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Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices

1063 points by WFHRenaissance 6y ago

Exquisites 6y ago
I need to subscribe to read the full story and I don't want that.
ajiang 6y ago
Seems reasonable when your core business has been massively impacted. Being a public company can't make it easier. Also as a startup, good sub-answer to the "Isn't Uber / Twitter / Dropbox etc working on this?". Yes, but in a market downturn, your investors want you to dig in harder while their investors want them to survive and focus on core.
- tootie 6y ago
  I honestly wonder what the strategy is. Obviously they are heavily impacted in the short term, but also this is a company that has been losing money from the get go. If the intent is to build and build and build and search for profit eventually, then I'd think they'd weather this storm more than they are. They invested heavily in building up a world-class engineering team and just cut a huge chunk loose. It makes me think they aren't just cutting costs, they are refocussing the business and probably won't reenter some markets.
  - rswail 6y ago
    And perhaps focus on being a global taxi company instead of things like self-driving cars which is the job of a global taxi manufacturer.
  - buboard 6y ago
    become an AWS competitor?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tyingq 6y ago
"Khosrowshahi said the company is winding down its product incubator and artificial-intelligence lab" Does that mean they are officially out of the self-driving car business? Wouldn't you need your AI lab if you were still pursuing that? Also, if you're hitting the paywall: https://outline.com/VL6xaR https://outline.com/VL6xaR
- Eridrus 6y ago
  "AI Labs" tend to publish papers more than they actually work on real projects, so I wouldn't assume shutting down an AI lab implies suspending the self-driving car project.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- njoubert 6y ago
  These are different efforts from ATG, the self-driving car division.
  - tedd4u 6y ago
    I thought the self-driving unit had been spun off. This article [1] (from April 2019) said: "Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), which works on self-driving vehicles, has netted an investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund ($333 million), Denso and Toyota ($667 million combined) … The investment values the division, known as the Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), at $7.25 billion and creates a newly formed corporate entity with its own board." [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/uber-nabs-1-billion-self-driving-car-investment-from-softbank-others.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/uber-nabs-1-billion-self-dri...
- seibelj 6y ago
  AI engineers cost an absurd amount of money for dubious ROI in the self-driving car space.
  - criddell 6y ago
warmcat 6y ago
https://archive.vn/vkqbT https://archive.vn/vkqbT
- lowwave 6y ago
  Hmm, getting This server could not prove that it is archive.vn; its security certificate is from cloudflare-dns.com. Are archive.vn working?
  - Fej 6y ago
    archive.today blocks users of Cloudflare DNS.
tuyguntn 6y ago
Anyone working at Uber, can you share how is morale in Uber at this moment? How might this affect hiring in the future when they need more people, but people don't want to go there? Honestly, in the beginning of 2020, I was too optimistic and planning to apply to Uber around June, thinking that corona will go away
- _pmf_ 6y ago
  > How might this affect hiring in the future when they need more people "Independent contractors" working from home and using their own equipment. "Gig economy". Hope they enjoy it.
  - ganstyles 6y ago
    Geez, this is incredibly callous. These are real people who are losing their livelihoods.
    - setgree 6y ago
      It's gauche to say it on the day a bunch of people lost their jobs (and there's no need for the schadenfraude) but I think the underlying point is sane. Uber's business model is replacing FTEs in a a hidebound, regulated industry with gig workers (& good UX!). If you were forecasting how this company in particular would deal with a downturn, it's a reasonable guess that they'll try to do the same thing to their own workforce, if they can find engineers willing to take on gig work. It's in their DNA. To be charitable, the grandfather comment is a warning to think about the broader effects of the work we do, driven home by the possibility of a "what goes around comes around" situation. EDIT: as many have pointed out, taxi drivers don't get benefits either (I originally said one of the margins Uber competes on is not providing benefits).
      - librish 6y ago
        A large portion of taxi drivers are independent contractors.
hknd 6y ago
Anyone know from the inside how this affects stock vesting and pre-IPO stock options?
- Me1000 6y ago
  Usually late stage startups switch from options to double-trigger RSUs years before they go public. I doubt anyone at Uber has unvested stock options. Assuming anyone laid off had unexercised options, they'll likely have a short window to exercise them before they expire.
  - nrmitchi 6y ago
    Furthermore, Uber is a public company now, and there is (as far as I know) no outstanding lockout period for employees. IF anyone has outstanding options, that are subject to a (most likely) 90-day exercise window, they can be exercised and immediately sold. The typical "exercising of an option for an illiquid asset which will be taxed as if it's liquid" problems with start-up stock options simply don't exist in this case.
jonluca 6y ago
Dara's email was really well written, and felt as compassionate as one can for a letter from a CEO announcing job cuts. The full email: Team Uber: These have been unprecedented and challenging times for everyone—our societies, our governments, our families, our economies, all around the world. They’ve also been challenging for Uber, and many of you, as you’ve waited for us to define the road ahead. I’ve said clearly that we had to take tough action to resize our company to the new reality of our business, and that I would come back to you this week with the specifics. Today I have the specifics: we have made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce our workforce by around 3,000 people, and to reduce investments in several non-core projects. As a leadership team we had to take the time to make the right decisions, to ensure that we are treating our people well, and to make certain that we could walk you through our decision making in the sort of detailed and transparent manner you deserve. Where we started and hard choices We began 2020 on an accelerated path to total company profitability. Then the coronavirus hit us with a once-in-a-generation public health and economic crisis. People are rightfully staying home, and our Rides business, our main profit generator, is down around 80%. We’re seeing some signs of a recovery, but it comes off of a deep hole, with limited visibility as to its speed and shape. You’ve heard me say it before: hope is not a strategy. While that’s easy to say, the truth is that this is a decision I struggled with. Our balance sheet is strong, Eats is doing great, Rides looks a little better, maybe we can wait this damn virus out...I wanted there to be a different answer. Let me talk to a few more CEOs...maybe one of them will tell me some good news, but there simply was no good news to hear. Ultimately, I realized that hoping the world would return to normal within any predictable timeframe, so we could pick up where we left off on our path to profitability, was not a viable option. I knew that I had to make a hard decision, not because we are a public company, or to protect our stock price, or to please our Board or investors. I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for the cities of the world—our being there for millions of people and businesses who rely on us—demands it. We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to keep growing, expanding, and innovating. We have to take these hard actions to stand strong on our own two feet, to secure our future, and to continue on our mission. I know that none of this will make it any easier for our friends and colleagues affected by the actions we are taking today. To those of you personally impacted, I am truly sorry. I know this will cause pain for you and your families, especially now. Many of you will be affected not because of the quality of your work, but because of strategic decisions we made to discontinue certain areas of activity, or projects that are no longer necessary, or simply because of the stark reality we face. You have been a huge part of this company and every day forward we will build on the foundations that you established, brick by brick. Our decisions and the road forward We have decided to re-focus our efforts on our core. If there is one silver lining regarding this crisis, it’s that Eats has become an even more important resource for people at home and for restaurants; and delivery, whether of groceries or other local goods, is not only an increasing part of everyday life, it is here to stay. We no longer need to look far for the next enormous growth opportunity: we are sitting right on top of one. I will caution that while Eats growth is accelerating, the business today doesn’t come close to covering our expenses. I have every belief that the moves we are making will get Eats to profitability, just as we did with Rides, but it’s not going to happen overnight. So we need to fundamentally change the way we operate. We need to make some really hard decisions about what we will and won’t do going forward, based on a few principles: We are organizing around our core: helping people move, and delivering things. We are building a cost-efficient structure that avoids layers and duplication and can scale, at speed. We are being intentional with our location strategy focused on key markets/hubs. Mac will now lead a unified Mobility team, which will include Rides and, as of today, Transit. Mac will continue to manage our cross-cutting functions like Safety & Insurance, CommOps, U4B, and Business Development, the latter of which will be centralized across Rides, Eats, and Freight under Jen. Pierre will lead what we will call “Delivery” internally, encompassing Eats, Grocery and Direct. Given the necessary cost cuts and the increased focus on core, we have decided to wind down the Incubator and AI Labs and pursue strategic alternatives for Uber Works. Due to these decisions, Zhenya has decided it makes sense to move on from Uber. Zhenya is customer-centric to her core, and I am deeply grateful for all of her hard work. We are also looking at our geographic footprint. While it served us well for many years to cast a wide physical net, it’s time to be more intentional about where we have employees on the ground. We are closing or consolidating around 45 office locations globally, including winding down Pier 70 in San Francisco and moving some of those colleagues to our new HQ in SF. And over the next 12 months we will begin the process of winding down our Singapore office and moving to a new APAC hub in a market where we operate our services. Having learned my own personal lesson about the unpredictability of the world from the punch-in-the-gut called COVID-19, I will not make any claims with absolute certainty regarding our future. I will tell you, however, that we are making really, really hard choices now, so that we can say our goodbyes, have as much clarity as we can, move forward, and start to build again with confidence. How we are helping departing employees As we previewed