When Uber CEO worked as ‘undercover’ driver: ‘Rudeness of…’

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has disclosed that he spent several months working as an undercover driver for the company. He said the campaign titled ‘Project Boomerang’ was Uber’s shot at improving the experience of its drivers, as the company has faced past criticism for not being driver-friendly.

As he launched the campaign in September, his nearly a dozen trips around San Francisco in the United States served as an eye-opener to the struggles of Uber drivers, which made Khosrowshahi acknowledge how granted Uber drivers were taken for.

“I think that the industry as a whole, to some extent, has taken drivers for granted,” the Uber CEO said in an interview to The Wall Street Journal, published on Friday.

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During the journey, he encountered instances of tip baiting, technical glitches on the app, faced penalties for turning down rides and said it was “surprisingly” hard to take rudeness of some of the riders, Khosrowshahi revealed.

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He said the campaign served in re-shaping Uber’s business – a major makeover since its inception in 2009. On the need for the experiment, Khosrowshahi linked it with the company’s struggle after the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns when it faced a scarcity of drivers. They weren’t his top priority till then because drivers were always in abundant supply. The labour shortage caused by the pandemic prompted the company to introspect its business model and “re-examine” past assumptions, Khosrowshahi said to the WSJ.

Khosrowshahi, who became Uber CEO in 2017, also mentioned about his interview on Twitter, saying, “Still have a long way to go, but getting better day by day.”