Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 689 posts

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#271

Post by economicslol »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #266
economicslol wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not some let them eat cake thing, frankly I think people with your pov are actually the ones saying that. How much would it actually cost to commute 20-30 minutes to and from work in an Uber? $40 a day? More? Let's just say its 40 and you strictly commute during the week so that's $200 a week or 800 a month. Even with bad credit or no credit you would be able to save for a car rapidly. The $2000 car would onl…

Why are you so focused on the "sole means of transportation"? Before COVID I've used Uber and the likes around twice a month - when using public transportation was unfeasible, like going to the airport with heavy luggage. Using public transportation and supplementing it with Uber was definitely most reasonable solution.

Because the Grandfather comment was about classifying Uber as an essential service when it's clearly not as demonstrated by yours and other comments. Using Uber a few times a month for extenuating circumstances is really not Essential.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#272

Post by economicslol »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #263
economicslol wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have specified, my point was that Uber is not the same as public transportation and is essentially a luxury good.

Then car is essentially a luxury good, since it's the same - just someone else is driving it.

Yes. That's my point. Uber is not essential, it is a luxury.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#273

Post by pgwhalen »

s1t5 wrote: post #147
sbuccini wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't this the ultimate problem of corporate leadership though? You have basically four options when making complicated decisions:

- lie, by saying there is no discussion

- omit, by not saying whether or not there is a discussion

- discuss openly

- don't discuss, just make the decision rashly

Decisions like this tend to follow one of the first two options, but clearly none of them are great. They're all damaging in their own way.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#274

Post by abbadadda »

jonluca wrote: post #9

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…

Really well written email... This seems like a smart thing to do: `We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to keep growing, expanding, and innovating.`

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#275

Post by mcculley »

rockinghigh wrote: post #117
elliekelly wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for the cities of the world Any company that facilitates or provides an in-person service that has seen a sharp decline from Covid-19 is pretty clearly not an essential service in the minds of their customers.

Are you saying transportation and restaurants are not essential?

How could restaurants be considered essential? People can eat without having food cooked for them.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#276

Post by Aperocky »

nom wrote: post #249
jacquesm wrote: post #134

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.

IMHO Unicorns are built with the assumption that almost every developer is replaceable. At that scale the critical knowledge is not with the developers.

That's what business leaders think.

Then you get to the critical component where you fire the lead architect/programmer and then it keeps working fine for few weeks, but you find more bugs and you need to upgrade/fix it. Only to find out the documentation if they exist don't help at all and the first 2 tries builds fine so you put it in production only to see everything destroyed. And after 1 year of back and forth you hire 10 other developer to maintain this thing and then 50 others to write a new one.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#277

Post by bdcravens »

fermienrico wrote: post #251
bdcravens wrote: post #205

Developers at unicorns: even in the best of times, do you feel more expendable than you've felt at other jobs? We always are amazed at the number of developers at companies like this. (the numbers I've seen are old, but I guess out of 22,000 employees, it was something like 5000 engineers?) While that allows you to build in a more robust way than a smaller company, it seems like there's no shortage of developers work…

I don't understand your point, can you please elaborate more? I read it twice and your comment isn't making any sense to me: 1) Are you suggesting that developers should go join a smaller company so they are less expendible? 2) Are you suggesting that developers, now that they are laid off, go work on R&D projects, tooling and open source startups? I am so confused. What is the take away?

I'm saying that large companies in tech tend to have a large developer headcount, often working on projects outside of the core business. As such, I think those employees are more expendable.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#278

Post by gkoberger »

bdcravens wrote: post #205

Developers at unicorns: even in the best of times, do you feel more expendable than you've felt at other jobs? We always are amazed at the number of developers at companies like this. (the numbers I've seen are old, but I guess out of 22,000 employees, it was something like 5000 engineers?) While that allows you to build in a more robust way than a smaller company, it seems like there's no shortage of developers work…

Let's say you like the Warriors. You and a group of friends get together every game to cheer for them. You're the one everyone looks to for bringing the beer, and you enjoy the group you hang out with. And when the Warriors win (or lose), there's a huge energy you get to be a part of.

I think it's the same with big companies. You can be a big part of your individual team, and it doesn't particularly feel much different than working at a startup day-to-day. And as a bonus you get to be a part of the large-scale wins and loses. Much like how it's exciting when the Warriors win, it's exciting when something big comes out of your company. Even if you did nothing but cheer.

Everyone is expendable. Travis, the founder and CEO of Uber, was expendable. So are people at large companies or small startups. But within your team, you get to do good work, and it doesn't feel that way.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#279

Post by MivLives »

mattwad wrote: post #171
0zymandias wrote: post #145

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 always wondered how the scooter fad was going to work out once people realized they could just buy them for a few hundred bucks. Bicycles are hard to store for apartment dwellers, and more at risk of being stolen when locked up.

I live in a city that banned the companies but see a few people still commuting on them in the bike lane.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#280

Post by Traster »

bdcravens wrote: post #205

Developers at unicorns: even in the best of times, do you feel more expendable than you've felt at other jobs? We always are amazed at the number of developers at companies like this. (the numbers I've seen are old, but I guess out of 22,000 employees, it was something like 5000 engineers?) While that allows you to build in a more robust way than a smaller company, it seems like there's no shortage of developers work…

It's a double edged sword, on the one hand you have the freedom to work on interesting projects, new technologies and get well compensated. On the other hand most engineers working at uber should be able to critically think about their job and say "Is what I'm doing contributing to the noticeably to the core business or am I part of a gamble the company can afford to make right now"
Post reply on HN