Ride hailing giant, Uber, has let go of 400 employees in the Marketing team as it tries to cut costs and streamline its operations after its initial public offering in May.
The news of the layoffs was first reported by The New York Times.
As at March 31, 2019, Uber’s public global headcount was 24,494 employees and it was made up of 1200 in the marketing department.
According to an internal email viewed by Techcrunch, Jill Hazelbaker, who leads marketing and public affairs at Uber, and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told employees Monday that the marketing team would have a more centralized structure.
The reorganized marketing team will be under the leadership of Mike Strickman, vice president of performance marketing, who joined from TripAdvisor a month ago, and another soon-to-be-hired head of global marketing. Strickman will oversee performance marketing, CRM and analytics, while the global marketing executive will manage the heads of product marketing, brand, Eats, B2B, research, planning and creative.
Many of Uber’s teams are “too big, which creates overlapping work, makes for unclear decision owners, and can lead to mediocre results,” Khosrowshahi said in an email sent to employees and shared with TechCrunch. “As a company, we can do more to keep the bar high, and expect more of ourselves and each other.”
Khosrowshahi said the restructuring aims to put the marketing team, and the company, back on track.
“Today, there’s a general sense that while we’ve grown fast, we’ve slowed down. You can see it in Pulse Survey feedback and All Hands questions, and you can feel it in much of our day-to-day work. This happens naturally as companies get bigger, but it is something we need to address, and quickly,” he wrote.
