Have you worked at a big company? In none of the fortune 500 companies have I met the CEO who has taken a minute to explain like Travis tried. In fact in some of the companies I worked for the CEO won't even respond to email.
I work for a gigantic corporation and you're right that the CEO wouldn't respond to me. In fact, if we were in a car together and I started talking to him about how my pay wasn't so hot this year I would expect him to be extremely uncomfortable. He should be! He makes huge decisions which affect thousands and thousands of lives. CEOs should be in constant contact with peons like me and Kamel. Maybe they would adjust their decisions so they wouldn't have to be confronted in this sort of way.
Except the CEO works for the board whose goal is to keep the company profitable so it can continue to exist.
If you are upset about pay, you go to your manager or in the case of Kamel, you go work for a competitor Lyft. You have every right to voice your complaints but don't be surprised when they fall on deaf ears.
I read something a while back (maybe here?) and I wish I could find the quote but my google-fu is failing me now, anyways it's something like this: "If the corporate structure is set up in such a way as to diffuse responsibility so thinly that no single person can actually be held responsible then the corporate structure is broken." This is a problem in many, many corporations but Uber is an extreme example. Kamel is just trying to hold someone responsible for the pay changes. Of course Kalanick is going to try to reject responsibility, it's what corporate America has taught him to do. That just seems a little messed up to me.
EDIT:
Furthermore, there is no good reason that a CEO should not work for the board as well as for their employees and their customers. Or maybe it's that the board should be looking out for their employees and customers. Either way, somebody should be listening to guys like Kamel so that outbursts like this don't have to happen.
Somewhat tangential, but if Kalanick's purpose is to make sure that Uber is profitable then he is failing at his job, considering they've lost billions of dollars quarter after quarter. And in this case, the driver can't be reasonably expected to go to Lyft because Lyft doesn't go black car services.
