Uber Fights to Get Its Edge Back

The challenges have been coming nonstop for Mr. Khosrowshahi. When Uber went public on May 10, its stock immediately tanked, in an embarrassment for the heavily hyped offering. At the end of May, Uber reported a quarterly loss of $1 billion, renewing questions about whether the ride-hailing service could ever turn a profit.

In June, Mr. Khosrowshahi moved to take more control of Uber’s day-to-day operations. That month, he ousted his chief operating officer, Barney Harford, who he had previously worked with at travel site Expedia and who he had personally recruited to Uber. He also forced out his chief marketing officer, Rebecca Messina.

Two Uber board members — Arianna Huffington and venture capitalist Matt Cohler — stepped down in July. Days later, Mr. Khosrowshahi laid off 400 people from marketing, or about a third of the division. That was when he began telling employees to do better, saying in a staff memo, “We can do more to keep the bar high, and expect more of ourselves and each other.”

Mr. Khosrowshahi started more directly managing some of Uber’s businesses, including the Uber Eats food delivery division, said two people familiar with the situation. At divisions like Uber Eats and Uber Freight, its shipping business that pairs truck drivers with freight that need to be transported, managers pushed employees to land deals with flagship brands to bolster revenue, current and former employees said.

In August, Uber posted the $5.2 billion loss, which Mr. Khosrowshahi called a “once-in-a-lifetime” figure. Afterward, Nelson Chai, Uber’s chief financial officer, sent an email to staff titled “#FindTheMoney.” It asked employees to suggest perks they would part with and congratulated one employee on an idea to cut celebratory balloons from the budget, saving the company’s San Francisco headquarters $200,000. Mr. Chai’s email was earlier reported by Crunchbase News

That same month, Mr. Khosrowshahi told Bloomberg, “We are going to be demanding our employees do even more with less.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/technology/uber-cost-cutting.html?emc=rss&partner=rss