
Uber is laying off 3,700, as rides plummet due to Covid-19 - kkcorps
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/06/uber-is-laying-off-3700-as-rides-plummet-due-to-covid-19/
======
rockarage
This is a failure in leadership at UberEats. Uber has more than one revenue
source and delivery is in high demand, UberEats is severely losing to DoorDash
in food delivery, despite Uber having significantly more resources than
DoorDash. Uber has billions in the bank, Doordash only has hundreds of
millions. At the time of this posting, Doordash is currently number #13 in the
App store, UberEats is sitting at #62. Uber has access to capital and reserve
in the bank. Reserves are often used for a rainy day, well it is pouring now.
They should be using their position to gain market share during this time of
peak demand for deliveries, should not be losing to DoorDash.

~~~
epylar
I ordered some things from UberEats early on in the quarantine. The
restaurants made several errors and eventually UberEats said they wouldn't
refund because I was having too many issues with my food, and it was
'unlikely' that a person would have that many issues. So I don't use them any
more.

~~~
Nextgrid
Same experience here, both with wrong food as well as a bug in the app which
caused a cached, previous cart to be ordered instead of the new cart from a
different restaurant. I actually provided detailed steps to reproduce this and
screenshots and they couldn't care less.

Both cases ended up with a chargeback.

Deliveroo is similar, they banned a 2 year old account used multiple times
every day (for both me and my flatmates) with over 2k spent on it for supposed
fraud when I dared to ask for "too many" refunds because of cold/incorrect
food (if you place many orders you have more probability that something goes
wrong, but their "fraud" scoring algorithm - that also influences whether you
can get one-click refunds directly in the app - doesn't seem to take that into
account).

Both Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats also often lie and blame the restaurant
for being slow when they can't assign a driver. I've had multiple occurrences
where an order is stuck on "Driver waiting at the restaurant" for 20+ minutes
but calling the restaurant reveals that the food was ready long ago and nobody
is coming to pick it up.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Though I'm kinda glad people who refund delivery food for being cold get
kicked off the platform so that more reasonable people who know how to heat
food up don't have to subsidize you and your expectations.

Btw how many times did you heat up and eat the food anyways after getting your
refund?

~~~
onemoresoop
A restaurant business owner friend of mine is struggling to stay open and he
lowered his fees to accept more orders on Seamless/Grubhub. Quite a bunch of
people order food, receive it on time only to then, in a couple of hours,
cancel the order. He filmed himself handing the delivery in to the person who
ordered and showed it to the customer reps at Seamless/Grubhub and they don't
do anything about it, he basically has to take the loss, multiple orders a day
already. He isn't delivering to that address again if they re-order. But, at
least here in NYC, there's no shortage of people who cancel they orders hours
after they eat it.

~~~
ThePowerOfFuet
How is it even possible to cancel an order hours after it's been delivered?

~~~
Nextgrid
Seems like a technical problem or a shortcoming of the platform, but
regardless, someone refusing video evidence like that (especially from who is
essentially their business partner and has little incentive to commit fraud)
is unacceptable. The problem is that support is outsourced to monkeys with no
real power to investigate or change things and it's cheaper to fob you off
than to assign the issue to someone with at least half a brain to see what's
going on and make it right.

------
0xB31B1B
This is the first in a series of cuts, and this cut didn’t effect anyone in
tech, it’s mostly the front line service agents. We expect 800 eng layed off
globally as has been reported in leaks.

~~~
alephnan
Eng is not part of tech?

~~~
bsimpson
Read the comment again.

------
calvinbhai
I refuse to use any of these delivery apps, which are kind of useless already.

Here in Toronto area, most of the big food outlets are closed, because they
are not able to get workers.

The ones that are open, are these mom&pop restaurants, that run on a skeletal
workforce.

So with fewer restaurants operating, and delivery apps having a limited radius
for delivery, I'd rather go and get the order myself, and let the neighborhood
restaurer keep more of the money I give instead of losing 30%-40% of the
amount as commission (I tip on top of it even though it's a pickup).

I'll use delivery apps only if: \- They charge the restaurant less than 5%
total fees \- They charge me 5% - 10% for delivery and processing fees
whatever (lets say a minimum of $5 or $10, whichever is higher).

Problem is at this rate, Uber Eats or Door Dash or GrubHub wont survive.

I understand using these apps is more of a necessity if you have kids and
larger number of people at home. But this is not for me.

Uber drivers who got cars on subprime loans cannot survive with deliveries
only. I'm curious to how they'll get through this storm. At least in this
case, Uber has fewer liabilities (all head ache borne by the driver).

