Uber executive leaves amid workplace probe
Senior VP’s exit comes ahead of anticipated report
The Uber board’s drive to pull one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched companies out of its monthslong nose-dive moved ahead Monday with the departure of a controversial top executive and the addition of a new outside director amid the fallout from a report on workplace culture by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Departing is Senior Vice President Emil Michael, a close ally of chief executive Travis Kalanick, said a person familiar with the decision, speaking on the condition of anonymity. And joining the board, this person said, is Nestle Executive Vice President Wan Ling Martello. Kalanick himself, according to multiple reports, is considering a leave of absence.
In a letter to the company’s 14,000 employees on Monday, Michael said his resignation took effect Sunday but did not explain the reason for his departure, though some in Silicon Valley believed he was the taking the fall for Kalanick’s troubles. “I signed on with the company almost four years ago and it has truly been the experience of a lifetime,” wrote Michael.
The letter said he was being replaced by David Richter, vice president of strategic initiatives. He will be charged with helping right a company weakened by a series of crises and a wave of executive departures.
Michael had been at the center of several controversies at Uber. In 2014, he suggested that the company should hire opposition researchers to probe the personal lives of journalists — prompting some to ask whether he should be fired over his remarks at a private party. Michael also reportedly knew about the medical records of an Uber customer obtained by another executive, Eric Alexander, who was fired last week for improperly acquiring and sharing the files, which belonged to a woman in India who accused an Uber driver of raping her.
The moves come ahead of Tuesday’s highly anticipated report from Holder, whose recommendations were accepted in total by Uber’s board during a marathon meeting Sunday.
The report to employees will include only the recommendations themselves, not the full report, because of concerns about the privacy of the hundreds of people who communicated their concerns about Uber’s allegedly toxic workplace culture to investigators.
The company has fired 20 employees and reprimanded others because of findings related to the investigation. The actions, taken together, leave enormous unresolved questions about the future of the embattled ride-hailing company.
Top among those is whether Kalanick will step down for a temporary leave of absence, a possibility that raises further questions about who could take his place.
Reuters reported Monday that he is “likely” to do so.
But whoever winds up running Uber for the next few months, one thing is clear: He or she will inherit a mountain of challenges left unaddressed as the company has lurched from crisis to crisis. As the controversies pile up, those problems could languish or worsen, throwing Uber into even greater disarray.
Uber’s many high-profile missteps this year have been reflected in customer trends, with some users choosing to switch away from the service in favor of rivals, according to outside analysts.
Much of this change began in late January after the #deleteUber campaign began circulating on social media, in response to the way Kalanick handled President Donald Trump’s travel ban for Syrian refugees.
“There was a nearly literally overnight shift in market share when #deleteUber first came out,” said Jonathan Wolf, chief executive of TXN Solutions, which uses credit card spending data to track consumer trends. “That shift has stayed — as Uber has run into subsequent woes, there’s been a slow steady drip.”
Uber’s main rival, Lyft, now accounts for 25 percent of all trips taken in the U.S. ride-hailing market, up from 18 percent at the beginning of the year, according to data from TXN.