[HN Gopher] Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices
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Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices
Author : WFHRenaissance
Score : 725 points
Date : 2020-05-18 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| Evangelosggg wrote:
| I remember being at Droidcon or some Android specific conference
| years ago.... When Uber was presenting the speaker said "I'm sure
| everyone here knows what it's like to work on an app that
| hundreds or thousands of devs are all contributing to at once!"
| and the entire crowd just looked at each other like dogs do when
| they hear a very high pitched sound.
| nulptr wrote:
| Can someone explain why Uber stock is up 7% today then?
|
| Is it because Uber's expenditure will decrease because of the
| layoffs?
| macksd wrote:
| It's not unusual for stocks to go up on layoffs, but as others
| have commented there isn't always a simple explanation either.
| But it wasn't a secret that Uber was going to be getting hit
| hard by quarantine - it would probably already be priced into
| the stock by the point. The news today is that Uber's
| leadership is recognizing that and aggressively taking action
| to protect the bottom line - sucks in the short-term for
| employees, especially those directly affected, but that's great
| news for investors.
| spyspy wrote:
| The entire market is up on Powell's positive remarks on the
| economy's recovery.
| rwc wrote:
| And the Moderna vaccine progress announcement this morning
| [deleted]
| cactus2093 wrote:
| There's not always a true, causal explanation of why stocks are
| reacting as they are. Don't be too quick to trust cable news
| anchors or other stock market shills that make a living making
| up and touting stock market narratives. By definition a stock
| price is a split of the public consensus of what's happening,
| just as many people are selling as buying at that price.
|
| Your explanation seems as good as any.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Stocks are always trying to predict the future, having these
| layoffs makes people think that they're getting leaner and
| organizing, I guess.
| nojito wrote:
| Because UBER has tremendous bloat. All COVID did was accelerate
| the inevitable.
| rvz wrote:
| > Is it because Uber's expenditure will decrease because of the
| layoffs?
|
| Yes.
|
| This is Uber's way of saying to their investors that their
| costs will decrease due to losing billions during the
| coronavirus outbreak, thus head count must be decreased. But
| some who are buying now, may see this as a way of selling at
| the "bull trap" in Q2.
| ajiang wrote:
| 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.
| tootie wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| travisl12 wrote:
| I was let go today from Uber. If anyone is looking for a
| Frontend/Fullstack with 7yoe. I'm here :)
|
| Find me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-
| lawrence-b77400b8/
| asood123 wrote:
| What's the best way to contact you?
| travisl12 wrote:
| www.redundantrobot.com
| balls187 wrote:
| Good luck brother. Keep your head up.
| travisl12 wrote:
| Changes in life are an opportunity and that's always
| something to get excited about. Full steam ahead!
| jinfiesto wrote:
| What's the best way to contact you?
| travisl12 wrote:
| www.redundantrobot.com
| [deleted]
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| Sorry you were let go - especially in the current situation.
| Feel free to look through our listings and, if anything is
| interesting to you, shoot us a message.
|
| https://www.collage.com/careers
| akmarinov wrote:
| what's the worst way to contact you?
| mv4 wrote:
| Call from an unfamiliar number, don't leave a message. Keep
| redialing until they pick up.
| cal5k wrote:
| When they eventually pick up, play back the sound you hear
| when you accidentally dial into a fax line.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Smoke signals from the house across the street.
| beckingz wrote:
| This is a great question. I'll use this as an icebreaker in
| the future.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| Let's see what Reddit says.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gm5zwu/what_is_
| t...?
| travisl12 wrote:
| Contact me on Google Wave.
| nickgubbins wrote:
| we're hiring at https://atellio.com - do reach out at
| nick@atellio.com would love to tell you more!
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| You should add your email address or website to your profile,
| so people can contact you.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Honestly don't understand why people don't have their email
| address public. Spam filtering is so good these days that
| this is all upside and no downside.
| martindelemotte wrote:
| You should also work for a more ethical company next time.
|
| Edit: it's not a snark, just a friendly reminder.
| adas0693 wrote:
| Sorry to hear that. Atlassian is hiring. Pls apply. Thank you.
| travisl12 wrote:
| Find me at http://redundantrobot.com/
|
| I'm down to see what you have going on there.
| fenguin wrote:
| Hi, we're hiring at Poynt (https://poynt.com) - ping me at
| c@poynt.com
| Fiveplus wrote:
| Was it all of a sudden or were you guys told this was coming
| from the higher ups? How did they manage it in terms of
| benefits, severances etc?
| travisl12 wrote:
| The info about layoffs leaked about 3 weeks ago, which was
| messed up.
|
| Overall though the severence is healthy, so I'll be plenty ok
| while I find another gig.
| graham_paul wrote:
| How did you end up in the States?
| travisl12 wrote:
| It's a long tail starting back in the days of my great great
| great great grandfather. Back in the mother country he was
| tired of the same old same old and decided to travel to the
| New World to start anew. 300 years later I was born here :)
| andrei wrote:
| whats the best way to contact you?
| travisl12 wrote:
| www.redundantrobot.com
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| I'm really worrying that the mindfulness and how to think
| gender neutral courses will be cancelled which would be a great
| shame. Furthermore I fear that I can't spend time on a
| completely new revolutionary javascript framework which makes
| all the other ones obsolete.
|
| Sad times...
| tyre wrote:
| Want to help fight COVID-19?
|
| Here's us: https://curativeinc.com/ Here's me:
| maddox@curativeinc.com
|
| We do testing, all aspects. They're oral swabs, which greatly
| reduces the barrier for many people who could get tested: They
| don't want a swab so far up their nose it feels like it's
| scraping their brain.
|
| We build the software for the full-stack of testing from
| managing drivethrough sites with healthcare workers, full lab
| operations, results delivery to patients, integrations with
| cities and state health departments.
|
| We're now handling hundreds of thousands of tests. We'll
| probably need at least 100x that to re-open the country with
| confidence.
|
| Hit me up: maddox@curativeinc.com with
| questions/comments/anything.
|
| Software team all remote, good pay + equity and benefits,
| satisfying work, and I love the people I work with.
|
| Some recent (public) things:
|
| https://www.texastribune.org/2020/05/14/texas-prisons-corona...
|
| https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2156392/air-...
|
| https://dot.la/coronavirus-rapid-test-curative-los-angeles-2...
| graham_paul wrote:
| sounds really good. I am curious, what tech stack do you use?
| tyre wrote:
| Typescript/React <-> Flask/Python <-> postgres + redis <->
| terraform
|
| Also building out a data science team--idk what the
| preferred stack is there.
| alexmic wrote:
| We're hiring at Supergreat (https://supergreat.reviews) :) I'd
| love to tell you more, email me at alexmic@supergreat.reviews.
| fermienrico wrote:
| What the.. hmm...interesting business for sure.
| justinmelbourne wrote:
| Hey @travis12 - we're hiring at App Annie for Staff and Senior
| FE roles - https://boards.greenhouse.io/appannie/jobs/2172372
| jonbrennecke wrote:
| Not OP, but I'm in a similar situation and a lover of App
| Annie's product. Are you hiring only in Vancouver or is the
| role open to remote? (US, Pacific Timezone)
| jmeister wrote:
| Did you get good severance? Hope you did.
|
| If you can afford it, I'd suggest taking a break.
| travisl12 wrote:
| Yeah severance is pretty good. I'll try to get a gig quick
| and then push off the start date a bit.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Good luck, I am super sorry to hear this.
| travisl12 wrote:
| I'll be ok, but your thoughts really are appreciated. Nice
| words from nice people are always a welcomed thing.
| dmaskasky wrote:
| I was also let go today, is anyone looking for a frontend
| engineer with 6 years experience?
|
| My profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaskasky/
| hyunwoona wrote:
| Hey, sorry for the bad news. Qualia is hiring. Can you send me
| your resume at eric.na@qualia.com and miguel@qualia.com?
| wegs wrote:
| As a suggestion, point people to a personal web page or
| portfolio. Especially for a front-end engineer, I would never
| recruit someone based on a LinkedIn profile. That's doubly-true
| in this market.
|
| To make it through the filter, it doesn't need to be fancy or
| take a lot of time, but it does need to be tasteful. Of course,
| fancy and playful go a very, very long ways for separating
| yourself from all the other people who made it through the
| filter.
| dmaskasky wrote:
| That's a great suggestion. Unfortunately, my portfolio is
| entirely comprised of Uber contributions that I cannot share
| publicly. I believe many folks are like me, eyes-forward and
| focused on the company mission. I was going through the
| process of open sourcing a library, but that's no longer
| going to happen.
|
| I suppose I should get started on making something that I can
| own.
| anticsapp wrote:
| Are you allowed to talk around what you did there? Or even
| write "Top secret, I can't talk about it". I think you need
| some line items of some sort, because those are three great
| companies. You'll probably be out of work for 17 minutes.
| dmaskasky wrote:
| I developed tooling for real time data through graphql
| subscriptions and grpc streaming. I built a protobuf to
| graphql schema generator tool. I have extensive
| experience with React hooks and making Redux-less
| applications. I was on the Uber Elevate team and brought
| several applications from 0-1.
| wegs wrote:
| You're unemployed now. It's not a bad use of your time.
| There are two levels here:
|
| Level 1: There's a basic web site. Think of it as fizz
| buzz. I can see you have a basic sense of style -- web site
| aesthetics, code quality, etc. You don't need a lot, but
| what's there ought to be sane, sensible, and good.
|
| Level 2: There are a few awesome things on it. Something
| clever, or something which shows some technical prowess.
|
| It can't really hurt; if it's not fancy, I'll assume you
| didn't have time. If you have typos, blink/marquee tags,
| and syntax errors, I'll pass. But the more information you
| bring to the table, the better.
|
| Right now, what people know about you is you passed a few
| reasonably rigorous interviews -- Tesla and Uber. Given you
| passed those, you'd likely pass more technical interview
| too (which is not the same as getting a job offer). Weaker
| companies might hire based on that. Stronger wants will
| want more signal. Anything you can do to generate that
| signal will help.
|
| As a footnote, you included the line "I developed tooling
| for real time data through graphql subscriptions and grpc
| streaming. I built a protobuf to graphql schema generator
| tool. I have extensive experience with React hooks and
| making Redux-less applications. I was on the Uber Elevate
| team and brought several applications from 0-1." Put that
| in you linkedin.
|
| There's a hierarchy I use when I look at resumes:
|
| 1) Weakest: Applicant worked somewhere. ("I was a software
| engineer for bagels.com")
|
| 2) Weak: Applicant worked on / with something. ("I worked
| on the customer database for bagels.com")
|
| 3) Average: Applicant accomplished something ("I increased
| the performance of the customer database of bagles.com by
| 25%, saving the company $50k/year in server costs and
| reducing latency")
|
| 4) Strong: Applicant accomplished something which justified
| their salary ("I rewrote the Fortran applicant database of
| bagles.com in node.js, moving it from a mainframe to AWS.
| This resulted in 25% higher customer conversion rates, and
| saved $500k / year.")
|
| 5. Strongest: Applicant accomplished something clever and
| technically impressive ("I built a pipeline which could
| render photorealistic bagle sandwiches for bagles.com prior
| to customer orders. This increased customer conversion
| rates 5x. I used [insert set of technically impressive
| techniques].")
|
| The higher up you go that chain, the more likely you are to
| get the job you want.
| anticsapp wrote:
| I'd much rather have a LinkedIn or a GitHub, I can't stand
| personal portfolio sites with a lot of frippery and it's
| unclear what they actually have accomplished.
|
| He needs to put line items into his LinkedIn, that's for
| sure. But he was probably dodging recruiterspam.
| charwalker wrote:
| Those sites also force some order or format across all
| projects/profiles so it is easier to dig in and find
| specific things if needed.
| wegs wrote:
| It's not an either-or. Hiring, you want as many independent
| data points as you can. An ideal candidate would have:
|
| 1) A strong resume / linkedin. Worked on projects which
| were successful. Worked for companies with rigorous
| recruiting processes. Didn't job hop randomly.
|
| 2) Good references from people I trust. In an ideal case, a
| personal referal.
|
| 3) A nice portfolio. I can see artifacts on github, on
| their web site, and through publications in academic
| journals.
|
| 4) A strong undergraduate school. Passed undergraduate
| recruiting.
|
| 5) A strong interview
|
| 6) A history of interest in what we do.
|
| I don't think I've ever met an ideal candidate, but as an
| applicant, you want to give as many strong signals on all
| of those fronts as you can.
|
| If all he had was an on-line portfolio, I probably wouldn't
| hire either.
| armageddon wrote:
| Plenty of other people will recruit him. The guy has worked
| as a front-end engineer at Uber and Tesla.
|
| Just fill out the LinkedIn profile - bullet points under the
| Uber section. Link to GitHub if he has it, then post
| something on LinkedIn.
|
| How many people have personal portfolio sites that are 2-3
| years out of date... even 4-5 discussing how to build a
| product list in Backbone.js.
| cellar_door wrote:
| If you've worked at big companies on products with millions
| of users (like OP with Uber, Intuit, and Tesla), can't you
| just detail the specific team and components you developed?
| amrrs wrote:
| Check this if you've not:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618
| dang wrote:
| Also "Who Wants to Be Hired":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/5OSus
| amq wrote:
| If there's anyone from Vienna, Austria, we're hiring.
| treelovinhippie wrote:
| So they've now fired 6700 employees WHILE investing $170M into
| scooters AND offering to buy Grubhub at ~$6B.