last week, we have taken a lot of feedback and worked to provide strong severance benefits and other support for those leaving Uber, like healthcare coverage and an alumni talent directory. We’re also taking care to support people in special situations a bit differently, like those on US visas or parental leaves. While the details will differ slightly by country, you can see a summary here. Every departing employee will have a 1:1 to receive the details of their individual package. Given the global nature of these changes, and the local rules and regulations involved, the individual experience today will vary by country: All other countries (those not listed to the right) Argentina, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland (COE only), Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan (Karachi only), Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK (ULL only) In these countries, we can communicate about individual impacts today. Everyone in these countries who is affected has already received an email, and will soon have a calendar invitation to a private meeting with a manager and HR. If you are in one of these countries and you did not receive a separate email this morning, you are not affected. In these countries, local laws mean that we cannot be as specific about individual impacts today. In some countries, we will start a consultation process. In others, there are restrictions on making changes during the COVID lockdown. If you are in one of these countries, you will get an email from Nikki describing next steps for your location. If you are one of the many affected Uber teammates, I’ll acknowledge right here that any package we offer, regardless of how thoughtful or generous, will never replace the opportunity to belong, to make a difference, to establish the kinds of bonds you establish with any important company or cause. We wouldn’t be here without you. We will finish what you started, and we will be excited to see the great things that you will build next. I am incredibly thankful to everyone reading this email, because the resilience and grit you’ve shown has made Uber the company it is and will continue to be. I’ve never had a harder day professionally than today, but Uber has consistently surprised me with the challenges it has thrown my way. But it’s the toughest challenges that are worthwhile, and I know even more strongly in my heart than I ever have that Uber is worth it, and more. Dara
boolcow 6y ago
What severance is being offered to the employees being laid off? Is it up to the high ethical standard set by Airbnb? Separated [Airbnb] employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the rest of the world.
- asciident 6y ago
  I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with equating ethical with generous. Basically it turns ethics into money, with the idea you can buy ethicalness.
  - kylec 6y ago
    If you’re cutting off someone’s source of income, giving them extra money gives them extra time to land on their feet. I’d say that’s pretty ethical.
    - libria 6y ago
      Is shorter or zero severance unethical? We all enter into this employment contract knowing it could end abruptly from either party. If money is tight, they could afford longer severances for all if they cut 4000 instead. Does that not seem unethical toward the extra 1000 cut?
      - kylec 6y ago
        Regardless of legality and what the parties agreed to contractually, the fact remains that abrupt termination with zero severance is harmful for the former employee, especially in this economic climate. If the corporation pays a generous severance, the harm is reduced or eliminated. On a scale of ethicality, the more harmful an action is, the less ethical it is, so yes, paying severance is more ethical than not paying severance.
livealife 6y ago
Who are getting laid off? Software engineers or management and customer team?
- bthrn 6y ago
  Yes
akmarinov 6y ago
Hmm wonder why they announced it on a Monday instead of a Friday?
- somebrody 6y ago
  The most reasonable explanation is that they were targeting Friday, but were late and so it was Monday. Firing 3,000 employees takes a lot of preparation. If there are a few corner case employee resolutions, that holds up the whole bunch
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    And there are legal steps they will have to go through making redundant that many in the US
- gamblor956 6y ago
  A lot of the layoffs are international, so if they had announced on Friday the employees would have learned of their terminations over theirs weekends, as Friday in the U.S. is generally at least Saturday in Europe and Asia. International companies generally announce cross-border layoffs on Monday (US-time), because that announcement will be during the work week everywhere they operate.
- odyssey7 6y ago
  What is the line of reasoning that favors a Friday for layoffs?
  - vitaflo 6y ago
    There are several, one is that you can time it with payroll, so your last day is the end of the current payroll period, just makes it neat for accounting purposes. Another is that if the company doesn't want the media to pick up the "bad news", Friday is the best time to do it because it'll get lost over the weekend when it's reported on. And finally, there's less worry about retaliation from disgruntled employees if they have the weekend to calm down over being let go.
  - 6y ago
baylearn 6y ago
A version of the article without the paywall: http://archive.is/OOuRC http://archive.is/OOuRC
nulptr 6y ago
Can someone explain why Uber stock is up 7% today then? Is it because Uber's expenditure will decrease because of the layoffs?
- spyspy 6y ago
  The entire market is up on Powell’s positive remarks on the economy’s recovery.
  - rwc 6y ago
    And the Moderna vaccine progress announcement this morning
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- cactus2093 6y ago
  There's not always a true, causal explanation of why stocks are reacting as they are. Don't be too quick to trust cable news anchors or other stock market shills that make a living making up and touting stock market narratives. By definition a stock price is a split of the public consensus of what's happening, just as many people are selling as buying at that price. Your explanation seems as good as any.
- rvz 6y ago
  > Is it because Uber's expenditure will decrease because of the layoffs? Yes. This is Uber's way of saying to their investors that their costs will decrease due to losing billions during the coronavirus outbreak, thus head count must be decreased. But some who are buying now, may see this as a way of selling at the "bull trap" in Q2.
- macksd 6y ago
  It's not unusual for stocks to go up on layoffs, but as others have commented there isn't always a simple explanation either. But it wasn't a secret that Uber was going to be getting hit hard by quarantine - it would probably already be priced into the stock by the point. The news today is that Uber's leadership is recognizing that and aggressively taking action to protect the bottom line - sucks in the short-term for employees, especially those directly affected, but that's great news for investors.
shuckles 6y ago
Can anyone with knowledge share whether the Uber Amsterdam office is impacted?
- tschellenbach 6y ago
  Also curious about this. Happy to talk to anyone who wants to work with Go: https://getstream.io/careers/ https://getstream.io/careers/
- maslam 6y ago
  I'd love to talk to technical product managers. We're hiring at Databricks Amsterdam. Please contact me at bilal dot aslam at databricks dot com
- asickperson 6y ago
  Yes, but it is not announced due to works council process. It'll take couple of weeks at least.
- ojilles 6y ago
  If anyone at Uber reads this, feel free to get in touch (Go, Java, SRE) if you want to effectively stay in the same building working for a multinational. There's not many roles open at the moment, but here's one: https://jobs.ebayclassifiedsgroup.com/job/amsterdam/senior-backend-engineer/25370/16028145 https://jobs.ebayclassifiedsgroup.com/job/amsterdam/senior-b...
saisundar 6y ago
I am wondering why there are two separate rounds of layoffs. Isn't it better for morale to just have the band aid ripped quick, once and for all? What context does Uber have now, that they did not when the initial layoff wave happened?
- rantwasp 6y ago
  uber never seemed like a rational company that thinks of the good of its employees (i know it’s a business, but still). the cut deep, cut once method for layoffs is doing business 101, but still there are 2 rounds of layoffs at uber
  - sbuccini 6y ago
    Dara hinted in his first email that there were more layoffs on the way. I consider them to be a single layoff, one portion of which took more time to execute.
    - s1t5 6y ago
      Isn't hinting the worst approach in that case though? I can't imagine that the additional uncertainty helped with staff morale.
      - sbuccini 6y ago
        Is it? You already laid off a large percentage of staff. Your product teams will have seen the data showing cratering revenue. Your top engineers are almost certainly already looking for new jobs anyways. You know you are going to have to make this move no matter what. Anyone with a brain knows that the status quo is unsustainable whether you say the quiet part out loud or not. Better to give people a heads up so they can start getting their resumes in order, hitting up their networks, etc. rather than telling a blatant lie.
      - sida 6y ago
        Internally, Dara was very clear that the layoff would happen in 2 stages for the different organizations
travisl12 6y ago
I was let go today from Uber. If anyone is looking for a Frontend/Fullstack with 7yoe. I'm here :) Find me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-lawrence-b77400b8/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-lawrence-b77400b8/
- jmeister 6y ago
  Did you get good severance? Hope you did. If you can afford it, I’d suggest taking a break.
  - travisl12 6y ago
    Yeah severance is pretty good. I'll try to get a gig quick and then push off the start date a bit.
- asood123 6y ago
  What's the best way to contact you?
  - travisl12 6y ago
    www.redundantrobot.com
- uxcolumbo 6y ago
  You should add your email address or website to your profile, so people can contact you.
  - martindelemotte 6y ago
    You should also work for a more ethical company next time. Edit: it's not a snark, just a friendly reminder.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Honestly don’t understand why people don’t have their email address public. Spam filtering is so good these days that this is all upside and no downside.
rvz 6y ago
I can't imagine how companies like Uber, Lyft and WeWork could be sustainable in the long term with huge costs and a high burn rate, but this action is definitely in addressing the future Q2 results in the summer which is the actual results including the impact on the coronavirus outbreak. Essentially for companies like Uber and Lyft who don't focus on fast growth, VC cash raising and generating little money with huge costs, the actual reality is that this is nothing more than the emperor new clothes. Unfortunately there are no sacred cows being saved here, especially engineering being affected in this.
- deminature 6y ago
  Uber and Lyft are public, they haven't relied on VC cash for over a year.
  - raiyu 6y ago
