68 ms·

Uber lays off 435 people

976 points by coloneltcb 7y ago

ssully 7y ago
Related, but Uber is said to be hiring 2,00 for it's new Chicago office next year [1]. A mix of engineering and operations. My understanding this would be under their freight team, which according to this Techcrunch article, was unaffected by this layoff. [1]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-hiring-old-post-office-20190909-va4mtjmgkfh7bnlrub736fbw5q-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-hiring-o...
- tempsy 7y ago
  Unless there was a performance issue then why not allow these employees to transfer if they want to?
  - paggle 7y ago
    Because they will likely want to hire in Chicago at much lower salaries than SF but asking someone to eat a big salary reduction is hard.
  - heliodor 7y ago
    Might be that the company is that disfunctional. Between the news articles and the horrendous software quality, it seems to me the company is a mess.
    - xxxtentachyon 7y ago
      What horrendous software quality? Uber consistently puts out some of the cleanest mobile experiences for a mass market app, and their research teams put out great OSS work.
      - heliodor 7y ago
        Have you tried to use the Android app? I have programmed Android for five years and I can confidently say that the Uber Android app is a disaster. Both usability and bugs. On the database side, there's a place in my city that has some permanent bad data in the db so that it won't allow anyone to get picked up or taken there. I go there frequently by Uber and have to set the pin a few blocks away from the corrupted area then explain to the driver where I am or where I am going. It's like there's a ghost car attached to that place because every time I try to get a ride from there, it says it's finding me a ride, followed by an error message that the driver is unavailable. Had a painful back-and-forth with support about this and of course nothing every got done. While the Android app is of poor quality and no one is rushing to fix it, Uber engineers are busy putting out open source software and plenty of it. Talk about resource mismanagement!
      - bdcravens 7y ago
        For several months, Uber tells the driver my house is on the other side of the street. Verified that Google Maps, Apple Maps, and OSM all have my house on the correct side.
  - paxys 7y ago
    Maybe they did? If you are an engineer in San Francisco, switching companies is trivial compared to relocating your life across the country to a place where you may not want to live.
- duxup 7y ago
  Logistics is a pretty mature industry as far as earning a sustainable profit goes. It would make sense they would be unaffected compared to their typical taxi type service.
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  They also recently announced plans to hire 3,000+ in Dallas [1] at a brand new massive office. I'm sure the hiring and layoffs are from different business units, but it does seem strange that there's been multiple several-hundred-people-layoff stories form Uber recently at the same time they're announcing otherwise massive hiring expansion. I would at least figure that they would prefer to transfer engineers between units rather than to layoff and hire anew. 1: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Leaders-Approve-About-93-Million-in-Incentives-for-Potential-Uber-Expansion-542866411.html https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Leaders-Approve-Abo...
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    Maybe some of them were given an option, but they didn't want to move locations; so they just decided it's better to pay them severance while they look for other work? /guess
  - epistasis 7y ago
    Does Uber have different pay scales depending on location?
    - lucasmullens 7y ago
      I can't possibly imagine they're paying 3000 Dallas employees a bay area salary.
    - mateo411 7y ago
      All companies that are Uber's size will have pay scales depending on location.
    - rockinghigh 7y ago
      Yes.
  - eternalny1 7y ago
    Interesting if this is a way to get out from under crushing Bay Area tech salaries. I still see zero reason a company like Uber should be based in San Francisco. We landed a man on the moon with parts built all over the United States, so it's not "that's where the talent is".
- freewilly1040 7y ago
  Maybe they are shifting headcount away from the Bay Area?
  - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
    that would make sense for a business with low margins. i'm surprised more companies aren't doing it.
    - muzz 7y ago
      They have been expanding in Palo Alto
      - eanzenberg 7y ago
        PA will probably command even higher salaries than SF though.
      - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
        PA would be the absolute worst place in the world for a low margin business to expand into. I really have no clue how they arrived at such a conclusion. I can only imagine, it had something to do with investors.
  - pcurve 7y ago
    I visited downtown chicago for first time. I'm sure the winter sucks, but it's really a nice city.
- dmode 7y ago
  I really take all this "will hire xx people in y location" with a grain of salt. This is all marketing speak intended for the tax handout. I don't really believe they will hire that many people if their business tanks
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    The difference is that this isn't some company with an existing footprint in a city saying "hey we're gonna hire some more people for our office here". In both the case of Chicago and especially Dallas, Uber is making significant real estate commitments to go along with these hiring plans. You don't buy up an entire skyscraper office building (and several plots of land around it) and open an entirely new office unless you're either 1) actually planning on filling it or 2) in such dire straits that you're willing to do really whacky shit to make people think you are planning on filling it. With Uber, it could be either one, but I certainly don't think it's just run-of-the-mill 'marketing speak'.
    - dmode 7y ago
      I don't believe Uber is buying a building, rather leasing out space, which can always be re-negotiated. There have many examples of companies promising a certain number of jobs and never fulfilling them, because who is looking. For example, Foxcon. Also, Uber once committed to build a HQ in Oakland and signed a huge lease. Soon after, they abandoned that plan and started building a brand new HQ in SF
      - txcwpalpha 7y ago
        The current deal that I've read for Uber's Dallas expansion is that they currently are leasing about 1/3rd of a brand new skyscraper that was just built, have plans to lease 90% of a brand new skyscraper that is currently being built, and also outright purchased several plots of land where they are planning on building office building that they will own. edit: After reading a few different articles it seems like every article says a different story about how much space Uber is committing to, so maybe you're right, it does sound a little wishy-washy.
- fireattack 7y ago
  Do you mean 2,000?
- muzz 7y ago
  Uber said the same thing about bringing 3,000 jobs to Oakland, but that didn't materialze because of... drumroll... the need for profitablity. In 2017. https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ditched-massive-headquarters-oakland-california-2017-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ditched-massive-headqua...
- baron_harkonnen 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure everyone on HN has gotten an email this week from uber-freight talking about their "HYPER growth!". It's really so tone deaf to have recruiters to be talking about their unique culture and rapid growth right after HQ lays off hundreds of people.
dominotw 7y ago
> we have over 27,000 full-time employees in cities around the world Wow
tschwimmer 7y ago
Anyone know what divisions the layoffs were in?
rubicon33 7y ago
There's definitely a tightening of capital happening right now. Investors are pulling back as fear of recession grows. EDIT: Did I say I believe there's a recession coming? No. I said (accurately) that there are growing FEARS of one. There's definitely tightening of investments and capital happening.
- riffic 7y ago
  Where is the line between "fear of recession" and "being in a recession"? Recessions happen on a somewhat consistent cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_recessions); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_recessions); people would be less fearful if they were better prepared for their inevitability. Antifragility would be a good concept to be familiar with.
  - rubicon33 7y ago
    You should re-read my post, as it wasn't myself that fears a recession is looming. The broader discussions within the markets are that one is on the horizon. I'm not so confident.
    - riffic 7y ago
      Sorry, I wasn't referring to you specifically. I have edited my comment to avoid the perception I had been.
- metalliqaz 7y ago
  Is Uber short of capital? I didn't see that in the article.
  - rubicon33 7y ago
    They run on investments (still haven't made a profit). If investors get shy (due to fear of recessions) then they have to cut back the pipe, and uber is forced to layoff. 435 people, especially engineers, is no small sum of money.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Yhippa 7y ago
This is a bold move for sure. It sounds like they might have hired the wrong people so instead of "redeploying" them they just cut pretty deeply. Definitely unfortunate for the employees but also impressive that Uber had the guts to do this. I've seen companies let dead weight hang on for too long. The fact that they are still hiring makes me think that this was not a panic move to address Wall Street.
netfl0 7y ago
I’d like the see HN consider layoffs in other verticals as well. Particularly manufacturing.
- arthurcolle 7y ago
  Why?
  - netfl0 7y ago
    It seems like technology plays a role in these paradigm shifts, perhaps awareness might inspire folks to leverage the workforce in new ways, maybe with technology.
- netfl0 7y ago
  To clarify, since I can no longer edit my comment, HN should be aware of other layoffs as well, especially layoffs due to automation...
djsumdog 7y ago
How does this work with layoffs + hiring? Can you layoff and then hire in the same department? I assume companies agree to pay at least unemployment and possible severance too in the case of layoffs. Can a company say "These 80 employees are under preforming" and justify a reduction in force that way? (I guess in at-will employment you don't need to justify it at all, so long as you meet legal unemployment requirements?) Are they getting rid of under performers and getting new blood or are they cutting people from certain departments (in which case, they could apply to be rehired in another division?)
