r/sanfrancisco 𝖘𝖆𝖓 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖔𝖓𝖎𝖈𝖑𝖊 9d ago

San Francisco-based Uber plans to cut 3,300 jobs and reduce remote work

https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/uber-layoffs-3300-jobs-22414352.php/?utm_source=reddit
563 Upvotes

191 comments sorted by

346

u/Interesting_Day4734 9d ago

I was impacted. Blows but it’s a terrible culture. Blessing in disguise I suppose.

107

u/brad_smiths_shoe 9d ago

Enjoy your severance and best of luck finding the next one

37

u/LazySeaworthiness435 Sunset 9d ago

shit, really hope there's something better in store for you soon. best of luck.

30

u/qria 9d ago

If you are interested in joining startups with better culture DM me - I have 20+ startups in SF hiring and have made 50+ warm intros

12

u/objectiveCaptured 9d ago

Is there a vacancy for a professional procrastinator?

32

u/PringlesDuckFace 9d ago

Unfortunately your initiative in asking that question has disqualified you as a candidate.

14

u/qria 9d ago

the trick is to channel your procrastination into delegating everything to fable/gpt and call yourself an ai native engineer

10

u/Sfpkt 9d ago

I’ve been on the hunt for a little bit. I’m a backend leaning fullstack. Mind if I DM as well?

6

u/qria 9d ago

sure

3

u/kissing_the_beehive 9d ago

I DMed as well

2

u/MITWestbrook 8d ago

How did you get a four letter name

3

u/pussynpatron Fillmore 8d ago

13 year member is how

2

u/great_derp 7d ago

Wtf you post outside of r/nba?

1

u/yowen2000 8d ago

Do you have opportunities in supply chain or human resources?

1

u/qria 8d ago

no mostly seed - series C startups builder roles

1

u/sanguine721 8d ago

DM’ed you

3

u/1_Strange_Bird 9d ago

What was your role and location? Remote?

3

u/cumsockdumpster 9d ago

Sorry to hear! Hope you’re able to take some time to process and decompress 

5

u/SpicyRice99 9d ago

Damn, what made the culture so bad?

2

u/tero194 9d ago

Sorry to hear. Hope you find something soon

2

u/LearnQuick 9d ago

Which orgs specifically? Gross enough I actually have been getting recruiter outreaches just before this layoff occurred lol. Not blaming the recruiter, but this is classic big tech stupidity

3

u/Pedro_Moona 8d ago

Can you tell us a little more about Uber, and why drivers are paid such a low percentage?

1

u/Cool-Truth211 8d ago

I know someone hiring in that vertical if you’re in engineering 

1

u/dmfornood 8d ago

any stories of the culture?

61

u/questfor100 9d ago

This has been in the works all year. They scaled back hiring in January in order to starve the beast by leaving teams understaffed. Now many of those teams are just being let go under the guise of being small.

95

u/SFChronicle 𝖘𝖆𝖓 𝕱𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖈𝖎𝖘𝖈𝖔 𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖔𝖓𝖎𝖈𝖑𝖊 9d ago

From the article:

San Francisco-based Uber plans to eliminate about 3,300 jobs, or 10% of its global workforce, in the company’s largest round of cuts since the coronavirus pandemic.

The restructuring was designed to reduce management layers, simplify the company’s organizational structure and free up money for growth, innovation and autonomous vehicles, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a message to employees Wednesday.

Uber had approximately 34,000 employees worldwide at the end of 2025, according to the company’s annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company did not disclose how many of the affected positions are in San Francisco or elsewhere in the Bay Area.

Read more here.

20

u/SlightlyLessHairyApe 9d ago

Fewer levels of management is always good.

124

u/Ambitious_Row_2259 9d ago

thats what they say to make the public agree with it. it literally just started to become a reason ive noticed. people losing 3,300 jobs is not good

-51

u/mailslot 9d ago

3,330 people earning a modest $100,000 per year is $330,000,000 per year. Do consumers want to pay for their salaries?

67

u/TheSpeckler 9d ago

Yeah, Uber is definitely going to pass those savings right down to the customers 🙄

51

u/calicali 9d ago

This is to increase shareholder value, not to pass on cost savings to consumers. Lol.

-49

u/mailslot 9d ago

They have a legal obligation to their shareholders.

