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Uber will lay off 3,700 people from its customer support and recruiting teams, the company announced in a Wednesday regulatory filing. That figure represents 14 percent of Uber's 26,900 employees, CNBC reports.
Uber has already frozen hiring, and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forego his salary for the remainder of the year, the company says.
The Information reported last week that Uber's ride bookings have fallen 80 percent from the same period a year earlier. Uber has tried to compensate by expanding its delivery business, launching two new services called Uber Connect and Uber Direct. But rides have historically been the largest part of Uber's business, making an 80 percent drop difficult to stomach.
Last week, Uber's main US rival, Lyft, announced 1,000 layoffs—a 17-percent reduction of the company's workforce.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @06:13PM (5 children)
> CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forego his salary for the remainder of the year,
Awww, poor baby, given that 4 months have been paid already, only makes 1/3 of $xxxmillion this year.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday May 07 2020, @06:16PM (4 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dara_Khosrowshahi [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @07:00PM (2 children)
Interesting, from one branch of the travel industry (Expedia, online reservations) which is close to monopolizing that business*, and now at Uber, doing their best to monopolize taxi service.
This guy is working hard to be one of the first against the wall.....but maybe the pandemic will save him from his fate?
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedia_Group [wikipedia.org] List of 18 companies purchased in the last 20 years including major competitors.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 07 2020, @08:56PM (1 child)
If it isn't Dara screwing over the little guy or consolidating, it'd be someone else.
I just find it interesting how the pandemic has seemingly derailed driverless plans [soylentnews.org]. Or maybe it will make the transition to "firing" all drivers more seamless, since rides will probably stay lower for the next couple of years and people want to avoid human contact in all sectors now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @02:00AM
Yes, but only because we keep electing people to congress that don't care about the law or enforcing antitrust regulations in place. Same goes for whitecollar crimes, the politicians think that regular people don't care about whitecollar crime or that we don't get what's going on. But, the reality is that most people get what's going on and care a great deal, it's just that none of the politicians on offer are serious about addressing it. That is, unless they're foolish like Madoff to steal from the powerful. His only real mistake was not ripping off the poor. Had he done that, he likely would have gotten off with a slap on the wrist.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday May 08 2020, @02:56AM
Probably because those stock options are going to be worth a whole lot less once Uber collapses. It's not insider trading if he forfeits them in exchange for good PR.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0, Troll) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 07 2020, @06:18PM (12 children)
Your tax dollars at work: paying for ex-Uber employees to smoke weed and watch Netflix all day.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @06:29PM
Yeah let them die on the street. I'm sure everyone will accept that peacefully.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @07:18PM
*snort*
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @07:20PM (9 children)
You are so right! What the fuck is wrong with these slacking scumbags? It's not like Uber has been paying into unemployment insurance for it's employees or anything, [brookings.edu] right?
It's completely obvious that these scamming pieces of shit decided en masse to steal our money by *refusing* to work.
If they're too lazy and stupid to stay employed at Uber, they should go out and get another job. It's not like anyone else is losing their job. The only reason they're unemployed is because they're lazy and don't want to work. Amirite?
I say to those fuckers, "get a job!" At a restaurant. Or a bar. Or a retail store. Or maybe a stadium or concert venue. Or they could just go out on the street (or on Craigslist) and sell their asses like the worthless whores they are. They're lazy and don't want to work.
And unemployment benefits are *huge*. The last time I was on unemployment (six or so years ago), the benefits were almost enough to cover 3/4 of my rent. Who needs any more than that? it's not like folks need food or electricity. Lazy scum!
Those pieces of shit make me sick!
You tell 'em Joe!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 07 2020, @07:53PM (8 children)
Build a house of cards, insure it with public money - profit! It's the capitalist dream.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2020, @03:02AM (4 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 08 2020, @12:28PM (3 children)
People need food, they don't get it they die. As demonstrated by the latest crisis: we actually do try to keep people from dying.
