So whether they are funded by VC's or large institutional buyers who are the majority traders on the public market, there is no difference and the companies continue to lost money.
The issue for Uber is that they need to change the narrative. They don't have the story that Amazon did, that they are losing money because they are reinvesting it back into tremendous infrastructure which will give them scale.
Uber is losing money because they grew very quickly so there were a lot of innate inefficiencies because of that. So these firings are a chance to right size the company and see if the new trimmed down Uber will now be profitable when eventually ridership returns to normal.
I feel bad for the people who got fired, but I also believe is was bound to happen, the current situation with Covid-19 just speed up the process.
The problem is that they have no self-driving cars and thus just represents the most massively over-staffed taxi-hailing mobile app ever.
I’d be surprised if we don’t see much more dramatic job cuts in the future.
Essentially for companies like Uber and Lyft who don't focus on fast growth, VC cash raising and generating little money with huge costs, the actual reality is that this is nothing more than the emperor new clothes. Unfortunately there are no sacred cows being saved here, especially engineering being affected in this.