~~~
colmvp
How does anyone expect food delivery services to survive with only 5% fees?
That's insanity. Uber has to also pay for engineers, sales/marketing to get
customers/restaurants onto the platform, online infrastructure, customer
service for both sides of the market, etc.

Delivery is expensive. It's time-consuming, and customers are rarely willing
to pay the true cost of it.

Most of the restaurant delivery services were bleeding hundreds of millions of
dollars last year. They've had a resurgence because of the Covid-19 but that's
a blip compared to a normal situation.

If people think it doesn't cost that much money to operate, then all
restaurants shouldn't have a problem having their own delivery service.

~~~
malcolmgreaves
Maybe food delivery services isn't solvable using the Silicon Valley method --
use insane amounts of rich people's money to subsidize product hyper-growth to
only later monopolize said market to re-coop earlier losses.

If these businesses would grow more sustainably (i.e. slower), they wouldn't
need such large sums of money to operate. They wouldn't over hire at sales /
marketing / engineering / design / operations/ literally every role. In turn,
they would be forced to set rates that can cover their actual costs while
being a good business deal for restaurants, as they'd have to be around long
enough for the delivery company to have any real growth.

There should be economies of scale wrt. a centralized delivery platform that
services all kinds of restaurants. The fact that, say, Dominos has been
offering delivery for _decades_ means that it's absolutely possible to have a
sustainable national food delivery business on $8 medium pizza deals and $4
delivery charges. The tech delivery companies are just plain greedy: I surmise
it's their quest for "f u" money that kills their business model right off the
bat.

~~~
kahnjw
I'd counter that Pizza hut has a key logistical advantage of vertical
integration. A delivery service is a very different business than a restaurant
chain that does its own delivery.

I agree that GrubHub, Doordash, and to some extent Uber seem bloated when
considering the sum total of the markets they play in. That doesn't mean these
business models aren't sustainable, though. Some companies allocate resources
to a few areas that turn into profit centers, some don't. The ones that don't
will be sold off or parted out. And the cycle will continue. I'd wager that
one of these companies will survive and turn out to be a profitable, healthy
business in the next few years. The rest will probably be sold off or slowly
downsized.

More broadly, to your criticism of SV's investment strategy, resource
allocation is a hard problem. If you want to direct large sums of capital at
certain business verticals, do you want to grow slowly and steadily over a 20+
year period only to find that the economics don't work, or do you want to fail
fast with some extra waste in the middle? Failing fast has some upside to it,
though I understand why I consistently hear this criticism on this site. It
feels like the last decade has seen the pendulum swing towards fast money and
back a little. I don't think were as far off from a healthy middle ground as
some might argue.

~~~
Apocryphon
> If you want to direct large sums of capital at certain business verticals,
> do you want to grow slowly and steadily over a 20+ year period only to find
> that the economics don't work, or do you want to fail fast with some extra
> waste in the middle?

Maybe we'll eventually learn that artificially forcing business models to run
at accelerated rates creates self-fulfilling prophecies of "fail fast."

~~~
kahnjw
Except for dozens of counter examples that make up for literally multiple
trillions of dollars in market capitalization.

~~~
mulmen
Isn’t this textbook survivorship bias? Dozens of successes out of how many
failures and how much misallocated capital?

~~~
kahnjw
Ask that to someone trying to find housing off Sand Hill Road in Palo Alto.

------
throwaway_1512
I think this is pretty amazing offense move played by the Uber CEO.

