Zoom says it will lay off 1300 employees, or around 15 percent of the job base. The company partly blames the amount of people hired during the corona pandemic. “That growth was not sustainable,” the company now says.
During two years in the corona pandemic, Zoom’s job base grew three times, Writes Eric Yuan in a blog to all staff. “We made mistakes. We didn’t take enough time, as we should have, to thoroughly analyze whether we were growing sustainably, towards the highest priorities.” Due to the uncertainty of the global economy and its effects on customers, Zoom must now ‘reset’, said Yuan.
Every part of the company is affected by the round of layoffs, with choices made ‘based on critical priorities for long-term growth”. The creator of the video calling app emphasizes that people and companies still use Zoom and Yuan says he still believes in the future of the company. The CEO speaks of a ‘platform vision’ in which ‘the best tools and applications for modern collaboration in one place’.
Yuan says he wants to take responsibility for the round of layoffs and is therefore reducing his salary for this year by 98 per cent. He also does not receive a bonus this year, as do other members of the executive management. Their salary is reduced by 20 percent. Zoom is not the only company that is cutting many jobs, although the percentage is relatively high. For example, chip manufacturer Micron is at 10 percent, Google parent company talks about 6 percent, just like Spotify, and at PayPal disappears 7 percent of all jobs.
