Many companies are facing the biggest loss in their history due to the outbreak of COVID-19. And, one of the badly hit companies is those associated with transportation. The lockdown has caused a major cease in the transportation business, shaking them up like anything. In this crisis, they cannot find another way to continue their business as the shutdown is active around the globe. Uber is facing one of the toughest times since the journey of the company started. The devastating outcomes of the pandemic started hitting them from March. Core members of the company are deciding on a 20% layoff, but nothing is official yet. Amongst this chaos, Thuan Pham, the current CTO of the company announced his resignation yesterday.
What Thuan Pham has to say?
Thuan was one of the company’s executives that served for a very long time. He joined Uber in 2013 and bid goodbye after seven years. But, what is the reason behind his departure? The media didn’t spot any light about his planning on departure earlier. This means the decision might be all of a sudden or he just kept it to himself.
He informed the company about his decision to resign on 24th April 2020 effective as of 16th May 2020. While making his resigning statements, Thuan mentioned that the engineering team of Uber is at peak performance and productivity. So, he is relieved to sign off at a situation when Uber has a strongly built system and proper stability. He also said the team is ready to face every threat or challenge that the future awaits and he is proud of being a part of it.
The company under Thuan Pham’s leadership
Thuan became a part of the company in 2013 when CTO Travis Kalanick brought him into the house. He has lasted more than Kalanick’s serving time at the company who was forced to resign in 2018. Pham was a very intelligent student who struggled a lot to reach the pinnacle of his career. He fled from Vietnam with his family at a very young age and spent almost a year at a camp in Indonesia.
But, luckily his intelligence ended him up at the doorsteps of MIT. He worked with HP for many years followed by Silicon Graphics. Before joining Uber, he worked at VMWare for eight years. In Uber, Thuan made the best engineering team possible and made more than $200 million from Uber’s 2019 IPO.
But, this is not the first time that an executive is resigning from the company all of a sudden. It is impressive to witness Thuan leaving in good terms as many of them fall victim to the scandal. Ryan Graves, one of the first employees of Uber discontinued his service last May and Eric Alexander, Uber’s president of business in Asia was fired in 2017 with serious charges. These are only a few examples of scandals that have affected the reputation of the company.
Cutting off employees due to the company’s loss
But, the company’s biggest news is not only the resignation of its CTO but also a 20% layoff. The information about the company planning to cut costs first came from The Information. And, they are planning to do it by cutting off the employees. When asked an Uber spokesperson refused to enlighten the audience about the 20% layoff. But, the spokesperson mentioned that they are trying to fix the current situation and come out of the crisis becoming stronger. The company is suffering a huge setback exclusively due to the novel coronavirus. It is crystal clear that it will cut off cost anyway.
The planning for the employee cutoff has been going on for a few weeks now. When everything is finalized it will affect 20% of 27,000 employees of Uber which will consist of 800 from Thuan’s team. Due to the pandemic, Uber expects an impairment charge of $2.2 billion in the first quarter. The current CTO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, mentioned that the gross booking of Uber in major cities went down by 70%. The situation is getting worse as the newly acquired food delivery brand; Uber Eats is unable to make up for the losses.
If everything goes haywire, the company has made a model for it as well. It is called “an extreme edge case” in which trip generation falls to 80%. The company said that it will still be able to come out of this crisis with $4 billion in unrestricted cash at the end of the year.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more