|
| Sociopaths.
| boolcow wrote:
| What severance is being offered to the employees being laid off?
| Is it up to the high ethical standard set by Airbnb?
|
| _Separated [Airbnb] employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and
| one more week for each year served at the company (rounding
| partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity
| cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of
| tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12
| months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States,
| and health care coverage through 2020 in the rest of the world._
| asciident wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with equating ethical with
| generous. Basically it turns ethics into money, with the idea
| you can buy ethicalness.
| boolcow wrote:
| Yeah, not sure why you would equate those two.
|
| Providing a former spouse with alimony money is not
| generosity. Neither is providing a former employee with
| severance money generosity. In both cases, the ethics are
| incredibly obvious.
|
| The fact that alimony is required and severance is not is
| simply a matter of a corrupt (US) political system. This
| system leaves it to individual CEOs to act ethically (or not)
| and the public to judge them.
|
| We can improve the ethics of tech companies by holding them
| to account for how they behave. One way to do that is judging
| their behavior during layoffs.
| WWLink wrote:
| A lot of companies don't have a public image because nobody
| knows or cares what they do. So they have nothing to fear
| from a few bad glassdoor reviews.
| kylec wrote:
| If you're cutting off someone's source of income, giving them
| extra money gives them extra time to land on their feet. I'd
| say that's pretty ethical.
| libria wrote:
| Is shorter or zero severance unethical? We all enter into
| this employment contract knowing it could end abruptly from
| either party. If money is tight, they could afford longer
| severances for all if they cut 4000 instead. Does that not
| seem unethical toward the extra 1000 cut?
| kylec wrote:
| Regardless of legality and what the parties agreed to
| contractually, the fact remains that abrupt termination
| with zero severance is harmful for the former employee,
| especially in this economic climate. If the corporation
| pays a generous severance, the harm is reduced or
| eliminated. On a scale of ethicality, the more harmful an
| action is, the less ethical it is, so yes, paying
| severance is more ethical than not paying severance.
| libria wrote:
| I find the terms "less and more" applied to ethical
| confusing. Telling a company to harm people a little
| instead of a lot is enabling.
|
| My use of ethical here is strongly tied to obligation.
| e.g., it is kind to give money to a person, but not
| unethical if you chose not to especially if you can't
| afford to.
|
| The way I understand you is that it's kinder/more
| sympathetic to provide a greater severance. This part I
| agree with!
|
| Severance is not free, though. Increasing it will either
| cost Uber more heads or greater risk (and more heads
| later). I'm repeating this question: Is this not
| unethical to the retained employees?
| tyingq wrote:
| _" 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
| Me1000 wrote:
| 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)
| anodyne33 wrote:
| My stomach dropped when I saw the thread and checked in with
| my pal at ATG. She's safe but half of her department
| (mapping) is gone.
| Eridrus wrote:
| "AI Labs" tend to publish papers more than they actually work
| on real projects, so I wouldn't assume shutting down an AI lab
| implies suspending the self-driving car project.
| [deleted]
| seibelj wrote:
| AI engineers cost an absurd amount of money for dubious ROI in
| the self-driving car space.
| criddell wrote:
| Isn't just a classic risk-vs-reward bet for a company like
| Uber?
| amznthrowaway5 wrote:
| That's true in more than just in the self-driving car space.
| Even at companies like AAPL and AMZN where ML focused
| researchers/engineers work on production related tasks, I've
| seen their value production is dubious at best.
| microtherion wrote:
| [Disclaimer: AAPL engineer, technically classified as ML]
|
| I would argue that ML researchers/engineers have a clear
| impact on AAPL products in several areas:
|
| * FaceID
|
| * Steadily improving speech recognition accuracy in Siri
|
| * Considerable improvement in speech synthesis quality
|
| * Increasing sophistication in camera image processing
| njoubert wrote:
| These are different efforts from ATG, the self-driving car
| division.
| tedd4u wrote:
| I thought the self-driving unit had been spun off. This
| article [1] (from April 2019) said:
|
| "Uber's Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), which works on
| self-driving vehicles, has netted an investment from the
| SoftBank Vision Fund ($333 million), Denso and Toyota ($667
| million combined) ... The investment values the division,
| known as the Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), at $7.25
| billion and creates a newly formed corporate entity with its
| own board."
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/uber-nabs-1-billion-self-
| dri...
| warmcat wrote:
| https://archive.vn/vkqbT
| lowwave wrote:
| Hmm, getting
|
| _This server could not prove that it is archive.vn; its
| security certificate is from cloudflare-dns.com._
|
| Are archive.vn working?
| shuckles wrote:
| Can anyone with knowledge share whether the Uber Amsterdam office
| is impacted?
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Also curious about this. Happy to talk to anyone who wants to
| work with Go: https://getstream.io/careers/
| asickperson wrote:
| Yes, but it is not announced due to works council process.
| It'll take couple of weeks at least.
| maslam wrote:
| I'd love to talk to technical product managers. We're hiring at
| Databricks Amsterdam. Please contact me at bilal dot aslam at
| databricks dot com
| ojilles wrote:
| If anyone at Uber reads this, feel free to get in touch (Go,
| Java, SRE) if you want to effectively stay in the same building
| working for a multinational.
|
| There's not many roles open at the moment, but here's one:
| https://jobs.ebayclassifiedsgroup.com/job/amsterdam/senior-b...
| tuyguntn wrote:
| Anyone working at Uber, can you share how is morale in Uber at
| this moment? How might this affect hiring in the future when they
| need more people, but people don't want to go there?
|
| Honestly, in the beginning of 2020, I was too optimistic and
| planning to apply to Uber around June, thinking that corona will
| go away
| _pmf_ wrote:
| > 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.
| ganstyles wrote:
| Geez, this is incredibly callous. These are real people who
| are losing their livelihoods.
| lykr0n wrote:
| 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
| balls187 wrote:
| Sure, but do you feel the same way about AirBNB, Google,
| Facebook, Apple, every major auto manufacturer, Tesla,
| Amazon, and myriad of other companies that behave in
| unethical ways?
|
| I can't think of a single tech company that hasn't
| engaged in some eye brow raising behavior.
|
| There was even some controversy with YCombinator funding
| a fantasy sports betting company.
| fatbird wrote:
| I'm a little more nuanced in my analysis than the GP, but
| yes, I do feel that way in some degree about all the
| companies you mention, and how the employees have some
| incremental responsibility for the bad those companies
| do.
|
| Offered rents in Vancouver have dropped 15% since the
| pandemic took hold and AirBnB became a dead business for
| a bunch of mini-hoteliers. If you helped build that
| software, then I hold you a little bit responsible for
| the crisis in affordable housing we've been struggling
| with, that AirBnB has contributed to.
|
| If you work at Facebook, then I hold you a little bit
| responsible for the consequences of the 2016 U.S.
| election and Donald Trump's presidency.
|
| Your share of the responsibility is likely tiny, and I'm
| not going act like you're a mass murderer. But at the end
| of the day you were part of the machine that left a trail
| of damage in its wake, and I won't ignore that just
| because you were merely a cog.
| novok wrote:
| Are you sure it's AirBNB, or the general economy
| dropping? RE values and rents as a knock on result have
| been dropping everywhere as demand ($$$ to pay for rent)
| has dropped globally as peoples jobs are lost and people
| move in with their parents or similar and drop leases
| fairly suddenly.
|
| When you really research how much AirBNB is part of a
| housing market, it's minuscule. One or 3 condo buildings
| can usually cover whatever supply AirBNB put into
| alternative demand markets. AirBNB is a convenient
| scapegoat in most markets, because it diverts attention
| from building more supply and all the NIMBYs blocking it.
| balls187 wrote:
| I get your point, but any culpability on their part
| should not cause us to withhold compassion and empathy to
| a person losing their livelihood.
|
| Being laid off sucks.
|
| I can't imagine what it's like to be laid off during the
| worst economic period in US history since the great
| depression, AND to have people bag on you because you
| were employed by a company they didn't agree with.
| giglamesh wrote:
| Not just people. They are actively screwing over our
| planet.
| jacquesm wrote:
| So are cab drivers.
| [deleted]
| bsanr2 wrote:
| The cynical part of me is thinking about the people who
| never had a chance at a decent livelihood. Demi-employment
| didn't sneak up on us, we just thought we were too classy
| and sophisticated as workers to have it ever effect us.
|
| 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.
| setgree wrote:
| 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 workforce, if
| they can find engineers willing to take on gig work. It's
| in their DNA.
|
| To be charitable, the grandfather comment is a warning to
| think about the broader effects of the work we do, driven
| home by the possibility of a "what goes around comes
| around" situation.
|
| EDIT: as many have pointed out, taxi drivers don't get
| benefits either (I originally said one of the margins Uber
| competes on is not providing benefits).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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.)
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Look more at car service companies (Uber's original
| service), not taxis.
| [deleted]
| bhupy wrote:
| Why? For the vast majority of people, Uber is a taxi
| service.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| The reason is that car service drivers are also being
| replaced and they are more likely to have been FTEs.
| jacquesm wrote:
| NL.
| eecc wrote:
| Check where they unionized more?
| derrick_jensen wrote:
| New York is probably one of the most union heavy places
| in America. Checking where they are unionized more isn't
| an accurate reflection of the rest of the world.
| librish wrote:
| A large portion of taxi drivers are independent
| contractors.
| rdslw wrote:
| and they dont' pay % of their revenue to the 'base
| station entity'.
|
| This Uber trick: taking % of the revenue for the fixed
| cost service (they provide to the taxis drivers ) is the
| master trick making uber money.
|
| So far, in Europe, all taxi corporations charge taxi
| driver FIXED (quite small 100..200 usd/month) amount for
| operating telco/web/radio and coordinating fleet of
| taxis.
|
| Uber's ability to push bulshine here is really business
| milking 101 course: Fixed costs, uncaped incomes.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > and they dont' pay % of their revenue to the 'base
| station entity'.
|
| Unless they own their own medallion, they pay "medallion
| rent". They'll also pay dispatch fees. Many taxi drivers
| switched over to being Uber drivers because they could
| earn (and keep) more money, not less.
| ping_pong wrote:
| You seem to not know how taxi companies work. They are
| independent contractors except they are even more at a
| disadvantage. They need to pay money upfront for their
| shift and spend half their time earning that money back
| before they even make money. And they have no benefits.
| nostrademons wrote:
| The reason why software companies don't generally hire
| contract software developers rather than bringing them on
| as FTEs is that they're _less effective_. Software
| development is a high-communication, high-trust activity;
| it 's very helpful to be able to explicitly direct and
| manage the activities of your workforce, because
| otherwise they don't produce anything useful. For
| specific tasks that _don 't_ need to be high-trust and
| high-communication (eg. writing an iOS app for a non-
| critical part of the business that uses a public API),
| companies are already inclined to hire contractors.
|
| The bigger risk with getting a job at Uber is "will they
| be in business in 2 years?" Tech company success tends to
| be binary: either you're growing and on top of the world,
| or you'll be out of business in a couple years. Just ask
| DEC, Symbolics, SGI, Sun, Yahoo, AOL, Netscape, etc.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I think the even bigger risk with getting a job at Uber
| will be that some of the future employers may not be
| willing to consider you due to sketchy reputation Uber
| has as a company.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Not a thing I've ever considered on a hiring front unless
| you're famous as a sexual harasser or for pulling a
| Damore. Literally never heard of anyone doing this
| either.
| nostrademons wrote:
| This is something I see employees worry about all the
| time, but I have never seen a business owner or person
| with hiring authority consider it. People who get to that
| position within a company learn to inhabit shades of
| grey; unless _you personally_ did something illegal, they
| 're not going to hold the company you worked for against
| you, except to the extent that they may think that people
| working at that company are incompetent.
|
| I see ex-Facebook and ex-Uber employees popping up all
| the time at high positions within hot (and sometimes even
| ethical) growth companies within the valley.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| "You're either a one or a zero. Alive or dead." Gary
| Winston from AntiTrust
| johntiger1 wrote:
| Exactly, Uber's business model only applies to (highly)
| fungible labour markets. As past experience shows, you
| (usually) can't swap out 10 devs here with 10 devs there
| and expect similar results (although who knows in the
| future)
| raverbashing wrote:
| > either you're growing and on top of the world, or
| you'll be out of business in a couple years. Just ask
| DEC, Symbolics, SGI, Sun, Yahoo, AOL, Netscape, etc.
|
| I think rather than looking at those names we might ask
| ourselves about the ones that managed to survive: Oracle,
| IBM, Microsoft, as an example
|
| Sure, we might argue that they have not always been the
| most ethical companies out there, but it doesn't mean
| they haven't had to reinvent themselves here and there
|
| How come Oracle and IBM got more money from Java than
| Sun? Windows is now "free" but MS continues to make
| money.
|
| Those companies that went away seems to be mostly good
| examples of the Inventor's dilema. Especially SGI.
| setgree wrote:
| > The bigger risk with getting a job at Uber is "will
| they be in business in 2 years?"
|
| what's median job duration for a software engineer in
| startup-land anyway? I'd be surprised if it was much over
| 2 years...
|
| I'd think that if your famous company goes under, folks
| won't generally hold that against you. Heck, I'd think
| people who watched it all fall apart would would have the
| most interesting stories (and valuable lessons about
| mistakes to avoid).
