141–150 of 689 posts
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Geez, this is incredibly callous. These are real people who are losing their livelihoods.
Uber has screwed over a lot of people in the past. I'm not going to cry for people who worked for a bad company getting screwed over by said bad company
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It's gauche to say it on the day a bunch of people lost their jobs (and there's no need for the schadenfraude) but I think the underlying point is sane. Uber's business model is replacing FTEs in a a hidebound, regulated industry with gig workers (& good UX!). If you were forecasting how this company in particular would deal with a downturn, it's a reasonable guess that they'll try to do the same thing to their own w…
> Uber's business model is replacing FTEs Where are taxi drivers employees with benefits? At least in New York, they're mostly independent contractors. (A minority are sole proprietors.)
Dara's email was really well written, and felt as compassionate as one can for a letter from a CEO announcing job cuts. The full email: Team Uber: These have been unprecedented and challenging times for everyone—our societies, our governments, our families, our economies, all around the world. They’ve also been challenging for Uber, and many of you, as you’ve waited for us to define the road ahead. I’ve said clearly…
"I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for the cities of the world — our being there for millions of people and businesses who rely on us — demands it." This is only one sentence in an otherwise fairly measured email, but it nevertheless annoyed me given the context. Uber is not an "essential service". They made this decision so that they can stay in business to make money for th…
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> How might this affect hiring in the future when they need more people "Independent contractors" working from home and using their own equipment. "Gig economy". Hope they enjoy it.
Geez, this is incredibly callous. These are real people who are losing their livelihoods.
This isn't the first time our generations have experienced this. It's practically the third. You should know very well by now that many of these jobs aren't coming back, and those that do are really only going to be open to people who are younger than you.
You can debate whether it was successful at GE. The criticism of Jack Welch was that his approach improved short-term financials, but he left a hollowed-out company to his successor that became irrelevant and lost value relative to the S&P.
The way I see this playing out at Uber is rapidly exiting categories like Scooters, Freight, Works, and AV. And doubling down on Ride Share and Eats with acquisitions in geographies where they have a leading position. I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility.
"Khosrowshahi said the company is winding down its product incubator and artificial-intelligence lab" Does that mean they are officially out of the self-driving car business? Wouldn't you need your AI lab if you were still pursuing that? Also, if you're hitting the paywall: https://outline.com/VL6xaR
I dont know if the whole team was laid off, but I can confirm that a lot of (most?) people working on self-driving were laid off today. (My source is a friend working on self-driving who was laid off today)
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uber never seemed like a rational company that thinks of the good of its employees (i know it’s a business, but still). the cut deep, cut once method for layoffs is doing business 101, but still there are 2 rounds of layoffs at uber
Dara hinted in his first email that there were more layoffs on the way. I consider them to be a single layoff, one portion of which took more time to execute.
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Vast majority of these offices are small hubs in tier 3 cities occupied by regional tems, or tier 1 cities with multiple offices.
Slightly off topic. What's tier 1/2/3 in the US? I had just heard that kind of system applied in China
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Austin / Salt Lake / Los Angeles / Portland / Atlanta
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Ann Arbor / Chicago / Minneapolis / Miami
I am wondering why there are two separate rounds of layoffs. Isn't it better for morale to just have the band aid ripped quick, once and for all? What context does Uber have now, that they did not when the initial layoff wave happened?
Management isn't omnipotent. > What context does Uber have now More data that can be feed into their financials models to understand the short-term and long-term impact of this market on their cash flow. Companies don't do layoffs because things are nice and predictable.
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Seems like a lot of cuts that needed to happen even without Covid. Common refrain for these companies is why does Company X need Y thousands of employees for a single app/website. For Uber I guess we are going to find out how much they were really needed.
Yes, pandemic is going to force companies to take action that was necessary anyway. Uber's businesses, all of them, everywhere, are garbage. There is no sense, no matter how narrow or convoluted, in which Uber has been profitable. Spare me the discussion of how their empanada delivery business in Jakarta is very healthy. Just spare me. When I was a professional investor, whenever management told me that they had a re…