Video Communications Company, Zoom, and E-commerce firm, eBay Inc. have announced plans to lay off about 1,300 and 500 employees representing about 15% and 4% of its total workforce respectively.
In a memo to employees, Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan said the layoffs would impact every part of the organization. Yuan also said he and other executives would take a significant pay cut, after acknowledging he made “mistakes” in how quickly the company grew during the pandemic.
Taking full responsibility for decisions that led to the layoffs, Zoom CEO in the memo said: “As the CEO and founder of Zoom, I am accountable for these mistakes and the actions we take today– and I want to show accountability not just in words but in my actions. To that end, I am reducing my salary for the coming fiscal year by 98% and foregoing my FY23 corporate bonus,” he added.
Yuan said members of the executive leadership team will reduce their base salaries by 20% for the coming fiscal year and forfeit their fiscal year 2023 bonuses.
Also, in a memo to employees, the CEO of eBay, Jamie Iannone said the company decided to make cuts after examining the global macroeconomic environment over the past several months. He said the cuts will strengthen eBay’s ability to deliver better experiences for its customers, and it will help eBay focus on areas where it can make the most impact.
“Importantly, this shift gives us additional space to invest and create new roles in high-potential areas — new technologies, customer innovations, and key markets — and to continue to adapt and flex with the changing macro, e-commerce, and technology landscape,” Iannone wrote in the release.
Zoom came to the limelight globally during the COVID-19 pandemic as many people turned to the platform for business meetings, family chats, and so on.
By mid-2020, Zoom reported skyrocketing revenue fueled by a spike in business customers from the many companies forced to turn to remote work.
Yuan said the company staffed up rapidly during the early days of the pandemic to support the boom in demand as many turned to its platform to video chat with friends and colleagues.