Posts Tagged: growth

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick reportedly saw violence against drivers as a tool for growth

A new trove of leaked documents has shed an unfavorable light on the early days of Uber. Dubbed the Uber Files, the leak consists of approximately 124,000 internal company documents, including more than 83,000 emails and text messages exchanged between former CEO Travis Kalanick and other executives, that date to a period between 2013 and 2017. The latter marks the year Kalanick stepped down as CEO of Uber amid mounting controversy.

Working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), The Guardian shared the trove with 180 journalists at 40 outlets across 29 countries. The documents show a company willing to do things many of its own executives thought were “fucking illegal.” 

In 2016, for instance, Kalanick reportedly ordered French employees to encourage local Uber drivers to counter-protest the taxi strikes that were underway in Paris at the time. When one executive warned Kalanick that “extreme right thugs” were part of the protest, the former CEO pushed back. “I think it’s worth it,” he said. “Violence guarantee[s] success. And these guys must be resisted, no?”

One former senior executive told The Guardian that Kalanick’s response was consistent with a strategy of “weaponizing” drivers and a playbook the company returned to in other countries.

Another selection of documents details the lengths the company went to escape regulatory scrutiny. In at least 12 instances, Uber ordered staff at local offices in six countries, including France, the Netherlands and India, to employ the “kill switch,” an internal tool the company developed to protect its data.

“Please hit the kill switch ASAP,” Kalanick wrote in one email shared by The Washington Post. "Access must be shut down in AMS,” he added, referring to the company’s Amsterdam office. In two cases involving Uber’s Montreal office, authorities entered the building only to see all the computers and tablets before them resetting at the same time. The company told The Post “such software should never have been used to thwart legitimate regulatory actions,” and that it stopped using the system in 2017.

“We have not and will not make excuses for past behavior that is clearly not in line with our present values,” said Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s senior vice president of marketing and public affairs, in a statement the company issued after The Guardian published its findings on the Uber Files. “Instead, we ask the public to judge us by what we’ve done over the last five years and what we will do in the years to come.”

In a statement published by the ICIJ, Travis Kalanick’s spokesperson said any suggestion the former executive “directed, engaged in, or was involved” in “illegal or improper conduct" is “completely false."

"The reality was that Uber's expansion initiatives were led by over a hundred leaders in dozens of countries around the world and at all times under the direct oversight and with the full approval of Uber's robust legal, policy, and compliance groups," they added.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Meta will limit hiring this year due to slowing revenue growth

Meta is limiting its intake of new employees as part of its efforts to cut costs due to weak revenue forecasts, according to CNBC and Bloomberg. Facebook's parent company is slowing the pace or pausing hiring for most mid-to-senior level positions altogether. It has started putting recruitment on hold, the sources said, after holding off on hiring new entry-level engineers over the past weeks. 

Facebook's latest quarterly earnings results were better than expected, and its daily active users even bounced back a bit from last quarter. However, the company also expects a revenue drop next quarter in part because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Company CFO David Wehner said during the earnings call that Meta "experienced a further deceleration in growth following the start of the Ukraine war due to the loss of revenue in Russia as well as a reduction in advertising demand both within Europe and outside the region." 

In addition, Facebook expects to lose $ 10 billion in revenue due to the changes in Apple's privacy settings on iOS. Apple introduced a new feature earlier this year that limits advertisers' access to the unique IDFA code associated with users' devices. That identifier is what gives companies a way to link a user to their Facebook data and show them targeted ads. Facebook even rolled out a prompt asking users to allow the company to track their activity across websites and apps before the change was implemented in hopes to curb its effects on the company's business.

A Meta spokesperson told the publications:

"We regularly re-evaluate our talent pipeline according to our business needs and in light of the expense guidance given for this earnings period, we are slowing its growth accordingly. However, we will continue to grow our workforce to ensure we focus on long-term impact."

Insider previously reported on leaked internal memos, wherein Wehner said that the hiring freeze will last the rest of the year. It will affect almost every team across the company, which won't be recruiting "engineers, managers and even some director level talent" throughout 2022.

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Xiaomi’s 2019 financial report is in, signals huge growth

Xiaomi published its 2019 financial report. Even with plenty of hurdles in 2019, the company is reporting significant growth. Yearly revenue came in at CNY 205.8 billion — (USD $ 29 billion) — marking the first time that Xiaomi has passed the 200 billion milestone. Revenue is great — it means the company is doing more […]

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May numbers for Android distributions show Oreo growth

Google has been a bit inconsistent in recent months with timely updates to their Android distribution stats, so it is a bit more challenging to identify shifts in the deployed versions. One of the trends we have seen in more recent months seems to be toward manufacturers relying more on users upgrading phones to something […]

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HTC U11 sparks revenue growth for the company in June

It’s not a well-kept secret that HTC has struggled pretty badly in the financial department for the past couple of years, but every once in awhile they’ll see a nice revenue bump from a successful flagship launch. It seems like that was the case in June, too, thanks to the slick U11. Revenues in June […]

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Gartner: The era of double-digit smartphone growth is over

Smartphone growth is on the decline, according to a recent report from Gartner. In fact, 2016 will be the first year that global smartphone growth will be under 10 percent, due in part to more complex carrier plans and incremental smartphone updates.

The post Gartner: The era of double-digit smartphone growth is over appeared first on Digital Trends.

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Report: Smartphone market will see smallest growth on record in 2015

Smartphone shipments will slow to single-digit growth in 2015, driven by sluggish growth in Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Western Europe; and lowered expectations for Windows Phone shipments.

The post Report: Smartphone market will see smallest growth on record in 2015 appeared first on Digital Trends.

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