In the next decade, there could be no more Uber drivers. They won't be necessary in a world where every Uber car is self-driving.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick (known by his more than 9,000 office employees as TK) said that the shift from human drivers to automation will take quite awhile. But it appears that some employees think that Uber hasn't done enough to show support prior to the transition.

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"Get someone to 'handle' TK. Too many glib comments in the media about driverless cars does little to convince drivers that we value and appreciate them," a senior researcher in Uber's San Francisco headquarters wrote in a Glassdoor review last September.

A motivational mandate arose quickly. Each year, Uber employees have the opportunity to go on a "workation" where they commit to building something during the holidays. Any employee can submit a project proposal to the executive team. The winners — 50 of which were picked this year — then recruit teams and are encouraged to travel anywhere they choose to execute on the ideas.

It's not a free vacation for Uber employees. In addition to convincing employees to take time away from their families to join their teams, project leads (who are awarded free flights) also must ask others to pay for a getaway. Each employee does receive a daily stipend (between $75 and 100) for meals and transportation.

"I didn’t know about [workation] beforehand, but you find out very quickly when you join," Anthony Spadafino, a senior operations manager at Uber, told Mashable. "People care so much about what they’re doing, to build something, to move the business forward, to make the lives of riders and drivers better."

Work > cation

The only guideline this year was to improve the driver experience, something an Uber spokesperson told Mashable is a top priority in 2017. Not every project will be introduced across Uber (driver destinations, scheduled ride and Spotify are a few that have been), but the company will start out 2017 by gifting Kalanick with 50 ideas on what they could do.

Spadafino, who worked from the D.C. office for the last two-and-half years and recently moved to London, was one of the selected project leads and one of more than 30 employees who traveled to Runaway Bay, Jamaica for a week.

It was his first workation, but he went in determined.

"When it comes to workation, work comes before 'kation. We want to make sure that our project is looking good and then hopefully we can have some fun for New Year's Eve and then see some beautiful places," Spadafino told Mashable over the phone shortly after he arrived from London.

Ann Hussey, lead marketing manager at Uber in Washington D.C., also stayed with Spadafino's team for her second workation and her first as a project leader.

Workation is not a competition, but there's a competitive aspect around trying to impress senior management. Indeed, many of the leaders are first-time project managers, and participants often are working in their traditional roles.

More than 20 employees from across Uber's offices stayed at the same house in Jamaica. Image: uber

Trip planning was one of the first challenges for project leaders. Ideas were submitted on Dec. 13 and approved on Dec. 15. Teams then left as early as the next week.

"We knew the goal was warm weather and from there it was seeing where along the Caribbean had openings. We did research in terms of where had the best Wi-Fi," Hussey said. The team referenced a website that sources connection speeds and searched for places on Airbnb and HomeAway.

They decided on a multi-level house atop a mountain in Jamaica that came with a chef and, perhaps more importantly, connectivity. "We’re lucky enough to find a wonderful house here," Hussey said. "Obviously we came well equipped with our chargers, plugs and MiFis and everything we needed to connect."

For drivers

Connectivity and conversations embodied the themes of Spadafino's and Hussey's projects.

Spadafino has worked in policy and expansion at Uber, first for Florida and now the U.K., but his project narrowed into a service aspect and Uber's app. Spadafino tasked his team, which included employees from San Francisco, Boston and New York, to create an app feedback form for drivers.

While the app is engineered within the walls of Uber's offices, Spadafino credited drivers with knowing the most about the product. His team's product allows drivers to share app screenshots and make notes all within the Uber app for drivers.

"You need to be somewhat of an expert on how the app functions to be able to fix the bugs. It’s difficult for someone in an email and for someone on the other end to understand what the bug is in words," he said.

"We're such a tech heavy company I think we should be focused on the content piece of it."

Hussey dedicated her team to building a new conversational experience for Uber and drivers. With her product, drivers can easily select what type of communication they want to receive and through what channel, such as email, text and in-app.

"I think we should give drivers the option to better tailor their experience," Hussey said.

Goal: Warm weather

Halfway through the trip, Spadafino told Mashable that he feared his team may be not be executing.

"You never know when someone’s staring at a computer how effective their work is there. They could be staring at their computer, but they could be staring at Facebook," he said.

But they delivered. They completed his tasks while simultaneously making time to visit an old plantation, see a waterfall and run by the beaches.

There seems to be only so much preparation and micromanaging you can do. Despite the time members spent looking for activities on TripAdvisor prior to arrival, they found the best recommendations through speaking in person with the locals in Jamaica, Spadafino said.

Though, they weren't able to speak with any Uber drivers. Uber is only available in Kingston, but not elsewhere in Jamaica.

"We keep saying we should probably just launch Uber when we’re here. That has been a joke around the house a couple of times. If only we could have a button and get around here in Jamaica, it would be a lot easier," Hussey said.