Overview
- Company memos reported Wednesday said Uber will eliminate 23% of positions inside its People and Places division, a reduction the company says equals well under 1% of its roughly 34,000 global workforce.
- The restructuring is led by newly promoted president Jill Hazelbaker, who took on an expanded role about three weeks earlier and told staff parts of the organization had become "too complex and fragmented."
- The cuts mainly target senior HR and recruiting roles and require some employees previously approved to work remotely to return under Uber’s three-day-per-week office policy.
- Uber told reporters the layoffs were not driven by artificial intelligence even as the company has capped employee spending on agentic AI and coding tools, with a base tier set at $1,500 per month after it exceeded its 2026 AI budget.
- The announcement pushed UBER shares down about 2.9% in the trading session that day with elevated volume, though many analysts retained buy ratings and price targets for the stock.