Zoom, the tech company that rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic as many businesses went remote, announced plans to lay off 1,300 employees on Tuesday.
In a message sent to Zoom employees on Tuesday, CEO Eric Yuan stated that the company must adapt to the “uncertainty of the global economy” and “its effect on our customers.”
Zoom stock was up more than 7% in afternoon trading.
“We worked tirelessly to improve Zoom for our customers and users. But we also made errors,” Yuan wrote on the Zoom blog. “We didn’t spend as much time as we should have on thoroughly analysing our teams or determining whether we were growing sustainably in the direction of our highest priorities.”
According to Yuan, the layoffs account for 15% of the company’s workforce.
According to the CEO, the company increased staffing during the pandemic as businesses became more reliant on its services as people worked from home.
Zoom tripled in size within 24 months to meet demand.
He also stated that businesses continue to rely on its services following the pandemic, but that changes are required.
Yuan also announced that he was reducing his salary for the upcoming fiscal year by 98% and foregoing his 2023 corporate bonus, claiming responsibility for the company’s mistakes and actions.
Yuan’s executive leadership team is also cutting their base salaries by 20% for the upcoming fiscal year and foregoing their corporate bonuses for 2023.
Google, Amazon, Spotify, Microsoft, and others have all announced layoffs.
Zoom is the latest tech company to lay off a large number of employees.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, recently laid off 12,000 employees, or 12% of its workforce. Meta reduced its workforce even further. Even IBM, which has been around for 111 years, is laying off thousands of workers.
According to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi, a website that has been tracking tech layoffs since March 2020, 297 tech companies laid off nearly 95,000 workers since the beginning of the year. If this trend continues, the industry could lose over 900,000 jobs by 2023. According to the site, this is nearly six times the total for the industry in 2022.
