5 ms·

Lyft CEO tells employees they must return to the office

37 points by bluedino 4y ago

cratermoon 4y ago
> The announcement about returning to the office came a day after Lyft said in an SEC filing that it would cut 1,072 employees – or 26% of its workforce – and eliminate 250 open positions. Another company hoping some number of workers would self-select and leave so the company can evade the consequences of firing people to puff up a falling stock value. Anyone want to bet they'll do a buyback in the next couple of quarters?
- jleyank 4y ago
  Giveaway is demanding non contiguous days in the office. It’s to piss off workers nothing more. Having gaps hinders work by breaking the rhythm.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    It’s like they wanted to say it’s just 3 days back. When really it’s 4 as who’s going to wfh Tuesday when they are working at the office on Mondays, weds, Thursday.
    - derwiki 4y ago
      I am going to WFH on Tuesdays; pre-pandemic it was a “no meeting day” and many worked from home.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  No reason to do a buyback when you’re already significantly reducing future dilutions by getting rid of 26% of people who are vesting shares.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    Don't underestimate the greed of investors.
throwawayior 4y ago
No software company should force it's employees to come offices. Employees are more productive when they work from where they likemost
- joecasson 4y ago
  Any sources to back up the second statement? It doesn't match up with my experience. FWIW, I've worked from home since 2020 for a company that is remote friendly. We've had employees that want to work from home but they don't do very much work when they do. Doesn't go for everyone but it's my anecdotal experience.
  - jemmyw 4y ago
    Did they do a lot of work when they came into the office?
    - mklepaczewski 4y ago
      Some of them were more productive when they worked in an office. I'm 3-4x more productive when I work beside someone. In discussions about WFH/RTO, people are usually split into two groups: the ones who work well unsupervised and those who want to slack off. There's the third group - the ones that want to work but are unable to do it due to chronic procrastination issues (which are often caused by ADD/ADHD ).
  - abhinavk 4y ago
    That has everything to with the employees. WFH is just the excuse. One thing about WFH is that it exposes such employees. In office, it's easy to look busy and blend in. In fact, you just realized this only now and not when they were in office tells all about it.
    - medvezhenok 4y ago
      There are some cases, like ADHD where body doubling actually helps productivity. So I wouldn’t be surprised if in office productivity was higher for those people. I also think ADHD is significantly more prevalent among software engineers (mostly inattentive type) in my experience. My random guess would be close to 25 percent:)
xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
If there's anyone left at Lyft waiting to be poached, now's the time. Lyft is screwed. Can't imagine how this goes any other way.
fumeux_fume 4y ago
I bet he actually thinks this is what most of his employees do. Like huddling around a whiteboard connecting boxes with lines or some shit until they all solve the "problem" and then give each other big high fives. Absolute doofus running this company.
- hellisothers 4y ago
  I love this imagery, requesting a comic of it from some AI art generation du jour.
  - MollyRealized 4y ago
    https://labs.openai.com/s/8txSWUUYv5U1NwjFwyCnRF3t https://labs.openai.com/s/8txSWUUYv5U1NwjFwyCnRF3t
- AHOHA 4y ago
  Lol! It’s like a stick image stuck in their mind of how you look to be productive.
nickpeterson 4y ago
I think people who run businesses see this as a purity test of who is “really invested in the company”. But the reality is that your best employees know they can move on and do, and you’re left with the desperate. Terrible strategy for innovation, but maybe ok if your company doesn’t foresee any big changes coming.
- ccooffee 4y ago
  To me, Lyft's entire brand is "not as good as Uber, but not as shitty to drivers as Uber". Maybe they've done something else innovative, but their PR is so vapid that I've never noticed. Your "maybe ok if your company doesn't foresee any big changes coming" is exactly what I expect of Lyft.
  - MollyRealized 4y ago
    for me, in a big city, it's "$10 more than Uber's current cost, no matter what, but a very slight bit more professional"
    - Gunnerhead 4y ago
      Is there really any difference? I feel like every driver dual-apps. That they share the same driver pool.
      - MollyRealized 4y ago
        I pretty much routinely see Lyft being more expensive. They're both nutty-high, but Lyft usually is at least $5-10 more than Uber.
lsy 4y ago
