6 ms·

> Layoffs of that magnitude, which haven’t been finalized but could be announced in stages in the coming weeks, could result in more than 5,400 of Uber’s 27,000

• jonknee 6y ago
  They're a global company that operates in 900 cities. I don't understand why so many people on this site seem to think it should be a few programmers and some suits to sign the checks.
  • Barrin92 6y ago
    because for the past 11 years, and people tend to forget how long this company has existed, they have been burning through money faster than star athletes after retirement while inventing increasingly convoluted metrics to claim to be actually profitable. Many people are just tired of seeing glorified sales and taxi companies disguising themselves as tech companies. The defining feature of a technology firm is reduction of marginal costs at scale. If you're adding human labour with every city you expand into you might have a problem on your hands if your banking on making facebook margins.There is an underlying exhaustion among some people, myself included, who want to see investments into basic research and real technological advances rather than yet another app delivering pizza being valuated at 50 billion dollars.
    • hckr_news 6y ago
      Uber’s engineering infrastructure is nothing to scoff at.
      • Barrin92 6y ago
        Yes, and I think that's the problem. The infrastructure is actually a cost for Uber. It's better to have less infrastructure. I have sometimes the feeling the infrastructure team at Uber is trying to build the tower of Babel to touch the heavens or something rather than considering that the end goal is giving people rides and not building more infrastructure. I think people should recognise that the taxi market has an advantage. It's a distributed system and a market. Taxis organise themselves. If you're going to replace an entire market with a centrally planned system and a giant electricity and compute eating machine then you better have something to show for it in terms of efficiency.
        • wpietri 6y ago
          Exactly. It's like measuring the success of building an airplane by how much it weights. What's especially interesting to me here is how the landscape has changed since Uber launched 10 years ago. In 2010, you legitimate had to build a lot of your own stuff; at that point Amazon hadn't even launched SNS or Redshift. [1] Docker didn't exist. Etc, etc. So the question for me isn't, "Can Uber justify their apparently large infrastructure?" It's more, "If somebody started an Uber competitor today, how much of the work could they get from open source, PaaS, and SaaS providers?"
          • kavalg 6y ago
            A really interesting question indeed. While Docker containers are a blessing from many perspectives, their orchestration is far from easy (yes k8s I am looking at you). Another consideration of a CTO, when choosing buy vs build, would be the cloud vendor lock-in and pricing consideration. Big cloud vendors may be a good offering for startups, when you need to move fast, growth is more important than margin and vendor lock-in is not an issue. However, as you grow, these things become increasingly important. Just to provoke some constructive thinking, I urge you to consider what businesses would become possible if running cost of IT & online payments equaled zero :)
        • skny 6y ago
          Your naïveté and misinformed idealism are quite amusing. Uber had to solve huge problems in realtime marketplace management, mapping, transport economics, financial systems, safety and fraud prevention to make the magical experience of pressing a button and getting a ride possible anywhere in the world. Don't assume you have the answers that a twenty thousand organization couldn't figure out.
          • james_s_tayler 6y ago
            "anywhere in the world" being the challenging part. If you're think about it from the perspective of a local taxi company, sure, it doesn't make sense. If you're a global service then it's probably different.
    • randomsearch 6y ago
      (Serious questions, seeking clarity in my own mind) Is Netflix a tech company? Is a company that sells ebooks a tech company? What about scientific journals? Are they tech companies? Is Instagram a tech company? What about ad brokers?