    Going public is still a fundraising event that puts cash on the balance sheet of the company. So whether they are funded by VC's or large institutional buyers who are the majority traders on the public market, there is no difference and the companies continue to lost money. The issue for Uber is that they need to change the narrative. They don't have the story that Amazon did, that they are losing money because they are reinvesting it back into tremendous infrastructure which will give them scale. Uber is losing money because they grew very quickly so there were a lot of innate inefficiencies because of that. So these firings are a chance to right size the company and see if the new trimmed down Uber will now be profitable when eventually ridership returns to normal.
- mannytabloid 6y ago
  Q2 is already doomed - plus now they're adding millions of one-time severance costs to the quarter. This is a hail mary for Q3.
- blihp 6y ago
  The game plan is pretty simple: use VC cash to quickly provide services everywhere and build market share, drive competitors out of business / acquire them, move to self-driving cars to the extent possible and eventually raise rates when customers have no other options.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
amq 6y ago
If there's anyone from Vienna, Austria, we're hiring.
Havoc 6y ago
45 offices closed. Holy hell.
- tmh79 6y ago
  Vast majority of these offices are small hubs in tier 3 cities occupied by regional tems, or tier 1 cities with multiple offices.
  - Havoc 6y ago
    Slightly off topic. What's tier 1/2/3 in the US? I had just heard that kind of system applied in China
    - koblas 6y ago
      San Francisco / Seattle / Boston / New York --- Austin / Salt Lake / Los Angeles / Portland / Atlanta --- Ann Arbor / Chicago / Minneapolis / Miami
      - MajorBee 6y ago
        Chicago is Tier 3? That doesn't seem right.
        koblas 6y ago
        I could argue that Atlanta is tier 3 as well, the distinction between tier 2/3 could just be a simple rule of numbers (over a 1M pop vs. under 1M pop) and not a tech center. Or in my case that when I've interviewed people from the given locations that they didn't meet the bar by a given level. UIUC produces some amazing engineers, but UChicago doesn't...
      - dmode 6y ago
        Los Angeles, Tier 2 ? I would say it should be Tier 2, considering greater Los Angeles area has 14mn people
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 6y ago
Hard to let go of that many people without losing critical knowledge, Uber will come out of this a diminished company in many ways. Best of luck to those laid off.
- user5994461 6y ago
  Not so sure about that. The company was notorious for having teams constantly rollout competing internal libraries/tools and rewrite them over and over, obviously not having enough bottom-line work to keep everyone busy. A smaller workforce may be able to focus on the work that matters, it doesn't have to imply a lower productivity.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    Even if a tool should not have been written, the ability to troubleshoot it is still critical to its consumers. And making hundreds of dependent teams spend a month migrating is easily more expensive than 3 headcount to maintain it.
  - shockinglytrue 6y ago
    I have never witnessed a company at least the size of Uber where this wasn't the case. This isn't exclusively a culture thing, it's a bandwidth thing. There is limited human IO available to coordinate, and available bandwidth diminishes in proportion to org size. The org can either choose to slow down to match available IO, or run at closer to natural pace and accept duplicate work. I guess the latter must be the obvious choice, or the automatic tendency I imagine the same problem is why so many large orgs inevitably turn into hyperstructures of insane management layer cake.. coordination overhead will eventually send everyone begging for the ability to shed work or delegate
  - scarface74 6y ago
    It could be worse. You could have a large company notorious for rolling out competing external products, like messaging and video chat apps....
- nom 6y ago
0zymandias 6y ago
It looks like Dara is executing the Jack Welch & General Electric playbook [1]. Essentially, it comes down to "Be the #1 or #2 company in the market or exit" You can debate whether it was successful at GE. The criticism of Jack Welch was that his approach improved short-term financials, but he left a hollowed-out company to his successor that became irrelevant and lost value relative to the S&P. The way I see this playing out at Uber is rapidly exiting categories like Scooters, Freight, Works, and AV. And doubling down on Ride Share and Eats with acquisitions in geographies where they have a leading position. I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch
- mattwad 6y ago
  > I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility Scooters are a fad that was never needed. Bikes or mopeds like Revel are 10 times more useful. I don't think scooters replace anything of note, since you can pretty much walk the same distance. They're only fun for tourists and left in the sidewalk for everyone else to stumble over.
  - ping_pong 6y ago
    I disagree wholeheartedly. Electric scooters are fun and useful, especially for commuting in the morning from a drop off location like a train station. The real question is whether or not it can be profitable, which I highly doubt. I would rather just get my own if I needed it.
    - neaden 6y ago
      I think scooters are very area dependent. Both because of weather, and the supporting infrastructure.
    - mcculley 6y ago
      I live in downtown Orlando. Lime, Lynx, and Bird have littered downtown with scooters. I run almost every day and they are often left directly in the middle of the sidewalk, either upright or fallen over. A couple months ago I began relocating any rental equipment I find in my way on the sidewalk. I am not at all gentle about this and I'm sure I have damaged some of the equipment. I like the idea that people might use these more than cars, but investors need to figure out a better way to store them than in the sidewalk.
r3nruturnEr 6y ago
Does anyone know where one could find a list of the offices they closed?
economicslol 6y ago
Remember when Dara predicted "profitability" by 2021? LOL, just another Softbank/VC funded money pit.
- rvz 6y ago
  Lyft also set such pretentious goals for 2021 last year. Not sure what crystal ball they were basing their forecast on but, such jokes are meant to be reserved for a late night comedy show not in an earnings call. [0] [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyft-expects-to-be-profitable-a-year-earlier-than-projected-11571765364?mod=rsswn https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyft-expects-to-be-profitable-a...
blackswan101 6y ago
Whoever is still being recruited by uber or close to an offer better make sure they have a solid severance clause written into their contract! Nothing less than 1 to 2 years of pay.
- saos 6y ago
  Surely no offers can be made during this period redundancies and consultation.
bdcravens 6y ago
Developers at unicorns: even in the best of times, do you feel more expendable than you've felt at other jobs? We always are amazed at the number of developers at companies like this. (the numbers I've seen are old, but I guess out of 22,000 employees, it was something like 5000 engineers?) While that allows you to build in a more robust way than a smaller company, it seems like there's no shortage of developers working on tooling, R&D projects, and at least partially on open source projects, roles that could presumably go away if a company had to focus strictly on the core product.
- spullara 6y ago
  All the big startups hire all the best people mostly to stop them from getting hired anywhere else until they can't sustain it. Having 1000 extra developers is better than having 200, 5 person engineering teams working against them.
- ransom1538 6y ago
  "Developers at unicorns:" Prato principal crystallized. Look at any big repro or any large company. There is usually about ~5 ish people that know wtf is going on. I think uber could be ran with 10 people.
  - pc86 6y ago
    > Prato principal crystallized You're wrong, and not just about the Pareto principle.
    - gdhbcc 6y ago
      He is probably Portuguese speaking, and his autocorrect changed the spelling.
      - pedrosorio 6y ago
        Can confirm, I was having a hard time parsing how "main course" in Portuguese made sense in the middle of that sentence.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.md/5OSus https://archive.md/5OSus
paulie_a 6y ago
Why in gods name do they have that many people? They are a cab company that doesn't employ drivers. Talk about a dumpster fire of VC money
dmaskasky 6y ago
I was also let go today, is anyone looking for a frontend engineer with 6 years experience? My profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaskasky/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaskasky/
- amrrs 6y ago
  Check this if you've not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618
  - dang 6y ago
    Also "Who Wants to Be Hired": https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring
- wegs 6y ago
  As a suggestion, point people to a personal web page or portfolio. Especially for a front-end engineer, I would never recruit someone based on a LinkedIn profile. That's doubly-true in this market. To make it through the filter, it doesn't need to be fancy or take a lot of time, but it does need to be tasteful. Of course, fancy and playful go a very, very long ways for separating yourself from all the other people who made it through the filter.
  - dmaskasky 6y ago
    That's a great suggestion. Unfortunately, my portfolio is entirely comprised of Uber contributions that I cannot share publicly. I believe many folks are like me, eyes-forward and focused on the company mission. I was going through the process of open sourcing a library, but that's no longer going to happen. I suppose I should get started on making something that I can own.
    - anticsapp 6y ago
      Are you allowed to talk around what you did there? Or even write "Top secret, I can't talk about it". I think you need some line items of some sort, because those are three great companies. You'll probably be out of work for 17 minutes.
netcan 6y ago
Uber is very vulnerable. They still make a large loss every year. Cash is not as bad, because (a) half the loss is in the form of "stock-based-compensation" and (b) they've been growing, which improves cash flows. Stock prices are (astonishingly) doing ok. Idk if that means uber can still raise whatever they need, but I suppose it does. They can't really ride out a dip in stock price though. They almost certainly can't cut enough to be profitable... Even if 2020 revenues weren't lower than last year's. Uber still operates financially like a startup... they have a certain amount of runway.... It's longer than most startups, but it's still under two years.
fallingmeat 6y ago
What about Elevate? Seems non-core but couldn't have been cheap.
michaelyoshika 6y ago
Am I the only one feeling that we should be thankful that these unicorns (whether actually profitable or driven by crazy VC money) have created so many jobs in the past several years?
- mylons 6y ago
  what did those jobs produce?
  - twic 6y ago
    Robust property prices in San Francisco!
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Money?
  - PunchTornado 6y ago
    I always feel thankful that I don't have to deal with taxi drivers when I travel.
    - californical 6y ago
      It's interesting that you say that, since it was one of my favorite parts about Europe being able to just walk up to any main street corner and have a ride somewhere. No need to have an app or anything, always works, no privacy/data issues. And it was never a big deal to walk a couple blocks to the main roads
      - PunchTornado 6y ago
