After more than three years, Uber Vice President of Product and Growth Ed Baker is officially resigning.
This development comes at a time when the ride-hailing brand is facing sexism and sexual harassment allegations and recent reports of using a secret tool named Greyball to trick regulators, not to mention that it follows the departure of the company's Senior Vice President of Engineering Amit Singhal.
Baker's Announcement And Replacement
First reported by Recode, Baker is stepping down, and filling in for him is Uber Head of Marketplace Daniel Graf as interim product and growth chief.
"I have always wanted to apply my experience in technology and growth to the public sector. And now seems like the right moment to get involved," the executive told his team via email.
Baker joined Uber in 2013, and before that, he was Facebook's head of international growth after the social media company bought his dating app Friend.ly back in 2011.
Uber Issues: The Ride-Hailing Ship Starts Getting More Holes
Considering how Uber's workplace is under heightened scrutiny because of the aforementioned issues, the timing of Baker's resignation comes across as a little odd.
According to Recode, an anonymous person informed Arianna Huffington, one of the company's board members, that Baker had a sexual encounter with another employee. Huffington is also part of the team that's investigating sexism and sexual harassment in the company.
However, it should be noted that a case of sexual harassment wasn't filed against Baker, indicating that the other individual involved likely consented to the act.
Other Recent Uber Scandals
Hashing out more of the issues surrounding Uber, company CEO Travis Kalanick was caught in camera in a rather intense argument with an Uber driver over dropping fares. Shortly after, he took responsibility and admitted that he needed to "fundamentally change as a leader and grow up."
More than that, Google sued Uber in February for stealing Waymo's self-driving car secrets, accusing former Google employee Anthony Levandowski.
"We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo's various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo's LiDAR and circuit board," the Waymo team said.
That's not all either, as Uber had lost more than 200,000 users after the social media campaign #DeleteUber became widespread, where the company was said to have taken advantage of taxi drivers in protest. As a result, Lyft had more users than Uber for the first time ever.
Recap
Long story short, Uber is losing its Vice President of Product and Growth during a time when it has a lot on its plate, particularly allegations of sexism and sexual harassment and questionable practices to circumvent regulators.
While the issues don't necessarily have a direct relation to Baker's resignation, the executive's leave is definitely a point of interest because of the timing.
If you have an opinion regarding Baker stepping down from his position, feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
