Is Uber's lawsuit spooking Execs? Uber's President resigns after only 6 months on the job.

The PR show that is Uber, continues in full-swing as more top execs give their leaving papers to the aggressive hot-shot unicorn. Read on.

Jeff Jones, the president of Uber, is leaving the car-hailing company after only six months. He's a former CMO of Target.

Uber's well documented mishandling of PR and possibly, sexual harassment in a workaholic culture sheds light on a major exodus of top talent as the number of executives departing from Uber is growing each week.

People don't generally like to work in a culture of chaos that's under legal investigation that may lead to many executives going to prison.

However, like all good companies, Uber is trying to buy themselves out of their PR woes.

Talent Exodus Continues at Uber

Uber's reckless management seems to be turning off not just the public, and the media, advocates of women in tech the world over, but the internal chain of command as well. A recent internal Uber Email issued recently went like this:

After we announced our intention to hire a COO, Jeff (Jones) came to the tough decision that he doesn’t see his future at Uber. It is unfortunate that this was announced through the press but I thought it was important to send all of you an email before providing comment publicly.”

Will the Departure of Talent Continue?

These aren't exactly sudden departures, these are the cracks at a culture eating itself from the inside due to poor culture and leadership. In addition, Brian McClendon, vice president of maps and business platform at Uber, also plans to leave at the end of the month.

When CEO Travis Kalanick announced the decision to hire a chief operating officer (COO, I speculate preferably female) to help him put the ride-hailing giant in a state of equilibrium, that seems to have rubbed Jones the wrong way.

The question is, who's next? And can a $70 billion valuation retain the tremendous momentum they've had up till now?

Legal Troubles Ahead for the Giant

Meanwhile, there's some evidence Uber's self-driving vehicle program is not doing too well. Not to mention, it's somewhat likely (innocent until proven guilty of course) when they acquired Otto, that they did so knowing that Anthony Levandowski secretly downloaded 14,000 proprietary technical files before leaving Google to found Otto.

An Uber spokesperson calls the Waymo (Google's) lawsuit a “baseless attempt to slow down a competitor.”

That Time Big Dreamers Went to Prison?

Since AVs (autonomous vehicles) will upend several multi-billion dollar markets of massive industries ranging from transportation to auto manufacturing, the lawsuit could actually ruin Uber.

Does Absolute Power Corrupt?

If a judge grants Google's request to block Uber from using the self-driving tech, it will complicate Uber's future in an uber-grand way.

This isn't just a case of "stealing the future", Google themselves have been developing self-driving technology for the better part of a decade and could have been a major player and might still be, as they plan to license that technology to other car companies through Waymo.

Last Words

So we already knew the workaholic culture of Uber was toxic and sexist, but will it be shown they broke the rules to get ahead and be criminally liable? No big surprise, if any of this is true, that top executives would be leaving Uber before things get worse. The real question should be, what does Jeff Jones know that the rest of us don't.

Leaving many of us to wonder, how did Uber go so far astray?

With more than 200,000 people deleting their apps for Uber (not counting the last 2 months), the ridesharing startup appears to be on a downward spiral.

After the hashtag #DeleteUber was created, the ride-sharing giant continues to lose market share to Lyft.

I'm the 2nd ranked LinkedIn Top Voice in Marketing and Social, and I cover articles on the cusp of the future at the intersection of tech news in real-time. Follow me to stay in touch.

Further reading: | Lawsuit updates | Robocar Lawsuit | Criminal Dreams Dashed

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Is Uber in serious trouble? Is Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, really more of an asset than he is a liability?