Uber Cuts 3,300 Roles, Thins Managers 20% to Fund Robotaxi Push
TL;DR
- Uber will eliminate about 3,300 roles, roughly 10% of staff, bringing headcount to just under 30,000, a level last seen in 2021.
- Management ranks shrink 20% and micro-teams of one or two people are cut by nearly half; remote work is capped at about 1% of employees.
- Savings are earmarked for growth and an 'autonomous future' backed by more than $10 billion committed across Avride, Lucid, Nuro and Rivian.
Uber will cut about 3,300 roles, roughly 10% of its global staff, and shrink management ranks by 20%, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees on September 2, Bloomberg reported. The reductions bring Uber's headcount to just under 30,000, a level last seen in 2021.
In a memo to staff, Khosrowshahi framed the cuts as a structural problem rather than a cost problem, writing that Uber's growth has produced "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." Micro-teams of one or two people will be cut by nearly half, and the share of employees sitting seven or more layers from the CEO drops 20%. Some displaced managers will move to individual-contributor roles rather than exit.
The company is also consolidating its three Delivery Ops teams — Restaurants, Retail and Direct — into a single structure, and pulling core services engineering and science under one roof. Remote work is being capped at about 1% of employees, with the rest expected in an office three days a week.
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," pointing at drivers, couriers, merchants and what he called an "autonomous future." Per Bloomberg's reporting picked up by Yahoo Finance, Uber has committed more than $10 billion to robotaxi partnerships with Avride, Lucid, Nuro and Rivian, and is keeping open more than 500 roles, nearly all in engineering tied to autonomy. Uber's stock rose as much as 1.7% in premarket trading after the announcement.
The reorg lands in the middle of a busy stretch for driverless commercialization on our autonomous vehicles tracker, where Waymo just opened paid rides in Denver, San Diego and Tampa and Zoox began testing in Houston. Uber is spending its way to a seat at that table while trimming the org around it.
Originally reported by bloomberg.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Uber to Cut 3,300 Jobs — 10% of Staff — to Fund $10B Robotaxi Push