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Lyft lays off 17% of workforce, furloughs hundreds more

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

#101

Post by eastbayjake »

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

Isn't a "jetty" a defensive barrier to protect a harbor against storm tides? Dumb move to accidentally invite everyone to a meeting with a codename, but not a dumb codename as you protect a company from a storm.

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

#102

Post by justapassenger »

stephencoyner wrote: post #19

This seems like a great time for Amazon or Google to buy Lyft. Amazon could bundle rides with package deliveries and get the pre-existing driver and passenger network from Lyft. Lyft was actually telling drivers to work with Amazon when the pandemic started (1). Waymo could take Lyft’s aggregated rider demand. They already have a partnership to transfer autonomous rides from Waymo to Lyft during bad weather situation…

> This seems like a great time for Amazon or Google to buy Lyft.

Why? It's a low-margin, money losing business. On top of that it's operating in a space with a lot of legal risks, regulations and competition.

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

#103

Post by netcan »

stephencoyner wrote: post #19

This seems like a great time for Amazon or Google to buy Lyft. Amazon could bundle rides with package deliveries and get the pre-existing driver and passenger network from Lyft. Lyft was actually telling drivers to work with Amazon when the pandemic started (1). Waymo could take Lyft’s aggregated rider demand. They already have a partnership to transfer autonomous rides from Waymo to Lyft during bad weather situation…

a great time for Amazon or Google to buy Lyft

...What would they do with it? The business model (also uber) as-is makes a loss.

Uber/Lyft's initial proposition was that once ride sharing incumbents were established, they'd have a software-ish monopoly and margins. This did not work out. Now the proposition is "When driverless cars get invented..."

If google had a car that can drive itself, they can figure out an app. They can get to a customer base. The driverless car is the important part.

Amazon otoh... deliveries maybe? If they could figure out a way to do deliveries in a lyft/uber model... that's valuable to amazon.

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

#104

Post by tibbydudeza »

eastbayjake wrote: post #101
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

Isn't a "jetty" a defensive barrier to protect a harbor against storm tides? Dumb move to accidentally invite everyone to a meeting with a codename, but not a dumb codename as you protect a company from a storm.

I think it meant Jettison (throw or drop (something) from an aircraft or ship).

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

#105

Post by zamadatix »

elliekelly wrote: post #72
tomp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Some…

Not when it's 22% of the company. After about 30 minutes in EVERYONE is aware people are getting calls about losing their job and spend their day hearing a trickle of rumors on who just got the call and wondering if their phone is going to be the one to ring next. I've yet to see something like this go down better than making it clear up front (e.g. mass meeting) and come out all at once then having the managers follow up after.

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

#106

Post by SilasX »

eastbayjake wrote: post #101
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

Isn't a "jetty" a defensive barrier to protect a harbor against storm tides? Dumb move to accidentally invite everyone to a meeting with a codename, but not a dumb codename as you protect a company from a storm.

Not to get too far on this tangent, but, for me, "jetty" doesn't evoke "jettison" but either:

1) Those little docks like in Venice (cf. "Let me off at this jetty" in The Last Crusade).

2) The jetty server library that Jenkins uses which shows up in error messages.

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

#107

Post by yaktubi »

eastbayjake wrote: post #101
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

Isn't a "jetty" a defensive barrier to protect a harbor against storm tides? Dumb move to accidentally invite everyone to a meeting with a codename, but not a dumb codename as you protect a company from a storm.

They are referring to the George Jetson maneuverability

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

#108

Post by Frost1x »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #97
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

I'm sure the current economic situation plays a role in the decision to layoff. But, i wonder, in general, if all these layoffs are to some degree something overdue that companies wanted to do anyways and are now just taking the opportunity to do it whilst still saving face.

This entire situation is going to allow for a lot of, arguably, necessary house cleaning.

I think you're also going to see management at surviving businesses exploit the downturn to their advantage. Lots of rationalization as to why you won't see raises, why you'll need to work more to pick up the slack, lots of "be greatful" (there's some validity here), lots of pay/hour cuts, etc. that will likely perpetuate long after the crisis has rebounded and balance sheets are in the green again. Its funny how quickly businesses react to cut costs but are slow to react to shore up their current employees.

You're also going to see employers who lay-off yet justify continual hiring in this marketplace. Businesses will try to capture high quality labor talent at reduced costs (due to competition) and lock in those rates for awhile (hoping some will stay and be happy with modest raises on their significantly reduced labor rates).

One place I work with, management claims everything is fine and they've locked down all non-essential hiring, but I keep active monitoring on popular labor marketplaces for them and see continual updated advertising, even after they've claimed to stop hiring. Some of it's automated but I know for a fact a few places manually renewed listings intentionally. They're not locking hiring, they're looking for discounts right now because they know they're financially solid and will weather this storm just fine.

I love many aspects of technology but am really growing to hate industry practices to the point of looking at career changes.

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

#109

Post by justapassenger »

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?

> Uber/airbnb/lyft were considered in the same tier as facebook/google before corona

So was wework by many. Facebook/google cannot be more different from uber/airbnb/lyft.

FB/G are in high margin business, operating largely in virtual space, where scaling to new markets has low marginal costs.

Uber/airbnb/lyft are in historically low margin, capital intensive space, where scaling to new markets has very high marginal costs. Same as wework is an office rental with an app, so is uber, a taxi with an app. App part is cool, and gives them meaningful advantage, but it's still a taxi business, and they were not able to change that.

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

#110

Post by earthtourist »

eastbayjake wrote: post #101
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

Isn't a "jetty" a defensive barrier to protect a harbor against storm tides? Dumb move to accidentally invite everyone to a meeting with a codename, but not a dumb codename as you protect a company from a storm.

IIRC this is why the U.S. military (in certain cases?) uses a pre-generated list of code names. If you let humans do the code names, they'll choose names that leak info.
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