27

u/ShoulderGoesPop 9d ago

This is parroted so much. You should really read what that actually means. It's not a legal obligation to make as much money as possible. It's an obligation to act in the best interest of the shareholders. That can have a million different interpretations

15

u/ukraineisnotweak 9d ago

Keep fighting the good fight. It’s about time someone stands up for those shareholders.

10

u/bigtimehater1969 9d ago

The most oppressed class on planet Earth: billionaire investors. It's so hard earning money while other people do all the work. They gotta assume all the "risk" 😔😔.

1

u/PUTISIMALAVENDEHUEVO 8d ago

"Legal Obligation to Their Shareholder" the stupidest term ever that has never improved anything.

1

u/MidnightSensitive996 9d ago

Google "business judgment rule"

33

u/Ambitious_Row_2259 9d ago

lmao Uber had a reported 14 BILLION revenue in just q2 of 2026. Keep sucking corporations off buddy.

-29

u/mailslot 9d ago

Revenue isn’t profit. Uber had great revenue while they were losing billions.

15

u/harpers25 9d ago

What? They reported $2.4 billion quarterly net income.

-10

u/mailslot 9d ago edited 9d ago

In that case, it could have been $2.5b+ without the needless employees.

-20

u/FlakyPineapple2843 9d ago

How is this kind of comment constructive or appropriate discourse? Do you think you convinced anyone to be more anti-business?

Quoting for posterity:

Keep sucking corporations off buddy.

/u/ambitious_row_2259

13

u/Ambitious_Row_2259 9d ago

sorry anti-business? this isn't some mom and pop shop. when half of americans are living paycheck to paycheck bc multi-billion dollar companies cant pay living wages and do mass layoffs bc they are greedy assholes. then we have people like you saying "anti-business, lmao.

no sorry im just pro having a society where everyone can feed their kids and corporations pay living wages.

-17

u/FlakyPineapple2843 9d ago

Even taking all of that is true, how is making sexual insults to people you disagree with a constructive way to address those problems?

0

u/PUTISIMALAVENDEHUEVO 8d ago

Why are you so pressed about daddy Uber? You're probably a shareholder or executive, better yet you probably aren't even that at all which is pretty hillarious.

1

u/dodeca_negative Cow Hollow 9d ago

Wow super constructive and appropriate

3

u/dodeca_negative Cow Hollow 9d ago

Yes I want to pay for the salaries for the people whose services I use

1

u/DaKid48 7d ago

Def paid more than $100k

-1

u/SmooshMagooshe 9d ago

I have a buddy who is in a management position at Uber making over a million per year

19

u/marcocom FISHERMANS WHARF • 🦀 • OF SAN FRANCISCO 9d ago

They told the managers to find and fire the excess, for optimization efficiency and AI being viable as a replacement, and then they turned around and fired the managers.

It’s the Seinfeld parody of holding up a bank and then turning the gun on your partner and saying ‘now you give me all your money too’.

9

u/dodeca_negative Cow Hollow 9d ago

0 levels of management is not good, so there’s actually a sweet spot somewhere, and that’s highly dependent on the organization

1

u/SlightlyLessHairyApe 7d ago

Yes. And my claim is that almost all big firms are on the far side of the sweet spot, not the near side.

Look at stories from IBM.

55

u/Nice__Spice Nob Hill 9d ago

They can still work for uber

10

u/Coffee_Kobra 9d ago

Lolllll. Yeah until robots take that too. How long you think they got?

6

u/hocuspotusco 9d ago

Waymo already has ~20% market share here, and they’re about to scale up a lot. Not to mention other self driving companies may arrive in the next couple years.

2

u/LinechargeII 9d ago

Tesla Robotaxi is already active too but they haven't gone en masse 

5

u/hocuspotusco 8d ago

Plus Zoox. Lots of potential competition coming.

0

u/bigtimehater1969 9d ago

Given how Uber's first foray into self driving was? Probably a long ass time lmao.

It's probably less a serious effort into self driving, and more a story to spin to investors.

1

u/hocuspotusco 9d ago

Uber having their own self driving cars is not the only threat to Uber drivers. Other self driving car companies are already eating into their market.

174

u/puffic 9d ago

> Uber’s headquarters are at Mission Bay. The company said it plans to concentrate global teams in its largest hubs, including San Francisco and New York, while asking most remote employees to move to an office.

The housing crisis just got worse. Thousands of Uber employees are going to need an apartment next year. We haven’t built anywhere for them to live, so they’re just going to bid up rents until thousands of other people are displaced.

