Read about them earlier today, they are getting ready for IPO. Can't help to think news like this has to do with building a better offer. The market likes these kind of news.
When someone points to a rising stock market as possible evidence of a strong economy, just keep in mind that the market likes it when a company fires a ton of employees.
Jobs for the sake of bragging about how many people are employed is just as useless.
Do what helps you make revenue, don't do what doesn't.
I am a fan of one-off utility of people, I think of everything like a commissioned trip to a new continent. Take risk, get the gold, return, distribute payments, disband. Reach out again if there is a similar project.
Keeping people around for no reason is folly and merely trendy.
> Jobs for the sake of bragging about how many people are employed is just as useless.
Not at all. Giving unemployed people useless jobs and paying them for it is great for the economy, and has been successfully used as a form of economic stimulus several times in the past. You are giving money to people who need it the most and will spend it in the local community and keeping them busy/out of trouble at the same time. Plus they have some skills for their resume when the job market improves.
> I think of everything like a commissioned trip to a new continent
It's a great model for the exploration business (or fields similar to it, such as construction projects, entertainment production and so on). It's not applicable to every single industry though.
I view the Instagram purchase as the most correct example. 30 employees and bought out for 1 billion.
I know so many investors and founders that are shy of certain dollar figures solely because there aren’t like 1000 people involved or some other arbitrary number of employees or personnel. Compared to the most accurate question “can I make a return on this amount of money, and what are those probabilities”.
Obviously there also are founders and investors that do ask the most accurate question, and they grow in number.
It does aggravate me to see this other slower moving culture with irrelevant perceptions of reality based on how many employees a company has. It seems rooted in a prosperity philosophy, where wealth accumulation is granted by compliance with morality, and high employment numbers satisfy that morality. And its like, wow how many times does that have to be disproven to those people, aren't they adults?
> Jobs for the sake of bragging about how many people are employed is just as useless.
They aren't useless in a society where the only means of survival is having a job.
In fact, in a society where the only means of survival is having a job, part of the social contract is 'everyone should be able to get a job'. Otherwise, you may get to meet a lot of angry, desperate people, with nothing to lose.
Vilifying a corporation that suddenly remembered they have a lot of random people don’t help generate revenue is odd. Similarly, assuming distress of a corporation when they remember to cut its workforce is just as odd. Its probably an accurate assumption, it just doesn't have to be and it would make more sense for corporations to be more nimble.
Maybe that corporation shouldn't have hired all of these people in the first place, and those people could have found jobs at places with more stable workforce plans.
Jobs aren't useless, but a job can produce net negative value. Consider other politically mandated jobs like gas station attendants in Oregon. These sorts of jobs (and the government guaranteeing a job for everyone) are downright dystopian - and further still, I can't imagine the path to a healthy society.
A lot of jobs produce net negative value, but the guy who pumps my gas, or the Wal-Mart greeter isn't at the front of that list. The guy who cold-calls me with telemarketing crap would be, though.
Everyone having an opportunity for employment is not dystopia. A real dystopia is when you have no good social safety net, but also have a large, unemployed underclass, which has no ability to make a living for themselves.
Uber is essentially a bet on automated vehicles. They cannot be profitable with human drivers, at least not as profitable as their market cap would require.
When someone points to a rising stock market as possible evidence of a strong economy, just keep in mind that the market likes it when a company fires a ton of employees.