Uber is laying off 10% of staff, or 3,300 people

Uber is laying off about 3,300 people, or about 10% of its global headcount, in a bid to cut management layers and invest more in its ride-sharing, delivery and robotaxi divisions. The company announced the changes in an internal email sent by CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and published online Wednesday. According to the email, the layoffs are part of a restructuring exercise that would shrink the number of managers by 20%, and some personnel in these roles would work as individual contributors going forward. Bloomberg first reported news of the layoffs. The ride-sharing giant is reducing the number of teams with one or two members by 50%, and letting go staff who are “more than seven layers down from the CEO,” per Bloomberg. Khosrowshahi’s email said the company is combining its engineering, science and delivery divisions. The company is also bringing together its delivery operations across restaurants, retail and direct divisions. Remote jobs at the company are going away, too, with Uber only allowing less than 1% of its staff to work remotely. “We’ve built new products, expanded into new businesses, reached more consumers and supported more earners, and become a much larger and stronger company. But that growth has also brought complexity: 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,” Khosrowshahi reportedly wrote in the email. The startup community will gather to answer a pivotal question: How do you build sustainably in the AI era?