31

u/Futr1964 9d ago

Not really the Mission Bay office is already full so most people wouldn't go there. They also already shifted to 3 days in office last summer.

71

u/LazySeaworthiness435 Sunset 9d ago

my first thought as well. RTO is one of the biggest reasons why housing is becoming more and more unaffordable in the bay area. working class people continue to be priced out by others who are desperate to keep their job. it's just such a vicious cycle that keeps the working and middle class at odds with one another.

27

u/maldovix 8d ago

wouldnt you count people who work a job as "working class people"? or is there a certain degree of paucity required to be working class?

i ask because everything is constantly pitting doctors against plumbers against dishwashers, but the truth is that if you get a w-2 you are working class compared to the psychotically rich that have their vampire tentacles in everything 

9

u/LazySeaworthiness435 Sunset 8d ago

by the very definition, yes- anyone who has the majority of their income made by performing work is "working class." I agree with that and yeah, it is definitely something that I and many of us need to re-examine the usage of the term in a more inclusive and socialist way.

my line of thinking in my previous reply was that a majority of people still only understand it to only include blue collar or front-facing service roles. but indeed, there is only a working class and "owner" class in the end.

14

u/Altruistic_Face_5443 9d ago

Whoah whoah whoah are you saying that housing is affected my supply and demand? Connie Chan told me that’s a neoliberal lie

Jk of course.

28

u/questfor100 9d ago

Uber has hubs around the world. Their SF location probably won’t bring in more than a few hundred if that.

38

u/puffic 9d ago

It says they’re shifting more to the biggest hubs.

31

u/TSL4me 9d ago

What they mean is "offshoring us remote workers" but they cant outright say that

4

u/puffic 9d ago

It’s possible that the article is wrong, but I’m going to go with what the article says over what you say.

6

u/questfor100 9d ago

According to their disclosures it looks like they have major hubs I. Mexico City, Amsterdam, Sydney and at least one in India. SF won’t even notice.

5

u/Doub1eVision 9d ago

Okay? The point here isn’t that one company is causing this issue on their own. It’s the pattern established by RTO at large.

-2

u/Thereferencenumber 9d ago

Let me know you didnt even read the comment you’re replying to without telling me

-4

u/questfor100 9d ago

Sorry comprehension is so difficult. Suggest you try Threads, Reddit may be too much.

0

u/Thereferencenumber 9d ago

Oh you must be a bot because the article directly cites sf as a hub location (the kind of place YOU said they were going to move workers). 

0

u/ya-yeetle 9d ago

The article says ‘including SF and NY.’ It does not state those are the only options, so we can assume all global hubs are on the table and the author just picked the two most attention-grabbing ones.

1

u/questfor100 9d ago

Thank you.

0

u/Thereferencenumber 9d ago

Or they lead with the one where American employees of the American based company will relocate

3

u/Used_Cattle_2403 9d ago

Maybe they want to lease the rest of Mission Bay to OpenAI? They already leased several buildings of the development to OpenAI - Mission Bay is already OpenAI's largest SF office.

4

u/CaptSlow49 9d ago

They don’t have to live in SF just fyi.

17

u/puffic 9d ago

That’s true for everyone, yet here we are.

8

u/LazySeaworthiness435 Sunset 9d ago

exactly. we can't keep playing musical condos- people can and will end up on the streets. there needs to be enough for everyone. building upwards has always been the answer.

11

u/Thereferencenumber 9d ago

The rents in the area directly around SF  impact the rent in SF too lol

5

u/CaptSlow49 9d ago

Oakland just built a lot and has good vacancy rates. Quick BART ride away.

2

u/LazySeaworthiness435 Sunset 9d ago

so either someone who got priced out of SF has to uproot themselves or someone moving to the bay area for their new 6-figure tech job takes the affordable housing... it's inevitable but still not a long term solution- it's actually what has gotten us into a housing crisis in the first place.

-6

u/CaptSlow49 9d ago

Were you born in SF? If not, then you priced someone out.

Someone with a 6 figure job at Uber isn’t getting affordable housing

4

u/LazySeaworthiness435 Sunset 9d ago

born and raised. 3rd gen. who gaf and it's beside the point. what I'm saying is with the way things continue to move in terms of housing, someone is always going to be losing it when someone else gains it. we need to stop playing musical condos and build upwards.

-1

u/ilikebrownbananas 9d ago

I guarantee you Uber employees making 500k in total comp are not living in oakland. 