As we enter the recession, with oil prices at all record low, driver earnings
are automatically higher and riders are little more patient with sobering
environment. In this mode, the support expectations are less than what they
used to be before. There isn’t a desire for a super prompt response, and since
support costs are linear (more reps -> faster ticket resolution), it’s quite
wise to reduce the cost of both synchronous (for drivers) and asynchronous
support agents (for riders).

For the recruiting, since most of hiring is either frozen or happens through
referrals, outbound hiring is going to be quite minimal and you only need
recruiting co-ordinators for interview scheduling and admin. It doesn’t make
much sense to have so many recruiters in such environment.

For the GH hubs, if psychiatrists are moving online to telehealth, Uber green
light hubs are way more simpler to be executed remotely via Zoom.

I am classifying this as a offense move, because the defense would have been
to raise more money through debts and so many companies are doing it, Uber
could have played the same move.

It’s pretty scary though, if this does set the precedent for other companies,
unemployment recovery in HR/Support is going to very very slow.

------
waterfowl
Seems technology sparing. One of the big things that this crisis has made me
realize about uber/lyft/airbnb and other disruptive entrants in regulated
spaces is that they have to have footprint in pretty much every market they
operate in - their staff scales more w/ use than a pure software operation.
Explains their "bloated" staff counts better than just "oh they're venture
backed and blitzscaling" imo.

~~~
duxup
I wish there was a rundown on what everyone does / what all those folks do at
those companies.

Not saying they don't need them, it's just that there are a lot of "Wait that
needs X people?" situations and I wish I knew what they did for a given use
case.

Accounting?

Does uber need a lot of local reps for regulatory requirements?

I think a lot of "omg what do they do?" is actually curiosity.

~~~
this_user
Uber is pretty bloated in the engineering department, because they are
suffering from NIH syndrome, and had to implement custom solutions for
everything. They could certainly be much leaner in that regard.

~~~
duxup
NIH is such a disease.

I work on a SaaS product, we have a really small team. Accordingly we can't
afford a lot of NIH when it can be avoided.

I talked to a semi-competitor and they noted they built a thing, we have that
thing too ... 24 different devs on that project and they do have some extra
features ... but it took them 9 months of 24 devs (not all full time granted)
and my boss and I hammered it out in a week.

Our customers are using it, meanwhile they haven't sold it to anyone.

Now I'm sure there are advantages to their work but as far as what it does ...
pretty much the same thing as far as core functionality goes :O

The amount of cycles NIH can scoop up is astounding.

------
tinyhouse
Expected. Uber/Lyft will get through it but have to prepare for a though time
ahead. I'm pretty optimistic that things will soon start getting back to
normal, gradually of course. However, business travel (and personal) will take
a while to recover. Companies already canceled all large events for the year.
All academic conferences this year are remote, etc. Most tech employees were
already told to keep working remotely until at least Sep/Oct. So even with
very optimistic projections, things will start looking better for these
companies only next year.

~~~
rswail
No one is driving around, other than Uber Eats and deliveries, there is
nowhere for people to go. There's no one flying, so no airport traffic.
There's no sports events, there's no entertainment districts active.

If anything, Uber will _save_ money by not operating. Their cashburn should be
substantially lowered if they are not subsidizing rides.

~~~
karthikb
This is older analysis [1] but Uber is profitable on each ride in their
biggest markets _until_ you deduct the OPEX of the main co. The burn of sales,
marketing, engineering, support, their rider safety team, the driver
inspection and on boarding centers, leases, etc all continue on with or
without riders.

[1] [https://benjamintseng.com/2019/04/lyft-vs-uber-a-tale-of-
two...](https://benjamintseng.com/2019/04/lyft-vs-uber-a-tale-of-two-s-1s/)

~~~
jbn
isn't it the case that they could decrease their burn rate by downsizing
sales, marketing, etc.. ?

