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Uber lays off 435 people

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Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#281

Post by whateveracct »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #274
whateveracct wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rathe…

My issue is this framing of it as "we're cutting low performers."

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#282

Post by miguelmota »

fpoijasw wrote: post #278

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 ha…

Over hiring is a typical mistake after raising a new round of funding. Good to hear that you agree with the layoffs. Like the old saying goes; you can't put 9 women in a room and make a baby in a month.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#283

Post by zizee »

kelnos wrote: post #169
throwaway66920 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re valued on growth, so if they decide to stop growing their valuation will plummet. If they raise prices then quantity of rides will go down. If quantity of rides goes down, it becomes harder to earn a living as a driver. If it is harder to earn a living as a driver, there are fewer drivers. If there are fewer drivers, then the cost of drivers goes up. Not to mention the fact that if uber becomes 10% more expen…

If Uber pays drivers more than Lyft to a point where drivers stop driving for Lyft, riders won't be able to get a ride on Lyft, so they'll pay Uber's higher prices. Not everyone will; some will opt for a regular taxi, driving themselves, or transit. But I suspect that there is actually some combination of higher ride prices and higher driver salaries that will keep Uber alive and growing, though probably not at the s…

I believe that you have the power dynamic reversed. I.e. The drivers will go where the customers are more than the customers will go where the drivers are.

A driver only gets paid if a passenger rides. If Uber increases the costs of their rides over a competitor, the the customers will opt to the competition.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#284

Post by sparuchuri »

jdsully wrote: post #178
Petrova wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I read the book last weekend and am going with my memory (I’ve since lent it out). In the book Travis found out about Lyft’s planned rideshare service and raced to launch UberX first. Alas google has become useless for finding useful information so I hope somebody who still has the book can confirm.

That was referring to Pool / Lyft Line.

As others said, Sidecar was technically the first to the "ridesharing" model

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#285

Post by spookthesunset »

fpoijasw wrote: post #278

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 ha…

> We even started building and maintaining our own chat app

God I love the Not Invented Here disease. Somebody, somewhere, thought "hey, slack is way to expensive, we don't want to get 'locked in', and 'mumble mumble privacy cloud evil stallman' so lets write our own chat application.... how hard can it be?"

Boom, now the company is straddled by a shitty, homebrew chat application that is maintained by nobody because the original author left for greener pastures. Nobody dares replace it though because that would be sacrilege. That chat app is part of the company, after all!

Arg.... I hate, hate, hate when engineers with a bad understanding of business and too much time on their hands lock their organisations into homebrew crap that has nothing to do with the value delivered by the business.

/rant

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#288

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

spookthesunset wrote: post #285
fpoijasw wrote: post #278

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 ha…

> We even started building and maintaining our own chat app God I love the Not Invented Here disease. Somebody, somewhere, thought "hey, slack is way to expensive, we don't want to get 'locked in', and 'mumble mumble privacy cloud evil stallman' so lets write our own chat application.... how hard can it be?" Boom, now the company is straddled by a shitty, homebrew chat application that is maintained by nobody because…

I love how the solution to this is always: "Let's build our own thing!" instead of: "Let's just use something free and/or open source."

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#289

Post by secfirstmd »

spookthesunset wrote: post #285
fpoijasw wrote: post #278

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 ha…

> We even started building and maintaining our own chat app God I love the Not Invented Here disease. Somebody, somewhere, thought "hey, slack is way to expensive, we don't want to get 'locked in', and 'mumble mumble privacy cloud evil stallman' so lets write our own chat application.... how hard can it be?" Boom, now the company is straddled by a shitty, homebrew chat application that is maintained by nobody because…

Dam. I could have saved them a fortune by recommending Mattermost. Maybe even got Uber to make some e2e encryption commits also :)
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