
Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices - WFHRenaissance
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-cuts-3-000-more-jobs-shuts-45-offices-in-coronavirus-crunch-11589814608
======
bdcravens
Developers at unicorns: even in the best of times, do you feel more expendable
than you've felt at other jobs? We always are amazed at the number of
developers at companies like this. (the numbers I've seen are old, but I guess
out of 22,000 employees, it was something like 5000 engineers?) While that
allows you to build in a more robust way than a smaller company, it seems like
there's no shortage of developers working on tooling, R&D projects, and at
least partially on open source projects, roles that could presumably go away
if a company had to focus strictly on the core product.

~~~
simias
I've never worked for a true unicorn but I've been in companies that got a
sudden success and grew way too big way too fast. I think you can tell from
the inside when a company loses its way. As you mention, suddenly you have
tons of teams working on what seems to be fairly niche aspects of the
company's product. You have man-years worth of work going nowhere as projects
get scrapped mid-development. You start having a massively more complicated
hierarchy of bosses and managers and project leaders and it seems like
everybody is chief of something and everybody loses sight of the big picture
as they just become focused on a single aspect of a given product. What was
once a lean startup with a vision is now struggling to get new products out of
the pipeline even though they have ten times (or more) the manpower.

Growing is hard and unicorns are expected to grow really, really fast. In the
end many companies with a completely viable product end up going under just
because investors thought that a million dollar company should be a billion
dollar company.

~~~
sandworm101
>> You have man-years worth of work going nowhere as projects get scrapped
mid-development.

That's better than seeing man-years go into features that get deployed. I
witnessed one successful control system company spin up a team of new hotshot
UI engineers, all right out of the best schools. After months of work the team
"updated" the product. Withing hours the call center was hit with hundreds of
"You changed the g-dam menus!! Put them back NOW!!".

The trick is to squeeze your long-term UI project in the same update as some
routine security fixes. Then the clients are forced to learn the new system.

~~~
seankimdesign
That's more of a failure for the ux and product vision than it is a failure of
project management. The trick isn't to just roll out new changes slowly, but
to involve the users and figure out what needs to change and how.

~~~
sandworm101
>> roll out new changes slowly.

That really depends on your customers and the product. In this case, control
systems, incremental changes are definitely not the way to go. Imagine if your
car made an incremental change to the position of the brake pedal every time
you turned it on. In such situations you don't babystep. You announce the
change ahead of time, provide your customers with transition training, and
make the change as scheduled.

In the case of "adaptive" menus in control systems, imagine if the elevator in
your building rearranged its floor buttons so that the most requested floors
were always at the top. Total chaos. People learn where their button is on day
one. After that ANY change is going to go badly no matter what the UI
engineers say. That UI should be carved in stone for the life of the building.

~~~
jdhn
Were there any dedicated UX people involved? To me, a UI engineer is someone
who works exclusively on the front end, and would implement the work of the UX
designer. They wouldn't actually do the designing and research themselves.

------
tuyguntn
Anyone working at Uber, can you share how is morale in Uber at this moment?
How might this affect hiring in the future when they need more people, but
people don't want to go there?

Honestly, in the beginning of 2020, I was too optimistic and planning to apply
to Uber around June, thinking that corona will go away

~~~
lhorie
Well, everyone knew it was coming. Dara has been pretty transparent about the
timelines, plus there were a ton of leaks in the news about details over the
course of the last few weeks. It looks like everyone in eng got an email this
morning that stated in bold italics whether they are affected or not. Gotta
say I appreciated that clarity.

But the day's just starting so I don't really have a grasp on what teams are
still around yet...

~~~
whymauri
I don't understand why the firings are waves. Is this a logistics thing, or a
morale thing somehow? Because it seems like it would negatively impact morale,
more than anything.

In either case, don't feel obligated to answer given the current
circumstances. I'm sorry this is happening to you and your company. I'm
sending you and the other workers good wishes.

~~~
gbronner
At Lehman Brothers, the waves came every few weeks. On Tuesdays, HR fired
business people, and engineering people cleaned up the mess. On Wednesdays, HR
fired engineering people. On Thursdays, HR fired each other.

It allows you to ramp down without pandemonium.

~~~
N1H1L
I don't know whether it's an urban legend or not, some HR people were asked to
write their own emails firing themselves at Lehman.

~~~
wlesieutre
If you broke labor laws while laying yourself off, would it be grounds to sue
the company afterward since the actions were taken by an employee of the
company?

~~~
smcl
It's a funny thought, but I have to think it'd get noticed pretty quickly that
you're suing the company for something _you_ actually did, and it'd be
dismissed pretty quickly.

It'd be fun to negotiate your own exit package in that situation though :-D

------
Evangelosggg
I remember being at Droidcon or some Android specific conference years ago....
When Uber was presenting the speaker said "I'm sure everyone here knows what
it's like to work on an app that hundreds or thousands of devs are all
contributing to at once!" and the entire crowd just looked at each other like
dogs do when they hear a very high pitched sound.

