Uber's Elephant In The Room (It's Not CEO Travis Kalanick)

By any measure, Uber is off to a terrible start in 2017. A plaintive account of Uber's misogynistic culture by an ex-employee went viral, unleashing a flood or corroborating stories. Travis Kalanick, the embattled CEO, was further shamed by the release of a video displaying boorish behavior in his encounter with an Uber driver. This was followed by disclosures of Uber's use of defeat software to evade regulatory agency monitoring, by damaging pre-trial motions in an IP theft lawsuit that puts Uber's self-driving vehicle program at risk, by revelations of inadequacies in Uber's driver screening procedures, and by the disclosure that Uber was secretly spying on its own and Lyft drivers for competitive advantage. Adding to these tumultuous challenges, a number of Uber senior executives, including President Jeff Jones and corporate communications head Rachel Whetstone, have opted or been asked to resign in the past month.