- Uber laid off 435 employees on Tuesday in its engineering and product departments, TechCrunch first reported.
- In a statement, Uber said the move was about staying nimble as a 27,000-person, global company.
- Tuesday’s firings follow a similarly sized cull in Uber’s marketing department in July.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Uber fired 435 employees from its product and engineering teams on Tuesday in its second major round of layoffs this year.
170 people have departed the company’s product team, with another 265 engineers leaving as well, an Uber representative confirmed to Business Insider. TechCrunch first reported the news.
In a statement, an Uber representative said the latest layoffs were another bid to find efficiencies in a now decade-old company and remain agile in a competitive field.
“Our hope with these changes is to reset and improve how we work day to day-ruthlessly prioritizing, and always holding ourselves accountable to a high bar of performance and agility,” the representative said.
"While certainly painful in the moment, especially for those directly affected, we believe that this will result in a much stronger technical organization, which going forward will continue to hire some of the very best talent around the world."
Tuesday's layoffs follow a hiring freeze in some departments in the United States as Uber seeks to cut costs and become profitable and appease anxious investors. That hiring freeze has since been lifted, the representative confirmed.
Read more: Uber marketing employees describe a 'bloodbath' when the company laid off 400 workers
Earlier in August, nervous engineers told Business Insider they feared they could be next. Other cost-cutting measures have included nixing the traditional balloons that employees receive on their work anniversaries and asking employees to be conscious about their travel expenses.
Among the cost-cutting efforts, however, are new investments that will expand Uber's presence well beyond its Silicon Valley roots. The company this week announced a $200 million investment in a new Chicago office to house a growing freight team, as well as a new office in Dallas to house sales and human resources employees.
Shares of Uber rose some 3.3% in trading Tuesday but remain more than 20% below initial trading prices following the company's massive IPO earlier this year.
Are you an affected Uber employee? We want to hear from you. Get in touch with this reporter at [email protected]. Secure contact methods are available here. We can keep you anonymous.
More Uber news:
- Uber's trucking division has hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars. Here's why the tech giant is betting another $200 million on freight and opening a dedicated Uber Freight HQ.
- Uber is opening massive new offices in Chicago and Dallas despite recent cost-cutting efforts
- You can now book an Uber ride without a phone for the first time