| bdcravens wrote:
| I don't think this is accurate. I've worked several
| contracts in my life, often working alongside the
| company's FTE developers. In every situation, we were
| fully integrated into the team, with the same level of
| access, etc. We fully participating in meetings and
| planning. The contracts were several months. (one as long
| as 18 months; it only was cut short due to 9/11) I will
| admit these weren't strictly software companies, and in
| every one of these roles, I was a w2 employee of a
| staffing company, not a 1099. However, I was at least as
| effective as their regular team members; probably more so
| because I could be released far more easily.
| economicslol wrote:
| >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.
| nostrademons wrote:
| 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 it: I was on a core
| product (Search), it's possible red badges are more
| common in peripheral products.
| txcwpalpha wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-
| temp-wo...
|
| 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.
| nostrademons wrote:
| My understanding is that a lot of those are jobs like
| street view driver, autonomous vehicle tester, search
| quality rater, contract recruiter, content moderator,
| con-ops (help forums & customer support), etc. That's a
| big portion of the company but not a big portion of core
| engineering teams. I'd acknowledged the existence of them
| in my original comment, but this article is specifically
| about layoffs of _software engineers_ within Uber 's
| _core products_. I maintain that someone in that position
| is far more likely to come in contact with other FTEs
| than with contractors.
| easytiger wrote:
| > one of the margins on which they can undercut
| competition is not paying benefits
|
| You think minicab firms paid benefits before Uber?
| lhorie wrote:
| Well, everyone knew it was coming. Dara has been pretty
| transparent about the timelines, plus there were a ton of leaks
| in the news about details over the course of the last few
| weeks. It looks like everyone in eng got an email this morning
| that stated in bold italics whether they are affected or not.
| Gotta say I appreciated that clarity.
|
| But the day's just starting so I don't really have a grasp on
| what teams are still around yet...
| whymauri wrote:
| I don't understand why the firings are waves. Is this a
| logistics thing, or a morale thing somehow? Because it seems
| like it would negatively impact morale, more than anything.
|
| In either case, don't feel obligated to answer given the
| current circumstances. I'm sorry this is happening to you and
| your company. I'm sending you and the other workers good
| wishes.
| lhorie wrote:
| The leadership team has repeatedly said they acknowledge it
| sucks to leave people hanging for weeks on end since it
| obviously drags morale through the mud, but that the
| logistics are complicated, due to the sheer number of
| people involved, local laws, etc. The leaks have just made
| it all the more stressful.
| rockinghigh wrote:
| For the layoffs last year I'm pretty sure they were trying
| to stay under the 500-employee threshold of the WARN Act.
| [deleted]
| vishnugupta wrote:
| The logistics. In the best of times it takes at least a
| week to let go a few thousand employees. I can think of
| about ten things to take care of. Now multiply that with
| number of countries, the local laws to be handled. Add
| another multiplier or two for being a public company. The
| PR angle. And finally the unprecedented COVID-19 situation
| we are in, which compounds by adding a few more variables,
| the least of which is remote coordination.
|
| All said and done, I'm actually impressed they got through
| this in under a month.
| gbronner wrote:
| At Lehman Brothers, the waves came every few weeks. On
| Tuesdays, HR fired business people, and engineering people
| cleaned up the mess. On Wednesdays, HR fired engineering
| people. On Thursdays, HR fired each other.
|
| It allows you to ramp down without pandemonium.
| N1H1L wrote:
| I don't know whether it's an urban legend or not, some HR
| people were asked to write their own emails firing
| themselves at Lehman.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| If you broke labor laws while laying yourself off, would
| it be grounds to sue the company afterward since the
| actions were taken by an employee of the company?
| draw_down wrote:
| It's a lot easier to find such things on Blind, FWIW
| maybeiambatman wrote:
| I only speak for myself and my own observations - both morale
| and productivity have been low the past 2 weeks.
| r3nruturnEr wrote:
| Does anyone know where one could find a list of the offices they
| closed?
| hknd wrote:
| Anyone know from the inside how this affects stock vesting and
| pre-IPO stock options?
| Me1000 wrote:
| Usually late stage startups switch from options to double-
| trigger RSUs years before they go public. I doubt anyone at
| Uber has unvested stock options.
|
| Assuming anyone laid off had unexercised options, they'll
| likely have a short window to exercise them before they expire.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| Furthermore, Uber is a public company now, and there is (as
| far as I know) no outstanding lockout period for employees.
| IF anyone has outstanding options, that are subject to a
| (most likely) 90-day exercise window, they can be exercised
| and immediately sold.
|
| The typical "exercising of an option for an illiquid asset
| which will be taxed as if it's liquid" problems with start-up
| stock options simply don't exist in this case.
| michaelyoshika wrote:
| 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?
| mylons wrote:
| what did those jobs produce?
| victords wrote:
| For Uber specifically?
|
| Money, better and cheaper transportation where it sucked, and
| jobs for much more people than just developers.
| twic wrote:
| Robust property prices in San Francisco!
| pjc50 wrote:
| Money?
| PunchTornado wrote:
| I always feel thankful that I don't have to deal with taxi
| drivers when I travel.
| dbancajas wrote:
| > middle-management kept asking for more developers, though, so
| everyone was happy.
|
| > reply
|
| not at the expense of pension funds used by VCs.
| jonluca wrote:
| 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 that we had to take tough action to resize our
| company to the new reality of our business, and that I would come
| back to you this week with the specifics.
|
| Today I have the specifics: we have made the incredibly difficult
| decision to reduce our workforce by around 3,000 people, and to
| reduce investments in several non-core projects. As a leadership
| team we had to take the time to make the right decisions, to
| ensure that we are treating our people well, and to make certain
| that we could walk you through our decision making in the sort of
| detailed and transparent manner you deserve.
|
| Where we started and hard choices
|
| We began 2020 on an accelerated path to total company
| profitability. Then the coronavirus hit us with a once-in-a-
| generation public health and economic crisis. People are
| rightfully staying home, and our Rides business, our main profit
| generator, is down around 80%. We're seeing some signs of a
| recovery, but it comes off of a deep hole, with limited
| visibility as to its speed and shape.
|
| You've heard me say it before: hope is not a strategy. While
| that's easy to say, the truth is that this is a decision I
| struggled with. Our balance sheet is strong, Eats is doing great,
| Rides looks a little better, maybe we can wait this damn virus
| out...I wanted there to be a different answer. Let me talk to a
| few more CEOs...maybe one of them will tell me some good news,
| but there simply was no good news to hear. Ultimately, I realized
| that hoping the world would return to normal within any
| predictable timeframe, so we could pick up where we left off on
| our path to profitability, was not a viable option.
|
| I knew that I had to make a hard decision, not because we are a
| public company, or to protect our stock price, or to please our
| Board or investors. 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. We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining
| enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to
| keep growing, expanding, and innovating.
|
| We have to take these hard actions to stand strong on our own two
| feet, to secure our future, and to continue on our mission.
|
| I know that none of this will make it any easier for our friends
| and colleagues affected by the actions we are taking today. To
| those of you personally impacted, I am truly sorry. I know this
| will cause pain for you and your families, especially now. Many
| of you will be affected not because of the quality of your work,
| but because of strategic decisions we made to discontinue certain
| areas of activity, or projects that are no longer necessary, or
| simply because of the stark reality we face. You have been a huge
| part of this company and every day forward we will build on the
| foundations that you established, brick by brick.
|
| Our decisions and the road forward
|
| We have decided to re-focus our efforts on our core. If there is
| one silver lining regarding this crisis, it's that Eats has
| become an even more important resource for people at home and for
| restaurants; and delivery, whether of groceries or other local
| goods, is not only an increasing part of everyday life, it is
| here to stay. We no longer need to look far for the next enormous
| growth opportunity: we are sitting right on top of one. I will
| caution that while Eats growth is accelerating, the business
| today doesn't come close to covering our expenses. I have every
| belief that the moves we are making will get Eats to
| profitability, just as we did with Rides, but it's not going to
| happen overnight.
|
| So we need to fundamentally change the way we operate. We need to
| make some really hard decisions about what we will and won't do
| going forward, based on a few principles:
|
| We are organizing around our core: helping people move, and
| delivering things.
|
| We are building a cost-efficient structure that avoids layers and
| duplication and can scale, at speed.
|
| We are being intentional with our location strategy focused on
| key markets/hubs.
|
| Mac will now lead a unified Mobility team, which will include
| Rides and, as of today, Transit. Mac will continue to manage our
| cross-cutting functions like Safety & Insurance, CommOps, U4B,
| and Business Development, the latter of which will be centralized
| across Rides, Eats, and Freight under Jen. Pierre will lead what
| we will call "Delivery" internally, encompassing Eats, Grocery
| and Direct.
|
| Given the necessary cost cuts and the increased focus on core, we
| have decided to wind down the Incubator and AI Labs and pursue
| strategic alternatives for Uber Works. Due to these decisions,
| Zhenya has decided it makes sense to move on from Uber. Zhenya is
| customer-centric to her core, and I am deeply grateful for all of
| her hard work.
|
| We are also looking at our geographic footprint. While it served
| us well for many years to cast a wide physical net, it's time to
| be more intentional about where we have employees on the ground.
| We are closing or consolidating around 45 office locations
| globally, including winding down Pier 70 in San Francisco and
| moving some of those colleagues to our new HQ in SF. And over the
| next 12 months we will begin the process of winding down our
| Singapore office and moving to a new APAC hub in a market where
| we operate our services.
|
| Having learned my own personal lesson about the unpredictability
| of the world from the punch-in-the-gut called COVID-19, I will
| not make any claims with absolute certainty regarding our future.
| I will tell you, however, that we are making really, really hard
| choices now, so that we can say our goodbyes, have as much
| clarity as we can, move forward, and start to build again with
| confidence.
|
| How we are helping departing employees
|
| As we previewed last week, we have taken a lot of feedback and
| worked to provide strong severance benefits and other support for
| those leaving Uber, like healthcare coverage and an alumni talent
| directory. We're also taking care to support people in special
| situations a bit differently, like those on US visas or parental
| leaves. While the details will differ slightly by country, you
| can see a summary here. Every departing employee will have a 1:1
| to receive the details of their individual package.
|
| Given the global nature of these changes, and the local rules and
| regulations involved, the individual experience today will vary
| by country:
|
| All other countries (those not listed to the right)
|
| Argentina, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland (COE only),
| Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan (Karachi only),
| Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK (ULL
| only)
|
| In these countries, we can communicate about individual impacts
| today.
|
| Everyone in these countries who is affected has already received
| an email, and will soon have a calendar invitation to a private
| meeting with a manager and HR.
|
| If you are in one of these countries and you did not receive a
| separate email this morning, you are not affected.
|
| In these countries, local laws mean that we cannot be as specific
| about individual impacts today.
|
| In some countries, we will start a consultation process. In
| others, there are restrictions on making changes during the COVID
| lockdown.
|
| If you are in one of these countries, you will get an email from
| Nikki describing next steps for your location.
|
| If you are one of the many affected Uber teammates, I'll
| acknowledge right here that any package we offer, regardless of
| how thoughtful or generous, will never replace the opportunity to
| belong, to make a difference, to establish the kinds of bonds you
| establish with any important company or cause. We wouldn't be
| here without you. We will finish what you started, and we will be
| excited to see the great things that you will build next.
|
| I am incredibly thankful to _everyone_ reading this email,
| because the resilience and grit you've shown has made Uber the
| company it is and will continue to be. I've never had a harder
| day professionally than today, but Uber has consistently
| surprised me with the challenges it has thrown my way. But it's
| the toughest challenges that are worthwhile, and I know even more
| strongly in my heart than I ever have that Uber is worth it, and
| more.
|
| Dara
| wdb wrote:
| I don't consider Uber taxis an essential service, though. More
| a luxury. Internet is a essential utility service but Uber?
| sjf wrote:
| Many, many people live out of the range of public transport.
| Not everyone can drive, private taxis _are_ an essential
| service.
| wdb wrote:
| Yes, I can't drive and still only take public transport.
| It's more convenient than getting a Uber in London. Even
| taking a black cab can actually be cheaper. So yeah, I
| fully aware that transportation is important. I wish that
| would be better covered.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Yes, I can't drive and still only take public
| transport.
|
| Lucky for you that this is an option. For many people
| less fortunate than yourself it is not an option and they
| rely on taxis such as Uber.
| wdb wrote:
| Lucky for them they can afford these taxis to get
| everywhere. I can't and I am happy to walk a while to get
| to the closest bus stop so I can get to the tube. But I
| prefer the bus as I can take multiple buses within a hour
| for the same fee :)
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Lucky for them they can afford these taxis to get
| everywhere.
|
| They can't afford not to!
|
| > I am happy to walk a while to get to the closest bus
| stop so I can get to the tube.
|
| You're lucky that you have access to walkable pavements,
| busses, and a tube. That's a lot of privilege! I'd sure
| they'd be happy to use those as well! But many people
| don't have access to those things, and if they want to
| get anywhere they need to pay taxis.
| wdb wrote:
| Sorry, out of curiosity but where are you from? Where you
| can't walk or cycle 10-20 minutes to a bus stop?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I live in semi-rural Cheshire - we do have pavements and
| busses (but the busses take hours to get anywhere). We
| don't have anything as amazing as the tube!
|
| If I want to get somewhere outside my village in less
| than a couple of hours I'd have to use a taxi or drive.
|
| But if you go to for example some parts of the US, they
| literally _don 't even have pavements_ let alone busses,
| let alone tubes.
