Uber to cut 10% of global workforce

Company operates its Centre of Excellence in Limerick

Uber is also mandating that only about 1% of employees can be remote going forward.

Uber Technologies 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.

Chief Executive Officer 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.” 

In 2015, Uber opened a Centre of Excellence in Limerick, its first such centre outside the US. Most recent accounts filed by the firm for 2024 show it employed 445 workers there.

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.

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 $10bn 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, Lucid Group, Nuro and Rivian Automotive.

Bloomberg