Uber is Hiring Hundreds of Engineers in India To Cut Costs (techcrunch.com) 106
Uber said it is working to hire 225 engineers in India, strengthening its tech team in the key overseas market months after it eliminated thousands of jobs globally. From a report: The move comes as several high-profile engineers have left Uber India in recent months to join Google and Amazon, among other tech giants. A senior engineer who recently left Uber told TechCrunch that many of his peers had lost confidence in Uber's future prospects in the country. [...] In July, news outlet The Information described Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi's plan to move engineering roles to India as a cost-saving measure. The report said Khosrowshahi's plan had sparked internal debates. Thuan Pham, Uber's longtime chief technology officer, who left the company earlier this year, reportedly cautioned that hiring more engineers so quickly in India would "require accepting lower-quality candidates." Further reading: Nearly 70,000 Tech Startup Employees Have Lost Their Jobs Since March (July 2020).
Hope they like buggy code. (Score:2)
Because that's what they're gonna get with this move.
Re:Worked for Microsoft... (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't that the Indians are bad at coding. I have found the problem is most businesses offshore to India to try to just get things done Cheap. So they will bargain price for the cheapest they can find in India.
Then you combined the parent company doesn't understand the culture, they don't realize the big deal of the time zone differences, subtle differences in language and grammar. You end up with a big problem often of crappy products. Because the company is in tune towards managing American Workers.
From my experience, Americans are more self reliant, you give them some basic specs, they will use their imagination and their experience to fill in the Gaps. While Indians will do what they are told. You give them basic specs and explain the big picture, you get basic results. Now if an Indian Company hires American workers, they will probably get Crap code as well, because they will give over elaborate specs, and the American worker will go, well I am not going to be micromanaged, so I am going to give you this instead, it will be crap because they don't have the big picture to work off of.
Shortly most businesses realize there is little to any real cost savings in the long run. It is better to hire people who are close to your community. If you want Indian developers get them into the United States and have them work in your office, at American Rates. They will quickly adapt to the culture and produce what you want.
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a bit racist but it's also based on experience.
I've worked with dozens of indian contractors. A few were definately smarter than I was.
But they coded to spec and bid to spec. And they never say "no- are you bat shit crazy?!?!?" Instead they say, "We'll do our best."
It's corporate cultural not racial cultural. The major contracting houses all teach their employees to code to spec and to get lots of certifications. They put their inexperienced employees on the cheapest customers with one or three
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
First I'm not a marxist and I haven't said that.
Second- I'm telling you what *literally* happened at our corporation and has happened at other corporations. Ideology never trumps real world experience.
They repeatedly coded to spec without raising objections. It cost the last place I worked 1.5 *BILLION* lost revenue plus massive damage to customer relations.
I'm for well regulated capitalism. I'm against laissez faire capitalism and crony capitalism.
Marxism doesn't work. Unregulated capitalism often t
Re: (Score:2)
But they said "yes"! But, but...
That seems to be cultural phenomenon. Or a clash-of-cultures phenomenon, more accurately.
Re: (Score:1)
Exactly
It's not just business - it's also conflict avoidance and an effort to avoid any one on any side losing face/being embarrassed.
Re: (Score:1)
I had similar experience many years ago (around 2005 I think), when the QA of our software was moved to India.
The testing involved typing some command in the terminal, and a typo on the first command had "/user/local/bin" instead of "/usr/local/bin" ... but all the subsequent ones were correct.
Do you think they read the second one and figured how to move forward, issuing a note to correct the first command? Nope, filed a bug report that the command was incorrect and that they could not proceed, then stoppe
Re: (Score:1)
The dev working the bug took that literal and found where the error was shown, and then just added an if check around it. They then made a PR with bug fixed. Within minutes multiple other devs rejected the PR with comments like "are you crazy, don't suppress the error find out why it is occurring and fix that!"
Almost a week later (and finally bugging other developers
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't that the Indians are bad at coding. I have found the problem is most businesses offshore to India to try to just get things done Cheap. So they will bargain price for the cheapest they can find in India.
