Uber's First Employee Is Out As An Exec But Will Remain On The Board

Tyrone Siu / Reuters

Uber Technologies' first employee and former CEO Ryan Graves is leaving day-to-day operations at the San Francisco-based ride-hailing giant, according to an email sent to employees on Thursday. Graves will still remain on the company's board, which is in the process of finding a replacement for former CEO Travis Kalanick.

“There is another lesson I’ve learned that we should have applied much earlier,” he wrote in an email that was obtained by BuzzFeed News. “We should have taken more time to reflect on our mistakes and make changes together. There always seemed to be another goal, another target, another business or city to launch.”

Graves had worked at Uber for more than seven years, and was originally hired by co-founders Kalanick and Garrett Camp to serve as the company's first CEO in early 2010. After Kalanick took over control of the company, Graves served as the company's president before stepping aside in August 2016, with the hire of former Target chief marketing officer Jeff Jones into the role. (Jones quit in March as Uber faced a series of scandals and allegations of widespread sexism at the company, which eventually led to Kalanick's dismissal.)

In his most recent role, Graves, according to a company blog post, was “a resident entrepreneur and builder” focused on people operations and Uber's delivery services like UberEats. His official title on LinkedIn was Senior Vice President of Operations.

“Well, there is no great time for a move like this one,” he said in his email. “But it’s really important to me that this transition doesn’t take away from the importance of the onboarding process of our new CEO, whoever they might be.”

Quelle: <a href="Uber's First Employee Is Out As An Exec But Will Remain On The Board“>BuzzFeed

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