At this point you can really just give a recipe for this type of article. - business-brain CEO is flailing - no better justification than "whiteboards" and "personal connection" - leadership actually lied when they promised to support remote work - trying to sell a hybrid setup as "balance" rather than half-assed and distracting And the totally expected outcome which is of course that everyone ignores it, and a couple months later the CEO has to start counting to 3 in a parental tone for the umpteenth time.
- codemac 4y ago
  So agreed. If you have <100 software engineers, I feel that being in the office lets you move super fast - conversations with sales folks, support staff, management, investors, etc in a very fast iteration loop. I've experienced this positive hyper communication mode. But... when I think about my current job, where there isn't a single team located 100% in the same office... and certainly not along with most of the people they work with as well... it seems all for show. These execs seem unable to either admit they haven't thought it through, or make the much more radical choice that imo would pay off - relocating everyone to be in the same location to increase communication bandwidth.
Xcelerate 4y ago
It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade. I don’t doubt that there are some people who are more productive in the office, but there are also a lot of people who are more productive from home as well. And there’s an undeniable competitive advantage when your company isn’t spending tens to hundreds of millions of dollars on Bay Area office real estate while your competitors are. The incumbents have decided that RTO is a top priority, whether because the types of personalities that tend toward leadership positions like being at the office better (and are probably more extroverted if I had to guess), or perhaps RTO is a convenient alternative to layoffs. Whatever the reason, there are hundreds of new startups that began as remote companies during the pandemic and will continue working that way with remote work ingrained into the culture from the beginning, and I am very curious to see if there is any noteworthy difference in success outcomes based on this factor a few years from now. My personal guess is that in the short-term remote work will start to disappear, but in the long-term it will make a strong and permanent comeback as a lot of these startups begin to displace the previous tech companies that once led the market.
- Salgat 4y ago
  Requiring in-office means both a massive cost for office buildings and losing a large portion of the hiring pool, particularly those that can most afford to be picky (top talent). I don't understand what advantage this gives a company.
  - zaphirplane 4y ago
    just FAANG let go what 70k people, I think companies are not going to struggle finding compliant employees
- rektide 4y ago
  > It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade. The next decade has enough people who know the past & will squabble over what works for them. The decades after the next 10 years are much more interesting. People who never knew office culture, people who never really have committed to 9-5, people who haven't worked closely with teams, people who haven't been part of water cooler conversations, people who haven't shoulder surfed important technical discovery. I personally don't see a ton of value in rto for myself. I do a little right now & it's awful & pathetic cargo culting, a failed play acting at an earlier time. But I also don't see how we maintain a useful industry & raise up new people if the level of sharing & connecting stays as abysmally low as where we are at. We are headed for a crash.
actualwill 4y ago
Even under an RTO mandate to a sinking ship, people will still go in. Who are are they going to run to? Nobody is hiring and paying the same rates unless your resume say AI.
villgax 4y ago
Screw these in-person bosses. If you didn't have culture before COVID you're not going to magically have it after coming back either. Employee gatherings need to be intentional & not stuffing people on the same floor & hoping to sneak in a conversation or two between back to back team calls with geographically spread out team members ironically
bdcravens 4y ago
I've wondered this in the pushback against RTO: As an employee, if you make a push to change the parameters of your job, how close do you get the definition of being a contractor? According to the IRS: "The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done."
- al2o3cr 4y ago
  Nevermind contractor vs employee - if you aren't allowed to "push to change the parameters", you're not an employee you're a SLAVE.
WirelessGigabit 4y ago
RTO really feels like you want miserable people. People who spend an hour or more commuting. People who pay super-high rents just to avoid the commute. People who can't relax because there's no nature... I moved to the suburbs next to the mountain. Takes me > 1.5h to get to the office, but I never do. I feel so much better...
ulfw 4y ago
I guess the 26% layoffs weren't enough and they're hoping for more attrition.

