UBER FAIL

ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 13, UBER EMPLOYEES SHUFFLED into an all-hands meeting at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. They came to hear the results of an investigation that, like many in Silicon Valley, they had been anxiously awaiting for months. In February, a former female engineer at the company wrote an exposé describing a workplace plagued by sexism and mismanagement; the explosive allegations led Uber to hire former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm to find out how far harassment and retaliation had gone at the world’s fastest-growing startup. “The process, as you all know, was longer than we thought and more painful than we thought, but it comes to an end today,” board member Arianna Huffington told employees during a presentation in which executives’ voices at times sounded brittle with emotion.

Over the past eight years, the hard-charging ride-hailing company has grown into a global powerhouse worth nearly $70 billion, disrupting the taxi industry in 76 countries and creating an app relied on by millions both for rides and for income. The wildly successful company has also been plagued by scandal from the start. Class-action lawsuits, driver revolts, cringeworthy faux pas by its brash CEO, you name it. But the past few months were something else: the February exposé was followed by a string of revelations so relentless, many started to wonder if Uber was in the midst of an existential crisis. In the end, the Holder report didn’t recommend reform so much as exorcism. The biggest change: CEO Travis Kalanick announced he would be taking a leave of absence, of undetermined length, and would eventually return to a diminished role. He described it as a time to grieve for his mother, who recently died, as well as a time to grow as a CEO. It was an acutely humbling turn for a founder who had cultivated an aura as a brawler. “If