The first six weeks of 2023 has seen thousands of redundancies across a range of big tech companies.
In a memo to employees on Feb 7, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said it was making made 1,300 employees redundant, which amounts to 15% of the company's workforce. "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."
Yuan has said he will cut his yearly pay by 98%, and will not take a bonus in a move to show his responsibility for the cuts. Executives at Zoom will also see a 20% reduction in salary and forgo their corporate bonuses.
Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google, said it will cut roughly 12,000 jobs from its global workforce on Jan 20. The decision will impact approximately 6% of the company's employees. "This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with," said Google's CEO Sundar Pichai in an email to Google employees.
Microsoft said on Jan 18 it will lay off 10,000 employees this year, affecting nearly 5% of Microsoft's global workforce. The layoffs at Microsoft arrive in response to "macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities," the company said in an official filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
IBM will lay off 1.5% of its workforce or about 3,900 employees, the company announced on Jan 25.
Dell was another to announce layoffs, saying it would cut about 6,650 roles. That amounts to roughly 5% of its global workforce.
pic: shutterstock/yakobchuk viacheslav