Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber is laying off 10% of staff

uber.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 94 posts

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#71

Post by pjmlp »

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.

Sadly, and we all know that butt on chair while doing Teams calls with the offshoring and nearshore teams, is a large improvement in productivity. /s

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#72

Post by pjmlp »

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.

Except most of us don't do team collaboration in the office anyway.

With very few exceptions, all my projects involve distributed teams in a mix of nearshore and offshoring, across multiple locations.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#73

Post by locknitpicker »

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.

> In-person team collaboration requires... well, collaboration.

You're confusing things. Collaboration doesn't require you to be continuously in the same room with people 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, and your personal needs to be in a room with someone else does not justify forcing everyone under payroll to commute to the office.

You already need to schedule meetings to be in the same room with someone, don't you? Why would anyone have to waste their time commuting to the office if you didn't booked a meeting?

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#74

Post by locknitpicker »

pjmlp wrote: post #71
spike021 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sadly, and we all know that butt on chair while doing Teams calls with the offshoring and nearshore teams, is a large improvement in productivity. /s

> Sadly, and we all know that butt on chair while doing Teams calls with the offshoring and nearshore teams, is a large improvement in productivity. /s

I personally liked how they claimed employees complained that they spend too much time aligning with other teams, and somehow their response to they complain was... Firing the people responsible for facilitating that alignment?

And then there's the comical justification that they will increase development speed with larger teams managed by managers with far more responsibilities and far less time to deal with issues.

Uber's announcement wouldn't sound so silly if they just stuck with the financial angle. They are firing people because they aren't growing, they have no answer for stalling, but they still need to present nice numbers to investors who want to get paid. That would be a more respectable answer.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#75

Post by locknitpicker »

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…

> In that case, firing the "coordinator" person increases velocity because parts of the business processes they prop disappear.

So you get rid of the coordinator. What then? Does this magically unblock people?

Let me frame this differently: if coordinating teams creates as much problems and impedance as you claim, how come Uber hired them to begin with? I mean, either Uber was shooting itself in the foot then, or it is now. Which one is it?

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#76

Post by nateb2022 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #46
Plasmoid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The least cynical take I've heard about RTO is that most managers are deeply under-trained to the point of being mostly incompetent. So forcing people into the office lets them do performative performance monitoring and project management. This makes their job "easier" in that they didn't know how to do it correctly in the first place.

Most managers aren't trained at all, and there's a massive shortage of good ones.

I would contend most corporations have a lot more managers than is necessary.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#77

Post by lirolero »

bamboozled wrote: post #44
lirolero wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s basically saying Uber is much bigger than it was 5+ years ago. Revenue almost tripled, and the company added a lot more products, people, and complexity. “Orders of magnitude” here just means “a lot,” not literally 10x or 100x.

Then he could just say uber has grown a lot?

He could have said a myriad of things, but he chose to say that, and what he chose to say isn’t incorrect.

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#78

Post by s1artibartfast »

nateb2022 wrote: post #76
s1artibartfast wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most managers aren't trained at all, and there's a massive shortage of good ones.

I would contend most corporations have a lot more managers than is necessary.

It appears that the Uber executive team agrees with you!

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#79

Post by FoundTheDouche »

pjmlp wrote: post #72
missedthecue wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except most of us don't do team collaboration in the office anyway. With very few exceptions, all my projects involve distributed teams in a mix of nearshore and offshoring, across multiple locations.

[dead]

Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff

#80

Post by FoundTheDouche »

pjmlp wrote: post #71
spike021 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sadly, and we all know that butt on chair while doing Teams calls with the offshoring and nearshore teams, is a large improvement in productivity. /s

[flagged]
Post reply on HN