~~~
alangibson
And the one's that did know looked at each other like dogs that spent the day
in a Skinner box.

------
ajiang
Seems reasonable when your core business has been massively impacted. Being a
public company can't make it easier.

Also as a startup, good sub-answer to the "Isn't Uber / Twitter / Dropbox etc
working on this?". Yes, but in a market downturn, your investors want you to
dig in harder while their investors want them to survive and focus on core.

~~~
tootie
I honestly wonder what the strategy is. Obviously they are heavily impacted in
the short term, but also this is a company that has been losing money from the
get go. If the intent is to build and build and build and search for profit
eventually, then I'd think they'd weather this storm more than they are. They
invested heavily in building up a world-class engineering team and just cut a
huge chunk loose. It makes me think they aren't just cutting costs, they are
refocussing the business and probably won't reenter some markets.

~~~
rswail
And perhaps focus on being a global taxi company instead of things like self-
driving cars which is the job of a global taxi manufacturer.

------
jacquesm
Hard to let go of that many people without losing critical knowledge, Uber
will come out of this a diminished company in many ways. Best of luck to those
laid off.

~~~
user5994461
Not so sure about that. The company was notorious for having teams constantly
rollout competing internal libraries/tools and rewrite them over and over,
obviously not having enough bottom-line work to keep everyone busy. A smaller
workforce may be able to focus on the work that matters, it doesn't have to
imply a lower productivity.

~~~
shockinglytrue
I have never witnessed a company at least the size of Uber where this wasn't
the case. This isn't exclusively a culture thing, it's a bandwidth thing.
There is limited human IO available to coordinate, and available bandwidth
diminishes in proportion to org size. The org can either choose to slow down
to match available IO, or run at closer to natural pace and accept duplicate
work. I guess the latter must be the obvious choice, or the automatic tendency

I imagine the same problem is why so many large orgs inevitably turn into
hyperstructures of insane management layer cake.. coordination overhead will
eventually send everyone begging for the ability to shed work or delegate

------
jonluca
Dara's email was really well written, and felt as compassionate as one can for
a letter from a CEO announcing job cuts.

The full email:

Team Uber:

These have been unprecedented and challenging times for everyone—our
societies, our governments, our families, our economies, all around the world.
They’ve also been challenging for Uber, and many of you, as you’ve waited for
us to define the road ahead. I’ve said clearly that we had to take tough
action to resize our company to the new reality of our business, and that I
would come back to you this week with the specifics.

Today I have the specifics: we have made the incredibly difficult decision to
reduce our workforce by around 3,000 people, and to reduce investments in
several non-core projects. As a leadership team we had to take the time to
make the right decisions, to ensure that we are treating our people well, and
to make certain that we could walk you through our decision making in the sort
of detailed and transparent manner you deserve.

Where we started and hard choices

We began 2020 on an accelerated path to total company profitability. Then the
coronavirus hit us with a once-in-a-generation public health and economic
crisis. People are rightfully staying home, and our Rides business, our main
profit generator, is down around 80%. We’re seeing some signs of a recovery,
but it comes off of a deep hole, with limited visibility as to its speed and
shape.

You’ve heard me say it before: hope is not a strategy. While that’s easy to
say, the truth is that this is a decision I struggled with. Our balance sheet
is strong, Eats is doing great, Rides looks a little better, maybe we can wait
this damn virus out...I wanted there to be a different answer. Let me talk to
a few more CEOs...maybe one of them will tell me some good news, but there
simply was no good news to hear. Ultimately, I realized that hoping the world
would return to normal within any predictable timeframe, so we could pick up
where we left off on our path to profitability, was not a viable option.

I knew that I had to make a hard decision, not because we are a public
company, or to protect our stock price, or to please our Board or investors. I
had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service for
the cities of the world—our being there for millions of people and businesses
who rely on us—demands it. We must establish ourselves as a self-sustaining
enterprise that no longer relies on new capital or investors to keep growing,
expanding, and innovating.

We have to take these hard actions to stand strong on our own two feet, to
secure our future, and to continue on our mission.

I know that none of this will make it any easier for our friends and
colleagues affected by the actions we are taking today. To those of you
personally impacted, I am truly sorry. I know this will cause pain for you and
your families, especially now. Many of you will be affected not because of the
quality of your work, but because of strategic decisions we made to
discontinue certain areas of activity, or projects that are no longer
necessary, or simply because of the stark reality we face. You have been a
huge part of this company and every day forward we will build on the
foundations that you established, brick by brick.

Our decisions and the road forward

We have decided to re-focus our efforts on our core. If there is one silver
lining regarding this crisis, it’s that Eats has become an even more important
resource for people at home and for restaurants; and delivery, whether of
groceries or other local goods, is not only an increasing part of everyday
life, it is here to stay. We no longer need to look far for the next enormous
growth opportunity: we are sitting right on top of one. I will caution that
while Eats growth is accelerating, the business today doesn’t come close to
covering our expenses. I have every belief that the moves we are making will
get Eats to profitability, just as we did with Rides, but it’s not going to
happen overnight.

