Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
The Information reports: Since Dara Khosrowshahi became CEO of Uber in 2017, he has been steadily pushing his engineering team to move jobs to India as a way of saving money. Despite some resistance from his top technology executive, Khosrowshahi made progress: about 15% of Uber’s engineering team, or about 600 people, is now in India. That’s up from 80 engineers in 2017.
Now Khosrowshahi, looking to control costs amid the Covid crisis, is taking steps to move a bigger portion of Uber’s engineering work to India. That has sparked an internal debate about the pros and cons of having so many of these jobs in India. It comes as similar conversations are occurring at other companies with lots of engineers in high-cost locations such as the San Francisco Bay Area, as businesses hit hard by the pandemic look to save money.
In Uber’s case, Khosrowshahi’s efforts follow the sudden departure in May of Thuan Pham, Uber’s longtime chief technology officer, who had resisted Khosrowshahi’s efforts to rapidly move jobs to India as Uber’s engineering ranks grew. Pham had argued to Khosrowshahi that hiring more engineers too quickly in that country would require accepting lower-quality candidates, according to two people at Uber who spoke to him. Pham previously told the CEO that if he wanted to go in that direction, he would need to do it with a different CTO, these people said.
His departure, which came as Uber was about to lay off engineers as part of a bigger wave of layoffs across the company, freed Khosrowshahi to take a more aggressive stance on the job shift. Khosrowshahi, a one time investment banker who later ran the travel giant Expedia, has taken Pham’s role himself temporarily while the company searches for a replacement.
Around the time Pham left, Khosrowshahi asked the engineering team to move more than a third of the engineering work related to the hardware and software that powers the company’s apps—also known as data center infrastructure—to India by the end of the year, said a person with knowledge of the matter. He also told the team he wanted most of Uber’s IT—which oversees the apps and other tech used by its 20,000 or so employees—shifted to India.
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Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
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1. Its a hiring bias. I don't know the reason but thats true for all companies (very evident at Indeed)
2. Take a reference wrt population and you'll be astonished how numbers are playing.
3. There are only certain category of people who hire people they know, it exists everywhere including US. Recently a Director here is hired by a US guy purely on the basis of knowing.
4. This is one point which is very well known. I myself have worked for 6 Indian managers and 3 US. I know many of them through friends/colleagues. Its safe to assume Indian managers are more micro managing and plays politics. I would definitely add - NOT ALL OF THEM though
5. Its definitely an outlier if you have experienced directly. There can be such outliers in US as well (only those who experienced it themselves would be able to pitch in here)
Significant % of the best people from India may already be in India, if pure numbers is what you’re hinting at.
As someone noted about micromanagement, internal politics it’s probably true with large software consultancy, but with more and more product based companies moving their bases gradually things are looking better.
Go Dara! Fuck USA immigration, fuck Trump.
Nobody wants to pay $300k TC for a taxi dispatcher. ; )
When I am traveling in cities I have had Uber’s and lyfts pick up in less than 2 minutes.