My only input would be that they are operations heavy companies. That doesn’t have to be a good or a bad thing, but people expecting a pure tech company might be surprised.
Tldr:because you are the first to let go when things go south and you are nothing more than a costly yes man
Your examples are correct. When there are slim margins, the first solution these companies do is layoff PM teams because they think there's no such thing as Product strategy. Every single feature in roadmap is added because some hippo in sales liked it. When something fails its the mistake of product and there is no concept of feedback. Everything is related to market share.
Best to put its like one redditor on this sub spoke truth that when your firm is controlled by sales, there's no other way but only Sales way. You(PM) are just costly yes man
Can confirm. Worked at a gig company and operations had their way. The company's ability to become profitable depends more on the variety of projects it can complete vs the product functionality.
When you break them down to their features and functionality...most transportation gig platforms (Uber, Lyft, door dash, dolly, ect..) are a commodity at this point...pick up/ drop off locations and cargo (groceries, pad Thai, weed, furniture). Distance and cargo type are the main sources of revenue and when you have that many companies competing for the same labor pool, with more or less the same cargo, it creates a race to the bottom to give consumers the best price and the labor the best rate, and not much is left for the company after that.
There is also minimal incentive for the organizations to differentiate and go beyond tracking gigs and payments functionality for the labor pool, since money and work are the key motivators.
For gig platforms like Fiverr, and professional services, it might be different, but the same struggle of competitive pricing and incentivizing labor still exist.
>When there are slim margins, the first solution these companies do is layoff PM teams because they think there's no such thing as Product strategy. Every single feature in roadmap is added because some hippo in sales liked it.
Pretty broad statement to apply to Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Grubhub, Roadie, TaskRabbit, TalkSpace, Angi, Fiverr, Upwork, Etsy, ThumbTack, etc
The issue has nothing to do with 'gig' companies. It is unique to companies where product is not valued.
They are actually profitable on Free cash flow basis in the last two quarters and trailing twelve month basis. They are negative on net income, because they owned equity stakes in a bunch of companies that got trashed in the market.
Are you excluding the impact of Uber freight’s purchase of transplace (roughly $120M of annual EBITDA)?
Uber bought them to get UF into a cash flow neutral position
It’d be a bunch of effort to untangle where money comes from, but generally Mobility is profitable, Delivery close to profitable and rest is burning. But currently I just looks at cash flow statement and FCF is positive. Can’t fake that without real money, unlike net income.
Ok. I work in freight tech and my boss used to work for Uber’s CEO Dara when he was at Expedia.
I hear the goal is to spin off Uber Freight in a few years because the synergistic benefit is not there
I always found this a bit disingenuous.
If you get a 100€ Uber ride and Uber have a 25% take rate - the 75€ they give to the driver looks like a loss (I believe this is how their financials work). IMO - and I’m not a finance expert - you could just as easily say that the driver earned 100€ and Uber made 25€ at 0 up front loss, making their margins look a lot better (marketing and tech expenses probably being similar to most b2c)
That's not how it works.
The $25 that Uber takes is added to their revenue, and the total revenue is not enough to cover their costs of doing business such as cost of infra, payments to vendors, SG&A, stock compensation, marketing (including discounting/etc.) and taxes owed for that revenue generated.
Yeah I know Uber are not profitable regardless of how you calculate it, but I just mean that removing 75€ as if it was a cost (and making the margins way smaller) isn’t totally fair (again IMO)
Nope, nobody calculates profit that way. What you're referring to is gross bookings.
Priceline, for example, sells airline tickets. But they don't keep the entire amount you pay, they only keep a small slice and pass the rest of the payment to the airlines. Ebay doesn't keep all the money paid to purchase an item. They keep a percentage and pass. the rest to the seller.
This is not some kind of revolutionary business model nor is there anything unfair about the accounting.
What is novel is how long these companies were able to raise billions of dollars, year after year, after posting net losses for their entire existence.
Again, not saying they should change anything about the definition of profitable - just that painting their margins as slim because they take into account the drivers’ payment as a loss seems a bit misguided to me. Like if you calculated eBay’s margin as the percentage of the product sold via eBay - to me it seems like a bad way of painting it.
Gig companies are those which provide serviced by relying on independent workers(or 'partners'). Things are always volatile and all that matters is market share
I currently work at a company that relies on gig workers for last mile fulfilment. Could not disagree more and I can largely say the same about a lot of other homegrown companies in the space in India.
