Zoom to sack 1,300 employees as CEO takes massive pay cut

Zoom, a video communications company, has announced the layoff of approximately 1,300 employees, or approximately 15% of its workforce.

With this announcement, Zoom employees have become the latest victims of the global tech industry’s mass layoffs, which began late last year.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan stated in a memo to employees that the layoffs would affect every part of the organization. Yuan also announced that he and other executives would take significant pay cuts after admitting that he made “mistakes” in how quickly the company grew during the pandemic.

While taking full responsibility for decisions that led to the layoffs, Zoom CEO in the memo said:

• “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 said members of the executive leadership team will reduce their base salaries by 20% for the coming fiscal year and forfeit their fiscal year 2023 bonuses.

COVID-19 bubble: Zoom came to the limelight globally during the COVID-19 pandemic as many people turned to the platform for business meetings, family chats and so on.

By mid-2020, Zoom reported skyrocketing revenue fueled by a spike in business customers from the many companies forced to turn to remote work.

Yuan said the company staffed up rapidly during the early days of the pandemic to support the boom in demand as many turned to its platform to video chat with friends and colleagues.

• “Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand while enabling continued innovation,” Yuan wrote.