Zoom to lay off 1,300 employees as work from home craze ends

Gareth Corfield
Tue, 7 February 2023 

Eric Yuan speaks onstage during the Dropbox Work In Progress Conference - Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for Dropbox

Zoom is to make 1,300 layoffs, letting go of around 15pc of its workforce as the Covid-19 pandemic’s work-from-home culture comes to a crashing halt.

Eric Yuan, the chief executive, said: “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.”

California-based Zoom’s share price soared more than 7pc as the news broke, rising as far as $83 (£69).


Mr Yuan also pledged to reduce his salary by 98pc and forgo his annual bonus. The company boss is worth around $4bn, according to Bloomberg estimates.

The news comes as US-based “Big Tech” companies make rounds of redundancies amid slowing sales as the world returns to pre-pandemic ways of working which are less reliant on tech products.

Some estimates say as many as 85,000 tech employees have been made redundant since the start of 2023, raising questions around executives’ strategies and forward planning for the post-pandemic era after two years of stratospheric sales and profits.

In its last set of financial results for the three months to October 2022, Zoom’s sales increased 5pc.

Yet profits declined to $48.4m, down from $340m in the previous year’s reporting period.

Starting in March 2020 the entire world was forced into remote working within a matter of weeks as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the globe.

Strict home lockdown policies ushered in a golden era for tech companies which capitalised on demand that skyrocketed overnight.

Zoom’s share price more than doubled during the 12 months leading up to March 2021, briefly quadrupling its pre-pandemic valuation of $32bn in October 2020.

At the time of writing, the business was valued at around $24bn (£19.86bn), making it more than three times larger than aero engine maker Rolls-Royce.

Addressing staff as “Zoomies” in his Tuesday message Mr Yuan said: “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.”

The redundancies come around a fortnight before the video calling company is due to present its latest financial results for the three months up to the end of January.

Over the past two years Zoom became a byword for working from home, becoming a vital tool relied on by millions of remote employees worldwide.

Video conferencing star Zoom cuts staff by 15 percent

Tue, 7 February 2023 


The company behind the Zoom video conferencing platform -- which became a household name during the pandemic -- announced Tuesday it is laying off about 15 percent of its staff.

Zoom Video Communications chief executive Eric Yuan is also taking a 98 percent cut in salary this year and forgoing his executive bonus, he said in a blog post about the job cuts.

He added that members of his executive leadership team are taking a 20 percent salary reduction and also forfeiting bonuses this year.


While people and businesses continue to rely on Zoom "as the world transitions to life post-pandemic," the Silicon Valley-based firm is seeing customers cut back on spending, Yuan said in the post.

Zoom has made the "tough but necessary" decision to lay off about 1,300 people, or roughly 15 percent of its staff, according to Yuan.

"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," Yuan said.

Zoom tripled its ranks of employees during the pandemic, as people used the platform for remote work, court hearings, social events and more while Covid-19 risks barred them from getting together in person, according to Yuan.

"We are seeing that people and businesses continue to rely on Zoom," Yuan said.

"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 strategic areas, the chief executive noted.

Zoom joined a growing list of US tech firms slashing jobs as years of high spending has given way to parsimony due to harsh economic conditions around the world.

American computer firm Dell said Monday that it will lay off some five percent of its global workforce, or around 6,650 employees.

The cuts follow similar steps by tech giants Microsoft, Facebook owner Meta, Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and Twitter as the industry girds for economic downturn.

They also come after a major hiring spree at the height of the coronavirus pandemic when companies scrambled to meet demand as people went online for work, school and entertainment.

According to the specialist site Layoffs.fyi, just over 95,000 tech employees have lost their jobs since the beginning of January worldwide.

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