On Tuesday, Zoom CEO and founder Eric Yuan announced that the company would be cutting nearly 15% of its entire workforce, saying goodbye to roughly 1,300 employees.
Why? During the pandemic, the usage of Zoom skyrocketed, and the company grew three times in size over the course of 24 months, Yuan stated. However, it seems that post-pandemic life is changing the company.
“As the world transitions to life post-pandemic, we are seeing that people and businesses continue to rely on Zoom. But the uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard — yet important — look inward to reset ourselves sp we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision,” Yuan said.
Details: Along with the layoffs, Yuan said he would be reducing his salary for the coming fiscal year by 98%, and forgoing a corporate bonus. Other executive employees’ salaries will be reduced by 20% for the next fiscal year and will not receive a bonus, the statement read.
Yuan said that as the head of the company, it’s his duty to “show accountability not just in words but in my actions,” citing the pay cut.
He also said that departing employees will be offered continued health care coverage, a partial bonus and other services.
The bigger picture: Zoom is only the latest of major tech companies to cut its workforce post-pandemic, including Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Dell, and more, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“The pandemic created very unique, once-in-a-lifetime conditions in many different industries that caused a dramatic reallocation of capital,” Julia Pollak, chief economist at job recruiting site ZipRecruiter, said, per Deseret News reporting. “Many of those conditions no longer apply so you’re seeing a reallocation of capital back to more normal patterns.”