      • dredmorbius 6y ago
        I'd suggest the OECD definition: Hatzichronoglou, Thomas: "Revision of the High-Technology Sector and Product Classification", OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers, No. 1997/02, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/revision-of-the-high-technology-sector-and-product-classification_134337307632 https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/revisi... Page 7 specifically divides manufacturing industries (it doesn't address services) into four technology levels, high, medium-high, medium low, and low: High technology: Aerospace, computers, office machinery, electronics-communications, pharmaceuticals. Medium-high technology: Scientific instruments, motor vehicles, electrical machinery, chemicals, other transport equipment, non-electrical machinery. Medium-low technoogy: Rubber and plastic products, shipbuilding, other manufacturing, non-ferrous metals, non-metallic mineral products, fabricated metal products, petroleum refining, ferrous metals. Low-technology: Paper printing, textiles and clothing, food, beverages, and tabacco, wood and furniture. Given J.S. Mill's wonderful definition of technology, 'the study of effects", there's little in human activity which is completely atechnological. There remains, however, much that is quite some remove from the cutting edge. (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12004/12004-h/12004-h.htm#FNanchor11 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12004/12004-h/12004-h.htm#FNa...) In the technology adoption lifecycle, high tech are innovators. An early-adopter firm is itself still not high tech itself. (Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22884971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22884971)
      • gonzo41 6y ago
        Yes, Netflix is a tech company. Eventually all companies that are enabled by technology and software become tech companies. Even banking is becoming a tech industry.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dave5104 6y ago
    That's 30 employees per city, for those who didn't do the mental math. Seems way more reasonable considering for each given market, you'll need a number of support staff + supervisors, marketing people, staff to support drivers and their enrollment, and staff to support an office if one exists. Divvy up corporate HQ heads (engineering, exec team, etc.) and I can see that number hitting 30 per city.
    • oblio 6y ago
      Don't forget people that deal with all sorts of compliance issues.
  • munificent 6y ago
    Most programmers are completely oblivious to the world of sales and how large it is.
  • aazaa 6y ago
    > I don't understand why so many people on this site seem to think it should be a few programmers and some suits to sign the checks. I don't, either, but then again I never said that. I'm merely wondering how the jobs break down.
• greendave 6y ago
  > comes as the 3,800-person Uber engineering group could be slashed by nearly 800 people in the coming weeks That leaves 23,000 people to account for.
• _bxg1 6y ago
  Marketing is probably a lot of it. And I'd bet they have a substantial legal department given their history.
  • elliekelly 6y ago
    They also have a substantial “public policy and government relations” department on K street and globally.
• pkaye 6y ago
  A bulk of those positions are probably sales and marketing and customer service.
  • 1MoreThing 6y ago
    They're not. Most of them are operations.
• lhorie 6y ago
  [deleted]
  • staticautomatic 6y ago
    So many lawyers.
    • propogandist 6y ago
      They'll be coming after OP for the staffing disclosure, especially when someone in HR sees the comment
      • skny 6y ago
        This.. I'd recommend removing the above orgchart comment, especially since it was extremely easy to figure out who you are. (WebDev at Uber)
        • lhorie 6y ago
          I don't think I'd get in trouble, but better safe than sorry, I guess </shrug>
          • exdsq 6y ago
            But now the context is here - maybe everyone should scrub their comments so it's unclear what was discussed.
    • therealdrag0 6y ago
      So many regional variations. Sounds terrible to have to work with.
    • jbn 6y ago
      well, that company is going into entrenched businesses, so of course the incumbents are going to defend themselves and not just go away..
  • 6y ago
• yibg 6y ago
  Every time there is any discussion about the number of employees at a large company there is some comment like this. Whether it be Uber, Airbnb or twitter. No large organization is going to be 100% efficient with their workforce, but what's more likely? 1) They (and judging by HN comments, every large company) just massively over hired without realizing it or 2) running a global company is more complicated and involves more moving parts than it appears on the surface.
  • rightbyte 6y ago
    I guess it is 1. If your competetive edge is running a slick taxi operation, having that many employees seems ... counterinuitive. That is probably why Uber gets a "what are they all doing" alot.
    • meddlepal 6y ago
      Compliance with local laws, localized marketing, localized support, localized administration, etc. It adds up quick.
    • yibg 6y ago
      In the same way Netflix is just a slick tv station, google is just a slick search engine and amazon is just a slick e-commerce site. Calling Uber’s operation just a “slick taxi operation” doesn’t hold water and purposely ignores all the complexity operating at scale and globally entails. I mean how many corporate employees would you have if you ran Uber?
      • rightbyte 6y ago
        Amazon does logistics, Netflix does their own content and Google mainly do advertising and is surely not a slick search engine. Neither are slick. Uber on the other hand is an app together with some driver administration. The main operation of the taxis are on the drivers.
        • yibg 6y ago
• blitztime 6y ago
  An article that gives some insight into why these tech companies seem to have a bloated workforce is https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/ https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/. Part of it is that the MVP might be easy to create, but scalability and edge cases add a lot of extra complexity. The other part of it is that it's not so much that a company _needs_ every employee it has, but it will keep hiring until the marginal benefit of an employee is no longer positive.