Me, personally, I don't mind taxes paying for food. Food for everyone, enough to eat 1600 economical healthy calories a day. We, as a society can afford that. That + basic health care and the things that make health care economical like basic shelter, clothing, etc. It's actually cheaper overall to provide it than it is to withhold it and then try to keep people from dying after they've been deprived of it; not to mention more pleasant for everyone involved, unless you get off on watching others suffer.
What I do mind taxes paying for is mountains of bullshit. Except in the present crisis, those who need food and are unable to get it through the "normal" modern cycle of savings->education->job->paychecks->savings->purchase have to climb mountains of bullshit to get to the tax supplied food. The food is there, those who need it and have no alternative do scale the mountains of bullshit to get it, our taxes pay for the erection and maintenance of these mountains of bullshit, and the periodic lobbing of bullshit bombs at those who have reached the other side to get the tax supplied food. Legions of government employees do nothing but shovel this bullshit out with the only goal being impediment of access to tax supplied food.
How about: everybody gets food (or UBI), whether they need it or not? Simple, easy to understand, cheap to administer. I could do with a lot less interaction with people who hate their jobs, but do it because the alternative is climbing mountains of bullshit to avoid starvation.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2020, @01:49PM (2 children)
The problem is that most of that "food" doesn't get eaten by who you expect. That's why you were complaining about "insure it with public money". The same impulses to feed people who need food, also feeds "houses of cards".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 08 2020, @06:42PM (1 child)
Thus: UBI. Preferably administered as a drip of $0.02778 per minute, paid direct deposit into the normal banking channels, and if persons are incapable of holding on to a debit card, they can have an RFID chip implanted that gives them access to their account. Hungry? Nobody stays hungry for long, after 36 minutes they have received enough UBI to buy something off the McD's $1 value menu. Nowhere to sleep? If you check into a flop house for 8 hours, at the end of those 8 hours you've got $12 for the night's bed and shower, and $1.33 left over for breakfast.
I don't know what impulses you're on about, the houses of cards I'm talking about are built by the "Everybody's gonna get filthy stinkin' rich within 8 months if we all just bust our asses" (and get insanely lucky) crowd. Build a business fast, loose, and risky as hell - 19/20 fail, but that 1/20 can pay a 100:1 ROI, for a little while. The whole VC industry is built up around feeding these meat grinders, and leaving the dead meat for mommy and daddy (or public assistance) to bail out.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday May 08 2020, @09:18PM
The bright bulbs trying to pay for this scheme will start with the usual taxing the rich. The rich will remove every asset that they can (often very easily since a good portion of them never lived in the US in the first place and already experienced with such things) with the early result that much of the expected tax base evaporates overnight. I figure they'll move on to the easy targets next - people who have jobs and of course, taxing the UBI itself say through sales and excise taxes. We'll probably see a lot of gimmicky taxes like sin taxes with a generous definition of what sin is.
Corruption will of course get worse, since only the more fraudulent can promise that everything will get better and the gullible will vote for that to protect or even increase their UBI checks. Meanwhile, with the combo of people dropping out of the workforce and things just costing more due to higher labor costs, we'll see the peculiar phenomena of increasing amounts of money and work required to do even mundane things. This is the "stall", a sharp reversal in productivity coming as a combination of higher cost labor, business which relies on substantial government support and corruption instead of the providing of services to prosper, and government entities which grow ever less capable of fulfilling basic functions.
I think the whole thing would end in a few years with a bout of austerity as external creditors impose a financial discipline of sorts, which would probably include a great curbing of the UBI, a moderate correction of the excesses of the past. Past that who knows? Civil war, mergers with other countries, or just another plodding country in the world are possible futures.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @03:19AM (2 children)
Who is profiting from this?
