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Uber lays off 435 people

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Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#241

Post by pmart123 »

theincredulousk wrote: post #71

Probably some reality shaking out. Uber's engineering team puts out some impressive stuff, often as OSS. Their engineering blogs are regularly on HN. I've been genuinely surprised that they churn out some of these things and release them for free given their relatively extreme financial situation. In contrast to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc. that have mountains of their own money to burn (rathe…

Airbnb seems to do similar things, but has a better business model to support it. I kind of get it from a recruiting standpoint and they probably did need to build some customized software given the scale they have. My guess is they spent far more money trying to conquer rideshare in multiple countries, self driving, and side businesses. At the same time, they did look like they were also developing some pretty low level software that was probably not necessary.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#242

Post by lliamander »

datapunk wrote: post #186
notatoad wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's especially a dick move when everybody already knows they're hurting for cash, and the official position could be "we just can't afford all these people" without the company losing any face. They aren't fooling anybody by pretending it's not about the cost.

Uber's stock has been going down the drain. Why would they give more reason's for investors to cash out?

You can just say something like "we're restructuring to focus on our core competencies". If you fire a bunch of non-critical staff, you just told investors "our revenue to cost ratio is about to get a lot better" and so if anything investors who have been watching the decline are going to recognize you are doing something about the problem.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#244

Post by VBprogrammer »

gowld wrote: post #196
sbarre wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. It costs quite a bit to open source a product if you're a commercial entity.. It needs to be reviewed (by legal, security, engineering, etc) and approved.. You're not just flipping the public/private flag on the repo.

Why would you give your open source code a tighter security and engineering review than your in-house code? Are you hoping for security through obscurity? And quality through obscurity?

If you are going somewhere where you have to get changed in public, say the gym, do you make sure you are wearing your good underwear?

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#245

Post by nooyurrsdey »

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.

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#246

Post by kamyarg »

meddlepal wrote: post #204
trenning wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or in the case of Amazon you have both, printing money with an awful culture of churning through employees. They even structured their stock vesting around it.

What is Amazon's vesting structure?

Seems it vests over 4 years with 5%, 15%, 40% and 40%

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#247

Post by StreamBright »

theincredulousk wrote: post #71

Probably some reality shaking out. Uber's engineering team puts out some impressive stuff, often as OSS. Their engineering blogs are regularly on HN. I've been genuinely surprised that they churn out some of these things and release them for free given their relatively extreme financial situation. In contrast to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc. that have mountains of their own money to burn (rathe…

>> In contrast to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc. that have mountains of their own money to burn (rather than investors') on research and OSS side-projects

You are assuming that these companies are letting engineers to do side-projects that are unrelated to their day to day work?

As far as I know the OSS projects these companies put out are in line what they use internally for day to day work and it is absolutely core to their business.

Examples:

- Amazon: https://firecracker-microvm.github.io - Google: https://github.com/google/guava - Microsoft: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode - Apple: https://github.com/apple/foundationdb

Am I missing the point? Are OSS projects from these companies that are side-projects?

While on the subject, I am not sure about Uber's contribution to OSS. Their projects tend to be outside of my purview.

>> Paying lavish SF engineer salaries to generate cool, but not revenue generating, software

Nobody is forcing Uber to employ people in California.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#248

Post by simonrobb »

joncrane wrote: post #221
simonrobb wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So cleaning up code, making sure no sensitive info, swear words and such, documentation, lawyery stuff, icons, PR copy, blog post, basic website, wiki, and much more nitty gritty I'm glossing over. I'm the manager of one of Uber's OSS projects, and all that the things you listed here ring true. I just know that in our case at least, OSS prep absolutely pales in comparison to the feature/operational work put in by t…

>I'm the manager of one of Uber's OSS projects Do you expect to still be doing this same job (or one step higher) in 6 months?

Yeah absolutely! It's a successful project and pretty integral to Uber, I love what I do and have a lot of faith in my manager/director. I don't anticipate any reason for our situation to change.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#249

Post by lliamander »

balls187 wrote: post #202
ceejayoz wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who aren't critical to the core product, or whose projects aren't big revenue generators. They might be high performers while being technically unprofitable.

> They might be high performers while being technically unprofitable. Why would you do that vs moving the high performers to the business critical projects?

Not necessarily a bad idea, but disrupting those business critical teams by just swapping out people could actually slow down execution and hurt revenue.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#250

Post by justcorrect »

csb6 wrote: post #138
edw wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the difference is that Han came around at the end of A New Hope , joined the Rebellion, and saved Luke’s ass, which lead to the Death Star’s destruction. This proved he wasn’t a complete scoundrel and had good within him. Uber’s corporate culture was ugly and toxic from the start. And it never got better or “came around” to a good cause. A better analogy would be Anakin moving from small-time massacres of Sand Pe…

The Death Star's destruction also killed thousands and thousands of soldiers, bureaucrats, and construction workers. A lot of who is good/bad in Star Wars is perspective. The Jedi can also be seen as religious extremists that kidnap children to indoctrinate in their ways, to lead in terrorist missions that help impose their view on an entire galaxy. Darth Vader is an emperor protecting his empire from a growing threat.

The moral is, multiple things can be true.

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