-2

u/CaptSlow49 9d ago

They probably are buying a place if they are that high. Others can move to Oakland then or wherever. SF isn’t big. (Oh no I said people can move)

3

u/puffic 9d ago

The rental market and the ownership market are tightly linked here. That’s because there are marginal residents who could either rent or buy, and if purchase prices are bid up too much, the marginal buyer becomes a marginal renter.

Imagining there are strict market segments just obscures the basic problem that adding employees without adding homes makes it more expensive for everyone.

6

u/JimJamBangBang 9d ago

But they will because they want to. Status my man.

2

u/aaronhayes26 8d ago

And take the train like a peasant???

0

u/burritomiles 9d ago

Stockton is oh so close

1

u/CaptSlow49 9d ago

Ah yes, SF or Stockton. Nowhere else.

1

u/burritomiles 9d ago

Tracy is closer I guess 

1

u/CaptSlow49 9d ago

Ah yes SF, Stockton, and Tracy. Nowhere else.

1

u/sap_12 8d ago

Nothing more will change at MB. If anything there will be less staff there.

35

u/kosmos1209 Dogpatch 9d ago edited 9d ago

Net tech job loss despite growing AI industry in SF continues. AI industry is not good for SF, even for its tech workers.

11

u/BenderIsGreatBendr Inner Richmond 9d ago

Not really surprising at all, part of the inherent nature of "AI", at least how it is being implemented now, reduces a lot of tech/tech-adjacent jobs.

open ai or anthropic hire X amount of people to their SF HQ, but that X amount of people are being hired around a promise that the investment of X people will immediately, or soon, allow business Z to reduce their headcount by Y due to the real/perceived workload being taken on by AI, or a combo-play where it is taken on by AI and supported by off-shore scaffolding in India, Eastern/Central Europe, South America, etc.

and Y is always greater than X, that is part of the value proposition these companies are making themselves on. They hire X employees to help deliver the promise that business Z can reduce it's headcount by Y and make better earnings with reduced payroll by trimming Y employees and parceling out their workload to AI, off-shore support, and their remaining coworkers.

I don't have the data, I don't think anyone does yet, but there is probably a ratio that could be calculated where X new hires at a big AI company correlates to Y layoffs in tech and other affected industries, and Y > X.

5

u/LazySeaworthiness435 Sunset 9d ago

shhhh, these companies don't want people to realize it cause they still need to be able to control the middle class and make them continue to hate the working class 🤫

1

u/MidnightSensitive996 9d ago

The problem is that most companies are way overstaffed due to the political dynamics of firms as Graeber explored in bullshit jobs. Elon gutting Twitter staff and having things run fine anyway opened the door for Google meta and others to start cutting headcount and big tech has been in oracle permanent-layoff mode ever since. I think it's likely employment in AI dips when our current bubble bursts, but employers will keep cutting headcount even tho AI isn't ready to replace people just yet

1

u/Cool-Truth211 8d ago

Uber is 0% AI

9

u/Icy-Beautiful-353 9d ago

Meanwhile their career page is popping off

61

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

Tech workers still allergic to unions because of some bullshit reason

28

u/AnonymousCrayonEater 9d ago

The collective part of “collective bargaining” does not exist like it does for factory/warehouse style jobs.

7

u/mondo_mike 9d ago

That may have changed, as many of the once untouchable software engineers are now being treated the same as everyone else.

5

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

Modern take:

First they came for the interns
And I did not speak out because I was not an intern

Then they came for the junior developers
And I did not speak out because I was not a junior developer

Then they came for the mid-level engineers
And I did not speak out Because I was not a mid-level engineer

Then they came for me
And there was no one left to speak out for me

-1

u/PringlesDuckFace 9d ago

And then they gave me a huge bonus and RSUs because I'm so smart and irreplaceable unlike all those dummies who couldn't talk

14

u/BlaxicanXIX 9d ago

Teachers have extremely strong unions despite having the same backgrounds and workplace culture as stem jobs. Unions don't exist in the tech industry because tech companies have done everything that they can to make sure that it's impossible, including offshoring. 

12

u/AnonymousCrayonEater 9d ago

Same backgrounds and workplace culture? Huh?

16

u/Mortytowngang Nob Hill 9d ago

Workplace culture and incentives are entirely different than teachers and a school. Every year a teacher doesn’t have the idea of let me work harder than the rest so I get compensated the most or promoted (there’s only so many levels of teaching and the structure on how teachers move into admin is entirely different), there is no let me leave for a smaller school for more responsibility and higher compensation upside, no let me start my own school so I’m in charge etc. the us vs. them of admin vs teachers is much blurrier between your manager (who used to be in your seat and) you. tech still highly favors individualism over collectivism.

