Uber Cuts 10% of Workforce, Begins Surge-Pricing Remaining Employees
Engineers now cost 2.4x during outages, all-hands meetings and "rainy periods of the roadmap."
SAN FRANCISCO — Days after announcing it would eliminate 3,300 positions in a restructuring, Uber informed remaining employees that their internal cost would now fluctuate with demand, with a multiplier applied during periods of high organizational need.
"We've always believed in dynamic pricing as a way to balance supply and demand," CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in a memo. "Today we're extending that philosophy to the most important marketplace of all: you."
Under the new system, teams requesting an engineer's time will see a live estimate. A backend engineer during a quiet Tuesday afternoon might cost 1.0x. The same engineer during a production incident, a quarterly planning cycle or the week before a board meeting could surge to 2.4x or higher. Product managers reported that a single staff engineer briefly reached 6.1x during a Friday deploy "and honestly deserved it."
The company says the system will help allocate scarce talent to its highest-value uses, and that employees will receive a share of surge revenue in the form of "recognition," which will be visible in a leaderboard.
Employees described the change as demoralizing but familiar. "I've been a rider, I've been a driver, and now I'm the thing being priced," said one product designer. "I opened my calendar this morning and it said my 2 p.m. was 'in high demand' and asked if I wanted to wait for a cheaper slot."
The company also introduced a "Pool" tier in which two engineers can be booked for a single meeting at a discount, provided they don't mind the meeting stopping at other teams' meetings along the way.
Uber said it expects the program to reduce internal wait times. At press time, several engineers had begun declining meetings until the multiplier improved, which the company described as "the system working."