Uber Cuts 8% of Product and Engineering Teams

Uber Technologies Inc. has laid off 435 employees across its product and engineering teams, representing about 8% of the combined organizations.

The ride-hailing giant says the cuts will streamline its development efforts and reduce redundancies. In July, Uber took a similar tack with its marketing department by laying off one-third of its 1,200 global team.

The latest downsizing affects 170 people on the product team and 265 from the engineering group. About 85% of those losing their jobs are based in the U.S., with the remainder in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Uber, which has 27,000 full-time employees worldwide, also recently combined its communications, marketing and policy groups. By creating leaner organizations, Uber aims to bring new products to market faster with a goal of “ruthlessly prioritizing” performance agility.

The company incurred steep costs related to its initial public stock offering in May. This resulted in a $5.2 billion loss in the second quarter. At the time, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi predicted the company’s red ink would begin to shrink over the next two years. But he still hasn’t said when the company expects to become profitable.