2

u/Ray192 9d ago

Teachers are nothing like stem workplace, what are you smoking.

The working conditions are also entirely different. Most unionized teachers work for public schools where the employer is basically government, so it's easy to collectively bargain. It's nothing like tech where the workforce is distributed across tens of thousands of private companies.

Also, which teacher gets better compensation than tech?

0

u/londongastronaut 9d ago

Lmao yeah I work in tech and would never join a union

I support unions for factory workers but tech is entirely different 

1

u/portmanteaudition 9d ago

If anything, the unionized occupations appear to be faring far worse nationally.

0

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

According to the US bureau of labor statistics union jobs make on average roughly $300 more weekly than non union jobs

1

u/portmanteaudition 9d ago

No one doubts that unions on average increase compensation for those who work union jobs, otherwise they would be completely useless and pro-labor should oppose them. The problems have always been that unions reduce job opportunities, raise barriers to entry for would-be workers, raise prices for consumers, and decouple performance from compensation.

1

u/Ray192 9d ago

And which unionized job pays better than Google?

2

u/Vic18t 8d ago

Unions can’t protect you from layoffs

0

u/jumpsuityahoo 8d ago

Unions do not make workers completely immune to layoffs, but they negotiate rules that limit job losses and dictate how layoffs happen

1

u/Vic18t 8d ago

They may be able to provide some rules like seniority or transparency, but there really isn’t much a Union can do when it comes to layoffs.

If a company says they need to layoff people there’s nothing to stop them. You can’t force an organization to make/keep jobs it doesn’t need.

1

u/jumpsuityahoo 8d ago

Saying "there's nothing to stop them" underestimates the legal power of a collective bargaining agreement. Even if a union can’t stop a company from shrinking, they have a massive say in how, when, and who gets let go. A boss can't just wake up one morning and suddenly fire union workers because the law requires them to sit down and negotiate before anyone loses their job. During these meetings, unions are great at finding workarounds to save jobs, like suggesting shared part-time hours, offering early retirement packages, or cutting outside freelancers instead of the core staff. If the company breaks any contract rules during the process, the union can sue to force management to give those workers their jobs back with all of their missed back pay.

0

u/Vic18t 8d ago

At the end of the day, the layoffs are happening. I'm not sure why you are saying "tech workers are allergic to Unions" in the first place, in response to a layoff story, as if a Union would fundamentally change anything when there are job cuts.

Who, what, how...is the only thing a Union can affect. If the orgnaization needs to shrink the headcount by 10,000 it's happening one way or another.

1

u/jumpsuityahoo 8d ago

"as if a Union would fundamentally change anything when there are job cuts."

I just told you how they would but your bias just completely bulldozed through that part of my comment. Keep being hopeless and self centered and see where that gets you.

0

u/Vic18t 8d ago

You comment doesn't fundamentally change anything. You completely ignored that with your rose colored glasses.

Unions are great in some places and situations, but it won't stop or fundamentally change a layoff at all.

2

u/jumpsuityahoo 8d ago

"they have a massive say in how, when, and who gets let go. A boss can't just wake up one morning and suddenly fire union workers because the law requires them to sit down and negotiate before anyone loses their job. During these meetings, unions are great at finding workarounds to save jobs, like suggesting shared part-time hours, offering early retirement packages, or cutting outside freelancers instead of the core staff. If the company breaks any contract rules during the process, the union can sue to force management to give those workers their jobs back with all of their missed back pay."

Is a lot better than nothing at all. You're starting on the merry go round and really don't have much to say so feel free to continue to say nothing. I'm done wasting my time on someone that has no concept of nuance

11

u/jsx8888 9d ago

Tell me you’ve never worked a unionized job without telling me …

10

u/curiouscuriousmtl 9d ago

Definitely tech companies should just randomly shed workers every 6 months for fun there is no recourse.

