Uber Faces Third Wave Of Layoffs Since August
Marking the third round of layoffs since August, Uber has laid off approximately 350 employees across multiple teams in the company with the inclusion of Uber Eats. Shares in the ride-hailing company increased 3.2 percent after the news, CNBC reported.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in a letter to employees, according to the outlet, “As you know, over the past few months, our leaders have looked carefully at their teams to ensure our organizations are structured for success for the next few years. This has resulted in difficult but necessary changes to ensure we have the right people in the right roles in the right locations, and that we’re always holding ourselves accountable to top performance.”
Teams impacted by the layoffs include recruiting, performance marketing segment, safety units and advanced technologies group unit in addition to multiple platform and global rides units. The layoffs are said to amount to approximately 1.5 percent of the workforce of Uber that reportedly encompasses 22,263 employees. The company reported 26,799 employees as of June 30 of this year but hasn’t made an employee headcount known since that time, per the outlet.
Khosrowshahi also noted in the letter, “We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren’t being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow.”
News surfaced in August that Uber was instituting a tech hiring freeze among other cost-savings measures. The company reportedly suspended new software engineer hires and product managers as those departments had already arrived at employment capacity, an Uber spokesman said per reports at the time.
“We are continuing to aggressively hire talent, including many engineers, all over the world,” the spokesman said per earlier reports. “We temporarily hit pause on some teams while we ensure we’re being both effective and efficient in staffing against our strategic priorities.”