37 points by bluedino 4y ago

> The announcement about returning to the office came a day after Lyft said in an SEC filing that it would cut 1,072 employees – or 26% of its workforce – and eliminate 250 open positions. Another company hoping some number of workers would self-select and leave so the company can evade the consequences of firing people to puff up a falling stock value. Anyone want to bet they'll do a buyback in the next couple of quarters?

jleyank 4y ago
Giveaway is demanding non contiguous days in the office. It’s to piss off workers nothing more. Having gaps hinders work by breaking the rhythm.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  It’s like they wanted to say it’s just 3 days back. When really it’s 4 as who’s going to wfh Tuesday when they are working at the office on Mondays, weds, Thursday.
  - derwiki 4y ago
    I am going to WFH on Tuesdays; pre-pandemic it was a “no meeting day” and many worked from home.
atdrummond 4y ago
No reason to do a buyback when you’re already significantly reducing future dilutions by getting rid of 26% of people who are vesting shares.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  Don't underestimate the greed of investors.

throwawayior 4y ago

No software company should force it's employees to come offices. Employees are more productive when they work from where they likemost

joecasson 4y ago
Any sources to back up the second statement? It doesn't match up with my experience. FWIW, I've worked from home since 2020 for a company that is remote friendly. We've had employees that want to work from home but they don't do very much work when they do. Doesn't go for everyone but it's my anecdotal experience.
- jemmyw 4y ago
  Did they do a lot of work when they came into the office?
  - mklepaczewski 4y ago
    Some of them were more productive when they worked in an office. I'm 3-4x more productive when I work beside someone. In discussions about WFH/RTO, people are usually split into two groups: the ones who work well unsupervised and those who want to slack off. There's the third group - the ones that want to work but are unable to do it due to chronic procrastination issues (which are often caused by ADD/ADHD ).
- abhinavk 4y ago
  That has everything to with the employees. WFH is just the excuse. One thing about WFH is that it exposes such employees. In office, it's easy to look busy and blend in. In fact, you just realized this only now and not when they were in office tells all about it.
  - medvezhenok 4y ago
    There are some cases, like ADHD where body doubling actually helps productivity. So I wouldn’t be surprised if in office productivity was higher for those people. I also think ADHD is significantly more prevalent among software engineers (mostly inattentive type) in my experience. My random guess would be close to 25 percent:)

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago

If there's anyone left at Lyft waiting to be poached, now's the time. Lyft is screwed. Can't imagine how this goes any other way.

fumeux_fume 4y ago

I bet he actually thinks this is what most of his employees do. Like huddling around a whiteboard connecting boxes with lines or some shit until they all solve the "problem" and then give each other big high fives. Absolute doofus running this company.

hellisothers 4y ago
I love this imagery, requesting a comic of it from some AI art generation du jour.
- MollyRealized 4y ago
  https://labs.openai.com/s/8txSWUUYv5U1NwjFwyCnRF3t https://labs.openai.com/s/8txSWUUYv5U1NwjFwyCnRF3t
AHOHA 4y ago
Lol! It’s like a stick image stuck in their mind of how you look to be productive.

nickpeterson 4y ago

I think people who run businesses see this as a purity test of who is “really invested in the company”. But the reality is that your best employees know they can move on and do, and you’re left with the desperate. Terrible strategy for innovation, but maybe ok if your company doesn’t foresee any big changes coming.

ccooffee 4y ago
To me, Lyft's entire brand is "not as good as Uber, but not as shitty to drivers as Uber". Maybe they've done something else innovative, but their PR is so vapid that I've never noticed. Your "maybe ok if your company doesn't foresee any big changes coming" is exactly what I expect of Lyft.
- MollyRealized 4y ago
  for me, in a big city, it's "$10 more than Uber's current cost, no matter what, but a very slight bit more professional"
  - Gunnerhead 4y ago
    Is there really any difference? I feel like every driver dual-apps. That they share the same driver pool.
    - MollyRealized 4y ago
      I pretty much routinely see Lyft being more expensive. They're both nutty-high, but Lyft usually is at least $5-10 more than Uber.