So we need to fundamentally change the way we operate. We need to make some
really hard decisions about what we will and won’t do going forward, based on
a few principles:

We are organizing around our core: helping people move, and delivering things.

We are building a cost-efficient structure that avoids layers and duplication
and can scale, at speed.

We are being intentional with our location strategy focused on key
markets/hubs.

Mac will now lead a unified Mobility team, which will include Rides and, as of
today, Transit. Mac will continue to manage our cross-cutting functions like
Safety & Insurance, CommOps, U4B, and Business Development, the latter of
which will be centralized across Rides, Eats, and Freight under Jen. Pierre
will lead what we will call “Delivery” internally, encompassing Eats, Grocery
and Direct.

Given the necessary cost cuts and the increased focus on core, we have decided
to wind down the Incubator and AI Labs and pursue strategic alternatives for
Uber Works. Due to these decisions, Zhenya has decided it makes sense to move
on from Uber. Zhenya is customer-centric to her core, and I am deeply grateful
for all of her hard work.

We are also looking at our geographic footprint. While it served us well for
many years to cast a wide physical net, it’s time to be more intentional about
where we have employees on the ground. We are closing or consolidating around
45 office locations globally, including winding down Pier 70 in San Francisco
and moving some of those colleagues to our new HQ in SF. And over the next 12
months we will begin the process of winding down our Singapore office and
moving to a new APAC hub in a market where we operate our services.

Having learned my own personal lesson about the unpredictability of the world
from the punch-in-the-gut called COVID-19, I will not make any claims with
absolute certainty regarding our future. I will tell you, however, that we are
making really, really hard choices now, so that we can say our goodbyes, have
as much clarity as we can, move forward, and start to build again with
confidence.

How we are helping departing employees

As we previewed last week, we have taken a lot of feedback and worked to
provide strong severance benefits and other support for those leaving Uber,
like healthcare coverage and an alumni talent directory. We’re also taking
care to support people in special situations a bit differently, like those on
US visas or parental leaves. While the details will differ slightly by
country, you can see a summary here. Every departing employee will have a 1:1
to receive the details of their individual package.

Given the global nature of these changes, and the local rules and regulations
involved, the individual experience today will vary by country:

All other countries (those not listed to the right)

Argentina, China, France, Germany, India, Ireland (COE only), Italy, Kenya,
Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan (Karachi only), Poland, Portugal, Slovakia,
South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK (ULL only)

In these countries, we can communicate about individual impacts today.

Everyone in these countries who is affected has already received an email, and
will soon have a calendar invitation to a private meeting with a manager and
HR.

If you are in one of these countries and you did not receive a separate email
this morning, you are not affected.

In these countries, local laws mean that we cannot be as specific about
individual impacts today.

In some countries, we will start a consultation process. In others, there are
restrictions on making changes during the COVID lockdown.

If you are in one of these countries, you will get an email from Nikki
describing next steps for your location.

If you are one of the many affected Uber teammates, I’ll acknowledge right
here that any package we offer, regardless of how thoughtful or generous, will
never replace the opportunity to belong, to make a difference, to establish
the kinds of bonds you establish with any important company or cause. We
wouldn’t be here without you. We will finish what you started, and we will be
excited to see the great things that you will build next.

I am incredibly thankful to _everyone_ reading this email, because the
resilience and grit you’ve shown has made Uber the company it is and will
continue to be. I’ve never had a harder day professionally than today, but
Uber has consistently surprised me with the challenges it has thrown my way.
But it’s the toughest challenges that are worthwhile, and I know even more
strongly in my heart than I ever have that Uber is worth it, and more.

Dara

~~~
andyjohnson0
_" I had to make this decision because our very future as an essential service
for the cities of the world — our being there for millions of people and
businesses who rely on us — demands it."_

This is only one sentence in an otherwise fairly measured email, but it
nevertheless annoyed me given the context. Uber is _not_ an "essential
service". They made this decision so that they can stay in business to make
money for their shareholders. Portraying it as something noble is more than a
little tone-deaf.

I feel for the people affected and I hope they find new roles soon.

~~~
thoraway1010
Ahh - the comment from the person with the multi-car garage, the tesla and the
range rover.

Walk me through what folks without good car / transit access should be using?
If cab companies are "essential" then uber is essential and preferred to cab
companies in many markets.

A lot of folks on HN seems to be approaching this whole situation from the I
have a ton of money, can work from home, have a car mental model.

~~~
economicslol
>have a car mental model.

I suspect buying a reasonable used compact car is much more financially
prudent than using Uber as you means of transportation. Maybe the calculus
flips in a dense city like NYC but there's no way people who commute every day
with Uber are doing so for cheaper than actually owning a car.

~~~
tjr225
Buying a reasonable used compact car probably costs around 2000$ minimum. And
a 2000$ car, no matter how nice, has the potential to require much more $$$ in
maintenance when things start breaking.

Believe it or not, there are people out there who don't have $2000 and these
people are also the same ones who can't get anyone to lend them money.

~~~
himinlomax
I live in Paris, and I could easily afford a new car (or two) with my income
as an SRE.

But then I'd have to park it, and just that would double the monthly cost. And
then I'd probably use it once a month on average.

