Sadly, the tech industry has been hit again with news of a mass layoff. This time, the company is Zoom, which announced today it was letting go of 1,300 employees, or a big 15 percent of its total workforce.
In a blog post, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan noted that in the last 24 months, Zoom added three times its previous employee workforce, as tons of companies started using its video conferencing software during the Covid-19 pandemic. Zoom calls became a normal way of life for a while, as employees stuck at home used the software to hold meetings with fellow employees.
However, the threat of the pandemic has now eased up, with more workers returning to their physical offices. Yuan stated that while many companies still use Zoom, the current uncertain economic situation has caused the company to " look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment."
Employees in the US who do get laid off will get up to 16 weeks of salary and healthcare coverage, along with any earned bonuses, stock option vesting for 6 months, and more. Yuan himself will be taking a whopping 98 percent reduction in his own salary, and will not be getting any bonus this year.
It's been a pretty brutal last few months in the entire tech industry as far as layoffs are concerned. Google, Spotify, Microsoft, and most recently Dell are just some of the major companies in the tech space that have reduced their workforce.
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