- tempsy 7y ago
  Like another poster mentioned, up until 2 years ago (?) Uber was handing out very fat compensation packages even to entry level engineers. It's possible these are employees who've been at Uber for 2+ years and are frankly overpaid even if there were no serious performance issues.
- sambroner 7y ago
  My impression is that at a large company it's easier to cut in broad strokes and then hire for specific roles. Many companies, certainly Uber as well, do smaller force reductions where the employees have ~60 days to find an internal role, after which they're laid off. It sounds like the same thing, but, it allows you to possibly keep the employees.
- derrick_jensen 7y ago
  The article says they're trying to reduce overlapping and redundant work, and restructuring teams in a way such that they intersect less implies they run more efficiently, so they only options at this point are to lay people off or find new projects for them to do. The former makes the most sense considering how little money Uber is making and how their bottom line might increase if they legally become employees (minimum wage, health insurace, threat of unionization, etc)
notTyler 7y ago
I've always wondered if uber were to abandon their ongoing development efforts and focus on support and maintenance, would they would actually be profitable? It seems to me they would need a fraction of the tech workers they currently support.
- TylerE 7y ago
  No. Their quarterly losses are more than double their entire R&D spend.
  - simonrobb 7y ago
    Fact check: R&D spend for three months ending June 2019 was $3.06B. Reported loss for three months ending June 2019 was $5.24B. So, already false. Now take away the one-time IPO expense of $3.9B, and we're not even close to being true. Further take away the $300M "IPO driver appreciation award" and you end up with a $1B loss for three months ending June 2019. In other words, the quarterly R&D spend is over three times the size of the quarterly loss. https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2019/Uber-Reports-Second-Quarter-2019-Results/default.aspx https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det...
    - jcdavis 7y ago
      But that IPO stock-comp expense is largely attributable to R&D, so if you want to subtract that from the losses to look at a more cash-focused analysis you have to substract that cost from the R&D side as well. Of the $3.95B total stock expense, $2.56B was from R&D, which suggests cash cost that quarter was more like $910m (still a lot!)
      - simonrobb 7y ago
        To my mind this quarter shouldn't be used at all in this kind of discussion since its so messy. e.g.: I take your point, but that $2.56B is the culmination of over ten years of R&D compensation. It's not at all representative of the company's broader financials. OP's inference that Uber's quarterly loss is more than double Uber's quarterly R&D costs in general shouldn't be propped up by a moment in time observation.
dvt 7y ago
Uber was actively poaching from our team when I was at Edmunds.com a few years ago; hope my ex-teammates that jumped ship are doing alright. Uber is in a precarious position and I can't help but wonder what would be different if Travis Kalanick were still in charge. I know it might be an unpopular opinion, but I think his leadership and vision were really instrumental to Uber's early success.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  > I know it might be an unpopular opinion, but I think his leadership and vision were really instrumental to Uber's early success. I don't think that's an unpopular opinion at all. Never heard someone say otherwise. EDIT: From the the downvotes I can tell I am wrong. Please help educate me: Honest question: Who or what was "really instrumental to Uber's early success"?
  - dvt 7y ago
    From my experience, singing Travis Kalanick's praises (at least on HN) has generally been met with resistance. I remember everyone piling on him about that (what I thought was a relatively innocuous) company retreat memo a few years ago.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - MegaButts 7y ago
      There's a big difference between admiring Kalanick as a person, and admitting he created the über startup. (I think) most people on HN realize that questionable ethics are strongly correlated with success.
  - bagacrap 7y ago
    > Honest question: Who or what was "really instrumental to Uber's early success"? Using VC funding to bankroll an unprofitable business model, undercutting existing industry players who didn't have multiple billion dollar rocket boosters, mostly. Ignoring laws and other unethical practices no doubt helped.
brakmic 7y ago
Late Stage Capitalism at work. * Fire people from department X. * Hire people for department X. * And sell it as "lean, exceptionally high-performing teams, with clear mandates and the ability to execute faster than our competitors". LOL
sparkling 7y ago
Serious question: what does Uber need 27k employees for? 1k people to run the show in the main headquarters + some small-ish ~50-100 people regional offices should be enough to keep the company running.
- fardin1368 7y ago
  Uber is in 85 countries and each one needs ops, legal, marketing, driver interaction teams and etc. There are only 4000 engineers.
  - keehun 7y ago
    Perhaps the next question is, what do 4000 engineers do? Not aimed as a troll-y question: an informed idea of what the breakdown of that many engineers do would be enlightening. For example, there were about 200 iOS engineers the last I heard. Assuming similar levels for Android, that leaves 3,500-3,600 engineers.
    - kaikai 7y ago
      Uber doesn't just make apps for phones. They also have an entire self-driving car division (computer vision, etc), car routing, maps folks, payments, the separate driver apps, etc. A company that size and complexity has plenty of work for engineers.
    - simonrobb 7y ago
      +1 Appreciate you avoiding the usual "it's just a little smartphone app" I'm not going to try and give an exhaustive list, but as a rough explanation: things get really, really hard when you're operating at Uber scale (hundreds of thousands of riders on trip at any one time, each demanding low latency and reliability): - Product: native clients for each side of the marketplace in each vertical (rides, eats, freight, atg, et al), maps, localization for every country with a presence (not just language, but tax, legal, hundreds of region-specific modes e.g.: tuk tuks) - Infrastructure: hardware teams to build on-prem DCs (cloud can get very expensive at scale), software networking to deal with said low-latency traffic, storage to optimize for reliability/latency/cost, observability (metrics, logging, alerting, tracing), security, et al - Data: insights, operational support, routing, et al - ATG Hope that gives a better idea.
choppaface 7y ago
Google is pretty well-known for maintaining a very deep bench-- if an engineer isn't effective in some role, they'll just move them to some other team. Heck, a lot of hires (especially 3rd/last attempt) go directly to the bench. This strategy pays off well when a new competitor (like Facebook or Uber) comes along and snatches up people in the lead roles, or if the company feels the need to pivot to something really fast (e.g. Google+, which drew from many teams across the entire company). Moreover, hiring a long-term employee today versus tomorrow might save money for a place like Google, assuming we expect competition and wages to continue to increase. It strikes me that if Uber is laying off software engineers, their company outlook must be very, very dire. A layoff is perhaps better strategy than firing the bottom 5%, which would likely preclude the departed from re-joining at a better time. But probably the wrong message to send to a cohort like software engineers-- a layoff is a legal confirmation that the company made a big mistake.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  Im not sure how much one can extrapolate from this. Google also has the massive scale, in terms of both headcount and profit, to smooth out things like this and hold onto talent for the longterm. As huge and well-capitalized as Uber is, Google really is on another level.
- hendzen 7y ago
  This strategy works very well if you have a gigantic money printing machine, which Google does. Uber has a gigantic money incinerating machine. They don't have the ability to just have engineers spinning their wheels on non-business critical projects like Google does.
  - trenning 7y ago
    Or in the case of Amazon you have both, printing money with an awful culture of churning through employees. They even structured their stock vesting around it.
    - meddlepal 7y ago
SilasX 7y ago
Is this the same as the 400 from a month ago, or a new batch? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20558490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20558490 Edit: Guess not, that initial group was just marketing. From the article: >These layoffs come shortly after Uber laid off 400 people from its marketing team.
txsoftwaredev 7y ago
Uber is also planning to open an office for 3k employees in Dallas. "...create 3,000 full-time jobs and pay employees an average salary of at least $100,000..." Considering the lower cost to operate in TX it would make sense to move IT roles to that area. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2019/08/09/uber-s-dallas-office-could-bring-3000-jobs-downtown-be-company-s-biggest-hub-outside-san-francisco/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2019/08/09/ub...
- dmode 7y ago
  The Dallas office is an administrative office and will not have eng roles. Also, these are all "promises", we really have to see how it plays out. Promises are cheap. Remember how Foxcon was going to hire 10k people in Wisconsin
  - txcwpalpha 7y ago
    That isn't what the article in the parent comment says: >The office would include engineers, finance executives, salespeople and other roles across Uber's business.
    - dmode 7y ago
      Here https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-new-offices-chicago-dallas-will-dwarf-san-francisco-hq-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-new-offices-chicago-dal... This directly quoted an Uber exec saying that it will be focused on HR, sales, and ops
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - seax 7y ago
      "engineers" is a pretty nebulous term these days though.
- Jweb_Guru 7y ago
bitL 7y ago
