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Are Uber's costs really in the tech space? It's a complex tech operation for sure, but I wouldn't have thought they could make up much of the 1.5bn USD if they

Are Uber's costs really in the tech space? It's a complex tech operation for sure, but I wouldn't have thought they could make up much of the 1.5bn USD if they fired a bunch of developers. These bulk of these costs must be in marketing, customer acquisition and discounted fares, right?

aetherson 9y ago
So remember that it's not that they burned $1.5B this quarter; they burned $3.5B (net revenue of $2B, $1.5B loss). If their average employee costs them $500,000 a year (surely a generous estimate), then that's $125k per quarter. A $2B spend on salaries would suggest then that they had 16,000 employees (not counting drivers, who aren't part of this equation -- they're the difference between the $9.7B "gross bookings" and the $2B net revenue). Uber employs apparently "more than 12,000 people," which is shocking, but salary still can't plausibly be the entire story here.
- hrasyid 9y ago
  How about driver bonuses? Would those count as expenses, pr as the difference between gross bookings and net revenue? I know sometimes (especially in new markets) Uber let drivers keep 100% and then add bonuses on top of that.
  - aetherson 9y ago
    I believe that bonuses and other incentives, to drivers and passengers, are the source of a huge amount of expenses and are counted out of the $2B net revenue, not included in the difference between bookings and revenue.
mrgordon 9y ago
They have around 12,000 employees according to Wikipedia (and a few other sources show a similar figure). If we figure the average employee is 250,000/year in liabilities on the balance sheet (salary + benefits + options/RSUs) then thats $3 billion a year in employee expenses. I don't think $250k is too unrealistic considering the massive capital gains many employees must have on paper as well as the high level of talent Uber has lured away from competitors. They had the creator of Google Maps, the Otto acquisition (and the subsequent legal costs if we want to factor those in), and a whole lot of other experts around mapping / autonomous vehicles.
- sandworm101 9y ago
  250k may well be an average, but not the type of average that matters. The few high-pay people warp the average. They will not be culled before an IPO as doing so will reduce confidence. Uber needs to keep its headliners. They can only cut from the plebs costing in the 50-100K range. So either they need to fire 4x as many people, or a cull won't solve the problem.
  - swimfar 9y ago
    I doubt that there's a single full-time employee (in the US) that only costs them 50k/year. Total overhead costs are a lot higher than the employee's salary. I have no idea what the distribution of salaries look like, so this doesn't necessarily invalidate your point.
    - sandworm101 9y ago
      Their sales/brand reps are reportedly paid 20$/hour, which works out to about 40k. I don't know what the benefit package is but I doubt it's much, as I doubt they are all paid for full 40-hour weeks. So I assume they have a pool of sub-40k people.
    - lostboys67 9y ago
      rule of thumb is 3x your salary is your cost to employer
      - aetherson 9y ago
        Not at engineer salaries. Maybe if you're a minimum wage employee.
- aetherson 9y ago
  Don't confuse years and quarters. Their quarterly loss is $1.5B. If we accept a $3B yearly salary cost (I expect it's actually a lot lower, because their 12,000 worldwide employees, I think, include lots of local employees at far-flung cities who probably have very low salaries by silicon-valley-programmer standards), and extrapolate their quarterly loss to a year, then they could cut all of their salaries to 0 and still only reduce their loss from $6B/year to $3B/year.

aetherson 9y ago

So remember that it's not that they burned $1.5B this quarter; they burned $3.5B (net revenue of $2B, $1.5B loss). If their average employee costs them $500,000 a year (surely a generous estimate), then that's $125k per quarter. A $2B spend on salaries would suggest then that they had 16,000 employees (not counting drivers, who aren't part of this equation -- they're the difference between the $9.7B "gross bookings" and the $2B net revenue). Uber employs apparently "more than 12,000 people," which is shocking, but salary still can't plausibly be the entire story here.

hrasyid 9y ago
How about driver bonuses? Would those count as expenses, pr as the difference between gross bookings and net revenue? I know sometimes (especially in new markets) Uber let drivers keep 100% and then add bonuses on top of that.
- aetherson 9y ago
  I believe that bonuses and other incentives, to drivers and passengers, are the source of a huge amount of expenses and are counted out of the $2B net revenue, not included in the difference between bookings and revenue.

mrgordon 9y ago

They have around 12,000 employees according to Wikipedia (and a few other sources show a similar figure). If we figure the average employee is 250,000/year in liabilities on the balance sheet (salary + benefits + options/RSUs) then thats $3 billion a year in employee expenses. I don't think $250k is too unrealistic considering the massive capital gains many employees must have on paper as well as the high level of talent Uber has lured away from competitors. They had the creator of Google Maps, the Otto acquisition (and the subsequent legal costs if we want to factor those in), and a whole lot of other experts around mapping / autonomous vehicles.

sandworm101 9y ago
250k may well be an average, but not the type of average that matters. The few high-pay people warp the average. They will not be culled before an IPO as doing so will reduce confidence. Uber needs to keep its headliners. They can only cut from the plebs costing in the 50-100K range. So either they need to fire 4x as many people, or a cull won't solve the problem.
- swimfar 9y ago
  I doubt that there's a single full-time employee (in the US) that only costs them 50k/year. Total overhead costs are a lot higher than the employee's salary. I have no idea what the distribution of salaries look like, so this doesn't necessarily invalidate your point.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    Their sales/brand reps are reportedly paid 20$/hour, which works out to about 40k. I don't know what the benefit package is but I doubt it's much, as I doubt they are all paid for full 40-hour weeks. So I assume they have a pool of sub-40k people.
  - lostboys67 9y ago
    rule of thumb is 3x your salary is your cost to employer
    - aetherson 9y ago
      Not at engineer salaries. Maybe if you're a minimum wage employee.
aetherson 9y ago
Don't confuse years and quarters. Their quarterly loss is $1.5B. If we accept a $3B yearly salary cost (I expect it's actually a lot lower, because their 12,000 worldwide employees, I think, include lots of local employees at far-flung cities who probably have very low salaries by silicon-valley-programmer standards), and extrapolate their quarterly loss to a year, then they could cut all of their salaries to 0 and still only reduce their loss from $6B/year to $3B/year.