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by rantwasp 2228 days ago
uber never seemed like a rational company that thinks of the good of its employees (i know it’s a business, but still).

the cut deep, cut once method for layoffs is doing business 101, but still there are 2 rounds of layoffs at uber

1 comments

Dara hinted in his first email that there were more layoffs on the way. I consider them to be a single layoff, one portion of which took more time to execute.
Isn't hinting the worst approach in that case though? I can't imagine that the additional uncertainty helped with staff morale.
Isn't this the ultimate problem of corporate leadership though? You have basically four options when making complicated decisions:

- lie, by saying there is no discussion

- omit, by not saying whether or not there is a discussion

- discuss openly

- don't discuss, just make the decision rashly

Decisions like this tend to follow one of the first two options, but clearly none of them are great. They're all damaging in their own way.

Is it? You already laid off a large percentage of staff. Your product teams will have seen the data showing cratering revenue. Your top engineers are almost certainly already looking for new jobs anyways. You know you are going to have to make this move no matter what. Anyone with a brain knows that the status quo is unsustainable whether you say the quiet part out loud or not.

Better to give people a heads up so they can start getting their resumes in order, hitting up their networks, etc. rather than telling a blatant lie.

Internally, Dara was very clear that the layoff would happen in 2 stages for the different organizations