Uber continues to downsize its global team amid mounting losses. Its its recent round of downsizing the company will layoff about 350 employees.
The company has had a history of bleeding money amidst increased competition in the US and abroad. The company had a disappointing IPO in May, and since then the company has been undertaking measures towards cost control. With its focus on reorganisation and controlling costs – the company has laid off more than 1000 people over the last few months. In August 2019, Uber reported its largest quarterly loss ever – for the quarter ending June: $5.2 billion.
In his statement to the Uber team on the reorganization and layoff’s – Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says – “our leaders have looked carefully at their teams to ensure our organizations are structured for success for the next few years 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”
The latest layoffs account for about 1% of the company’s manpower and follow two other rounds in roughly four months. Earlier, in September, Uber laid off about 435 employees primarily from its product and engineering teams, and prior to that, around 400 people from its marketing division.
It is understood that the present round of layoffs will also have a small impact on the Uber India’s manpower, to the extent of about 10 – 15 % of the total layoffs announced.
Below is Khosrowshahi’s full email with the subject line, “Stronger moving forward”:
Team Uber,
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.
Today is the last wave of a process we began months ago with our Marketing team, and more recently, with our Product and Engineering teams. This time, ATG, Eats, Global Rides and Platform (Rides Ops, CommOps, Safety & Insurance, U4B, and Product Ops), Performance Marketing, and Recruiting have made changes. As part of this exercise, some of our employees are being asked to relocate, and around 350 will be leaving the company.
Days like today are tough for us all, and the ELT and I will do everything we can to make certain that we won’t need or have another day like this ahead of us. 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.
We have proven ourselves to be not only one of the most ambitious and innovative companies in the world, but also one of the most resilient. We’ve always pushed through tough times and come out the other side a better and stronger company—that will continue to be true tomorrow, and every day after.
As always, we’ll be at the All Hands tomorrow and will dedicate most of the time to answer your questions. Add yours to the slido here.
Eyes forward—back to building.
Dara
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