(Singapore, Feb 9 2023) Zoom on Tuesday announced plans to cut about 1,300 workers, or 15% of its workforce, according to a blog post on the company’s website.
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan wrote in the blog post that as the world continues to adjust to life after the COVID pandemic, the company needs to adapt to the “uncertainty of the global economy” as well as “its effect on our customers.”
“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 analyse our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities.”
Yuan said the cuts will impact every organisation across Zoom, and employees who are laid off will be offered up to 16 weeks of salary and health-care coverage.
The CEO also said he plans to reduce his own salary for the coming fiscal year by 98%, and he is also forgoing his 2023 corporate bonus. For the 2022 financial year, Yuan’s salary was $300,000 and his total compensation was around $1.1 million, which included roughly $800,000 for security services, regulatory filings show.
“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,” Yuan wrote in the post.
In late January 2020 , Zoom’s headcount was about 2,500. It has since added about 6,000 people. The cuts announced Tuesday will reduce Zoom’s total workforce to early 2022 levels.
Shares of Zoom closed up about 9.8% at the end of Tuesday’s trading, the biggest single-day jump in three months. Despite Tuesday’s rise, the stock has plummeted 85% from an all-time high in October 2020 and is now at pre-pandemic levels.
The company’s layoff announcement marks the latest round of job cuts in tech industry. eBay on Tuesday announced plans to cut 500 jobs, or 4% of its workforce, and Dell on Monday announced plans to cut 6,650 jobs, or about 5% of its workforce.
