Bird – Santa Monica-based electric scooter firm Bird is laying off 23% of its staff in an effort to cut costs.
A Bird spokesperson confirmed the layoffs in an emailed statement to dot.LA—noting that “while the need for and access to micro-electric vehicle transportation has never been greater, macroeconomic trends impacting everyone have resulted in an acceleration of our path to profitability.”
“This path required us to reduce our cost structure in a way that allows us to responsibly and sustainably expand our service beyond the more than 400 cities we operate in today as climate action has never been more paramount,” the spokesperson added. “In addition to eliminating all non-critical third-party spend, we also, unfortunately, had to depart with a number of team members who passionately helped create a new industry and paved the way for more eco-friendly transportation.”
A number of Bird employees posted online about the layoffs earlier on Tuesday. One former employee named Angelica Gomez said on LinkedIn that she was “one of the employees affected by layoffs at Bird” and is now looking for a new job. Gomez worked as a data analyst at Bird for just under two years. Gomez’s boss, a former senior data analytics manager for Bird named Bryce Miller, also posted about the layoffs on LinkedIn, having also been let go from the company.
