Work is a Verb
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Uber's Office Rule Did Not Change. Its Exemptions Did.
On September 2, Uber told about 10 percent of its roughly 34,000 employees that their jobs were gone. In the same memo, they told the people who were left where they would be living.
Global teams move to New York and San Francisco. Regional teams go to designated regional hubs, local teams to country hubs, tech teams to tech hubs. Managers sit with their reports "wherever possible, particularly for earlier-career employees." And the line that got the headlines: "We are also asking the vast majority of remote employees to move to an office, and going forward, only ~1% of employees will be remote."
Read the coverage and you would think Uber had tightened its remote policy. It did not. The rule is three days a week, and it has been three days a week since June 2025.
Uber's remote employees were never covered by a remote policy. They were covered by approvals, granted one person at a time, as exceptions to their hybrid work model.
Relocation mandates have a reputation as a quiet headcount tool, and this is where it comes from. Often we are left to speculate about the motives behind an RTO mandate but the timing of layoffs with the Uber's return to office leaves little to the imagination.
It's a good reminder that jobseekers should consider the way companies work, not just the label on a particular job. The question worth answering is whether remote at that company is the structure or the exception and how likely that is to change in the future.
Four questions separate them, and you can ask all four before you sign.
Where would you put me if you consolidated? A hub-shaped company answers instantly, because the map already exists. Uber's did, and the September 2 memo laid it out. A company with no offices or no chance of a mandate should feel comfortable saying so.
Is pay tied to where I live? If moving cities would change your salary, you want to know that going in.
Where does the leadership team sit? If the executives share a building and you do not, you are the exception regardless of what the handbook says.
Is my remote status in the offer letter, or is it my manager's approval? Ask what would allow the company to change those written terms. A manager's approval can disappear when someone conducts a thorough review of existing approvals.
If you are hiring and you mean it, that list runs fine in reverse. Put the remote terms in the offer letter instead of in a manager's discretion. Publish the pay bands and explain how location affects them. Say where your executives sit. Somebody who has watched this happen twice already is not going to take your word for it, and they should not have to.
