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Uber to Cut 300 Jobs in Bay Area
Uber Technologies has chopped 300 jobs in the Bay Area, including hundreds in San Francisco and dozens in Palo Alto, a state government filing shows.
San Francisco-based Uber revealed the staffing cutbacks in an official filing with California’s Employment Development Department.
The ride-hailing service disclosed it has decided to permanently eliminate 238 jobs in San Francisco and 62 in Palo Alto.
“Uber Technologies is conducting mass layoffs in its Northern California locations at 555 Market Street, San Francisco; 1455 Market Street, San Francisco; and 900 Arastradero Road, Palo Alto,” Taylor Lamme, an Uber human resources executive, wrote in a letter to the EDD.
All told, Uber has notified state officials of plans to eliminate 388 Bay Area jobs during 2019. In August, the company detailed plans to eliminate 88 jobs in San Francisco.
“All affected employees have been notified of their separation dates and that their separation from employment will be permanent,” Uber stated in the letter to the EDD.
Uber lost $5.24 billion in the second quarter — its largest quarterly loss ever — after making huge stock-based payouts in the months after its initial public offering, according to the Associated Press.
Uber went public in May through an initial public offering that raised $8.1 billion.
When Uber launched its IPO, the shares were priced at $45. Since then, however, the company’s stock has tumbled 29.8% as of the close of trading Sept. 26.
Despite these job cuts, Uber has set the stage for big-time expansions in Silicon Valley.
In June, Uber struck a deal for a major Silicon Valley growth boom with a big lease in Sunnyvale that gives the tech company enough office space for up to 1,900 workers near a Caltrain station.
The ride-hailing company agreed to lease two big office buildings in Sunnyvale that total about 291,000 square feet.
Still, Uber has sharply scaled back expansion plans in the past. At one time, Uber announced with much fanfare that it would establish a co-headquarters in Oakland at what is now called the Uptown Station office and retail complex. Uber steadily reduced the scope of that expansion and eventually scuttled a corporate presence in the East Bay.
The Bay Area layoffs that Uber has just revealed are scheduled to be effective Oct. 10, the EDD filings show.
The job cuts were spread among dozens of employment classifications, although multiple grades of software engineers were among the positions that Uber targeted for elimination, the EDD filing showed. A number of management positions also were involved.
