CEO Says Uber Has No Plans for Widespread Job Cuts

Uber’s CEO says the rideshare/delivery giant has no plans for company-wide layoffs.

Dara Khosrowshahi made these comments — reported by Reuters — at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland Thursday (Jan. 19), amid a period of sweeping tech sector job cuts.

Khosrowshahi told the audience at a Wall Street Journal event that Uber has worked for months to trim costs. It embarked on these cuts earlier than other companies, so much so that a memo the chief executive wrote on his more conservative outlook “landed a bit like a lead balloon initially,” Khosrowshahi said.

PYMNTS has reached out to Uber for comment but has not yet gotten a response.

His comments come as a number of tech companies are looking to cut costs during a period of declining consumer spending and ahead of an anticipated recession.

Amazon began its latest round of job cuts Wednesday (Jan. 18), a workforce reduction that is expected to impact more than 18,000 employees, and its largest layoff ever. The cuts will reportedly affect 1% of Amazon’s total workforce and 6% of its corporate employees.

Also on Wednesday, Microsoft announced it was letting go of 10,000 workers, a number that represents just under 5% of its staff. CEO Satya Nadella told employees the layoffs were happening as the company had seen “significant” changes.

“First, as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less,” Nadella said. “We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.”

With those cuts, Amazon and Microsoft continued a wave of layoffs that have hammered the tech sector since last year, when companies cut 153,000 positions.

Among those companies was Uber rival DoorDash, which announced in November it was laying off 1,250 workers, or 14% of its staff worldwide.

CEO Tony Xu wrote in a message on the company website that the move was aimed at lowering operating expenses which, “if left unabated, would continue to outgrow our revenue.”

As noted here earlier this week, research from PYMNTS’ Provider Ranking of Aggregators shows that DoorDash is the top performer in that category by a considerable margin, followed by Uber’s Uber Eats.