This is so true. I have worked with many high-quality Indian engineers both in India and Indian immigrants in the US. The differentiator is how management sees the value of the team. Bargain hunting companies soon realize that skilled engineers with experience tend to want decent compensation and interesting work. If the job market is remotely active, they will vote with their feet. In the end, you get what you pay for and cheap companies select for cheap engineers. This is as true in Bangalore as it is in
Re: Worked for Microsoft... (Score:1)
So what you're saying is, if you were required to pay local market rates for labor, your business would not be viable. It's only viable now because our imbalanced trade relations allow you to sell in high cost market while producing in a low cost market.
Certainly that makes sense for you as a businessman. And no doubt your competitors are doing the same. But in a very real sense your business is being subsidized by trade policy. You gain cheap labor, at the expense of driving down wages and standard of livi
OK I have to ask. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just what does Uber need all those engineers for?
Their apps are developed. They work pretty well. Sure there are always new features to add but a team of 5-10 would be enough for each one. You also need people to tweak new phones that come out. One guy each phone should do it.
Their data centers seem to be up and running. Needs regular maintenance but they must have those people already.
What are all these people doing?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: OK I have to ask. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
What are all these people doing?
Uber is bleeding cash. Their current business model does not work and is unlikely to ever work.
Their plan, which they have openly stated, is to transition to self-driving cars.
So that may be what these people will be working on.
Re:OK I have to ask. (Score:5, Insightful)
Their plan, which they have openly stated, is to transition to self-driving cars.
So that may be what these people will be working on.
They'd have to be pretty stupid to think that a couple hundred cut-rate offshore engineers will solve the self-driving problem.
Re: (Score:3)
They'd have to be pretty stupid to think that a couple hundred cut-rate offshore engineers will solve the self-driving problem.
There is the core problem of building an SDC. That is 99% solved.
Then there is the methodical process of dealing with the remaining 1% of corner cases. Much of that is reviewing recordings and finding incidents where the car didn't behave properly. Once a behavior quirk is identified, look for similar incidents, and build out the training set.
That is grunt work that doesn't require brilliance.
Re: (Score:3)
What you call the last 1% will take far longer to get right than the other 99%.
We will never "get it right". We will just get it "good enough".
There isn't going to be a sudden "Ah-ha!" moment of insight.
Instead, we will methodically identify and fix one problem after another, until it is clear that SDCs are a better alternative to human drivers.
Re:OK I have to ask. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not true at all. You can't special case the corner cases in any ad-hoc way which will not hurt performance on the rest of the data.
I work in machine learning---they're trying to solve an extremely difficult problem. To get to acceptable levels of performance, to go from 99% to 99.9999%, requires the most extraordinary efforts and significant brilliance and major, fundamental scientific breakthroughs, as well as tremendously large and well specified data sets.
Re: (Score:3)
Not true at all. You can't special case the corner cases in any ad-hoc way which will not hurt performance on the rest of the data.
I work in machine learning---they're trying to solve an extremely difficult problem. To get to acceptable levels of performance, to go from 99% to 99.9999%, requires the most extraordinary efforts and significant brilliance and major, fundamental scientific breakthroughs, as well as tremendously large and well specified data sets.
It also requires far larger datasets than Uber can ever come up with. That's why I think Tesla is ultimately the only company on the planet as of right now that can do it. They have tens of thousands of cars being driven around by humans that have all the sensors needed for self-driving. And those cars can compare what they would have done to what the human did. And learn from it.
Uber simply cannot do that. The necessary dataset is thousands of years of those comparisons. Uber would spend a thousand y
Re: (Score:2)
"And those cars can compare what they would have done to what the human did. And learn from it"
Nope, not what happens. The sensor data is sent back to mind control central and the algorithms are updated there and then spat out across the fleet. Individual cars do not learn about safety related stuff by themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
"And those cars can compare what they would have done to what the human did. And learn from it"
Nope, not what happens. The sensor data is sent back to mind control central and the algorithms are updated there and then spat out across the fleet. Individual cars do not learn about safety related stuff by themselves.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that. Each car doesn't learn, otherwise the sheer volume of cars would be irrelevant.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: OK I have to ask. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I would say "corner cases" make up 80% of the problem time-wise not 1% of the problem.