At the same time, this time presents a unique opportunity for their
engineering: how often does the market give you several months to breathe?
Isn't this the time to polish the product, to finally fix all that tech debt
you accumulated?

~~~
karthikb
Yes. That’s why they’re laying people off, and why Uber stock is _up_ in after
hours trading. Because of these layoffs, their margins have actually improved.
Doesn’t make things any better for the people who find themselves without a
job, though.

------
olivermarks
Couple of points

1 Where we live Whole Foods in store purchases have been cheaper than Safeway,
who they are trying to put out of business Walmart style. Prime home delivery
has got very expensive per item (and a lot of the items ordered don't show up,
shown as out of stock) in comparison to buying in store.

2 100 years ago it was normal in most Western world countries for small
vendors to deliver food to homes. Milkmen in the UK had electric milk floats
until the 1980's, delivery bicycles and tricycles were very common until the
1960's, and smaller local vendors almost invariably offered local delivery. I
spoke to an Ocardo delivery van guy in February based in Coventry UK who told
his route went into Wales 90 miles away. In the US we are consuming incredible
amounts of packaging to buy small items from Amazon.

I'm not seeing value in centralizing delivery through large entities via
casual delivery people unconnected to the businesses they are delivering from,
I see massive profits for a tiny number of people and zero oversight of our
private business, what we order and from who. I'd like to see a return to
local anonymous delivery via private arrangements with local vendors.

As a seperate topic I'd also like to know that my every move in an Uber/Lyft
etc is not being tracked, filed away by God knows who and sold.

~~~
sneak
> _I 'd like to see a return to local anonymous delivery via private
> arrangements with local vendors._

Building a polished, stable, feature-complete mobile app for the two major
platforms generally costs about a million dollars if you want it to be world
class. Of course you can reduce scope or polish or pick only one platform, but
that's roughly what it takes.

Who's going to pay to develop the apps that these local businesses use to do
online ordering, to sway customers away from Uber Eats et al? The reason these
organizations are achieving market penetration is because their UX is
polished. Yelp made a whole (predatory) business off of small business owners
being bad at websites.

I'd love to see it become more decentralized via private arrangements, but
there are real costs to entering the market due to software developers not
being cheap. I'd also love to see a resurgence in use of the web for such
things, but despite being able to bookmark websites to one's homescreen, it's
still not quite at the point where using a website feels like an app, and
users care a lot about that stuff.

~~~
olivermarks
When I was a kid we had a paper book at the local greengrocers/general store,
paid the bill every two weeks with cash.

~~~
priyankc
That is still the case in many local grocers in India. We pay them once a
month. It becomes their local advantage.

------
dublinben
Non-Techcrunch article: [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/uber-to-lay-
off-3700-employe...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/06/uber-to-lay-
off-3700-employees-about-14percent-of-workforce.html)

The SEC filing:
[https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/0001...](https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000155278120000325/e20313_uber-8k.htm)

------
ahmedfromtunis
Out of curiosity, why would a company like Uber employ 26.5k employees? Does
this number include drivers (which I doubt)?

~~~
Cthulhu_
They have a presence in every country they're active; likely a big chunk of it
is customer services, both for consumers and drives. Administration as well,
they are handling a lot of money after all between a lot of people. See
[https://www.uber.com/us/en/careers/](https://www.uber.com/us/en/careers/) for
what positions they hire for.

~~~
manquer
Customer service is rarely in-house in these kind of companies, The bulk of it
is usually done by contractors and staffing firms . It is cheaper as they
don’t have to pay the same kind of benefits and of course of-shored

------
fredley
Is this the same Uber from the story yesterday about putting $170m into Lime?

[https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-reportedly-
considering-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-reportedly-considering-
emergency-funding-to-lime-2020-5?r=US&IR=T)

~~~
alexeichemenda
Uber burning money on opex and Uber investing in Uber's future (through Lime)
are two very different ways to spend money. Don't expect Uber to stop spending
money, it'll simply do that differently.

------
sudhirkhanger
Should you hold it against companies which are laying off people or doing pay
cut?

I have an emotional reaction to this. Maybe I should be equally needy and
switch jobs as soon as I get a better offer.

~~~
vorpalhex
If the alternative is telling employees you suddenly can't pay them their
paycheck, yes, you should cut early. More than a few restaurants have gone
under with no warning and leaving all of their employees fully in the lurch.

> Maybe I should be equally needy and switch jobs as soon as I get a better
> offer.

