Slashdot Mirror
Uber's Silicon Valley Employees May Be Looking to Jump Ship (fortune.com)
Some San Francisco-based recruiters and executives at Uber's rival companies told the Financial Times in a Monday article that the number of Uber employees looking to leave the ride-sharing company has spiked. From a report: "One of the main reasons is lack of faith in senior leadership," one unnamed recruiter that previously worked with Uber told the FT. The news comes as the company weathers waves of criticism regarding its leadership, political stance, and internal culture. An Uber spokesperson told the FT that its current level of departures has been normal.
I hope those paychecks come with a side of regret. Their colleagues at the university are probably less than enthusiastic to take them back.
Wait, Uber has boats now?
#DeleteFacebook
You don't leave a 6 figure job because of "lack of confidence in management." You just don't. You milk that puppy until it's dry. Plus, at the end of the day Uber is already profitable in the US. They are bleeding money competing for market share in Europe and China. The whole "profitable in the US" thing escapes the headlines but the are making bank here and they will outside the US too once the market share fight is over.
There are several thousand engineers in places outside of silly con valley that would love to work for a company like Uber all while not particularly caring about the BS social justice crap.
all uber, all the time
Uber is the new favorite whipping boy. IBM, Microsoft, Google, HP, they have all had their time in the mud too.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Let them die. They are a discusting company, run by a discusting man.
drivers better get out be for they go down and they end losing all they own when the uber insurance becomes useless
You're just getting old and grumpy, like me.
I forget what 8 was for.
An Uber spokesperson told the FT that its current level of departures has been normal.
Sure, the levels are normal now, but that is not what the article, and recruiters, are saying. From the article:
the number of Uber employees looking to leave the ride-sharing company has spiked.
That means in the future departures should spike accordingly. Just because the Uber Cab Company doesn't see an issue now only means they aren't looking.
This will be my second dotcom bubble, and just like the first I'm working in a non-startup company watching on the sidelines. One thing I noticed about last bubble is that towards the end, people were hopping jobs every 3 to 6 months to try to maximize their salary. If you could spell HTML and CSS back then, or were a reasonably skilled sysadmin, you could hop from startup to startup for 10 or 20% salary bumps just because there was so much of a frenzy.
I guess my question is whether this is normal job hopping or whether people don't want to be associated with Uber given their bad press. Based on reports from colleagues and acquaintances who've worked at startups, all of them have insane cultures so I doubt they're jumping for better working conditions. If they do make it to self-driving cars before the startup bubble pops, and fire all their employees^Windependent contractors, they'll have a near monopoly on phone-initiated taxi service since they're basically giving away rides to boost name recognition.
Unlike most /.ers, I'm inclined to believe some of the allegations about sexism and harassment in these startups. Most don't really have HR departments in the traditional big-company sense -- every big company I've worked for has just said "zero tolerance" and fired anyone involved. Startups work people in insane working conditions, grueling hours and close quarters; I'm sure a lot of employees don't really interact with people outside the company for much of their waking hours, which could definitely lead to "interpersonal issues." And I know anecdote != data, but most inappropriate behavior I've noticed in my career has been in salesy/marketing types -- those slimy middle aged guys leering at younger women that you hope you don't get stuck with when doing engineering work at a customer site. SV startups don't have tons of hardcore "nerds" -- most are just using app SDKs and JavaScript frameworks to write the majority of their code, and so they might trend to the extroverted side of the spectrum more than a heads-down coder working on C++ for an embedded IoT thingy. I hate to use the "brogrammer" stereotype, but I have seen it and while it's not generally true, it exists.
It takes forever just to find a taxi in this damn town!
It escapes the headlines for the same reason the Bowling Green Massacre escapes the headlines; it just isn't true. Uber loses money in every major market they operate in. There are only two possible paths to profitability: 1) replace drivers (Uber's main cost) with self-driving cars (something which will not be as cheap or happen as fast as Uber imagines) or 2) continue losing money until its competitors are forced out of business and they can raise prices. At this point Uber (and more importantly its investors) are like gamblers at the blackjack table who double their bet every time they lose. They'll eventually either win big or run out of money, but my bet is on the house.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
Depends on the company/team. I for one would not care if one of my devs was a literal Silent Hill monster as long as it wrote good code with proper unit tests.
Be careful of IP rights and assignments. The Due Process clause has not been explicitly extended to literal Silent Hill monsters yet and I do not believe there has been litigation in any jurisdiction establishing their right to be treated as persons for purposes of the takings clause or to sign legal documents as they might need to do when applying for a patent or assigning one to your company. That being said, state laws vary considerably and monsters have greater rights in some states than they do in others.
Real lawyers write in C++
Jettison the libtards, I'll take a job at Uber. I've a feeling this too shall pass.