Video Communications company, Zoom, has said it will lay off about 1,300 employees, representing about 15% of its workforce.
With this announcement, Zoom staff have become the latest victims of the mass layoffs that has rocked the global tech industry since late last year.
In a memo to employees, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan said the layoffs would impact every part of the organization. Yuan also said he and other executives would take a significant pay cut, after acknowledging he made “mistakes” in how quickly the company grew during the pandemic.
CEO takes responsibility: While taking full responsibility for decisions that led to the layoffs, Zoom CEO in the memo said:
- “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. To that end, I am reducing my salary for the coming fiscal year by 98% and foregoing my FY23 corporate bonus,” he added.
Yuan said members of the executive leadership team will reduce their base salaries by 20% for the coming fiscal year and forfeit their fiscal year 2023 bonuses.
COVID-19 bubble: Zoom came to the limelight globally during the COVID-19 pandemic as many people turned to the platform for business meetings, family chats and so on.
By mid-2020, Zoom reported skyrocketing revenue fueled by a spike in business customers from the many companies forced to turn to remote work.
Yuan said the company staffed up rapidly during the early days of the pandemic to support the boom in demand as many turned to its platform to video chat with friends and colleagues.
- “Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand while enabling continued innovation,” Yuan wrote.