A Tesla on Autopilot does the right thing far more often than 99% of the time.
Re: (Score:2)
You would have to be pretty stupid to think that there aren't top notch engineers in India.
Sundar Pichai is a nice example, responsible for many of Google's most successful products. Google itself was founded by Sergey Brin, who was Russian, and who also co-developed the original PageRank algo that made Google the king of search.
If you continue with that attitude then in a few years another Huawei will happen to you. Last time it was 5G, maybe next time it will be an Indian company developing most of the te
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, I know, it's Slashdot, but you could at least read the summary of the story. Or even the title.
Uber isn't going after the best and brightest engineers here. They're looking for cheap. And they're going to get what they pay for.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that the guy left suggests that Uber disagrees with the notion that they will have to hire lower quality candidates.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Uber's big problem is that they have fallen behind on SDCs.
Waymo and Tesla are way ahead of them.
If they don't get there first (and it is unlikely they will), then they will be entering a competitive market with low profit margins.
It is doubtful they will ever make up for their current operating losses.
I don't short stocks, but if I did, Uber would be my first pick.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Nike IT is quietly doing the same. No fanfare. No press releases. Not even an actual email to employees. Nothing that could be leaked to the media.
Fifty percent of all IT is going to a variety of Capability Centers distributed around the world. Supposedly there are many CCs, but almost all positions are going to Bangalore India. Also supposedly it is to provide 24/7 IT coverage and provide the ability to tap into new talent pools. Nothing to do with much much lower wages.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
BULLSHIT
This has *everything* to do with lowering wages.
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing to do with much much lower wages.
BULLSHIT
This has *everything* to do with lowering wages.
Costs matter, but he also raised the legitimate issue of global coverage.
Re: (Score:2)
This was true in 2011, and it's still partially true today. [usnews.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but human rights abuses like paying Indians pennies on the dollar and treating them like indentured servants is completely unacceptable. I don't care if you try to gloss over the cost savings with "global coverage", it's still flat out wrong.
This was true in 2011, and it's still partially true today. [usnews.com]
Those things matter. I was only responding to your point that cost was the only factor.
Re: (Score:2)
Costs matter, but he also raised the legitimate issue of global coverage.
Sure, "global" coverage - with all the positions in Bangalore.
Re: (Score:3)
Just what does Uber need all those engineers for?
There could be LOTS of things depending on what you call an engineer.
On Uber's core business.
The app is actually fairly complicated, you could easily have a UI team of 2-3 people working on each view of the application. Doing user testing in UI is time consuming. The app is also on multiple platforms so there is that.
There is the back end infrastructure. Typically these infrastructure are originally built to have a marketable product. And then you spend time consolidating your infrastructure to scale up an
You don't just develop an app (Score:2)
And God Help you on Android. So many versions, so many versions, so many versions....
Re: (Score:3)
> Just what does Uber need all those engineers for?
If they called them "ML dataset annotators" would people feel better?
A rose...
Re: (Score:2)
You don't work in software, do you!
Any software that is used by people, will have to be updated. Software is a living thing, it is never "finished." In that way, it's kind of like road construction. We already have roads all over the city, why do we have to keep building new ones?
Advice kids.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see and hear all this whining and complaining about offshoring, lack of opportunities, expensive educations, etc...
Pick good parents! That is all you got to do!
Why is that so hard?
Oh, and make sure you are born smart and white ...and male - to a well to do family. That really helps.
Now, if you want to be cool and hip, be sure to pick a parent like Will Smith. You can be Black and rich and have all the opportunities you want.
But white and nerdy, there's plenty of parents to choose from.
Re: (Score:1)
I see and hear all this whining and complaining about offshoring
If you see a coder in India as your competition, you made some poor life decisions.
Oh, and make sure you are born smart and white ...and male
I was able to do that without even trying. It was easy. So why can't everyone else?
Re: (Score:1)
If you see a coder in India as your competition, you made some poor life decisions.
Exactly. I mean I am a flabby suburban IT guy. I am special. Unlike those guys.
