“Email In Next 30 Minutes…”: Zoom CEO Announces 1,300 Job Cuts

Zoom scaled up fast during the Covid pandemic as people worked from home

New Delhi:

Communications technology firm Zoom will lay off some 1,300 employees or 15 per cent of its workforce, chief executive Eric Yuan said in the company’s official blog today.

Calling the affected employees “hard-working, talented colleagues”, Mr Yuan said they will get an email if they are based in the US and all non-US staff will be informed following local requirements.

“If you are a US-based employee who is impacted, you will receive an email to your Zoom and personal inboxes in the next 30 minutes that reads [IMPACTED] Departing Zoom: What You Need to Know. Non-US employees will be notified following local requirements,” Mr Yuan said.

Departing full-time “Zoomies” – as Zoom employees are called by their CEO – in the US will be offered up to 16 weeks’ salary and healthcare coverage, payment of earned fiscal 2023 annual bonus based on company performance, RSU (restricted stock units) and stock option vesting for six months for US employees and through August 9, 2023 for non-US employees.

“Support for ‘Zoomies’ outside the US will be similar and will take into account local laws,” Mr Yuan said.

Zoom’s lay-offs add to a long list of technology firms cutting their workforce recently amid a slowdown in businesses after the boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, which confined people to work from home. This led to a global demand for communications software and services, which encouraged many to hire more at that time. Now, many firms are cutting their workforce as Covid wanes across nations and large businesses end work from home mode.

“We built Zoom to remove the friction that businesses felt when collaborating. Our trajectory was forever changed during the pandemic when the world faced one of its toughest challenges, and I am proud of the way we mobilized as a company to keep people connected. To make this possible, we needed to staff up rapidly to support the quick rise of users on our platform and their evolving needs. Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand while enabling continued innovation,” Mr Yuan wrote on the blog post.

“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 so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision,” he said.