|
| They can't even walk to their local shops in some cases.
| They're trapped without a car or taxi.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| _" 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 their
| shareholders. Portraying it as something noble is more than a
| little tone-deaf.
|
| I feel for the people affected and I hope they find new roles
| soon.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Uber all but destroyed the existing taxi infrastructure in
| several major cities. So yeah, in many places they're now
| pretty essential.
|
| That said, the barrier to entry for an Uber-like service is
| quite low, so if Uber vanished from the face of the Earth it
| wouldn't take more than about a month to re-create it.
| wobbly_bush wrote:
| You are thinking of only US and similar countries where
| everyone already owns cars. In country like India, there were
| not much taxis before Uber came. An alternative was
| autorickshaw which took twice as long to go the same
| distance, had much worse safety features, exposed one to all
| the pollution all the time, not to mention the cheating of
| fares.
| fernandopj wrote:
| > Uber is not an "essential service".
|
| I agree given no other contexts, but let me refute
| anecdotally: Brazil for instance has become socially and
| economic dependable over Uber continuous success. Current
| situation goes like this:
|
| - Brazil has about 1 million rental cars. Uber drivers have
| already returned 80% of their vehicles [1][2]. Rentals are
| down 90%. As cities are beginning to announce harder
| lockdowns, these will only go further down. [3]
|
| - Rental companies stopped buying new cars for at least a
| year [4]. At least that matches the fact that almost no new
| cars are being made since March.[5]
|
| - Rental companies buy directly from manufactures, they're
| almost half of their sales [6]. And app drivers are a big
| chunk of their customers.
|
| - Car manufacturers are a big slice of every State's taxes
| they're in. Less car sales, thousand more layoffs. (lacking
| links here, sorry)
|
| IMHO, to sum up: at least here, to any politician or car-
| related executive, Uber success is critical.
|
| [1] https://www.jornalcruzeiro.com.br/sorocaba/locadoras-de-
| carr... (pt-br) [2] https://www.bol.uol.com.br/noticias/2020/
| 03/23/coronavirus-s... (pt-br) [3]
| https://www.infomoney.com.br/mercados/sem-servico-160-mil-
| mo... (pt-br) [4] https://www.uol.com.br/carros/colunas/autod
| ata/2020/05/15/lo... (pt-br) [5] https://revistaautoesporte.g
| lobo.com/Noticias/noticia/2020/0... [6]
| https://www.blogdaslocadoras.com.br/locadoras-de-
| carros/reco...
| himinlomax wrote:
| You can't fault the guy for believing / wanting to believe
| that what he's doing is useful.
| matwood wrote:
| I dunno. I find services like Uber and Lyft pretty essential.
| In my smallish city, getting a cab pre-Uber was near
| impossible. My friends and I had the personal number of 2 cab
| drivers, and if neither of them picked up, good luck.
|
| Even with the highly publicized Uber failures, no Uber I've
| ever taken has been worse than many of the cabs I was in
| prior. Something as simple as knowing the price up front has
| been key when traveling.
|
| So sure, of course they want to stay an ongoing concern. But,
| services like Uber and Lyft have become essential to many
| people.
| 1024core wrote:
| I travel to India, a lot, as I have family there.
|
| Pre-Uber days, here's what it took to get an auto-rickshaw
| (also called "auto"): you walk up to the "auto stand" where
| you see some auto drivers lounging. As they see you walk up,
| they size you up; and immediately jack up the prices they're
| going to quote you as they see you don't seem a local. If you
| turn one of them down, the others will simply refuse to talk
| to you or even look at you. Then your best bet is to keep
| walking, looking for an idling auto driver.
|
| Post-Uber world: pull up the app, enter the destination
| address, and watch as the car approaches your location. Hop
| in, driver is incentivized to get you there as quickly as
| possible. Hop off at the destination, give him 5 stars, and
| you're on your way. Simple as that.
|
| For me, Uber was always an essential service in India.
| giglamesh wrote:
| There is a very simple way to determine if a service is
| essential or not. If it existed 15 years ago it might be
| essential, but if it did not, then it is definitely not
| essential. Human civilization arose and thrived for thousands
| of years without ride-share. We'll be fine (better off
| actually) without it.
| ollerac wrote:
| This is a terrible measure.
|
| The World Wide Web was invented only 30 years ago, yet it's
| arguably the single most essential service during this
| time. Without it, social distancing while keeping large
| parts of the economy alive wouldn't have even been an
| option.
|
| At the rate technology is becoming embedded into our daily
| lives, I think an arbitrary number of years is definitely
| not the way to decide whether something is essential.
| Context matters. What if instead of a pandemic that affects
| the lungs, the next one affects older people's ability to
| walk? Not very hard to imagine Uber being considered a 100%
| essential service at that point.
| drstewart wrote:
| Well, you're right about one thing: that sure is a simple
| method.
|
| Useful? No. Effective? No. Meaningful? No. But definitely
| simple.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Why 15 years? Why not 50? Or 150?
|
| By those measures BTW, antibiotics, modern sewers and (for
| the most part) vacinations aren't essential.
|
| And indeed they aren't, for the survival of the human race.
| They are, however, very important for the survival of
| individual humans.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| 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.
| phatfish wrote:
| All the gig economy apps do is ensure the poor stay poor.
|
| When you are working 10-12 hours a day to make ends meet
| and shoulder the all costs of the depreciating fix assets
| there is very little opportunity dig yourself out of that
| hole.
|
| Uber and similar companies are destroying the very small
| businesses (or squashing their margins into nothing) which
| traditionally are the environment that the poor can become
| entrepreneurs and build their own local business.
| hobofan wrote:
| The classification as an "essential service" has only to do
| with the service being essential to the _users_ of the
| service, and nothing to do with the workers.
|
| You are completely twisting the label of an essential
| service in a way that makes it effectively meaningless. For
| every worker that depends on their salary for their
| livelihood, their job is essential, but that has nothing to
| do with an "essential service".
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| 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.
| dbancajas wrote:
| > 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.
| Reubend wrote:
| Centuries ago, people got by with horses. Does that mean
| that cars aren't essential?
|
| Ridesharing services allow for an unprecedented level of
| mobility for those who don't already own cars.
| dbancajas wrote:
| You could say the same for taxis. If uber cost 100$/ride
| you wouldn't be claiming it is unprecedented. It will die
| because no one wants to pay for it with the real cost:
| livable wage + proper car insurance.
| nerfhammer wrote:
| 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.
| dbancajas wrote:
| If they spin off the ride sharing part of the company how
| much are they earning? do you know?
| mqnfred wrote:
| 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.
| economicslol wrote:
| >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.
| freeqaz wrote:
| When I lived in SF parking was $400 per month, plus as a
| young male my insurance was $200+ per month.
|
| Most of the time I could take a bus or public transit,
| but when I couldn't (like buying groceries) then I'd use
| an Uber. It was significantly cheaper versus owning a
| car, and it was absolutely an "essential" service at that
| point in my life.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This discounts the difficulties in buying a car when
| credit is bad or nonexistent. I was in this situation,
| the only people who will give you a vehicle are loan
| sharks and scammers. Partially this was my own ignorance
| (see: awful credit). Partially it was my own bad credit
| itself.
|
| It also discounts the horrible stress that adding a known
| monthly bill can cause, when Uber is more flexible, pay-
| what-you-need. And I was never as bad as many others, so
| I can see how the least-prepared and least-financially-
| secure could see Uber as a viable use, either once-in-a-
| while (e.g., missed the bus), or for regular use (paying
| $12 for a two-way, 1 mile trip through a crappy part of
| town can pay for itself if you avoid an hour of walking
| and get an hour of working).
| economicslol wrote:
| So you're saying Uber is a luxury. So it's not essential.
| tjr225 wrote:
| 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.
| economicslol wrote:
| 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 $2000 car would only take 10 weeks to pay for fully
| in cash and the savings of 800$ per month could easily
| cover maintenance.
|
| My point is if you can afford to use Uber as your sole
| means of transportation you can surely afford your own
| car and the people who can't are using subways or Buses.
| It's pretty simple, people who are struggling aren't
| using Uber very often.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| 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.
| economicslol wrote:
| 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.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| The "essentialness" of an service it a pretty bad
| concept. Uber is definitely non essential as sole means,
| but it starts to be pretty essential when you feel sick
| and want to go to hospital (not on ambulance level tho).
| himinlomax wrote:
| I live in Paris, and I could easily afford a new car (or
| two) with my income as an SRE.
|
| But then I'd have to park it, and just that would double
| the monthly cost. And then I'd probably use it once a
| month on average.
| dbancajas wrote:
| So use the taxi for once a month? Uber doesn't have to
| exist for you to address your problem.
| himinlomax wrote:
| I use my bicycle every day, but some people don't have
| that option. Also I normally use Uber more than once a
| month. The thing is, a car is way too much of hassle to
| use most of the time in the city. You need to park it,
| there's traffic, and then you can't drive drunk or so
| I've been told.
| Reubend wrote:
| If you can use public transportation, then relying on it
| with supplementary transportation from Uber is cheaper in
| most cities.
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| That's not your call to make.
|
| Literally folks with cars are telling folks without cars
| (but who use uber when needed) that uber is not necessary
| (ie, partial access to a car is not needed) while they
| have 24/7 access.
|
| Anyone who has NOT owned a car will tell you - uber is
| essential - full stop.
|
| 30% of the population has HOUSEHOLD income from all
| sources of $30K or less. The cost of parking alone can be
| a major issue (many cheaper apts do not have dedicated
| parking).
| arkadiytehgraet wrote:
| Perhaps you should speak only for yourself and not
| others?
|
| I don't have a car and hopefully never will. I never used
| an Uber or any similar service. I used taxi maybe 2 or 3
| times in the past few years.
|
| It is extremely easy to live without a car if the city /
| country accommodates for it.
| aeyes wrote:
| > there's no way people who commute every day are doing
| so for cheaper than actually owning a car.
|
| Yes there is: Public transportation (bus, metro, train).
| Millions of people get to work using it every day. Just
| having a car sit on the street would cost me at least
| 100$ 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.
| economicslol wrote:
| I should have specified, my point was that Uber is not
| the same as public transportation and is essentially a
| luxury good.
| x0x0 wrote:
| I bet Uber/Lyft enable single car ownership for lots of
| couples, and is nothing like a luxury good. Things like
| people who carpool, but need a backup when that falls
| through. Or the ability to get to a doctor (or any
| location) poorly served by public transit.
|
| I mean, it's not a luxury good in the sense that you
| _can_ buy a car, but I suspect many folks have made
| difficult or expensive to unwind decisions that make car
| ownership expensive. Classifying transportation where an
| alternative may well cost more than $1k /mo as a "luxury
| good" is a real stretch of the word luxury.
| economicslol wrote:
| So a luxury that you can normally get by without? You
| seem to be strengthening my argument that it's not
| essential.
|
| I think my point is being missed though and that is that
| using Uber as your daily commute is certainly not cheaper
| than owning a car. I think that's perfectly reasonable to
| say.
|
| Also I don't mean to imply that Uber is a luxury in the
| same way Lois Vuitton is a luxury.
|
| In my examples in other comments using Uber as a daily
| commute option almost certainly costs nearly 1000 or more
| per month.
| dj_brown_sugar wrote:
| Using Uber alone for all transportation may be a luxury,
| but if you're in a situation where you rely heavily
| public transportation, Uber is a nearly essential
| addition to it.
|
| Transporting large items, or groceries for an entire
| family are extremely difficult if not impossible over
| public transportation. Transporting a group of people
| (3+) can be approximately the same price on public
| transportation and Uber without potentially sacrificing
| comfort, safety, time and effort, many of which can be
| essential depending on your circumstances.
|
| The cost of using Uber and Public transportation also
| requires a lot less upfront cost which is necessary for
| people living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to
| spend around $2k on a car, as well as deal with it's
| maintenance time and cost.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Then car is essentially a luxury good, since it's the
| same - just someone else is driving it.
| economicslol wrote:
| Yes. That's my point. Uber is not essential, it is a
| luxury.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into personal attack. Your comment would
| be fine without the first sentence.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > Ahh - the comment from the person with the multi-car
| garage, the tesla and the range rover.
|
| I think you have me mistaken for someone else. I don't have
| any of those things. Not even close.
| aguyfromnb wrote:
| > _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._
|
| You think poor people are using Uber to get around?
