Uber is cutting about 3,300 jobs worldwide as chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi restructures the business and redirects resources towards growth, innovation and autonomous vehicles.
The reduction represents roughly 10% of the company’s workforce and is Uber’s largest round of job cuts since the Covid-19 pandemic. Employees affected by the changes have been notified, although some countries must complete local consultation procedures first.
Khosrowshahi said the decision was not a response to weak trading. Uber’s second-quarter results showed gross bookings rising 22% year on year to $58bn, while revenue increased 12% to $14.2bn.
Instead, he said rapid expansion had left the company with too many layers of management, overlapping responsibilities and teams spending excessive time coordinating rather than developing products or serving customers.
“The changes we’re making today are designed to do two things: make Uber simpler and faster, and create more capacity to invest in our future,” he wrote in a message to staff published on Wednesday.
Uber is reducing by 20% the number of employees who sit seven or more management layers below the chief executive. It is also cutting the number of so-called micro-teams, in which managers have only one or two direct reports, by nearly half.
The company is merging its restaurant, retail and direct delivery operations under unified teams, while combining its core services engineering and science divisions. It is also concentrating staff in a smaller number of major hubs and asking most remote workers to move to an office.
Under the revised policy, about 1% of Uber employees will be allowed to work remotely, while the company’s hybrid policy continues to require three days a week in the office for many staff.
Uber’s job cuts linked to autonomous vehicle expansion
The savings are expected to help fund Uber’s push into robotaxis and other autonomous transport. The company has committed to investing more than $10bn over the coming years through equity investments, infrastructure and vehicle agreements with partners.
Uber said during its second-quarter earnings update that autonomous vehicles were already operating on its platform in seven cities, with deployments expected in as many as 15 by the end of the year. Partners have committed about 120,000 vehicles to the network over the coming years.
In London, autonomous vehicles developed with Wayve have received Private Hire Vehicle licences, clearing a regulatory milestone ahead of a planned launch in the coming weeks.
Uber abandoned plans to develop its own robotaxi technology after selling its Advanced Technologies Group in 2020, but has since focused on working with specialist companies including Wayve, Rivian, Baidu and Pony.ai.
Khosrowshahi has described Uber’s ambition as becoming the leading commercialisation platform for autonomous mobility, providing the marketplace, fleet operations, financing, charging and insurance needed to deploy self-driving vehicles at scale.
Andrew MacDonald, Uber’s president and chief operating officer, said last month that private car ownership could largely disappear over the next 15 to 20 years as people turn to shared autonomous vehicles and other forms of transport.
Uber shares closed 1.61% higher at $76.45 on Wednesday after the restructuring was announced.