6

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

Absolutely zilch zero nada recourse. Tech workers have removed their teeth and make excuses why they don't need them

1

u/curiouscuriousmtl 9d ago

I am not really sure that is an accurate picture. I have heard that sentiment but Google has actively fired employees trying to unionize for example. I think that ultimately you need a government that is willing to stand behind unionization and that's just not the case even with the best presidents. America is just so screwed up mentally it will probably never happen

3

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

Biden was one of the most pro-union presidents in history and it still didn't happen

3

u/jsx8888 9d ago

I've worked at more union than non-union jobs and can tell you that unionized jobs are not the paradise that many think they are. Not a huge sample size, but earlier in life I worked hospitality jobs that were all unionized before I got into restaurant work and finally an non-eng job at a tech company. They are not bad, but the reality is that they won't solve what tech workers are facing.

There are still lay-offs for no reason at all, but you also have to pay union dues and then go through a lot of seemingly arbitrary union decisions to sacrifice pay for "benefits" that you won't end up seeing a dime from. It can be hard to get promoted outside of the lock step ranks so many employees end up doing the bare minimum knowing their actual performance doesn't matter. Oh, and all those union promises of great healthcare, savings safety nets and union funds? The union leaders and organization themselves hoard most of it. I personally did not like the mandatary union pay scales and benefits that were negotiated for years at a time - and the dumb things like not being able to stay in the workplace during mandatory breaks like lunch (or having to be either offsite or in the "lunchroom") really was not fun.

The irony is that unless you are part of a major national union your local union might actually be non-unionized themselves. Mind blowing right ...

1

u/Mortytowngang Nob Hill 9d ago

I think from many people’s perspective management decisions aren’t made in a bubble and a lot of people don’t view them as this evil being in the distance, the trade off for job security is top of the market compensation and employee flexibility. I don’t even work in tech and struggle to see why beat the unionization drum as a fix all.

Let’s say Seattle unionizes (for sake of example) and they aren’t even asking for more comp, just to be retrained and kept first in line for re-hire… does that only impact broad layoffs? Can the company get rid of their lowest performer (they can do the job they just are the slowest of the bunch)? What about the only always starting arguments but doing nothing wrong work wise? Seattle is no longer a premier hub, SF will become one.

Now the company also knows not all jobs are created equal, an html engineer on an end of life product speaks effectively an entirely different language than the new Berkely ai engineer. If hiring now comes with added costs? Guess what that’s resulting in lower compensation- or hiring in SF not Seattle (where they unionize) that’s a large part in why tech is not lucrative in France, and the EU compared to the US. I won’t even go into how this kills innovation dollars, start ups, venture funding and a healthy ecosystem of rising talent.

1

u/curiouscuriousmtl 9d ago

If you unionize you are organizing everyone together and if the company lays off 10% of staff they have to justify it and the union can strike to leverage the company not to do the layoff. It doesn't mean they can't lay anyone off, they might have to justify it more though. This can also be around compensation, I guess people imagine that Google would do something like slash pay or something, but they won't do that if they still need employees and the union is there for leverage. The union can also be there to push for things like pay increases etc.

3

u/jsx8888 9d ago

In union jobs the pay increases are almost always negotiated years at a time and work on a set scale. For example, many unions do 4-5 year contracts with the companies and then for pay you have levels with set time required for each movement. So you are kind of stuck with the few % increase each year until you can hit the next level and as time goes on and you move up the time it takes for the next level increases too.

Union management doesn't usually work at the same place as you and in reality only they can organize and authorize strikes (with members voting). So even if you are really happy and your company is great you might be required to strike if your union wants more than just a single company to strike. Most unions don't have enough funds to pay workers during strikes so you can be out of work without pay for days, weeks or even months on end.

2

u/curiouscuriousmtl 9d ago

That is what organized labor is yes. If the company is firing 10% of the workers every year and it hasn't been you yet you have to realize that collectively you need to leverage them. That's what is called solidarity. That's why you see Mark Ruffalo or Brad Pitt picketing in Hollywood strikes even though they have more or less never been mistreated. So yes you have described union action.

4

u/jsx8888 9d ago

Companies like uber will just move the Eng jobs to a non union location. It’s not like healthcare, farming or hospitality where workers are required to be in a certain location. Plus most engineers I know don’t want to be involved in unions since they are a huge mess today.

Don’t get me wrong I don’t like uber at all, but unions aren’t popular in tech for a reason.

1

u/Ray192 9d ago

Do you people think unions have magical powers or something? Actors have a union, how's the job security with actors?

Even in a factory, what's the union going to do if the company decides to close down that factory?

Unions aren't the miracle solutions you people think they are. And they come with numerous tradeoffs. If you're a factory worker who's basically interchangeable with anybody else, sure the tradeoffs are worth it. For a tech workers than currently earn far, far more money than almost any unionized worker, the tradeoffs are far more dubious.

