Uber, the rideshare and supply firm that already doesn’t need to acknowledge its drivers as staff, mentioned it is going to “treat hiring as a privilege,” going ahead. The announcement got here in an e mail from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to workers on Sunday night time, first released by CNBC.

The line implies a hiring freeze, or not less than slowdown, is coming to Uber. “[We will] be deliberate about when and where we add headcount. We will be even more hardcore about costs across the board,” Khosrowshahi additional wrote.

The rideshare big is the newest in a string of different tech corporations asserting hiring gradual downs or cuts. At the tip of April, investing app, Robinhood, laid off 9% of its workers. Then, Netflix laid off a number of just lately employed writers for weblog endeavor Tudum following a dismal quarterly earnings report. And, final week, Meta introduced a hiring freeze for the remainder of the 12 months.

“It’s clear that the market is experiencing a seismic shift and we need to react accordingly,” Khosrowshahi wrote to workers. The e mail additionally famous that the corporate will reduce spending on promoting and incentives, as a part of a push to turn out to be worthwhile when it comes to “free cash flow,” slightly than solely adjusted earnings earlier than curiosity. “We have to show the value of the platform in real dollar terms. We are serving multi-trillion dollar markets, but market size is irrelevant if it doesn’t translate into profit,” mentioned the CEO.

In addition to the spending cuts the Uber workers e mail highlighted Khosrowshahi’s want for its meals supply and freight sectors to rapidly increase. “I firmly believe Delivery should be growing even faster,” he wrote. “Freight needs to get even bigger so that investors recognize its value and love it as much as I do,” he added.

The e mail follows Uber’s launch of its blended 2022 first quarterly earnings final week. The firm reported its income greater than doubled between now and the identical time final 12 months, to $6.9 billion. And Uber Eats, an enormous element of the corporate’s pandemic earnings, has remained in excessive demand at the same time as rideshare requests have rebounded post-covid restrictions.

Despite that although, the rideshare firm is nonetheless dealing with challenges. Uber’s losses have been nearly as massive as its income at $5.9 billion, which it attributed to a worth dip in its personal investments. The firm’s stock prices have also fallen greater than 40% in 2022 up to now, solely beforehand reaching comparable lows when shares hit their all time backside March 20, 2020 on the onset of the pandemic shut-downs.

High gasoline costs have additionally probably taken a toll, although Khosrowshahi mentioned Uber’s variety of drivers is rising and is at a “post-pandemic high,” in prepared remarks launched following the corporate’s first quarter earnings report. Lyft, then again, famous issue recruiting drivers in its earnings report and said it would boost spending to attempt to appeal to extra drivers.

“I’ve never been more certain that we will win. But it’s going to demand the best of our DNA: hustle, grit, and category-defining innovation. In some places we’ll have to pull back to sprint ahead. We will absolutely have to do more with less,” wrote the Uber CEO in Sunday’s e mail. “This will not be easy, but it will be epic.”