[mabbo]

Step 1: Begin with culture.

Get every single employee involved. Have a very big summit with the single goal: creating the culture that Uber should aspire to be, and coming up with a distinct plan for how they're going to get there. Engineers like to solve problems, and it's clear there's a big one here that has been identified.

Once we have our goal of who we want to be as a company, there will need to be continual work to make sure we're still aligned on that goal, aligned on that culture. There will be people who need to leave, by their own choice or not, based on whether they want to and can be part of that change.

Probably worth hiring Fowler to be part of it, if she's willing.

Step 2: Cut some losses.

This Uber/Waymo thing? It's time to settle. It's clear that even if somehow Uber is innocent in all this, we're not going to win the case in court. Come to Google and say "We're sorry we let this happen. We want to be better than that. Waymo and Uber have the same goals in mind, so let's work together." It'll be expensive, but it'll be cheaper than never having self-driving cars.

Step 3: Plan.

Come up with 1, 3, 5, and 10 year plans. Where does Uber intend to be at each of those milestones? How do they relate to each other? On what day is Uber profitable? How does Uber stop the bleeding? And are these milestones achievable while still meeting the cultural goals from step 1? If not, come up with better goals. If I can't find a way to profitability without meeting the cultural goals, I step down and let a better leader step up.

Uber board, let me know when you're ready for my bold and inspiring leadership.

[edshiro]

Just wanted to say I love your description about opinions being like shirts that sometimes need changing.

[mabbo]

Ironically I've had that on my profile for years.

[romanovcode]

> Get every single employee involved.

So naive. You have 12k employees and loads of business problems and you want to get 12k employees involved in some culture bullshit. Most of them will probably not even care about such event.

[mabbo]

The people who are incapable of caring about this problem are exactly the ones who have enabled it to happen. They are the root of the problem. And as I said above, some people will need to leave.

Company culture isn't bullshit, it's what makes or breaks a company. Uber has neglected this very important nutrient, and I think will die if it doesn't fix it.

[palakchokshi]

Culture is important. Having 12K employees all give an input is counter productive. I believe that's what he was referring to as naive. Companies with great culture didn't have every single employee in a grand summit providing culture input.

[mabbo]

A very fair point. And I should have been clearer: it's not that there needs to be 12k people in one room all at once for an entire week. But I do think that there needs to be 12k people in the same room for one hour. Renting a stadium for an afternoon is very easily done these days.

This just can't be an email saying "Hey everyone, here's our culture rules now! Now get back to work!". Those get ignored. It has to be something that can't be skipped, can't be ignore, can't be forgotten.

[palakchokshi]

I would point you to Netflix, a large company with a decent culture. They didn't ask every employee for input (AFAIK). They hired one person and gave her the time and resources and access to upper management and tasked her with coming up with the culture document. 12K people in a stadium for an hour or even 4 hours won't be productive like you want it to be. In the end only a few people will speak up because not everyone speaks up in a stadium full of people.