Uber reduces hiring by 18% one month before layoffs



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Yber, Uber ($ NYSE: UBER) fired 435 people from its product and engineering teams yesterday, representing about 8 percent of its workforce, according to TechCrunch. But before this announcement, hires within the company – and especially in the divisions affected by layoffs – experienced a dramatic reduction in early August.

On or about August 4th, openings at Uber increased from 1,530 to 1,290 in the space of a few days. Since then, the openings within the carpool company have slowed down even more, reaching about 1,260.

The trend is common: layoffs are often preceded by slowdowns in hiring that foreshadow the types of positions about to be removed. In this case, hiring fell in early August in the categories Design, Product Management and Engineering of the company. Meanwhile, hires in the company's Sales, Business Development and Community Operations divisions have remained stable or increasing.

Uber's Engineering Division experienced the most dramatic slowdown in hiring, with openings almost halved in early August. The openings in the product management were also marked by deep cuts, as well as by Design and Backend.

Opportunities for community operations professionals remained healthy and even slightly increased in early August, while other divisional hires were slowed. This trend was similar for business development and sales.

Community operations remain the most popular service at Uber, exceeding even sales and municipal operations. Community Operations is described by Uber as "the organization responsible for building [its] customer service network. "

Inconsistent cuts reflect the fact that a company focuses on generating revenue rather than on a product in the shadow of disappointing earnings as a newly-opened company. Meanwhile, the number of business employees – according to LinkedIn data, which includes everyone, from executives to drivers – continues to climb.

At the same time, a new California law will require Uber (along with other companies such as Lyft and Doordash) to treat its drivers as employees and not as subcontractors.

About the data:

Thinknum tracks companies using the information they publish online – jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings – and creates datasets that measure factors such as hiring, revenues and pedestrian traffic. Datasets may not be very complete (they only represent what is available on the Web), but they can be used to evaluate performance factors such as staffing and sales.

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