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

411–420 of 689 posts

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#411

Post by mqnfred »

dbancajas wrote: post #309
nerfhammer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they spin off the ride sharing part of the company how much are they earning? do you know?

The ridesharing line of business has been profitable for at least a year from what I can tell. The plan was for it to cover all the other costs by EoY 2020, incl. HQ expenses and other bets like Eats.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#412

Post by notJim »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #386
matt_morgan wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I presume all the developers are men? as in members of mankind... All people are men.

This is not a common way of speaking anymore, IMO. When I read "all the developers are men", I didn't understand what you meant at all. I thought maybe you were making some kind of ironic joke about sexism. I did get what you meant after re-reading of course, but "All people are men" sounds very archaic to me, like something out of Tolkien.

Usually when we want to talk about humans as a species or whatever, we now use the word "human."

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#414

Post by asdf21 »

slac wrote: post #401
ascendantlogic wrote: post #369

Makes you wonder how these companies ever planned to last during the "next" economic downturn. I don't think anyone bet on a global pandemic causing this shock but the point still stands: These kind of companies were still burning cash at incredible rates 10+ years in. How were they ever going to survive?

This is not a downturn though. It is a collapse.

It's more like a pause.

What makes you think it's a collapse?

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#415

Post by astronautjones »

ascendantlogic wrote: post #369

Makes you wonder how these companies ever planned to last during the "next" economic downturn. I don't think anyone bet on a global pandemic causing this shock but the point still stands: These kind of companies were still burning cash at incredible rates 10+ years in. How were they ever going to survive?

infinite growth forever, of course

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#416

Post by SenorSourdough »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #386
matt_morgan wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I presume all the developers are men? as in members of mankind... All people are men.

Sure, but the idea of "mankind" is gendered / male-centric in the first place. We just defaulted to male because we always default to male.

Training yourself to default to non-gendered language like person-kind and to think about whether a term originates from problematic aspects of gender dynamics is a relatively easy first step towards breaking down some of the insidious aspects of sexism that are imbedded in language.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#417

Post by kaydub »

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…

These companies are beyond being unicorns though. I work at a unicorn and our whole R&D team is only like 100-120 people.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#418

Post by victords »

mylons wrote: post #331
michaelyoshika wrote: post #329

Am I the only one feeling that we should be thankful that these unicorns (whether actually profitable or driven by crazy VC money) have created so many jobs in the past several years?

what did those jobs produce?

For Uber specifically?

Money, better and cheaper transportation where it sucked, and jobs for much more people than just developers.

Re: Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

#420

Post by jrochkind1 »

GiorgioG wrote: post #400
jrochkind1 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are in fact the one that sounds like you are crusading, not the person you are replying to. You seem really fired up about it.

It is tiresome to see these types irrelevant comments on a story. So yes it does fire me up a bit. These are people out of work, and the parent chose to focus on pushing their gender-neutral grammar preferences. Real problems vs. Snowflake problems.

And yet you are treating their comment like a "real problem"... you're the one crusading, they just gently and non-confrontationally made a suggestion. You could have just passed on by if you didn't agree with their suggestion, but you turned it into a crusade against them. To the observer, you are in fact the one acting like a "snowflake" fired up (dare I say "triggered") by their actually quite gentle suggestion, in which they make it clear that they weren't accusing anyone of ill-intent.

Do you think your annoyance and anger at their suggestion is a "real problem" or a "snowflake problem"? If you don't think it matters that much if someone says "man year" or "person year" (you said it wasn't a "real problem"), why is the suggestion to do either way so triggering to you? Do you think it might be more in line with how worthy of your annoyance it is to see someone suggest "person year" (maybe not worth that much annoyance in the grand scheme of thing when we have 'real problems'?) to reflect on your own about why their suggestion to say "person year" made you so angry and upset, without needing to reply on HN and turn it into a crusade?

Post reply on HN