Uber is cutting 3,300 jobs despite double-digit growth as it makes room for its robotaxi future

Uber announced on Wednesday that it will be laying off 3,300 employees, a tenth of its workforce worldwide, marking the largest cuts since the Covid pandemic. The CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, emphasized that the decision was not driven by a downturn in the economy, but rather aimed to streamline the company's operations as it prepares for its future in robotaxis.

Uber has grown exponentially in the past five years, but the company's size made it difficult to manage effectively. To address this, Khosrowshahi reduced the number of employees who were seven layers or more removed from the CEO, cut the number of "micro-teams" in half, and combined delivery operations teams into larger ones. The CEO also revealed that the organization's restructuring was influenced by employee feedback that Uber spent too much time coordinating rather than building, shipping, or serving customers.

The savings from the restructuring will be reinvested in growth, innovation, and the development of autonomous vehicles. Uber's president and chief operations officer, Andrew MacDonald, predicted that nobody will own a car in the next 15 to 20 years, and self-driving cars and other forms of transportation will fill the void. Uber is allocating $10 billion to self-driving cars, with 120,000 cars expected to be deployed by partners by Q2 2026.