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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

#361

Post by justinzollars »

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…

I totally agree with this perspective: salaries will go down, the number of jobs will decrease.

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

#362

Post by cactus2093 »

Shivetya wrote: post #304
mikepurvis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interesting piece in this week's Atlantic on the motivation for having states declare bankruptcy: "Under the Constitution, bankruptcy is a power entirely reserved to the federal government. An American bankruptcy is overseen in federal court, by a federal judge, according to federal law. That’s why federal law can allow U.S. cities to go bankrupt, as many have done over the years. That’s why the financia…

His unwillingness to not solve the state's pension problems should be applauded. the amount of unfunded liabilities is in the hundreds of billions of dollars and approaching a trillion if it has not passed that already. This all happened because the number of public servants who are pulling in over 100k has skyrocketed... 100k+ in retirement.. with millions past 50k! Think about that 50k in pay plus medical. These pe…

To be fair, in SF for example the median income is $96,000. And I think that's take-home salary, so the median cost to the employer with benefits is well over $100k. It doesn't seem at all unreasonable that important city workers should make at least the area median wage. Having all of the local government employees be the lowest paid people in the city doesn't seem like a good thing.

It is also kind of shocking to see how many employees actually work for city and state governments. And of course government workers have a strong reputation for not being incentivized to work very hard or do more than the bare minimum. I would think the bigger opportunity would be to reduce the size of local government payroll rather than lower everyone's salaries.

Related thought - I wonder, why aren't city and state governments more at the forefront of automating menial work away, given the perpetual costs of each worker on the pension system? It seems they'd have a lot to gain from it.

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

#363

Post by kortilla »

cleandreams wrote: post #291
bilbo0s wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, right now there seems to be a disturbing pattern of the world falling apart at the end of every GOP administration. This is problematic, because we still need the GOP so that we can vote out democrats when they mismanage the nation's affairs. We can't have one party, that's not safe for us as the citizenry for obvious reasons. At the same time, we can't have this, "the world ends", at the end of every G…

Single party rule in California has been an improvement. We have a functioning government. Kinda helps in a pandemic. When we got rid of our last Republican governor we paid down our debt and California entered this dire period with a big reserve. The notion that some sort of optimal condition is reached by trashing government is just a clueless and stupid idea.

California has gotten significantly worse over the last 10 years or so for residents though, even if some debt has been paid off.

Rent control, nimbyism, etc all backed by the current government have made the housing market a hellscape. Nothing has been done to address the education system and huge pension liabilities either.

The issue with Democrats in charge without any meaningful opposition is that none of the Democratic radioactive stuff gets touched (excessive regulation, entitlements, etc).

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

#364

Post by jshevek »

mikepurvis wrote: post #357
jshevek wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Less gets done means the country gets worse and people get more radicalized trying to improve things. This opinion requires a great deal of justification.

Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now? The government has basically been in gridlock since 2010, and voters have increasingly rewarded extreme policians who seek to shift the overton window over compromise politicians who work across party lines to find a middle ground. The book American Carnage is a fantastic deep dive on this (and extremely fair and even-handed, despite the bombastic title).

>Isn't that exactly what we're seeing now?

If "that" is the cause-effect relationship claimed above, no we are not "seeing" this right now. There is a huge difference between events and the narratives, accurate or otherwise, which some people use to explain those events. The system under consideration is insanely complex, with an immense list of causal factors at play. To me, in my opinion, it's obvious that the causal relationship described above is at best a tiny contributor that is, itself, dependent on other factors also being present. At worst, it's completely wrong and a distraction from understanding the real causes.

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

#365

Post by bsder »

sojournerc wrote: post #345
bsder wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't have one party, that's not safe for us as the citizenry for obvious reasons. Why not? If one party doesn't actually want to govern, kill it. In addition, the Democrats are hardly a unified bloc. And, if the Democrats, themselves, split into 2 parties because they have buried the Republicans, that would solve your problem, no? California is your counterexample. Excising the Republican party like a tumor mad…

Just wow. Hope your dictators benevolent. Just as our legal system is adversarial, where two "teams" enter a court to at least attempt justice, it seems crucial to a successful political system that there be a dialectic between opposing views, hoping compromise benefits the whole. Comments such as this, dismissing a huge portion of fellow citizens out of hand, without so much as recognizing that "they" might be tryin…

> Comments such as this, dismissing a huge portion of fellow citizens out of hand, without so much as recognizing that "they" might be trying to do what's best in their eyes is so far from a democratic ideal...