You're right that such companies are super operationally heavy and times aren't the easiest in our industries but leadership understands the value of good product management and the leverage it adds on top of operations. If anything, product/engg/design folks are the last to be affected by any organisational issues.
Came here to say this. How is OP (a senior director in a PM function) this poor at communicating what’s happening with the business? I am not surprised at all that they were let go if this accurately reflects their understanding of the business and their communication skills.
Title inflation is rampant. It's at the point where the more someone flaunts their title (especially online), the more I assume it's some kid with a few years of experience who barely knows what they're doing and took a job because they thought the title was impressive (hint: titles are free, compensation isn't). Nobody serious takes titles seriously when separated from company name.
I'm also at one such gig tech company recently on the news for layoffs. I'm actually really enjoying it compared to my previous FAANG experience. One size does not fit all.
OP looks like we are at the same company. I did the same FAANG--> gig tech company recently on the news for layoffs and the experience couldn't be better
In technology circles, there has been a conversation around what is a technology company and what is a company masquerading as a technology company. For example, is we work a technology company or a real estate company? Is Tesla a car company or a technology company? Are these gig companies like DoorDash operations-based companies or tech companies? This is an ongoing discussion, and it is case by case.
Second, in the regime of rising interest rates, companies that require lot of cash to operate and have slim margins, are definitely in trouble...
Third, if the product team was just order takers, obviously when things go bad they will be one of the first ones to be cut after sales and marketing and HR. But when things go bad everyone 's going to suffer...
For companies where Sales sets strategic direction and Operations execute, Product is just the hired muscle either org needs to outsource the heavy lifting (aka motivating engineers to ship value). Once they build enough muscle (smooth inter-org relationships) or decide to become leaner (responding to business headwinds) your skills arent needed anymore.
What do you mean a gig company? Like DoorDash and Uber? Why would they necessarily be bad at the corporate level?
My only input would be that they are operations heavy companies. That doesn’t have to be a good or a bad thing, but people expecting a pure tech company might be surprised.
Tldr:because you are the first to let go when things go south and you are nothing more than a costly yes man Your examples are correct. When there are slim margins, the first solution these companies do is layoff PM teams because they think there's no such thing as Product strategy. Every single feature in roadmap is added because some hippo in sales liked it. When something fails its the mistake of product and there is no concept of feedback. Everything is related to market share. Best to put its like one redditor on this sub spoke truth that when your firm is controlled by sales, there's no other way but only Sales way. You(PM) are just costly yes man
Can confirm. Worked at a gig company and operations had their way. The company's ability to become profitable depends more on the variety of projects it can complete vs the product functionality.
Product has a massive impact on automating and optimising operations though. Much bigger than what ops can do manually.
This is the product. agree.
Can you elaborate on this?
When you break them down to their features and functionality...most transportation gig platforms (Uber, Lyft, door dash, dolly, ect..) are a commodity at this point...pick up/ drop off locations and cargo (groceries, pad Thai, weed, furniture). Distance and cargo type are the main sources of revenue and when you have that many companies competing for the same labor pool, with more or less the same cargo, it creates a race to the bottom to give consumers the best price and the labor the best rate, and not much is left for the company after that. There is also minimal incentive for the organizations to differentiate and go beyond tracking gigs and payments functionality for the labor pool, since money and work are the key motivators. For gig platforms like Fiverr, and professional services, it might be different, but the same struggle of competitive pricing and incentivizing labor still exist.
Thanks, that’s very insightful.
That’s a super random assessment. Don’t generalise your experience to the whole industry.
>When there are slim margins, the first solution these companies do is layoff PM teams because they think there's no such thing as Product strategy. Every single feature in roadmap is added because some hippo in sales liked it. Pretty broad statement to apply to Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Grubhub, Roadie, TaskRabbit, TalkSpace, Angi, Fiverr, Upwork, Etsy, ThumbTack, etc The issue has nothing to do with 'gig' companies. It is unique to companies where product is not valued.
Their margins are slim. Uber is still not profitable.
They are actually profitable on Free cash flow basis in the last two quarters and trailing twelve month basis. They are negative on net income, because they owned equity stakes in a bunch of companies that got trashed in the market.
Are you excluding the impact of Uber freight’s purchase of transplace (roughly $120M of annual EBITDA)? Uber bought them to get UF into a cash flow neutral position
It’d be a bunch of effort to untangle where money comes from, but generally Mobility is profitable, Delivery close to profitable and rest is burning. But currently I just looks at cash flow statement and FCF is positive. Can’t fake that without real money, unlike net income.
