Principles, Reorgs, and Launching uberPOOL in China

I sent the following during the height of a tough time at Uber in May 2017 to the rider Product Operations team. In it you'll find how I approached my career at the time, one way to think about reorgs in team structure, a little bit about launching uberPOOL in China, and some principles (unedited) that I still believe are relevant. Now that I've moved onto Canoo from Uber (where I'm working hard on putting a cool car on the road), I'll be sharing more of these types of emails from my time at Uber. If you like them, please let me know.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: James Cox <[email protected]>

Date: Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 11:44 AM

Subject: On #Reorgs and a #Principled Approach to Career Progression

Team, 

TLDR; Below you’ll some principles that guide how I think about career progression and work. If you’re currently impacted by the tech reorg, you might consider prioritizing reading this. Otherwise, read it when you get time and a nice glass of Pinot Noir.

Moving to America

2 years and 3 months ago I moved to the states to join a small team called Product Operations. The Product Ops Team consisted of Kevin Brinig, Ted Moran, Dima Kovalev, James Hawkins, Matt Shroder, Bo Oh, and Blake Samic.

I chose to join Product Ops instead of applying for a GM role in Perth and instead of joining what was then called the Growth Team. I did so against the advice of some people I trusted at Uber. I did so because it allowed me to work on a project to let anyone who was deaf or hard of hearing drive on Uber.

How I Chose Product Operations

As many of you will have experienced, choosing between multiple great options for your future can often seem complex despite being a good spot to be in. Any of those options above would have been and remain great options. Hindsight thankfully makes it seem easy looking back. So here we go.

I personally try to focus on where I can have the biggest impact. I make this assessment by thinking about my own comparative advantages and interests and those of the team around me.

I love working with people. I love starting new things. I love creative problem solving. I love positively influencing others. I’m bad at working on things I’m not passionate about. I'm not great at doing what i'm told without reasoning. And as you all know, I don’t mind a principled confrontation :)  

I chose to join Product Ops because I felt Uber was a highly complex operational company that would benefit from bringing people and teams together. I was also passionate about the original problem I was tasked with on the revolution program; enabling deaf drivers to drive on Uber. This task necessarily involved Product and Operations (before they talked so often!).

This was the right decision for me independent of the outcome (I know it wouldn’t have been for everyone). By making this decision I was also choosing not to join two clearer, perhaps higher paid and more senior paths because I believed in the mission of Product Ops (still do!) and I wanted to learn about Product. I took a long term view.

uberPOOL. Huh?

I never once thought I would work on uberPOOL before I moved to America.

6 weeks after moving here, I joined a team responsible for the global operational rollout of POOL (or PISCINE as it was called for Spanish speakers in LA at the time #whoops).

In between, in my first of many reorgs, we’d launched Beethoven and a senior director had informed me that whilst we were doing great work (Uber All Hands 06/09/15), we had higher priority things to focus on. I suppose in one sense the advice of my advisers had been correct.

But in another sense, I was then lucky enough to move to new problem; a new problem that would amongst other things take me to China, introduce me to POOL Boy, #Stonecold, Allen, and MJ, and ultimately result in me getting to meet and work with a number of you and many other brilliant people at Uber.

I had also, because I was passionate about what I worked on, built a tiny track record at HQ before joining POOL; something each of you could consider as you build each of your own story arcs in each of your own careers.

Why This All Matters #Reorgs #Principles

As many of you consider the current reorg going on in Tech and on Rider, I’m sure some of you are feeling similar emotions to what I did then when the Revolution team went away. Many of you moved across the world for your teams too.

Firstly, I want each of you to know I’m here to support you. I’m here to jam. I’m here to hear what your thinking as you make tough decisions. I’m here to listen (I promise I’m improving at it!). Regardless of all of it, I’m in your corner. This is definitely true of each of the managers on Product Ops and it should be true of how we all treat each other. 

 Secondly, remember that you are part of something bigger. We simply cannot coordinate 15,000 people without a clear strategic and thoughtful vision with focussed resources around solving the biggest pain points of our customers. This necessarily makes tough decisions (start, stop, continue) necessary and will not change in our futures at Uber. It also shouldn't in my opinion.

What adds comfort for me is having a principled approach to how I deal with these situations. The output of applying the principles below will differ for each of you but hopefully they’ll be somewhat helpful as you think about your future careers.

I certainly couldn’t have made the decisions I did without the advice of those around me (thank you to each of you bcc'ed and those I forgot to include).

#Principles

• Consider your unique comparative advantages to maximize the impact you can have.
• Think long term and don’t over balance or over optimize for a few hundred dollars a month.
• Work hard on what you’re passionate about. *Note, tasks you may not always enjoy are sometimes required to achieve this (e.g. I had to test POOL app flows in China in Chinese from HQ). 
• Consider your own personal story arc and what you want to work on; what you choose, how you treat people and how you operate contributes to your reputation.
• It’s ok to slow down to make tough decisions. Stop and Think. Then move forward.
• Don’t expect everything tomorrow.
• Rely on your decision making and your own abilities to guide you through reorgs and tough times.
• Write emails like this on the plane to Las Vegas for your good Aussie friends buck's party and hide your OOO notices within them (I'm OOO today and Monday :)
• Trust your gut.

I can honestly say to each of you I’m pumped about the direction of both this company, Product Ops, and the Rider group specifically. Please shoot back any thoughts you have about the above and let me know if you ever want to chat. I’m here.

Feel free to share this with anyone that might want / need to hear it.

Mahalo