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Uber lays off 435 people

techcrunch.com

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Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#111

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

sparkling wrote: post #27

Serious question: what does Uber need 27k employees for? 1k people to run the show in the main headquarters + some small-ish ~50-100 people regional offices should be enough to keep the company running.

this is a good question, not just for Uber but for many companies. It would be interesting to see how large companies utilize large scale employment, seeing the breakdown of what needs to be done, how much of it is R&D, how much of it actually moves the needle on assisting in company operations.

I work in a big organization of over 1K people and although most people work extremely hard, I still don't see how most of what we do helps the company enough to warrant a decent ROI.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#112

Post by fireattack »

ssully wrote: post #2

Related, but Uber is said to be hiring 2,00 for it's new Chicago office next year [1]. A mix of engineering and operations. My understanding this would be under their freight team, which according to this Techcrunch article, was unaffected by this layoff. [1]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-hiring-o...

Do you mean 2,000?

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#113

Post by matchagaucho »

choppaface wrote: post #29

Google is pretty well-known for maintaining a very deep bench-- if an engineer isn't effective in some role, they'll just move them to some other team. Heck, a lot of hires (especially 3rd/last attempt) go directly to the bench. This strategy pays off well when a new competitor (like Facebook or Uber) comes along and snatches up people in the lead roles, or if the company feels the need to pivot to something really f…

The press release mentions the hires were the result of "decentralized hyper-growth".

That is basically code word for political fiefdoms seizing power.

No cloud-hosted or SaaS company should allow silos or redundancy around communal services.

This is long overdue and Dara is making the right move to clean up.

But to your point.... should the Engineers be reallocated to a bench until properly utilized? Yes. Moves like this can be poisonous to culture long-term.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#114

Post by dmode »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #95
dmode wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really take all this "will hire xx people in y location" with a grain of salt. This is all marketing speak intended for the tax handout. I don't really believe they will hire that many people if their business tanks

The difference is that this isn't some company with an existing footprint in a city saying "hey we're gonna hire some more people for our office here". In both the case of Chicago and especially Dallas, Uber is making significant real estate commitments to go along with these hiring plans. You don't buy up an entire skyscraper office building (and several plots of land around it) and open an entirely new office unles…

I don't believe Uber is buying a building, rather leasing out space, which can always be re-negotiated. There have many examples of companies promising a certain number of jobs and never fulfilling them, because who is looking. For example, Foxcon. Also, Uber once committed to build a HQ in Oakland and signed a huge lease. Soon after, they abandoned that plan and started building a brand new HQ in SF

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#115

Post by outside1234 »

sabujp wrote: post #98
blackflame7000 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but self-driving would instantly turn Uber into a cash cow and it's not that far away. Edit: By not that far away I'm talking 5-15 years. I'm not talking next week. Amazon burned cash for at least 20 years.

I've been wondering about this for years, do you have any data to actually back that up? Seeing how teslas are "very close" to self driving why doesn't uber up the game and go full self driving with lidar.

The last 1% of corner cases is the hard, potentially decades long problem, that also happens to kill people, that is unsolved.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#116

Post by outside1234 »

edw wrote: post #108
jobu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was absolutely instrumental to the early success. In some places they were actively breaking the law just to operate there, and Kalanick was able disrupt the system and make Uber important enough to change the laws. However, that doesn't mean he should still be CEO. Kalanick also created a company culture that became more and more toxic as it grew larger. Lyft was arguably on the ropes and might've failed without…

You've reminded me of an observation I made recently about Star Wars: the behavior of Han Solo (pre-Greedo-shoots-first-bs) and Darth Vader aren't that different. It's the context that matters. If you're small and scrappy, antisocial behavior makes you a charming scoundrel. If you're big, the same behavior makes you evil.

It was still ugly when Uber was small.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#117

Post by epistasis »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #7
ssully wrote: post #2

Related, but Uber is said to be hiring 2,00 for it's new Chicago office next year [1]. A mix of engineering and operations. My understanding this would be under their freight team, which according to this Techcrunch article, was unaffected by this layoff. [1]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-hiring-o...

They also recently announced plans to hire 3,000+ in Dallas [1] at a brand new massive office. I'm sure the hiring and layoffs are from different business units, but it does seem strange that there's been multiple several-hundred-people-layoff stories form Uber recently at the same time they're announcing otherwise massive hiring expansion. I would at least figure that they would prefer to transfer engineers between…

Does Uber have different pay scales depending on location?

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#118

Post by outside1234 »

appleshore wrote: post #78
landryraccoon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get why Uber isn’t profitable. Their marginal cost is only higher than zero because they choose to lose money. Their fixed costs are servers and engineering. If they set their prices higher than what drivers are willing to accept they should make money. I don’t see how “basic economics” is the enemy. Their enemy is setting expectations too high. If they were happy with a profit of $100M a year they would be s…

Uber should just increase their rates dramatically, increase the driver’s share and offer discount subscriptions to loyal customers. Spontaneous riders pay more, others pay less.

The driver's share is already something like 110% of what they charge.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#119

Post by southphillyman »

ageitgey wrote: post #59
bitL wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is 3rd/last attempt?

Google will only re-interview you 3 times for the same type of role total. After that, you are out for good.

Interesting. Never knew that, it seems like it's almost a normal part of the process to be told to "try again in 6 months".

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#120

Post by xxxtentachyon »

heliodor wrote: post #11
tempsy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless there was a performance issue then why not allow these employees to transfer if they want to?

Might be that the company is that disfunctional. Between the news articles and the horrendous software quality, it seems to me the company is a mess.

What horrendous software quality? Uber consistently puts out some of the cleanest mobile experiences for a mass market app, and their research teams put out great OSS work.
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