by Mary Spiller
February 3, 2024
The company explained to media outlets that it wants to shift to focus more on future growth in Artificial Intelligence, sales, and products.
Videoconferencing company Zoom has announced that it’s cutting 150 different jobs this year to refocus on a new company direction.
Zoom Video Communications will be eliminating nearly 200 jobs in order to narrow its scope on future division growth in Artificial Intelligence and product sales. According to a report published by Bloomberg on Feb. 1, Zoom’s sharp decline in users with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although it clocked in as having millions of users while businesses were forced to go remote during the height of the pandemic, it has lost popularity as workers consistently return to the office full-time or even to a part-time hybrid business model.
A spokesperson from Zoom told CRN more about the business cuts. They said, “We regularly evaluate our teams to ensure alignment with our strategy. As part of this effort, we are rescoping roles to add capabilities and continue to hire in critical areas for the future.”
The new structure of Zoom as a whole will include more hires in AI, products, and sales team roles this year, but it will cut 150 other jobs to make room for the reconfiguration.
According to the outlet, the layoffs will account for “less than 2 percent” of the company’s total workforce.
Jobs that have come under fire by the job cuts include integrated marketing and webinar program managers. Departments included in the functioning of their online video base sales have also been speculated to have been impacted, according to Zoom employees on LinkedIn confirming their shrinking departments.
This is not the first time the company has undergone a massive downsizing. Around this same time in 2023, Zoom reportedly “cut around 1,300 workers or about 15 percent of its workforce.”
Zoom’s CEO, Eric Yuan, even claimed that he would have to reduce his 2023 salary by 98 percent from the COVID-19 pandemic and that many workers would no longer receive corporate bonuses.
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