Days after taking over as the new CEO of Lyft\n \n last month, Risher announced plans to “significantly reduce” the company’s workforce and stressed that the decision was his. The next week, Lyft\n \n revealed the extent of the layoffs: 26% of the staff, or more than 1,000 employees, would lose their jobs. “It was a very, very tough decision and a tough, you know, set of days and weeks to go through, of course,” Risher told CNN in an interview Thursday. “Nobody likes it.
“You can outsource a lot of that stress to us, that’s what we want to do. And that really is Jeff Bezos,” Risher told CNN. “I’m just copying his strategy that worked pretty well for Amazon. I think it can work pretty well for Lyft and our customers.” But as Risher works to revive Lyft’s fortunes, he faces a rival, Uber, that has shown renewed strength in recent quarters. When asked what went wrong for Lyft, Risher told CNN, “I think the pandemic went wrong with Lyft.