~~~
dbancajas
So use the taxi for once a month? Uber doesn't have to exist for you to
address your problem.

~~~
freeone3000
Okay, yes, Uber can be replaced by a taxi service with a good app because
Uber's a taxi service with a good app. Gold star.

A _taxi service_ is an essential complement to mass transit, and Uber provides
that service in areas with poor taxi service (essentially everywhere).

------
schnable
Are they going to regret having 4,000 micro services now?

~~~
MisterPea
Well I think that's one of the benefits of microservices actually.

Cut out all the services that have deep tribal knowledge from people let go
and replace them with new services if the service is actually important or
just remove it altogether.

~~~
schnable
What I wonder is how often the "remove" operation happens. I'd wager it's more
likely there are many services doing variations of the same thing, but
existing ones are hard to kill because there is a web of dependencies.

~~~
jakemal
If they're hard to kill because there are a web of dependencies then I would
argue they are doing microservices wrong.

~~~
creato
No matter what you call it, if something can trivially be killed off, was it
providing any real value in the first place? Dependencies aren't just things
satisfied by linkers.

~~~
runT1ME
The cloud and open source world, especially in the infrastructure space has
moved incredibly fast in the past five years. It's certainly possible that an
in house microservice can now be replaced with one of the latest AWS services
or even some of the latest apache OSS + a few lines of yaml/config.

That doesn't mean it never provided value, just that there are now better
alternatives.

------
michaelyoshika
Am I the only one feeling that we should be thankful that these unicorns
(whether actually profitable or driven by crazy VC money) have created so many
jobs in the past several years?

~~~
mylons
what did those jobs produce?

~~~
victords
For Uber specifically?

Money, better and cheaper transportation where it sucked, and jobs for much
more people than just developers.

~~~
luckydata
had advantages but remuneration for drivers lately it was very comparable to
taking a reverse-mortgage on your car. I'm still convinced Uber is not a
sustainable business at the scale they operate at.

~~~
wutbrodo
> remuneration for drivers lately it was very comparable to taking a reverse-
> mortgage on your car

I've still yet to see any analysis show this that didn't have serious
problems. The most common, and most severe, failing of these studies is the
way they assume that time-based depreciation on a car is zero...implying that
buying a car and letting it sit idle would maintain 100% of its value. That is
to say, these studies define away the possibility that increasing utilization
of your car allows you to get more value out of the asset, which IMO is at the
core of the value calculation.

I wouldn't be shocked if better analyses found that the net income of being an
Uber driver was pretty poor, but the fact that every analysis includes this
glaring flaw makes me slightly more suspicious of the claim than I otherwise
would be. And I don't think your unqualified statement of this claim as fact
is warranted.

~~~
luckydata
the cost per mile of maintaining a fleet car is one of the subject matters
best studied and quantified in the entire universe. My wife is a fleet
manager, I'm very damn well sure what I'm talking about (contrary to you).

I'm also a product manager so I did some back of the envelope math because I
REALLY wanted to understand to what I was missing that Softbank wasn't. Turns
out, absolutely nothing, I'm the sane one.

~~~
wutbrodo
> My wife is a fleet manager, I'm very damn well sure what I'm talking about
> (contrary to you).

Yeesh calm down, drink a glass of water or something. Do you always fly off
the handle when people have a different understanding of a situation than you?
I was going off of the popular coverage of studies that I've seen, much of
which has been widely discussed here before. It's a pretty reasonable
assumption that that's what you were going off of. Good to know that you have
more rigor behind your assumption than those sources did, but I'm still left
wondering why they have such glaring holes.

------
netcan
Uber is very vulnerable.

They still make a large loss every year. Cash is not _as_ bad, because (a)
half the loss is in the form of "stock-based-compensation" and (b) they've
been growing, which improves cash flows.

Stock prices are (astonishingly) doing ok. Idk if that means uber can still
raise whatever they need, but I suppose it does.

They can't really ride out a dip in stock price though. They almost certainly
can't cut enough to be profitable... Even if 2020 revenues weren't lower than
last year's.

Uber still operates financially like a startup... they have a certain amount
of runway.... It's longer than most startups, but it's still under two years.

------
travisl12
I was let go today from Uber. If anyone is looking for a Frontend/Fullstack
with 7yoe. I'm here :)

Find me on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-
lawrence-b77400b8/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-lawrence-b77400b8/)

~~~
akmarinov
what's the worst way to contact you?