        When I went to Paris I was cheated so much and almost beaten, had a physical altercation with a taxi driver at destination. Never again would I use taxi if I have another option.
      - xvector 6y ago
        In the US I’ve never come across a taxi driver that wasn’t an asshole, but Uber drivers are usually chill and fine.
outlace 6y ago
I’m sure Travis Kalanick is so happy he dumped his shares before all this.
- pishpash 6y ago
  He dumped shares at more than 10% below today's closing price, and almost 20% below today's intraday high. Why would he be happy?
  - outlace 6y ago
    Who cares about today? There are a lot of other days in the future.
  - flak48 6y ago
    The sheer volume of shares he offloaded everyday contributed significantly to the drop in price while he was selling.
kumarski 6y ago
Even in this market whereby consumers must order food via apps, none of the food delivery companies are profitable from my understanding. Can anyone explain how this works/how this came to be?
- mooreds 6y ago
  Food is a business with skinny skinny margins (source, worked on a startup which provided services to food businesses, family members own food businesses). Delivery companies are fighting for a piece of that market which isn't full of margin, so they're having to fight for it. Plus they're in a landgrab, so choosing growth over profits.
- shay_ker 6y ago
  grubhub was profitable for years
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    Charging for referrals was profitable; they didn't deliver until 2014.
    - shay_ker 6y ago
      Delivery at a loss or break-even to drive profitable orders is also a fine strategy, and worked for quite some time
csense 6y ago
What in the world did Uber ever need that many people for?
- mabbo 6y ago
  When I was an intern at Google maaaany years ago, a mentor of mine described what it is Google does with all these engineers: "Well see, we discovered a hose that money pours out of. It's called 'online advertising'. Now what we do is spend half our effort trying to make the hose pour faster, and the other half trying to find another hose." Uber figured out the 'Uber for X' pattern. Now they're trying to optimize it, and figure out something else that makes money.
  - erik_seaberg 6y ago
    Yeah, Google invests in everything and then fails fast. They're worried about missing the Next Big Thing™ after seeing Microsoft miss the early web.
ascendantlogic 6y ago
Makes you wonder how these companies ever planned to last during the "next" economic downturn. I don't think anyone bet on a global pandemic causing this shock but the point still stands: These kind of companies were still burning cash at incredible rates 10+ years in. How were they ever going to survive?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- slac 6y ago
  This is not a downturn though. It is a collapse.
  - asdf21 6y ago
    It's more like a pause. What makes you think it's a collapse?
    - crazygringo 6y ago
      I mean, a downturn is generally considered to be down by 10%, maybe 20%. Quantitatively different, but not qualitatively different. Adjustments, but things still generally continue as planned. A collapse is dropping by close to 50% or more, like Uber's demand. It's suddenly playing an entirely different game, it becomes a qualitatively different business. If this isn't a collapse, nothing is. A "pause" would imply things will return to normal as soon as things are "unpaused". If you cut 3,000 jobs and 45 offices, those are not just magically reappearing when things are "unpaused".
      - asdf21 6y ago
        Oh, did you mean Uber and not the economy as a whole?
        crazygringo 6y ago
        Oh, I re-read the comments and realized I completely confused the two. Never mind me, sorry! Yes, the economy as a whole has not collapsed, it is more of a pause, agreed.
treelovinhippie 6y ago
So they've now fired 6700 employees WHILE investing $170M into scooters AND offering to buy Grubhub at ~$6B. Sociopaths.
- flak48 6y ago
  Grubhub deal is all stock. Layoffs were on the cards since more than 6 months already, COVID was just an excuse
schnable 6y ago
Are they going to regret having 4,000 micro services now?
- PaulWaldman 6y ago
  It would be interesting to see the ratio of how many micro services an org maintains vs the number of engineers.
  - bob1029 6y ago
    I think this could be an interesting metric to apply across the board. R = # of micro services / # of engineers If R >= 1, this is potentially problematic and may indicate engineers being unable to work with the code of their peers. Operating in this regime would be viewed as risky. R can go to infinity very quickly if you go down this path without very deliberate planning, involving the consensus of both the entire management and engineering staffs. If R < 1, you have more engineers than micro services. People share code bases and are not afraid of each other. This is probably a safe regime to operate in, even if you completely fuck up the intent of micro services. I think R could also serve as an arbitrary bus impact scalar for the org chart.
    - closeparen 6y ago
      Depends. R > 1 can also mean that projects are getting wrapped up and left alone, and their teams moving onto new stuff. Three people per module-project, three project cycles in, will have R = 1. That is not necessarily a bad thing, although it can be a liability if they all suddenly need attention at once. R < 1 can mean that either the same functionality is getting reworked over and over, or people are breaking separation of concerns and concatenating unrelated stuff onto existing modules. Ideally you want to be spotting the common patterns and replacing e.g. five 10k-line modules with one 10k-line module. But there's also an unfortunate tendency to favor consolidation into one 50k-line module. In that case they were separate for a good reason...
    - scarface74 6y ago
      There is also a technical reason for microservices -- scaling and releasing independently. The company I work for is a B2B company. We use our APIs for our own (relatively low volume) website. But we also use it for batch jobs and we sell direct access to our APIs to our clients and they use our APIs for their own websites and applications. One large client gets signed, the usage of one API can spike by 30%
slac 6y ago
Is there a list of offices closing?
victords 6y ago
Which offices are they closing?
cparsons3000 6y ago
Is this the last round of layoffs for Uber?
Evangelosggg 6y ago
I remember being at Droidcon or some Android specific conference years ago.... When Uber was presenting the speaker said "I'm sure everyone here knows what it's like to work on an app that hundreds or thousands of devs are all contributing to at once!" and the entire crowd just looked at each other like dogs do when they hear a very high pitched sound.
- alangibson 6y ago
  And the one's that did know looked at each other like dogs that spent the day in a Skinner box.
nabla9 6y ago
Atlanta Fed's GDPnow nowcasting estimates that the US Q2 GDP growth was -42.8 percent on May 15 (annual rate of change, not change) https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
IgorPartola 6y ago
How exactly is their stock price not reflecting this at all? Is the market really that irrational right now?
- wholien 6y ago
  My understanding is: they announced they would do layoffs 1-2 weeks ago, so it's priced in. And usually your stock goes up when you announce and do layoffs because your costs are lower
- chid 6y ago
  I think lately we've seen stock prices increase after layoffs. Not saying they're causal
- tanilama 6y ago
  Layoff == less spend Their stock price will go up.
  - IgorPartola 6y ago
    By that logic why do companies even bother to have employees or contractors? No payroll == more money?
    - anticensor 6y ago
      Worker rights. Employees mean more bonding, less freedom of movement.
Pxtl 6y ago
The big worry for many cities is they've eviscerated their docked bike-rental program. Those are municipal infrastructure... If Uber is abandoning this product, there are a lot of cities that are going to have an orphaned bikeshare service with hard infrastructure installed all over town.
- 1propionyl 6y ago
  The thing is that they never actually were municipal infrastructure. They were an outsourced attraction posing as municipal infrastructure. And to be frank, maybe those cities or municipalities should consider hiring some of the laid off employees, buying the infrastructure during the fire sale (if they don't actually already own it), cutting out the middle man, and doing it themselves.
  - Pxtl 6y ago
    At least in my city, it was a locally owned program. The city owned the bikes and the business that handled maintenance and rebalancing was a private not for profit. Uber was basically only involved with the software. But if the city wants more bikes or parts, where do they get it?
    - 1propionyl 6y ago
      Where do companies like Spin get their bicycles and parts from? They're not in the manufacturing business either.
nogabebop23 6y ago
>> attempts to steer the ride-hailing giant through the coronavirus pandemic. No doubt this is accelerating certain motivators, but I for one am a little sick of the "COVID Excuse" for blaming aspects of these non-business plans that were bad ideas without a global pandemic on which to blame them.
sytelus 6y ago
I don't understand this... Lift and Grab aren't doing so bad. Also, things are opening back up again. Even their quarterly results looked very bad, it was already priced in and so no benefit there. This reduced focus basically just translates to much lower ambition and not a good thing for long term valuation. On the other hand money is super cheap. They could double on debt if they want to. I'm not sure what this layoff buys them anything except injuring their future prospects.
AhtiK 6y ago
Is AI Labs the whole AI unit at Uber that is now being shut down?
johnwangdoe 6y ago
Ahhhhh darn. The job market is gonna be flooded now.
blackrock 6y ago
Is Uber dead without a vaccine?
classics2 6y ago
45 offices... why do they need more than one?
- akoncius 6y ago
  they hire many employees in different countries
mrfusion 6y ago
They’re an app. Do they need 45 offices?
- lm28469 6y ago
  When you're a company like uber you probably need legal and marketing in every market you're in.
casperb 6y ago
I wonder if it is harder to let so many engineers go when you have so many microservices as Uber has/had. Seems to me that a monolith is easier to maintain when the amount of people working on it goes down, then with all those small microservices. They maybe/probably will have microservices running that now has no one to maintain them.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
Uber needed an excuse to layoff some people for a long time now. They went with a very "parallel" strategy, spinning up new teams for every project and ignoring code/process efficiency by sharing. Basically throw money at it to win quickly. Pretty unsophisticated engineering, enough microservices and huge DBs to ignore coordination problems. They will transition to a more efficient structure with more co-ordination now that they have many different bets going and 1-2 core businesses that could work. Right in line with wallstreet expectations and Dara's job to make Uber profitable. I called it a year ago :D
tuananh 6y ago
Uber's chief technology officer and longest-serving executive, Thuan Pham, has resigned effective May 16, the company said Tuesday, as the company reportedly mulls further cost cutting to weather the coronavirus pandemic https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-on-thanks-memories-thuan-pham/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-on-thanks-memories-thuan...

