At the World Economic Forum Davos 2023, Uber chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi on Thursday shared his views on layoffs. At a time when several global companies are sacking employees as part of their cost-cutting measures, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said that they are not planning any company-wide layoffs.
Khosrowshahi’s statement comes after several IT companies including Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft decided to hand over pink slips to their employees. The year 2023 began with many layoffs with over 35,000 employees being fired.
According to Reuters, the Uber CEO said that as compared with other companies, the ride-sharing and booking firm has worked to cut costs for months. He made the comment at a Wall Street event happening on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting.
He further added that in the upcoming 12- 15 years, almost 20 per cent of Uber’s car fleet could be self-driving. Khosrowshahi’s also mentioned that the company is interested in talking to manufacturers about purpose-built cars for rideshare.
Meanwhile, e-commerce major Amazon began its new round of layoffs and fired off over 18,000 people. According to media reports, Amazon started its first round of layoffs last November and has now begun notifying its employees affected by the new round of job cuts.
Earlier this month, CEO Andy Jassy announced that “between the reductions we made in November and the ones sharing today (January 5), we plan to eliminate just over 18,000 roles.” Amazon had in November announced 10,000 layoffs.
Similarly, software major Microsoft on Wednesday announced that it will sack about 5 per cent of its workforce. CEO Satya Nadella said that the company has decided to slash five per cent of its workforce or 10,000 employees by the end of the third quarter of the financial year 2022-23 (FY23) as the company braces for an economic downturn.