~~~
mv4
Call from an unfamiliar number, don't leave a message. Keep redialing until
they pick up.

~~~
cal5k
When they eventually pick up, play back the sound you hear when you
accidentally dial into a fax line.

------
0zymandias
It looks like Dara is executing the Jack Welch & General Electric playbook
[1]. Essentially, it comes down to "Be the #1 or #2 company in the market or
exit"

You can debate whether it was successful at GE. The criticism of Jack Welch
was that his approach improved short-term financials, but he left a hollowed-
out company to his successor that became irrelevant and lost value relative to
the S&P.

The way I see this playing out at Uber is rapidly exiting categories like
Scooters, Freight, Works, and AV. And doubling down on Ride Share and Eats
with acquisitions in geographies where they have a leading position. I worry
the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban mobility.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch)

~~~
mattwad
> I worry the most about Scooters and AV as those are arguably core to urban
> mobility

Scooters are a fad that was never needed. Bikes or mopeds like Revel are 10
times more useful. I don't think scooters replace anything of note, since you
can pretty much walk the same distance. They're only fun for tourists and left
in the sidewalk for everyone else to stumble over.

~~~
ping_pong
I disagree wholeheartedly. Electric scooters are fun and useful, especially
for commuting in the morning from a drop off location like a train station.
The real question is whether or not it can be profitable, which I highly
doubt. I would rather just get my own if I needed it.

~~~
mcculley
I live in downtown Orlando. Lime, Lynx, and Bird have littered downtown with
scooters. I run almost every day and they are often left directly in the
middle of the sidewalk, either upright or fallen over. A couple months ago I
began relocating any rental equipment I find in my way on the sidewalk. I am
not at all gentle about this and I'm sure I have damaged some of the
equipment. I like the idea that people might use these more than cars, but
investors need to figure out a better way to store them than in the sidewalk.

~~~
ac29
I get the anger about sidewalks getting littered with scooters, but damaging
or destroying them is just creating more hazardous e-waste to be disposed of.

~~~
heavyset_go
There needs to be a more sustainable model for scooter rentals than "when the
scooter breaks, we just throw it out and replace it with another $20 white
label scooter from China"

The reason they're treated like trash, by both the company that put them there
and by pedestrians, is because that is what they are.

------
saisundar
I am wondering why there are two separate rounds of layoffs. Isn't it better
for morale to just have the band aid ripped quick, once and for all?

What context does Uber have now, that they did not when the initial layoff
wave happened?

~~~
tomnipotent
Management isn't omnipotent.

> What context does Uber have now

More data that can be feed into their financials models to understand the
short-term and long-term impact of this market on their cash flow. Companies
don't do layoffs because things are nice and predictable.

~~~
fra
Isn't the word you're looking for omniscient ?

~~~
tomnipotent
Haha yes it has become muscle memory.

------
dmaskasky
I was also let go today, is anyone looking for a frontend engineer with 6
years experience?

My profile is here:
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaskasky/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmaskasky/)

~~~
wegs
As a suggestion, point people to a personal web page or portfolio. Especially
for a front-end engineer, I would never recruit someone based on a LinkedIn
profile. That's doubly-true in this market.

To make it through the filter, it doesn't need to be fancy or take a lot of
time, but it does need to be tasteful. Of course, fancy and playful go a very,
very long ways for separating yourself from all the other people who made it
through the filter.

~~~
dmaskasky
That's a great suggestion. Unfortunately, my portfolio is entirely comprised
of Uber contributions that I cannot share publicly. I believe many folks are
like me, eyes-forward and focused on the company mission. I was going through
the process of open sourcing a library, but that's no longer going to happen.

I suppose I should get started on making something that I can own.

~~~
anticsapp
Are you allowed to talk around what you did there? Or even write "Top secret,
I can't talk about it". I think you need some line items of some sort, because
those are three great companies. You'll probably be out of work for 17
minutes.

~~~
dmaskasky
I developed tooling for real time data through graphql subscriptions and grpc
streaming. I built a protobuf to graphql schema generator tool. I have
extensive experience with React hooks and making Redux-less applications. I
was on the Uber Elevate team and brought several applications from 0-1.

~~~
anticsapp
Yo that's crazy good, put those as line items on LinkedIn you will have to
turn off notifications so many people will be bothering you.

------
rvz
I can't imagine how companies like Uber, Lyft and WeWork could be sustainable
in the long term with huge costs and a high burn rate, but this action is
definitely in addressing the future Q2 results in the summer which is the
actual results including the impact on the coronavirus outbreak.

Essentially for companies like Uber and Lyft who don't focus on fast growth,
VC cash raising and generating little money with huge costs, the actual
reality is that this is nothing more than the emperor new clothes.
Unfortunately there are no sacred cows being saved here, especially
engineering being affected in this.

~~~
blihp
The game plan is pretty simple: use VC cash to quickly provide services
everywhere and build market share, drive competitors out of business / acquire
them, move to self-driving cars to the extent possible and eventually raise
rates when customers have no other options.

~~~
partiallogic
This is always brought up as the game plan but are there any examples where
this worked out?

~~~
dbancajas
probably not. but while doing that (takes 10 years), all the execs and VCs get
rich while the investing public is left holding the bag.

------
Pxtl
The big worry for many cities is they've eviscerated their _docked_ bike-
rental program. Those are municipal infrastructure... If Uber is abandoning
this product, there are a lot of cities that are going to have an orphaned
bikeshare service with hard infrastructure installed all over town.

~~~
1propionyl
The thing is that they never actually were municipal infrastructure. They were
an outsourced attraction posing as municipal infrastructure.

