Uber pink-slips 350 in third round of layoffs

By: Nicholas V.

Uber on Monday reportedly began its third round of layoffs in the past few months, handing out pink slips to 350 employees.

Shares of the ride-hailing giant spiked more than 3% after the news site TechCrunch reported that the company was laying off workers at Uber Eats, its self-driving car unit, marketing and recruiting.

Uber has trimmed more than 1,000 jobs since it laid off 400 employees from its marketing team in July, followed by 435 engineers in September.

Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi called Monday’s cut “the last wave of a process we began months ago,” according to a letter to employees obtained by the tech blog.

“Days like today are tough for us all,” he wrote, adding that he and his executive team “will do everything we can to make certain that we won’t need or have another day like this ahead of us.”

Khosrowshahi told employees that moving forward, the company will be serious about cutting waste.

“We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren’t being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow,” he said.

Other teams hit by the layoffs include safety and a number of overseas operations and technology units. Monday’s layoffs amount to a cut of less than 2% of Uber’s global workforce of 22,000.

A number of employees have also been asked to relocate, according to Khosrowshahi’s letter.

Shares of Uber finished the day up 3.3%, at $31.12.