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“” In total, the layoffs represent about 1% of the company”” That seems like a very small lay-off. From reading the article it sounds like this is full time em

“” In total, the layoffs represent about 1% of the company”” That seems like a very small lay-off. From reading the article it sounds like this is full time employees, not gig workers.

tyingq 7y ago
1135 employees total across three waves. They say they have approximately 19,000 actual employees. So about 6% total laid off.
- asah 7y ago
  IIRC it was normal for large companies (Sun, Intel, Oracle, etc) to terminate the "bottom n%" where n=5+ by some performance metric?
  - Judgmentality 7y ago
    Sure, and most (not all) consider that a horrible practice that encourages backstabbing politics. And it's definitely bad for morale. And the people that defend the idea say it's nice to cut the flak once a year, but it's obviously better to just fire people for being bad as needed rather than create this constant annual layoff. The main reason it's done it's because it's so much easier than managing companies correctly.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      It creates perverse incentives for managers to hire one sacrificial goat per year so they don't have to cut into their otherwise effective team. A lot of this is just managers that don't want to be confrontational and firing the guy who just isn't working out but seems perfectly happy to just keep sucking at his job. These 10% haircuts give them the excuse they need to do their job.
    - throwing838383 7y ago
      It's to keep fear of lay offs high thus making people work harder. this is especially effective with H1Bs. However, some well qualified engineers won't be bullied by such routines: they'll simply go work somewhere they're appreciated.
  - iamasoftwaredev 7y ago
    That's one of the policies that destroyed Microsoft's reputation for years. You could argue that they did it in the stupidest way though.
lettergram 7y ago
This is typically what you’ll see when they want to fire people. They classify them as “layoffs” without requiring all the paperwork. When it occurs they’ll email departments and say something along the lines of “we have an ongoing lay-off, please stack rank employees by need” Then you cut the bottom. It’s something GE did for quite a while.
outside1234 7y ago
1%!!! There are 35,000 people working for Uber?
- jandrese 7y ago
  It takes work to lose hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. You would think it would only take a modest number of admins and developers to run a website that does the fairly simple task of finding the closest available driver when a rider hits a button, but apparently not.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

“” In total, the layoffs represent about 1% of the company”” That seems like a very small lay-off. From reading the article it sounds like this is full time employees, not gig workers.

tyingq 7y ago

1135 employees total across three waves. They say they have approximately 19,000 actual employees. So about 6% total laid off.

asah 7y ago
IIRC it was normal for large companies (Sun, Intel, Oracle, etc) to terminate the "bottom n%" where n=5+ by some performance metric?
- Judgmentality 7y ago
  Sure, and most (not all) consider that a horrible practice that encourages backstabbing politics. And it's definitely bad for morale. And the people that defend the idea say it's nice to cut the flak once a year, but it's obviously better to just fire people for being bad as needed rather than create this constant annual layoff. The main reason it's done it's because it's so much easier than managing companies correctly.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    It creates perverse incentives for managers to hire one sacrificial goat per year so they don't have to cut into their otherwise effective team. A lot of this is just managers that don't want to be confrontational and firing the guy who just isn't working out but seems perfectly happy to just keep sucking at his job. These 10% haircuts give them the excuse they need to do their job.
  - throwing838383 7y ago
    It's to keep fear of lay offs high thus making people work harder. this is especially effective with H1Bs. However, some well qualified engineers won't be bullied by such routines: they'll simply go work somewhere they're appreciated.
- iamasoftwaredev 7y ago
  That's one of the policies that destroyed Microsoft's reputation for years. You could argue that they did it in the stupidest way though.

lettergram 7y ago

This is typically what you’ll see when they want to fire people. They classify them as “layoffs” without requiring all the paperwork. When it occurs they’ll email departments and say something along the lines of “we have an ongoing lay-off, please stack rank employees by need” Then you cut the bottom. It’s something GE did for quite a while.

outside1234 7y ago

1%!!! There are 35,000 people working for Uber?

jandrese 7y ago
It takes work to lose hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. You would think it would only take a modest number of admins and developers to run a website that does the fairly simple task of finding the closest available driver when a rider hits a button, but apparently not.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]