Heaptalk, Jakarta — Zoom announced the reduction of its workforce to about 150 employees, representing around 2% of the company’s total employees. This new wave of layoffs was carried out because investors continued to push for efficiency measures for its operations.
As cited in CNBC International, a Zoom spokesperson responded to this layoff, “We regularly evaluate our teams to ensure alignment with our strategy. As a part of this effort, we are rescoping roles to augment capabilities and continue to hire in critical areas for the future.”
As is known, Zoom’s business soared at the start of the pandemic as remote working changed, with many jobs and learning shifting to video conferencing platforms. However, as the pandemic subsided and community activities returned to normal, Zoom shares reportedly fell 10% this year and continue to go down almost 90% from its highest level since October 2020.
However, the company claimed that the new wave of layoffs would not impact overall company divisions. Instead, Zoom Video Communication will unlock job vacancies in artificial intelligence (AI), sales, and operations in 2024.
Previously, this online-based video conferencing platform has laid off about 1,300 jobs, impacting 15% of its global employees last year. In this early wave of layoff, Zoom faced a business slowdown in its conferencing video services along the waning of the pandemic, generating a related charge of up to US$68 million.
As an effect, this technology company was also obliged to cut the salaries of company leaders by up to 98%, including Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan, and other company executives, expecting to suppress the expenses amidst the crisis for the last year.
Many technology companies outside of Zoom declared job termination in early 2024. On January 5th, Alibaba’s e-commerce Lazada cut off around 30% of Southeast Asia’s employees, including Indonesia. These layoffs reportedly affected several departments, such as the commercial and marketing teams. However, the company avoided disclosing the details of the affected employee numbers in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
On the other hand, TikTok follows in other global tech companies’ footsteps, such as Amazon and Google, by laying off around 60 jobs globally. This layoff reportedly impacted TikTok’s employees in the sales and advertising divisions in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and abroad.
Also, Google terminated hundreds of workforces working on the hardware, voice-assistance, engineering, and hardware teams responsible for products like the Pixel phone, Fitbit watches, and Nest thermostat as part of cost-cutting measures.