...and the internal demoralization just started. Once this Pandora box is opened, it cannot be closed.
Elof 7y ago
Kinda interesting that they chose to do the layoffs during the Apple event. I wish companies would just own what's going on instead of trying to bury it.
- favorited 7y ago
  Some tech company always tries to bury their garbage during Apple keynotes, unfortunately... Glad this made it to the top here anyway.
- rocky1138 7y ago
  I didn't know that there was an Apple event today.
halis 7y ago
It all comes down to management. ASSHOLE IN === ASSHOLE OUT ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lucie2813 7y ago
I wonder how long a nonprofitable company can sustain...
- zelly 7y ago
  As long as the Fed keeps lowering interest rates
Areibman 7y ago
"Of those laid off, more than 85% are based in the U.S., 10% in the Asia-Pacific and 5% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to the source." Interesting. This hit seems to be mostly localized to the US. During their last mass layoff in July, employees from all over the world were affected. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/cwutan/oc_locations_of_the_400_uber_employees_laid_off/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/cwutan/oc_...
frostyj 7y ago
well hope their balance sheet looks better now
theincredulousk 7y ago
Probably some reality shaking out. Uber's engineering team puts out some impressive stuff, often as OSS. Their engineering blogs are regularly on HN. I've been genuinely surprised that they churn out some of these things and release them for free given their relatively extreme financial situation. In contrast to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc. that have mountains of their own money to burn (rather than investors') on research and OSS side-projects, it always seemed to me that Uber was trying to play the same game, but far too early. Paying lavish SF engineer salaries to generate cool, but not revenue generating, software is probably excellent for morale, culture and recruiting, but a dubious use of resources when you are losing money seemingly faster than it would be logistically possible to literally burn it. Saying they're ~ "culling the low performers" can be entirely true, but it is also a Silicon Valley, meritocracy-culture-friendly way of saying "we're losing far too much money to pay bloated growth-stage poaching-game salaries to engineers, so if you're not working on something that generates revenue, glhf"
- simonrobb 7y ago
  It doesn't really cost anything to open source something though. These are all projects which are developed for a reason: the commercial version might be prohibitively expensive at Uber scale, or not technically capable of operating at Uber scale, or just plain doesn't exist yet. At that point you can engage with the tech community and offer it as OSS (not to mention make your engineers happy), or you can keep it to yourself and eventually lose that opportunity to somebody else.
  - sbarre 7y ago
    That's not true. It costs quite a bit to open source a product if you're a commercial entity.. It needs to be reviewed (by legal, security, engineering, etc) and approved.. You're not just flipping the public/private flag on the repo.
    - on_and_off 7y ago
      Also, the doc, blog posts, feedback from the community, evangelization at conferences, thinking out the API design so it answers enough cases, not just yours, all take engineering time, that's not free.
jeff_friesen 7y ago
Does anyone know yet how this will affect their open source work, such as react-vis and deck.gl?
- null_vector 7y ago
  If they heavily rely on their own tools, odds are good maintenance will continue.
Railsify 7y ago
I suspect when the economy takes a downturn luxury purchases like this will be the first to go. If I think I might be laid off do I spend 10 dollars to Uber home or walk the 5 blocks and have one less drink? I would personally have one less drink and walk, or take the train/bus... Those 7 dollars Starbucks venti iced white chocolate mochas with 5 shots will slow also.
- rubiquity 7y ago
  One drink determines whether you can walk 5 blocks or not?
  - smileysteve 7y ago
    It was difficult to follow, but I think the point was to exchange the cost of the uber for a drink (same cost) but walk home.
  - intuitionist 7y ago
    At some margin, definitely!
  - Railsify 7y ago
    It can, depending on the mix or my mood, replace one with two or three or whatever you want, smileysteve broke it down for you.
- danans 7y ago
  > Those 7 dollars Starbucks venti iced white chocolate mochas with 5 shots will slow also. <joke>On the plus side, this may slightly delay the onset of type II diabetes related healthcare expenses!</joke>
Zenst 7y ago
I wonder about Uber, they have spent lots of money branding and getting everything in place, that they overshot the whole making money aspect and now playing catchup. Problem is, will they reach that balance before they bleed beyond the point that they become vulture targets for another large company to step in, cherry pick what they want and discard the rest. With all that said, I wonder if maybe Amazon or some self driving car startup steps in and buys them up for a lot less than it would to build that penetration. Can imagine your Amazon owned Uber driver bus picking you up, with half a dozen stops on the way, some people, some packages, doing the rounds. Things change, how will Uber adapt and more so, all those drivers on zero hour contracts, are just as easily laid off and much cheaper as well. Self driving cars are a case of when, not if as so much being done in the field, progress has become a hot competition and slowly getting there.
- jdsully 7y ago
  Uber was very profitable when they just had Uber Black. The problem is they were disrupted themselves by Lyft and had to launch UberX (give Travis credit for launching this before Lyft even though it was their idea).
  - Petrova 7y ago
    Are you sure? In the recent book about Uber written by Mike Isaac,the author stated that Lyft was the first to launch a low cost ride service with non professional drivers and Uber rushed to copy them.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - jdsully 7y ago
      I read the book last weekend and am going with my memory (I’ve since lent it out). In the book Travis found out about Lyft’s planned rideshare service and raced to launch UberX first. Alas google has become useless for finding useful information so I hope somebody who still has the book can confirm.
yalogin 7y ago
I predict this situation to get worse over the next couple of years and will culminate in Uber shutting down the self driving project and partnering with Waymo.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
Uber's core business is a taxi app and I get that there are some clever algorithms involved, but I still don't really understand how they justify the size of their engineering team. I read that they had 2,000 engineers out of 6,000 employees in 2016, though I don't know the numbers now. That seems gigantic.
- seax 7y ago
  Agreed, I'm curious what they are actually working on with a team like that. Although they do have a not unsubstantial physical data center presence so I think a fair number of engineers are in support of that and not software engineers.
- kamyarg 7y ago
  There is Uber Eats, Freight, and JUMP bikes in addition to their ride-hailing product. I believe they share some technical similarities but still each of the four(I know of) are startups ideas imho.(See Lime, Lyft, Sennder, Delivery Hero, Takeaway.com, door dash etc.)
- happppy 7y ago
  I read Uber engineering blogs and there's a new blog every other day. IMO they are just over-engineering things thus justifying the size of engineers?
cwperkins 7y ago
Is it any coincidence this happens the week that CA is debating a bill that can drastically change how they compensate drivers? It appears like they are trying to gain leverage from an outsider’s perspective.
- tanilama 7y ago
  Uber is at a worrying place with or without bill.
mari13 7y ago
Terrible, it's never a great experience to be laid off. I went ahead and quickly created a site that will allow people to add their contact/background information to a global list. I know when Uber did their 1st round of layoffs in the marketing department a Google Spreadsheet was created, but this might be more easy to use. Created it in a few minutes, but please share and give me any feedback/comments you might have Job Collaboration Website: https://jobcolab.com/ https://jobcolab.com/ Trying to help any way I can.
newnewpdro 7y ago
Given what we know of Travis Kalanick and Saudi Arabia, burn baby burn! Good riddance.
mrich 7y ago
They are in a race: Be the first with self-driving taxis and go for the monopoly, or run out of cash. I don't want to sound pessimistic, but my bet is on the latter. It's just such a hard problem, especially in cities. I just hope there won't be a kind of AI winter when some of these startups run out of money.
- paulcole 7y ago
  > Be the first with self-driving taxis This is thrown out all the time. How exactly does this save them? Are they going to spend billions to purchase and maintain a fleet of their own taxis? Are they going to be paying people to "borrow" their self-driving cabs? Something else? I just don't see how this suddenly changes the equation in a meaningful way. People aren't going to spend more for a self-driving ride and the costs can only go down so much.
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    >> Be the first with self-driving taxis >This is thrown out all the time. How exactly does this save them? They know that their days of paying drivers less than a living wage and no benefits are numbered. They have two options: Raise ride prices to pay drivers more, or get rid of drivers altogether. They're betting on the latter. The costs go down dramatically because buying cars is a one-time capital expense, rather than an ongoing cost of doing business. (Yes cars require maintenance but this is still cheaper than paying drivers.)
  - bigzyg33k 7y ago
    Because self driving cars, while expensive, are still significantly cheaper that employing drivers. Furthermore, it could be argued that you need less self driving cars than cars with drivers, as they never need to take breaks, and can work all hours of the day. It would also drastically decrease ubers cost of entering new cities - previously they relied on driver incentives, this flattens the variation in cost greatly.
    - cookie_monsta 7y ago
dubliner2077 7y ago
"exceptionally high-performing teams" 12h sort of performance.
uwuhn 7y ago
Curious to know how many of the engineers who were laid-off were specifically iOS. Relevant to me since I'm pigeon-holed and in the Bay Area :)
streetcat1 7y ago