Re: (Score:2)
I see and hear all this whining and complaining about offshoring
If you see a coder in India as your competition, you made some poor life decisions.
Oh, and make sure you are born smart and white ...and male
I was able to do that without even trying. It was easy. So why can't everyone else?
You are full of shit. Are you gonna repeat your story how you had live out of your car and had to shower at the health club - that you were able to afford - and KNEW that it was temporary because you are so awesome pulling yourself up by yer own bootstraps? You knew - based on your STORY that is was temporary. You HAD a job.
Huh? Bill?
You are a phony. You THINK you are all that. You are just another blowhard on Slashdot hiding behind a pseudonym claiming to be something.
Fuck you Bill.
There are people wh
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hey buddy: there was a low point in my life when I could afford only ONE Tesla. So I know all about hardship.
Indeed. And they just raised the docking fee at the marina, again. Life is not easy.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh, maybe that was satire? Hard to tell with you...
I'll think about it and need be, flame you again.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh, maybe that was satire? Hard to tell with you...
I strive for ambiguity, so I appreciate the complement.
I see myself as a living embodiment of Poe's Law.
Re: Advice kids.... (Score:2)
The Mormons believe you pick your parents (Score:3)
It's basically their version of "Personal Responsibility". e.g. the idea that no matter how bad things are for you, you made your bed now live in it. Sort of an extension of the whole "God's Plan" thing that says all the suffering in the world is OK because God knew it was gonna happen.
I'm more in line with the Episcopals here, as they're more of a "Lord Helps those that Help themselves, and
Re: (Score:2)
Won't happen to me (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This won't happen to me. I am a flabby suburban IT guy. I am so much smarter than everyone else and have exceptional abilities. I can stay in my house indefinitely until COVID is over and the money will keep rolling in. All I need is these deplorables to harvest, manufacture and deliver my food and electricity and internet, etc to me. I will be fine.
You too!
I just LOVE being the exceptional overweight ELITE!
Re: (Score:2)
In other news, fire is hot and water is wet. (Score:2)
This is news? What tech company doesn't have teams in India, Israel, Russia, and/or China? What company isn't constantly shifting staffing back and forth between them all?
This was a thing back in the dot com boom. You couldn't get money without answering "what's your India strategy?"
As a developer in the US (Score:2)
Congrats California... (Score:2)
Hmm, isn't there something going on in California about making Uber drivers all employees? Those costs come from somewhere. So here's an idea, we'll just start hiring cheaper labor overseas to be prepared with what is going to happen.
Weird how we complain workers are called contractors, but then complain the company's moving jobs over seas. They have to keep the balance sheets in the black. This isn't the government. You can't run debt spending forever.
So what do people want? Cheap transportation? E
Re: (Score:1)
Hmm, isn't there something going on in California about making Uber drivers all employees? Those costs come from somewhere. So here's an idea, we'll just start hiring cheaper labor overseas to be prepared with what is going to happen.
Weird how we complain workers are called contractors, but then complain the company's moving jobs over seas. They have to keep the balance sheets in the black. This isn't the government. You can't run debt spending forever.
So what do people want? Cheap transportation? Employees? You can't have both.
Yes, you can have both.
Here's my dream tech company:
I go to Bumfuck, Potatohoe and hire the best from Potatohoe State.
I say - "This is what I want to do."
Here is a great wage - Not Silly Valley levels but enough where you feel like you are being appreciated.
Then I offer a 40 hour workweek, vacation, HEALTHCARE, and time to live a life.
I could CRUSH any Silly Valley company with that.
Because there are smart people in Bumfuck who would and could be more than tech support. But the snobbery I have witnessed
Re: (Score:2)
If you are actually aiming to hired skilled employees, then you are at a disadvantage to the offshoring providers. Their playbook is to point out all the legitimate examples of talent local to their area, and then hire *completely different* people who aren't skilled to actually fulfill business from a client that is landed. The actual talent is certainly there, but not as cheap as the offshoring shoppers are looking for. To actually compete you'd go off into rural america and hire out the services of rando
Genius move (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Having once supervised a team of H-1Bs, believe me, there *are* cultural differences that will bite you in the ass.
