Uber COO Barney Harford and CMO Rebecca Messina are leaving the company
Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi is parting ways with two top lieutenants in a major leadership overhaul. Barney Harford, the chief operating officer, and Rebecca Messina …
Context & Ripple Effects
Barney Harford arrived at Uber in December 2017 as Dara Khosrowshahi's hand-picked COO from Orbitz, charged with making the company more efficient by reining in promotions and discounts and cutting rider drop-off rates (his stated efficiency plan). Within months his tenure was clouded by employee complaints over insensitive comments about women and minorities, after which he said he would work with a coach.
His exit alongside CMO Rebecca Messina extends a pattern already visible when partnerships chief David Richter left in 2018 with duties absorbed by Andrew Macdonald — Khosrowshahi is steadily thinning the executive bench he inherited.
First-order effects
- Uber must backfill two C-suite roles mid-overhaul, and whoever replaces Harford inherits or abandons his signature mandate: tighter promotion and discount spending to improve unit economics.
- Khosrowshahi consolidates direct authority over operations and marketing, removing lieutenants whose mandates he originally set.
Second-order effects
- With Harford gone, the cost-discipline agenda he championed faces re-evaluation just as competitive pressure mounts — Khosrowshahi has called Rapido 'the tougher competition in India', a reminder that pure austerity can cede ground to rivals.
- Successor searches put Uber back in the market for operators with marketplace-economics backgrounds like Harford's Orbitz/Expedia profile, tightening competition for that talent pool among platform companies.
Third-order effects
- If the churn continues, Uber drifts toward a flatter structure concentrated around Khosrowshahi personally, where strategy resets with each departure rather than compounding across a stable team.
- The episode also shows how cultural-controversy baggage (the 2018 complaints) shortens executive tenures at companies still rebuilding reputation, making culture vetting a standing filter on senior hires.
The trend: Uber under Khosrowshahi is steadily replacing the executive team it inherited with leaders aligned to its post-2017 economics-first playbook, one departure at a time.