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Uber Lays Off 435 People Across Engineering and Product Teams (techcrunch.com) 34

Posted by msmash from the apple-day-news-dump dept.
Uber has laid off 435 employees across its product and engineering teams, the company announced today. Combined, the layoffs represent about 8% of the organizations, with 170 people leaving the product team and 265 people leaving the engineering team. From a report: The layoffs had no effect on Eats, which is one of Uber's top-performing products, and Freight, according to a source familiar with the situation. Meanwhile, the company is lifting the hiring freeze on the product and engineering teams that has been in effect since early August, according to the source. "Our hope with these changes is to reset and improve how we work day to day -- ruthlessly prioritizing, and always holding ourselves accountable to a high bar of performance and agility," an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch. "While certainly painful in the moment, especially for those directly affected, we believe that this will result in a much stronger technical organization, which going forward will continue to hire some of the very best talent around the world." Great timing to dump this announcement.
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Uber Lays Off 435 People Across Engineering and Product Teams More

Uber Lays Off 435 People Across Engineering and Product Teams

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  • Uber is just another app (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @02:47PM (#59178382)
    Uber is just another app now that they got out of self-driving research. How many engineers does it take to maintain an app? How many do they have?

    • Based on this math "the layoffs represent about 8% of the organizations, with 170 people leaving the product team and 265 people leaving the engineering team" TOO FREAKING MANY.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      ...now that they got out of self-driving research.

      Did someone tell Uber they got out of self-driving tech? Apparently they didn't get the memo. https://www.uber.com/us/en/car... [uber.com] Or am I missing something here?

    • Re:Uber is just another app (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @04:59PM (#59178832)

      I know, right? What the hell are all those people doing? I guess the obvious answer is: Making Uber unprofitable.

      I'd imagine the more complex answer is: A whole lot of R&D that probably went nowhere, or into building hugely complicated infrastructure that's vastly more than was needed to do the job at hand. Programmers are going to program, but it doesn't mean what they program will really be of any significant value, aside from being some "really cool tech." My guess is that among all those programmers, some of them developed:

      * A new domain-specific language, because all programmers think they can invent a better language.
      * A new micro-services framework. We can never have too many of those.
      * New server configuration management and deployment tools. Not Invented Here, so we need our own special sauce.
      * A whole bunch of AI-research for heavens knows what, because everyone knows that's the future. Or something.
      * Secret back-door tools for spying on everything and everyone. Yes, we're fucking evil. So what?
      * Random cloud-related shit.
      * Something something blockchain.
      * And of course, self-driving tech. How hard could that be?

      • They were making lots of factory design patterns. And different variations on the factory design pattern, so many that if you use the wrong variation they will point it out in code review.

        Nothing says OOP like using factories everywhere. And Uber is OOP.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Number '1' function of all those development, the most important role of that development, the core role of all that research, it's true primary function, create the illusion of future income far exceeding current income in order to PUMP and PUMP and PUMP, that IPO, that's where the money is, that's where they clean up and then it's well, the aftermath, the layoffs, divisions closing, losses still accumulating and just enough left for golden parachutes and it is time to bail out. Looks like they were not ab

    • "they got out of self-driving research"
      LOLWUT?

  • I hope the company dies and their dystopian dream of creating a transportation-as-a-service system based on social credit (ratings) dies with them. Good riddance, hope Lyft is next.

  • I guess they got it. I wonder if anyone took a taxi home that day.

  • "Great timing to dump this announcement" (Score:4)

    by dysmal ( 3361085 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @02:54PM (#59178416)

    I don't get what is supposed to be implied with this last line. Are they implying that this will get lost in the chatter over the latest Apple announcements?