If it's actually a better offer, yes you should. Your company doesn't have any
loyalty to you outside the risk of replacing you.

~~~
asdff
Great advice for the former bull market, but this could backfire in a
recession. Last in, first out. Hold on to your job for dear life for the next
two years.

------
stcredzero
I wonder if Tesla could modify their car models, such that the passenger
compartment can be on a different HVAC system than the front compartment?

Now that the world has a recent concrete demonstration of what it means to be
in a pandemic, with all of the emergent problems revealed in gory detail,
shouldn't we change some things so that we can cope better in case it happens
again? Like I've said, no one buckles their seatbelt in expectation of getting
into a high speed crash on their current trip, but we prepare for such a
severe circumstance due to the cost/benefit.

~~~
stevehawk
is the 'front compartment' the 'frunk' (front trunk)? What are you trying to
accomplish? Cooled compartments for food/beverages in a car is old tech (many
cars have had chilled glove boxes/consoles)..

~~~
winter_blue
No, he means that the air circulation (HVAC) is separate for the front and
rear seats. So an infected driver can't infect a customer sitting in a rear
seat.

The frunk is just a trunk for storing things in the front, common on Tesla
cars.

~~~
Traster
It's worth remembering that COVID isn't airborne, it's transmitted through
droplets, so a simple plastic panel would be sufficient. Which is basically
what traditional taxis in major cities very often already have.

~~~
stcredzero
_It 's worth remembering that COVID isn't airborne, it's transmitted through
droplets, so a simple plastic panel would be sufficient._

True that, though I was thinking about rideshare being robust against any
pandemic, going forward.

------
werber
I’ve had several restaurants tell me to avoid any food delivery platform and
they’re backing it up with great perks. I’d much rather spend extra tipping
the person taking the risk than financing the middleman. But, I can see value
in having a central verification system if I’m actually getting in the
vehicle.

------
rob_austin
I don't feel bad if Uber takes a bigger hit. Earlier, I loved the potential of
Uber to make transportation better but it hasn't materialized (for me at
least). I had an "animal farm" feeling about Uber when I was trying to find a
ride from the airport around midnight. They would match me, then cancel the
ride and then match me to a ride at a higher rate. This went on for an hour
and I eventually paid the same as I was paying for a cab before. At least with
a cab, I could have reached home quicker. So as a consumer, I lost in every
way. Yes, I hate the cab drivers and their behaviors but Uber wasn't any
better for my particular situation.

I have also had similar experiences with UberPool. I was charged extra because
the route was longer. It wasn't worth for me to complain about $10 but I
stopped using UberPool later.

I have tried food delivery a couple of times and the extra cost was so
expensive that I just didn't feel like it was worth it. I get that they need
to charge a certain amount for the service to be sustainable/profitable. I
didn't find it to be worth it.

They also played a lot of games with the Amex Platinum credits. So I closed
the Amex Platinum card as well. It was not worth playing the games to save $15
a month.

------
nojito
masquerading as a "tech" company when you're nothing more than a physical
service company is the biggest realization here.

This is definitely a wizard of oz moment for many "tech" companies.

~~~
leetcrew
I've seen a lot of similar comments regarding various companies over the last
week or so. what exactly is a "tech company", and what makes it different from
a normal company (eg, a bank) for whom tech is still an integral part of the
product?

~~~
alphast0rm
Ben Thompson wrote an interesting article "What Is a Tech Company?" on
Stratechery [1] recently where he discusses the trademark characteristics of
tech companies and makes a convincing argument as to why Uber could be
considered one:

> Note the centrality of software in all of these characteristics:

> \- Software creates ecosystems.

> \- Software has zero marginal costs.

> \- Software improves over time.

> \- Software offers infinite leverage.

> \- Software enables zero transaction costs.

> The question of whether companies are tech companies, then, depends on how
> much of their business is governed by software’s unique characteristics, and
> how much is limited by real world factors.
    
    
      ...
    

> Uber, meanwhile, has long been mentioned in the same breath as Airbnb, and
> for good reason: it checks most of the same boxes:

> \- There is a software-created ecosystem of drivers and riders.

> \- Like Airbnb, Uber reports its revenue as if it has low marginal costs,
> but a holistic view of rides shows that the company pays drivers around 80
> percent of total revenue; this isn’t a world of zero marginal costs.

> \- Uber’s platform improves over time.

> \- Uber is able to serve the entire world, giving it maximum leverage.

> \- Uber can transact with anyone with a self-serve model.

> A major question about Uber concerns transaction costs: bringing and keeping
> drivers on the platform is very expensive. This doesn’t mean that Uber isn’t
> a tech company, but it does underscore the degree to which its model is
> dependent on factors that don’t have zero costs attached to them.

He walks through a few other examples as well (e.g. Netflix, Airbnb, WeWork,
Peloton), would definitely recommend reading the whole article.

[1] [https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech-
company/](https://stratechery.com/2019/what-is-a-tech-company/)