My uber alg: 1) open the Uber app. 2) X - price of ride with uber. 3) open the Lyft app. 4) Y = price of Lyft. IF Y < X -> Choose Lyft. Else : Choose Uber. Currently, Uber is around 20% more expensive. Not good. The rest is irrelevant to 99% of the customers.
CobrastanJorji 7y ago
This is probably good news for "City Storage Solutions," Kalanick's new startup, given the volume of recruiting emails I've seen going around from them.
OrgNet 7y ago
435 of their real employees or fake employees?
xvector 7y ago
This news comes hours after a massive Uber outage. Huh.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fpoijasw 7y ago
Hello Uber Engineer here! Obviously everything I say is personal experience and opinion. I think the layoffs were long overdue and should've happened sooner. There was a general understanding between my coworkers and I that Uber definitely over hired in 2016. Thanks to that a lot of engineers ran out of things to do which led to political infighting over roadmap, ridiculous redundant resourcing - every single team had mobile/web, severe shortage on infra teams since head count was already taken by main Uber teams. We even started building and maintaining our own chat app. I disagree that all the cool eng project that we put out and share here is a waste of time or resources. Those project was initiated by real needs on Uber and only the best make it out into the rest of the world. Engineers that shipped those projects are still here and we would've done it regardless of whether the 435 people that were hired in the first spot. I fully realize that it's an insensitive thing to say but I think it's important that it's expressed somewhere. I think the lesson here is to grow responsibily, and it's real people's lives that are being affected. Don't hire people to alleviate your current engineer's burnout and stress. Learn to plan better and to prioritize aggressively instead of just hiring and getting everything done.
- miguelmota 7y ago
  Over hiring is a typical mistake after raising a new round of funding. Good to hear that you agree with the layoffs. Like the old saying goes; you can't put 9 women in a room and make a baby in a month.
- spookthesunset 7y ago
  > We even started building and maintaining our own chat app God I love the Not Invented Here disease. Somebody, somewhere, thought "hey, slack is way to expensive, we don't want to get 'locked in', and 'mumble mumble privacy cloud evil stallman' so lets write our own chat application.... how hard can it be?" Boom, now the company is straddled by a shitty, homebrew chat application that is maintained by nobody because the original author left for greener pastures. Nobody dares replace it though because that would be sacrilege. That chat app is part of the company, after all! Arg.... I hate, hate, hate when engineers with a bad understanding of business and too much time on their hands lock their organisations into homebrew crap that has nothing to do with the value delivered by the business. /rant
robotburrito 7y ago
Dang, I wonder if this makes my job search here in SF much harder now :).
- rolltiide 7y ago
  More startups than people here with multiple black holes sucking up talent dont worry from this news Recruiters salivating though
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
omerekmekci 7y ago
Ohh we want come back. Uber xl. To Turkey again
brukaaguka 7y ago
Dropbox is next.
SagePower 7y ago
Ddxcx
renatoautore 7y ago
This is just unaccetable
aj7 7y ago
This is an unsustainable business model. If you draw a Gaussian surface around it, the end result is that Uber/Lyft will destroy the taxi industry (which was execrable, but put a fair amount of kids through college) and replace it with pauperized “contractors” too naive to calculate depreciation. And at the same ultimate fares, but with less share for the drivers. Enjoy it while you can, I guess.
NoblePublius 7y ago
I believe the actual term is “deactivated”.
efficax 7y ago
Hey! Maybe there should be unions in tech! Just a thought!
xenospn 7y ago
Hi newly ex-Uber engineers! If you’re an iOS developer And live in Southern California please reach out.
nikolay 7y ago
I can't belive that such simple and hugely profitable idea needs such huge staff, which can only screw things up. No wonder these idiots are losing big money!
habosa 7y ago
I don't know the details of this situation and Uber is far from a healthy company, but I don't like that layoffs are always a sign of a company in peril in Silicon Valley. 1) This is a public company with shareholders. If they think they can cut costs without hurting their revenue outlook that's not a bad idea! 2) We all know that interviews for engineers in SV suck ... So why can't you fire someone if you make a mistake? 3) I work at a company (Google) where the prevailing assumption is that if a team is not getting enough done it should ask for more engineers. That almost never helps. It adds communication overhead and doesn't address the problem of why the team wasn't getting to where it thought it would. Just smothers the issues. The most effective teams I've ever worked with were 3-10 people who were motivated and working in their area of expertise. 4) We all know that one bad teammate can undo the work of two good ones. I could go on. Yes I truly have sympathy for anyone who loses their job suddenly. It sucks for them and those who depend on them. It's probably good for Uber though.
- steelframe 7y ago
  > I work at a company (Google) where the prevailing assumption is that if a team is not getting enough done it should ask for more engineers. What I'm finding at Google is that whenever a team takes longer than 2 quarters to do pretty much anything, that's considered some kind of "problem" that needs to be "fixed." Sometimes the problem is that the technical challenge really needs more than 2 quarters to be adequately addressed. And yes, the first instinct is to ask for more headcount. But often times the problem is also with the headcount you have, not the headcount you don't have. What is usually needed is to get rid of the TLM who got into a management position through the IC track because of the collective delusion that someone who has worked their way up to Senior or Staff SWE by writing dank design docs and uber code (often in vast quantities) has also acquired senior engineering management competency. Once you've hired somebody who has significant education and/or experience with engineering management is managing the team, the next thing for that person to do is figure out how to increase the health and effectiveness of the team they have. You might even need to reorg to get the team size down to 7-10. In the process you need to give the team a couple more quarters to cut their MVP down to the bone and deliver on it. Then, and only then, should you think about throwing more headcount in the team's general direction. And it needs to be done with the goal of adding a layer of management hierarchy, making sure than no more than 7-10 people are in the daily standups.
0d0d0fsd0 7y ago
This is positive, they need to adapt to the expectations of the public markets.
mlvulfs 7y ago
Scaling back on the engineering and product teams was a smart move to cut costs. The promotions in engineering have been based on rollout of new features. No one was willing to be a grown up and require the engineering team to fix actual problems with the core product, the app. That is on the VPs. Sure, fixing bugs is not as much fun as building new features but Uber needs to make its core product better. Uber also had the opportunity to use a mapping system like google maps or Tom Tom the way that Lyft has. Instead, they built their own proprietary system at huge expense, refused to scrap it after it became clear it would be advantageous to do so, and have yet to work out the bugs with turn by turn navigation. There are some brilliant people at Uber doing amazing things, there are also a lot of ridiculous side projects with engineering teams devoted to them like the flying car team. It’s unfortunate that Uber laid off so many people. Maybe if upper management had made smarter choices about how they measure and reward success internally prior to this they would not be in the situation they are in.
lziest 7y ago
My question is, do they forfeit the RSUs given to the laid-off workers?
abalone 7y ago
Any idea roughly how many SF engineers just got laid off? Trying to get a sense of how this will hit the local labor market in the next few weeks. Articles says 265 engineers.. 85% in the U.S. So up to ~200 will be looking for SF jobs? How many are remote or in other US offices?
_pmf_ 7y ago
Maybe they can be independent contractors, what with the gig economy being no big problem and such.
- sempak123 7y ago
  Oh yeah
vkaku 7y ago
I think the logic is simple: while(true) { getHired(); work(); quitOrGetFired(); } There's no logical explanation for any of these steps. Every company that is being funded is not funded for being responsible, but for showcasing a hockey stick growth and making investors go $$$$$$$. If you're lucky, there's a chance your company will be an unicorn, and if you are luckier, your stock will mean something, and if you are one of the luckiest, you can actually sell it and do something else with your life than work. Anecdotal evidence shows that you need to be really lucky than be meritorious to make money. It also shows that even with low luck, periods of employment basically give you that money stream. Leave the analysis for someone else and get going! I've already done the good deed of referring the Uber engineers in my network. IMO, about the open source thing - Now that you've left Uber, you still have the neat tools you need to build something better, faster, bigger and someone else already paid for the caveman to science work.
lukelandlord 7y ago
I think like @fpoijasw
romeo12 7y ago
Great news
- happppy 7y ago
  great? how?
happppy 7y ago
Maybe Uber should focus on fixing their main app first. Driver can't get rides even after being online for hours sometimes. Card payments are being delayed and now I know why they are decreasing bonuses day by day, due to over hiring, because they have to pay over hired engineers a shit amount of money thus decreasing drivers bonuses!
Jelo 7y ago
I hope the 435 people laid off by Uber find the strength, the vibes and the zeal to push forth with life. I hope they don't see this as a setback but as a stepping stone to greater heights. I pray they find peace within.
yowlingcat 7y ago
Sounds like an awesome opportunity for hiring managers. At my last company, I'd be all over this, and indeed may be all over this when I start my new position.
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976 points by coloneltcb 7y ago

