Uber is laying off nearly a quarter of its People and Places staff — but not because of AI, the company said.
The department oversees teams from human resources to recruitment. The job cuts amount to less than 1% of Uber's global workforce of 34,000 employees, a spokesperson said.
The layoffs come less than a month after Uber named Jill Hazelbaker to the newly created role of chief corporate affairs officer and president.
Hazelbaker, who has worked at Uber since 2015, said in a memo to staff on Wednesday that the layoffs reorganize teams that "have become too complex and fragmented, with overlapping responsibilities, unclear ownership, and teams operating too far from the businesses and partners they support."
While other major companies have cited AI as the reason for layoffs this year, the cuts to Uber's people division weren't due to the technology, the spokesperson said. "These changes are necessary to maximize the effectiveness of the People team and the enormous potential ahead of us," CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in her own memo to staff explaining the layoffs.
Like many tech companies, Uber is using AI — and wrestling with its implications.
Uber is hiring fewer employees as its employees use AI to become more productive, Khosrowshahi said last month. COO Andrew Macdonald, meanwhile, said that those productivity gains aren't proportional to what the company is spending on AI tokens.
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