• Zoom is cutting 15 percent of its workforce, writes CEO Eric S. Yuan in a blog post.
• Employees will be notified via email if they are being dismissed from the company.
• The fired employees will join more than 256 806 former tech workers who have been laid off since last year.

In an open letter published on the company’s official blog, CEO Eric S. Yuan addresses his employees as “Zoomies” before detailing why the virtual meeting and conferencing platform is cutting 15 percent of its workforce or 1 300 employees.

“We have made the tough but necessary decision to reduce our team by approximately 15% and say goodbye to around 1 300 hardworking, talented colleagues,” Yuan writes.

The CEO continues that US-based employees who are impacted will receive their notices via email, similar to how Twitter handled its latest mass firings.

“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,” the letter reads.

“I am sorry you are finding out this way but we felt it was best to notify all impacted Zoomies as soon as possible,” Yuan adds.

The reason for the mass layoffs, broken down by the Zoom CEO, are familiar to anyone following the tech layoffs that began in earnest late last year.

As Yuan indicates, Zoom grew enormously quickly during the height of the pandemic, and to match its growth, it needed more employees. “Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand while enabling continued innovation.”

“We worked tirelessly and made Zoom better for our customers and users. But we also made mistakes. We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities,” Yuan writes.

Adding that the company is still seeing people and businesses rely on its platform as the world transitions to a post-pandemic period, but due to “uncertain” economic conditions, Zoom is taking a hard “look inward to reset [itself] so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision.”

Yuan says that every department across the company will be affected in some way by these layoffs.

Employees deemed essential for the sustainable future of the company will remain, while “overly complex or duplicative” functions and related jobs will meet the axe.

Finally, Yuan says he will be reducing his salary by 98 percent for the rest of the fiscal year, while executive staff will see their salaries reduced by 20 percent. “As the CEO and founder of Zoom, I am accountable for these mistakes and the actions we take today,” he writes.

Zoom joins the world’s largest technology companies in Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and others in an unprecedented tech jobs bloodbath that according to tracker Layoffs.fyi has seen 256 806 employees fired from 1356 tech companies the world over since last year.

Each tells the same tale of rapid growth during the pandemic which led to swathes of job cuts post-pandemic, amid cost reduction initiatives as the world enters a dour economic position.

With the war in Ukraine still ongoing seemingly without end, and inflation and interest rates climbing, more jobs will undoubtedly be on the axeman’s block in the near future.

[Image – Mourizal Zativa on Unsplash]