I was laid off from Uber — Here’s what I learned

I was laid off from Uber — Here’s what I learned

I was laid off from Uber the past Monday. While the news itself was tough to swallow, I do want to take a moment to reflect on my time at Uber, hoping it can benefit people at similar stages of their career.

About me

I joined Uber in June 2019. I was a software engineer on the Fulfillment Platform team under the Uber Marketplace org. My team was primarily responsible for managing the lifecycle of an Uber trip. This includes some mission-critical tasks such as handling ride requests, dispatching available drivers, and providing real-time destination updates.

About the layoff

I was laid off along with 3,000 other employees from Uber on Monday, May 18th, 2020. Including the 3,700 employees laid off two weeks ago, the total is 6,700 — about 25% of the workforce at Uber. The layoff impacted many orgs across Uber including engineering, product, operations, marketing, and HR. 45 Uber offices closed down globally as a result.

About the severance package

minimum of 10 weeks of severance pay
six months of health benefits coverage
additional month of equity vesting⁠ — Vesting cliff is dropped if within three months
impacted visa holders will have 30-day transitional work period to explore options
four months of outplacement service
company equipment such as laptops and keyboards can be kept

How did it happen?

I was technically on vacation during the day of the layoffs. I was driving back from Santa Barbara to San Francisco on Highway 101. I noticed a text message from our director of engineering around 11:30 am requesting to talk to me. I instantly connected the dots. I then checked my mailbox and saw an email sent by our CEO at 8:00 am that morning informing me that I was being laid off.

When I got back to my apartment in San Francisco around 12:30 pm, I hopped on a Zoom call with our director of engineering and an HR representative to receive my official notice for layoff. The call was formal and lasted about 10 minutes. I was given the details regarding my severance package. However, the specific reason as to why I was personally selected was not shared.

For the rest of the day, I arranged several one-on-ones with my manager and teammates to say goodbye. At 6:00 pm, my Gmail, Slack, and other company accounts were frozen. That was officially my last day at Uber.

How did I react?

On that day, I had worked at Uber for about 11 months. Like a lot of folks that were laid off, my instant reactions were shock, confusion, and sadness. With total honesty, I did not anticipate that this was going to happen to me. I was eager to learn about the reason for this decision, but management simply refused to share such details. I did feel frustrated, and even a bit angry, that I got laid off and was not given a reason as to why. But those feelings quickly subsided. Had I realized that this was my last day working at Uber, I did not wish to go out in anger and frustration, but rather to leave with positivity and gratitude.

The one-on-ones I had following the official layoff Zoom call were incredibly valuable. I was able to connect with a few colleagues, mentors that I was close with, and chat about the time we shared at Uber. There were two things I tried to focus on for each conversation I had:

Gratitude
Constructive feedback

I am so grateful for all the learnings and growth I’ve accumulated over the past year. I was extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to surround myself with such an amazing group of people at Fulfillment Platform. I made sure to speak from my heart and let them know the difference they made in my life.

Additionally, I advocated for providing and receiving constructive feedback during these parting conversations. These were some of the most incredible moments of learning I’ve had. The sentiments were so genuine as we openly gave each other feedback. That brought me peace, relief, and furthermore, a sense of excitement for growth.

I truly feel like I owe so much to my teammates for everything they have taught me. And it warms my heart to see the friendships I’ve built over the past year. While my journey at Uber has come to an end, I believe everything I’ve learned here has prepared me for whatever comes next.

Lessons Learned

I do wish that I was informed of the specific reasons for my layoff so I can clearly know what to pay attention to in the future. But here are some areas of improvement that I identified from the feedback gathered and personal observations.

Finish the last 10%

This is the single greatest lesson I’ve learned at Uber. This refers to the last 10% of a project. At Uber, we work with a service-oriented system that is distributed by nature. The work involved in standing up a service, creating an endpoint, or launching a feature goes way beyond just simply being code-complete and having test coverage. There is a lot of additional work that goes into observability, canary/shadow testing, documentation, alerting, SLA (Service Level Agreement) maintenance, etc.

As a new engineer with no previous experience with distributed systems, I was chasing new shiny projects without properly wrapping up the tail end of the previous one because I thought being code-complete was almost equivalent to being done. I was wrong. There are so many operational complexities that go into the last 10% in systems like Uber. In fact, I’d now argue that the last 10% is where a significant portion, if not majority, of the learning opportunities lie.

Note to self: Anyone can do the first 90%, but it’s the tenacity and diligence required to go through the last 10% that will make all the difference.

Be the supply to your team’s demand

The more a team relies on an individual, the less dispensable that individual is. For folks joining a new team, it can be valuable to identify areas the team needs the most help with, and then proactively provide support and develop domain expertise in those areas. This can help you become someone your team relies on and build a solid foundation for future opportunities. It would be best if personal interest can align with team needs. If the two do not align, prioritize team needs.

I did not start this way. Instead, I requested to work on things that were most interesting to me. For my first six months, I jumped between three different projects, and I didn’t establish true ownership for any of them.

Note to self: Understand what your team desperately needs. Fill that gap and become the owner of it. Be someone your team needs.

Closing

I hope this essay is helpful to someone somewhere. Big shoutout to my team at Uber that helped me continuously grow over the past year. This experience will always hold a special place in my heart. Thanks for everything.