Related, but Uber is said to be hiring 2,00 for it's new Chicago office next year [1]. A mix of engineering and operations. My understanding this would be under their freight team, which according to this Techcrunch article, was unaffected by this layoff. [1]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-hiring-old-post-office-20190909-va4mtjmgkfh7bnlrub736fbw5q-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-hiring-o...

tempsy 7y ago
Unless there was a performance issue then why not allow these employees to transfer if they want to?
- paggle 7y ago
  Because they will likely want to hire in Chicago at much lower salaries than SF but asking someone to eat a big salary reduction is hard.
- heliodor 7y ago
  Might be that the company is that disfunctional. Between the news articles and the horrendous software quality, it seems to me the company is a mess.
  - xxxtentachyon 7y ago
    What horrendous software quality? Uber consistently puts out some of the cleanest mobile experiences for a mass market app, and their research teams put out great OSS work.
    - heliodor 7y ago
      Have you tried to use the Android app? I have programmed Android for five years and I can confidently say that the Uber Android app is a disaster. Both usability and bugs. On the database side, there's a place in my city that has some permanent bad data in the db so that it won't allow anyone to get picked up or taken there. I go there frequently by Uber and have to set the pin a few blocks away from the corrupted area then explain to the driver where I am or where I am going. It's like there's a ghost car attached to that place because every time I try to get a ride from there, it says it's finding me a ride, followed by an error message that the driver is unavailable. Had a painful back-and-forth with support about this and of course nothing every got done. While the Android app is of poor quality and no one is rushing to fix it, Uber engineers are busy putting out open source software and plenty of it. Talk about resource mismanagement!
    - bdcravens 7y ago
      For several months, Uber tells the driver my house is on the other side of the street. Verified that Google Maps, Apple Maps, and OSM all have my house on the correct side.
- paxys 7y ago
  Maybe they did? If you are an engineer in San Francisco, switching companies is trivial compared to relocating your life across the country to a place where you may not want to live.
duxup 7y ago
Logistics is a pretty mature industry as far as earning a sustainable profit goes. It would make sense they would be unaffected compared to their typical taxi type service.
txcwpalpha 7y ago
They also recently announced plans to hire 3,000+ in Dallas [1] at a brand new massive office. I'm sure the hiring and layoffs are from different business units, but it does seem strange that there's been multiple several-hundred-people-layoff stories form Uber recently at the same time they're announcing otherwise massive hiring expansion. I would at least figure that they would prefer to transfer engineers between units rather than to layoff and hire anew. 1: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Leaders-Approve-About-93-Million-in-Incentives-for-Potential-Uber-Expansion-542866411.html https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Leaders-Approve-Abo...
- djsumdog 7y ago
  Maybe some of them were given an option, but they didn't want to move locations; so they just decided it's better to pay them severance while they look for other work? /guess
- epistasis 7y ago
  Does Uber have different pay scales depending on location?
  - lucasmullens 7y ago
    I can't possibly imagine they're paying 3000 Dallas employees a bay area salary.
  - mateo411 7y ago
    All companies that are Uber's size will have pay scales depending on location.
  - rockinghigh 7y ago
    Yes.
- eternalny1 7y ago
  Interesting if this is a way to get out from under crushing Bay Area tech salaries. I still see zero reason a company like Uber should be based in San Francisco. We landed a man on the moon with parts built all over the United States, so it's not "that's where the talent is".
freewilly1040 7y ago
Maybe they are shifting headcount away from the Bay Area?
- thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
  that would make sense for a business with low margins. i'm surprised more companies aren't doing it.
  - muzz 7y ago
    They have been expanding in Palo Alto
    - eanzenberg 7y ago
      PA will probably command even higher salaries than SF though.
    - thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
      PA would be the absolute worst place in the world for a low margin business to expand into. I really have no clue how they arrived at such a conclusion. I can only imagine, it had something to do with investors.
- pcurve 7y ago
  I visited downtown chicago for first time. I'm sure the winter sucks, but it's really a nice city.
dmode 7y ago
I really take all this "will hire xx people in y location" with a grain of salt. This is all marketing speak intended for the tax handout. I don't really believe they will hire that many people if their business tanks
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  The difference is that this isn't some company with an existing footprint in a city saying "hey we're gonna hire some more people for our office here". In both the case of Chicago and especially Dallas, Uber is making significant real estate commitments to go along with these hiring plans. You don't buy up an entire skyscraper office building (and several plots of land around it) and open an entirely new office unless you're either 1) actually planning on filling it or 2) in such dire straits that you're willing to do really whacky shit to make people think you are planning on filling it. With Uber, it could be either one, but I certainly don't think it's just run-of-the-mill 'marketing speak'.
  - dmode 7y ago
    I don't believe Uber is buying a building, rather leasing out space, which can always be re-negotiated. There have many examples of companies promising a certain number of jobs and never fulfilling them, because who is looking. For example, Foxcon. Also, Uber once committed to build a HQ in Oakland and signed a huge lease. Soon after, they abandoned that plan and started building a brand new HQ in SF
    - txcwpalpha 7y ago
      The current deal that I've read for Uber's Dallas expansion is that they currently are leasing about 1/3rd of a brand new skyscraper that was just built, have plans to lease 90% of a brand new skyscraper that is currently being built, and also outright purchased several plots of land where they are planning on building office building that they will own. edit: After reading a few different articles it seems like every article says a different story about how much space Uber is committing to, so maybe you're right, it does sound a little wishy-washy.
fireattack 7y ago
Do you mean 2,000?
muzz 7y ago
Uber said the same thing about bringing 3,000 jobs to Oakland, but that didn't materialze because of... drumroll... the need for profitablity. In 2017. https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ditched-massive-headquarters-oakland-california-2017-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ditched-massive-headqua...
baron_harkonnen 7y ago
I'm pretty sure everyone on HN has gotten an email this week from uber-freight talking about their "HYPER growth!". It's really so tone deaf to have recruiters to be talking about their unique culture and rapid growth right after HQ lays off hundreds of people.

dominotw 7y ago

> we have over 27,000 full-time employees in cities around the world Wow

tschwimmer 7y ago

Anyone know what divisions the layoffs were in?

rubicon33 7y ago

There's definitely a tightening of capital happening right now. Investors are pulling back as fear of recession grows. EDIT: Did I say I believe there's a recession coming? No. I said (accurately) that there are growing FEARS of one. There's definitely tightening of investments and capital happening.

riffic 7y ago
Where is the line between "fear of recession" and "being in a recession"? Recessions happen on a somewhat consistent cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_cycle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_recessions); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_recessions); people would be less fearful if they were better prepared for their inevitability. Antifragility would be a good concept to be familiar with.
- rubicon33 7y ago
  You should re-read my post, as it wasn't myself that fears a recession is looming. The broader discussions within the markets are that one is on the horizon. I'm not so confident.
  - riffic 7y ago
    Sorry, I wasn't referring to you specifically. I have edited my comment to avoid the perception I had been.
metalliqaz 7y ago
Is Uber short of capital? I didn't see that in the article.
- rubicon33 7y ago
  They run on investments (still haven't made a profit). If investors get shy (due to fear of recessions) then they have to cut back the pipe, and uber is forced to layoff. 435 people, especially engineers, is no small sum of money.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Yhippa 7y ago

This is a bold move for sure. It sounds like they might have hired the wrong people so instead of "redeploying" them they just cut pretty deeply. Definitely unfortunate for the employees but also impressive that Uber had the guts to do this. I've seen companies let dead weight hang on for too long. The fact that they are still hiring makes me think that this was not a panic move to address Wall Street.

netfl0 7y ago

I’d like the see HN consider layoffs in other verticals as well. Particularly manufacturing.

arthurcolle 7y ago
Why?
- netfl0 7y ago
  It seems like technology plays a role in these paradigm shifts, perhaps awareness might inspire folks to leverage the workforce in new ways, maybe with technology.
netfl0 7y ago
To clarify, since I can no longer edit my comment, HN should be aware of other layoffs as well, especially layoffs due to automation...

djsumdog 7y ago

How does this work with layoffs + hiring? Can you layoff and then hire in the same department? I assume companies agree to pay at least unemployment and possible severance too in the case of layoffs. Can a company say "These 80 employees are under preforming" and justify a reduction in force that way? (I guess in at-will employment you don't need to justify it at all, so long as you meet legal unemployment requirements?) Are they getting rid of under performers and getting new blood or are they cutting people from certain departments (in which case, they could apply to be rehired in another division?)

tempsy 7y ago
Like another poster mentioned, up until 2 years ago (?) Uber was handing out very fat compensation packages even to entry level engineers. It's possible these are employees who've been at Uber for 2+ years and are frankly overpaid even if there were no serious performance issues.
sambroner 7y ago
My impression is that at a large company it's easier to cut in broad strokes and then hire for specific roles. Many companies, certainly Uber as well, do smaller force reductions where the employees have ~60 days to find an internal role, after which they're laid off. It sounds like the same thing, but, it allows you to possibly keep the employees.
derrick_jensen 7y ago
The article says they're trying to reduce overlapping and redundant work, and restructuring teams in a way such that they intersect less implies they run more efficiently, so they only options at this point are to lay people off or find new projects for them to do. The former makes the most sense considering how little money Uber is making and how their bottom line might increase if they legally become employees (minimum wage, health insurace, threat of unionization, etc)

notTyler 7y ago

I've always wondered if uber were to abandon their ongoing development efforts and focus on support and maintenance, would they would actually be profitable? It seems to me they would need a fraction of the tech workers they currently support.

