5 ms·

Dead company walking. Can't expect to cut 30% of a struggling company's workforce and expect growth to keep happening. Seems like a last ditch effort at shori

Dead company walking. Can't expect to cut 30% of a struggling company's workforce and expect growth to keep happening. Seems like a last ditch effort at shoring things up. Or cutting enough to look good enough to sell.

Retric 3y ago
Lyft seems like the kind of company that would be more successful run extremely lean than trying to focus on growth. There simply isn’t that many major metro areas after all.
- radicaldreamer 3y ago
  They never expanded globally like Uber did though so there is potential there, but with any marketplace, you need a lot of money to expand into a market initially because you need both riders and drivers and incentivizing use when you're new is expensive.
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  "growth" I'm starting to think that many companies seem to define "growth" in terms of headcount, rather than revenue or marketshare, and that they overhire based on a perception of needing to grow the company whether they need the people or not.
  - lbotos 3y ago
    I mean, if you can grow success without headcount, that's the dream, but sometimes growth means "investing in many different parallel opportunities" so you hire more people to do more in parallel.
    - suzzer99 3y ago
      Sometimes "success" means selling investors on a growth story. Hard to do that w/o headcount.
      - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
        Bingo. Lyft is a mature product. Heck, they felt like a mature product when I used them for the first time five years ago. So why would they need to keep hiring engineers? What new features necessitated the hiring of additional teams?
  - wpietri 3y ago
    I think it's not so much companies as executives. If we divide people up by skill/topic and reward managers for being in charge of many people, then they've got a strong incentive to focus on the growth of things that make them look important.
- keeptrying 3y ago
  Can't run lean. Its a 40% GPM business.
avrionov 3y ago
They may survive, but it will be hard. A bug cut like this will destroy the morale in the company. What works in their favor is that the entire tech industry is cutting jobs right now and they don't look like an exception. If the cuts are done well, they'll cut the most of the future projects and focus on a few key areas. Still it is a high risk for them and they may not survive.
- treis 3y ago
  I'm not sure what y'all are talking about. They're half of a duopoly with 5 billion in revenue a year. They're going to be just fine. This is mostly recognizing that they were feature complete like 5 years ago. They're now in the "keep the lights on and rake in the money while it lasts" phase of a company.
  - avrionov 3y ago
    Uber revenue in 2022 was 31B. Lyft revenue was 4B. This is not duopoly. Lyft is much smaller, loosing 1.5B per year and the stock price crashed. They will have hard time to keep the employees and keep the drivers.
    - treis 3y ago
      Uber is in a lot more lines of businesses and markets than Lyft is. The split for rideshare in the US is 70% Uber and 30% Lyft.
      - mi_lk 3y ago
        Where do you get that stat? It's interesting because I think I read that (uber 70, lyft 30) in 2018 when Uber was in deep trouble. After 5 years, Lyft can't do better than that?
        treis 3y ago
        https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/rideshare-industry-overview/ https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/rideshare-industry-over... Uber made much bigger bets than Lyft. Expanded world wide, launched stuff like eats, and burned a ton of money on self driving cars.
arbuge 3y ago
> Can't expect to cut 30% of a struggling company's workforce and expect growth to keep happening. It's quite possible actually if those 30% were not the ones contributing anything to said growth. I'm not saying this is or is not the case at Lyft.
heywhatupboys 3y ago
the redundancies are not distributed equally.
adam_arthur 3y ago
There is 0 need for a large development team for Lyft or Uber once the core tech is built out. In fact its a liability at that point The marginal cost to provide a ride is all that matters to their business in the end. Any meaningful improvements to this via software has likely already been achieved

Retric 3y ago

Lyft seems like the kind of company that would be more successful run extremely lean than trying to focus on growth. There simply isn’t that many major metro areas after all.

radicaldreamer 3y ago
They never expanded globally like Uber did though so there is potential there, but with any marketplace, you need a lot of money to expand into a market initially because you need both riders and drivers and incentivizing use when you're new is expensive.
Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
"growth" I'm starting to think that many companies seem to define "growth" in terms of headcount, rather than revenue or marketshare, and that they overhire based on a perception of needing to grow the company whether they need the people or not.
- lbotos 3y ago
  I mean, if you can grow success without headcount, that's the dream, but sometimes growth means "investing in many different parallel opportunities" so you hire more people to do more in parallel.
  - suzzer99 3y ago
    Sometimes "success" means selling investors on a growth story. Hard to do that w/o headcount.
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      Bingo. Lyft is a mature product. Heck, they felt like a mature product when I used them for the first time five years ago. So why would they need to keep hiring engineers? What new features necessitated the hiring of additional teams?
- wpietri 3y ago
  I think it's not so much companies as executives. If we divide people up by skill/topic and reward managers for being in charge of many people, then they've got a strong incentive to focus on the growth of things that make them look important.
keeptrying 3y ago
Can't run lean. Its a 40% GPM business.

avrionov 3y ago

They may survive, but it will be hard. A bug cut like this will destroy the morale in the company. What works in their favor is that the entire tech industry is cutting jobs right now and they don't look like an exception. If the cuts are done well, they'll cut the most of the future projects and focus on a few key areas. Still it is a high risk for them and they may not survive.

treis 3y ago
I'm not sure what y'all are talking about. They're half of a duopoly with 5 billion in revenue a year. They're going to be just fine. This is mostly recognizing that they were feature complete like 5 years ago. They're now in the "keep the lights on and rake in the money while it lasts" phase of a company.
- avrionov 3y ago
  Uber revenue in 2022 was 31B. Lyft revenue was 4B. This is not duopoly. Lyft is much smaller, loosing 1.5B per year and the stock price crashed. They will have hard time to keep the employees and keep the drivers.
  - treis 3y ago
    Uber is in a lot more lines of businesses and markets than Lyft is. The split for rideshare in the US is 70% Uber and 30% Lyft.
    - mi_lk 3y ago
      Where do you get that stat? It's interesting because I think I read that (uber 70, lyft 30) in 2018 when Uber was in deep trouble. After 5 years, Lyft can't do better than that?
      - treis 3y ago
        https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/rideshare-industry-overview/ https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/rideshare-industry-over... Uber made much bigger bets than Lyft. Expanded world wide, launched stuff like eats, and burned a ton of money on self driving cars.

arbuge 3y ago

> Can't expect to cut 30% of a struggling company's workforce and expect growth to keep happening. It's quite possible actually if those 30% were not the ones contributing anything to said growth. I'm not saying this is or is not the case at Lyft.

heywhatupboys 3y ago

the redundancies are not distributed equally.

adam_arthur 3y ago

There is 0 need for a large development team for Lyft or Uber once the core tech is built out. In fact its a liability at that point The marginal cost to provide a ride is all that matters to their business in the end. Any meaningful improvements to this via software has likely already been achieved