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| No, they are the ones driving it. And now they will be
| out of their job.
| treis wrote:
| 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.
| jeffbee wrote:
| 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 really profitable business in Uruguay or Crete or
| wherever I would run, RUN back to my desk and short their
| stock. "Big in Japan" is not. Anyway the point is Uber is the
| most-fucked company that ever was. They will never expand
| into their new Mission Bay HQ. At best, they will retreat
| into it, abandoning their other real estate in a continuation
| of the process that began when they bailed out of Oakland.
| This has been a long time coming for Uber and Covid-19 merely
| gives them the cover to do what's needed.
| degurechaff wrote:
| uber is not available in jakarta, only grab & gojek
| [deleted]
| abbadadda wrote:
| 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.`
| mv4 wrote:
| I expect this to get downvoted, but: I would say that was a
| smart thing to say when laying off thousands of employees.
| That's not necessarily what the top executives believe, or
| want, as it is much much harder.
| elliekelly wrote:
| > 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.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| The numbers are skewed because of the nature of this
| pandemic. People are scared of being in close proximity with
| each other.
|
| I would argue some portion of the accommodations industry is
| essential (avg. occupancy rates of around ~%60 in normal
| times, so let's say ~%60 of hotels/motels are essential) and
| yet I know multiple hoteliers who have had to close shop for
| the next few months due to zero volume. This doesn't mean
| that day-to-day, hotels aren't an essential service.
| dashwav wrote:
| As a counterpoint, buses/railways are imo 100% an essential
| service for cities and yet they were running empty during the
| COVID-19 lockdown where I live. I would hate to see them
| recategorized as non-essential because of a situation that is
| clearly completely abnormal.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| Counterpoint to your counterpoint. I agree that public
| transport is essential, but the level at which it was
| running previously was 100% non essential, because the
| majority of the workforce in places like London (where we
| have excellent public transport) can & should work from
| home. There's no need for accountants to sit in an open
| plan office all clustered on the same spot in the City of
| London and therefore putting a huge strain on public
| transport which forces London to run a train every 60
| seconds.
|
| And precisely because public transport IS essential we
| still had all of it running, just at a reduced capacity to
| facilitate the essential public demand. So comparing public
| transport with Uber only highlights even more how Uber is
| non essential, because we can live pretty much without it,
| but we evidently can't without public transport (as seen in
| London).
| rockinghigh wrote:
| Are you saying transportation and restaurants are not
| essential?
| dustinmoris wrote:
| Well... transportation hasn't disappeared. People still
| drive, cycle and take busses and trains, so clearly these
| means of transport are essential. However, it is true that
| air travel has collapsed and restaurants as well, both
| which seem to be non essential. People don't have to fly to
| other places (for the most part at least, air freight is
| still happening plentyfull) and people can cook at home or
| get delivery, so it seems that not all transportation is
| essential and that restaurants aren't either.
| bbv-if wrote:
| Judging from my experience - restaurants are not. We have
| started cooking more since the beginning of the lockdown
| being able to cook during the time that would have
| otherwise been spent on commute. And we have saved a
| surprisingly large amount of money in the process.
| mcculley wrote:
| How could restaurants be considered essential? People can
| eat without having food cooked for them.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| > I am incredibly thankful to _everyone_ reading this email,
| because
|
| I'm just curious, did you take the time to add the emphasis
| here, or did the original email have the word "everyone"
| surrounded by asterisk characters?
| jonluca wrote:
| I copy and pasted it from the CNBC article - not sure if
| that's their emphasis or not.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| > And over the next 12 months we will begin the process of
| winding down our Singapore office and moving to a new APAC hub
| in a market where we operate our services.
|
| Wonder where the new APAC hub is? Could it be Hong Kong? They
| have had the unrest issues but haven't been impacted much by
| covid, relatively speaking.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| My educated guess is India. They have a reasonably big
| development center in Bangalore and Hyderabad, besides
| operating rides business there.
| pthomas551 wrote:
| India is a regulatory nightmare. It's more likely to be
| Tokyo or Seoul. Maybe Sydney but from a geographic
| perspective Australia isn't exactly ideal.
| babesh wrote:
| The Information had a good article on the engineering
| layoffs (at least the previous round). The CEO decided to
| cut people to shift development to lower cost countries
| even when some managers were willing to cut their own
| salaries to save some jobs.
| theredbox wrote:
| This must feel really bad. 200k engineers replaced by 30k
| indians.
| ra7 wrote:
| Where did you get those numbers? And how did you conclude
| engineers worldwide are being "replaced by" Indians from
| a statement which says they're moving APAC hub from
| Singapore?
| theredbox wrote:
| I am replying to a comment that is speculating they are
| going for India.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| The speculation was in response to question about "moving
| Singapore to APAC". Sorry if that wasn't clear from the
| context.
| [deleted]
| pm90 wrote:
| I wonder how Dara's approach will pan out if things get much
| worse (most economists predict that there will be a greater
| recession than 08 unless urgent fiscal and monetary actions are
| taken immediately). Friends in the oil industry have described
| the environment as cutthroat and unpredictable, swaying wildly
| from euphoric good times to brutal cost cutting when oil prices
| fall... I was shocked at how they were treated but in a
| cyclical market that's the only kind of company that will
| survive the lows.
|
| Hopefully it doesn't come to that but who knows.
| fermienrico wrote:
| Yep, I agree - it sounds genuine and from the heart. 80%
| reduction in business is no small thing and especially due to
| something out of the CEO's control. We can't blame companies
| from laying off people - it sucks for all of us.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I totally agree with this. I've seen Dara speak before and
| I've always found him extremely genuine, intelligent, and
| insightful.
|
| That said, I've seen a number of layoff announcements from
| CEOs recently where there have been a number of "Wow, really
| great job announcing those layoffs" comments. And, while I
| agree with that, part of me thinks that we've become so
| conditioned to especially shitty layoff announcements and
| corporate double speak that when someone does something that
| really shouldn't be _that_ difficult (speak with empathy,
| genuineness, but clarity on what must be done, and treat
| employees who are leaving well) that we 're all particularly
| impressed.
|
| I'm in no way saying layoffs are easy, and I know many good
| CEOs who agonize over those decisions. At the same time, I
| think we should try to raise our expectations of how
| employees should be humanely treated.
| wow222 wrote:
| Personally, I would prefer "Sorry, we're letting you go,
| reasons are obvious - it's covid19 not you. Thanks for
| everything, your last month salary will be paid on X and we're
| giving you Y months of cash to help you transition."... Why
| make a movie out of it?
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Anyone know how they are handling folks on TN and H-1B visas?
| netcan wrote:
| Uber is very vulnerable.
|
| They still make a large loss every year. Cash is not _as_ bad,
| because (a) half the loss is in the form of "stock-based-
| compensation" and (b) they've been growing, which improves cash
| flows.
|
| Stock prices are (astonishingly) doing ok. Idk if that means uber
| can still raise whatever they need, but I suppose it does.
|
| They can't really ride out a dip in stock price though. They
| almost certainly can't cut enough to be profitable... Even if
| 2020 revenues weren't lower than last year's.
|
| Uber still operates financially like a startup... they have a
| certain amount of runway.... It's longer than most startups, but
| it's still under two years.
| schnable wrote:
| Are they going to regret having 4,000 micro services now?
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| It would be interesting to see the ratio of how many micro
| services an org maintains vs the number of engineers.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I think this could be an interesting metric to apply across
| the board.
|
| R = # of micro services / # of engineers
|
| If R >= 1, this is potentially problematic and may indicate
| engineers being unable to work with the code of their peers.
| Operating in this regime would be viewed as risky. R can go
| to infinity very quickly if you go down this path without
| very deliberate planning, involving the consensus of both the
| entire management and engineering staffs.
|
| If R < 1, you have more engineers than micro services. People
| share code bases and are not afraid of each other. This is
| probably a safe regime to operate in, even if you completely
| fuck up the intent of micro services.
|
| I think R could also serve as an arbitrary bus impact scalar
| for the org chart.
| lotophage wrote:
| A couple of years ago it was roughly 3 service per engineer.
| MisterPea wrote:
| Well I think that's one of the benefits of microservices
| actually.
|
| Cut out all the services that have deep tribal knowledge from
| people let go and replace them with new services if the service
| is actually important or just remove it altogether.
| schnable wrote:
| What I wonder is how often the "remove" operation happens.
| I'd wager it's more likely there are many services doing
| variations of the same thing, but existing ones are hard to
| kill because there is a web of dependencies.
| fallingmeat wrote:
| What about Elevate? Seems non-core but couldn't have been cheap.
| livealife wrote:
| Who are getting laid off? Software engineers or management and
| customer team?
| akmarinov wrote:
| Hmm wonder why they announced it on a Monday instead of a Friday?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| A lot of the layoffs are international, so if they had
| announced on Friday the employees would have learned of their
| terminations over theirs weekends, as Friday in the U.S. is
| generally at least Saturday in Europe and Asia.
|
| International companies generally announce cross-border layoffs
| on Monday (US-time), because that announcement will be during
| the work week everywhere they operate.
| somebrody wrote:
| The most reasonable explanation is that they were targeting
| Friday, but were late and so it was Monday. Firing 3,000
| employees takes a lot of preparation. If there are a few corner
| case employee resolutions, that holds up the whole bunch
| C1sc0cat wrote:
| And there are legal steps they will have to go through making
| redundant that many in the US
| tengkahwee wrote:
| Friday in San Francisco is Saturday in Asia which means there's
| probably a layoff on Monday in Asia.
|
| However a Monday layoff in San Francisco means a Tuesday layoff
| in Asia which won't be separated by a weekend.
| odyssey7 wrote:
| What is the line of reasoning that favors a Friday for layoffs?
| vitaflo wrote:
| There are several, one is that you can time it with payroll,
| so your last day is the end of the current payroll period,
| just makes it neat for accounting purposes.
|
| Another is that if the company doesn't want the media to pick
| up the "bad news", Friday is the best time to do it because
| it'll get lost over the weekend when it's reported on.
|
| And finally, there's less worry about retaliation from
| disgruntled employees if they have the weekend to calm down
| over being let go.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| I think he/she is saying that announcing bad news on a Friday
| usually helps because it mitigates the amount of negative
| coverage it would receive from the media. Announcing on a
| Monday then seems unusual from a PR perspective.
| johntam wrote:
| Not OP, but a lot of American companies do layoffs on a
| Friday in an attempt to have fewer headlines on a weekend
| (news outlets aren't fully staffed then, people are
| distracted, etc.)
|
| https://www.kornferry.com/insights/articles/bad-news-
| deliver...
| rvz wrote:
| I can't imagine how companies like Uber, Lyft and WeWork could be
| sustainable in the long term with huge costs and a high burn
| rate, but this action is definitely in addressing the future Q2
| results in the summer which is the actual results including the
| impact on the coronavirus outbreak.
|
| Essentially for companies like Uber and Lyft who don't focus on
| fast growth, VC cash raising and generating little money with
| huge costs, the actual reality is that this is nothing more than
| the emperor new clothes. Unfortunately there are no sacred cows
| being saved here, especially engineering being affected in this.
| blihp wrote:
| The game plan is pretty simple: use VC cash to quickly provide
| services everywhere and build market share, drive competitors
| out of business / acquire them, move to self-driving cars to
| the extent possible and eventually raise rates when customers
| have no other options.
| partiallogic wrote:
| This is always brought up as the game plan but are there any
| examples where this worked out?
| blihp wrote:
| I believe Amazon was the (modern) prototype of this type of
| business plan.
| dbancajas wrote:
| probably not. but while doing that (takes 10 years), all
| the execs and VCs get rich while the investing public is
| left holding the bag.
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| Well... yes, but the problem with that plan is that Uber
| would need VC funding for 20 more year while they try to make
| the self driving cars work.
|
| I feel bad for the people who got fired, but I also believe
| is was bound to happen, the current situation with Covid-19
| just speed up the process.
| deminature wrote:
| Uber and Lyft are public, they haven't relied on VC cash for
| over a year.
| raiyu wrote:
| Going public is still a fundraising event that puts cash on
| the balance sheet of the company.
|
| So whether they are funded by VC's or large institutional
| buyers who are the majority traders on the public market,
| there is no difference and the companies continue to lost
| money.
|
| The issue for Uber is that they need to change the narrative.
| They don't have the story that Amazon did, that they are
| losing money because they are reinvesting it back into
| tremendous infrastructure which will give them scale.
|
| Uber is losing money because they grew very quickly so there
| were a lot of innate inefficiencies because of that. So these
| firings are a chance to right size the company and see if the
| new trimmed down Uber will now be profitable when eventually
| ridership returns to normal.
| mannytabloid wrote:
| Q2 is already doomed - plus now they're adding millions of one-
| time severance costs to the quarter. This is a hail mary for
| Q3.
| blackswan101 wrote:
| Whoever is still being recruited by uber or close to an offer
| better make sure they have a solid severance clause written into
| their contract! Nothing less than 1 to 2 years of pay.
| saos wrote:
| Surely no offers can be made during this period redundancies
| and consultation.
| bdcravens wrote:
| 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 working on tooling, R&D
| projects, and at least partially on open source projects, roles
| that could presumably go away if a company had to focus strictly
| on the core product.
| simias wrote:
| I've never worked for a true unicorn but I've been in companies
| that got a sudden success and grew way too big way too fast. I
| think you can tell from the inside when a company loses its
| way. As you mention, suddenly you have tons of teams working on
| what seems to be fairly niche aspects of the company's product.
| You have man-years worth of work going nowhere as projects get
| scrapped mid-development. You start having a massively more
| complicated hierarchy of bosses and managers and project
| leaders and it seems like everybody is chief of something and
| everybody loses sight of the big picture as they just become
| focused on a single aspect of a given product. What was once a
| lean startup with a vision is now struggling to get new
| products out of the pipeline even though they have ten times
| (or more) the manpower.
|
| Growing is hard and unicorns are expected to grow really,
| really fast. In the end many companies with a completely viable
| product end up going under just because investors thought that
| a million dollar company should be a billion dollar company.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> You have man-years worth of work going nowhere as projects
| get scrapped mid-development.
|
| That's better than seeing man-years go into features that get
| deployed. I witnessed one successful control system company
| spin up a team of new hotshot UI engineers, all right out of
| the best schools. After months of work the team "updated" the
| product. Withing hours the call center was hit with hundreds
| of "You changed the g-dam menus!! Put them back NOW!!".