lsy 4y ago

At this point you can really just give a recipe for this type of article. - business-brain CEO is flailing - no better justification than "whiteboards" and "personal connection" - leadership actually lied when they promised to support remote work - trying to sell a hybrid setup as "balance" rather than half-assed and distracting And the totally expected outcome which is of course that everyone ignores it, and a couple months later the CEO has to start counting to 3 in a parental tone for the umpteenth time.

codemac 4y ago
So agreed. If you have <100 software engineers, I feel that being in the office lets you move super fast - conversations with sales folks, support staff, management, investors, etc in a very fast iteration loop. I've experienced this positive hyper communication mode. But... when I think about my current job, where there isn't a single team located 100% in the same office... and certainly not along with most of the people they work with as well... it seems all for show. These execs seem unable to either admit they haven't thought it through, or make the much more radical choice that imo would pay off - relocating everyone to be in the same location to increase communication bandwidth.

Xcelerate 4y ago

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade. I don’t doubt that there are some people who are more productive in the office, but there are also a lot of people who are more productive from home as well. And there’s an undeniable competitive advantage when your company isn’t spending tens to hundreds of millions of dollars on Bay Area office real estate while your competitors are. The incumbents have decided that RTO is a top priority, whether because the types of personalities that tend toward leadership positions like being at the office better (and are probably more extroverted if I had to guess), or perhaps RTO is a convenient alternative to layoffs. Whatever the reason, there are hundreds of new startups that began as remote companies during the pandemic and will continue working that way with remote work ingrained into the culture from the beginning, and I am very curious to see if there is any noteworthy difference in success outcomes based on this factor a few years from now. My personal guess is that in the short-term remote work will start to disappear, but in the long-term it will make a strong and permanent comeback as a lot of these startups begin to displace the previous tech companies that once led the market.

Salgat 4y ago
Requiring in-office means both a massive cost for office buildings and losing a large portion of the hiring pool, particularly those that can most afford to be picky (top talent). I don't understand what advantage this gives a company.
- zaphirplane 4y ago
  just FAANG let go what 70k people, I think companies are not going to struggle finding compliant employees
rektide 4y ago
> It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next decade. The next decade has enough people who know the past & will squabble over what works for them. The decades after the next 10 years are much more interesting. People who never knew office culture, people who never really have committed to 9-5, people who haven't worked closely with teams, people who haven't been part of water cooler conversations, people who haven't shoulder surfed important technical discovery. I personally don't see a ton of value in rto for myself. I do a little right now & it's awful & pathetic cargo culting, a failed play acting at an earlier time. But I also don't see how we maintain a useful industry & raise up new people if the level of sharing & connecting stays as abysmally low as where we are at. We are headed for a crash.

actualwill 4y ago

Even under an RTO mandate to a sinking ship, people will still go in. Who are are they going to run to? Nobody is hiring and paying the same rates unless your resume say AI.

villgax 4y ago

Screw these in-person bosses. If you didn't have culture before COVID you're not going to magically have it after coming back either. Employee gatherings need to be intentional & not stuffing people on the same floor & hoping to sneak in a conversation or two between back to back team calls with geographically spread out team members ironically

bdcravens 4y ago

I've wondered this in the pushback against RTO: As an employee, if you make a push to change the parameters of your job, how close do you get the definition of being a contractor? According to the IRS: "The general rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done."

al2o3cr 4y ago
Nevermind contractor vs employee - if you aren't allowed to "push to change the parameters", you're not an employee you're a SLAVE.

WirelessGigabit 4y ago

RTO really feels like you want miserable people. People who spend an hour or more commuting. People who pay super-high rents just to avoid the commute. People who can't relax because there's no nature... I moved to the suburbs next to the mountain. Takes me > 1.5h to get to the office, but I never do. I feel so much better...

ulfw 4y ago

I guess the 26% layoffs weren't enough and they're hoping for more attrition.