Explain to me what I'm supposed to do with people who wear "Better Russian than Democrat" t-shirts or my father-in-law who literally said "Her views are everything I want, but I can't vote for her because she's with the Democrats."

That kind of stuff is not anti-Democratic party--it is anti-Democracy.

> Just wow. Hope your dictators benevolent.

Sorry, I'm pretty comfortable burying a party that is anti-Democracy.

However, it turns out that the California jungle primary gives the opposing party more power because it often gets to be the king-maker between the two Democratic candidates rather than simply getting ignored because one candidate won the primary and now can roll over the general election.

So, that actually approximates your dialectic as opposed to mouthing it and never compromising. Unlike the Republicans, Democrats don't seek to silence the opposing party. But, yeah, the jungle primary is going to do a good job of removing the wing nuts from both parties from the conversation.

I consider that a feature and not a bug.

I suggest some further research.

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

#366

Post by JustSomeNobody »

mikepurvis wrote: post #165
wonderwonder wrote: post #121

Layoffs are mounting, alternative work is limited, and the unemployment systems in many states are either broken or running out of funding. Add the federal governments indicated desire to let blue states go bankrupt and we are looking at a good combination to enter a depression. Its a pretty sobering time.

There was an interesting piece in this week's Atlantic on the motivation for having states declare bankruptcy: "Under the Constitution, bankruptcy is a power entirely reserved to the federal government. An American bankruptcy is overseen in federal court, by a federal judge, according to federal law. That’s why federal law can allow U.S. cities to go bankrupt, as many have done over the years. That’s why the financia…

I don't understand how someone can love their political party as much as Mitch McConnell does. It's party before all else. I don't get it. At all.

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

#367

Post by oarabbus_ »

lacker wrote: post #222
Loughla wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real questions. I'm not a history buff. Has there ever been a time in US history that the federal government has been so openly antagonistic and overtly willing to attack opposite-party state governments? If so, what were the outcomes? If not, is there anything even close? Current question - what is the endgame for those who what blue states to go bankrupt? What do they get if that happens, outside of talking points?…

Well yes - there was a civil war! And more recently, the national guard was used to enforce school integration. Things have been much more antagonistic between the federal government and the states at times in the past.

>Well yes - there was a civil war!

Hah, this really puts it into perspective. Despite how bad things are now, it's not 1865.

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

#368

Post by Gibbon1 »

kortilla wrote: post #363
cleandreams wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single party rule in California has been an improvement. We have a functioning government. Kinda helps in a pandemic. When we got rid of our last Republican governor we paid down our debt and California entered this dire period with a big reserve. The notion that some sort of optimal condition is reached by trashing government is just a clueless and stupid idea.

California has gotten significantly worse over the last 10 years or so for residents though, even if some debt has been paid off. Rent control, nimbyism, etc all backed by the current government have made the housing market a hellscape. Nothing has been done to address the education system and huge pension liabilities either. The issue with Democrats in charge without any meaningful opposition is that none of the Dem…

> Rent control, nimbyism, etc all backed by the current government have made the housing market a hellscape.

The question is if California is soooo bad. Why are smart, intelligent people coming here? Why does capital still invest here?

Part of the answer is other places in the US are slowly failing. So many of the problems have to due with California serving as a refuge from failed economic and social policy in other states and countries.

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

#369

Post by jonny_eh »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #366
mikepurvis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an interesting piece in this week's Atlantic on the motivation for having states declare bankruptcy: "Under the Constitution, bankruptcy is a power entirely reserved to the federal government. An American bankruptcy is overseen in federal court, by a federal judge, according to federal law. That’s why federal law can allow U.S. cities to go bankrupt, as many have done over the years. That’s why the financia…

I don't understand how someone can love their political party as much as Mitch McConnell does. It's party before all else. I don't get it. At all.

It's a strategy/ideology he's been rewarded for following?

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

#370

Post by chrisseaton »

mbrameld wrote: post #353
chrisseaton wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really sure why you're so worked up about this? I thought a 401(k) was a pension, since it pays you money when you retire, which is what a pension is to me. I went looking it up on Wikipedia which said it was as well. Can you see how I'd think it was a pension? > If you need help defining the words in that section let me know Well I must not understand the word 'pension' then, because it says multiple times that…

I'm happy to explain. Let's start with the fundamentals: Do you understand that the meaning of a word is dependent on its context?

I think you're deliberately trolling me so I'm not going to keep responding.
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