Posted on 05/11/2020 12:53:07 PM PDT by C19fan
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Thousands of Uber employees learned that they were being laid off in a three-minute Zoom call last week. The ride-sharing company informed 3,500 people who worked in customer service and recruitment around the country that it would be their last day working for Uber on the live call. Uber's Ruffin Chaveleau was tasked with breaking the news that the app was 'eliminating' thousands of jobs on the call, obtained by DailyMail.com. Chaveleau heads Uber's Phoenix Center of Excellence - the term the company uses to describe its customer service office. Chevaleau told staff: 'Our rides business is down by more than half. There is not enough work for many frontline customer support employees. [As a result] we are eliminating 3,500 frontline customer support roles.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
That sucks. I know a few people who work for Uber in their spare time.
What a cowardly way to lay off people. Same reason I dislike Ivar’s here in Seattle. That coward laid off staff at the Waterfront walk up with a note pinned to the employee’s bulletin board; read while checking in. Sent home.
-——That sucks. I know a few people who work for Uber in their spare time.-——
Are they drivers? I don’t think they laid off any drivers.
It would take too long to notify them any other way. As long as he did it the best way he could, it’s really all he can do.
The IPO price for Uber stock was $45.00 per share.
The current price of Uber stock is $31.71 per share.
Anyone who bought at the IPO price is severely under water.
I remember some analysts have said that Uber is not a viable long term business, and that accounts for why its stock had consistently slid down so much from the IPO.
I wonder if the virus crisis is just magnifying problems with the Uber business model?
I only know a few drivers, which might make it better. It’s just unfortunate.
I expected Uber to fold...and Lyft too.
I texted this to my son. He replied, “Oh, wow. I guess they’ll be cutting back on their $400,000/yr. senior engineer positions”.
Never used Uber’s services. On a recent visit to our local dealership service department, I dropped my wife’s car off for service. I was asked if they could give me a ride home using Uber. I declined. The service manager got a porter to give me a ride, instead. :-)
I was on the received end of a similar conversation about 11 years ago. Since it was only 5-6 employees we got a long conversation.
I can’t really think of a better or personal way to do it. I’d expect that they all worked in just a handful of call center locations. Best to get it all done together.
Item 5.02. Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers.
Item 7.01. Regulation FD Disclosure.
On May 6, 2020, Uber Technologies, Inc. (the “Company”) announced plans to reduce its operating expenses in response to the economic challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the Company’s business. Due to lower trip volumes in its Rides segment and the Company’s current hiring freeze, the Company is reducing its customer support and recruiting teams by approximately 3,700 full-time employee roles. In connection with these actions, the Company estimates that it will incur approximately $20 million related to severance and other termination benefits. The Company is evaluating other cost and will provide an update in subsequent SEC disclosures regarding such amounts, if material.
In connection with the foregoing, Dara Khosrowshahi, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, after consultation with the Board of Directors, agreed to waive his base salary for the remainder of the year ending December 31, 2020. In connection with this decision, Mr. Khosrowshahi and the Company entered into a letter agreement, effective as of May 2, 2020.
This Form 8-K contains forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations which involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. Forward-looking statements include all statements that are not historical facts and can be identified by terms such as “anticipate,” “expect,” “will,” or “would” or similar expressions and the negatives of those terms. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and other factors relate to, among others: developments in the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting impact on our business and operations, our strategy, competition, managing our growth and corporate culture, financial performance, investments in new products or offerings, our ability to attract drivers, consumers and other partners to our platform, our brand and reputation and other legal and regulatory developments. In addition, other potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted include, among others, those risks and uncertainties included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 2, 2020 and in any subsequent Form 10-Qs and Form 8-Ks filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All information provided in this Form 8-K is as of the date hereof and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements in this Form 8-K, which are based on information available to us on the date hereof. We undertake no duty to update this information unless required by law.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/1543151/000155278120000325/e20313_uber-8k.htm
For Uber ride sharing may no longer be the main impetus of their business. Their software can enable the gig economy in a big way. They could get into courier services, local emergency shipments, repair services, etc. There are a lot of business opportunities for their software platform.
“$400,000/yr. senior engineer positions”
They make ~ $180K/year and work like dogs. They are a glorified sweatshop. Most have to work north of 60 hours a week. Many are at 80 or more. That $400K number typically includes ‘phantom equity’ (which is mostly worthless for engineers right now). Burnout at that place is high ... very, very high.
The *only* reason this company is still alive is that lots of liberal idiots invested a LOT of money. They got millions from the likes of Hollywood trash and scummy political types like David Plouffe. In a sane world, they would have fallen apart a couple of years ago.
Some of their claims involving their autonomous vehicles were ridiculous. Unless you get all of your news from Wired Magazine (they hyped that place up like a pack of clueless, high school cheerleaders), you could see that they were full of crap back in 2015.
Your son should thank God that he doesn’t work there. I know some outstanding engineers there that bought all of their hype hook, line, and sinker. They’re completely burnt out yet are clinging onto hope that their options will be worth millions someday. No joke, they’ve aged 10-15 years in five. It’s sad.
There are PLENTY of $180K/year + equity jobs out there for people with skills. I’d avoid Uber like the plague.
Very possible. I have a family member who owned a mini fleet of yellow cabs in NYC and then the city completely devalued medallions through its policies and made the price plunge. And people couldn’t even sell them because they had gone from a million dollars to nearly worthless. That’s why cabbies, a lot of them immigrants investing in the American dream of owning a business, were committing suicide a couple of years ago.
It was partially also because of the advent of the so-called ride sharing, although in reality not a lot of people shared their rides and most people called them the way you’d call a cab. Hailing was the only thing that even kept yellow cabs alive.
A lot of the more successful cabbies then started driving for Uber, especially in the black car service.
The big failure of the taxi industry was that they were completely out of the loop on basic things such as mobile phone apps and connections, while modern companies such as Uber and Lyft knew how to do this. Yellow cab drivers, even though theoretically licensed, also did not know the city, half the time the photo on the license looked nothing like the driver and they were crazy drivers. This was particularly true during a period where there were a lot of African drivers - not medallion owners, just friends of somebody related to the person who had leased the cab....and they drive as if they were on a dirt road in Africa. But this was NYC.
So the taxi industry had a lot of problems, but so does Uber. Some of the drivers are very sketchy (I had one show up with her entire family in the backseat, and I was supposed to sit with them) and a lot of them don’t know the city and don’t seem to be able to use GPS.
So there’s probably a lot of factors involved in the drop in clientele.
I read that the long term business model was the “driver-less” vehicle.
Interesting article. Interesting comments. Like the fashion industry where customers today can buy the best clothes cheaply, thanks to sweat shops, the taxi industry is where customers today can buy the best lift services cheaply, thanks to gullible drivers. The optimal situation is to use one’s own car, scooter or bicycle.
Good post - thanks for that information.
Heck we’ve already used Uber 2 or 3 times to bring suff we forgot in Brooklyn up to Monroe NY. Was totally worth it.
Creative destruction?
At least they aren’t putting many miles on their cars.
And gas is pretty cheap.
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