|
| The trick is to squeeze your long-term UI project in the same
| update as some routine security fixes. Then the clients are
| forced to learn the new system.
| bashinator wrote:
| > The trick is to squeeze your long-term UI project in the
| same update as some routine security fixes. Then the
| clients are forced to learn the new system.
|
| Is this sarcasm? Seems like a really user-hostile attitude
| if not. Admittedly, my personal point-of-view is that the
| majority of UI updates are make-work for engineers and PMs
| with at best no value added, and at worst negative value
| created (as you experienced).
| matt_morgan wrote:
| I'm not saying anything about anyone's intent, but
| replacing "man-year" with "person-year" is a painless,
| traditional-grammar-friendly way to go gender-neutral.
| lumberingjack wrote:
| You need to me more accepting of people words what he
| said was fine maybe he prefers traditional grammar and
| you just need to accept people
| eadmund wrote:
| > I'm not saying anything about anyone's intent, but
| replacing "man-year" with "person-year" is a painless,
| traditional-grammar-friendly way to go gender-neutral.
|
| It is not painless: it is dissonant _and_ takes another
| syllable.
|
| One might argue that is worth the pain and stylistic cost
| of infelicitous phrasing in order to be sex-neutral or
| welcoming or whatever, and that might indeed be the case.
|
| I think that language is far less important here than
| culture. Persian, for example, is a genderless language:
| it has no 'he' or 'her,' no 'waiter' or 'waitress,' no
| 'actor' or 'actress.' And yet I think most folks would
| say that Iran is far less gender-neutral than any
| English-speaking country.
| LaGrange wrote:
| > It is not painless: it is dissonant
|
| You'll get used to it in about 5 minutes.
|
| > and takes another syllable.
|
| Seriously, the amount of time people who pretend to be
| hard and rational loose their minds over things like "one
| syllable."
|
| > Persian, for example, is a genderless language: it has
| no 'he' or 'her,' no 'waiter' or 'waitress,' no 'actor'
| or 'actress.' And yet I think most folks would say that
| Iran is far less gender-neutral than any English-speaking
| country.
|
| That's a straw man. Asking for gender-neutral terms when
| referring to groups of people does not equate to asking
| for gender-neutral culture. Take it from a trans person,
| that is _not_ what most of us are asking for.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I presume all the developers are men? as in members of
| mankind... All people are men.
| SenorSourdough wrote:
| 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.
| rauhl wrote:
| > 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.
|
| That is not actually true. The Old English word for a
| male human being is wer, as in werewolf; it is cognate to
| the Latin vir (also meaning a male human being, and the
| source of modern English words like virile & virtue).
| That word is no longer in common use in modern English,
| although I think maybe it survives in some dialects.
|
| The word man(n), OTOH is the gender-neutral Old English
| word for a human being, as found in such words as woman
| (from wifman, a wife-man) or leman (a mistress, or love-
| man), both notably referring to female human beings. It
| is cognate to modern German mann, again referring to any
| human being.
|
| The word mankind thus refers to ... any kind of man.
| arcticbull wrote:
| This is going to sound stupid but at some point, it's
| less important what's right and more important how
| something makes people feel.
| SenorSourdough wrote:
| Language is fluid. The thing that was "right" to say 500
| years ago wasn't right 100 years ago, and what was
| "right" 100 years ago wouldn't be right now. There are
| clear arguments for why encouraging people to think about
| the gendered language that they use and how it
| perpetuates gender roles would be beneficial in combating
| sexism. The arguments for maintaining existing language
| because it is currently the most popular tend to be
| pretty thin.
| wolco wrote:
| When you move into how people feel are we introducing
| inequality? People feel at different rates. Some can go
| into a rage in an instant while others can be a rock. Are
| we rewarding the primate brain over scientific
| obvervations when we choose to accept personal feeling as
| the gold standard? Should we be encouraging one over the
| other?
| notJim wrote:
| 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."
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > I'm not saying anything about anyone's intent
|
| Well then don't say anything at all. It adds nothing to
| the conversation. Don't push your ideals on others. Take
| your SJW crusade elsewhere. That's one positive thing
| from this pandemic - the shift in focus away from these
| types of (IMO) non-existent 'problems.'
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| 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.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| 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.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| 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?
| citizenkeen wrote:
| The fact that you view a history of systemic sexism in
| tech and in the world as not a real problem is, in fact,
| part of the problem.
|
| The good news is when people start being more inclusive
| with their language you'll see fewer people correcting
| them!
| SenorSourdough wrote:
| You understand that there are millions of women who are
| victims of abuse, sidelined or disregarded by society,
| and constantly repressed because of sexism, right?
|
| Losing your job is a temporary problem for most people.
| Sexism, like the kind that is baked right into our
| language, is an inescapable daily struggle for many
| women.
|
| We have the capacity to think about both women's rights
| and the recently unemployed at the same time. It's
| frankly sad that you can't look deeply enough at this
| issue to see it as more than a problem of "grammar
| preferences".
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| What are you worried about. The intellectual left is
| effectively dead.
|
| Sanders. Dead. Warren. Dead. Gender police. Dead.
|
| The democrats are going to fight one another to one-uo
| republicans on immigration post corona. And pro-US first
| no further dependence on globalist masks or hand
| sanitizer.
|
| There may be a few gender cops here and there, but the
| movement is dead. There is no point in fighting
| wolco wrote:
| Can we be species neutral. Person refers to humans and
| leaves out animals and other substances like carbon which
| would experience a year in the same manner as a human.
| desert_boi wrote:
| Corporations are people too, my friend.
| brianobush wrote:
| you are missing the point, it is still a year of work,
| regardless of gender.
| sbarre wrote:
| I suspect they got the point, and rather you are missing
| their point, which is taking the (trivially easy)
| opportunity to be more gender-neutral with our language..
|
| That's all!
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Why not go with "work-years"? It has the benefit of being
| gender neutral and even more relevant.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| The OP's intent was not to single out a gender. He/she
| was using a very common catchphrase. Your call-out was
| really passive-aggressive and uncalled for.
|
| Do you get pressed everytime someone talks about history,
| and suggest they use the word "herstory" or "perstory"
| instead?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I'm not saying anything about anyone's intent either, but
| it's also painless and traditional just to refrain from
| unsolicited corrections of people's word choice when
| there isn't any ill intent to be talked about.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I don't alter quotes, even for PC reasons. And If I am
| going to reuse language for effect I am not going to make
| changes unless they add to the point I am making. The
| first comment said man-years and I stuck with that as I
| wasn't trying to correct their gender grammar.
|
| Also, "person-year" is vague as "persons" includes non-
| humans entities such as corporations and partnerships.
| "Man-year" refers only to work by biological humans.
| "People-years" might be better but that is plural. Had I
| been the first I might have used person-years, but when
| someone else sets a precedent that avoids confusion I'm
| happy to stick with it despite potential
| microaggressions.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| sde-year, dev-year, engineer-year, resource-year,
| employee-year, are all variants I've heard before.
|
| I can understand not wanting to miss-quote something, but
| otherwise seems simple enough to use different language.
| staticassertion wrote:
| Or do A/B testing and incremental rollouts?
| seankimdesign wrote:
| That's more of a failure for the ux and product vision than
| it is a failure of project management. The trick isn't to
| just roll out new changes slowly, but to involve the users
| and figure out what needs to change and how.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> roll out new changes slowly.
|
| That really depends on your customers and the product. In
| this case, control systems, incremental changes are
| definitely not the way to go. Imagine if your car made an
| incremental change to the position of the brake pedal
| every time you turned it on. In such situations you don't
| babystep. You announce the change ahead of time, provide
| your customers with transition training, and make the
| change as scheduled.
|
| In the case of "adaptive" menus in control systems,
| imagine if the elevator in your building rearranged its
| floor buttons so that the most requested floors were
| always at the top. Total chaos. People learn where their
| button is on day one. After that ANY change is going to
| go badly no matter what the UI engineers say. That UI
| should be carved in stone for the life of the building.
| jdhn wrote:
| Were there any dedicated UX people involved? To me, a UI
| engineer is someone who works exclusively on the front
| end, and would implement the work of the UX designer.
| They wouldn't actually do the designing and research
| themselves.
| [deleted]
| closeparen wrote:
| >suddenly you have tons of teams working on what seems to be
| fairly niche aspects of the company's product
|
| At scale it tends to be worthwhile, even necessary, to engage
| fully with the complexity of all those "niche" aspects.
|
| When you don't understand how something could possibly take
| so much effort, it's _possible_ all the people working on it
| are idiots and you could do it better in a weekend. (When you
| spot situations like that, think of them as startup
| opportunities...)
|
| It's also possible they're doing a good job hiding the
| complexity from you.
| munificent wrote:
| I think there is a lot of truth to both your comment and
| the parent comment.
|
| Everyone underestimates the complexity of systems they
| aren't personally familiar with. Ask the average person how
| many parts are in a modern automobile and they'd probably
| guess too low by an order of magnitude.
|
| But it is also true that large organizations get weird when
| money is easily available. You get a Cambrian explosion
| where without selection pressure to ensure people and teams
| do real, useful work, everything starts to seem like a good
| idea.
|
| Determining _which_ organizational complexity is essential
| and which is accidental is likely the quintessential hard
| problem of business.
| hintymad wrote:
| Well said. That's exactly what happened to many unicorns,
| including Uber.
| skywhopper wrote:
| For what it's worth, this isn't unique to unicorns. Almost
| company successful enough to get to the scale of tens of
| thousands of employees likely has huge amounts of waste
| within it. The situation you describe of niche projects being
| scrapped after several person-years of effort had been
| invested, incomprehensible management hierarchy, and no
| coherent strategy perfectly matches my first job out of
| college, a year at Sprint in 1999. Me and two other new hires
| spent a year doing next to nothing on a team of 20+ building
| a complicated Java service with a purpose I never understood,
| but which had been going on for about a year, with half the
| team made up of contractors. Pretty sure I never wrote any
| actual code, though I did have to fill out time sheets every
| week. I had two managers, neither of whom I ever talked to.
| After a year, I got a 15% raise and a promotion. Then soon
| after I found another job and quit, our project got
| cancelled, but everyone on the team just got moved to other
| teams doing similar "work".
| specialist wrote:
| _"...you can tell from the inside when a company loses its
| way. "_
|
| Those example pathologies you listed are SOP at all the
| mature orgs I've worked at.
| wrkronmiller wrote:
| Do you think the degree to which a company succumbs to one
| of these "pathologies" matters? Is it a matter of timing
| (i.e. becoming successful faster than they become
| moribund)?
|
| What do you think differentiates a company that becomes
| "mature" vs one that flames out?
| lumberingjack wrote:
| Sound like what happened at Intel
| hintymad wrote:
| It's not about in unicorns or not. It's about the scope and
| impact of your projects, both of which have more to do with the
| size than the PR status of a company. When the quantity of
| people in a company exceeds the quantity of work, you'll be
| much more expendable.
|
| Following this type of logic, joining Uber in 2015 or later is
| a bad idea. Joining airbnb in 2015 is a bad idea. Joining
| Google now is likely a bad idea. Joining new orgs in AWS is
| probably a good idea.
|
| A few heuristics that I find useful: 1. Revenue per employee 2.
| Moving average of number of substantial launches in the past X
| months 3. Actionable technical blogs that address real
| challenges directly related to specific business needs. So, no,
| Uber's why they switched from MySQL to Postgres and then later
| another article by the same person on why they switched from
| Postgres to MySQL do not count.
| meditativeape wrote:
| These heuristics are interesting. Do you have concrete
| numbers for some of the big techs?
| kaydub wrote:
| These companies are beyond being unicorns though. I work at a
| unicorn and our whole R&D team is only like 100-120 people.
| monadic2 wrote:
| Well you don't get VC money because you want to give people
| jobs, so yes.
| ratww wrote:
| Definitely. The company just felt bloated. Feature teams needed
| 7 or 8 people working constantly on single screens that would
| be an afterthought in an MVP, just to keep up with the constant
| changes in architecture and infrastructure. Lots of over-
| engineering and NIH from veterans that didn't want work on
| teams. Lots of rewrites due to performance issues. All that
| without any noticeable change for the customer (other than the
| website becoming slower). VCs and middle-management kept asking
| for more developers, though, so everyone was happy, but the
| general perception was that we would do just as well (or
| better) with a half, or a third of the staff.
| burnte wrote:
| 5,000 engineers for Uber. Absurd.
| gkoberger wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Travis, the founder and CEO of Uber, was expendable._
|
| I didn't like the way he conducted himself or ran his
| company, but the jury is still out on that. TFA is about how
| that ball is still currently in play.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Much like the Warriors in the last year, it's hard to ignore
| your team taking losses, especially when success was so easy
| in the past, and thinking about finding a new team if things
| don't improve.
| Traster wrote:
| 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"
| staysaasy wrote:
| As someone who has hired many engineers and PMs, and runs a
| hiring budget today, there are some reasons to feel at least
| fairly secure if you're an engineer at a growing company:
| - Building a high-quality product is a longterm investment and
| most technology companies know that. As a result, in my
| experience companies who expect growth would always prefer to
| keep engineers and PMs as investments. - Companies
| generally find it hard to hire Engineers and PMs that meet
| their standards, especially in competitive markets like the
| SFBA, NYC, Boulder/Denver, Seattle, Austin etc. (You can argue
| whether that's caused by overly stringent hiring standards -
| that's a much more complex question). As a result, companies
| are somewhat more likely to "hoard" engineers if they expect
| that they'll need them to grow. - Because engineers in
| these markets are expensive, it makes economic sense to spend
| to improve their productivity. If I have 100 engineers on my
| team and I can make them all just 1% more productive by hiring
| an additional engineer who focuses solely on internal tools or
| open source libraries that improve developer QoL, that's
| arguably money well spent. - Many products at scale are
| more complex than one might expect from the outside, which
| demands a lot of ongoing product/engineering effort to
| maintain. If you're working on something that has a credible
| path to revenue or clearly makes/saves money now, your job is
| probably fairly safe.
|
| This all assumes that 1) the company wants to keep you, and 2)
| the company is growing, even modestly. Once the financials go
| downhill companies will cut directly to the bone in order to
| survive, and at that point nobody in any industry is safe.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| I'm at Airbnb (opinions strictly are my own). The number of
| engineers working on tooling for us is actually not that large.
| The vast, vast majority are product engineers and with our most
| recent layoffs the majority of the cuts were for those types of
| engineers. My own opinion is that we simply had way too many
| product engineers for the amount of actual output we got from
| them.
|
| Uber is on another different plane altogether... they have more
| than double the number of engineers and from talking w/
| colleagues that worked for years at Uber it's my impression
| that even on infra there's a lot of bloat. Plenty of high level
| ICs that couldn't produce quality IC work to save their lives
| and plenty of pet projects.
| swyx wrote:
| right. this recession is actually giving cover to let go of a
| lot of bloat that has built up over the years.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Well, freeing it up to compete. I expect some of the bloat
| is just so that someone can't work for a competitor.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| You'd think so but that's at least not the impression
| I've gotten. At Google that's certainly going to be the
| case but at a company like Uber/Lyft/Airbnb the bloat
| ends up largely arising due to managerial bloat (managers
| want to grow their org to make themselves seem more
| important) and low technical standards for higher level
| ICs (which results in far more resources used to
| accomplish each project).
