I realize Uber is a big company and it obviously deserves some press, but I'm surprised just how many articles about Uber have made it to the front page of hacker news the past few days. And (almost) all of them have been very negative. I wonder if public perception will change and people will use their competitors more? Probably not enough to be noticeable. I wonder how Uber considers managing its brand, as they rarely seem to shy away from bad publicity.
With regards to this specific article, how common is this practice at other startups? From anecdotal experience, it seems common for startups to under inform employees with regards to their equity and how it works. I rarely meet a startup employee who understands what their equity is worth.
Making it top front page: Uber and AirBnB are likely the two startups that most people are waiting to see IPO (Dropbox like a year or two ago). Any of these companies is bound to garner attention when something big happens.
Uber is also aggressively recruiting. Many people on this board probably have been contacted by them or have been made offers by them. For what their comp promises, this would be very important for them, especially if they didn't do their due diligence on the company's financials and how their stock awards were set up.
I agree that very few people know how their stock works. To the valley's credit, a lot of places do RSUs which is a simple matter. But I definitely spoken with folks that didn't realize their exercise rights had expired.
> Making it top front page: Uber and AirBnB are likely the two startups that most people are waiting to see IPO
I upvote those articles for a different reason - Uber is the single company I'm most waiting to finally die, possibly with enough mess around it to finally drive the point that sociopathic behaviour and blatantly breaking the law is not a way to run a company in a civilized society.
The lesson Uber has taught me at scale is that if you break the law make sure you break a law that has perceived benefit to the people. Uber has the hearts and minds of the population because it's perceived as de-fucking the Taxi industry regardless of how it's gotten to where it is.
That is very true. Not only people do not go by themselves to learn who they're dealing with, they will ignore the negative stories if told - what matters is that taxis are considered expensive and crappy, while Uber is cheaper (and hot - at least within my social circle they won a lot by just marketing themselves as a startup!).
This too. No doubt they accumulated much hate for different reasons. Guess it would be better said if it's gonna be a boom or bust. I've been feeling like an IPO isn't going to happen for Uber for about a year now. There's a passage in Ben Horowitz's book that went "we drove so fast off that cliff we didn't leave treadmarks", paraphrasing. That's how I feel about Uber once news came out about how they were doing in China, then the new about spending near $1B in 6 months. People argue with me that institutions are dying to get into deals like Uber, but I don't know many institutions able to burn billions a year into a single investment. They get investors, they get loans. It's all good until no one is willing to put up more money and then it just fades away (or acquired like someone else said, but at what valuation? look at twitter from $70B to $11B now).
I don't think I've ever seen positive press about Uber and I think the negative press has helped it way more in getting mindshare than it hurt. After all, many people still have not used Uber, and many people also disagree with a lot of the bad press.
With regards to this specific article, how common is this practice at other startups? From anecdotal experience, it seems common for startups to under inform employees with regards to their equity and how it works. I rarely meet a startup employee who understands what their equity is worth.