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Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

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Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#191

Post by kerbs »

somenameforme wrote: post #144
kerbs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was young too, but I think the .com bust was far more obvious than the housing crash which snuck up on a lot of people.

I would argue that this is not because it was difficult to see coming, but because most people have a bias that makes it difficult for them to imagine something that's "normal" abruptly coming to an end. This was the era of "I got a loan for this house in 10 minutes. I added granite counter tops, mopped the floor, and sold it for a $20k profit in 9 days." type shows. TV is TV, but that was genuinely happening. The ma…

The part of the housing crash that I was inferring was hidden to most was how deep the credit markets were tied up in housing, to the point where a housing bust meant banks collapsed and all money was frozen.

I was young(ish) at the time, but I imagine some knew housing wasn't sustainable. I'm not sure there were many outside the stars of The Big Short quite knew how vulnerable the entire banking system was because of housing before it all came down.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#192

Post by gamblor956 »

xeromal wrote: post #134
bryanlarsen wrote: post #43

Tesla was one of the first big tech companies to start this cycle, announcing a 10% layoff in June. Now they're hiring at a rapid clip. https://insideevs.com/news/617007/tesla-hiring-boost-after-l...

Didn't they layoff a lot of labelers after they felt confident in their auto labeling?

Incidentally, those layoffs were shortly followed by a huge increase in the number of reported FSD incidents...

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#193

Post by fny »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #43

Tesla was one of the first big tech companies to start this cycle, announcing a 10% layoff in June. Now they're hiring at a rapid clip. https://insideevs.com/news/617007/tesla-hiring-boost-after-l...

This is all pretty standard culling. They're just trying to scare people into recession think (i.e. don't try to negotiate a raise) and rehire cheaper outsourced or--get ready for this buzz word--"insourced" labor.

Remember, the big tech cos also increased their work force sizes dramatically during COVID, so a more aggressive reduction push is understandable.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#194

Post by bluepizza »

pc86 wrote: post #188
bluepizza wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish you were right. Unfortunately, most tech companies have some decent amount of people coasting at the lowest level of effort. My current team has 6 people. 3 are delivering at normal levels, but the other 3 complete one task per week at most. And those are tasks that take a couple of hours at most. This is happening everywhere, and is a clear consequence of overhiring.

How is it a natural consequence of overhiring that 50% of your team will work 4 hours/week?

Too many people for too little task queue. Engineering managers are more than happy to hold on to headcount to justify their own existence.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#195

Post by cvhashim04 »

bluedino wrote: post #179
datalopers wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these companies have vastly overhired. Think of your own peers and colleagues. How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV?

Back in the 90's my step-father worked in a factory, and he and his buddies always joked about a guy there that never did a single lick of work. He took a VHS camcorder in one day, and recorded the guy flipping a piece of metal over on a table a couple times, then moving the piece of metal to a new table. Repeating this over and over throughout a 10/12 hour day.

Your dad should mind his own business rather than worry about someone else’s pockets and/or the work they’re doing.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#196

Post by kerbs »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #95
kerbs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was young too, but I think the .com bust was far more obvious than the housing crash which snuck up on a lot of people.

The housing crash was obvious - talk to anyone trying to buy a house in 2004 or even 2003. By 2005 or so I had friends that were getting cold called with offers of nodoc nodown interest only loans.

Was it obvious Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers would collapse? That Morgan Stanley would need a bailout?

The crisis with the housing criss wasn't that housing collapsed, it's that the world economy went along with it.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#197

Post by bryanlarsen »

gamblor956 wrote: post #192
xeromal wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't they layoff a lot of labelers after they felt confident in their auto labeling?

Incidentally, those layoffs were shortly followed by a huge increase in the number of reported FSD incidents...

That probably has a lot more to do with the massive expansion in the FSD beta pool.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#198

Post by nkjnlknlk »

dilyevsky wrote: post #167
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CS was already a popular bet among incoming college students, but the memory of the manic 2020-21 period have fuelled a vast flight of talent to CS majors, at least in my country. Everyone is convinced that the only way to make any real money fast is to learn how to code. The expectations are absurd - most expect to make doctor-tier salaries right after graduation (source: wife teaches at university). By 2024, the st…

> In short: downward pressure on programmer wages. Entry level programmers maybe - lets see how many can actually stick around past first midterm

People have been making these doomer claims since 00s to my memory and all that has been proven since then is we don't have enough software engineers.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#199

Post by forgotusername6 »

datalopers wrote: post #18
jstx1 wrote: post #3

Where are we heading if every company drop 10-20% of their staff?

All these companies have vastly overhired. Think of your own peers and colleagues. How many are a) utterly useless or b) competent but don't have anything to do so they spend time working on mostly pointless projects to improve their CV?

Not my experience at all. I work for a big company and we've been under staffed for basically as long as I can remember. The default position is not enough people to do what we need to do.

Re: Lyft to lay off about 700 employees in second round of job cuts

#200

Post by nkozyra »

dotnet00 wrote: post #63
tqi wrote: post #48

Did these companies accelerate planned layoffs because they figure Twitter layoffs on Friday would help take the spotlight off of them?

I doubt these are at all related to Twitter layoffs, we've been seeing announcements of layoffs from tech companies a few times a week for a few weeks now.

I think the point is about the timing of the announcement. I could see it landing a little softer when people are talking about the Twitter stuff.

On the other hand, big companies do this all the time and get a little bad press and then move on with their lives.

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