Video conferencing company, Zoom, has said it will lay off about 1,300 employees, representing about 15% of its workforce.
With this statement, Zoom employees have been added to the list of recent casualties in the wave of mass layoffs that has shook the global tech sector since late last year.
The layoffs would affect every area of the company, according to a memo from Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan to staff members. After admitting he made “mistakes” in how swiftly the company expanded during the pandemic, Yuan also announced that he and other executives would take a sizable compensation cut.
The memo from Zoom CEO, who accepted full responsibility for the choices that resulted in the layoffs, stated:
“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 announced that the executive leadership team members’ base pay for the upcoming fiscal year will be reduced by 20%, and they will forgo their bonuses for the fiscal year 2023.
Due to the widespread use of Zoom for family talks, business meetings, and other purposes during the COVID-19 outbreak, the company received widespread attention.
Zoom anticipated soaring income by the middle of 2020, driven by an increase in corporate clients from the numerous organizations that were obliged to use remote workers.
During the early stages of the pandemic, according to Yuan, the business quickly hired more employees to handle the surge in demand as more people started using its platform to video chat with friends and coworkers.
“Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand while enabling continued innovation,” Yuan wrote.
Ref: Nairametrics
