This phenomenon is likely due to Uber’s incentives timing out around the same time, meaning many drivers are competing for less trips as promo end nears. It’s highly unlikely they are doing something actually malicious.
We've been fixing "bro culture" given that it's largely a myth propogated by a select group of SV tech writers via cherry picking a small group of bad apples that are in no way representative of the majority of folks at the company.
You associate with Uber if you want the chance to solve big problems with incredible teams to continually improve a product that you and millions of others rely on as a matter of necessity.
The "Uber exploiting workers" meme is a classic, and holds little water given the fact that everyone on the platform consents to be there and can leave at any time. If anything, the flexible earnings opportunity Uber provides is transformational to a group of people who have historically had to make insidious trade offs (money over family time) to keep the lights on.
Travis had a deep empathy for the challenges of building successful products, and would offer tremendous grace and thoughtful advice to his team solving problems in the trenches. When projects went sideways, and we presented numbers that were less than stellar, Travis was both empathetic and optimistic while offering actionable guidance and a path forward.
"Bro culture" is a loaded term and the wrong one to describe the environment Travis cultivated. He had tremendous focus on the problems at hand and pushed his team to operate with a sense of urgency to solve them. If anything I think he cared too much about each individual problem, which propelled his teams forward but sometimes left him too deep in the details of his business rather than focusing on the big picture.