one thing, I don't understand about these companies is why base your locations in super expensive cities i.e NY, SF, Seattle. And be hurting for cash. if lyft had focused on recruiting in low cost of living cities for decent engineers. & have a good remote program. they wouldn't be hurting for cash atm.
Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
61–70 of 110 posts
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#62Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#63I'd be curious to know if you signed a contract already? If you signed a contract pre-cut you could technically sue (not sure if it would help but it's always an option), but if you still haven't signed a contract then this is a lesson to always have a back up plan and make sure you don't take anything for granted until that contract is signed.
Given the state of the courts right now, you'd likely be months away from any action being taken.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it would be smarter to not have an internship program right now. Very little of the work from internships contributes to active product roadmap, and you'd better be served by retention than new hiring. Especially of junior engineers. Although it's a generalization, interns are as a group probably better equipped to handle sudden loss of salary. Those with children, mortgages, and healthcare needs are less so.…
It seems as if they want to cancel, but put the onus on interns to make the proper decision. If you were negotiating a job offer, and right as it came time to sign the paperwork, would you take a 50% salary cut? You'd move on to the next company.
In our case, we already signed our offers (and most of us turned down many other Big N offers). It makes me wonder about the future of hiring; both sides (talent and employers) will certainly be more selective and wary going forward.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I seem to recall that Lyft had some of the most insanely overpaid listings in the SF area in terms of raw compensation - maybe shave 3% off those salaries above 200k instead of half what the interns make. Edit, found it: https://www.levels.fyi/2019/
I find these “total compensation” member-measurement rankings very misleading because much of these reported sums is actually in stock. Someone who was hired by Lyft in 2019 got RSUs at double today’s stock price. A quarter or more of their total compensation has vanished. Going the other way, someone who joined Amazon in 2017 got stock at 1/3rd of today’s price. Their total compensation has probably doubled as a res…
Breakdowns are available on the rest of our site (check out http://levels.fyi/comp.html). We just used total packages for our end of the year report to deliver more focus to the totals since that's the main objective of using a median value (ie the median total package isn't guaranteed to reflect the middle stock package or median base salary. That said, total compensation is what candidates look at when switching companies and what recruiters have to match if they really want to attract a candidate. This along with the bull run stock market is what has led to such an increase in comp over last few years.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#66Look I'll be blunt: you handle this by being grateful. The alternative is that you could be without a job and a paycheck and struggling to figure out how to pay your bills. I live in Nashville. We got hit with a devastating tornado at the start of March that put a good number of people out of work followed by the safer at home order that increased the number of people out of work. Some of those people live in the same apartment I do and I see them struggling with how they will pay for things.
You have a job, you have a paycheck and it sounds like you are remote so you get to work from hopefully a lower cost of living area. Save your money, sign up for You Need A Budget and learn where and how you can cut costs.
This probably won't be the last time something like this happens. So instead of throwing a pity party, do the things needed to make this a non event. Things like living in a lower cost of living area, cutting your expenses, having a robust and resilient emergency fund and be grateful you still have a job while millions have no idea when they will go back to work or how they are going to pay their bills.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think it’s going to be tough to support yourself on 50% of what Lyft was offering, wait until you run the numbers on a $0 income.
I'm not sure what internships at Lyft pay, but their headquarters is in the bay area. After a 50% cut, they may come out ahead having $0 income compared to paying rent in their college town and the bay area, higher cost of living, and moving expenses (if not already covered). This is particularly true for non-programming roles which pay less. It's possible Lyft covers housing separate from salaries. I had 4 internshi…
It looks like Lyft is making the internship remote as well (from other posts on this thread), so cost-of-living in SF is not a factor.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#68I'd be curious to know if you signed a contract already? If you signed a contract pre-cut you could technically sue (not sure if it would help but it's always an option), but if you still haven't signed a contract then this is a lesson to always have a back up plan and make sure you don't take anything for granted until that contract is signed.
I remember reading my offer and there was a line that goes like this "only the CEO has the power to sign contract". and everybody else's offer are "at-will".
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#69For the sake of comparison, $4,800/month (mentioned by another commenter) is $57,600 extrapolated to a full year, or 1.7x the median US salary. That's the median for all US workers, so it includes mid-career professionals, not just college students. There are people as smart and capable as you making less than $15/hour all across the country - and, for that matter, people who got laid off from those $15/hour jobs and didn't send their rent checks today. Have some perspective, be grateful that you're in such a fortunate position to begin with, and recognize this setback as the minor speedbump that it is.
Re: Lyft cuts internship salaries by 50%
#70Sorry to hear that. That's an interesting choice to make on Lyft's part, to cut duration and salary rather than cancel entirely. For the interns, I hope there's enough structure and guidance to make it worthwhile.
I had an internship cancelled a few years ago, in 2017. Etsy replaced their CEO and laid off a large portion of their employees, and cancelled our internships along the way. The message to us was along the lines of, "It's not about the money; it's going to be chaotic around here for a little while, and it wouldn't be a good or useful experience as an intern." And they backed it up by paying out a stipend of a significant fraction of what the entire summer's pay would have been, which they really didn't have to do. At that time there was a bit of a scramble, but within a couple weeks all of us would-be interns got picked up by other companies, and looking back, this unlucky turn of events completely changed the course of my career, as I ended up interning with the SRE team at Squarespace and discovering a new world.
I really respect Etsy in making the tough call at the time to cancel outright (and pay a stipend) instead of dragging things on. But of course, in today's environment where all companies are affected instead of just one, it seems much less likely that Lyft's interns would be able to find other internships. So maybe this halfway measure will work out better.
Best of luck to the Lyft interns and their mentors - hopefully you can make the best of an unfortunate situation.