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Worth pointing out that Uber is no longer a unicorn. It is a
| large publicly traded corporation with a market cap of $58B. I
| suppose you're asking your question about large tech companies
| generally, not so much unicorns? Most unicorns are still quite
| small (revenue and employee count-wise) relative to large
| publicly traded corporations like Uber and the FANGs.
| bradlys wrote:
| Am at a Unicorn. Engineering is 20-30 engineers total. This
| person is definitely confusing Unicorn with some generic big
| engineering heavy company. Many companies scale very
| differently. Some scale with large engineering efforts - mine
| doesn't. The change in number of engineers has barely moved
| in the last 2 years.
|
| That said - to the question about unicorns: You're always
| expendable. Same as any job - same politics - same nonsense.
| No matter how important they make you think you are to a
| products success - they'll fire you regardless. It's amazing
| how fake management will be about urgency. "This is the most
| critical business function! We must have people working on
| it!11!!1!1!" Fires key employee because they didn't like them
| - "critical business function" gets shoved into the backlog
| to never be seen again. People are fake and think they need
| to show urgency to get the most value out of their employees.
| all_usernames wrote:
| Hmm, sounds like you've got some dyfunctional managers.
| I've never personally witnessed management faking urgency
| on a project just to get productivity on it. Management is
| generally charged with making sure ICs know what the
| priorities are as set by Product. It's possible that
| Product changes its mind often, confusing everyone. But if
| Product, Management, and ICs are confused about what your
| "critical business functions" are, I think you've got some
| systemic leadership problems.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > "critical business function" gets shoved into the backlog
| to never be seen again.
|
| Never worked for a unicorn, but everything from big corp to
| startup to government. "Urgent" provokes no reaction from
| me anymore because of this.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| The only truly urgent thing I've seen is a product being
| down / a critical bug in production.
| greenyoda wrote:
| Anything that can cause your company to lose a lot of
| money can be truly urgent. For example, your biggest
| customer needs a new feature, and if they don't get it by
| the end of the quarter, they'll switch to your
| competitor.
|
| On the other hand, artificial deadlines that are invented
| by your company's management are usually not urgent.
| trhway wrote:
| >"Urgent"
|
| ,"Critically Important", etc. is the most recent whatever
| caught the attention of a typical S/E/VP with the
| attention span of a ferret long enough for him/her to be
| able to utter it in the words. If you're able to highly
| visibly jump and demonstrate activity during exact that
| moment - a great talent leading to
| advancements/promotions - there is no point to react as
| the next new "critical" directive/change of course/etc.
| is coming very soon. Of course if your manager is one of
| those aspiring "talented jumpers", he/she will try to
| make you jump with him/her - it is a real PITA to have
| such a manager who instead of filtering and protecting
| the team from would amplify all that stuff flowing down.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I am shocked at how often I can just ignore an annoying
| email and have the issue go away...
| ErikAugust wrote:
| I wonder if there is a way to convert Harvard Business
| Review articles into top-of-the-backlog items
| automatically...
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| There's your Startup Idea!
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You jest, but an email to backlog service is something
| some managers might buy.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| > show urgency
|
| I call this "artificial panic". That term came to mind when
| I joined a FMCG around Y2K, and on my first weeks I noticed
| people were running around stressed, like headless chicken.
| When I asked "what's on fire" and the answer was "nothing".
|
| https://dilbert.com/strip/2012-07-15
|
| The "Minimalists" say on their podcast that "most
| emergencies, aren't". When I see panic setting camp in a
| company's mentality, I make myself scarce for a while until
| things calm down. If I see that the artificial state of
| panic is a perpetual feeding machine, I try to dance around
| it. I've read my share of Dilbert to know to avoid these
| toxic environments.
|
| Sometimes you need to be a Wally to survive.
|
| https://dilbert.com/strip/1994-11-12
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Urgency is a matter of prioritisation.
|
| Ideally in a company there would be one single order
| backlog, showing the relative value of each project to
| everyone. However getting such an ordering would involve
| huge co-ordination across vastly differing internal
| companies / cultures and would drag up every buried
| political hand grenade of the company's lifetime.
|
| So instead you do what someone shouts loudly about. If
| the shouter is right more than 50/50 they are doing
| pretty well.
| biddlesby wrote:
| Reminds me of Douglas Adam's "Crisis Inducer" :)
| bdcravens wrote:
| Yeah, I was taking artistic license with the term, but "large
| tech" is probably a better term, though I'd filter it down to
| those on the lower profitability side. (even those with large
| IPOs are often just a startup at scale)
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Unicorn never meant lower on the profitability side though.
| It just means a valuable pre-IPO late stage start-up.
| Plenty of them were or went on to be insanely profitable.
| fermienrico wrote:
| 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?
| bdcravens wrote:
| 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.
| lhorie wrote:
| Teams that open source stuff typically have leveraging
| roles, i.e. they build things that several other teams
| depend on.
|
| Orthogonally, typically large companies have a maslow
| hierarchy of sorts: for every infrastructural endeavor,
| there may be a number of others that are more "nice-to-
| have" niche projects that aren't really critical to anyone
| else's ability to deliver results.
|
| The most vulnerable employees are those on niche projects,
| despite these projects being internally focused (as opposed
| to open sourced). Infra folks whose work may be open source
| are typically less vulnerable because they do in fact work
| on critical, well, infrastructure.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I do not think he is suggesting any course of action beyond
| awareness that their position is less stable than it might be
| in other jobs.
| zankly wrote:
| Well regardless of economic boom or bust, the chance that a
| startup runs out of money is probably higher than the
| chance that a big company chooses to lay you off.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Worth pointing that your position at a unicorn is probably
| more secure than at a random small startup.
| fermienrico wrote:
| Ohh....I get it now. Jeez, I need more coffee.
|
| I've always worked in manufacturing so people aren't that
| easily expendible. Takes a long time to train someone and
| without them, one of the line shuts down or gets less
| productive / slow.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| How long do people usually stay at your company?
| fermienrico wrote:
| Average is probably 8 years.
| rachelbythebay wrote:
| Oh, you might be surprised how many people are not working on
| anything of consequence. Some of these companies don't even do
| much in the way of building stuff outside of the product teams,
| and even then, they frequently fizzle after some point.
|
| You know the line "don't mistake motion for progress"? There's
| a whole lot of motion up in those SoMa offices... but very
| little progress. Some of these teams are very good at doing a
| lot of jiggling around while never accomplishing anything. They
| manage to snow their manager, which snows the next-level up,
| and if nobody calls BS, it just goes on like this.
|
| R&D? When the response to building something new is an _immune
| system flare-up_ from the people who benefit from things
| remaining exactly as they are, there can be no R&D.
|
| Just like the server situation, the employee situation is
| bloated beyond belief. You have people making messes and others
| cleaning it up, instead of just not making the mess in the
| first place (and then needing neither of those people).
|
| If a million monkeys at a million typewriters would eventually
| produce the works of Shakespeare, some of these companies would
| likewise boil down to "three monkeys, ten minutes" (not my line
| but I love it).
| tinyhouse wrote:
| I worked for small and big. Everyone is expendable. Running
| lean or efficiency is not something those companies optimize
| for. That's why they have so many employees. They optimize for
| growth. Until something bad happens.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "Developers at unicorns:" Prato principal crystallized. Look at
| any big repro or any large company. There is usually about ~5
| ish people that know wtf is going on. I think uber could be ran
| with 10 people.
| pc86 wrote:
| > Prato principal crystallized
|
| You're wrong, and not just about the Pareto principle.
| slac wrote:
| Is there a list of offices closing?
| cparsons3000 wrote:
| Is this the last round of layoffs for Uber?
| Havoc wrote:
| 45 offices closed. Holy hell.
| tmh79 wrote:
| Vast majority of these offices are small hubs in tier 3 cities
| occupied by regional tems, or tier 1 cities with multiple
| offices.
| Havoc wrote:
| Slightly off topic. What's tier 1/2/3 in the US? I had just
| heard that kind of system applied in China
| koblas wrote:
| San Francisco / Seattle / Boston / New York
|
| ---
|
| Austin / Salt Lake / Los Angeles / Portland / Atlanta
|
| ---
|
| Ann Arbor / Chicago / Minneapolis / Miami
| simmonmt wrote:
| This tiering is surprising to me. Which metric are you
| using? By population, NY, LA, and Chicago are the top
| three cities in the country.
| opportune wrote:
| Don't really agree with this at all unless you are only
| talking in the context of the software engineering job
| market - which I don't think is usually what people refer
| to by "tier N"
| MajorBee wrote:
| Chicago is Tier 3? That doesn't seem right.
| koblas wrote:
| I could argue that Atlanta is tier 3 as well, the
| distinction between tier 2/3 could just be a simple rule
| of numbers (over a 1M pop vs. under 1M pop) and not a
| tech center. Or in my case that when I've interviewed
| people from the given locations that they didn't meet the
| bar by a given level. UIUC produces some amazing
| engineers, but UChicago doesn't...
| BlackJack wrote:
| Props for posting an ordering :O
|
| This seems to be ranked on eng availability, but in terms
| of actual city tiers it's more like
|
| T1: SF / NY / LA / Miami / Chicago / Atlanta T2: Seattle
| / Boston / Austin / SLC / Portland T3: Minneapolis / Ann
| Arbor
| Keyframe wrote:
| Miami tier 3? hawhat?
| dmode wrote:
| Los Angeles, Tier 2 ? I would say it should be Tier 2,
| considering greater Los Angeles area has 14mn people
| saisundar wrote:
| 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?
| sbuccini wrote:
| As I understand it, the first was for comms, operations, and
| support roles. This layoff was more product-related (so
| engineering, design, and product roles) and required more
| thought around how they were going to position themselves
| strategically going forward.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| 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.
| fra wrote:
| Isn't the word you're looking for omniscient ?
| jacquesm wrote:
| > omnipotent
|
| You seem to like that word, it being your nick, but that
| said, it would seem to me that any management that believes
| it is omnipotent ought to be fired on the spot. That sort of
| delusion can only end in tears.
| rantwasp wrote:
| 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
| sbuccini wrote:
| 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.
| s1t5 wrote:
| Isn't hinting the worst approach in that case though? I
| can't imagine that the additional uncertainty helped with
| staff morale.
| pgwhalen wrote:
| 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.
| sbuccini wrote:
| 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.
| sida wrote:
| Internally, Dara was very clear that the layoff would
| happen in 2 stages for the different organizations
| outlace wrote:
| I'm sure Travis Kalanick is so happy he dumped his shares before
| all this.
| pishpash wrote:
| He dumped shares at more than 10% below today's closing price,
| and almost 20% below today's intraday high. Why would he be
| happy?
| [deleted]
| economicslol wrote:
| Remember when Dara predicted "profitability" by 2021? LOL, just
| another Softbank/VC funded money pit.
| rvz wrote:
| Lyft also set such pretentious goals for 2021 last year. Not
| sure what crystal ball they were basing their forecast on but,
| such jokes are meant to be reserved for a late night comedy
| show not in an earnings call. [0]
|
| [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyft-expects-to-be-
| profitable-a...
| kumarski wrote:
| Even in this market whereby consumers must order food via apps,
| none of the food delivery companies are profitable from my
| understanding.
|
| Can anyone explain how this works/how this came to be?
| mooreds wrote:
| Food is a business with skinny skinny margins (source, worked
| on a startup which provided services to food businesses, family
| members own food businesses).