It's not that Americans and Indians can't do the same things, but you have to work to understand people who were raised differently from you to get what you need from them. For me the challenge with Indian engineers was to get them comfortable with questioning me -- obviously some took to it quickly than others, but none of them ever simply *assumed* it was OK to call BS on me in public. Init
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if that was cultural or a byproduct of being outsourced but it probably explains why the company didn't get the value out of the situation that they thought.
Re: (Score:2)
I have no doubt that those Indian engineers are doing plenty thinking for themselves. They just perceive putting their opinions forth as rude, which no doubt really hampers these distance collaboration things. In person you can overcome this.
Of course it *is* possible that your company simply picked a lousy outsourcing outfit. Judging competency is another one of those things that's harder across cultural barriers. The Indian educational system appears to place more emphasis on rote learning and respe
Re: (Score:2)
Secondly, ANYONE who has experience of outsourcing to India knows exactly what you get for your money - yeah it's cheap and for that you get indifferent programmers shuffled around between teams they find a better job to go to with zero pushback and zero knowledge retention. I don't blame the people working in the outsourcing companies since they clearly don't give a s
we need to cut costs to pay CA drivers min wage! (Score:2)
we need to cut costs to pay CA drivers min wage!
Where's Trump when you need him? (Score:3)
He'll stop this in a flash... as in ban Uber. (sic)
Seriously, why is this news? Don't all US Companies with a Wall St Listing do this already?
Re: (Score:2)
The same guy who employs illegal aliens? https://www.vanityfair.com/new... [vanityfair.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's interesting because with the changes to H1B it was supposed to provide more jobs for Americans, but it appears that instead companies are offshoring entire departments.
No more uber for me... (Score:2)
Selling off my uber in my portfolio, they can go out of business for all I care. I'm done supporting companies that outsource jobs away from perfectly capable Americans.
An investor asks (Score:2)
what made you buy that POS share anyway? Have you ever seen anything that looks like a sensible business plan?
Seems right (Score:3)
225 indian engineers? That should just about cover the 5 that left.
Why only the 1% get richer (Score:2)
Even computer programmers, normally members of the 10%, are "costs", and "costs" have to be cut. Costs will always be cut, so there will be no corner turned, after which the income of the bottom 99% rises with overall productivity. Not ever.
In a world with increasing availability of cheap labour as cheap travel and communications bring poor populations into the workforce, as AI automates more jobs, capitalism will never, at any point, hand over a single penny of new productivity that was made possible b
Re: (Score:2)
You are assuming, as the executives do, that costs will actually be cut. Sure, they'll get programmer hours for 1/3 the cost of programmer hours in the US, but they'll get much less than 1/3 of the productivity they would have gotten from those more-expensive US programmers. In the end, they'll pay more for their software, and get lower quality. It's not that Indians are inferior, it's more that you get what you pay for.
Uber: Putting programmers out of work (Score:2)
So they can put taxi drivers out of work.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh those poor taxi companies! The taxi industry was long past-due for a shakeup, when Uber and Lyft came along. Don't get me wrong, many taxi drivers are good people just trying to earn a living. They have been abused by the companies that hired them, just like they abused their customers. Finally, Uber and Lyft provide real taxi service that people can rely on, and taxi companies don't know what to do!
Re: (Score:2)
I don't disagree with you about taxi companies, however taxi *drivers* are people.
Re: (Score:2)
The offshoring problems are not a matter of race. If the exact same strategies used to run offshoring providers in India were used to run an outsourcing provider in California, the result would be similar. India has great cutting edge talent in the market. You will not benefit from them from a 'offshore for cost' provider.
The problem is that they take advantage of a fad that says "people in are smart and can be hired cheap" to sell services of unqualified people as if they were, and rely upon the client to
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Eastern Europe is becoming a fashionable offshoring location, and it is every bit as bad as India. However India has a lot more people and a lot more history of being in the offshoring game, so they do carry the stereotype. It is a bit distasteful to link to India specifically when they merely happen to be the most prolific, but there are valid concerns and reasons behind the general problems with offshoring in practice.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)