Uber Laid Off Hundreds Of Technical Employees From Product And Engineer Teams

Uber apparently has to go to great lengths in tightening its finance belt while the company’s still bleeding cash. However, this led to a cut of 435 jobs in the company and most of them are technical employees from product and engineering divisions, counting up to 8% of the total number of employees working there. In addition to the plan, the ride-sharing firm said in a statement that this “decentralized way” of hiring would help the company to keep up the growth in the startup-era period. Now, the most important priority is to set the focus on “lean, exceptionally high-performing teams” ahead of others.

Along with that, the recruitment needs to be more strategic. For example, Uber may continue recruiting new employees as it's claimed to lift a recent hiring freeze which is implemented in August. Unfortunately, the number of new positions will be as many as that of it was in the past.

A few weeks ago, 400 jobs in the marketing team were also laid off. As per Uber, several conversations related to the layoffs have been on the go for a long time, but the latest quarterly results don’t speak to these, but the firm’s financial performance is doubt with weighing on every decision. Now Uber has become a public company, so the call for turning to be profitable is more urgent than ever.

Though layoffs themselves don’t make any huge dent, the company will more effectively streamline costs and work while labor costs will likely go up due to a new law from authorities in California, which reclassify drivers as contract employees. If the law called AB5 is passed, the increase in paying for labor costs could exceed 30 percent for Uber, as estimated by experts. Agree to disagree with these, customers are responsible to pay the difference, as always.