~~~
huevosabio
He also has an interesting follow-up [0] where he looks at it from the gross
margin point-of-view. His main point is that when you look at it from the
perspective of what the rider pays, their margins are much lower and implies
that perhaps it should not be categorized as a tech company (in the zero
marginal costs and massive gross margins).

[0] [https://stratechery.com/2019/neither-and-new-lessons-from-
ub...](https://stratechery.com/2019/neither-and-new-lessons-from-uber-and-
vision-fund/)

------
johntiger1
Does this signal the start of something like a recession in tech?

~~~
wpietri
With the scale of the recession in the rest of the economy, it's certain that
we'll feel in in tech. Maybe less, in that it's easier for us to work and
deliver value at at a distance. But perhaps more, in that a lot of what we do
is an investment, and recessions aren't a great time to be investing. A lot of
software's value is essentially in reducing the cost of labor to achieve some
result. But with the unemployment rate going from historic lows of ~4% to
somewhere around 20% [1], reducing labor costs is less urgent.

[1] [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/millions-of-lost-jobs-
may-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/millions-of-lost-jobs-may-push-
unemployment-rate-to-highest-since-great-depression-2020-05-02)

~~~
rswail
Reducing labor costs will remain as urgent because companies have to deal with
a very low demand. So they will layoff and automate.

It will accelerate automation.

What's needed is demand, the way for that to happen is for government to pay
for things and to create jobs.

~~~
wpietri
I suspect it depends a lot on the employer. Fewer will go out and hire
(expensive) software engineers as part of a long-term project to (hopefully)
decrease labor costs. Some still will, but lower capital availability and
increased uncertainty means a lot of things seen as long-term investments will
get put off until things are clearer.

------
nixass
Well gig economy has to die some time, or at least in this form. Let's hope
this is start of it

------
cwperkins
This is unfortunate, but I also imagine that Uber may be one of the
beneficiaries when it comes to re-opening later this summer if there are more
people that choose to avoid taking mass transit. They have talented employees
so I hope everyone lands on their feet.

------
soulofmischief
Is the writing on the wall?

First Lyft, then Airbnb, and Uber... are all unicorns taking this kind of hit
right now?

~~~
freddie_mercury
No, not all Unicorns are taking this kind of hit. Most obviously, Zoom was a
unicorn before this started and...they are doing fine. I'd expect a fair
number of enterprise or B2B unicorns to be okay but consumer-facing ones to be
more likely to be hurting. Atlassian just had their earnings call and beat
targets, for instance.

~~~
asdff
Zoom is doing fine until a proper company like Microsoft decides to step up to
the plate and deliver an objectively better product with more resources
supporting it. Sysadmins who've flocked to zoom for lack of a better
alternative will gladly flock back to a company that can better support their
products.

~~~
rchaud
Theyve been trying for nearly a decade with little to no luck. Skype was
acquired in 2011 and Skype for Business is a joke, even in enterprise settings
like my workplace.

Everybody has moved on to Zoom, even though SFB is available via our org wide
Office365 implementation. I do use it to send quick messages to coworkers in
different regional offices, as their online/offline status is a useful
indicator of their availability since it's connected to their outlook
Calendar. And the screen sharing feature is good, there are never any
compatibility issues. But as a voice or video call system, it's not great.
Zoom has had far lower switching costs.

