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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

#231

Post by dmitrygr »

mabbo wrote: post #178
jstx1 wrote: post #3

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

An interesting time, imho. The costs to explore a startup are pretty low these days. You can live anywhere (move somewhere with relative low COL), you can develop just about anything cheaply (open source, plus easy frameworks). You can work with like-minded people all over the world easily (remote work for '20-'21 made big inroads in that department). And we may suddenly have a few tens of thousands of talented devel…

> or maybe they'll join one where they get paid mostly in equity.

Yup, most people who lost their jobs and are wondering how to feed their families will definitely pick to to not be paid for even longer...

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

#232

Post by boredtofears »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #224
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?

I literally cannot name a single person like this in my entire career. Yes, less than ideal performs, but nobody that's utterly useless or spending all day on side projects.

Same here until my most recent job that I took just this year. The amount of brain waste is staggering.

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

#233

Post by ethbr0 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #141
UncleOxidant wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current environment has a similar feeling to the early part of the dot com bubble-burst. In that early part of the burst we had the feeling that it could get bad, but we also were sort of deluding ourselves into thinking that it wouldn't be that bad. ...also HN today kind of looking like fuckedcompany[1] back in those days. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company

I agree that there are similarities, but many of the web businesses these days are legit with happy customers. The challenge seems to be more widespread across the economy and there are a few not-so-black-swan-anymore looking things on the horizon (e.g., a Sino war) that could dramatically change the picture for the whole industry. My take away is that we may have a mild recession, but the likelihood of a massive rec…

Exactly. One of the central features of the dot-com bubble were that stupid (as in never-gonna-work / Silicon Valley-the-series) companies were getting massive amounts of funding.

Then, it was because {value} = {idea} + {Internet}.

Except nobody knew how much value the {Internet} part added, because the Internet wasn't done solidifying in terms of capability (e.g. "AJAX? What's that?") or connectivity (PocketPC!).

Now, the Internet is a pretty well-known quantity.

So while Uber and Lyft and Masayoshi Son's portfolio might be massively overvaluing things, the fundamental nature is well understood.

Some stupid companies will die, but there are lots of companies making actual money doing actually useful things.

And the primary casualties of the dot-com bust are all so consolidated that the tools-impact will likely be lesser too. Amazon/MS/Google aren't going to go bankrupt over softer cloud demand.

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

#234

Post by gryBrd1987 »

vecter wrote: post #102
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?

There's no way that they planned a layoff within a week. They take much longer to plan and execute.

There’s no way these people chat in a Signal chat group?

It’s funny how people on a technology forum discount other normal humans also using technology

I mean Musk’s Twitter texts just revealed they do exactly that.

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

#236

Post by nemo44x »

suzzer99 wrote: post #85
ryandrake wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just feels like the psychology behind a bank run. 1. Convince people their bank is in trouble. 2. They withdraw all their money. 3. Now the bank really is in trouble. Or 1. Convince people stocks are going to go down. 2. Mass sell-off. 3. Now stocks really are going down. I think this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy where business leaders convinced themselves a slowdown is coming, causing them to take actions t…

Or - stocks have been ridiculously overvalued for a while now and are just coming back to earth somewhat. https://www.longtermtrends.net/market-cap-to-gdp-the-buffett... I'm not saying I know that's what's happening. But I wouldn't be surprised.

Stocks were valued mainly pretty good when you consider interest rates. As rates go up then the expected return on stocks needs to change (we expect more return on them) so the prices fall. For instance, a dividend paying stock will see its price fall when interest rates increase because the dividend yield is a percentage of the stock price. When interest rates are low the yield can be low which means the price of the underlying stock is high. Until their profits catch up with the new reality the stock price will remain lower.

As for high flying tech (cloud, etc) - yeah, probably too much speculation there.

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

#237

Post by im-a-baby »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #163
im-a-baby wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using analogies is always dangerous because they're never going to be a perfect fit. But the difference between your engine analogy and the federal reserve's actions is that anemic economic growth and high unemployment is not a side effect. In your engine analogy, adding more gas and air into the engine increases the amount combustion. It's the combustion that increases speed, so in a sense increase combustion is a g…

> amount of economic activity and the amount of available labor are what drive prices The relationship is sufficiently complex to permit e.g. falling unemployment, falling (not negative) wage growth, falling (including negative) growth and falling inflation. It's not a deterministic system. > in a sense increase combustion is a goal No, it's not, because the goal--reaching the destination quickly--would be accomplish…

Look, I agree that theoretically it’s possible to lower inflation while keeping unemployment low. But the Fed is looking for a causal effect. They want higher unemployment because that will balance the labor supply and reduce wage growth. That’s what the Fed has said. The fact that they’re looking for a causal effect in raising unemployment means the engine analogy is not valid. There is no causal relationship between engine temperature and speed.

I think you’re falling for the no true Scotsman fallacy. We started this conversation talking about whether or not the Fed’s goal is higher unemployment. I presented an argument, in the Fed’s own words, that they plan on lowering inflation by weakening the labor pool. And your response is “that’s not really a goal.” I disagree and, and I don’t see a productive way forward for this conversation. At the very least, you should accept that this is a valid interpretation of the Fed’s own words, and not just some conspiracy theory being peddled.

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

#238

Post by jonny_eh »

papercrane wrote: post #227
ulchar wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would "insourced" mean exactly? Cheap remote domestic hires?

Unless it's taken on a new meaning, insourcing is just the opposite of outsourcing, i.e. using the companies own workforce and resources for a project.

That doesn't sound that scary.

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

#239

Post by bluepizza »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #228
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.

An organization with no slack can’t respond to emergencies in an effective way.

Excellent point. This adds a different dimension to the situation, for sure. I can see that the slower crowd would keep the boat afloat while the high performers go and solve the pressing issues. I have seen it happen a couple of times. Still seems a bit wasteful to have half of a team essentially parked.

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

#240

Post by booi »

papercrane wrote: post #227
ulchar wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would "insourced" mean exactly? Cheap remote domestic hires?

Unless it's taken on a new meaning, insourcing is just the opposite of outsourcing, i.e. using the companies own workforce and resources for a project.

That’s just called a job
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