Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Uber lays off hundreds more, this time from its engineering and product teams
Uber announced even more layoffs on Tuesday, following an earlier round in July. The ride-hailing company confirmed it's letting go of hundreds of employees in its engineering and product departments to "reset and improve how we work day to day." The total number of staff it laid off this time was 435 people, or about 8% of each department.
"We need to shift how we design our organizations: lean, exceptionally high-performing teams, with clear mandates and the ability to execute faster than our competitors," an Uber spokesman said in a statement. "Today, we're making some changes to get us back on track, which include reducing the size of some teams to ensure we are staffed appropriately against our top priorities."
The layoffs, first reported by TechCrunch, come during a rough period for Uber as it attempts to gain footing as a public company. After debuting on Wall Street in May, the company has seen plummeting stock prices, quarterly revenue loss and an exodus of high-level executives. Three of Uber's board members have stepped down since then, along with its chief operating officer and chief marketing officer.
[...] With this latest round of layoffs, the Uber spokesman said Khosrowshahi asked his management team if they were satisfied with the design of their organizations.
"After careful consideration, our engineering and product leaders concluded the answer to this question in many respects was no," the spokesman said. "Previously, to meet the demands of a hyper-growth startup, we hired rapidly and in a decentralized way." That worked in the past, the spokesman said, but it doesn't anymore.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 11 2019, @07:09PM (3 children)
Management knows they're in trouble (thanks in no small part to recent legislation [soylentnews.org]) and doing everything they can to grab the money and run.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:28PM
Uber's share price is still at something like $33 so, management might be in trouble but there are evidently still shareholders holding out hope that some backwoods rube with a lot of money* will bail them out.
* Seems like a small market to aim at to me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:00PM (1 child)
No tragedy, the first investors grabbed their money; doesn't matter if the unicorn they nursed is an old donkey kept for ages on life support.
The fucks that bought the shares at IPO can be fucked at their own time, who cares about them? Your pension fund included.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:48PM
The Uber Unicorn was of the Ringling Brothers' variety (I saw it live in 1985!) Noone is allowed to look at it too closely, or for very long, or while it is standing still, that's what keeps the magic alive.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @07:54PM (15 children)
Dangle the hangers on over the shark tank - hm?
I would say: you get what you deserve, working for a volatile labor abusing startup like Uber, but... having worked for a couple of volatile startups myself (some labor abusing, some not), Uber management doesn't really have to be such assholes, it's more of a choice / preference / lack of experience or ability to manage issue.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:30PM (4 children)
Is it really necessary to have engineers and product teams in order to operate a successful high tech company?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:47PM (1 child)
No [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 11 2019, @09:53PM
Wish I had a Touche mod point.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @09:33PM (1 child)
For certain definitions of success, no.
I've worked for a number of startups where, once the engineers completed their job and the marketing/sales wanks failed to follow through on their promises, the engineers were considered dead-weight and traded in for more sales power. I've never seen this scenario result in anything other than flameout and crash, but they still try.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday September 11 2019, @09:54PM
(based on an old Dilbert cartoon . . .)
What could go wrong? Just fire more engineers! It always works. Its like printing money! You can do it forever. Nothing could go wrong.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:12PM (9 children)
Unfortunately they do have to be assholes.
Uber's business model is not sustainable, never was (unless you have an unlimited supply of people desperate enough to slave in a gig economy).
Remember, they tried to diversify in many other sectors (e.g. Uber eats, until most of the restaurant owners got smart enough to kick them out). And they were still burning cash, never got to profitable stage.
All the current managers can do is to attempt a soft emergency landing instead of a hard crash.
What's the outcome for you, the small fry investor? Well, your retirement may be a bit leaner if your pension fund invested in Uber stock. But that is what has been done expected from the start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:45PM (7 children)
Maybe, at this point in the game, after having played the incipient asshole long enough, you're obligated to follow through.
With a gradual pivot to higher end user costs, and higher net pay for their drivers, they could make a sustainable business out of the brand they have built. Plenty of people would "hail an Uber" instead of calling a taxi, even if the Uber cost twice as much, just because it has a better image. Like paying for fruit on your phone, it doesn't make sense, it makes dollars.
