Uber is slashing roughly 3,300 jobs worldwide as part of a sweeping restructuring that will also force most employees back into offices.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, 55, disclosed the 10 percent workforce reduction in a company memo posted Wednesday, framing the cuts as a streamlining effort rather than pure cost-cutting. The San Francisco-based ride-hailing giant currently employs about 33,000 people globally, making this one of its largest single rounds of layoffs in recent years.
“We are removing layers, simplifying team structures, refining our global location strategy, and focusing our people and investments against the biggest opportunities ahead of us,” Khosrowshahi wrote in the memo.
The restructuring comes with a dramatic reversal of Uber’s remote-work flexibility. The company will now concentrate global teams in its two largest hubs, New York and San Francisco, while pushing regional staff to designated regional hubs, local workers to country hubs, and technology employees to tech hubs.
“Global teams will be concentrated in our largest global hubs, NY and SF; regional teams in designated regional hubs; local teams in country hubs; and tech teams in tech hubs,” Khosrowshahi wrote.
Only about 1 percent of Uber’s workforce will qualify for fully remote status moving forward. The remaining employees face stricter in-person requirements than many have grown accustomed to since the pandemic.
“We’ll also continue to reinforce compliance with our hybrid work policy, which requires three days a week in the office,” Khosrowshahi added.
Wall Street welcomed the belt-tightening. Uber’s stock climbed 2.4 percent Wednesday morning as investors bet that leaner operations would improve profitability at the company, which has historically struggled to consistently turn a profit despite massive revenue growth.
The return-to-office mandate marks a particularly sharp turn for a company that, like much of Silicon Valley, embraced distributed work during COVID-19 lockdowns. The policy shift will likely hit hardest among employees who relocated away from expensive coastal cities during the remote-work era, particularly younger workers who have fewer roots in traditional tech hubs.
The layoffs land heavily on Generation Z workers who entered the workforce during the remote-work boom and now face both job loss and diminished geographic flexibility in their next search. Many built lives and housing arrangements around the assumption that distributed work would persist, making the sudden hub concentration especially disruptive for early-career employees with less savings and professional networks to absorb the shock.
Uber has undergone several workforce reductions in recent years as it has sought to prove it can achieve sustainable profits after years of growth-at-all-costs spending. The company posted its first full year of profitability in 2023 but has continued to face pressure from investors to trim expenses and demonstrate operational efficiency.
The Wednesday announcement represents Khosrowshahi’s most aggressive restructuring move since taking the helm in 2017, combining headcount reductions with a fundamental reorganization of where and how Uber’s work gets done.