Uber Talent Directory • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber Talent Directory

#11

Post by nojito » Wed, May 20, 2020, 12:19 PM UTC

legerdemain wrote: post #9

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprising? When you're unemployed during a major economic downturn lots of people would be willing to leave one of the most expensive cities in the country.

No, I think it is, in fact, somewhat interesting. I was at Uber until a couple of months ago and left for mostly unrelated reasons. A significant proportion of the people I worked with had 3-5 years of tenure at Uber, families, homes. Not people who could relocate easily, even if they wanted to. There's an obvious and boring explanation for the prevalence of "willing to move" on this list, and that is if the layoffs…

Many of the people willing to relocate are <3 years out of school and have only worked at Uber for ~1 year

Re: Uber Talent Directory

#12

Post by vikramkr » Wed, May 20, 2020, 2:35 PM UTC

svntid wrote: post #10

wow reads like an orbituary - shame on uber pulling the easy one on those unfortunate folks

If the alternative is the company going out of business, this isn't the "easy one." I don't like uber (I'm sure my post history has plenty of anti-uber mini rants...), and even I'll admit this is pretty nice of them. Most companies going through mass layoffs don't give people severance/benefits as good as uber did (AirBNB also did this well), and I can't say I've heard of one going this far to set up a site to try and get them hired.

Re: Uber Talent Directory

#13

Post by dmode » Wed, May 20, 2020, 3:35 PM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #3

A surprising number of these folks in the SFBA are willing to relocate.

I filtered by NY and Pittsburgh and found the same ratio of people willing to relocate

Re: Uber Talent Directory

#14

Post by srnvs123 » Wed, May 20, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

Wow, surprising how nice Uber have been during these layoffs. I'm assuming they either cannot afford anymore negative press given that they look like a failing company to the world, OR they've legitimately transformed themselves from the early days. Id say the former, but I hope the latter

Re: Uber Talent Directory

#15

Post by mr_coleman » Wed, May 20, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

svntid wrote: post #10

wow reads like an orbituary - shame on uber pulling the easy one on those unfortunate folks

If you want to be extra cynical, think of it as an asset auction listing as part of a liquidation.

Re: Uber Talent Directory

#16

Post by karthikb » Wed, May 20, 2020, 7:31 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #7

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #3

A surprising number of these folks in the SFBA are willing to relocate.

Surprising? When you're unemployed during a major economic downturn lots of people would be willing to leave one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Not surprising in general, but given the reality that SF is the most tech-dense city in the world, it's an interesting observation that people perceive jobs to be scarce enough that the opportunity cost of leaving is worth more immediate employment.

Re: Uber Talent Directory

#17

Post by rdbell » Wed, May 20, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

svntid wrote: post #10

wow reads like an orbituary - shame on uber pulling the easy one on those unfortunate folks

If the executive team doesn't let staff go they will be fired by the board. If the board doesn't fire the executive team they will be voted out by the shareholders. If the shareholders don't vote out the board the stock price will plummet and in the best case scenario what's left of Uber gets vacuumed up by another company or activist investors and they go back to step 1 minus any of the severance packages and good-will.

It's horribly sad to see mass layoffs but the alternative creates a lot more chaos.