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Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

blog.yelp.com

101–110 of 317 posts

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#101

Off topic: Can anyone explain why the dow jones is going up? The dow was LOWER Jan 1st 2019. I feel we are worse off than Jan 1st 2019.

Company announces bad news and then the stock price goes UP. WTF? This often seems counter-intuitive but is pretty simple to understand if you keep in mind that markets are always forward looking. For instance, if Company A typically makes $1m in profits each year, you can ascribe a value to it. However, if at some point, you suspect that their profit is going to drop 80%, you are going to devalue their stock accordi…

I think most of the time stock prices go up when layoffs are announced. If a company releases bad news about the business and simultaneously lays people off, that's a different story. But layoffs are seen as cost-cutting, and an indication that the company will be more profitable (or at least lose less money) in the future.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#102
post #17

Off topic: Can anyone explain why the dow jones is going up? The dow was LOWER Jan 1st 2019. I feel we are worse off than Jan 1st 2019.

Every 10 years or so there is a 'catastrophic' event, so markets fluctuate, players are invited to get out, new players emerge and life goes on and on and on Next one is around 2030 - see ya !

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I'm having a hard time mustering sympathy for the layoffs. If anything, they will use this as a stepping stone to a more ethical career choice. I do still feel for them on a human level though.

Ethics is a luxury. In a bad economy, people are probably more ready to take on less ethical jobs.

They were very ready & happy to take the unethical in a very good economy though.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#104
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren't sales and account management precisely the people who are client-facing or related to e-commerce?

Yes but they're the easiest to ramp up and wind down. Certain segments of the economy as devastated right now. Would not want to be a flight attendant, but airplane engine mechanics are probably still in demand as cargo flights replace passenger traffic (since we're ordering everything online now). Logically, that would extend to people whose job revolves around signing up restaurants to marketing portals. The restau…

According to flight aware, global air traffic is down 75%. So I'd bet mechanics aren't doing so hot either unless they were dedicated to cargo.

Programmers arent as easy to replace because they already understand the system. Training takes time, and if there's not enough documentation then you'll end up contacting the previous programmers for help (I've seen it happen) anyway.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#105
post #54
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yelp's engineering isn't likely much more than ~150 people (I worked there ~2 years ago, maybe has grown since then but honestly, given their revenue situation even then, likely not by much). The mix there is just like most companies; you've got dedicated teams for each of their apps (which includes Android, iOS, web, business-facing, etc), you've got API teams, back office teams working on moving data around and bus…

I think your 150 estimate is very low— we had 80 eng when I left, nine years ago.

But he was there 7 years after you so his estimate is probably closer, no?

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#107
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, she said "almost perfectly" and "up to 200,000 deaths." The revised model predicts up to ~127k deaths, which is certainly less, but not egregiously so (here: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america ) If you kept the model exactly the same , you'd nevertheless get tighter and tighter estimates (i.e., reduced uncertainty and a lower upper bound) as more data comes in. This is just how statistics w…

> FWIW, she said "almost perfectly" Has anyone seriously suggested that the US’s measures are being carried out anywhere near “almost perfectly”? Quite the opposite, there’s been lots of concerns voiced that people aren’t taking this seriously. > The revised model predicts up to ~127k deaths, which is certainly less, but not egregiously so It’s a nearly 40% reduction!

1) Are the policy implications of potentially killing off all of (say) Salt Lake City much different from destroying New Haven? I would argue no, not really.

2) Biological data is often a nightmare to work with. Estimates about behavior too. Getting something within an order of magnitude is often not too shabby.

3) Errors ('up to') are sensitive.

Here's a toy example. Suppose you think two numbers are each around 5, but the data are consistent with anywhere between 0-10. The sum of these numbers must be between 0-20 (low case: 0 + 0 = 0, high: 10 + 10 = 20), and their product between 0-100 (0 x 0 = 0; 10 x 10 = 100).

More data comes in and you can estimate each value more precisely: now you know they're somewhere between 4-6. You know the sum is actually between 8-12, and the product between 16-36. That's a massive decrease in the upper bound (64 percent for the product!) but literally nothing has changed except for the increased precision.

The COVID models have exactly this problem--none of the parameters are known exactly--and the outcome is some function of combining them. Moreoever, we're learning more about what factors matter AND how to fight the virus.

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#108
post #17

Off topic: Can anyone explain why the dow jones is going up? The dow was LOWER Jan 1st 2019. I feel we are worse off than Jan 1st 2019.

Every 10 years or so there is a 'catastrophic' event, so markets fluctuate, players are invited to get out, new players emerge and life goes on and on and on Next one is around 2030 - see ya !

Every 8 years normally, this one was already long overdue

Re: Yelp lays off 1000, furloughs 1100

#109
post #26

What is the biggest source of revenue for Yelp? What part of Yelp's revenue is Empyr or other card-linked offers?

They call businesses to sell promotion packages, and those that don't buy get hammered with bad reviews.

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/01/10/1728222/yelp-accuse...

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