The ride-hailing company is cutting 3,300 positions globally, with middle managers bearing the brunt of the shake-up
Uber Technologies, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing company, will cut approximately 3,300 jobs, around 10% of its global workforce, in a structural overhaul its CEO attributed to organizational complexity built up over five years of rapid growth.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the changes on Wednesday in a memo sent to employees and published on Uber's newsroom. Uber had roughly 34,000 employees globally at the end of 2025, according to the company's annual filing. Khosrowshahi noted that Uber's revenue has nearly tripled over the past five years, but that growth also introduced more layers, more coordination, and more fragmented ownership. Shares rose approximately 2% on the news, which Bloomberg News first reported.
"The changes we're making today are designed to do two things: make Uber simpler and faster, and create more capacity to invest in our future," Khosrowshahi wrote.
Khosrowshahi acknowledged the human toll of the decision. "This wasn't a decision we made lightly, because it will have a real impact on our teammates and friends who have worked hard for Uber," he wrote, adding that the changes reflect how the company is organized and what it's prioritizing, not a judgment on individual contributions. All affected employees were notified on the day of the announcement, with country-specific processes to follow where local law requires it.
Stripping out the management stack
The restructuring cuts deepest into Uber's management hierarchy. The total number of managers will fall by 20%, and employees sitting seven or more reporting layers from the CEO will also drop by 20%. Small management units of one to two direct reports, which Khosrowshahi called "micro-teams," have been reduced by nearly half.
In Pulse surveys and direct employee feedback cited in the memo, Uber found that too much work required cross-team coordination, decisions were taking too long, and ownership was unclear. Three separate Delivery Operations groups covering Restaurants, Retail, and Direct will be consolidated into unified global, regional, and country-level teams. In the technology division, Core Services Engineering and Science teams will also be merged, mirroring a structure already in place across Mobility and Delivery.
"A leaner organization will mean clearer ownership, faster decisions, and more time spent building rather than coordinating," Khosrowshahi wrote.
Not an AI story
Khosrowshahi explicitly did not attribute the cuts to artificial intelligence, which has been cited as a central driver in the majority of major tech sector layoff announcements in 2026. That distinction places Uber in a smaller category of large employers framing workforce reductions as organizational efficiency rather than automation.
Uber joins a pattern seen across the sector this year. LinkedIn cut 5% of its staff despite crossing $5 billion in quarterly revenue, a move its leaders described as regular business planning. The share price reaction fits a broader investor response to cost-cutting accompanying mass downsizing becoming a default corporate strategy across industries in 2026. Meta's 10% workforce reduction in May 2026, executed while committing billions of dollars to AI infrastructure, also generated a market rise on announcement despite the scale of the cuts.
Nearly all remote workers must return to office
The restructuring significantly narrows Uber's location strategy. The company will ask nearly all remote employees to relocate to an office, with only approximately 1% of the workforce permitted to remain fully remote going forward. Global teams will be concentrated in New York and San Francisco, Uber's two largest hubs. Regional teams will operate from designated regional offices, and local teams will be based in country hubs. Uber will prioritize co-location between managers and their direct reports, particularly for employees at an earlier stage of their careers.
Uber's hybrid work policy will also be enforced more actively, requiring three days per week in the office. Khosrowshahi said the case for in-person collaboration has become clearer than ever in the post-pandemic environment.
The savings from the restructuring are earmarked for reinvestment in growth, innovation, and the capabilities Khosrowshahi said will determine Uber's trajectory in the years ahead.
Managing the workforce that remains, under a reorganized structure with new team boundaries and significantly reduced management layers, will be the next challenge for Uber's people leaders. Every company that has announced cuts of this scale in 2026 has found that retaining the engagement and trust of those who stay is at least as difficult as the restructuring itself.