And to be frank, maybe those cities or municipalities should consider hiring
some of the laid off employees, buying the infrastructure during the fire sale
(if they don't actually already own it), cutting out the middle man, and doing
it themselves.

~~~
Pxtl
At least in my city, it was a locally owned program. The city owned the bikes
and the business that handled maintenance and rebalancing was a private not
for profit. Uber was basically only involved with the software.

But if the city wants more bikes or parts, where do they get it?

~~~
1propionyl
Where do companies like Spin get their bicycles and parts from?

They're not in the manufacturing business either.

------
nabla9
Atlanta Fed's GDPnow nowcasting estimates that the US Q2 GDP growth was -42.8
percent on May 15 (annual rate of change, not change)

[https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow](https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/research/gdpnow)

------
warmcat
[https://archive.vn/vkqbT](https://archive.vn/vkqbT)

~~~
lowwave
Hmm, getting

 _This server could not prove that it is archive.vn; its security certificate
is from cloudflare-dns.com._

Are archive.vn working?

~~~
Fej
archive.today blocks users of Cloudflare DNS.

------
ascendantlogic
Makes you wonder how these companies ever planned to last during the "next"
economic downturn. I don't think anyone bet on a global pandemic causing this
shock but the point still stands: These kind of companies were still burning
cash at incredible rates 10+ years in. How were they ever going to survive?

~~~
slac
This is not a downturn though. It is a collapse.

~~~
asdf21
It's more like a pause.

What makes you think it's a collapse?

~~~
crazygringo
I mean, a downturn is generally considered to be down by 10%, maybe 20%.
_Quantitatively_ different, but not _qualitatively_ different. Adjustments,
but things still generally continue as planned.

A collapse is dropping by close to 50% or more, like Uber's demand. It's
suddenly playing an entirely different game, it becomes a _qualitatively_
different business.

If this isn't a collapse, nothing is.

A "pause" would imply things will return to normal as soon as things are
"unpaused". If you cut 3,000 jobs and 45 offices, those are not just magically
reappearing when things are "unpaused".

~~~
asdf21
Oh, did you mean Uber and not the economy as a whole?

~~~
crazygringo
Oh, I re-read the comments and realized I completely confused the two. Never
mind me, sorry! Yes, the economy as a whole has not collapsed, it is more of a
pause, agreed.

------
nogabebop23
>> attempts to steer the ride-hailing giant through the coronavirus pandemic.

No doubt this is accelerating certain motivators, but I for one am a little
sick of the "COVID Excuse" for blaming aspects of these non-business plans
that were bad ideas without a global pandemic on which to blame them.

------
r3nruturnEr
Does anyone know where one could find a list of the offices they closed?

------
shuckles
Can anyone with knowledge share whether the Uber Amsterdam office is impacted?

~~~
asickperson
Yes, but it is not announced due to works council process. It'll take couple
of weeks at least.

------
nulptr
Can someone explain why Uber stock is up 7% today then?

Is it because Uber's expenditure will decrease because of the layoffs?

~~~
spyspy
The entire market is up on Powell’s positive remarks on the economy’s
recovery.

~~~
rwc
And the Moderna vaccine progress announcement this morning

------
amq
If there's anyone from Vienna, Austria, we're hiring.

------
Havoc
45 offices closed. Holy hell.

~~~
tmh79
Vast majority of these offices are small hubs in tier 3 cities occupied by
regional tems, or tier 1 cities with multiple offices.

~~~
Havoc
Slightly off topic. What's tier 1/2/3 in the US? I had just heard that kind of
system applied in China

~~~
koblas
San Francisco / Seattle / Boston / New York

\---

Austin / Salt Lake / Los Angeles / Portland / Atlanta

\---

Ann Arbor / Chicago / Minneapolis / Miami

~~~
BlackJack
Props for posting an ordering :O

This seems to be ranked on eng availability, but in terms of actual city tiers
it's more like

T1: SF / NY / LA / Miami / Chicago / Atlanta T2: Seattle / Boston / Austin /
SLC / Portland T3: Minneapolis / Ann Arbor

~~~
seanmcdirmid
That’s a pretty strange ordering, mixing up a Seattle and Boston metros of 4
and 4.6m with an SLC, Portland, and Austin metros Of 1.2, 2.5, and 2.1m
respectively. Why mix up the small and large cities in T2? Then your T3 has
Minneapolis, at 3.6m. Why would Minneapolis be ranked lower than tiny SLC
given it has 3x the population?

~~~
BlackJack
Thanks for the population numbers, I didn't know they were so different. I
just ranked them from (my perceived) livability - SLC close to skiing/nature,
while Minneapolis/Ann Arbor are not destination cities like the other ones.

I think Seattle / Boston can be T1, but then you'd have too many T1s. My logic
was "do lots of people want to move to this city?" and I think the answer is
"no" compared to the demand for the T1s.

