Zoom Video Communications, the company behind the popular video conferencing platform, has announced plans to eliminate around 15% of its employees on Tuesday.
In an article on the blog in a blog post, the CEO Eric Yuan disclosed that he will take an 8% cut in salary , and will not receive his executive bonus for the year. The executive management team will also get 20% reduction in their salaries and lose their bonuses.
Despite continuing reliance upon Zoom while the globe adjusts the post-pandemic environment however, the company faces lower revenue from customers, as reported by Yuan. This led to the hard decision of laying the company’s 1,300 employees.
In light of the challenges presented due to the outbreak, Yuan expressed pride in the ability of the company connect people. She also pointed out that the company’s employees number grew by three times during the pandemic because of the platform’s wide usage for court proceedings, and social gatherings.
“We are seeing that people and businesses continue to rely on Zoom,” Yuan stated.
“But the uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision.” Zoom will continue to invest in areas of strategic importance that will help us achieve our long-term goals, said the chief executive.
Zoom is part of with the current trend US tech companies cutting their workforce in the face of economic turmoil around the world and a shift to cost-saving measures.
American computer firm, Dell, announced plans to cut approximately 5 percent of its global workforce about 6,650 employees. The cuts come on the heels of similar actions taken by tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, and Twitter as the tech industry is preparing for the economic downturn.
The reductions come following an era of massive hiring at the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, where companies tried to meet the increasing demands for online work as well as education and entertainment. According to the tracking of job losses website, Layoffs.fyi, over 95,000 tech workers have been laid off from the beginning in the new year.