Uber has fired more than 400 product and engineering employees in its second major round of layoffs this year

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Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi speaks onstage at Day 1 of the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit 2018 at The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on October 9, 2018 in Beverly Hills, California.

• Uber laid off 435 employees on Tuesday in its engineering and product departments, TechCrunch reported.
• The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
• Tuesday's firings follow a similarly sized cull in Uber's marketing department in July.

Uber fired 435 employees on Tuesday in its second major round of layoffs this year, TechCrunch reported.

Some 170 people have departed the company's product team, TechCrunch reported, with another 265 engineers leaving as well. Earlier this year, Uber laid off 400 employees from its marketing department.

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An Uber representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Our hope with these changes is to reset and improve how we work day to day-ruthlessly prioritizing, and always holding ourselves accountable to a high bar of performance and agility," an Uber spokesperson told TechCrunch.

"While certainly painful in the moment, especially for those directly affected, we believe that this will result in a much stronger technical organization, which going forward will continue to hire some of the very best talent around the world."

Tuesday's layoffs follow a hiring freeze in some departments in the United States as Uber seeks to cut costs and become profitable and appease anxious investors. TechCrunch reports that hiring freeze has since lifted.

Read more: Uber marketing employees describe a 'bloodbath' when the company laid off 400 workers

Earlier in August, nervous engineers told Business Insider they feared they could be next. Other cost-cutting measures have included nixing the traditional balloons that employees receive on their work anniversaries and asking employees to be conscious about their travel expenses.

Shares of Uber rose some 3.3% in trading Tuesday but remain more than 20% below initial trading prices following the company's massive IPO earlier this year.

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