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Lyft to cut 1,072 employees, or 26% of its workforce

• fhaltmayer 3y ago
  Useful link if anyone wants to keep track of all these layoffs going on: https://layoffs.fyi https://layoffs.fyi
  • blululu 3y ago
    Or if you want to know which CEO's were responsible for these layoffs: https://www.itakefullresponsibility.fyi https://www.itakefullresponsibility.fyi
• nbar1 3y ago
  Not surprised. Lyft really failed to keep up over the past couple years and just year-to-date their stock price is down almost 70%. A lot of talk about companies laying off just to lay off, but if one company really needed it, it's Lyft.
  • johntiger1 3y ago
    I think there has been a lack of innovation and growth. WS can accept losses so long as there is potential (e.g. food delivery)
    • alfalfasprout 3y ago
      Yep. For all its flaws Uber has been really trying to invest in the right areas and is frankly much more promising long-term. Lyft was always just 2nd fiddle to Uber for ridesharing.
• keehun 3y ago
  I've been a supporter of Lyft as the underdog and tried my best to give them as much business as I could. I was trying to get a ride at an airport, and I got so frustrated that I gave up and had a very good experience with Uber. What happened was this: I requested a ride, and it was confirmed by the driver who was about 15 minutes away. After waiting 10 minutes, the driver would cancel (and presumably go pick up someone else who had a higher fare). This happened literally 3 times, and I sat outside at the curb waiting for 30+ minutes. I gave up, requested a ride with Uber instead which had a similar price (<$2 delta, I think). The Uber driver not only not cancel on me but also was significantly closer causing me to wait less from the moment I requested a ride.
  • vkou 3y ago
    If you're already at the airport... Why wait for a ride-hail, instead of just using the taxi line?
    • keehun 3y ago
      My airport doesn't have a taxi line. Also, traditional airport taxis in my area (which you have to call and wait for a dispatcher to dispatch a taxi anyways) are about 2-3x the cost of an uber/lyft ride.
    • CobaltFire 3y ago
      I recently had this exact thought. Then the taxi driver tried to scam me multiple ways, including demanding cash because they "forgot to start the meter" and attempted to take the long way to my home (I live about 1 mile from the airport). Won't make that mistake again.
      • misssocrates 3y ago
        It's both easy to forget why Uber/Lyft was revolutionary and easy to remember why.
      • soperj 3y ago
        If you only live a mile away, why wouldn't you walk?
        • somekyle2 3y ago
          I'm healthy and enjoy a good walk, but I wouldn't really want to bring luggage a mile from an airport, especially not if the weather isn't nice; it seems rare for foot traffic out of airports to be particularly easy.
          • soperj 3y ago
            I walk nearly a mile (1.2km) just to get to the nearest bus stop (that buses come to often) from my airport. I only travel with a backpack though. You're right in that they don't have sidewalks though out of the airport area.
• greenyoda 3y ago
  Big discussion from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35655780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35655780
• affinepplan 3y ago
  unsurprising. the experience with Lyft is terrible. the last three times I attempted to call one I had to give up waiting for a driver after nearly 40 minutes. drivers will accept the ride, and then just never show up. I watched them on the map---I think they are driving Uber routes for other customers while simultaneously "accepting" my ride
  • jacurtis 3y ago
    They definitely are. When I take Uber/Lyft I notice that most drivers are running both apps. As they get towards my destination they will start bobbing for fares between the two apps. Maybe Uber is paying slightly more for drivers? I don't know, but maybe that is why they tend to favor Uber rides over Lyft. Maybe they are more likely to get tips on Uber. Just some theories. But I have noticed the same thing, most drivers tend to favor Uber. So if they gets rides from both, they will cancel the Lyft one. I used to switch between the apps based on price of rides. Now I have AMEX rewards for Uber plus I get Marriott points when I ride, so that is why I have moved exclusively to Uber. But the drivers are the same. It's the same pool of drivers, using both apps.
• NickBusey 3y ago
  Off topic, but I deleted the Lyft app last month after I rode one of their scooters home. Apparently, they have a geofenced area around downtown, and any ending of the ride outside of that area is considered "bad parking" and they will charge you a $50 fee. They put the fee on my receipt, along with a $50 credit, as a warning I guess. The issue I have with this is that there are many "no go" areas downtown, like the pedestrian mall, and the scooter will simply stop working if you go into those areas. You have to manually push the scooter back out of the area before it will start working again. Great, perfect, fine, good, so then why did you let me drive it outside of the valid downtown area to begin with?
  • iamjake648 3y ago
    I ran into something very similar in DC. They let me unlock a scooter that was in a 'no-go' zone and began billing me, however it wouldn't operate because I was in that zone. I ended up having to walk it over a mile to get it to function, while it was billing me the whole time. So frustrating they even would let you unlock these in the first place. I'll never use it again.
    • mschuster91 3y ago
      Probably because the "no go zone" is time based? Here in Germany, cities are experimenting with all sorts of policies to try and combat the various issues (drunk partygoers, people throwing escooters into rivers or into bushes, ...).
      • blululu 3y ago
        Unless the OP logged on within <1 minute of the zone switching designation, then this is still an unethical business practice. They have the code to make the scooter not run. They just didn't apply that code so that the sale can't go through.
