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Uber lays off 435 people

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Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#271

Post by m-ee »

Petrova wrote: post #151
jdsully wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber was very profitable when they just had Uber Black. The problem is they were disrupted themselves by Lyft and had to launch UberX (give Travis credit for launching this before Lyft even though it was their idea).

Are you sure? In the recent book about Uber written by Mike Isaac,the author stated that Lyft was the first to launch a low cost ride service with non professional drivers and Uber rushed to copy them.

Sidecar was the first service I remember that explicitly used the current UberX/Lyft business model when all these companies kicked off in SF. Back then your payment to your Lyft driver was still called a “donation” because it was originally intended as a carpooling app like what WaZe has now.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#272

Post by lliamander »

madengr wrote: post #259
jacquesm wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Saying they're ~ "culling the low performers" can be entirely true Even if it isn't they have just branded everybody with 'Uber' on their CV that is on the market a low performer. Think before you speak.

Yeah, they should be firing low performers. A lay-off is when you lose business, with the prospects of being re-hired in an up-turn.

Certainly that should be part of it, but the goal is to reduce costs without reducing revenue. Low performers are certainly a cost, but there's only an indirect relationship between job performance rating and revenue.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#274

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

whateveracct wrote: post #268
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.

Layoffs are always a failure of leadership, but leadership will always choose to dodge blame if given an out. Hence, "low performers."

> Layoffs are always a failure of leadership

I completely disagree. Which would you rather have:

(a) Business is booming, but leadership holds off on hiring because they believe the boom won't last forever.

(b) Business is booming, so leadership hires to support the boom. The boom eventually subsides, so leadership decides to lay off as the business is no longer there.

Fortunately, even as an employee, I'd much rather have (b) (assuming the timeframe was relatively decent, i.e. I didn't get hired and laid off in 3 months).

I've said this before, but in growing industries, I do not believe lay offs are something to fear. I mean, given the desire for experienced engineers and product people, I have no doubt these Uber folks will get snatched up extremely quickly. (and to emphasize, I certainly do NOT believe this is the case with shrinking industries)

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#275

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

braythwayt wrote: post #252
novok wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to lay off people in a cross cutting manner, who would you choose?

If you could chose low performers, lay them off, and be more focused and higher productivity with the remaining people... _Why haven't you already done that?_ Nobody likes low-performers, even when you're flush with cash. Fixing their mistakes is demoralizing for your high-performers. The word gets around that you have low standards, and it's hard to recruit. The only way to get your money's worth from them is to put…

>If you could chose low performers, lay them off ... _Why haven't you already done that?_

There's a reason that all tech companies try to brag that they only hire the top performers.

Performance of an engineer is relative to his environment. I was a top performer on some teams/projects and a low performer on others.

Even if they ace your hiring process, you still can't know how they'll fit with the team long term.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#276

Post by blackflame7000 »

rsj_hn wrote: post #261
blackflame7000 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, obviously the people at Google think it's possible or they wouldn't keep investing in Waymo.

Google invests in a lot of moonshot projects, and also shuts down projects regularly. To their credit, they are willing to invest in high risk/high reward stuff, so the fact that Google is investing in something doesn't actually mean that this thing will succeed, or not be cancelled in the future. But remember that there is a lot of value between "no computer on board" and "fully self-driving". Cars already have thin…

The whole Alphabet move was to stop wasting so much money on moonshot projects that didn't have a clear path to profitability.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#277

Post by bitL »

asveikau wrote: post #147
ageitgey wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Out for good" is weird here. I interviewed with them more than a decade ago. They'd still consider that "signal"?

They might bring you in to get additional datapoint regardless.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#278

Post by fpoijasw »

Hello Uber Engineer here!

Obviously everything I say is personal experience and opinion. I think the layoffs were long overdue and should've happened sooner. There was a general understanding between my coworkers and I that Uber definitely over hired in 2016. Thanks to that a lot of engineers ran out of things to do which led to political infighting over roadmap, ridiculous redundant resourcing - every single team had mobile/web, severe shortage on infra teams since head count was already taken by main Uber teams. We even started building and maintaining our own chat app. I disagree that all the cool eng project that we put out and share here is a waste of time or resources. Those project was initiated by real needs on Uber and only the best make it out into the rest of the world. Engineers that shipped those projects are still here and we would've done it regardless of whether the 435 people that were hired in the first spot. I fully realize that it's an insensitive thing to say but I think it's important that it's expressed somewhere.

I think the lesson here is to grow responsibily, and it's real people's lives that are being affected. Don't hire people to alleviate your current engineer's burnout and stress. Learn to plan better and to prioritize aggressively instead of just hiring and getting everything done.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#279

Post by dragonwriter »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #276
rsj_hn wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google invests in a lot of moonshot projects, and also shuts down projects regularly. To their credit, they are willing to invest in high risk/high reward stuff, so the fact that Google is investing in something doesn't actually mean that this thing will succeed, or not be cancelled in the future. But remember that there is a lot of value between "no computer on board" and "fully self-driving". Cars already have thin…

The whole Alphabet move was to stop wasting so much money on moonshot projects that didn't have a clear path to profitability.

No, that was closer to “more wood/fewer arrows” (but that was more about aimless toys than deliberate moonshots), which was several years before Alphabet.

Alphabet was to more cleanly separate (in branding and organizationally) the core Google business from other ventures, which moved the moonshots out of Google proper. It wasn't to kill moonshots, though it may be accurate to say it was in part about being better at maturing them.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#280

Post by zachrose »

braythwayt wrote: post #252
novok wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to lay off people in a cross cutting manner, who would you choose?

If you could chose low performers, lay them off, and be more focused and higher productivity with the remaining people... _Why haven't you already done that?_ Nobody likes low-performers, even when you're flush with cash. Fixing their mistakes is demoralizing for your high-performers. The word gets around that you have low standards, and it's hard to recruit. The only way to get your money's worth from them is to put…

> Nobody likes low-performers, even when you're flush with cash. Fixing their mistakes is demoralizing for your high-performers.

If you define performance as change over time then this would seem to have nothing to do with mistakes. From what I've read about the space shuttle programmers, they would have been classified as low performance (low change over time) but who also made with very few mistakes (as I understand their process). At the other end you could have high performing programmers (lots of change) with high defects that they're always fixing (which could in turn qualify as still more change).

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