|
| Delivery companies are fighting for a piece of that market
| which isn't full of margin, so they're having to fight for it.
| Plus they're in a landgrab, so choosing growth over profits.
| shay_ker wrote:
| grubhub was profitable for years
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Charging for referrals was profitable; they didn't deliver
| until 2014.
| 0zymandias wrote:
| 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 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch
| sucrose wrote:
| In other news, GE Appliances just cut my web development
| contract short by 8 months. Congratulations, India.
| mattwad wrote:
| > 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.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _you can pretty much walk the same distance_
|
| I think I'm the intended use case because I live about 2
| miles (3.2km) from an entertainment district. I can walk it,
| and I have done so, but it takes quite a while, around 45
| minutes. On a scooter it takes like 10.
|
| Because of parking costs, scooter is cheaper than driving. It
| might even be faster. I own a bike, so I could ride that, but
| I don't like parking it in a busy downtown area.
|
| There's also a bus I can take, and sometimes I take bus one
| direction and scooter the other if the bus schedule doesn't
| work for me.
|
| I admit many people park scooters in a very inconsiderate
| way, but I always park carefully out of the way, so I don't
| feel bad about that personally.
| swiley wrote:
| Not only that but 2 miles is a long walk to do often if
| you're not very careful about it, especially if you're
| carrying much.
|
| I'm 100% for walking places but it's important to have
| options once you start getting out that far.
| jeremy_k wrote:
| I would argue this isn't true. I lived in Santa Monica when
| the scooters came about and once they removed the helmet law
| I loved the utility they provided. I lived about 2 miles away
| from downtown Santa Monica, which is totally walkable and I
| love walking, but sometimes I wanted to meet up with someone
| in a more reasonable amount of time. Instead of having to
| order an Uber for such a short trip, I would check Bird or
| the Lyft scooters to find one close to me, jump on it, and be
| downtown in roughly 10 minutes. And they're fun to ride!
|
| Now Santa Monica does have a great bike share infrastructure
| that I also used quite a bit, but nothing is more frustrating
| that getting on a well used bike and having the brakes hardly
| work or the crank constantly slipping as you push the pedal
| downward. Don't get me wrong, you can totally get a bad
| scooter that isn't running well, but I think I ran into more
| worn down bikes, likely due to the bike program having been
| around longer.
|
| My 2 cents, the more options the better.
|
| EDIT: Also wanted to note, Santa Monica has a lot of bike
| lanes, which made riding the scooters around much easier and
| safer from my perspective.
| JPKab wrote:
| Not wearing a helmet on a device whose front wheel is a
| fulcrum of a lever that can smash your head on the pavement
| at a moment's notice is monumentally reckless.
|
| The helmetless riders are a real issue. And the injuries
| caused by the morons using them are a business model
| externality that isn't dealt with.
| novok wrote:
| The scooter division was _bikes_ & scooters
| MivLives wrote:
| 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.
| ping_pong wrote:
| I disagree wholeheartedly. Electric scooters are fun and
| useful, especially for commuting in the morning from a drop
| off location like a train station. The real question is
| whether or not it can be profitable, which I highly doubt. I
| would rather just get my own if I needed it.
| mcculley wrote:
| I live in downtown Orlando. Lime, Lynx, and Bird have
| littered downtown with scooters. I run almost every day and
| they are often left directly in the middle of the sidewalk,
| either upright or fallen over. A couple months ago I began
| relocating any rental equipment I find in my way on the
| sidewalk. I am not at all gentle about this and I'm sure I
| have damaged some of the equipment. I like the idea that
| people might use these more than cars, but investors need
| to figure out a better way to store them than in the
| sidewalk.
| ac29 wrote:
| I get the anger about sidewalks getting littered with
| scooters, but damaging or destroying them is just
| creating more hazardous e-waste to be disposed of.
| jmchuster wrote:
| Tell that to the homeless guy in SF who made it his life
| mission to push scooters into the bay. They even had to
| make a line item just for him.
| mcculley wrote:
| Where do you live? Maybe I can put them in front of your
| house.
| mcculley wrote:
| I'm not really angry. I consider it a public service for
| the people who come along after me. These things are a
| hazard for runners.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| True, but that still makes them a market fad. Even if you
| got cities on board, the costs are fairly fixed, so while
| the scooters are fun, it was never a feasible business at
| scale.
| neaden wrote:
| I think scooters are very area dependent. Both because of
| weather, and the supporting infrastructure.
| iamricks wrote:
| 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.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| 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.
| OctopusSandwich wrote:
| Scooters are heaven sent.
| bhouston wrote:
| This strategy is the opposite of a portfolio play. It is great
| if your winners stay winners. I think if you are aligned well
| with the overall market direction that is great.
|
| Basically by only keeping the strongest you should get the
| highest rate of return until these is a failure. A portfolio
| play gives you more modest returns but more consistent over
| time -- you should still trim the losers who do not have
| potential.
| breischl wrote:
| I had never thought of it in those terms before, but this is
| similar to portfolio diversification in investing. There's
| the quip that when you're properly diversified there's always
| something to hate in your portfolio. Of course the flipside
| is that there's always something to love too.
|
| All that compared to making concentrated bets where you can
| win big, or lose big.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| Sounds more like the playbook of being a real business, meaning
| to take in more money than they spend....
| ping_pong wrote:
| "Short-term"? He was CEO for 20 years, and made it one of the
| most successful companies during that time. One would be very
| hardpressed to call GE of 2001 a hollowed-out company.
| 0zymandias wrote:
| Jack Welch retired in 2001 after twenty years as CEO. "Upon
| his retirement from GE, Welch had stated that his
| effectiveness as its CEO for two decades would be measured by
| the company's performance for a comparable period under his
| successors"
|
| If we use the long-term yardstick that Jack Welch suggested
| we use, he does not come out looking good. We are now at
| roughly the two-decade mark and GE is trading at the same
| price that it did in 1992 and 80% below where it was when he
| retired.
| erichurkman wrote:
| To read that quote differently:
|
| 1981 * Jack Welch becomes CEO * $1.29 2001 * Jack Welch
| retires * $37.20 (down from its peak of near $60.00 in mid
| 2000) 2020 * Nearly 20 years post Jack Welch * $6.28.
|
| 20 years of Jack Welch - +2,800% increase 20 years after
| Jack Welch - -83% decrease
| 0zymandias wrote:
| 2800% is a much bigger number than 83%. But if you do the
| math using your numbers, you see that GE substantially
| underperformed the S&P since 1981:
|
| GE = (1+2800%)*(1-83%) = 4.93 = 393% appreciation since
| 1981.
|
| S&P = S&P has appreciated 2000% since 1981.
|
| GE << S&P
| erichurkman wrote:
| Maybe that's why Welch said to measure against GE's
| future leaders if they are destined to forever
| underperform the S&P. :)
| ivalm wrote:
| To be fair, most companies underperform s&p 500. S&p is
| driven by giant winners, and every generation has
| different winners. In the 90s GE was the winner and other
| companies in s&p trailed them. This is what makes
| survivors like Microsoft so amazing, they managed to
| remain on top by reinventing themselves many times under
| different leaderships.
| ping_pong wrote:
| Meh, that's a completely arbitrary measure and flippant at
| best. He has no control over what his successors do, or
| their strategy. I, and many many others, prefer to judge
| him by how he handled the company when he actually had
| control over it.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| When you read his book he portrays himself as a teacher
| and mentor to the next generation of managers. GE was
| supposed to crank out high quality managers. He maybe did
| a good job himself (or was lucky with this timing) but he
| totally failed at preparing the company for a time after
| him.
| 0zymandias wrote:
| I didn't come up with it. It is the yardstick that he
| suggested we use to measure his performance :)
|
| And it's a well-known issue with executive compensation
| that CEOs will juice numbers in the short-term to get
| their payouts which is likely why he proposed this as a
| measure of his performance.
| ping_pong wrote:
| Yes, I know. But it's a nonsensical way to measure it. Is
| sounds like something he said flippantly without thinking
| about what that meant, because it's meaningless.
| javajosh wrote:
| An interesting comment because it's a good example of
| what you see more and more of from people with a positive
| emotional disposition toward someone who _won 't let them
| fail or look bad_ even if its quite obvious that they
| failed, and it looks bad (and even if they themselves
| would admit it).
|
| As a factual matter, the measurement isn't meaningless at
| all. Give Jack _some_ credit.
| ping_pong wrote:
| So are you saying that the new successors to GE have no
| agency at all, and they are just following a script?
| That's ridiculous. The CEOs of GE have not been great or
| successful but that's on them, not Welch.
| javajosh wrote:
| Presumably Welch believed in the hiring system he put in
| place. It was also an audacious claim, which comes with
| its own rewards. But folks like you let Welch have his
| cake and eat it too: he gets the praise for making an
| audacious claim, and then when it turns out false, folks
| like you make excuses for him.
|
| It's good to be the king, I guess.
| ping_pong wrote:
| lol I never praised him for making an audacious claim,
| I've said it's nonsensical several times.
| bibinou wrote:
| > Scooters
|
| They just sold Jump, while investing in Lime. I think scooters
| could still be used as a "last-mile" strategy for Ride Share,
| and maybe acquire teen mindshare and a sort of platform play.
| But it's a spinoff with a long leash.
| csense wrote:
| What in the world did Uber ever need that many people for?
| mabbo wrote:
| When I was an intern at Google maaaany years ago, a mentor of
| mine described what it is Google does with all these engineers:
|
| "Well see, we discovered a hose that money pours out of. It's
| called 'online advertising'. Now what we do is spend half our
| effort trying to make the hose pour faster, and the other half
| trying to find another hose."
|
| Uber figured out the 'Uber for X' pattern. Now they're trying
| to optimize it, and figure out something else that makes money.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Yeah, Google invests in _everything_ and then fails fast
| because they 're worried about missing the Next Big Thing(tm)
| after seeing Microsoft miss the early web.
| [deleted]
| baylearn wrote:
| A version of the article without the paywall:
| http://archive.is/OOuRC
| ascendantlogic wrote:
| 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?
| [deleted]
| slac wrote:
| This is not a downturn though. It is a collapse.
| asdf21 wrote:
| It's more like a pause.
|
| What makes you think it's a collapse?
| crazygringo wrote:
| I mean, a downturn is generally considered to be down by
| 10%, maybe 20%. _Quantitatively_ different, but not
| _qualitatively_ different. Adjustments, but things still
| generally continue as planned.
|
| A collapse is dropping by close to 50% or more, like Uber's
| demand. It's suddenly playing an entirely different game,
| it becomes a _qualitatively_ different business.
|
| If this isn't a collapse, nothing is.
|
| A "pause" would imply things will return to normal as soon
| as things are "unpaused". If you cut 3,000 jobs and 45
| offices, those are not just magically reappearing when
| things are "unpaused".
| asdf21 wrote:
| Oh, did you mean Uber and not the economy as a whole?
| astronautjones wrote:
| infinite growth forever, of course
| Exquisites wrote:
| I need to subscribe to read the full story and I don't want that.
| victords wrote:
| Which offices are they closing?
| paulie_a wrote:
| Why in gods name do they have that many people? They are a cab
| company that doesn't employ drivers. Talk about a dumpster fire
| of VC money
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| nom wrote:
| IMHO Unicorns are built with the assumption that almost every
| developer is replaceable. At that scale the critical knowledge
| is not with the developers.
| Aperocky wrote:
| 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.
| stevenwliao wrote:
| An architect that doesn't leave documentation and share
| knowledge isn't doing their job and management needs to get
| ahead of this. What if this "key person" decides to find
| another job?
| Aperocky wrote:
| Of course there's documentation, and also knowledge
| sharing, doesn't help he/she and 50% of his/her teammates
| are let go and without a solid way of knowledge transfer
| or the desire to do so under this context.
|
| This is especially bad for software that are written
| under tight deadline - no matter how much document you
| write about it. And sadly, there's more software that are
| written like that than otherwise.
| Thrymr wrote:
| An architect that doesn't leave documentation and share
| knowledge might also be thinking about protecting his own
| job. Being irreplaceable is good job security.
| agakshat wrote:
| I've always wondered, does this actually happen? People
| not getting fired because they are irreplaceable partly
| because of their own failure to document stuff?
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I bet the number of developers that are working on the
| business critical stuff is very low. Years ago I talked a
| lot to people at Oracle and Apple and it was always amazing
| how small the core development teams for the big products
| were.
| jmchuster wrote:
| Oracle 12 lists 66 developers
| https://docs.oracle.com/database/121/REFRN/title.htm
| [deleted]
| user5994461 wrote:
| 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.
| closeparen wrote:
| Even if a tool should not have been written, the ability to
| troubleshoot it is still critical to its consumers. And
| making hundreds of dependent teams spend a month migrating is
| easily more expensive than 3 headcount to maintain it.
| shockinglytrue wrote:
| I have never witnessed a company at least the size of Uber
| where this wasn't the case. This isn't exclusively a culture
| thing, it's a bandwidth thing. There is limited human IO
| available to coordinate, and available bandwidth diminishes
| in proportion to org size. The org can either choose to slow
| down to match available IO, or run at closer to natural pace
| and accept duplicate work. I guess the latter must be the
| obvious choice, or the automatic tendency
|
| I imagine the same problem is why so many large orgs
| inevitably turn into hyperstructures of insane management
| layer cake.. coordination overhead will eventually send
| everyone begging for the ability to shed work or delegate
| [deleted]
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