The media has just begun digging up the dirt in the so-calledUber files. According to The Guardian, more than 124,000 confidential files show how unethical executive decision-making was caused by the greed of the company.
The Guardian did a deep dive into private communications that form the majority of the leak. The cache of 83,000 emails, iMessages, and WhatsApp messages allegedly reveals the inside story of how the company spent five years evading police while endangering driver safety, attacking rivals, secretly wooing officials with financial incentives, and brazenly ignoring laws in pursuit of market dominance.
Let's leave the past in the past and acknowledge the misdeeds of the past.
"We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values," Hazelbaker said. We want the public to judge us by what we've done over the last five years and what we're going to do in the future.
The official stance of the company is that it has corrected course under a new leader. It has become a different company thanks to the 90 percent of current employees who joined after the CEO arrived. The company says that it works with officials to comply with thousands of regulations and that it once waged war on unions.
AdvertisementThe past is unlikely to stay in the past and the timing of the release is not great. Just as the tech company has become profitable for the first time in its history, the public will be able to see the files of the ride-sharing service.
The Guardian's report is the first of many from a global investigation into the ride sharing service. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists was used to share the data in hopes of telling the full story. There will be more scandalous stories from outlets this summer.
The report shows how staff and executives at the highest level joked about the company's legal status and discussed other questionable growth strategies.
In addition to Turkey, South Africa, Spain, the Czech Republic, Sweden, France, Germany, and Russia, there are other countries where the company is accused of skirting regulations. "We are not legal in a lot of countries, we should not make statements like that," the executive warned in the email.
The messages show how, at least a dozen times, law enforcement in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Hungary, and Romania attempted to raid the offices of the ride-sharing company. An executive claimed in an email that they have become pirate.
The "kill switch" software shouldn't have been used to impede legitimate regulatory action, according to Kalanick's spokesman. When Kalanick became CEO, the software was stopped by the company.
AdvertisementThe legal department of the company approved these tactics.
There was a message from the head of global communications at the ride-sharing company. It was clear that leadership considered the ride sharing service above the law. "We're just not legal," Hourdajian said. Hourdakian did not comment in the story.
The first profitable quarter for the company was celebrated in November of last year. In May, The New York Times reported that the company's profits have continued to climb, with the company reporting "$ 6.9 billion in revenue for the first three months of 2022."
It's no wonder that the company wants to look ahead rather than look back at the past, as Hazelbaker described it as "one of the most famous scandals in the history of corporate America."
Some executives like Pierre-Dimitri Gore- Coty, who was previously in charge of Western Europe, have stayed on. Gore- Coty blamed his poor decision-making on youth and inexperience, as well as taking direction from superiors with questionable ethics.
The profitability of the company seems to suggest that the new strategy is working. Hazelbaker wrote that "we've moved from an era of confrontation to one of collaboration, showing a willingness to come to the table and find common ground with former opponents." We work at all levels of government to improve the lives of people using our platform and the cities we serve.
If the upcoming reporting from the Uber files shows that the company is making money again, then it will be possible for it to get to the end of its rocky road to redemption.
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