Zoom, a company that became well-known when the Covid pandemic made more people work from home, is letting go of 1,300 employees.
The move will affect about 15% of its employees. Recently, the company has seen its user growth slow and its profits drop.
Eric Yuan, the company’s boss, said that he and other leaders would also take big pay cuts as the company works to make sure it can survive the slowdown.
It is making the same kinds of changes as a lot of other tech companies.
“As the world adjusts to life after the pandemic, we see that people and businesses still rely on Zoom,” Mr Yuan said in a message to employees that the company shared.
“But the uncertainty of the global economy and how it affects our customers means we need to take a hard but important look at ourselves to reset so we can weather the economy, serve our customers, and reach Zoom’s long-term vision.”
Amazon and Salesforce are two other big companies that have cut a lot of jobs and said that the business boom they had during the pandemic was over.
Layoffs.fyi, a site that keeps track of these kinds of news says that since the beginning of the year, more than 300 tech companies have let go of nearly 100,000 workers around the world.
Zoom has had a hard time, especially as other tech companies have improved their own video services.
In 2020, the company’s income more than tripled, and in 2021, it grew by about 55%. But last year, the growth slowed to single-digit percentages, and the company’s profits fell sharply.
Since their peak in 2020, the company’s shares have fallen by more than 80%.
Mr Yuan said that the cuts would affect every part of the organization and were meant to get rid of roles that were already being done by other people and put the firm’s attention back on its top priorities.
Zoom said that the restructuring would cost between $50 million and $68 million and that affected employees would get 16 weeks of pay, health care coverage, and other help.
Mr Yuan said he would also give up his bonus and cut his salary by 98% in the next fiscal year. He also said that the base salaries and bonuses of other members of the executive leadership team would go down by 20%.
“We worked hard, but sometimes we made mistakes. We didn’t take as much time as we should have to analyze our teams and figure out if we were growing in a way that was sustainable and focused on the most important things “Mr Yuan said.
“As the CEO and founder of Zoom, I am responsible for these mistakes and the actions we take now. I want to show that I am responsible, not just with words, but with my actions as well.”
When the news came out, shares of the company went up by more than 8%.
