(July 23): Uber Technologies announced it has cut its headcount in customer service operations by 10% as part of a broader effort to streamline its organization and “embrace artificial intelligence.”
The company announced cuts to its community operations team on Wednesday and is working to “simplify operations, enhance in-person collaboration, and continue to embrace AI,” an Uber spokesperson said in an email. Employees who were working remotely for the team were also asked to relocate to the hub office in accordance with the company’s return-to-office mandate, a spokesperson said.
“Our organization is too complex and siloed,” Megha Yetatika, Uber’s vice president of global community operations, said in a memo to the division on Wednesday. She said the sector had “made some progress” in using AI, “but unlocking this potential requires an effective organization to overlay AI. You can’t scale frontier technologies on top of fragmented processes.”
Companies from financial services company Block to cloud company Oracle have cited AI as a reason for layoffs in recent months. This is the first time Uber has combined layoffs with AI efficiency drives, and the second time in less than two months that the company has cut jobs to simplify its team structure.
In June, after a new president took over, the company cut 23% of its so-called human resources department, representing less than 1% of its 34,000 employees worldwide. Uber does not provide specific numbers about the size of its customer service business.
In May, the company announced that hiring would slow due to its internal use of AI, but its job page still has more than 500 positions available, including engineers to support the robotaxi partnership.
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