other celebrities You gotta you gotta have a set to go after the queen bee. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. All right, of course There's a link to the self-driving pilot failure It just blatantly drives through a red light just False advertising January 2017 Oh uber was forced to pay 20 million dollars to settle allegations that the company duped people into driving with false promises about Earnings Federal Trade Commission claimed that most superdrivers earn far less than a reach uber published in 18 major cities. Oops Let's see Sexual harassment scandal public. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah Public is a sexual harassment and discrimination prompting the company to hire a former US Attorney General Eric Holder and investigate his claim The story sparked widespread debate about sex in a miscount across the Silicon Valley startups Yes, there was that was an entire Mess there was so much that spun off of that And there was a there was a couple people and I mean a granted take of the grain salt It was all discussed anonymously on Reddit, but people just discussed the way things were treated there in uber Yeah, there's a there's a I think it's in the hiring subreddit They there's a place where people can obviously review the places they work Someone claimed to work for uber. Oh boy. Yeah, and they just they said look it's really really bad here We have a couple when they had some term to use for them But they call them like the godlike programmers that HR basically says they can do no wrong And they do wrong all the time so they basically and this is what led to all the scandal was HR dismissive Very dismissive of just ignore them like the guy grabs me grabs my butt. Yeah, I know but he is really good at programming We just tolerate it. Yeah, you just that's what turned into that entire disaster for them And there's a lot of people that discussed like, oh, yeah, they were like the culture there was just brazen about it Of course, this is the company we talked about a few minutes ago that had the how many How many people you could bone at an event had done their defense. They did set it low at one I mean, you know, if he hadn't if he hadn't bone that person yet He wasn't violating that HR precedent that was sent early on into companies also I mean, let's go back to the 90s. What let's define what bone is What do you define, you know Yeah, google lawsuit that we mentioned we have all the self-driving art company and parent company original alphabet files a lawsuit in uber Accusing a startup of calculated theft Don't be a good way to do it. You know, I mean, here's the thing. That's actually not unprecedented. We're we're looking at you bill gates and the stacker Incident, yeah So bill gates, maybe heralded and this is an entire other discussion Maybe I'll dig up all the stuff on there because um It bill gates uh microsoft lost a lawsuit for stealing technology from another company But it was a as they put it as they calculated theft Because theft in corporate world can be calculated with lawyers because no one ever goes to jail over this So we stole from the company, but the fines were less than the profit we made therefore It is a calculated risk. Sure. Yeah, we still made money So we still made money and that's how that was there and and put that potential competition out of business So in the long run Winner winner. This is where we get even fun. This is march of 2017 I'm glad this is in here the new york times reported the uber users use a tool called gray ball to Systematically deceive law enforcement in cities where companies violated local laws The company used gray ball to identify people believe you working for city agencies carrying us Sting operations the times reported a launch of federal investigation. There's another article and I couldn't find this But it's directly related to this was they some internal memos that were two Basically scripts of how to evade investigators and how to lie to them in any systematic manner, which doesn't surprise me I mean, they already were using a third party stuff to avoid laws Right, but at some point they got to say like look, we know you're gonna have to talk to the authorities at some point Yes, just it's just that's just how it goes working here at uber. So here's how to lie to him Yes, no, this is also uh, when the ceo rides in his own car Oh, jeez ceo now, this is great because there's video evidence. I'm really happy that this particular employee of uber had a Camera going because they have the ceo himself Uh, ceo was caught on camera arguing with his uber driver Complained about the difficulty making living with the companies declining rates the embattled ceo Ceo yelled the driver some people don't take responsibility for their own shit So they blame everything you like with somebody else. Good luck. He is using an apology leader and said he intended to get some leadership help Look, he needed it from the beginning It's funny because we're in 2017 here the memo was booked from 2014. So he should have got this leadership help a while ago Oh my god That's okay. It's ironic that he's yelling that people don't take responsibility like anyway, yeah That's okay. Oh escorts in soul. Nice escorts in soul Yes, bringing bunch of escorts home on the company dime. Hey, whatever's the company money. I'm whatever that's a different mess Spying on the rival a secret program the uber called hell that That allowed the company to spy on his rival lift uncovered drivers working for both companies And to help steer them away from the competitor This is actually interesting because it came out before and the more evidence came out in 2017 is they were uh Hiring people to talk people into why they should use uber. They were working for the competitor to talk to the people They would also book rides on lift and convince the lift drivers to work for uber. Wow Yeah, this is all part of a big mess and it was Geez, yes Oh You know what though? I give him I give him points for creativity. Yes Yes, um uber and bill did had fired 20 employees following investigation of sexual harassment claims and workplace culture This is uh part of the holder investigation. They happened earlier. They finally that some action was taken. They fired 20 people Um, so that's interesting. I know this goes back to if if you thought it was bad They harassed reporters in spite on celebrities There was a rape victim. This is despicable They obtained the medical records of a rape victim so they could try to slander her which she did sue and won for violating privacy Their idea was well, this is bad and it's not This is a problem in general with any of these services. You have to still be Aware that uber may not do the best vetting process and there's been a lot of debate about that. Um, I don't know where Where uber's responsibility lies basically said they don't vet their people now I don't think this is mentioned in here Because I don't see it Uh, but we had that incident. We had the uber killer here. Yeah Um, so they said did they do enough vetting the uber driver