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Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

cnbc.com

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Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#71

Post by bsanr2 »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #63
fyp wrote: post #37

Uber/airbnb/lyft were considered in the same tier as facebook/google before corona. With google also slowing hiring, are the engineers laid off all going to be absorbed by facebook?

This will play our more like the dotcom burst than the 2008 crisis. For most younger people here this may come as a shock but tech jobs can disappear, for years. The job market in 2019 felt a lot like the job market in 1999, people rushing to get upskilled so that they could get into software and make ridiculous money. After the dotcom burst huge number of people left tech, or at least left the world of software deve…

Which is gonna suck for a lot of people in major metros, as those salaries were necessary to keep up with asset inflation post-2008.

Wariness about the future, spiced with a tinge of schadenfreude.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#72

Post by elliekelly »

tomp wrote: post #54
draw_down wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's always some related piece of news about the way the company went about the layoffs. This one seems especially reaching. Really, a meeting invite?!

What else do you propose during a "lockdown" "shelter-in-place" situation? IMO it's only the name of the meeting that is (potentially) the problem.

A phone call? Ending the employment relationship isn’t all too different from ending a romantic relationship. How would you feel if your significant other called and dumped you? Not good. How would you feel if your SO notified you of your new relationship status via text? Probably worse. Now how would you feel if your SO sent a mass text message dumping you and several other people at once? Probably a lot worse.

Sometimes difficult decisions have to be made but a one-on-one conversation with the person is always preferable to a (mass) notification, in my opinion.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#73

Post by verall »

qqssccfftt wrote: post #39
SilasX wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I keep [dead] comments turned on and I thought that one was pretty reasonable so I was going to vouch for it but wasn't sure if there was some context I was missing. Your comment provides it.

[dead] by itself is a shadowban. [flagged] [dead] is not.

Comments can be downvoted to death without being flagged. [dead] by itself does not imply its a shadowban. It's super easy to tell though, because if someone is banned, you can look at their history and see all their posts besides a few that get vouched are dead.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#74

Post by vmception »

cracker_jacks wrote: post #45
vmception wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because there is at least 17% less share dilution than there was a day before, let alone the runway being marginally extended. So speculators don't get dumped on by employees with RSUs all day every day, and the business prospects are not adversely impacted any more than they already were. Thats when you pay more for shares. Layoffs are proactive for investors, not an omen for investors, don't get that confuse…

Won't this create more share dilution in the short term? Don't layoffs trigger options/RSUs to be executed some time window after the layoff?

LYFT and many recently IPO'd tech companies have been doing monthly vesting, with no cliff. So basically with all their massive hiring, employees have already been dumping shares.

The conditions on the unvested portions typically are destroyed. With options are available to purchase for exercise. That's pretty exclusive to startup life, but the same concept in RSUs at big tech where only the vested portion is sellable and the rest is destroyed.

That being said, a contract can say anything.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#75

Post by corporateslave5 »

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #63
fyp wrote: post #37

Uber/airbnb/lyft were considered in the same tier as facebook/google before corona. With google also slowing hiring, are the engineers laid off all going to be absorbed by facebook?

This will play our more like the dotcom burst than the 2008 crisis. For most younger people here this may come as a shock but tech jobs can disappear, for years. The job market in 2019 felt a lot like the job market in 1999, people rushing to get upskilled so that they could get into software and make ridiculous money. After the dotcom burst huge number of people left tech, or at least left the world of software deve…

People have been calling software engineering wages a bubble for 20 years, and trying to call “the end of tech”. I just don’t see it, highly proficient software engineers are more valuable than ever. The wages are higher than ever. Going forwards, tech is really the only engine of growth in the American economy. Trying to say tech will be under for years is like saying the USA will be in a massive recession for years. I just don’t believe it.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#76

Post by rchaud »

johntiger1 wrote: post #30

Crap, I was scheduled to go on internship with them this summer, but I feel like that might quickly no longer be an option..

I feel for you. Back in '08, I did my summer internship at a big energy company that had massive exposure to Lehman Bros' coal + gas trading arm. Job offer was rescinded the day AIG collapsed, and about 24 hours before Lehman went down.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#78

Post by saagarjha »

qqssccfftt wrote: post #39
SilasX wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I keep [dead] comments turned on and I thought that one was pretty reasonable so I was going to vouch for it but wasn't sure if there was some context I was missing. Your comment provides it.

[dead] by itself is a shadowban. [flagged] [dead] is not.

Note that [dead] itself is not necessarily a shadowban: an unpopular comment will show up like that too. To figure out if the user is shadownbanned you want to go to their profile and check if the account is new or has multiple [dead] but reasonable-looking comments.

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#79

Post by phillco »

minimaxir wrote: post #3

> Lyft is laying off 17 percent of its workforce and furloughing 5 percent. This is after an employment lawyer at the company accidentally invited much of the workforce to a weekend meeting called "Jetty" in what workers took to be a reference to jettisoning jobs. https://twitter.com/kateconger/status/1255526352813535232

Q: "Why does my company use the blandest possible codenames for everything?"

A:

Re: Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

#80

Post by ebg13 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #68
Uehreka wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I found out that a bunch of my coworkers had been laid off in a video meeting, I’d be bummed because they got laid off, but I’d understand that companies have to make hard decisions sometimes. If I learned that the accidentally visible filename of the PowerPoint in that meeting was “EjectorSeat.pptx”, I’d be some combination of angry and alarmed about management’s attitude. That would be a definite “update my resu…

>I think people reasonably expect that when a company makes a serious decision that affects hundreds of people’s livelihoods, that they effect a pretty somber tone. This case sounds like an unfortunate mistake, I’m sure they intended to present the material in a somber manner. That said, it begs the question on if what should be expected behind closed doors.

> This case sounds like an unfortunate mistake, I’m sure they intended to present the material in a somber manner.

The tone of the presentation is far less important than the tone in the minds of the people doing the presenting. You can present as somberly as you want, but if a laugh track is secretly playing inside their heads, they can fuck all the way off. Workers deserve actual compassion, not the facade of it.

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