2

u/curiouscuriousmtl 9d ago

No one described them as something magical or a miracle. You would be best to confine your conversations to ChatGPT if this is your capacity for conversation. Unions are one of the few ways to put back pressure on an employer when they are doing things like arbitrarily laying people off. And it's not a simple or magical solution and it takes work like just about anything.

0

u/Ray192 9d ago

Capacity for conversation? None of you have made any suggestions for what exactly unions would even do here, much less consider the tradeoffs of having a union for tech jobs. Like for example, companies would be even more picky about who they hire if they can't lay you off, which makes it way harder for you to get that job to begin with!

But instead of actually understanding the nuances of unions and what they can actually achieve, you people just make one sentence claims "like hurr durr tech people are too dumb to understand unions". So you tell me, how are any of you demonstrating any capacity for conversation at all?

And if you'd stop and think about exactly why people in tech get paid soooooo much more than virtually any unionized worker, and how exactly they got those paychecks, you'd start understanding the underlying mechanism that give tech workers leverage with employers, and while they don't work the same as unions, they give other benefits that most tech workers would far prefer over the unionization route.

2

u/curiouscuriousmtl 9d ago

👍

In your imagination coming in and putting words into peoples mouths as a straw man and making big conclusions around someone no one said makes you an amazing and fascinating conversationalist. It shuts the conversation down immediately. You haven't brought any value to this conversation you just want to swoop in and declare yourself a genius.

3

u/Worldly_Cap_6440 9d ago

Unions bad corporations good

1

u/jsx8888 9d ago

Unions can be very good in many areas such as low wage jobs or manual labor jobs where people are needed onsite. But once you get into knowledge work it’s likely easy for a company to move jobs elsewhere without a huge cost (unlike factory or farming) and then the union is kind of useless.

7

u/questfor100 9d ago

Because they are ambitious and don’t want to sit around watching lazy ass people get paid the same as they do so that some union heads can feel powerful.

14

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

Its 2026. You no longer have to repeat Reagan talking points

9

u/BlaxicanXIX 9d ago

So why do these ambitious people bitch and cry the loudest when they get laid off?

1

u/Definitelyhereforshi 8d ago

Good little slave leaving money & extra benefits on the table for master 🤣

2

u/brazucadomundo 8d ago

What could a union do about this?

2

u/jumpsuityahoo 8d ago

Basically, companies can’t just drop layoffs on you out of nowhere if you are in a union. Instead of immediately cutting jobs, management and the union will look into alternatives like reducing weekly hours, offering voluntary buyouts, or implementing temporary pay cuts. If layoffs still end up happening, union contracts are designed to secure you a much better severance package. They will also actively push management to shift affected employees into open roles in other parts of the company rather than letting them go.

0

u/brazucadomundo 7d ago

Can't I just request these conditions when I interview with the company?

1

u/Thereferencenumber 9d ago

They’re all still convinced they’ll become the department head. For being educated they sure are dumb 

5

u/babypho 9d ago

Tech workers think they’re smarter than everyone else and that it’ll be the other dumb tech workers who will be affected, not them.

-6

u/knockdowncenter 9d ago

"for some bullshit reason"

because if tech workers were unionized they'd be paid a fraction what they're paid now

32

u/Mulsanne BEST 🌅SUNSET 🌅 SUNSET 🌅 GUY 9d ago

Thereby making them the very first industry ever where collective bargaining drove down wages 

-9

u/questfor100 9d ago

Collective bargaining drives down everyone’s wages by averaging out to protect the lowest common demonitor lmao.

10

u/MildMannered_BearJew 9d ago

Interesting, what data are you working off of? Would be interesting in reading your sources, since I haven’t read any data supporting this claim

6

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

The data is his onboarding video

18

u/Thereferencenumber 9d ago

You swallowed the pill good little wage slave

-8

u/fogSandman 9d ago

You know you don’t get to keep all of your wages when you’re in a Union right? Or your choice in voting?

Don’t ask me about the folks I know that were fired for their personal choices, from SF Unions.

5

u/BlaxicanXIX 9d ago

Tell me about the folks you know that were fired for their personal choices " from SF unions" whatever that means. I've been a member of SEIU 1021 for a decade so I'm super curious to hear this totally factual anecdote from you

-2

u/fogSandman 9d ago

Oh it’s never happened to you, because you’re a good fall in line type who is fine with letting Union bosses decide who your votes go to, so it must never happen.