  • thescriptkiddie 3y ago
    Where I live there is a high-speed road (45 mph speed limit, no sidewalks) going through a park. Lyft and Bird have both designated the entire park as a prohibited zone except for the road. The city has also designated the road a "cycling route" despite it not having bike lanes. I found this out while trying to ride a scooter through the park. Google Maps directed me to take the road, which I was not thrilled about but seemed like a better idea than carrying the scooter through the prohibited zone. But then the fuzzy geofencing on the scooter thought I was in the park anyway and kept intermittently cutting off the scooter.
• SeanAnderson 3y ago
  Dang. That's really unfortunate. I live in SF and don't own a car. I can't say I've had appreciably better/worse experiences with Uber vs Lyft, but I am very fearful to live in an Uber-only world. I feel like their strategy since Day 1 has been "First, take over the world. Second, raise prices." and if their primary competition gives up the chase then I'm going to be between a rock and a hard place. I really value the convenience and confidence I get by using apps vs calling a taxi service, but I have to assume Uber knows that, too, and are going to push quite a premium for it once unfettered.
  • jacurtis 3y ago
    Lyft is still around. They aren't going out of business. They are just consolidating their workforce. Remember that Uber has had 2 rounds of layoffs already I think. One was for 16% of their workforce and another was for 5-6%. So it isn't a whole lot different. I wouldn't expect anything to change. Facebook has had 4-5 rounds of layoffs and Instagram and Facebook aren't going anywhere.
    • SeanAnderson 3y ago
      I appreciate the optimism! I am not as confident. It's true that Uber has laid off people, but, according to layoffs.fyi, all of their post-covid layoffs have occurred either outside of the U.S. or applied to Uber Freight. Uber had two rounds of layoffs in SF during 2020 for 14% and 13% of their workforce. Nothing since. (source: https://i.imgur.com/MqNYdhT.png https://i.imgur.com/MqNYdhT.png) In contrast, SF Lyft has gone through four rounds of layoffs: 17% in 2020, 2% + 13% in 2022, and 26% in 2023. If Uber cuts their SF workforce by 25% in the next month or so then I'll feel better about the mutual competition. Otherwise, my stance remains that they're entering into the winner-take-all phase of their strategy.
  • kelnos 3y ago
    > I feel like their strategy since Day 1 has been "First, take over the world. Second, raise prices." I'm not sure it's as nefarious as you present it. The "raise prices" portion is more like "raise prices to what it actually costs to provide the ride". They'd been pricing rides at a loss for years to get traction and customers. Anecdotally, though, I haven't found Lyft to be much better. Even with Lyft Pink (and no Uber One or whatever it's called), Uber is usually fairly competitive with Lyft, at least where I live.
• UncleOxidant 3y ago
  Usually I see these announcements and think "How could they have had that many employees?" But in this case I'm kind of surprised that they only had ~4,000 employees.
  • zug_zug 3y ago
    I mean if you really weren't profitable, and you wanted to try to be, why not freeze feature development and run the company with ~500 employees, <100 engineers? I learned Uber takes as much as a 50% cut of taxi rides. The margin for profit is really there if you see the company's primary goal as "make a taxi marketplace, and leave it be" like craigslist does.
• tracerbulletx 3y ago
  For a while before the pandemic it felt like Lyft and Uber were roughly equal in my market, most drivers did both, saturation was about the same, prices about the same. Now I see a lot more Uber drivers, I wonder if the ability to do food deliveries with order size based tips on the Uber network has an impact on that?
  • hellisothers 3y ago
    My last Lyft ride home from the airport the driver was really ripping into Lyft and how terrible they treat their drivers compared to Uber, says he only drives Lyft as a last resort if no Ubers are available. He agreed that Lyft used to be the underdog and preferred them but something changed.
  • jacurtis 3y ago
    I have noticed that Lyft rides frequently get cancelled, and Uber rides aren't as often (still happens though). I think drivers are preferring riding for Uber over Lyft. It used to be that every driver had both apps in their cars and now I am seeing fewer drivers running both apps. So I think many are settling down with Uber. In the end, this is actually kind of exciting. It means that the two companies can compete on treating drivers better and the drivers will move towards that app and the riders are noticing (based on this thread). Competition that treats the drivers better I think is ultimately a good thing. The market was so crazy for a while it didn't matter, but now this might be an important factor between the two.
    • kelnos 3y ago
      How would that work, though? Treating drivers better pretty much always means paying them more, no? If Lyft has to pay drivers more to entice them away from Uber, that means rides get more expensive, which will push customers over to Uber. Drivers on Lyft will feel less demand for their services and go back to Uber.
• thescriptkiddie 3y ago
  I was under the impression that Lyft had ~2 million employees, not ~3 thousand.
  • jacurtis 3y ago
    You are wildly off. For perspective, Microsoft has ~200,000 employees. Lyft never had 2,000,000. You might be thinking 2,000,000 drivers. But I checked that fact and apparently they have 20M registered drivers. Maybe 2M of those are active. I don't know. But Lyft never had anywhere near 2M employees. It looks like at their peak they had around 4,500.
    • bmicraft 3y ago
      That's the point they're OP is makeing. The drivers should be considered employees.
• ulfw 3y ago
  This is all ridiculous and just there to push stock prices up. The asset owners getting richer on the back of the white collar worker (see META stock since all the layoffs).
• zmnd 3y ago
  One of the companies that decide to build the most complex engineering systems, very expensive social programs, while keep losing more money every year. Hopefully company will be able to focus on what’s important for their business moving forward.
• 1letterunixname 3y ago
  What all employees of megacorps should do: quit and work for themselves. Doesn't have to be a startup, a worker-owned co-op doing consulting or a business products company can bring home the proverbial bacon and the profits can be shared fairly amongst workers.