Uber Technologies Inc. is expanding its New York offices, now the biggest outside its San Francisco headquarters, a reflection of the city’s growing importance to the company’s operations since Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi moved there in recent years.
To accommodate its local workforce, which has grown to more than 2,000 employees from 800 before the COVID-19 pandemic, the ride-hailing giant is increasing its footprint in 3 World Trade Center in Manhattan’s Financial District to 11 floors, spanning nearly 500,000 square feet, a spokesperson told Bloomberg. The company has also been renting large swaths of office suites in the Industrious co-working space, which occupies two floors in the same building.
Prior to the expansion, the New York office had been running out of desks, and the company also packed them close together to accommodate the influx of staff, according to people familiar with the matter.
Uber’s New York office has seen a surge in employees after the company announced a three-day-a-week office mandate that went into effect in June. Remote work approvals have been scaled back as some U.S. workers who live within 50 miles of an office have been asked to comply with the policy. As of December, the company and its subsidiaries had about 34,000 employees globally and operates in more than 70 countries. Its approximately 10 million drivers are mostly classified as independent contractors.
Khosrowshahi, who relocated to New York in 2024 to be closer to family, has said publicly that the company’s work culture may not be for everyone. “If you’re not performing, we’re going to let you know, and if you don’t fix it, we’re going to push you out,” he said on the Diary of a CEO podcast last month. “But while it will be incredibly hard, you will have real agency at the company.”
The growth of the New York City staff accelerated to about 17% in October compared with January 2024, even as personnel levels remained flat for California, according to an analysis of LinkedIn data by Live Data Technologies. Growth in that city was particularly strong in managerial, sales and marketing roles, per the analysis.
Meanwhile, Uber’s employee count in Texas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Georgia declined over the same period. Live Data Technologies analyst Alex Hamilton noted that the small amount of attrition could be related to the in-office mandate.
The company said it plans to continue expanding its workforce in the city over the coming years. “New York City is central to Uber’s future,” Andrew Macdonald, Uber’s president and chief operating officer said in a statement Tuesday. Uber is also making a $7-million investment into some of the city’s education and cultural programs, including sponsoring courses on computer science pedagogy for public school teachers and supporting the Perelman Performing Arts Center, a spokesperson said.
“New York is one of the best places in the world to build and grow a team,” the spokesperson said. “The talent pool is deep, and the pace of opportunity here pushes us to move faster and think bigger.”
Lung writes for Bloomberg.