1063 points by WFHRenaissance 6y ago

I need to subscribe to read the full story and I don't want that.

Seems reasonable when your core business has been massively impacted. Being a public company can't make it easier. Also as a startup, good sub-answer to the "Isn't Uber / Twitter / Dropbox etc working on this?". Yes, but in a market downturn, your investors want you to dig in harder while their investors want them to survive and focus on core.

tootie 6y ago
I honestly wonder what the strategy is. Obviously they are heavily impacted in the short term, but also this is a company that has been losing money from the get go. If the intent is to build and build and build and search for profit eventually, then I'd think they'd weather this storm more than they are. They invested heavily in building up a world-class engineering team and just cut a huge chunk loose. It makes me think they aren't just cutting costs, they are refocussing the business and probably won't reenter some markets.
- rswail 6y ago
  And perhaps focus on being a global taxi company instead of things like self-driving cars which is the job of a global taxi manufacturer.
- buboard 6y ago
  become an AWS competitor?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tyingq 6y ago

"Khosrowshahi said the company is winding down its product incubator and artificial-intelligence lab" Does that mean they are officially out of the self-driving car business? Wouldn't you need your AI lab if you were still pursuing that? Also, if you're hitting the paywall: https://outline.com/VL6xaR https://outline.com/VL6xaR

Eridrus 6y ago
"AI Labs" tend to publish papers more than they actually work on real projects, so I wouldn't assume shutting down an AI lab implies suspending the self-driving car project.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
njoubert 6y ago
These are different efforts from ATG, the self-driving car division.
- tedd4u 6y ago
  I thought the self-driving unit had been spun off. This article [1] (from April 2019) said: "Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), which works on self-driving vehicles, has netted an investment from the SoftBank Vision Fund ($333 million), Denso and Toyota ($667 million combined) … The investment values the division, known as the Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), at $7.25 billion and creates a newly formed corporate entity with its own board." [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/uber-nabs-1-billion-self-driving-car-investment-from-softbank-others.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/18/uber-nabs-1-billion-self-dri...
seibelj 6y ago
AI engineers cost an absurd amount of money for dubious ROI in the self-driving car space.
- criddell 6y ago

warmcat 6y ago

https://archive.vn/vkqbT https://archive.vn/vkqbT

lowwave 6y ago
Hmm, getting This server could not prove that it is archive.vn; its security certificate is from cloudflare-dns.com. Are archive.vn working?
- Fej 6y ago
  archive.today blocks users of Cloudflare DNS.

tuyguntn 6y ago

Anyone working at Uber, can you share how is morale in Uber at this moment? How might this affect hiring in the future when they need more people, but people don't want to go there? Honestly, in the beginning of 2020, I was too optimistic and planning to apply to Uber around June, thinking that corona will go away

_pmf_ 6y ago
> How might this affect hiring in the future when they need more people "Independent contractors" working from home and using their own equipment. "Gig economy". Hope they enjoy it.
- ganstyles 6y ago
  Geez, this is incredibly callous. These are real people who are losing their livelihoods.
  - setgree 6y ago
    It's gauche to say it on the day a bunch of people lost their jobs (and there's no need for the schadenfraude) but I think the underlying point is sane. Uber's business model is replacing FTEs in a a hidebound, regulated industry with gig workers (& good UX!). If you were forecasting how this company in particular would deal with a downturn, it's a reasonable guess that they'll try to do the same thing to their own workforce, if they can find engineers willing to take on gig work. It's in their DNA. To be charitable, the grandfather comment is a warning to think about the broader effects of the work we do, driven home by the possibility of a "what goes around comes around" situation. EDIT: as many have pointed out, taxi drivers don't get benefits either (I originally said one of the margins Uber competes on is not providing benefits).
    - librish 6y ago
      A large portion of taxi drivers are independent contractors.

hknd 6y ago

Anyone know from the inside how this affects stock vesting and pre-IPO stock options?

Me1000 6y ago
Usually late stage startups switch from options to double-trigger RSUs years before they go public. I doubt anyone at Uber has unvested stock options. Assuming anyone laid off had unexercised options, they'll likely have a short window to exercise them before they expire.
- nrmitchi 6y ago
  Furthermore, Uber is a public company now, and there is (as far as I know) no outstanding lockout period for employees. IF anyone has outstanding options, that are subject to a (most likely) 90-day exercise window, they can be exercised and immediately sold. The typical "exercising of an option for an illiquid asset which will be taxed as if it's liquid" problems with start-up stock options simply don't exist in this case.

jonluca 6y ago

Dara's email was really well written, and felt as compassionate as one can for a letter from a CEO announcing job cuts. The full email: Team Uber: These have been unprecedented and challenging times for everyone—our societies, our governments, our families, our economies, all around the world. They’ve also been challenging for Uber, and many of you, as you’ve waited for us to define the road ahead. I’ve said clearly that we had to take tough action to resize our company to the new reality of our business, and that I would come back to you this week with the specifics. Today I have the specifics: we have made the incredibly difficult decision to reduce our workforce by around 3,000 people, and to reduce investments in several non-core projects. As a leadership team we had to take the time to make the right decisions, to ensure that we are treating our people well, and to make certain that we could walk you through our decision making in the sort of detailed and transparent manner you deserve. Where we started and hard choices We began 2020 on an accelerated path to total company profitability. Then the coronavirus hit us with a once-in-a-generation public health and economic crisis. People are rightfully staying home, and our Rides business, our main profit generator, is down around 80%. We’re seeing some signs of a recovery, but it comes off of a deep hole, with limited visibility as to its speed and shape. You’ve heard me say it before: hope is not a strategy. While that’s easy to say, the truth is that this is a decision I struggled with. Our balance sheet is strong, Eats is doing great, Rides looks a little better, maybe we can wait this damn virus out...I wanted there to be a different answer. Let me talk to a few more CEOs...maybe one of them will tell me some good news, but there simply was no good news to hear. Ultimately, I realized that hoping the world would return to normal within any predictable timeframe, so we could pick up where we left off on our path to profitability, was not a viable option. I knew that I had to make a hard decision, not because we are a public company, or to protect our stock price, or to please our Board or investors. I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for the cities of the world—our being there for millions of people and businesses who rely on us—demands it. We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to keep growing, expanding, and innovating. We have to take these hard actions to stand strong on our own two feet, to secure our future, and to continue on our mission. I know that none of this will make it any easier for our friends and colleagues affected by the actions we are taking today. To those of you personally impacted, I am truly sorry. I know this will cause pain for you and your families, especially now. Many of you will be affected not because of the quality of your work, but because of strategic decisions we made to discontinue certain areas of activity, or projects that are no longer necessary, or simply because of the stark reality we face. You have been a huge part of this company and every day forward we will build on the foundations that you established, brick by brick. Our decisions and the road forward We have decided to re-focus our efforts on our core. If there is one silver lining regarding this crisis, it’s that Eats has become an even more important resource for people at home and for restaurants; and delivery, whether of groceries or other local goods, is not only an increasing part of everyday life, it is here to stay. We no longer need to look far for the next enormous growth opportunity: we are sitting right on top of one. I will caution that while Eats growth is accelerating, the business today doesn’t come close to covering our expenses. I have every belief that the moves we are making will get Eats to profitability, just as we did with Rides, but it’s not going to happen overnight. So we need to fundamentally change the way we operate. We need to make some really hard decisions about what we will and won’t do going forward, based on a few principles: We are organizing around our core: helping people move, and delivering things. We are building a cost-efficient structure that avoids layers and duplication and can scale, at speed. We are being intentional with our location strategy focused on key markets/hubs. Mac will now lead a unified Mobility team, which will include Rides and, as of today, Transit. Mac will continue to manage our cross-cutting functions like Safety & Insurance, CommOps, U4B, and Business Development, the latter of which will be centralized across Rides, Eats, and Freight under Jen. Pierre will lead what we will call “Delivery” internally, encompassing Eats, Grocery and Direct. Given the necessary cost cuts and the increased focus on core, we have decided to wind down the Incubator and AI Labs and pursue strategic alternatives for Uber Works. Due to these decisions, Zhenya has decided it makes sense to move on from Uber. Zhenya is customer-centric to her core, and I am deeply grateful for all of her hard work. We are also looking at our geographic footprint. While it served us well for many years to cast a wide physical net, it’s time to be more intentional about where we have employees on the ground. We are closing or consolidating around 45 office locations globally, including winding down Pier 70 in San Francisco and moving some of those colleagues to our new HQ in SF. And over the next 12 months we will begin the process of winding down our Singapore office and moving to a new APAC hub in a market where we operate our services. Having learned my own personal lesson about the unpredictability of the world from the punch-in-the-gut called COVID-19, I will not make any claims with absolute certainty regarding our future. I will tell you, however, that we are making really, really hard choices now, so that we can say our goodbyes, have as much clarity as we can, move forward, and start to build again with confidence. How we are helping departing employees As we previewed last week, we have taken a lot of feedback and worked to provide strong severance benefits and other support for those leaving Uber, like healthcare coverage and an alumni talent directory. We’re also taking care to support people in special situations a bit differently, like those on US visas or parental leaves. While the details will differ slightly by country, you can see a summary here. Every departing employee will have a 1:1 to receive the details of their individual package. Given the global nature of these changes, and the local rules and regulations involved, the individual experience today will vary by country: All other countries (those not listed to the right) Argentina, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland (COE only), Italy, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan (Karachi only), Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK (ULL only) In these countries, we can communicate about individual impacts today. Everyone in these countries who is affected has already received an email, and will soon have a calendar invitation to a private meeting with a manager and HR. If you are in one of these countries and you did not receive a separate email this morning, you are not affected. In these countries, local laws mean that we cannot be as specific about individual impacts today. In some countries, we will start a consultation process. In others, there are restrictions on making changes during the COVID lockdown. If you are in one of these countries, you will get an email from Nikki describing next steps for your location. If you are one of the many affected Uber teammates, I’ll acknowledge right here that any package we offer, regardless of how thoughtful or generous, will never replace the opportunity to belong, to make a difference, to establish the kinds of bonds you establish with any important company or cause. We wouldn’t be here without you. We will finish what you started, and we will be excited to see the great things that you will build next. I am incredibly thankful to everyone reading this email, because the resilience and grit you’ve shown has made Uber the company it is and will continue to be. I’ve never had a harder day professionally than today, but Uber has consistently surprised me with the challenges it has thrown my way. But it’s the toughest challenges that are worthwhile, and I know even more strongly in my heart than I ever have that Uber is worth it, and more. Dara

