I really wonder if they still have an office in Aarhus Denmark. It was weird to me that they did because no one drives uber there at all.
If they're hiring I'd work in Aarhus!
Uber is laying off 10% of staff
81–90 of 94 posts
Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#82Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#83Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#84Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
yes, it is. It's incorrect, misleading and douchey.
If they didn't say "revenue tripled" and you asked people to speculate how much Uber had grown in 5 years given the statement, you'd get a lot of guesses around 100x.
Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#86I really wonder if they still have an office in Aarhus Denmark. It was weird to me that they did because no one drives uber there at all. If they're hiring I'd work in Aarhus!
A software office, or a driver support center? Aarhus is a pretty respected technical university, so a software office would make sense.
Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#87Earlier 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.
> 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? W…
You're misunderstanding my use of the term collaboration. I'm not using it as corporate speak for "teamwork". I'm saying that in order for me to go into the office with everyone, everyone needs to go into the office. That's an axiomatic self-proving statement.
As opposed to WFH where one can simply do that without other people also doing it.
Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Does this magically unblock people?
Yes? Removing and/or minimizing detractors/hangers-ons/randoms from a project is an important part of running a project. Especially in corporate scenarios where telling people to go pound sand is, unfortunately, not an option, more elaborate strategies must be employed.
> 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?
Are you thinking that humans can predict behavior and evolution of social systems, and especially how they would behave after some change is forced upon them?
In my opinion, that cannot be further from the truth. Any sufficiently complex social system, which Uber with 30k+ employees definitely is, exists and evolves more or less independently from how any one individual part of this system might wish. Even if it's a CEO.
Uber leadership thought cross-team coordination would help them, so they hired a bunch of people to do it. That might have been a correct idea at a time, or at least on paper, it looked like a correct move. But in the end, it did not pan out. So they probably shot themselves in the foot back then. Did they shoot themselves in the foot now? Who knows? (Spoiler: no one) We'll see once enough time has passed.
Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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? W…
You're misunderstanding my use of the term collaboration. I'm not using it as corporate speak for "teamwork". I'm saying that in order for me to go into the office with everyone, everyone needs to go into the office. That's an axiomatic self-proving statement. As opposed to WFH where one can simply do that without other people also doing it.
> I'm saying that in order for me to go into the office with everyone, everyone needs to go into the office.
No. You feel you need everyone around you at the office, but that is you and you speak for yourself. Others have a say on that, don't they?
For you to be around people in a way you don't get in the way of everyone else around you, you need to coordinate. This means you need to plan ahead and schedule meetings with a specific agenda to discuss with the people whose time you want to waste. That doesn't require everyone else to drive all the way to the office 5 days a week,and then send there 8 or 9 hours a day. In some cases a simple message does the work. In some cases a call will do. For the rare occasions where you need to be at arm's reach of someone, you guys can plan ahead.
So why do you believe it's reasonable ti demand everyone around you to bend backwards to accommodate your peculiar requirements of proximity?
Re: Uber is laying off 10% of staff
#90> 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…
RTO steals one work day from me per week, at a minimum. When i work from home i can start 6am (or whenever i want to), and if im in a flow state, i can push to 5pm easily. I get SOOOO much done. Other days i can lax, have a few teams meetings and chill on the couch and quit work early.
When i go to the office it takes 2 hours from each day only for commute, add meetings, lunch breaks, and the office bullshit chitchat and non-stop blabber that distracts you. People on the phone, or just "hanging" out next to you.
Bottom line is when i have to work from the office i get 5% done of what i do from home. I get angry, and unmotivated. I usually also leave early.