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Uber is laying off 10% of staff

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Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#61

Post by [deleted] »

missedthecue wrote: post #58
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the use of "decimated" is used approximately correctly in most cases, even if not precisely right. And it is a cool sounding word, and it's one word. "Orders of magnitude" is three words when one would do, it's used to sound sophisticated, and it's use is off by... an order of magnitude or so... in many cases

Hmm... Sometimes decimated is used in ways that are colloquially understandable but actually make no sense at all. For example, "Sadly, my team got decimated in the playoffs". That doesn't even make sense. 1/10th of the team lost the game? What?

[deleted]

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#62

Post by abhayaya »

Varelion wrote: post #45
abhayaya wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us know how we can help you progress further down your desired DSM-IV/DSM-5 diagnostic chain (as those of us in red team work in security generally bounce between 1-5 times in a proxy chain, there is a lot of room for great fiction with words. RIP Venezuela). Between IPv6, SOCKS4/SOCKS5 (missing one in the dryer? You have proxied), linked lists, IDA debugger, threads/pthreads, RPCs, IPCs, and the wide wild world…

Claude, de-schitzo this post.

Anthropic, please let my darling agent Blaise know that Varelion lacks a sense of humour and misses the point about how people who lack specialized vocabularies make a sludgey crazy mess out of LLMs that really only are meant to work in specialized environments and not interact with generalized ones. Please also give a short lesson on how the average individual believes they understand how technology works.

As for you, Claude, a gentle reminder to let Gemini let those thousands of confused tourists taking over Crete and Italy know, their odd converging won't bring back anything but probably heat stroke.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#63

Post by johnnyanmac »

spike021 wrote: post #20
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.

Depends on the person and their lifestyle and savings. I'm sure some well off single/DINK households can simply weather the recession while making a few concessions, waiting until the market shifts to an employee's market again.

But in the normal case, you are right. Google had extra rounds of layoffs because RTO didn't self-cull enough people. People know this isn't the market to make a stand in without significant leverage.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#64

Post by broknbottle »

missedthecue wrote: post #47
xingped wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how most any RTO-proponent always presents RTO as "well I'm glad you're back in the office with me because that's better for me". Ask most any WFH-proponent about going to the office and the answer will read like "do whatever works best for yourself, I prefer WFH myself, you can go to the office if you want". It's a very selfish mindset, really. If RTO-proponents cared about not imposing their will on others,…

Well what do you expect? Holing yourself up in your home is something you can do unilaterally. In-person team collaboration requires... well, collaboration. It's not a unilateral action so there isn't unilateral advice.

100%. The Linux kernel would have never grown and become so successful if it weren’t for everybody in the office all those years just collaborate-maxxxing … /s

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#65

Post by nosman »

missedthecue wrote: post #48
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #39

"Over the last 5+ years, Uber has grown by orders of magnitude, with our top line nearly tripling" Orders of magnitude.

I have noticed that "orders of magnitude" is getting the same colloquial treatment that has long-since happened to "decimated". That is, a departure in common parlance from the technical meaning of the word to one used to communicate a general description of largeness.

That and when people use "exponential" to mean big.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#66

Post by mncharity »

danielmarkbruce wrote: post #41
techgnosis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't say "Uber has grown by orders of magnitude" == "top line nearly tripling" They are two separate statements. Maybe some portions of Uber did grow exponentially. Riders, revenue, miles travelled, etc... He also wants you to know that as part of that exponential growth, top line nearly tripled.

You can't give a concrete and nonsensical way Uber has grown 100x (minimum number of "orders") while revenue tripled. Cannot be miles. Can't be riders. Can't be drivers. Revenue is top line, by definition. This statement is as bad as the original. There is no need for hyperbolic statements that one doesn't even understand. "Uber has grown significantly" works. Why the need to sound so sophisticated and use terms like…

> has grown 100x (minimum number of "orders")

Two orders of magnitude is 31.6 to 316 (10^1.5 to 10^2.5), so 32x would be sufficient.

Most Uber 5-year growth numbers seem less than 3x. Steelmanning, some programs seem new in 2021 (Uber One, autonomous driving), and thus might have grown more dramatically as they spun up.

But yes, eep. Maybe misuse will, by getting more exposure for the term, eventually get us more people who know and use it properly? Maybe?

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#67

Post by mncharity »

kingstnap wrote: post #49
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't give a concrete and nonsensical way Uber has grown 100x (minimum number of "orders") while revenue tripled. Cannot be miles. Can't be riders. Can't be drivers. Revenue is top line, by definition. This statement is as bad as the original. There is no need for hyperbolic statements that one doesn't even understand. "Uber has grown significantly" works. Why the need to sound so sophisticated and use terms like…

They are simply measuring in base 1.7 :^) Uber has grown 2 orders of magnitude!

Or base 2. 2^1.5 (2.83) is the low bound on two orders of magnitude base 2. So tripled fits.

All this concern, when he merely assumed everyone would realize he meant oom base 2. :P

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#68

Post by ButlerianJihad »

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.

Look at the bright side: any employees compelled to commute now will be much more likely to summon Uber rides every day!

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#69

Post by kridsdale1 »

xnx wrote: post #54
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the use of "decimated" is used approximately correctly in most cases, even if not precisely right. And it is a cool sounding word, and it's one word. "Orders of magnitude" is three words when one would do, it's used to sound sophisticated, and it's use is off by... an order of magnitude or so... in many cases

For a long time I thought it meant to reduce to 1/10th not by 1/10th.

Yes. As a kid, hearing it used in like GI Joe or something, it always felt equivalent to “massacred”.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#70

Post by locknitpicker »

RestlessMind wrote: post #16
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. Th…

> 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.

If you feel you work better at the office, more power to you.

That does not justify forcing everyone around you to do the same, particularly if the best argument you can piece together is that forcing others to do something against their will makes you feel better.

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