<story><title>Uber Lays Off 400</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/technology/uber-job-cuts.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codingdave</author><text>&amp;gt; The marketing team had more than 1,200...&lt;p&gt;I fully admit that I&amp;#x27;m not in marketing, so there are surely nuances I don&amp;#x27;t know. But that scale of marketing department is orders of magnitude above any other place I have worked, with the possible exception of IBM in the 90s. Just maybe... this was a reasonable move.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aresant</author><text>Uber&amp;#x27;s marketing &amp;#x2F; customer acquisition cost is their highest non-driver line item by a significant multiple.&lt;p&gt;They spent ~$3,200,000,000 ($3.2 billion) on sales &amp;amp; marketing in 2018 of which ~$1,800,000,000 is direct media &amp;#x2F; HR cost to drive customer acquisition.&lt;p&gt;In 2019 this number, as of the first quarter, has gone up substantially to a &amp;gt;$4b run rate.&lt;p&gt;With a burdened cost of $150k&amp;#x2F;yr for every single member of the 1,200 marketing team that makes up $180m of the total.&lt;p&gt;Uber operates in 600+ international major markets.&lt;p&gt;1200 employees (5% of organization total) covering and executing nuanced marketplace approaches for a budget of that scale is not out of range.&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;qz.com&amp;#x2F;1592971&amp;#x2F;uber-ipo-filling-reveals-how-it-spends-its-money&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;qz.com&amp;#x2F;1592971&amp;#x2F;uber-ipo-filling-reveals-how-it-spend...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Uber Lays Off 400</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/29/technology/uber-job-cuts.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codingdave</author><text>&amp;gt; The marketing team had more than 1,200...&lt;p&gt;I fully admit that I&amp;#x27;m not in marketing, so there are surely nuances I don&amp;#x27;t know. But that scale of marketing department is orders of magnitude above any other place I have worked, with the possible exception of IBM in the 90s. Just maybe... this was a reasonable move.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dalbasal</author><text>Since we&amp;#x27;re talking about tech startup marketing budgets, it&amp;#x27;s a good time to reread &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;yahoo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;yahoo.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;By 1998, Yahoo was the beneficiary of a de facto Ponzi scheme. Investors were excited about the Internet. One reason they were excited was Yahoo&amp;#x27;s revenue growth. So they invested in new Internet startups. The startups then used the money to buy ads on Yahoo to get traffic. Which caused yet more revenue growth for Yahoo, and further convinced investors the Internet was worth investing in. When I realized this one day, sitting in my cubicle, I jumped up like Archimedes in his bathtub, except instead of &amp;quot;Eureka!&amp;quot; I was shouting &amp;quot;Sell!&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>