------
cwhiz
Why are all the top comments about UberEats or food delivery apps? UberEats
isn't mentioned in the article at all and this has nothing to do with food
delivery whatsoever. I thought I was in the wrong comment section at first...
but nope.

------
jasonv
I get that people use delivery, but I can't even remember the last time I got
food delivered. I order for pick-up now (you know, now)...

No judgement, just one of those "Wow, people do a thing that never occurs to
me to do..." moments.

(OK, I did get Thistle in SF.)

~~~
asdff
The delivery fee is like the price of another entree. I'll deliver the damn
thing myself.

------
noad
It's starting to feel like we just built the Borg from Star Trek. Everything
bigger, everything more centralized, everything more efficient and streamlined
and outsource everything you're not good at. Economies of scale so massive you
can argue they are just monopolies. Every new venture needs to scale to
billions or it's not worthwhile. Some competition and innovation, but mostly
just growth throw acquisition and assimilation.

Wasn't the Borg devastated by a virus?

TNG was such a good show.

~~~
Ididntdothis
I agree. Somehow we should discourage large companies and create a system that
favors more smaller companies. I really don't see the value in having huge
companies like Apple or Amazon that need to absorb more and more businesses to
keep growing. They hinder innovation, trample over smaller companies but have
the power to shape countries' policies to their advantage.

In the past there was a size limit to managing a company but unfortunately
technology allows for more and more central control so the trend to ever
bigger companies will probably continue.

~~~
noir_lord
Cyberpunk called this back in the 70's, 80's - Corporations come to rule the
world and states become less and less relevant.

I sometimes feel like we live in that world already just without the cool
neon/fashions.

Drones, militarisation of the police, massive corporations that are basically
immune to governments on a basic level.

~~~
topkai22
I think a fair amount of cyberpunk also had an eye to the past, with the East
India company and others like it serving as reference points to the mega corps
of the “future”

The East India company is gone, the railroads and US steel aren’t what they
once were. And this age shall pass too.

~~~
asdff
Just like how the breakup of bell liberated us from oppressive telecoms
monopolizing our neighborhoods, and fostered competitive innovation in this
field, right? It doesn't matter how many companies there are in an industry if
the functional consequences on your life by that industry as a whole are the
exact same if they were a single monolith. If it quacks like a duck...

You say the railroads are a bygone era, just drive through San Marino to see
what railroad money has bought and continues to buy to this very day. This
wealth did not evaporate, it has only grown.

------
Bang2Bay
in remote areas where cab drivers would heckle riders for trip charges, uber
gave a predetermined number which helped. my only worry was they not having
competition and that has been set right with at least one other ipo-ed
company.

------
fourtonite
Why can't a company just fail any more because it's never made a single cent
in profit? And likely never will.

The inside baseball of Uber doesn't really matter does it? Why dont they lay
the whole company off?

------
hajderr
So now I can ride my bicycle

------
mickotron
Glad. Couldn't have happened to a nicer company.

------
pseingatl
If the drivers are independent contractors, they can't be laid off. They will
just not get any more assignments for the moment.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
> In an SEC filing dating back to last week, Uber disclosed plans to layoff
> 3,700 employees. The figure amounts to around 14% percent of the ride
> hailing giant’s total workforce.

Do drivers count as employees in states like California, but as independent
contractors elsewhere? The answer would provide greater context to these
numbers.

~~~
sp332
No, California is still fighting it.
[https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/05/california-sues-to-
make...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/05/california-sues-to-make-uber-
and-lyft-drivers-employees/) In New Jersey they are though
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/nyregion/uber-new-
jersey-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/nyregion/uber-new-jersey-
drivers.html) as well as the UK [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/31/uber-loses-
appeal-against-la...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/31/uber-loses-appeal-
against-landmark-uk-workers-rights-ruling.html) and France
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-05/trump-
pus...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-05/trump-pushes-virus-
from-china-lab-theory-that-divides-u-s-spies)