TylerE 7y ago
No. Their quarterly losses are more than double their entire R&D spend.
- simonrobb 7y ago
  Fact check: R&D spend for three months ending June 2019 was $3.06B. Reported loss for three months ending June 2019 was $5.24B. So, already false. Now take away the one-time IPO expense of $3.9B, and we're not even close to being true. Further take away the $300M "IPO driver appreciation award" and you end up with a $1B loss for three months ending June 2019. In other words, the quarterly R&D spend is over three times the size of the quarterly loss. https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-details/2019/Uber-Reports-Second-Quarter-2019-Results/default.aspx https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det...
  - jcdavis 7y ago
    But that IPO stock-comp expense is largely attributable to R&D, so if you want to subtract that from the losses to look at a more cash-focused analysis you have to substract that cost from the R&D side as well. Of the $3.95B total stock expense, $2.56B was from R&D, which suggests cash cost that quarter was more like $910m (still a lot!)
    - simonrobb 7y ago
      To my mind this quarter shouldn't be used at all in this kind of discussion since its so messy. e.g.: I take your point, but that $2.56B is the culmination of over ten years of R&D compensation. It's not at all representative of the company's broader financials. OP's inference that Uber's quarterly loss is more than double Uber's quarterly R&D costs in general shouldn't be propped up by a moment in time observation.

dvt 7y ago

Uber was actively poaching from our team when I was at Edmunds.com a few years ago; hope my ex-teammates that jumped ship are doing alright. Uber is in a precarious position and I can't help but wonder what would be different if Travis Kalanick were still in charge. I know it might be an unpopular opinion, but I think his leadership and vision were really instrumental to Uber's early success.

paulddraper 7y ago
> I know it might be an unpopular opinion, but I think his leadership and vision were really instrumental to Uber's early success. I don't think that's an unpopular opinion at all. Never heard someone say otherwise. EDIT: From the the downvotes I can tell I am wrong. Please help educate me: Honest question: Who or what was "really instrumental to Uber's early success"?
- dvt 7y ago
  From my experience, singing Travis Kalanick's praises (at least on HN) has generally been met with resistance. I remember everyone piling on him about that (what I thought was a relatively innocuous) company retreat memo a few years ago.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    There's a big difference between admiring Kalanick as a person, and admitting he created the über startup. (I think) most people on HN realize that questionable ethics are strongly correlated with success.
- bagacrap 7y ago
  > Honest question: Who or what was "really instrumental to Uber's early success"? Using VC funding to bankroll an unprofitable business model, undercutting existing industry players who didn't have multiple billion dollar rocket boosters, mostly. Ignoring laws and other unethical practices no doubt helped.

brakmic 7y ago

Late Stage Capitalism at work. * Fire people from department X. * Hire people for department X. * And sell it as "lean, exceptionally high-performing teams, with clear mandates and the ability to execute faster than our competitors". LOL

sparkling 7y ago

Serious question: what does Uber need 27k employees for? 1k people to run the show in the main headquarters + some small-ish ~50-100 people regional offices should be enough to keep the company running.

fardin1368 7y ago
Uber is in 85 countries and each one needs ops, legal, marketing, driver interaction teams and etc. There are only 4000 engineers.
- keehun 7y ago
  Perhaps the next question is, what do 4000 engineers do? Not aimed as a troll-y question: an informed idea of what the breakdown of that many engineers do would be enlightening. For example, there were about 200 iOS engineers the last I heard. Assuming similar levels for Android, that leaves 3,500-3,600 engineers.
  - kaikai 7y ago
    Uber doesn't just make apps for phones. They also have an entire self-driving car division (computer vision, etc), car routing, maps folks, payments, the separate driver apps, etc. A company that size and complexity has plenty of work for engineers.
  - simonrobb 7y ago
    +1 Appreciate you avoiding the usual "it's just a little smartphone app" I'm not going to try and give an exhaustive list, but as a rough explanation: things get really, really hard when you're operating at Uber scale (hundreds of thousands of riders on trip at any one time, each demanding low latency and reliability): - Product: native clients for each side of the marketplace in each vertical (rides, eats, freight, atg, et al), maps, localization for every country with a presence (not just language, but tax, legal, hundreds of region-specific modes e.g.: tuk tuks) - Infrastructure: hardware teams to build on-prem DCs (cloud can get very expensive at scale), software networking to deal with said low-latency traffic, storage to optimize for reliability/latency/cost, observability (metrics, logging, alerting, tracing), security, et al - Data: insights, operational support, routing, et al - ATG Hope that gives a better idea.

choppaface 7y ago

Google is pretty well-known for maintaining a very deep bench-- if an engineer isn't effective in some role, they'll just move them to some other team. Heck, a lot of hires (especially 3rd/last attempt) go directly to the bench. This strategy pays off well when a new competitor (like Facebook or Uber) comes along and snatches up people in the lead roles, or if the company feels the need to pivot to something really fast (e.g. Google+, which drew from many teams across the entire company). Moreover, hiring a long-term employee today versus tomorrow might save money for a place like Google, assuming we expect competition and wages to continue to increase. It strikes me that if Uber is laying off software engineers, their company outlook must be very, very dire. A layoff is perhaps better strategy than firing the bottom 5%, which would likely preclude the departed from re-joining at a better time. But probably the wrong message to send to a cohort like software engineers-- a layoff is a legal confirmation that the company made a big mistake.

wutbrodo 7y ago
Im not sure how much one can extrapolate from this. Google also has the massive scale, in terms of both headcount and profit, to smooth out things like this and hold onto talent for the longterm. As huge and well-capitalized as Uber is, Google really is on another level.
hendzen 7y ago
This strategy works very well if you have a gigantic money printing machine, which Google does. Uber has a gigantic money incinerating machine. They don't have the ability to just have engineers spinning their wheels on non-business critical projects like Google does.
- trenning 7y ago
  Or in the case of Amazon you have both, printing money with an awful culture of churning through employees. They even structured their stock vesting around it.
  - meddlepal 7y ago

SilasX 7y ago

Is this the same as the 400 from a month ago, or a new batch? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20558490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20558490 Edit: Guess not, that initial group was just marketing. From the article: >These layoffs come shortly after Uber laid off 400 people from its marketing team.

txsoftwaredev 7y ago

Uber is also planning to open an office for 3k employees in Dallas. "...create 3,000 full-time jobs and pay employees an average salary of at least $100,000..." Considering the lower cost to operate in TX it would make sense to move IT roles to that area. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2019/08/09/uber-s-dallas-office-could-bring-3000-jobs-downtown-be-company-s-biggest-hub-outside-san-francisco/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2019/08/09/ub...

dmode 7y ago
The Dallas office is an administrative office and will not have eng roles. Also, these are all "promises", we really have to see how it plays out. Promises are cheap. Remember how Foxcon was going to hire 10k people in Wisconsin
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  That isn't what the article in the parent comment says: >The office would include engineers, finance executives, salespeople and other roles across Uber's business.
  - dmode 7y ago
    Here https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-new-offices-chicago-dallas-will-dwarf-san-francisco-hq-2019-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-new-offices-chicago-dal... This directly quoted an Uber exec saying that it will be focused on HR, sales, and ops
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - seax 7y ago
    "engineers" is a pretty nebulous term these days though.
Jweb_Guru 7y ago

bitL 7y ago

...and the internal demoralization just started. Once this Pandora box is opened, it cannot be closed.