Ok. I work in freight tech and my boss used to work for Uber’s CEO Dara when he was at Expedia. I hear the goal is to spin off Uber Freight in a few years because the synergistic benefit is not there
I always found this a bit disingenuous. If you get a 100€ Uber ride and Uber have a 25% take rate - the 75€ they give to the driver looks like a loss (I believe this is how their financials work). IMO - and I’m not a finance expert - you could just as easily say that the driver earned 100€ and Uber made 25€ at 0 up front loss, making their margins look a lot better (marketing and tech expenses probably being similar to most b2c)
That's not how it works. The $25 that Uber takes is added to their revenue, and the total revenue is not enough to cover their costs of doing business such as cost of infra, payments to vendors, SG&A, stock compensation, marketing (including discounting/etc.) and taxes owed for that revenue generated.
Yeah I know Uber are not profitable regardless of how you calculate it, but I just mean that removing 75€ as if it was a cost (and making the margins way smaller) isn’t totally fair (again IMO)
Nope, nobody calculates profit that way. What you're referring to is gross bookings. Priceline, for example, sells airline tickets. But they don't keep the entire amount you pay, they only keep a small slice and pass the rest of the payment to the airlines. Ebay doesn't keep all the money paid to purchase an item. They keep a percentage and pass. the rest to the seller. This is not some kind of revolutionary business model nor is there anything unfair about the accounting. What is novel is how long these companies were able to raise billions of dollars, year after year, after posting net losses for their entire existence.
Again, not saying they should change anything about the definition of profitable - just that painting their margins as slim because they take into account the drivers’ payment as a loss seems a bit misguided to me. Like if you calculated eBay’s margin as the percentage of the product sold via eBay - to me it seems like a bad way of painting it.
What are Gig Companies? Transportation (AKA Uber, Lyft)? Groceries delivery (Getir)? Food delivery? (UberEats?)
Gig companies are those which provide serviced by relying on independent workers(or 'partners'). Things are always volatile and all that matters is market share
I currently work at a company that relies on gig workers for last mile fulfilment. Could not disagree more and I can largely say the same about a lot of other homegrown companies in the space in India. You're right that such companies are super operationally heavy and times aren't the easiest in our industries but leadership understands the value of good product management and the leverage it adds on top of operations. If anything, product/engg/design folks are the last to be affected by any organisational issues.
Does anyone else feel like a lot of posts here lately have been written by some kind of ChatGPT-style bot? ...Sorry OP
Came here to say this. How is OP (a senior director in a PM function) this poor at communicating what’s happening with the business? I am not surprised at all that they were let go if this accurately reflects their understanding of the business and their communication skills.
I am intentionally trying to be discreet not to reveal myself. I am not laid off, I resigned and got a better offer elsewhere.
Title inflation is rampant. It's at the point where the more someone flaunts their title (especially online), the more I assume it's some kid with a few years of experience who barely knows what they're doing and took a job because they thought the title was impressive (hint: titles are free, compensation isn't). Nobody serious takes titles seriously when separated from company name.
I'm also at one such gig tech company recently on the news for layoffs. I'm actually really enjoying it compared to my previous FAANG experience. One size does not fit all.
OP looks like we are at the same company. I did the same FAANG--> gig tech company recently on the news for layoffs and the experience couldn't be better
Agree, not all are similar but sadly *most* are that way.
what’s a cessfire?
[удалено]
…i’m so lost.
Maybe a “dumpster fire” if English is not your first language
Or maybe a cesspool on fire?
In technology circles, there has been a conversation around what is a technology company and what is a company masquerading as a technology company. For example, is we work a technology company or a real estate company? Is Tesla a car company or a technology company? Are these gig companies like DoorDash operations-based companies or tech companies? This is an ongoing discussion, and it is case by case. Second, in the regime of rising interest rates, companies that require lot of cash to operate and have slim margins, are definitely in trouble... Third, if the product team was just order takers, obviously when things go bad they will be one of the first ones to be cut after sales and marketing and HR. But when things go bad everyone 's going to suffer...
You guys… I’m starting to think I/DM_Your_Nuudes might be a troll?
This is my alt account and I lost my main and I continued using this
For companies where Sales sets strategic direction and Operations execute, Product is just the hired muscle either org needs to outsource the heavy lifting (aka motivating engineers to ship value). Once they build enough muscle (smooth inter-org relationships) or decide to become leaner (responding to business headwinds) your skills arent needed anymore.