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Uber lays off 435 people

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Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#511

Post by anticensor »

jtolmar wrote: post #493
earthboundkid wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put it this way, if the standard theory of why capitalism beat Soviet communism is that competition created better products etc. none of that requires that the goal of firms is to create better than market average returns to shareholders rather than the goal of firms being a) earn sufficient profit to continue to exist b) benefit consumers c) benefit employees d) benefit shareholders. Yes shareholder would prefer to…

If the only defense of capitalism is competition, why not market socialism? As in, markets, competition, and entrepreneurship still exist, but all firms must be worker-owned.

It is too fragile.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#512

Post by vkaku »

I think the logic is simple:

while(true) { getHired(); work(); quitOrGetFired(); }

There's no logical explanation for any of these steps. Every company that is being funded is not funded for being responsible, but for showcasing a hockey stick growth and making investors go $$$$$$$. If you're lucky, there's a chance your company will be an unicorn, and if you are luckier, your stock will mean something, and if you are one of the luckiest, you can actually sell it and do something else with your life than work. Anecdotal evidence shows that you need to be really lucky than be meritorious to make money. It also shows that even with low luck, periods of employment basically give you that money stream.

Leave the analysis for someone else and get going! I've already done the good deed of referring the Uber engineers in my network.

IMO, about the open source thing - Now that you've left Uber, you still have the neat tools you need to build something better, faster, bigger and someone else already paid for the caveman to science work.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#513

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

22c wrote: post #455
dahart wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somebody, somewhere, thought "hey, slack is way to expensive, we don't want to get 'locked in', and 'mumble mumble privacy cloud evil stallman' [...] Like I completely agree with your overall point about reckless overengineering, but you also just listed three true and really good reasons to avoid integrating Slack.

I setup an enterprise-grade Mattermost server in a weekend. The hardest part wasn't even Mattermost itself, but getting SMTP working reliably in the age of DKIM/SPF/DMARC policies. This could be sidestepped by using any of the well-established email providers. No reason to use Slack when such options exist, but also no reason to write your own chat app, either.

> The hardest part wasn't even Mattermost itself, but getting SMTP working reliably in the age of DKIM/SPF/DMARC policies. This could be sidestepped by using any of the well-established email providers.

This is valid not just for Mattermost but many other apps that support sending e-mails. And that's why it's important that instead of giving up and outsourcing it, we all try to set it up and have first-hand experience in challenges we have to face in the process. Because if everybody just uses Mailgun & SES, in a decade or two it won't be be possible to set up your e-mail server anymore (of course you will be able to, but your e-mails won't reach most customers).

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#514

Post by kortilla »

raz32dust wrote: post #490
22c wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I setup an enterprise-grade Mattermost server in a weekend. The hardest part wasn't even Mattermost itself, but getting SMTP working reliably in the age of DKIM/SPF/DMARC policies. This could be sidestepped by using any of the well-established email providers. No reason to use Slack when such options exist, but also no reason to write your own chat app, either.

If the company relies on Mattermost, I would assume they'd need at least one maintainer per ~100 users, just to make sure that the SMTP keeps working reliably, there are backups etc. One person to maintain Mattermost would cost a company at least 150000 USD in the bay area. That's $100+ per month per user. Slack is way cheaper than that.

Lol, where did you get the idea that smtp servers need more maintenance as users increase? What if I told you I’ve witnessed a team of 3 manage a mail system of a university of over 100k active email accounts?

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#515

Post by jholloway7 »

22c wrote: post #455
dahart wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somebody, somewhere, thought "hey, slack is way to expensive, we don't want to get 'locked in', and 'mumble mumble privacy cloud evil stallman' [...] Like I completely agree with your overall point about reckless overengineering, but you also just listed three true and really good reasons to avoid integrating Slack.

I setup an enterprise-grade Mattermost server in a weekend. The hardest part wasn't even Mattermost itself, but getting SMTP working reliably in the age of DKIM/SPF/DMARC policies. This could be sidestepped by using any of the well-established email providers. No reason to use Slack when such options exist, but also no reason to write your own chat app, either.

Let's not pretend that hosting an OSS chat server is a walk in the park for every enterprise just because you personally got one up and running in a weekend.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#516

Post by icebraining »

vadym909 wrote: post #438
spookthesunset wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> uChat is actually built by a pretty large team Which is even more scary. Why isn't uber laying all these people off and paying cash money for a real chat application? What competitive advantage does uber have maintaining a chat application?

Why doesn't Uber spend less on Engg and pay more to their drivers- which may actually help its business.

If they fired 1000 engineers, at $250k/year each, that would come to about $1.2/week more for each monthly active driver.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#517

Post by birdyrooster »

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…

Now imagine they did it like 4 times. Am I talking about Apple or Google?

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#518

Post by jholloway7 »

raz32dust wrote: post #490
22c wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I setup an enterprise-grade Mattermost server in a weekend. The hardest part wasn't even Mattermost itself, but getting SMTP working reliably in the age of DKIM/SPF/DMARC policies. This could be sidestepped by using any of the well-established email providers. No reason to use Slack when such options exist, but also no reason to write your own chat app, either.

If the company relies on Mattermost, I would assume they'd need at least one maintainer per ~100 users, just to make sure that the SMTP keeps working reliably, there are backups etc. One person to maintain Mattermost would cost a company at least 150000 USD in the bay area. That's $100+ per month per user. Slack is way cheaper than that.

You're making a good underlying point but contriving way too many details in your argument for it to be taken seriously.

Re: Uber lays off 435 people

#519

Post by raz32dust »

dx034 wrote: post #496
raz32dust wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the company relies on Mattermost, I would assume they'd need at least one maintainer per ~100 users, just to make sure that the SMTP keeps working reliably, there are backups etc. One person to maintain Mattermost would cost a company at least 150000 USD in the bay area. That's $100+ per month per user. Slack is way cheaper than that.

Really, 50 maintainers for a 5000 user system? I'd think it scales much better, probably 2-3 people for the whole company. And in that case, it can quickly be cheaper than slack

I think you are really underestimating the bureaucratic overheads in a large company. It is not the same as a 3-person startup serving 5000 customers. Of course I pulled that number out of the air, but the point is that it can make sense. I think I am right around the ballpark of needing a 5 people team to serve 500 users - you'd need a minimum of 3 people just to make sure there is enough redundancy if one person is sick or goes on vacation. You'd need 24x7 on-calls. The scaling factor probably changes after that - may be it is 10 people for 5000 users instead of 50.

Adding to other large company problems, these people will need management layers, the team will need a charter for growth. Who wants to be the maintainer of the Mattermost servers in a large company? Add all of this up and then the slack deal starts to look reasonable.

Edit: Just to add some real numbers, slack costs $12.50 per user per month [1] - that is ~$750k per year for 5000 users = 5 engineers. (More like 3 really in the Bay area)

[1] https://slack.com/pricing

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