Employees at Uber are apparently circulating a petition demanding that Travis Kalanick be reinstated as CEO of the company, despite how royally he screwed it all up this past year.
Photo: AP
Kalanick resigned this week after pressure from five major Uber investors following the release of a report on Uber’s internal culture and a seemingly endless series of scandals and screw-ups.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that Kalanick needed to go, more than 1000 current Uber employees have now signed a petition demanding the board reinstate him, Axios reports. According to screenshots obtained by BuzzFeed, the petition says employees “need to revolt this” and that Kalanick was an “inspiration” who can “come back strong as Travis 2.0”. Recode reports that the petition says the board must “hear from Uber employees that it’s made the wrong decision in pressuring Travis to leave and that he should be reinstated in an operational role”.
In the days since Kalanick’s resignation, there has been a predictable outpouring of support from Kalanick’s allies, essentially arguing that Kalanick’s “hard work” made up for that whole “allowing a culture of sexual harassment to flourish” thing, including literally calling the company “Boober” to make a joke about how much sex he got.
One such post, from Uber product manager Margaret Seger, thanked Kalanick for “creating a culture where — as a woman — it was okay to, no, encouraged to speak up,” a stark contrast to the picture painted by other female employees such as Keala Lusk or Susan Fowler. The post was liked by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Just some chill Silicon Valley dudes, havin’ each other’s backs.