boolcow 6y ago

What severance is being offered to the employees being laid off? Is it up to the high ethical standard set by Airbnb? Separated [Airbnb] employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and health care coverage through 2020 in the rest of the world.

asciident 6y ago
I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with equating ethical with generous. Basically it turns ethics into money, with the idea you can buy ethicalness.
- kylec 6y ago
  If you’re cutting off someone’s source of income, giving them extra money gives them extra time to land on their feet. I’d say that’s pretty ethical.
  - libria 6y ago
    Is shorter or zero severance unethical? We all enter into this employment contract knowing it could end abruptly from either party. If money is tight, they could afford longer severances for all if they cut 4000 instead. Does that not seem unethical toward the extra 1000 cut?
    - kylec 6y ago
      Regardless of legality and what the parties agreed to contractually, the fact remains that abrupt termination with zero severance is harmful for the former employee, especially in this economic climate. If the corporation pays a generous severance, the harm is reduced or eliminated. On a scale of ethicality, the more harmful an action is, the less ethical it is, so yes, paying severance is more ethical than not paying severance.

livealife 6y ago

Who are getting laid off? Software engineers or management and customer team?

bthrn 6y ago
Yes

akmarinov 6y ago

Hmm wonder why they announced it on a Monday instead of a Friday?

somebrody 6y ago
The most reasonable explanation is that they were targeting Friday, but were late and so it was Monday. Firing 3,000 employees takes a lot of preparation. If there are a few corner case employee resolutions, that holds up the whole bunch
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  And there are legal steps they will have to go through making redundant that many in the US
gamblor956 6y ago
A lot of the layoffs are international, so if they had announced on Friday the employees would have learned of their terminations over theirs weekends, as Friday in the U.S. is generally at least Saturday in Europe and Asia. International companies generally announce cross-border layoffs on Monday (US-time), because that announcement will be during the work week everywhere they operate.
odyssey7 6y ago
What is the line of reasoning that favors a Friday for layoffs?
- vitaflo 6y ago
  There are several, one is that you can time it with payroll, so your last day is the end of the current payroll period, just makes it neat for accounting purposes. Another is that if the company doesn't want the media to pick up the "bad news", Friday is the best time to do it because it'll get lost over the weekend when it's reported on. And finally, there's less worry about retaliation from disgruntled employees if they have the weekend to calm down over being let go.
- 6y ago

baylearn 6y ago

A version of the article without the paywall: http://archive.is/OOuRC http://archive.is/OOuRC

nulptr 6y ago

Can someone explain why Uber stock is up 7% today then? Is it because Uber's expenditure will decrease because of the layoffs?

spyspy 6y ago
The entire market is up on Powell’s positive remarks on the economy’s recovery.
- rwc 6y ago
  And the Moderna vaccine progress announcement this morning
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cactus2093 6y ago
There's not always a true, causal explanation of why stocks are reacting as they are. Don't be too quick to trust cable news anchors or other stock market shills that make a living making up and touting stock market narratives. By definition a stock price is a split of the public consensus of what's happening, just as many people are selling as buying at that price. Your explanation seems as good as any.
rvz 6y ago
> Is it because Uber's expenditure will decrease because of the layoffs? Yes. This is Uber's way of saying to their investors that their costs will decrease due to losing billions during the coronavirus outbreak, thus head count must be decreased. But some who are buying now, may see this as a way of selling at the "bull trap" in Q2.
macksd 6y ago
It's not unusual for stocks to go up on layoffs, but as others have commented there isn't always a simple explanation either. But it wasn't a secret that Uber was going to be getting hit hard by quarantine - it would probably already be priced into the stock by the point. The news today is that Uber's leadership is recognizing that and aggressively taking action to protect the bottom line - sucks in the short-term for employees, especially those directly affected, but that's great news for investors.

shuckles 6y ago

Can anyone with knowledge share whether the Uber Amsterdam office is impacted?

tschellenbach 6y ago
Also curious about this. Happy to talk to anyone who wants to work with Go: https://getstream.io/careers/ https://getstream.io/careers/
maslam 6y ago
I'd love to talk to technical product managers. We're hiring at Databricks Amsterdam. Please contact me at bilal dot aslam at databricks dot com
asickperson 6y ago
Yes, but it is not announced due to works council process. It'll take couple of weeks at least.
ojilles 6y ago
If anyone at Uber reads this, feel free to get in touch (Go, Java, SRE) if you want to effectively stay in the same building working for a multinational. There's not many roles open at the moment, but here's one: https://jobs.ebayclassifiedsgroup.com/job/amsterdam/senior-backend-engineer/25370/16028145 https://jobs.ebayclassifiedsgroup.com/job/amsterdam/senior-b...

saisundar 6y ago

I am wondering why there are two separate rounds of layoffs. Isn't it better for morale to just have the band aid ripped quick, once and for all? What context does Uber have now, that they did not when the initial layoff wave happened?

rantwasp 6y ago
uber never seemed like a rational company that thinks of the good of its employees (i know it’s a business, but still). the cut deep, cut once method for layoffs is doing business 101, but still there are 2 rounds of layoffs at uber
- sbuccini 6y ago
  Dara hinted in his first email that there were more layoffs on the way. I consider them to be a single layoff, one portion of which took more time to execute.
  - s1t5 6y ago
    Isn't hinting the worst approach in that case though? I can't imagine that the additional uncertainty helped with staff morale.
    - sbuccini 6y ago
      Is it? You already laid off a large percentage of staff. Your product teams will have seen the data showing cratering revenue. Your top engineers are almost certainly already looking for new jobs anyways. You know you are going to have to make this move no matter what. Anyone with a brain knows that the status quo is unsustainable whether you say the quiet part out loud or not. Better to give people a heads up so they can start getting their resumes in order, hitting up their networks, etc. rather than telling a blatant lie.
    - sida 6y ago
      Internally, Dara was very clear that the layoff would happen in 2 stages for the different organizations

travisl12 6y ago

I was let go today from Uber. If anyone is looking for a Frontend/Fullstack with 7yoe. I'm here :) Find me on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-lawrence-b77400b8/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-lawrence-b77400b8/

jmeister 6y ago
Did you get good severance? Hope you did. If you can afford it, I’d suggest taking a break.
- travisl12 6y ago
  Yeah severance is pretty good. I'll try to get a gig quick and then push off the start date a bit.
asood123 6y ago
What's the best way to contact you?
- travisl12 6y ago
  www.redundantrobot.com
uxcolumbo 6y ago
You should add your email address or website to your profile, so people can contact you.
- martindelemotte 6y ago
  You should also work for a more ethical company next time. Edit: it's not a snark, just a friendly reminder.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Honestly don’t understand why people don’t have their email address public. Spam filtering is so good these days that this is all upside and no downside.

rvz 6y ago

I can't imagine how companies like Uber, Lyft and WeWork could be sustainable in the long term with huge costs and a high burn rate, but this action is definitely in addressing the future Q2 results in the summer which is the actual results including the impact on the coronavirus outbreak. Essentially for companies like Uber and Lyft who don't focus on fast growth, VC cash raising and generating little money with huge costs, the actual reality is that this is nothing more than the emperor new clothes. Unfortunately there are no sacred cows being saved here, especially engineering being affected in this.

deminature 6y ago
Uber and Lyft are public, they haven't relied on VC cash for over a year.
- raiyu 6y ago
  Going public is still a fundraising event that puts cash on the balance sheet of the company. So whether they are funded by VC's or large institutional buyers who are the majority traders on the public market, there is no difference and the companies continue to lost money. The issue for Uber is that they need to change the narrative. They don't have the story that Amazon did, that they are losing money because they are reinvesting it back into tremendous infrastructure which will give them scale. Uber is losing money because they grew very quickly so there were a lot of innate inefficiencies because of that. So these firings are a chance to right size the company and see if the new trimmed down Uber will now be profitable when eventually ridership returns to normal.
mannytabloid 6y ago
Q2 is already doomed - plus now they're adding millions of one-time severance costs to the quarter. This is a hail mary for Q3.
blihp 6y ago
The game plan is pretty simple: use VC cash to quickly provide services everywhere and build market share, drive competitors out of business / acquire them, move to self-driving cars to the extent possible and eventually raise rates when customers have no other options.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

amq 6y ago

If there's anyone from Vienna, Austria, we're hiring.

