Uber to cut 3,300 jobs to reduce management layers

(Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg)

Uber Technologies Inc. is cutting about 3,300 roles, or 10% of its staff globally, in a massive restructuring aimed at reducing management layers and reallocating spending into its ride-sharing, delivery and robotaxi businesses. 

CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes in an email obtained by Bloomberg News, saying that Uber’s growth in recent years has created “more layers, more coordination, more fragmented ownership, and in some cases structures that made sense when businesses were smaller but no longer serve us well at our current scale.”

The cuts will reduce the number of managers in the company by 20%, with some being moved to the role of an individual contributor, an Uber spokesperson said. The company didn’t disclose what percentage of managers would be laid off, however. The cuts also apply to people who aren’t managers. 

To make Uber “simpler and faster,” it is cutting the number of "micro-teams" with one or two members by about 50% and paring back the number of employees who sit more than seven layers down from the CEO, Khosrowshahi said. The company is also streamlining its core engineering, science and delivery groups, including combining its three operations teams for restaurants, retail and its white-label delivery service.

Shares of Uber erased earlier losses to rise as much as 1.7% in premarket trading after the announcement.

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Khosrowshahi

And as part of an ongoing push to ask more staff to work in-person at key office locations, Uber is also mandating that only about 1% of employees can be remote going forward.

Khosrowshahi said the changes will “generate savings that we intend to reinvest in growth, innovation, and the capabilities that will matter most over the coming years.” He said more investments will be made into drivers, couriers and merchants around the world, in addition to upgrades for its core business and work being done to build an “autonomous future.”

The move comes as Uber has vowed to commit more than $10 billion to robotaxi partnerships in the coming years as it seeks to transform its service into the go-to platform for hailing an autonomous vehicle. The company has reallocated capital in other ways in the past year, including by reducing its stakes in some companies and investing in Avride Inc., Lucid Group Inc., Nuro Inc. and Rivian Automotive Inc.

The layoffs follow more targeted cuts the ride-hailing company has made across its customer service and human resources departments this year.

Unlike Big Tech firms, which have conducted frequent job cuts in the name of heavy spending on artificial intelligence in the last few years, Uber had avoided massive reductions since the COVID-19 pandemic. It said in May that it would moderate the pace of hiring. The Sept. 2 cuts bring Uber’s overall employee count to just under 30,000 people, about where it was in 2021.

Khosrowshahi did not mention the impact of AI in his announcement, but the changes are also driven by a desire to use more of the technology to drive daily operations. The job cuts are taking place across the U.S. and other countries where the company operates in.

Uber Freight ranks No. 16 on the Transport Topics Top 100 list of the largest logistics companies in North America.