Folks receiving 1/2 (or less) their normal pay in unemployment benefits? It's the horrible tragedy of paying people who aren't working a pittance, which *might* keep them from defaulting on their mortgages or cooking up their pets and children so they don't starve*. This is both unfair and an unacceptable burden on real (read: not poor) Americans.
Employers? Many of whom have seen their revenue drop by 50-75% or had to close down altogether? They're the real victims here. Many won't be able to afford another Alfa Romeo or Tuscan villa for *at least* a year or so. This is a completely unacceptable state of affairs and must be dealt with immediately!
But there is a solution! You can easily reduce the number of people sucking at the public teat (get your hands out of my wallet, you thieving scumbag!) while creating thousands of jobs! It's called "decimation."
We should have weekly decimations [wikipedia.org], similar to ranking employees at review time and firing the bottom ten percent.
But instead of firing those folks, the bottom ten percent should be summarily executed. This will create *thousands* of jobs in the executioner/death/burial industry and give gun and ammunition manufacturers a much needed boost.
Weekly decimations would resolve any issues with overwhelming the health care system, and would leave more money for the folks who need it most. Maintaining 150-foot yachts and private jets is *expensive*.
The first week, we take the bottom ten percent (chosen by real incomes) and kill them. That would reduce the population to ~300 million. After the second week the population would be down to ~270 million, and so on.
At that rate, we'd be down to about 1/2 (~160 million people ) the current population in six weeks or so. Let's go for it! The "job creators" need more money, after all! Open up America Again!
And once we get down to 70 million or so, we can finally have the country we deserve, without all those lazy, shiftless takers sitting around "smoking weed and watching Netflix" all day.
The best part of this is that rather than killing these folks *slowly* via joblessness, homelessness, malnutrition and disease, we remove the useless from our society quickly, saving lots of money and more importantly, creating lots of jobs.
Weekly decimation should be part of *every* plan to open up the economy. It's a win-win for everyone!
*You apparently seem to be unaware that the majority of the US economy is based on consumer spending. If consumers have no money, they can't spend it and the economy goes to hell...and stays there.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 08 2020, @12:11PM (1 child)
Look to the owners of the house of cards: low construction costs, reap profits while it stands, when it falls: walk away and build another.
The great thing about our current legal structure is that the owners don't even have to walk away, they can just collapse parts of their card house enterprise when times are tough - walk away from those parts - and then rebuild more flimsy structures that generate profits for them as long as they stand when the environment will support them.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @05:06PM
What a bunch of vague bullshit.
The best I can figure based on what you did say, with its nearly null semantic content is that you're railing against limited liability corporations [wikipedia.org]. Is that what's got your knickers in a twist?
House of cards? Are you talking about the fine folks over at Hoyle or Vistaprint?
Speak plainly, as you're sounding like a conspiracy theorist. Then again, maybe you are one.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 07 2020, @07:22PM (4 children)
I still shake my head at how this scam has lasted so long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @03:26AM (3 children)
Which scam? Unemployment insurance? I know! If you don't work, you don't deserve to live! As such, anyone who is unemployed for more than four weeks should be killed so as not to be a burden on the rest of us.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @08:54AM (2 children)
Unempliyment isurance is a scam, and it will become apparent as soon as it runs out of money and people start to ask yncomfortable questions. Especially true in the scumbug state of NJ, where I reside,.where the public funds have been raided for the past 30 years and used to pay for totally unrelated shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @05:08PM
Based on the (poor) quality of your prose, it seems that the "totally unrelated shit" didn't include education.
More's the pity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2020, @05:17PM
I'm glad someone gets what I'm talking about! It is a *huge* scam.
As I said, anyone who doesn't work needs to be shot dead to keep them from being a burden on the rest of us. Don't have a job? Don't worry, go and find a new one.
What? It's been four weeks and you still don't have a job? You're a useless, lazy taker and need to be killed, so you aren't a burden on the rest of us.
*That* is what "unemployment insurance" should be: Ensure that you're contributing by having employment or take two bullets in the back of the head.