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posted by Fnord666 on Friday May 22 2020, @09:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the hey-hey-goodbye dept.

Uber lays off 3,000 people in second big round of cuts:

Uber is laying off another 3,000 workers, the company announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. That's in addition to the 3,700 workers the company laid off earlier this month. Uber had 26,900 employees at the end of last year. Uber drivers, whom the company treats as independent contractors, are not directly affected.

"Given the dramatic impact of the pandemic, and the unpredictable nature of any eventual recovery, we are concentrating our efforts on our core mobility and delivery platforms and resizing our company to match the realities of our business," CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in the SEC filing. "That's led us to some painful decisions today."

Uber's core ride-hailing business has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. The Wall Street Journal reports that Uber's rides business was down 80 percent, year over year, in April.

[...] Uber estimates that it will spend $110 million to $140 million on severance packages and another $65 million to $80 million on expenses related to shutting down offices. The Wall Street Journal says Uber is closing 45 office locations. The two rounds of cuts are designed to reduce Uber's overhead by more than $1 billion.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 22 2020, @10:58AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 22 2020, @10:58AM (#997782) Journal

    Did Uber ever make money? I know they had a lot of cash flow, with investors continuously trying to get onboard. But, did they ever make a profit? Doesn't seem that way to me.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2020, @11:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2020, @11:32AM (#997792)

    https://www.google.com/search?q=Did+Uber+ever+make+money [google.com]
    About 351,000,000 results (0.58 seconds)

    This hit from last summer may be fairly unbiased(??) but requires interpreting the business-school jargon, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/uber-profitability/ [upenn.edu]

    For example:

    However, “Uber’s growth is slowing down, and the costs are not slowing down,” Allon continued. “There are many reasons [for those], but fundamentally, the issue is that Uber competes in both markets: riders and drivers. So, they can’t pay drivers less and they cannot charge riders more, basically breaking the main assumptions that underline its growth strategy. In that light, working on other verticals of mobility (such as Uber Eats) is a viable strategy, as it waits for either … self-driving cars [to reduce driver costs] or a merger with Lyft [to consolidate operations].”

    Why do I have this feeling that "consolidate operations" really means, "restore monopolistic behavior"?