Expedia to Eliminate 1,500 Jobs as Travel Growth Moderates | Hacker News Reader

Expedia to Eliminate 1,500 Jobs as Travel Growth Moderates

bloomberg.com

53 pointsmfiguiere25 comments

The business model has run its course. They banked for years on superior software integrations than any individual provider could match. But when was the last time you didn't just book something directly nowadays? Maybe they live on as some kind of API provider, but the travel aggregators are starting to seem like something from a bygone era.

I book almost all my travel through capital one or Amex credit card points. Am I getting fleeced by not booking directly now?

It's not so much about the price, as the horrible reputation they've built on leaving customers out to dry and ruining vacations with no recourse. Amex is an exception here. But even the slightest possibility of being hit with "sorry we don't have you in our system, you'll have to call Expedia" makes it a nonstarter for me after dealing with it.

> “With so much technical achievement over the last 12 months and so much tech debt behind us, we now are obliged to take a close look at roles, skills, teams, and locations to ensure that our resources are focused in the right areas,” Kern wrote in the memo

This is such a tone deaf statement. "Thanks for all your hard work! As a reward, you are now fired!" How could Expedia's PR department let this through?

It really is. It's like "Hey, thanks for picking up a bucket and scooping water out of the ship. Now that we've been saved, we're gonna need you to jump overboard because we want bigger rations."

Missed opportunity for a metaphor... "we're gonna need you to walk the plank".

But fundamentally, I don't think this is an indefensible stance. There are many industries that hire seasonally or for specific projects, and where the expectation is that you will need another job when the season is over / the task is done. Tech is actually pretty "seasonal", going through cycles of manic, excessive hiring and then belt-tightening and layoffs at the first sign of any headwinds. It's been like that for 30+ years.

The problem is that nobody is going to be honest with you. In fact, in the fat years, tech workers are coddled and told they're family. I can't really see the industry changing any time soon, so if you want to stay sane, just don't fall for the lies. By the end of the day, you're just a delivery guy for a very posh version of UPS.

I agree that there are plenty of seasonal roles, but you'd hope they'd leverage contract positions for that.

Hope all you'd like but that doesn't change the fact that they'll do whatever they want because you have no power.

> The problem is that nobody is going to be honest with you.

Isn't that what makes it indefensible?

We need to unionize and get residuals. 0.0001 cent each time a line of our code execute might be a good start.

Because SWE are famously underpaid. I'm much more concerned about less privileged staff and their work being properly valued

So group X should not fight for better pay because somewhere there exist groups Y and Z who are more underpaid?

You can care about more than one thing at once

I hope you get your medal!

Never thought I'd see the day when software engineers would argue that sloccount is a good productivity metric. Loving it.

If folks were higher to fix the problems, what are they supposed to be doing once they’re fixed though? Be paid indefinitely for the work done X years ago?

You’d assume they’d have other projects to move their employees to, or alternatively, use contract work to temporarily employ people meant for time bound tasks of this kind.

Exactly! Couldn't have said this better myself. Contract work was one of my first thoughts after I read that first line. There is nothing wrong with short or medium-term work that requires more flexible employment arrangements, as long as that's understood by both parties. Hiring full-time then letting go "once the work is done" is something else altogether.

I mean what is supposed to happen here. They may now have gotten handle on previous architecture astronautery after spending ton of money of tech resources. Should they just jump on some CloudNative Microservice NextGen 2.0 or whatever to keep people who have no work employed?

What do you want them to say? Isn't it kind of refreshingly honest?

I mean, once people finish the work that needs to be done, and if there isn't any more work to be done... those people get let go.

Not sure what you think the alternative is? Or how else to word it? People generally prefer honesty.

Refer to another reply comment on this chain by supriyo-biswas:

> You’d assume they’d have other projects to move their employees to, or alternatively, use contract work to temporarily employ people meant for time bound tasks of this kind.

> I mean, once people finish the work that needs to be done, and if there isn't any more work to be done... those people get let go

Except , companies tend to hire and fire rather periodically which is a huge waste in terms of "lead time" (it takes an employee x months to be productive) not to mention demoralizing to employees. The alternative seems to be to have better planning or a decent enough roadmap rather than cater to the whims of Wall St ?

>How could Expedia's PR department let this through?

It's for shareholders. Who cares about anyone else?

"Use and toss" culture: https://medium.com/@trendguardian/why-we-are-dispensable-7a5...

Sama used to be on this board. Recently replaced by scale ai Alex wang

Reply on news.ycombinator.com