Elof 7y ago

Kinda interesting that they chose to do the layoffs during the Apple event. I wish companies would just own what's going on instead of trying to bury it.

favorited 7y ago
Some tech company always tries to bury their garbage during Apple keynotes, unfortunately... Glad this made it to the top here anyway.
rocky1138 7y ago
I didn't know that there was an Apple event today.

halis 7y ago

It all comes down to management. ASSHOLE IN === ASSHOLE OUT ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

lucie2813 7y ago

I wonder how long a nonprofitable company can sustain...

zelly 7y ago
As long as the Fed keeps lowering interest rates

Areibman 7y ago

"Of those laid off, more than 85% are based in the U.S., 10% in the Asia-Pacific and 5% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to the source." Interesting. This hit seems to be mostly localized to the US. During their last mass layoff in July, employees from all over the world were affected. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/cwutan/oc_locations_of_the_400_uber_employees_laid_off/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/cwutan/oc_...

frostyj 7y ago

well hope their balance sheet looks better now

theincredulousk 7y ago

Probably some reality shaking out. Uber's engineering team puts out some impressive stuff, often as OSS. Their engineering blogs are regularly on HN. I've been genuinely surprised that they churn out some of these things and release them for free given their relatively extreme financial situation. In contrast to companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc. that have mountains of their own money to burn (rather than investors') on research and OSS side-projects, it always seemed to me that Uber was trying to play the same game, but far too early. Paying lavish SF engineer salaries to generate cool, but not revenue generating, software is probably excellent for morale, culture and recruiting, but a dubious use of resources when you are losing money seemingly faster than it would be logistically possible to literally burn it. Saying they're ~ "culling the low performers" can be entirely true, but it is also a Silicon Valley, meritocracy-culture-friendly way of saying "we're losing far too much money to pay bloated growth-stage poaching-game salaries to engineers, so if you're not working on something that generates revenue, glhf"

simonrobb 7y ago
It doesn't really cost anything to open source something though. These are all projects which are developed for a reason: the commercial version might be prohibitively expensive at Uber scale, or not technically capable of operating at Uber scale, or just plain doesn't exist yet. At that point you can engage with the tech community and offer it as OSS (not to mention make your engineers happy), or you can keep it to yourself and eventually lose that opportunity to somebody else.
- sbarre 7y ago
  That's not true. It costs quite a bit to open source a product if you're a commercial entity.. It needs to be reviewed (by legal, security, engineering, etc) and approved.. You're not just flipping the public/private flag on the repo.
  - on_and_off 7y ago
    Also, the doc, blog posts, feedback from the community, evangelization at conferences, thinking out the API design so it answers enough cases, not just yours, all take engineering time, that's not free.

jeff_friesen 7y ago

Does anyone know yet how this will affect their open source work, such as react-vis and deck.gl?

null_vector 7y ago
If they heavily rely on their own tools, odds are good maintenance will continue.

Railsify 7y ago

I suspect when the economy takes a downturn luxury purchases like this will be the first to go. If I think I might be laid off do I spend 10 dollars to Uber home or walk the 5 blocks and have one less drink? I would personally have one less drink and walk, or take the train/bus... Those 7 dollars Starbucks venti iced white chocolate mochas with 5 shots will slow also.

rubiquity 7y ago
One drink determines whether you can walk 5 blocks or not?
- smileysteve 7y ago
  It was difficult to follow, but I think the point was to exchange the cost of the uber for a drink (same cost) but walk home.
- intuitionist 7y ago
  At some margin, definitely!
- Railsify 7y ago
  It can, depending on the mix or my mood, replace one with two or three or whatever you want, smileysteve broke it down for you.
danans 7y ago
> Those 7 dollars Starbucks venti iced white chocolate mochas with 5 shots will slow also. <joke>On the plus side, this may slightly delay the onset of type II diabetes related healthcare expenses!</joke>

Zenst 7y ago

I wonder about Uber, they have spent lots of money branding and getting everything in place, that they overshot the whole making money aspect and now playing catchup. Problem is, will they reach that balance before they bleed beyond the point that they become vulture targets for another large company to step in, cherry pick what they want and discard the rest. With all that said, I wonder if maybe Amazon or some self driving car startup steps in and buys them up for a lot less than it would to build that penetration. Can imagine your Amazon owned Uber driver bus picking you up, with half a dozen stops on the way, some people, some packages, doing the rounds. Things change, how will Uber adapt and more so, all those drivers on zero hour contracts, are just as easily laid off and much cheaper as well. Self driving cars are a case of when, not if as so much being done in the field, progress has become a hot competition and slowly getting there.

jdsully 7y ago
Uber was very profitable when they just had Uber Black. The problem is they were disrupted themselves by Lyft and had to launch UberX (give Travis credit for launching this before Lyft even though it was their idea).
- Petrova 7y ago
  Are you sure? In the recent book about Uber written by Mike Isaac,the author stated that Lyft was the first to launch a low cost ride service with non professional drivers and Uber rushed to copy them.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jdsully 7y ago
    I read the book last weekend and am going with my memory (I’ve since lent it out). In the book Travis found out about Lyft’s planned rideshare service and raced to launch UberX first. Alas google has become useless for finding useful information so I hope somebody who still has the book can confirm.

yalogin 7y ago

I predict this situation to get worse over the next couple of years and will culminate in Uber shutting down the self driving project and partnering with Waymo.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

Uber's core business is a taxi app and I get that there are some clever algorithms involved, but I still don't really understand how they justify the size of their engineering team. I read that they had 2,000 engineers out of 6,000 employees in 2016, though I don't know the numbers now. That seems gigantic.

seax 7y ago
Agreed, I'm curious what they are actually working on with a team like that. Although they do have a not unsubstantial physical data center presence so I think a fair number of engineers are in support of that and not software engineers.
kamyarg 7y ago
There is Uber Eats, Freight, and JUMP bikes in addition to their ride-hailing product. I believe they share some technical similarities but still each of the four(I know of) are startups ideas imho.(See Lime, Lyft, Sennder, Delivery Hero, Takeaway.com, door dash etc.)
happppy 7y ago
I read Uber engineering blogs and there's a new blog every other day. IMO they are just over-engineering things thus justifying the size of engineers?

cwperkins 7y ago

Is it any coincidence this happens the week that CA is debating a bill that can drastically change how they compensate drivers? It appears like they are trying to gain leverage from an outsider’s perspective.

tanilama 7y ago
Uber is at a worrying place with or without bill.

mari13 7y ago

Terrible, it's never a great experience to be laid off. I went ahead and quickly created a site that will allow people to add their contact/background information to a global list. I know when Uber did their 1st round of layoffs in the marketing department a Google Spreadsheet was created, but this might be more easy to use. Created it in a few minutes, but please share and give me any feedback/comments you might have Job Collaboration Website: https://jobcolab.com/ https://jobcolab.com/ Trying to help any way I can.

newnewpdro 7y ago

Given what we know of Travis Kalanick and Saudi Arabia, burn baby burn! Good riddance.

mrich 7y ago

They are in a race: Be the first with self-driving taxis and go for the monopoly, or run out of cash. I don't want to sound pessimistic, but my bet is on the latter. It's just such a hard problem, especially in cities. I just hope there won't be a kind of AI winter when some of these startups run out of money.

paulcole 7y ago
> Be the first with self-driving taxis This is thrown out all the time. How exactly does this save them? Are they going to spend billions to purchase and maintain a fleet of their own taxis? Are they going to be paying people to "borrow" their self-driving cabs? Something else? I just don't see how this suddenly changes the equation in a meaningful way. People aren't going to spend more for a self-driving ride and the costs can only go down so much.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  >> Be the first with self-driving taxis >This is thrown out all the time. How exactly does this save them? They know that their days of paying drivers less than a living wage and no benefits are numbered. They have two options: Raise ride prices to pay drivers more, or get rid of drivers altogether. They're betting on the latter. The costs go down dramatically because buying cars is a one-time capital expense, rather than an ongoing cost of doing business. (Yes cars require maintenance but this is still cheaper than paying drivers.)
- bigzyg33k 7y ago
  Because self driving cars, while expensive, are still significantly cheaper that employing drivers. Furthermore, it could be argued that you need less self driving cars than cars with drivers, as they never need to take breaks, and can work all hours of the day. It would also drastically decrease ubers cost of entering new cities - previously they relied on driver incentives, this flattens the variation in cost greatly.
  - cookie_monsta 7y ago

dubliner2077 7y ago

"exceptionally high-performing teams" 12h sort of performance.

uwuhn 7y ago

Curious to know how many of the engineers who were laid-off were specifically iOS. Relevant to me since I'm pigeon-holed and in the Bay Area :)

streetcat1 7y ago

My uber alg: 1) open the Uber app. 2) X - price of ride with uber. 3) open the Lyft app. 4) Y = price of Lyft. IF Y < X -> Choose Lyft. Else : Choose Uber. Currently, Uber is around 20% more expensive. Not good. The rest is irrelevant to 99% of the customers.

