ZOOM announced that it would lay off 1,300 employees, or 15% of its staff. The company’s shares increased by 7% after the news was announced in a blog post by CEO Eric Yuan on the website of the business.
Yuan further declared that he will forgo his fiscal 2023 corporation bonus in favour of a 98% wage reduction for the upcoming year. The manufacturer of video conferencing software also announced that during the same time period, its executive leadership team will see a 20% reduction in base pay.
CEO Eric Yuan wrote in the blog post that as the world continues to adjust to life after the pandemic, the company needs to adapt to the “uncertainty of the global economy” as well as “its effect on our customers.”
Zoom experienced a huge boom during the pandemic when people were forced to work from home and turned to video chat software to stay in touch with colleagues, friends and family.
“We worked tirelessly and made Zoom better for our customers and users. But we also made mistakes,” Yuan said. “We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities.”
He said that the cuts will impact every organization across Zoom, and employees will be offered up to 16 weeks of salary and healthcare coverage.
“As the CEO and founder of Zoom, I am accountable for these mistakes and the actions we take today- and I want to show accountability not just in words but in my own actions,” he wrote in the post.
A raft of U.S. companies from Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) to Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) have laid off thousands this year to ride out a demand downturn wrought by high inflation and rising interest rates.
This Video communications organisation layoffs, marked the latest round of job cuts in the tech industry, as earlier on Monday Dell slashed 6,650 jobs. In January, Google laid off more than 12,000 workers, Microsoft disclosed plans to cut 10,000 employees and Salesforce announced plans to lay off 7,000 workers.
