Jawbone has been having what many have presumed is its own share of financial difficulty. At one point, Jawbone was working with third-party sellers to finish selling off its own UP 2,3,and 4 fitness trackers that had remained in the company's clogging inventory -- a sign to some that things just weren't coming up roses for the fitness tracker company. Of course, Fitbit's success in the fitness tracker business, Fitbit's acquisition of mobile payments company Coin, the company's new success in the smartwatch arena as well, alongside of Jawbone's lawsuit against Fitbit for stealing company secrets and snatching up some of Jawbone's former executives to that end, means that Jawbone is not having a good time these days.
Unfortunately, you can now add an employee departure to the list.
Credible sources say that Jawbone executive Travis Bogard has up and left Jawbone for Uber, leaving behind the company to which he's devoted the last 8 years. Bogard will become Uber's Global Head of Enterprise Business in his next work chapter.
We've already seen Moto 360 designer Jim Wicks depart Motorola for academia, so this is the second tech departure of a major executive in the last 8 weeks. While executives transition from companies all the time, Wicks and Bogard have something in common: both have served for quite a while at these tech companies (Motorola and Jawbone) and both are leaving at a time when these companies are financially struggling. Motorola is not on its own, having been bought by Google, then sold to Lenovo (the current owner), with so many layoffs occurring in the process of both acquisitions and, finally, seeing one of Motorola's top executives, former Motorola president Rick Osterloh, be poached by Google. Jawbone isn't doing well if it's having to send its fitness trackers to other sellers, particularly the last 3 generations of its UP fitness tracker.
What this shows us is an increasing trend of employees who depart for other more fortunate streams of income when things continue going downhill. Of course, these individuals need to make a living, too, but their departures show more about the financial misfortune of the former companies they work for than anything else.
