Cruise sacks 8% of COVID-19 workforce and allocates resources to engineering – TechCrunch

Cruise, GM's autonomous cars subsidiary, also supported by Vision SoftBank Fund,

Car maker Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates are laying off nearly 8% of its workforce of more than 1,800 members today as it attempts to cut costs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The layoffs will affect employees in Cruise's product, marketing and carpooling units, according to a memo sent by the CEO of Cruise. Dan Ammann and seen by Heaven32. Bloomberg was the first to report cuts.

Dismissed employees will be offered severance pay and their health benefits will be paid for by the company until the end of the year, according to the memo.

Cruise spokesman Milin Mehta confirmed the cuts.

"In this time of great change, we are fortunate to have a crystal clear mission and billions in the bank. The steps we are taking today reflect our doubling of our engineering work and our engineering talents, "Mehta said in an emailed statement.

The layoffs are part of a larger strategy outlined in the memorandum to move resources to where they are most needed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cruise also closes his Pasadena, California office, where he worked at LIDAR. The LIDAR team will be transferred to the San Francisco office.

Even in the event of layoffs, Cruise will continue to hire engineers, according to the memo.

The company "will continue to aggressively recruit in the most critical areas of engineering, which currently means duplicating high-level leadership and high-level IC roles to further support the improvement of the core technology goal, "wrote Ammann. in the memo. "From here, we hope to recruit and develop our engineering teams for the rest of the year."