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

wsj.com

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

#261

Post by YetAnotherNick »

jylam wrote: post #177
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?

Weird to put that on the employees if you ask me. It's not like there is exactly 13% of bad employees. Or 25% of bad employees but they decide to just fire 13% for some reason. To me, it seems quite evident, they need to reduce the spending for any reason, so they reduce the workforce. Nothing to do with useless employees. You can be shit at your job or very good, they will have a metric threshold telling them you ne…

GP said they have overhired, which is definitely bad managing, or that employee aren't productive, and if >5-10% employees are non-productive that is a managing or interviewing problem as well.

But saying it has nothing to do with employee is also not correct. If someone is signing up for a company that does not manage its finance sustainably, they should expect this. And company would only overpay if they aren't focusing on cost at that moment. So for all the folks who managed to double their CTC in COVID period should be prepared for this case.

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

#262

Post by dv_dt »

dv_dt wrote: post #210
jstx1 wrote: post #3

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

The conventional wisdom floating around financial news is that a recessionary period is/was expected lasting around a year. This is a way to smooth out gross revenues over that year as well as knock out some expectations on salary growth. That it all happens to be coordinated is an interesting thing to contemplate about self-fulfilling prophecy, or natural market reactions, or maybe spin wild conspiracy stories about…

*net not gross fyi

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

#263

Post by matwood »

jonathankoren wrote: post #190
matwood wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The .com crash was obvious it was going to happen, but when was the problem [1]. Companies were IPOing with no business model and no clear path to one. Imagine if the majority of the nasdaq was SPACs and crypto...yeah. I wish fuckedcompany.com was still around because it cataloged the implosion of the insanity. [1] The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

> I wish fuckedcompany.com was still around because it cataloged the implosion of the insanity. Kozmo was the GOAT in the dead pool. Blows my mind that Kozma's failed business model is back and bigger than ever, but with the same fundamental profitability problems.

Haha...I will always remember Flooz [1] as my personal 'WTF is going on'?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com

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

#264

Post by WillPostForFood »

jonathankoren wrote: post #190
matwood wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The .com crash was obvious it was going to happen, but when was the problem [1]. Companies were IPOing with no business model and no clear path to one. Imagine if the majority of the nasdaq was SPACs and crypto...yeah. I wish fuckedcompany.com was still around because it cataloged the implosion of the insanity. [1] The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

> I wish fuckedcompany.com was still around because it cataloged the implosion of the insanity. Kozmo was the GOAT in the dead pool. Blows my mind that Kozma's failed business model is back and bigger than ever, but with the same fundamental profitability problems.

Amazon Prime is Kozmo with a profitable version of the business model.

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

#265

Post by janeerie »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #113
jeffbee wrote: post #37

Although I do think an industry downturn is here/coming, I don't think Lyft is part of the trend. Lyft, specifically, is just a bad company. It has never made an annual profit, will never make an annual profit, and is gravely overstaffed for its operations. Liabilities are approaching assets on the balance sheet. They have to cut somewhere. They already shed their useless little autonomous driving division, and I exp…

I believe the bike-share is their most profitable division. Would it make sense to spin that off? It has a de facto monopoly in many markets it operates in

The one specific person I saw that was laid off today was in their bike-share division, so it apparently is involved in the layoffs.

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

#266

Post by spacemadness »

jasonlotito wrote: post #97
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?

> 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 bet the people who hired them get to keep their jobs despite failing to a) hire useful people or b) competent people that can work on useful projects and c) burning cash while d) not turning a profit because e) they are just a gambling mechanism for investors.

I absolutely will never conduct interviews for a company again if I’m going to be punished depending on how they work out. Some people interview well and their behavior on the job does not match what you expected due to a large number of reasons from team fit to personal issues.

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

#267

Post by watwut »

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.

I knew an utterly useless guy. He was good at making impression of a good programmer - read right blogs and had correct opinions. Probably reads HN and definitely knows all the fads.

It is just that, he never produced anything. I worked with him twice. They moved him between teams and both times he got absurd amount of benefit of doubt (one of the companies was firing people quickly, but not him). Anyway based on what I heard, he did nothing whole his career.

But like, he was definitely not a norm.

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

#268

Post by bombcar »

datalopers wrote: post #205
pc86 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 minutes to press a button twice? I'll do it in 4.

I like that you only went for 4 minutes, giving yourself ample room to demonstrate continued improvement in the future

Under promise and over deliver!

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

#269

Post by bombcar »

matwood wrote: post #263
jonathankoren wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish fuckedcompany.com was still around because it cataloged the implosion of the insanity. Kozmo was the GOAT in the dead pool. Blows my mind that Kozma's failed business model is back and bigger than ever, but with the same fundamental profitability problems.

Haha...I will always remember Flooz [1] as my personal 'WTF is going on'? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flooz.com

They were missing a blockchain!

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

#270

Post by BitwiseFool »

bombcar wrote: post #54
onion2k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hope my colleagues aren't reading this and looking at me.

If you don't know who the useless colleague is, it's probably you! Not entirely true, but I think most people can (if they're being honest) get 70% or more correct when guessing who will be laid off. The only wildcard usually is when entire teams are let go, and sometimes those are predictable, sometimes surprising.

>" If you don't know who the useless colleague is, it's probably you!"

My problem is that I have an almost crippling sense of impostor syndrome and I undervalue my contributions constantly. I don't feel entirely useless, but I do feel like an under-performer - despite probably being an average developer in my cohort.

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