Twelve days after announcing the slashing of 3,700 jobs, Uber says it is laying off another 3,000 workers and closing one of its San Francisco offices entirely.
In an email to employees on Monday, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the second wave of layoffs, which brings the pandemic-related job hemorrhage at the company to 25 percent of its total workforce, as the SF Business Times reports. The company had an estimated 26,900 employees as of December, and now will have around 20,000.
Uber is reportedly still moving ahead to consolidate workers into its swanky new offices in Mission Bay, adjacent to the Chase Center. But 500 workers who have been in offices on Pier 70 nearby will be moving in first as the company says it will close that office entirely. The Business Times explains that this office was primarily home to Uber\'s Advanced Technology Unit. The Mission Bay campus is reportedly set for move-in soon.
In total, Uber is closing or consolidating 45 offices around the world, including its Singapore office.
\"I’ve said clearly that we had to take tough action to resize our company to the new reality of our business and that I would come back to you this week with the specifics,” Khosrowshahi said in the company email. “Today, I have the specifics.\"
He went on to say that Uber Eats is the company\'s \"next enormous growth opportunity,\" which was presaged last week with the leak about Uber\'s in-process deal to acquire GrubHub. But, as TechCrunch notes, Khosrowshahi added that Eats still is not profitable, and not even close, despite some accelerated growth during the pandemic lockdown.
He said the company could not wait for the world to \"return to normal within any predictable timeframe.\" \"People are rightfully staying home, and our Ride business, our main profit generator, is down around 80%,\" Khosrowshahi said. \"We’re seeing some signs of a recovery, but it comes off a deep hole, with limited visibility as to its speed and shape.\"
It\'s not clear how many of this latest round of job losses are based in San Francisco, or which departments might be most effected. To date, per the Chronicle last week, the Bay Area has seen 114,000 jobs lost in the last two and a half months. As of May 12, Uber had only indicated that 52 of its initially announced 3,700 job cuts were in the Bay Area.
As TechCrunch reported, Uber is looking into expanding an app that could prove critical for unemployed shift workers in the coming year: UberWorks. The app helps connect shift workers with available work, and it launched in Chicago in October.
Photo: Uber/Twitter
