Uber Technologies is dismissing 435 employees, the second major staff cut in recent months, as the company faces mounting losses and a declining stock price.
The eliminated jobs are in the product and engineering divisions, representing about 8% of those groups. Uber said it was firing about 400 marketing employees, about a third of that department, in July.
Four months after Uber went public, the stock is trading about 25% below the initial public offering price. Last month, the ride-hailing company reported its largest-ever quarterly loss of US$5.24-billion. This week, California lawmakers are expected to vote on a labour bill that could dramatically alter the gig economy and foist new costs onto Uber.
Uber instituted a hiring freeze of technical staff in the US and Canada last month. A spokesman now says the freeze is over following Tuesday’s cuts. The news was reported earlier by TechCrunch.
“We are not doing this for Wall Street,” Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO, wrote Tuesday in an e-mail to staff. “We are doing this for Uber. It’s critical we get our edge back and continually push ourselves to do better.”
Uber has more than 27 000 employees, with intentions to add more to certain divisions. It outlined plans on Monday to hire 2 000 people in Chicago over the next three years to work on Uber Freight, a service to connect truckers with shipments. The company touts trucking as an area of potential growth, as revenue from ride-hailing decelerates. — Reported by Lizette Chapman, (c) 2019 Bloomberg LP