Some Uber Employees Are Getting A Raise

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It's a good day for some Uber employees, between three and four thousand of whom learned they'll be getting a pay bump.

At an all-hands meeting held Tuesday morning, employees across Uber's tech team — that's product, engineering and design — learned they'll be seeing a small increase in their annual salaries, sources familiar with the situation tell BuzzFeed News.

These employees will receive either a 5% increase in their total salary, or be bumped to the middle of their pay band, whichever is higher. The total increase will also reflect how long individual employees have worked at Uber.

Uber declined to comment on this story.

BuzzFeed News first learned that Uber would be making adjustments to employee compensation this week from Uber head of HR Liane Hornsey, who was interviewed for a BuzzFeed News story on Uber employee mental health.

Hornsey told BuzzFeed News that, in conversations with employees, compensation emerged as one of their top nine concerns.

In the BuzzFeed News story published Monday, employees discuss how compensation packages at Uber are lower than competitors when it comes to salary, and aggressively weighted towards equity. This system, known colloquially as golden handcuffs, incentivizes employees to stay on at a company, even if they'd rather leave and work somewhere else.

Previously, The Information reported that Uber uses an algorithm to keep labor costs down by estimating the lowest salary a new employee is likely to accept.

This announcement comes after a very tough year for Uber, in which a female engineer's viral blog post on workplace culture launched two internal investigations at Uber and CEO Travis Kalanick resigned his post. An executive team of 14 individuals is currently searching for his replacement.

from BuzzFeed - Tech https://www.buzzfeed.com/carolineodonovan/some-uber-employees-are-getting-a-raise?utm_term=4ldqpia