Havoc 6y ago

45 offices closed. Holy hell.

tmh79 6y ago
Vast majority of these offices are small hubs in tier 3 cities occupied by regional tems, or tier 1 cities with multiple offices.
- Havoc 6y ago
  Slightly off topic. What's tier 1/2/3 in the US? I had just heard that kind of system applied in China
  - koblas 6y ago
    San Francisco / Seattle / Boston / New York --- Austin / Salt Lake / Los Angeles / Portland / Atlanta --- Ann Arbor / Chicago / Minneapolis / Miami
    - MajorBee 6y ago
      Chicago is Tier 3? That doesn't seem right.
      - koblas 6y ago
        I could argue that Atlanta is tier 3 as well, the distinction between tier 2/3 could just be a simple rule of numbers (over a 1M pop vs. under 1M pop) and not a tech center. Or in my case that when I've interviewed people from the given locations that they didn't meet the bar by a given level. UIUC produces some amazing engineers, but UChicago doesn't...
    - dmode 6y ago
      Los Angeles, Tier 2 ? I would say it should be Tier 2, considering greater Los Angeles area has 14mn people
    - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 6y ago

Hard to let go of that many people without losing critical knowledge, Uber will come out of this a diminished company in many ways. Best of luck to those laid off.

user5994461 6y ago
Not so sure about that. The company was notorious for having teams constantly rollout competing internal libraries/tools and rewrite them over and over, obviously not having enough bottom-line work to keep everyone busy. A smaller workforce may be able to focus on the work that matters, it doesn't have to imply a lower productivity.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Even if a tool should not have been written, the ability to troubleshoot it is still critical to its consumers. And making hundreds of dependent teams spend a month migrating is easily more expensive than 3 headcount to maintain it.
- shockinglytrue 6y ago
  I have never witnessed a company at least the size of Uber where this wasn't the case. This isn't exclusively a culture thing, it's a bandwidth thing. There is limited human IO available to coordinate, and available bandwidth diminishes in proportion to org size. The org can either choose to slow down to match available IO, or run at closer to natural pace and accept duplicate work. I guess the latter must be the obvious choice, or the automatic tendency I imagine the same problem is why so many large orgs inevitably turn into hyperstructures of insane management layer cake.. coordination overhead will eventually send everyone begging for the ability to shed work or delegate
- scarface74 6y ago
  It could be worse. You could have a large company notorious for rolling out competing external products, like messaging and video chat apps....
nom 6y ago

0zymandias 6y ago

It looks like Dara is executing the Jack Welch & General Electric playbook [1]. Essentially, it comes down to "Be the #1 or #2 company in the market or exit" You can debate whether it was successful at GE. The criticism of Jack Welch was that his approach improved short-term financials, but he left a hollowed-out company to his successor that became irrelevant and lost value relative to the S&P. The way I see this playing out at Uber is rapidly exiting categories like Scooters, Freight, Works, and AV. And doubling down on Ride Share and Eats with acquisitions in geographies where they have a leading position. I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch

mattwad 6y ago
> I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility Scooters are a fad that was never needed. Bikes or mopeds like Revel are 10 times more useful. I don't think scooters replace anything of note, since you can pretty much walk the same distance. They're only fun for tourists and left in the sidewalk for everyone else to stumble over.
- ping_pong 6y ago
  I disagree wholeheartedly. Electric scooters are fun and useful, especially for commuting in the morning from a drop off location like a train station. The real question is whether or not it can be profitable, which I highly doubt. I would rather just get my own if I needed it.
  - neaden 6y ago
    I think scooters are very area dependent. Both because of weather, and the supporting infrastructure.
  - mcculley 6y ago
    I live in downtown Orlando. Lime, Lynx, and Bird have littered downtown with scooters. I run almost every day and they are often left directly in the middle of the sidewalk, either upright or fallen over. A couple months ago I began relocating any rental equipment I find in my way on the sidewalk. I am not at all gentle about this and I'm sure I have damaged some of the equipment. I like the idea that people might use these more than cars, but investors need to figure out a better way to store them than in the sidewalk.

r3nruturnEr 6y ago

Does anyone know where one could find a list of the offices they closed?

economicslol 6y ago

Remember when Dara predicted "profitability" by 2021? LOL, just another Softbank/VC funded money pit.

rvz 6y ago
Lyft also set such pretentious goals for 2021 last year. Not sure what crystal ball they were basing their forecast on but, such jokes are meant to be reserved for a late night comedy show not in an earnings call. [0] [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyft-expects-to-be-profitable-a-year-earlier-than-projected-11571765364?mod=rsswn https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyft-expects-to-be-profitable-a...

blackswan101 6y ago

Whoever is still being recruited by uber or close to an offer better make sure they have a solid severance clause written into their contract! Nothing less than 1 to 2 years of pay.

saos 6y ago
Surely no offers can be made during this period redundancies and consultation.

bdcravens 6y ago

Developers at unicorns: even in the best of times, do you feel more expendable than you've felt at other jobs? We always are amazed at the number of developers at companies like this. (the numbers I've seen are old, but I guess out of 22,000 employees, it was something like 5000 engineers?) While that allows you to build in a more robust way than a smaller company, it seems like there's no shortage of developers working on tooling, R&D projects, and at least partially on open source projects, roles that could presumably go away if a company had to focus strictly on the core product.

spullara 6y ago
All the big startups hire all the best people mostly to stop them from getting hired anywhere else until they can't sustain it. Having 1000 extra developers is better than having 200, 5 person engineering teams working against them.
ransom1538 6y ago
"Developers at unicorns:" Prato principal crystallized. Look at any big repro or any large company. There is usually about ~5 ish people that know wtf is going on. I think uber could be ran with 10 people.
- pc86 6y ago
  > Prato principal crystallized You're wrong, and not just about the Pareto principle.
  - gdhbcc 6y ago
    He is probably Portuguese speaking, and his autocorrect changed the spelling.
    - pedrosorio 6y ago
      Can confirm, I was having a hard time parsing how "main course" in Portuguese made sense in the middle of that sentence.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.md/5OSus https://archive.md/5OSus

paulie_a 6y ago

Why in gods name do they have that many people? They are a cab company that doesn't employ drivers. Talk about a dumpster fire of VC money

dmaskasky 6y ago

I was also let go today, is anyone looking for a frontend engineer with 6 years experience? My profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaskasky/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaskasky/

amrrs 6y ago
Check this if you've not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23042618
- dang 6y ago
  Also "Who Wants to Be Hired": https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring
wegs 6y ago
As a suggestion, point people to a personal web page or portfolio. Especially for a front-end engineer, I would never recruit someone based on a LinkedIn profile. That's doubly-true in this market. To make it through the filter, it doesn't need to be fancy or take a lot of time, but it does need to be tasteful. Of course, fancy and playful go a very, very long ways for separating yourself from all the other people who made it through the filter.
- dmaskasky 6y ago
  That's a great suggestion. Unfortunately, my portfolio is entirely comprised of Uber contributions that I cannot share publicly. I believe many folks are like me, eyes-forward and focused on the company mission. I was going through the process of open sourcing a library, but that's no longer going to happen. I suppose I should get started on making something that I can own.
  - anticsapp 6y ago
    Are you allowed to talk around what you did there? Or even write "Top secret, I can't talk about it". I think you need some line items of some sort, because those are three great companies. You'll probably be out of work for 17 minutes.

netcan 6y ago

Uber is very vulnerable. They still make a large loss every year. Cash is not as bad, because (a) half the loss is in the form of "stock-based-compensation" and (b) they've been growing, which improves cash flows. Stock prices are (astonishingly) doing ok. Idk if that means uber can still raise whatever they need, but I suppose it does. They can't really ride out a dip in stock price though. They almost certainly can't cut enough to be profitable... Even if 2020 revenues weren't lower than last year's. Uber still operates financially like a startup... they have a certain amount of runway.... It's longer than most startups, but it's still under two years.

fallingmeat 6y ago

What about Elevate? Seems non-core but couldn't have been cheap.

michaelyoshika 6y ago

Am I the only one feeling that we should be thankful that these unicorns (whether actually profitable or driven by crazy VC money) have created so many jobs in the past several years?

mylons 6y ago
what did those jobs produce?
- twic 6y ago
  Robust property prices in San Francisco!
- pjc50 6y ago
  Money?
- PunchTornado 6y ago
  I always feel thankful that I don't have to deal with taxi drivers when I travel.
  - californical 6y ago
    It's interesting that you say that, since it was one of my favorite parts about Europe being able to just walk up to any main street corner and have a ride somewhere. No need to have an app or anything, always works, no privacy/data issues. And it was never a big deal to walk a couple blocks to the main roads
    - PunchTornado 6y ago
      When I went to Paris I was cheated so much and almost beaten, had a physical altercation with a taxi driver at destination. Never again would I use taxi if I have another option.
    - xvector 6y ago
      In the US I’ve never come across a taxi driver that wasn’t an asshole, but Uber drivers are usually chill and fine.