  • Yup (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BytePusher ( 209961 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @02:59PM (#59178430) Homepage
    I'm so excited about these openings I'm going to apply... never. How the fuck would anyone want to work for a company that goes directly from hiring freeze to layoffs to mass hiring during record low unemployment? My guess, Uber used some statistics while tightening the screws during the hiring freeze to infer who might be likely to support a union, then cut the thought traitors. This move was purely about a making a show to instill fear into their employees, as they could have cut the low performers one by one at Will.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • You're glad for the culling? What personal investment do you have in it? Uber easily could implement policies like stack ranking, fire the bottom 10% if they want to bubble sort their way to a better workforce. This was purely about sending a message to their employees. Guarantee in the next few weeks we'll hear more from those who got cut that it was really about nipping a unionization effort in the bud.

    • I imagine it's all about the investor story. Look for an annoucement in a few months time about how their radical structural changes haved supercharged the innovation pipeline and the magical unicorn car is now just around the corner. It's probably enough to generate funding for another six months of cash burning.

      We live in a time of negative interest rates. As long as investors feel they can flog Uber shares off to someone else, then they will happily allow the company to run perpetual losses for a good wh

    • they fired engineers. Also, they're on the verge of having their entire business model (treating employees like third party contractors) made illegal in California. And even with that skeezy business model they're bleeding cash.

      This looks more like death throws. Uber's goal was to survive until they had self driving cars. I'm not sure they're gonna make it.

      It's gonna be interesting if they collapse though. Uber drivers aren't counted in Unemployment figures. If they implode you can kiss the phony 4%

  • Expand into Vancouver BC, die like the rest.

    P.S.: using rideshare apps increases your carbon footprint by 40%

  • Uber serves their customers well. They replaced taxis that were horrible monopolists in much of the world with a much cheaper, cleaner, friendlier alternative. Uber drivers are contractors. There is no barrier to for drivers entering or leaving the market, they supply their own equipment and set their own hours. The drivers who track what they are doing and know how peak pricing work make much more than they would at jobs requiring similar skill.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      1. They treat their "employees" like shit. 2. What they're doing is blatantly illegal. I happily pay up to twice as much to take taxis.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • That I don't really like as a lot of these cabbies made large investments in medallions and the like, so it sort of screws them over.

        Taxi Medallions are pretty much owned by organized crime, that's a well known well documented fact. It'd be HARD to find a more fundamentally corrupt industry. Destroying the taxi industry (as it stands today) would be a net Good For Society.

        Sure there's Ordinary People driving cabs, and they would be VICTIMS in such destruction, but after time passes and society deals with the restructuring (ie removal and replacement) of the systemic corruption, the world would be better off.

    • hahaha

      you mean they wasted investor money doing something that couldn't be done at a profit, using poorly paid people and their cars?

      when Uber crashes and burns, the taxis and livery services will be there

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      They replaced taxis that were horrible monopolists in much of the world with a much cheaper, cleaner, friendlier alternative.

      But it is clear they can't do it and also make a profit. When they put their fares up to sustainable levels, what will their advantage be? An app? Anybody can make an app. My local taxi company has one and it's able to make a profit and pay its drivers a living wage.

  • 435 people? Doing what, exactly? (Score:3)

    by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @06:45PM (#59179136) Journal

    435 people? Doing what, exactly?

    Seriously, the Uber app could be coded by a team of 20 or 30 La Croix drinkers with lots of slack time left over. Add another 20 or 30 to run the testing and shit, and what more do you need for "Engineering and Product teams"?

    • Well, apparently 405 of them are focused on keeping the LaCroix vending machine running.
    • Imagine you have a project that is medium large, say 200,000 lines of code, plus infrastructure (AWS), configuration, etc. Your goal as a business is to make sure that all developers are cogs, so that if any one of them quits, or a lot of them quit, then they can be replaced without harming the business. That is a reasonable goal, you don't want your bus factor too high.

      The common way to do that is to get project managers, product managers, designers, documentation writers, all surrounding each develope

      • In some estimates, a developer who writes 5 lines of code a day is moving quickly.

        If that's true then I'm waaaay overdue for a massive raise. Yesterday I wrote 6 lines, so I'm a lean, mean, coding machine!

        (4 of those lines were comments, but still...)

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