Oct. 14 (UPI) — Uber has laid off about 350 employees in its self-driving, Uber Eats and other teams, marking the final phase of layoffs that began earlier this year, the company confirmed Monday.
The announcement by Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in a companywide letter to employees marks the third and final round of cuts this year. The layoffs started in August, when about 400 employees in the California-based ride sharing company’s marketing team were laid off. Last month, 435 employees were laid off from the company’s engineering and product teams.
Uber’s advanced technology group, Eats, global ride and platform departments, will be affected this time, Khosrowshahi said in the email, along with performance marketing and recruiting.
“Days like today are tough for us all,” Khasrowshahi wrote.
“The ELT (executive leadership team) and I will do everything we can to make certain that we won’t have another day like this ahead of us,” he added. “We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren’t being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow.”
About 1 percent of the company has been laid off in total, an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch.
It’s also the first round of layoffs for the self-driving division, since it developed its own unit in April.
TechCrunch previously reported that the layoffs come after Khosrowshahi asked his executive leadership team if they were to start over would their respective organizations look the same. A spokesperson said engineering and product team leaders responded ‘no’ and Chief Product Officer Manik Gupta and Chief Technology Officer Thuan Pham had found duplicate roles.