I see your logic though, and maybe it's better to just have a T1 and T2.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Minneapolis is the biggest American metro between Chicago, Seattle, Dallas,
and Phoenix. It basically anchors a huge amount of the country. SLC in
contrast plays second fiddle to nearby (relatively speaking) Denver, Phoenix,
and Las Vegas (at least it is bigger than Boise).

Ann Arbor is so small and close to Detroit, it is odd to hear it listed as a
significant city in its own right (like Madison WI). Heck, they are about the
same close-ish distance away from Toledo, and Toledo is much bigger than Ann
Arbor.

------
zaptheimpaler
Uber needed an excuse to layoff some people for a long time now. They went
with a very "parallel" strategy, spinning up new teams for every project and
ignoring code/process efficiency by sharing. Basically throw money at it to
win quickly. Pretty unsophisticated engineering, enough microservices and huge
DBs to ignore coordination problems.

They will transition to a more efficient structure with more co-ordination now
that they have many different bets going and 1-2 core businesses that could
work. Right in line with wallstreet expectations and Dara's job to make Uber
profitable. I called it a year ago :D

------
tyingq
_" Khosrowshahi said the company is winding down its product incubator and
artificial-intelligence lab"_

Does that mean they are officially out of the self-driving car business?
Wouldn't you need your AI lab if you were still pursuing that?

Also, if you're hitting the paywall:
[https://outline.com/VL6xaR](https://outline.com/VL6xaR)

~~~
seibelj
AI engineers cost an absurd amount of money for dubious ROI in the self-
driving car space.

~~~
amznthrowaway5
That's true in more than just in the self-driving car space. Even at companies
like AAPL and AMZN where ML focused researchers/engineers work on production
related tasks, I've seen their value production is dubious at best.

~~~
microtherion
[Disclaimer: AAPL engineer, technically classified as ML]

I would argue that ML researchers/engineers have a clear impact on AAPL
products in several areas:

* FaceID

* Steadily improving speech recognition accuracy in Siri

* Considerable improvement in speech synthesis quality

* Increasing sophistication in camera image processing

~~~
amznthrowaway5
In my experience working on these product teams, most of the real gains are
just from solid engineering combined with public advances in ML. The teams
filled with ML specific folk aren't able to accomplish much.

------
tuananh
Uber's chief technology officer and longest-serving executive, Thuan Pham, has
resigned effective May 16, the company said Tuesday, as the company reportedly
mulls further cost cutting to weather the coronavirus pandemic

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-on-thanks-memories-
thuan...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/uber-on-thanks-memories-thuan-pham/)

------
kumarski
Even in this market whereby consumers must order food via apps, none of the
food delivery companies are profitable from my understanding.

Can anyone explain how this works/how this came to be?

~~~
shay_ker
grubhub was profitable for years

~~~
erik_seaberg
Charging for referrals was profitable; they didn't deliver until 2014.

~~~
shay_ker
Delivery at a loss or break-even to drive profitable orders is also a fine
strategy, and worked for quite some time

------
casperb
I wonder if it is harder to let so many engineers go when you have so many
microservices as Uber has/had. Seems to me that a monolith is easier to
maintain when the amount of people working on it goes down, then with all
those small microservices. They maybe/probably will have microservices running
that now has no one to maintain them.

------
mrfusion
They’re an app. Do they need 45 offices?

~~~
lm28469
When you're a company like uber you probably need legal and marketing in every
market you're in.

------
IgorPartola
How exactly is their stock price not reflecting this at all? Is the market
really that irrational right now?

~~~
tanilama
Layoff == less spend

Their stock price will go up.

~~~
IgorPartola
By that logic why do companies even bother to have employees or contractors?
No payroll == more money?

~~~
anticensor
Worker rights. Employees mean more bonding, less freedom of movement.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/5OSus](https://archive.md/5OSus)

------
slac
Is there a list of offices closing?

------
victords
Which offices are they closing?

------
outlace
I’m sure Travis Kalanick is so happy he dumped his shares before all this.

~~~
pishpash
He dumped shares at more than 10% below today's closing price, and almost 20%
below today's intraday high. Why would he be happy?

~~~
flak48
The sheer volume of shares he offloaded everyday contributed significantly to
the drop in price while he was selling.

------
blackswan101
Whoever is still being recruited by uber or close to an offer better make sure
they have a solid severance clause written into their contract! Nothing less
than 1 to 2 years of pay.

~~~
saos
Surely no offers can be made during this period redundancies and consultation.

------
sytelus
I don't understand this... Lift and Grab aren't doing so bad. Also, things are
opening back up again. Even their quarterly results looked very bad, it was
already priced in and so no benefit there. This reduced focus basically just
translates to much lower ambition and not a good thing for long term
valuation. On the other hand money is super cheap. They could double on debt
if they want to. I'm not sure what this layoff buys them anything except
injuring their future prospects.

------
livealife
Who are getting laid off? Software engineers or management and customer team?

~~~
bthrn
Yes

------
fallingmeat
What about Elevate? Seems non-core but couldn't have been cheap.

------
AhtiK
Is AI Labs the whole AI unit at Uber that is now being shut down?

------
csense
What in the world did Uber ever need that many people for?

