Uber lays off 400 people on its marketing team

[steven36]

Uber is laying off about one third of its 1,200-person strong marketing department in an effort to slash costs and make operations more efficient following its public debut and first quarter losses of $1 billion.

 

 

The layoffs were first reported by The New York Times.

 

About 400 people in Uber’s marketing department were laid off across its 75 offices globally, according to the company. Uber’s latest public global headcount was 24,494 global employees as of March 31, 2019.

 

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, according to an internal email viewed by TechCrunch. 

 

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.

 

The layoffs are the latest cost-driven changes to occur at the company since it went public in May.

 

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.

 

Uber’s first quarterly earnings report as a publicly traded company gave a snapshot of a growing business with stunning operational losses. Uber’s revenue grew 20%, to $3.1 billion, compared to $2.5 billion in the same period last year. And its gross bookings rose 34%, to $14.6 billion, in the first quarter, with Uber Eats driving much of that growth.

 

But its loss from operations exploded 116%, to $1 billion, in the first quarter compared to the same year-ago period.

 

In June, chief operating officer Barney Harford  and chief marketing officer Rebecca Messina stepped down as part of an organizational shakeup put into motion just a month after the ride-hailing company went public.

 

At the time, Khosrowshahi explained in an email to employees that the changes were prompted by his decision to more directly control core parts of the business. Khosrowshahi told employees that he wants to be even more involved in the day-to-day operations of its biggest businesses, the core platform of Rides and Eats, and has decided they should report directly to him.

 

Source

[mkc21]

yeah, their marketing it is pretty shitty lol I guess it makes sense

[luisam]

The problem with UBER is that it evolved fast to a corporation from something it looked as some kind of a popular application it was supposed to be. When I first read about it, I understood that it was one more application for users where you registered your car and yourself as a UBER user, indicatig you were in a certain location and you could transport another registered user to a another location probably near to a place you were going. It sounded fine: you should earn some money and the other user saved on taxi getting a fast transport.

Now happens that transportation providers are kind of UBER employees, without the benefits of being an employee! Also, they are providing a public service without any authorization except that of UBER. They drive expecting a call from someone near, to go where asked, just like another taxi service and UBER gets a commission!

As it looks, their "marketing" is mostly the use of a big server coordinating on GPS the ubication of the cars/drivers signed-in at each moment, users asking for service and the fees being charged to get their commission. As it looks, almost everything is being done by the server! And even so, looks UBER is not doing it a well as it should! 

Probably part of their problem is that they now are not the only kid in the block and where UBER is authorized, there are now several other similar systems providing a similar service. 

[steven36]

41 minutes ago, luisam said:

The problem with UBER is that it evolved fast to a corporation from something it looked as some kind of a popular application it was supposed to be. When I first read about it, I understood that it was one more application for users where you registered your car and yourself as a UBER user, indicatig you were in a certain location and you could transport another registered user to a another location probably near to a place you were going. It sounded fine: you should earn some money and the other user saved on taxi getting a fast transport.

Now happens that transportation providers are kind of UBER employees, without the benefits of being an employee! Also, they are providing a public service without any authorization except that of UBER. They drive expecting a call from someone near, to go where asked, just like another taxi service and UBER gets a commission!

As it looks, their "marketing" is mostly the use of a big server coordinating on GPS the ubication of the cars/drivers signed-in at each moment, users asking for service and the fees being charged to get their commission. As it looks, almost everything is being done by the server! And even so, looks UBER is not doing it a well as it should! 

That's not all they do they also deliver food and packages . I have a friend who works for them when they fell like it it you can make up your own hours with them and  they never drive people no were they just deliver things. One problem UBER has others don't  there services  is not everywhere in the USA just mostly in big cites . They need drivers  more than they need such a big marketing department making the. big bucks  , they always need drivers and  people who do not provide more value to the company than they cost, should live in fear of layoffs. But I think they made a mistake buy going IPO  they was better off staying private.

 

In rural areas there are no services to bring you stuff except for UPS ,FEDEX and the US Post Office  and there no cab  services  near by  so  just getting to these places from town would cost you a $100 . So everyone  has cars that live in rural areas.