was picking up people and in between killing other people Uh, because he had done he'd gone on a killing spree. Yeah, like on the west like west side of michigan West side of ishington. So that happened right here in a state and it was a big job shocked It's not in here. Yeah, but also it's not I mean you you people can pass these exams in basic vetting that uber does in But they're not actually employees they're contractors for a ride-sharing service So where uber's responsibility lies is questionable But certainly they do not have responsibility to defame a rape victim because she was right by uber driver. Yeah, so that's um That's where they definitely go into the wrong. Then that's one of those The the fuzzy area is how how well should they vet? Well, I mean right now unless they've changed it But I mean the last time I took a look which is maybe a year ago Like you say I want to work for uber then they have certain people in an area that are I forget what they call them but they're like Like supervisors or so to speak. Yeah, they're uber drivers who uber has decided can Decide if you can be a uber driver. So like they're in your area. They come talk to you Make sure your car is pretty and then say yeah, you can be an uber driver. Like that is not a vetting process At all. Yes So now we get all the way back into june of 2017 and uh He took in the ceo finally took an indefinite leave of absence Oh, yeah, it was basically related to the uh workplace culture. He was Sighted as the reason for it, which doesn't surprise me. Um, then we got the board members making a sexist joke and they leave too They leave too And then they leave and then the next guy said something terrible and did something terrible and then he left Oh, yeah, then finally it was he and as he's what he said it's David david bonderman Resigned uber's board after he made a sexist joke that during an all-staff meeting about Reforming the company and combating such harassment the venture capital joked that if there was likely to be more talking with another woman on the board Oh my god You're there like okay racial insensitivity or uh sexual It doesn't it's funny because it's funny but sad But it's like we're gonna have a talk about this and then you crack a joke about the exact thing that we're here because you're in trouble for Yeah Just you guys should just stay off of all that if you focused on just being uber uber would be a better company Right if you just focused on like I don't know ride sharing service But that gets a shut up gary because that was the guy in the there was some guy said that This is like the client that we have uh that we asked like how can I quit getting somebody back google reuse quit being an asshole? Yeah, that's why I don't want to do that. I make a lot of money being an asshole. I just want to be clear on that I need another solution. Yeah, well Yeah It is very acceptable there Yeah, that's uh, we're gonna stop here Yeah, um uber still because honestly this could go on for days And we'll just go to the the scandals uh workplace culture and scandals of uh wikipedia and We'll just leave some links for you because yeah, you're reading I mean we're just we're just reading and then compiling and cure eating a list We certainly don't do the investigating here And uh, there's no shortage of articles. You can click it's a click hole. It's a rabbit hole of what? Yeah, if you really want to do it set aside a day or two to go down that rabbit hole. Yeah, I mean it's It's just crazy. It's there's issues in there How I just like how How do they get so far like that's what disturbs me money? They just keep throwing money at it. Yeah, but I mean how but lack of competitor. I got yeah They destroyed them. They had a competitor. They showed the competitor. So back to lack of competitor. Yeah I guess so it's well. Here's here's a part of another thing Um And this is something that infuriates me in general about the market Uh, especially the tech market In and it works. I guess for a lot of markets, uh better Marketing will overcome inferior products and that's part of what uber First to market and better marketing is just it's it will trump over Having a better product. Yeah, that's we're seeing that we see it all the time You can have really high quality products, but they fail if they don't have a good marketing plan You can have a really low quality product But a just amazing marketing plan hook jingle and everything that you have to go with it and branding And you will find that that product all though inferior to all competitors will reign superior. Yeah, because uh marketing Sadly, but that's that's the world we live in. Um So that's it for the uber talk. Like I said, we might change these about like once a month doing the off topic tuesdays The uh, it's just finding the articles putting it together takes a bit of time and doing some of the reading And that's how he chose a single article today Well a single topic because you type in uber scandals and it's you we went through the click hole Yeah, um, and we haven't always found as many of the different types of articles We want to cover more iot stuff and there is all these little stuff But it's hard to build enough of them in a week for a story unless something incident happens So we made this on an incident basis, uh, we love doing these shows But when there's not a lot of news or digging it up It becomes work and we actually have real work that we have to do As much as I love making videos until we have enough people just throwing money at us to do videos in a research team all Time because it's just me and marvin doing this. So yeah, we slap some articles That we find during the week and then cover it next week. That's one of the reasons we did the altered carbon one Um was because we just watched it and it made a singular topic Which makes it easier to do because it's something we already have done the research on by binge watching a tv show Which was awesome, which we enjoyed and we definitely liked it Um, but so until then if you like that idea Wonderful if you don't you want us to be more often? Fling articles at us. Someone helps us do the research. We don't mind doing the reading It's sometimes just finding because literally we had caught up. We were so last week was just hammered down Uh, we've been doing some internal reorganization stuff Which has got me working on some more ideas videos related to it So we'll get on to all that on uh thursday And fun stuff like that. So that's about it. Thanks for watching like subscribe send articles Let us know what you think if uh about changing it to a you know Every couple weeks or once a month type thing or as we have something to discuss We'll figure out how we want it. We like consistency. That's why we're going to keep vlog Thursday Absolutely on thursday and I Did I I sprinkled tech videos in between which are always fun? You spring it's a sprinkler sprinkle, right? I'll let's do this together. It starts on there. We like Sprinkle a little uber on it No, never sprinkle a little uber on anything On that note see ya