outlace 6y ago

I’m sure Travis Kalanick is so happy he dumped his shares before all this.

pishpash 6y ago
He dumped shares at more than 10% below today's closing price, and almost 20% below today's intraday high. Why would he be happy?
- outlace 6y ago
  Who cares about today? There are a lot of other days in the future.
- flak48 6y ago
  The sheer volume of shares he offloaded everyday contributed significantly to the drop in price while he was selling.

kumarski 6y ago

Even in this market whereby consumers must order food via apps, none of the food delivery companies are profitable from my understanding. Can anyone explain how this works/how this came to be?

mooreds 6y ago
Food is a business with skinny skinny margins (source, worked on a startup which provided services to food businesses, family members own food businesses). Delivery companies are fighting for a piece of that market which isn't full of margin, so they're having to fight for it. Plus they're in a landgrab, so choosing growth over profits.
shay_ker 6y ago
grubhub was profitable for years
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  Charging for referrals was profitable; they didn't deliver until 2014.
  - shay_ker 6y ago
    Delivery at a loss or break-even to drive profitable orders is also a fine strategy, and worked for quite some time

csense 6y ago

What in the world did Uber ever need that many people for?

mabbo 6y ago
When I was an intern at Google maaaany years ago, a mentor of mine described what it is Google does with all these engineers: "Well see, we discovered a hose that money pours out of. It's called 'online advertising'. Now what we do is spend half our effort trying to make the hose pour faster, and the other half trying to find another hose." Uber figured out the 'Uber for X' pattern. Now they're trying to optimize it, and figure out something else that makes money.
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  Yeah, Google invests in everything and then fails fast. They're worried about missing the Next Big Thing™ after seeing Microsoft miss the early web.

ascendantlogic 6y ago

Makes you wonder how these companies ever planned to last during the "next" economic downturn. I don't think anyone bet on a global pandemic causing this shock but the point still stands: These kind of companies were still burning cash at incredible rates 10+ years in. How were they ever going to survive?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
slac 6y ago
This is not a downturn though. It is a collapse.
- asdf21 6y ago
  It's more like a pause. What makes you think it's a collapse?
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    I mean, a downturn is generally considered to be down by 10%, maybe 20%. Quantitatively different, but not qualitatively different. Adjustments, but things still generally continue as planned. A collapse is dropping by close to 50% or more, like Uber's demand. It's suddenly playing an entirely different game, it becomes a qualitatively different business. If this isn't a collapse, nothing is. A "pause" would imply things will return to normal as soon as things are "unpaused". If you cut 3,000 jobs and 45 offices, those are not just magically reappearing when things are "unpaused".
    - asdf21 6y ago
      Oh, did you mean Uber and not the economy as a whole?
      - crazygringo 6y ago
        Oh, I re-read the comments and realized I completely confused the two. Never mind me, sorry! Yes, the economy as a whole has not collapsed, it is more of a pause, agreed.

treelovinhippie 6y ago

So they've now fired 6700 employees WHILE investing $170M into scooters AND offering to buy Grubhub at ~$6B. Sociopaths.

flak48 6y ago
Grubhub deal is all stock. Layoffs were on the cards since more than 6 months already, COVID was just an excuse

schnable 6y ago

Are they going to regret having 4,000 micro services now?

PaulWaldman 6y ago
It would be interesting to see the ratio of how many micro services an org maintains vs the number of engineers.
- bob1029 6y ago
  I think this could be an interesting metric to apply across the board. R = # of micro services / # of engineers If R >= 1, this is potentially problematic and may indicate engineers being unable to work with the code of their peers. Operating in this regime would be viewed as risky. R can go to infinity very quickly if you go down this path without very deliberate planning, involving the consensus of both the entire management and engineering staffs. If R < 1, you have more engineers than micro services. People share code bases and are not afraid of each other. This is probably a safe regime to operate in, even if you completely fuck up the intent of micro services. I think R could also serve as an arbitrary bus impact scalar for the org chart.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    Depends. R > 1 can also mean that projects are getting wrapped up and left alone, and their teams moving onto new stuff. Three people per module-project, three project cycles in, will have R = 1. That is not necessarily a bad thing, although it can be a liability if they all suddenly need attention at once. R < 1 can mean that either the same functionality is getting reworked over and over, or people are breaking separation of concerns and concatenating unrelated stuff onto existing modules. Ideally you want to be spotting the common patterns and replacing e.g. five 10k-line modules with one 10k-line module. But there's also an unfortunate tendency to favor consolidation into one 50k-line module. In that case they were separate for a good reason...
  - scarface74 6y ago
    There is also a technical reason for microservices -- scaling and releasing independently. The company I work for is a B2B company. We use our APIs for our own (relatively low volume) website. But we also use it for batch jobs and we sell direct access to our APIs to our clients and they use our APIs for their own websites and applications. One large client gets signed, the usage of one API can spike by 30%

slac 6y ago

Is there a list of offices closing?

victords 6y ago

Which offices are they closing?

cparsons3000 6y ago

Is this the last round of layoffs for Uber?

Evangelosggg 6y ago

I remember being at Droidcon or some Android specific conference years ago.... When Uber was presenting the speaker said "I'm sure everyone here knows what it's like to work on an app that hundreds or thousands of devs are all contributing to at once!" and the entire crowd just looked at each other like dogs do when they hear a very high pitched sound.

alangibson 6y ago
And the one's that did know looked at each other like dogs that spent the day in a Skinner box.

nabla9 6y ago

Atlanta Fed's GDPnow nowcasting estimates that the US Q2 GDP growth was -42.8 percent on May 15 (annual rate of change, not change) https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow

IgorPartola 6y ago

How exactly is their stock price not reflecting this at all? Is the market really that irrational right now?

wholien 6y ago
My understanding is: they announced they would do layoffs 1-2 weeks ago, so it's priced in. And usually your stock goes up when you announce and do layoffs because your costs are lower
chid 6y ago
I think lately we've seen stock prices increase after layoffs. Not saying they're causal
tanilama 6y ago
Layoff == less spend Their stock price will go up.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  By that logic why do companies even bother to have employees or contractors? No payroll == more money?
  - anticensor 6y ago
    Worker rights. Employees mean more bonding, less freedom of movement.

Pxtl 6y ago

The big worry for many cities is they've eviscerated their docked bike-rental program. Those are municipal infrastructure... If Uber is abandoning this product, there are a lot of cities that are going to have an orphaned bikeshare service with hard infrastructure installed all over town.

1propionyl 6y ago
The thing is that they never actually were municipal infrastructure. They were an outsourced attraction posing as municipal infrastructure. And to be frank, maybe those cities or municipalities should consider hiring some of the laid off employees, buying the infrastructure during the fire sale (if they don't actually already own it), cutting out the middle man, and doing it themselves.
- Pxtl 6y ago
  At least in my city, it was a locally owned program. The city owned the bikes and the business that handled maintenance and rebalancing was a private not for profit. Uber was basically only involved with the software. But if the city wants more bikes or parts, where do they get it?
  - 1propionyl 6y ago
    Where do companies like Spin get their bicycles and parts from? They're not in the manufacturing business either.

nogabebop23 6y ago

>> attempts to steer the ride-hailing giant through the coronavirus pandemic. No doubt this is accelerating certain motivators, but I for one am a little sick of the "COVID Excuse" for blaming aspects of these non-business plans that were bad ideas without a global pandemic on which to blame them.

sytelus 6y ago

I don't understand this... Lift and Grab aren't doing so bad. Also, things are opening back up again. Even their quarterly results looked very bad, it was already priced in and so no benefit there. This reduced focus basically just translates to much lower ambition and not a good thing for long term valuation. On the other hand money is super cheap. They could double on debt if they want to. I'm not sure what this layoff buys them anything except injuring their future prospects.

AhtiK 6y ago

Is AI Labs the whole AI unit at Uber that is now being shut down?

johnwangdoe 6y ago

Ahhhhh darn. The job market is gonna be flooded now.

blackrock 6y ago

Is Uber dead without a vaccine?

classics2 6y ago

45 offices... why do they need more than one?

akoncius 6y ago
they hire many employees in different countries

mrfusion 6y ago

They’re an app. Do they need 45 offices?

lm28469 6y ago
When you're a company like uber you probably need legal and marketing in every market you're in.

casperb 6y ago

I wonder if it is harder to let so many engineers go when you have so many microservices as Uber has/had. Seems to me that a monolith is easier to maintain when the amount of people working on it goes down, then with all those small microservices. They maybe/probably will have microservices running that now has no one to maintain them.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

Uber needed an excuse to layoff some people for a long time now. They went with a very "parallel" strategy, spinning up new teams for every project and ignoring code/process efficiency by sharing. Basically throw money at it to win quickly. Pretty unsophisticated engineering, enough microservices and huge DBs to ignore coordination problems. They will transition to a more efficient structure with more co-ordination now that they have many different bets going and 1-2 core businesses that could work. Right in line with wallstreet expectations and Dara's job to make Uber profitable. I called it a year ago :D

tuananh 6y ago

Uber's chief technology officer and longest-serving executive, Thuan Pham, has resigned effective May 16, the company said Tuesday, as the company reportedly mulls further cost cutting to weather the coronavirus pandemic https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-on-thanks-memories-thuan-pham/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-on-thanks-memories-thuan...