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Uber is laying off 10% of staff

uber.com

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Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#11

Post by etse »

sznio wrote: post #4
Artgor wrote: post #2

"In Pulse surveys and conversations with many of you, we’ve heard that too much work requires coordination across teams, debates take too long, and decision-making rights are unclear. I’m sure many of you have felt that you spend too much time “aligning” rather than building, shipping, or serving customers. To improve this, we have reduced roles primarily focused on coordination, and have clarified the remit of the c…

I don't get it. Too much time is spent coordinating, so fire those who are responsible for coordination? Am I reading this wrong?

That's how I read it, too.

They pinpointed the problem of over-coordination to the messenger (coordinator) instead of the teams demanding final approval over launches (coordination).

Won't merging different teams under a single owner only push the problem further down the org chart?

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#13

Post by zamalek »

1attice wrote: post #5

Interesting -- it doesn't cite AI (smart comms move, and a change from recent practice) but the buried lede is that this frees up resources etc etc. I think we might be in a new phase: AI layoffs are now being disguised as regular layoffs (rather than the other way around) because of the backlash.

Uber was one of the first to admit that AI isn't all it's hyped up to be.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#14

Post by jms703 »

Artgor wrote: post #2

"In Pulse surveys and conversations with many of you, we’ve heard that too much work requires coordination across teams, debates take too long, and decision-making rights are unclear. I’m sure many of you have felt that you spend too much time “aligning” rather than building, shipping, or serving customers. To improve this, we have reduced roles primarily focused on coordination, and have clarified the remit of the c…

So TPMs are getting the axe? Product managers too?

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#15

Post by MattGaiser »

sznio wrote: post #4
Artgor wrote: post #2

"In Pulse surveys and conversations with many of you, we’ve heard that too much work requires coordination across teams, debates take too long, and decision-making rights are unclear. I’m sure many of you have felt that you spend too much time “aligning” rather than building, shipping, or serving customers. To improve this, we have reduced roles primarily focused on coordination, and have clarified the remit of the c…

I don't get it. Too much time is spent coordinating, so fire those who are responsible for coordination? Am I reading this wrong?

The coordinators enable extra coordination that is not worth doing. The coordination itself is the problem.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#16

Post by RestlessMind »

garbawarb wrote: post #3

> We are also asking the vast majority of remote employees to move to an office, and going forward, only ~1% of employees will be remote. If you believe in return-to-office as a soft layoff, even more than 10% will be leaving.

“ The benefits of sitting together, collaborating in person, and solving problems as a team are clearer than ever in our post-Covid world.”

100%. Speaking only for myself, I was fully remote for a few years and that was a miserable experience. Now everyone is mandated to be in office 3 days a week and that works better for me. Uber is going one step further and structuring teams to be colocated with their manager. That solves the problem of team members distributed across multiple offices, which is still a real pain point in the hybrid model.

I know some people who strictly prefer fully remote setup. Over time, I think companies and employees will self sort themselves into those who prefer office vs those who prefer remote. That should work out for most of us.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#17

Post by [deleted] »

jerjerjer wrote: post #7
sznio wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. Too much time is spent coordinating, so fire those who are responsible for coordination? Am I reading this wrong?

People whose primary job is to "coordinate" often, either in a well-meaning attempt to be thorough or just to be relevant, try to pull as many different people into any decision-making as possible. So instead of me just getting approval from my manager, I need to get approval/buy-in from departments A, B, and C. In that case, firing the "coordinator" person increases velocity because parts of the business processes t…

[deleted]

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#18

Post by threetonesun »

Artgor wrote: post #2

"In Pulse surveys and conversations with many of you, we’ve heard that too much work requires coordination across teams, debates take too long, and decision-making rights are unclear. I’m sure many of you have felt that you spend too much time “aligning” rather than building, shipping, or serving customers. To improve this, we have reduced roles primarily focused on coordination, and have clarified the remit of the c…

I've heard this at other companies and it's almost always an issue of upper management holding too much control over decision making, or poorly communicating actual business objects, but it's project managers and middle management that will bear the brunt of the layoffs.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#20

Post by spike021 »

garbawarb wrote: post #3

> We are also asking the vast majority of remote employees to move to an office, and going forward, only ~1% of employees will be remote. If you believe in return-to-office as a soft layoff, even more than 10% will be leaving.

That's a nice idea but how many of those people will wind up at a job that doesn't require RTO? I was applying quite a bit back in April and many places that previously had decently-hard stances on allowing WFH now stated RTO as a requirement.
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