Seems reasonable when your core business has been massively impacted. Being a public company can't make it easier. Also as a startup, good sub-answer to the "Isn't Uber / Twitter / Dropbox etc working on this?". Yes, but in a market downturn, your investors want you to dig in harder while their investors want them to survive and focus on core.
I honestly wonder what the strategy is. Obviously they are heavily impacted in the short term, but also this is a company that has been losing money from the get go. If the intent is to build and build and build and search for profit eventually, then I'd think they'd weather this storm more than they are. They invested heavily in building up a world-class engineering team and just cut a huge chunk loose. It makes me think they aren't just cutting costs, they are refocussing the business and probably won't reenter some markets.
It looks like Dara is executing the Jack Welch & General Electric playbook [1]. Essentially, it comes down to "Be the #1 or #2 company in the market or exit" 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 pl…
> I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility Scooters are a fad that was never needed. Bikes or mopeds like Revel are 10 times more useful. I don't think scooters replace anything of note, since you can pretty much walk the same distance. They're only fun for tourists and left in the sidewalk for everyone else to stumble over.
I use scooters to commute daily, Revel is more dangerous IMO, i have seen a few of them totaled since they came to Miami. Scooters are the least hassle for me.
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.
Isn't hinting the worst approach in that case though? I can't imagine that the additional uncertainty helped with staff morale.
Is it? You already laid off a large percentage of staff. Your product teams will have seen the data showing cratering revenue. Your top engineers are almost certainly already looking for new jobs anyways. You know you are going to have to make this move no matter what. Anyone with a brain knows that the status quo is unsustainable whether you say the quiet part out loud or not.
Better to give people a heads up so they can start getting their resumes in order, hitting up their networks, etc. rather than telling a blatant lie.
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…
Tell that "Uber is not an essential service" to the millions of otherwise unemployable people that were able to feed their families using it. In countries like Brazil, where I'm from, the fall of Uber will have a gigantic impact. Gig economy apps BECAME ESSENTIAL parts of our lives, there's no denying it. But it was never sustainable. When everybody benefits from a product/service, other than the company that offers it, something is wrong. Uber only exists still, because of the FED's massive amount of money being printed and injected in the markets since 2008. Boomer's 401ks subsidized my Uber rides. The american taxpayers money created an amazing amount of wealth all over the world, lifted a lot of people from poverty. But now the party is over. Every unsustainable business eventually will die, just like the Dodos. I needed to write this, sorry. This ideia of Uber not being essential is such a miopic stance, it can only come from a person that can't see the impact, for the good, that gig economy apps had for the poor of the world.
Ahh - the comment from the person with the multi-car garage, the tesla and the range rover. Walk me through what folks without good car / transit access should be using? If cab companies are "essential" then uber is essential and preferred to cab companies in many markets. A lot of folks on HN seems to be approaching this whole situation from the I have a ton of money, can work from home, have a car mental model.
>have a car mental model. I suspect buying a reasonable used compact car is much more financially prudent than using Uber as you means of transportation. Maybe the calculus flips in a dense city like NYC but there's no way people who commute every day with Uber are doing so for cheaper than actually owning a car.
Buying a reasonable used compact car probably costs around 2000$ minimum. And a 2000$ car, no matter how nice, has the potential to require much more $$$ in maintenance when things start breaking.
Believe it or not, there are people out there who don't have $2000 and these people are also the same ones who can't get anyone to lend them money.
Hard to let go of that many people without losing critical knowledge, Uber will come out of this a diminished company in many ways. Best of luck to those laid off.
Not so sure about that. The company was notorious for having teams constantly rollout competing internal libraries/tools and rewrite them over and over, obviously not having enough bottom-line work to keep everyone busy. A smaller workforce may be able to focus on the work that matters, it doesn't have to imply a lower productivity.
Ahh - the comment from the person with the multi-car garage, the tesla and the range rover. Walk me through what folks without good car / transit access should be using? If cab companies are "essential" then uber is essential and preferred to cab companies in many markets. A lot of folks on HN seems to be approaching this whole situation from the I have a ton of money, can work from home, have a car mental model.
>have a car mental model. I suspect buying a reasonable used compact car is much more financially prudent than using Uber as you means of transportation. Maybe the calculus flips in a dense city like NYC but there's no way people who commute every day with Uber are doing so for cheaper than actually owning a car.
> there's no way people who commute every day are doing so for cheaper than actually owning a car.
Yes there is: Public transportation (bus, metro, train). Millions of people get to work using it every day.
Just having a car sit on the street would cost me at least 100$ per month in taxes, insurance, parking and other misc costs. I spend much less on public transportation.
Most people live in dense cities so these services exist. I almost only use Uber/taxis when I need to go to places that are hard to reach or at night.
It looks like Dara is executing the Jack Welch & General Electric playbook [1]. Essentially, it comes down to "Be the #1 or #2 company in the market or exit" 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 pl…
> I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility Scooters are a fad that was never needed. Bikes or mopeds like Revel are 10 times more useful. I don't think scooters replace anything of note, since you can pretty much walk the same distance. They're only fun for tourists and left in the sidewalk for everyone else to stumble over.
Scooters seem very viable in parts of Los Angeles. Before covid people were using them a lot. It is true that mopeds/ bikes are more functional. But there is something about a scooter where you just stand on it and it is very pleasant, vs something you sit on and feel like maybe you should have a helmet. Anecdotally, I saw scooters used a lot more than bikes in Century City, when both were available.
>The reason why software companies don't generally hire contract software developers Have you ever been inside a FAANG? Sometimes it feels like red badges outnumber FTE 2:1 so I have no idea what you're talking about.
Worked for Google for 5 years. Red badges were largely confined to QA testers, physical security, and the kitchen, along with a few UI designers or engineers that didn't want to be employees because they liked the freedom that being a contractor allowed (eg. being able to work for someone else on the side). Basically everyone I interacted with on a daily basis was a FTE. Product area could have something to do with i…
Your comment downplays the number of contractors at Google as if they are rare, but in reality, Google employs ~100k FTEs and ~120k contractors. It's definitely more than just QA testers and kitchen staff.
You may really have just been on a team that doesn't interact often with contractors, but the reality for the broader company is that contracting is a way of life for much more than just Uber.
Ahh - the comment from the person with the multi-car garage, the tesla and the range rover. Walk me through what folks without good car / transit access should be using? If cab companies are "essential" then uber is essential and preferred to cab companies in many markets. A lot of folks on HN seems to be approaching this whole situation from the I have a ton of money, can work from home, have a car mental model.
> ation from the I have a ton of money, can work fr is uber cheaper than cabs/public transpo w/o the VC subsidy? 15 years ago there was no uber and people were able to get by using public transpo.
the idea that uber loses money on rides because of "VC" needs to die. uber is not VC funded anymore and hasn't been for a long time now.
uber loses money on every ride because uber loses money overall because it spends a lot of money on other projects, not because the marginal cost/benefit of each ride is negative.