Hacker News Reader

Comment by ssully | Hacker News Reader

Related, but Uber is said to be hiring 2,00 for it's new Chicago office next year [1]. A mix of engineering and operations. My understanding this would be under their freight team, which according to this Techcrunch article, was unaffected by this layoff.

[1]: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-uber-hiring-o...

View on HN

I really take all this "will hire xx people in y location" with a grain of salt. This is all marketing speak intended for the tax handout. I don't really believe they will hire that many people if their business tanks

The difference is that this isn't some company with an existing footprint in a city saying "hey we're gonna hire some more people for our office here". In both the case of Chicago and especially Dallas, Uber is making significant real estate commitments to go along with these hiring plans. You don't buy up an entire skyscraper office building (and several plots of land around it) and open an entirely new office unless you're either 1) actually planning on filling it or 2) in such dire straits that you're willing to do really whacky shit to make people think you are planning on filling it.

With Uber, it could be either one, but I certainly don't think it's just run-of-the-mill 'marketing speak'.

I don't believe Uber is buying a building, rather leasing out space, which can always be re-negotiated. There have many examples of companies promising a certain number of jobs and never fulfilling them, because who is looking. For example, Foxcon. Also, Uber once committed to build a HQ in Oakland and signed a huge lease. Soon after, they abandoned that plan and started building a brand new HQ in SF

The current deal that I've read for Uber's Dallas expansion is that they currently are leasing about 1/3rd of a brand new skyscraper that was just built, have plans to lease 90% of a brand new skyscraper that is currently being built, and also outright purchased several plots of land where they are planning on building office building that they will own.

edit: After reading a few different articles it seems like every article says a different story about how much space Uber is committing to, so maybe you're right, it does sound a little wishy-washy.

They also recently announced plans to hire 3,000+ in Dallas [1] at a brand new massive office. I'm sure the hiring and layoffs are from different business units, but it does seem strange that there's been multiple several-hundred-people-layoff stories form Uber recently at the same time they're announcing otherwise massive hiring expansion. I would at least figure that they would prefer to transfer engineers between units rather than to layoff and hire anew.

1: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Dallas-Leaders-Approve-Abo...

Maybe some of them were given an option, but they didn't want to move locations; so they just decided it's better to pay them severance while they look for other work? /guess

Does Uber have different pay scales depending on location?

I can't possibly imagine they're paying 3000 Dallas employees a bay area salary.

All companies that are Uber's size will have pay scales depending on location.

Yes.

Interesting if this is a way to get out from under crushing Bay Area tech salaries.

I still see zero reason a company like Uber should be based in San Francisco. We landed a man on the moon with parts built all over the United States, so it's not "that's where the talent is".

> I still see zero reason a company like Uber should be based in San Francisco. We landed a man on the moon with parts built all over the United States, so it's not "that's where the talent is".

It's exceptionally difficult to get investment money if a tech company isn't located in the Bay Area or Seattle.

The US has had quite a bit of migration in it since a man landed on the moon.

Uber said the same thing about bringing 3,000 jobs to Oakland, but that didn't materialze because of... drumroll... the need for profitablity. In 2017. https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ditched-massive-headqua...

Maybe they are shifting headcount away from the Bay Area?

that would make sense for a business with low margins. i'm surprised more companies aren't doing it.

They have been expanding in Palo Alto

PA will probably command even higher salaries than SF though.

PA would be the absolute worst place in the world for a low margin business to expand into. I really have no clue how they arrived at such a conclusion. I can only imagine, it had something to do with investors.

I visited downtown chicago for first time. I'm sure the winter sucks, but it's really a nice city.

Unless there was a performance issue then why not allow these employees to transfer if they want to?

Because they will likely want to hire in Chicago at much lower salaries than SF but asking someone to eat a big salary reduction is hard.

Might be that the company is that disfunctional. Between the news articles and the horrendous software quality, it seems to me the company is a mess.

What horrendous software quality? Uber consistently puts out some of the cleanest mobile experiences for a mass market app, and their research teams put out great OSS work.

Have you tried to use the Android app? I have programmed Android for five years and I can confidently say that the Uber Android app is a disaster. Both usability and bugs.

On the database side, there's a place in my city that has some permanent bad data in the db so that it won't allow anyone to get picked up or taken there. I go there frequently by Uber and have to set the pin a few blocks away from the corrupted area then explain to the driver where I am or where I am going. It's like there's a ghost car attached to that place because every time I try to get a ride from there, it says it's finding me a ride, followed by an error message that the driver is unavailable. Had a painful back-and-forth with support about this and of course nothing every got done.

While the Android app is of poor quality and no one is rushing to fix it, Uber engineers are busy putting out open source software and plenty of it. Talk about resource mismanagement!

For several months, Uber tells the driver my house is on the other side of the street. Verified that Google Maps, Apple Maps, and OSM all have my house on the correct side.

Maybe they did? If you are an engineer in San Francisco, switching companies is trivial compared to relocating your life across the country to a place where you may not want to live.

I'm pretty sure everyone on HN has gotten an email this week from uber-freight talking about their "HYPER growth!".

It's really so tone deaf to have recruiters to be talking about their unique culture and rapid growth right after HQ lays off hundreds of people.

Do you mean 2,000?

Logistics is a pretty mature industry as far as earning a sustainable profit goes. It would make sense they would be unaffected compared to their typical taxi type service.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com