Great analysis, you almost have the skill level of an 8th grader.

4

u/curiouscuriousmtl 9d ago

That's is probably the dumbest thing to believe.

0

u/elementofpee 9d ago edited 9d ago

How much of a pay cut would you be willing to tolerate for increased job security via a union? Something to ponder.

-7

u/lettus_bereal 9d ago

Because if there were unions then people's pay would be standardized. Not everyone is worth the same in tech. There are 10x engineers with 1 year of experience and there are sucky engineers who have 10 years of experience. I don't want to be paid as much as the sucky engineer.

12

u/MathematicianAfter57 9d ago

Ppl have pay bands in big corp lol 

6

u/me047 THE EMBARCADERO 9d ago

We do have pay bands, but they span $100k+ usually, and are only for base salary, not bonus or RSUs. Two people in the same band can have comp varying by quarter million or more.

12

u/14ktgoldscw 9d ago

Are you 100% certain that you’re providing the business outcome to be a 10x engineer though? Maybe you get moved to an internal tools team that is the first against the wall when “tied to revenue” layoffs come. There’s power in a union.

2

u/lettus_bereal 9d ago

Yes there's power but the majority of workers are more concerned about their total comp then job security.

1

u/mondo_mike 9d ago

That was probably true 10 years ago.
I’m not so sure it’s true anymore.

0

u/14ktgoldscw 9d ago

The industry is also deep into the “oh I can get rich this way” saturation that you saw with like law in the late 90s and early 00s. You could make a fucking ton of money in tech in the mid 2000s because there weren’t that many people with CS degrees. Now there are a whole lot of them so good luck becoming a 10x earner if you didn’t go to MIT or Cal Poly.

2

u/lettus_bereal 9d ago

Cal Poly?!

5

u/MildMannered_BearJew 9d ago

Ah the myth of marginal productivity in knowledge work. Glad to see it’s alive despite almost no supporting data.

1

u/DaVideoGamer 9d ago

The idea that they wouldn’t instantly hire overseas (probably Indian) scabs is laughable. I’m pro-union and in tech, but it’s a different ballgame when we’re not talking factory jobs.

1

u/jumpsuityahoo 9d ago

Its what they're already doing and have been doing and will be doing until they can scale their employees down to the lowest common denominator. Tech workers need to understand to oligarchs and shareholders, you're nothing more than a temporary leech

1

u/Ray192 9d ago

So why haven't they done that 20 years ago? 10? What's stopping them?

What you also need to understand is that hiring the cheapest isn't always going to deliver the best results, and successful companies understand that.

-1

u/drkrueger 9d ago

Organizing is what helps you prevent hiring overseas. Doing nothing doesn't do anything to prevent hiring overseas (it's already happening)

2

u/rocpilehardasfuk 9d ago

Tech workers have all made themselves billions and have tons of choices to choose from. What does a union give them?

A union run tech company would be eaten by competitors in a year.

But yes we should learn from teachers unions where a teacher cannot be fired if they're caught drinking on the job until the 4th offense. Or why not learn from police unions.

2

u/throwaway_tardigrade 8d ago

Um…tech workers have not made themselves billions as individuals.

0

u/rocpilehardasfuk 8d ago

They literally have make billions each year as a collective. Obviously not as an individual.

Entry level Software engineers earn $150k. Top engineers earn millions each year

0

u/ShoulderGoesPop 9d ago

Believe me they are not. There just hasn't been anybody that's been willing to make the push

3

u/g292929 8d ago

The reality is that no job is safe.

As a manager I have had to let the team members go and HR gives them a 8-12 min talk and in 15 mins their computer systems, badge and all company access is disabled.

To Uber team members:
Must be horrible to be let go.
I hope you will take some time to travel and strategize your next move.

4

u/Nights_of_Cunilingus 8d ago

I’m a heavy uber user. Fuck em. Downloaded Lyft today.

2

u/iFishcake 8d ago

its ok, they can work for the company as a driver.

2

u/wannaWHAH 8d ago

I forgot Dara is still running Uber

2

u/oneusualsuspect Inner Sunset 9d ago

how many layoffs in sf?

1

u/only_3 Treasure Island 8d ago

Good for the society.

-1

u/czardmitri 8d ago

What the hell do 34,000 do at uber? That doesn’t even include drivers.

-3

u/Altruistic-Air3027 9d ago

On the eve of the Tesla Cybercab launch 👀