CobrastanJorji 7y ago

This is probably good news for "City Storage Solutions," Kalanick's new startup, given the volume of recruiting emails I've seen going around from them.

OrgNet 7y ago

435 of their real employees or fake employees?

xvector 7y ago

This news comes hours after a massive Uber outage. Huh.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

fpoijasw 7y ago

Hello Uber Engineer here! Obviously everything I say is personal experience and opinion. I think the layoffs were long overdue and should've happened sooner. There was a general understanding between my coworkers and I that Uber definitely over hired in 2016. Thanks to that a lot of engineers ran out of things to do which led to political infighting over roadmap, ridiculous redundant resourcing - every single team had mobile/web, severe shortage on infra teams since head count was already taken by main Uber teams. We even started building and maintaining our own chat app. I disagree that all the cool eng project that we put out and share here is a waste of time or resources. Those project was initiated by real needs on Uber and only the best make it out into the rest of the world. Engineers that shipped those projects are still here and we would've done it regardless of whether the 435 people that were hired in the first spot. I fully realize that it's an insensitive thing to say but I think it's important that it's expressed somewhere. I think the lesson here is to grow responsibily, and it's real people's lives that are being affected. Don't hire people to alleviate your current engineer's burnout and stress. Learn to plan better and to prioritize aggressively instead of just hiring and getting everything done.

miguelmota 7y ago
Over hiring is a typical mistake after raising a new round of funding. Good to hear that you agree with the layoffs. Like the old saying goes; you can't put 9 women in a room and make a baby in a month.
spookthesunset 7y ago
> We even started building and maintaining our own chat app God I love the Not Invented Here disease. Somebody, somewhere, thought "hey, slack is way to expensive, we don't want to get 'locked in', and 'mumble mumble privacy cloud evil stallman' so lets write our own chat application.... how hard can it be?" Boom, now the company is straddled by a shitty, homebrew chat application that is maintained by nobody because the original author left for greener pastures. Nobody dares replace it though because that would be sacrilege. That chat app is part of the company, after all! Arg.... I hate, hate, hate when engineers with a bad understanding of business and too much time on their hands lock their organisations into homebrew crap that has nothing to do with the value delivered by the business. /rant

robotburrito 7y ago

Dang, I wonder if this makes my job search here in SF much harder now :).

rolltiide 7y ago
More startups than people here with multiple black holes sucking up talent dont worry from this news Recruiters salivating though

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

omerekmekci 7y ago

Ohh we want come back. Uber xl. To Turkey again

brukaaguka 7y ago

Dropbox is next.

SagePower 7y ago

Ddxcx

renatoautore 7y ago

This is just unaccetable

aj7 7y ago

This is an unsustainable business model. If you draw a Gaussian surface around it, the end result is that Uber/Lyft will destroy the taxi industry (which was execrable, but put a fair amount of kids through college) and replace it with pauperized “contractors” too naive to calculate depreciation. And at the same ultimate fares, but with less share for the drivers. Enjoy it while you can, I guess.

NoblePublius 7y ago

I believe the actual term is “deactivated”.

efficax 7y ago

Hey! Maybe there should be unions in tech! Just a thought!

xenospn 7y ago

Hi newly ex-Uber engineers! If you’re an iOS developer And live in Southern California please reach out.

nikolay 7y ago

I can't belive that such simple and hugely profitable idea needs such huge staff, which can only screw things up. No wonder these idiots are losing big money!

habosa 7y ago

I don't know the details of this situation and Uber is far from a healthy company, but I don't like that layoffs are always a sign of a company in peril in Silicon Valley. 1) This is a public company with shareholders. If they think they can cut costs without hurting their revenue outlook that's not a bad idea! 2) We all know that interviews for engineers in SV suck ... So why can't you fire someone if you make a mistake? 3) I work at a company (Google) where the prevailing assumption is that if a team is not getting enough done it should ask for more engineers. That almost never helps. It adds communication overhead and doesn't address the problem of why the team wasn't getting to where it thought it would. Just smothers the issues. The most effective teams I've ever worked with were 3-10 people who were motivated and working in their area of expertise. 4) We all know that one bad teammate can undo the work of two good ones. I could go on. Yes I truly have sympathy for anyone who loses their job suddenly. It sucks for them and those who depend on them. It's probably good for Uber though.

steelframe 7y ago
> I work at a company (Google) where the prevailing assumption is that if a team is not getting enough done it should ask for more engineers. What I'm finding at Google is that whenever a team takes longer than 2 quarters to do pretty much anything, that's considered some kind of "problem" that needs to be "fixed." Sometimes the problem is that the technical challenge really needs more than 2 quarters to be adequately addressed. And yes, the first instinct is to ask for more headcount. But often times the problem is also with the headcount you have, not the headcount you don't have. What is usually needed is to get rid of the TLM who got into a management position through the IC track because of the collective delusion that someone who has worked their way up to Senior or Staff SWE by writing dank design docs and uber code (often in vast quantities) has also acquired senior engineering management competency. Once you've hired somebody who has significant education and/or experience with engineering management is managing the team, the next thing for that person to do is figure out how to increase the health and effectiveness of the team they have. You might even need to reorg to get the team size down to 7-10. In the process you need to give the team a couple more quarters to cut their MVP down to the bone and deliver on it. Then, and only then, should you think about throwing more headcount in the team's general direction. And it needs to be done with the goal of adding a layer of management hierarchy, making sure than no more than 7-10 people are in the daily standups.

0d0d0fsd0 7y ago

This is positive, they need to adapt to the expectations of the public markets.

mlvulfs 7y ago

Scaling back on the engineering and product teams was a smart move to cut costs. The promotions in engineering have been based on rollout of new features. No one was willing to be a grown up and require the engineering team to fix actual problems with the core product, the app. That is on the VPs. Sure, fixing bugs is not as much fun as building new features but Uber needs to make its core product better. Uber also had the opportunity to use a mapping system like google maps or Tom Tom the way that Lyft has. Instead, they built their own proprietary system at huge expense, refused to scrap it after it became clear it would be advantageous to do so, and have yet to work out the bugs with turn by turn navigation. There are some brilliant people at Uber doing amazing things, there are also a lot of ridiculous side projects with engineering teams devoted to them like the flying car team. It’s unfortunate that Uber laid off so many people. Maybe if upper management had made smarter choices about how they measure and reward success internally prior to this they would not be in the situation they are in.

lziest 7y ago

My question is, do they forfeit the RSUs given to the laid-off workers?

abalone 7y ago

Any idea roughly how many SF engineers just got laid off? Trying to get a sense of how this will hit the local labor market in the next few weeks. Articles says 265 engineers.. 85% in the U.S. So up to ~200 will be looking for SF jobs? How many are remote or in other US offices?

_pmf_ 7y ago

Maybe they can be independent contractors, what with the gig economy being no big problem and such.

sempak123 7y ago
Oh yeah

vkaku 7y ago

I think the logic is simple: while(true) { getHired(); work(); quitOrGetFired(); } There's no logical explanation for any of these steps. Every company that is being funded is not funded for being responsible, but for showcasing a hockey stick growth and making investors go $$$$$$$. If you're lucky, there's a chance your company will be an unicorn, and if you are luckier, your stock will mean something, and if you are one of the luckiest, you can actually sell it and do something else with your life than work. Anecdotal evidence shows that you need to be really lucky than be meritorious to make money. It also shows that even with low luck, periods of employment basically give you that money stream. Leave the analysis for someone else and get going! I've already done the good deed of referring the Uber engineers in my network. IMO, about the open source thing - Now that you've left Uber, you still have the neat tools you need to build something better, faster, bigger and someone else already paid for the caveman to science work.

lukelandlord 7y ago

I think like @fpoijasw

romeo12 7y ago

Great news

happppy 7y ago
great? how?

happppy 7y ago

Maybe Uber should focus on fixing their main app first. Driver can't get rides even after being online for hours sometimes. Card payments are being delayed and now I know why they are decreasing bonuses day by day, due to over hiring, because they have to pay over hired engineers a shit amount of money thus decreasing drivers bonuses!

Jelo 7y ago

I hope the 435 people laid off by Uber find the strength, the vibes and the zeal to push forth with life. I hope they don't see this as a setback but as a stepping stone to greater heights. I pray they find peace within.

yowlingcat 7y ago

Sounds like an awesome opportunity for hiring managers. At my last company, I'd be all over this, and indeed may be all over this when I start my new position.

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