Unfortunately, swinging the big Silicon Valley dick with self driving car development and other "valuation multiplier" schemes really is a very fast way to burn through cash.
I'm dumb enough to invest in Tesla, and Canadian Cannabis growers (possibly US based growers, soon...) but Uber? Yeah, no. Hard pass.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:08PM (6 children)
All that it take for a fast death is the various municipalities to release the artificial scarcity introduced by limiting the number of cabs. Competition will do the rest.
Nope, at least not necessarily and, if momentarily true, not for long.
Without limitation on the number of taxies in a city, there will be companies that will make sure their service is even more flashy, with stable fees and predictable time to pick-up. I saw this in at least one East-Europe capital, needed a ride for my old parents - I booked the ride over the Internet; chose a stylish people-mover van with wheel-chairs and driver assistance as the most appropriate for the situation; the 'business class' options, fast large Beemers and the all that blitz was also available.
Do you really think that a mobile application to hail a ride and monitor the progress is such a big deal? Because it seems that's the only "technological platform advantage" that Uber prides itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:32PM (2 children)
Manhattan has had this for 50+ years, central London limits the total number of cars period taxi or no... however, the rest of the world seems disinclined to go this route for whatever reasons.
Back in the '90s some friends and I tried to dream up ideas for a zero-investment capital required internet based business. We came to something like InstaCart as a pretty good scheme, as long as you could manage to ride herd on the drivers well enough. Somebody threw out the idea of a taxi service and our group shot it down as "too regulated" - well, I guess Uber has bigger balls than anyone in our group.
iPhone came out around about 12-13 years ago. Within a year or so, the Android phone market caught up with iOS in terms of features, yet now, over a decade later, 40% of the US market still pays 4-5x multiples for their fruity phones as compared to nearly identical, sometimes superior, Android products offered by every vendor in sight.
Sure, but you notice that the uberApple diamond encrusted designer phones with their Italian leather accents tend not to sell nearly as well as the hip, popular, well established premium brand. Same can be observed in sales volumes for Mercedes/BMW vs Aston/Maserati - there's always a higher price point product out there, somewhere, but the brands with the right positioning take the bulk of the profit from the market by keeping their sales volume and their prices high. Good marketing people do earn their money, even if it's luck, liquor and guessing - if you do it poorly, you will become the next Jaguar.
No, and neither do I think that mixing up a bunch of nasty chemicals including lavender scent and a dark brown coloring in carbonated sugar water is hard to do, but top two brands in that market have made Billions, if not Trillions more than the also-rans and local market competition. They'd like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony, they'd like to buy the world a Coke - and keep that money coming, which they still do to an impressive extent today, even after being rightly branded as a major underlying cause of the western obesity epidemic.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:41PM (1 child)
Yeap, I concede you have a point.
However, there are many places in which Uber didn't caught or the presence is less that what they'd like. And I don't think it's a coincidence those places are un-/less- restricted on the number of cabs that can function.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 12 2019, @02:02AM
Oh, yeah - definitely, but they didn't really catch fire at least around here until the last 5 years or so - room to grow, it takes time to replace a commodity like Taxi with a brand like Uber / Lyft / also-ran.
And, with all the crazy unicorn behavior, they may well tank the company before reaching escape velocity, but they do have a legitimate shot at long term greatness, if their management aren't really the turd-stains they appear to be acting like at the moment. Their best hope might well be to sell the brand to a group that knows what they are doing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 12 2019, @01:25AM (2 children)
The places that have this problem could have done it decades ago. They won't until the cab companies are broken which I doubt will happen. There's too many stories like the above where the cartel players are using the law to protect their business models and succeeding. After all, it's more important to protect Uber drivers from themselves rather than having a functioning riding hailing transportation system, wouldn't you agree?
Tens of millions of people use it for some reason. I bet a fair number of them find it is a big deal.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday September 12 2019, @02:30AM (1 child)
To vague a statement for me to decide if I agree or not.
Let's make the thing clear in my intended meaning: "big deal = requires billion of dollars and hundred engineer*years to develop".