~~~
mabbo
When I was an intern at Google maaaany years ago, a mentor of mine described
what it is Google does with all these engineers:

"Well see, we discovered a hose that money pours out of. It's called 'online
advertising'. Now what we do is spend half our effort trying to make the hose
pour faster, and the other half trying to find another hose."

Uber figured out the 'Uber for X' pattern. Now they're trying to optimize it,
and figure out something else that makes money.

~~~
erik_seaberg
Yeah, Google invests in _everything_ and then fails fast. They're worried
about missing the Next Big Thing™ after seeing Microsoft miss the early web.

------
johnwangdoe
Ahhhhh darn. The job market is gonna be flooded now.

------
classics2
45 offices... why do they need more than one?

~~~
akoncius
they hire many employees in different countries

------
cparsons3000
Is this the last round of layoffs for Uber?

------
paulie_a
Why in gods name do they have that many people? They are a cab company that
doesn't employ drivers. Talk about a dumpster fire of VC money

------
economicslol
Remember when Dara predicted "profitability" by 2021? LOL, just another
Softbank/VC funded money pit.

~~~
rvz
Lyft also set such pretentious goals for 2021 last year. Not sure what crystal
ball they were basing their forecast on but, such jokes are meant to be
reserved for a late night comedy show not in an earnings call. [0]

[0] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyft-expects-to-be-
profitable-a...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/lyft-expects-to-be-profitable-a-
year-earlier-than-projected-11571765364?mod=rsswn)

------
akmarinov
Hmm wonder why they announced it on a Monday instead of a Friday?

~~~
odyssey7
What is the line of reasoning that favors a Friday for layoffs?

~~~
johntam
Not OP, but a lot of American companies do layoffs on a Friday in an attempt
to have fewer headlines on a weekend (news outlets aren’t fully staffed then,
people are distracted, etc.)

[https://www.kornferry.com/insights/articles/bad-news-
deliver...](https://www.kornferry.com/insights/articles/bad-news-delivery)

------
baylearn
A version of the article without the paywall:
[http://archive.is/OOuRC](http://archive.is/OOuRC)

------
blackrock
Is Uber dead without a vaccine?

------
treelovinhippie
So they've now fired 6700 employees WHILE investing $170M into scooters AND
offering to buy Grubhub at ~$6B.

Sociopaths.

~~~
flak48
Grubhub deal is all stock.

Layoffs were on the cards since more than 6 months already, COVID was just an
excuse

------
hknd
Anyone know from the inside how this affects stock vesting and pre-IPO stock
options?

~~~
Me1000
Usually late stage startups switch from options to double-trigger RSUs years
before they go public. I doubt anyone at Uber has unvested stock options.

Assuming anyone laid off had unexercised options, they'll likely have a short
window to exercise them before they expire.

~~~
nrmitchi
Furthermore, Uber is a public company now, and there is (as far as I know) no
outstanding lockout period for employees. IF anyone has outstanding options,
that are subject to a (most likely) 90-day exercise window, they can be
exercised and immediately sold.

The typical "exercising of an option for an illiquid asset which will be taxed
as if it's liquid" problems with start-up stock options simply don't exist in
this case.

------
boolcow
What severance is being offered to the employees being laid off? Is it up to
the high ethical standard set by Airbnb?

 _Separated [Airbnb] employees will receive 14 weeks of pay, and one more week
for each year served at the company (rounding partial years up). The firm is
also dropping its one-year equity cliff so that employees who are laid off
with under 12 months of tenure can buy their vested options; Airbnb will also
provide 12 months of health insurance through COBRA in the United States, and
health care coverage through 2020 in the rest of the world._

~~~
asciident
I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with equating ethical with generous. Basically
it turns ethics into money, with the idea you can buy ethicalness.

~~~
kylec
If you’re cutting off someone’s source of income, giving them extra money
gives them extra time to land on their feet. I’d say that’s pretty ethical.

~~~
libria
Is shorter or zero severance unethical? We all enter into this employment
contract knowing it could end abruptly from either party. If money is tight,
they could afford longer severances for all if they cut 4000 instead. Does
that not seem unethical toward the extra 1000 cut?

~~~
kylec
Regardless of legality and what the parties agreed to contractually, the fact
remains that abrupt termination with zero severance is harmful for the former
employee, especially in this economic climate. If the corporation pays a
generous severance, the harm is reduced or eliminated. On a scale of
ethicality, the more harmful an action is, the less ethical it is, so yes,
paying severance is more ethical than not paying severance.

~~~
libria
I find the terms "less and more" applied to ethical confusing. Telling a
company to harm people a little instead of a lot is enabling.

My use of ethical here is strongly tied to obligation. e.g., it is kind to
give money to a person, but not unethical if you chose not to especially if
you can't afford to.

The way I understand you is that it's kinder/more sympathetic to provide a
greater severance. This part I agree with!

Severance is not free, though. Increasing it will either cost Uber more heads
or greater risk (and more heads later). I'm repeating this question: Is this
not unethical to the retained employees?

