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Electric scooter rental company Bird cuts 138 employees after difficult start to 2022
https://www.whatjobs.com/news/employment-news/electric-scooter-rental-company-bird-cuts-138-employees-after-difficult-start-to-2022
By Nithya Bose in Employment News, posted June 11, 2022
Bird, an electric scooter rental company, has announced 23 percent staff layoffs from various teams and areas throughout the world, affecting around 138 people.
The news comes after the electric scooter company disclosed a challenging financial start in 2022.
Bird reported a drop in sales, gross margins, and ride profits in its first-quarter financial release in May.
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A spokesperson for Bird said: “While the need for and access to micro-electric vehicle transportation has never been greater, macro economic trends impacting everyone have resulted in an acceleration of our path to profitability.
"We also, unfortunately, had to depart with a number of team members who passionately helped create a new industry.”
Travis VanderZanden, the firm's founder and CEO, stated that the company will take measures to achieve profitability and refocus its resources.
Former workers' LinkedIn posts from this week showed that layoffs had already begun.
A stock market downturn is currently bearing down on Silicon Valley.
Bird is the latest tech company to announce layoffs and other cost-cutting measures, such as hiring freezes, following in the footsteps of Robinhood, Uber, and Meta.
All affected team members were informed of the layoffs in one-on-one meetings with senior executives and were also given a human resources contact.
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They also received three weeks of severance pay, three months of healthcare coverage, longer exercise windows for vested options, and laptops, among other benefits.
WHAT IS BIRD?
Bird is a micro-mobility company that distributes electric scooters designed for short-term rental to over 400 cities.
Where it is headquartered? The company is headquartered in Miami, Florida.
How many staff does it have? It currently has around 500 employees.
Source: Gizmodo
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