Do you think that the "entry level for a local market is set so high that only the kind of Uber/Lyft enterprises can break through it"? Personally, I really doubt it and I can see many "Uber/Lyft-like apps" made available by small taxi businesses acting in a city that doesn't artificially restrict the number of taxis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 12 2019, @11:41AM
In many places, yes.
Note the phrase "in a city that doesn't artificially restrict the number of taxis".
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday September 12 2019, @02:15PM
Who said they don't have an endless supply of drivers? There will always be another person desperate enough (or dumb enough) to trade in their asset's equity for short term money gains. (And the occasional smart person who might make the system work but live more humbly on the pure profit to them). I'm more interested in whether there is an unlimited supply of drivers who have vehicles in better conditions than your average cab; will they reach an equilibrium where the cars are better maintained and comfortable than cabs or does least-common-denominator mean that it will eventually reach that average with more desperate people entering Uber's workforce?
Obviously there have been investors who have either felt that Uber's model may reach profitability eventually or that they'll be able to unload their stock/VC money on a bigger sucker. The problem is that Amazon started a trend of "yeah we will be profitable someday, but not in the near term...." but investment in a new or unproven market requires one to go beyond the simple financial mechanics and try to figure out what the viability plan is. And somehow there are businesses out there that don't seem to need to prove what their viability will be and people still throw money at it.
That throwing-of-money, beyond just the usually boom-bubble-bust cyclic, is what I think might trigger depression. Too much loose capital in the hands of too many people who are eventually proven to not be smart with it causes a system collapse when the fails accumulate more than the wins produce new growth.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:08PM (4 children)
"Today, we're making some changes to get us back on track, which include reducing the size of some teams to ensure we are staffed appropriately against our top priorities."
I've never heard it put that way before: reducing headcount to ensure appropriate staffing levels.. These guys must be management geniuses. Or some priorities got thrown overboard. Or as suggested above, management is trying to keep the gravy train going as long as possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:40PM (3 children)
Firing their engineers will be a big help in creating more lethal autonomous taxis.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:24PM (2 children)
That's already dead, whether they know it or not [techcrunch.com]
$1B/year and still in "research mode"? Uber not gonna generate that much profit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:46PM (1 child)
So this Meyhofer guy can’t explain the basis for the estimates that his own team generated? And he refers to the team members as “they” rather than “we”? Wow...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 11 2019, @10:53PM
See, the benefit of the age? You can see signs others can't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:11PM (1 child)
...why does Uber layoff these employees when they could offer to transfer them to driver positions? Oh wait, the drivers aren't employees; they're contractors. I wonder how many of these former employees will opt to start driving for Uber?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 11 2019, @08:20PM
If I were foolish enough to take a job with Uber to help develop self-driving cars, I'd expect to take home in a day approximately what an Uber driver can earn in a couple of weeks... so... I'd call that option a hard pass.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 11 2019, @11:19PM (3 children)
Management: "Hey thanks for building us our money machine. Now fuck off and die."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 12 2019, @06:44AM
Well, a lot of times the alternative is "let's use our development teams to build a brand new UI that everybody hates, and reduce the value of our premium service". See: Digg, Flickr, the green site, and even reddit--although they learned enough from the other examples that they haven't trashed the old UI for current users... yet.
It's a sad truth, but a lot of times not only the company, but the users would be better off if some developers were fired.
I don't think that's the deal with Uber though. They're probably just struggling. Still though, they could have used those extra devs to make a "brand new UX experience" that would have made matters worse... so, there's that.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday September 12 2019, @05:28PM (1 child)
What're you, some kind of copyright rentseeker? The job is done, the machine is built, are they supposed to keep paying you for the rest of your life?
It takes more people to build a car than to service it.
(Devils advocate, mostly, Uber can go fuck itself)
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday September 14 2019, @03:48PM
"copyright rentseeker" hahaha man that's beautiful Newspeak for "labor." Bravo!
"In a new report from the government bureau of statistics, the number of active copyright rentseekers is higher than it's ever been, while the number of inactive copyright rentseekers has sunk to an all-time low."
"Hey, you bum, why don't you go out and get an active copyright rentseeker position?!"
"Bad news, Dear, I lost my copyright rentseeking position."
Washington DC delenda est.