Zoom's CEO will take a $10,000 salary this year, a 98% pay cut, after laying off 1,300 workers because of 'mistakes' he made growing the company

• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan is taking a pay cut of 98%, and will earn just $10,000 in salary this year.
• The tech company announced it was laying off 1,300 workers. Yuan blamed it on "mistakes" he made.

The CEO of video-calling company Zoom is taking a 98% pay cut after laying off 1,300 workers.

Eric Yuan said on Tuesday that Zoom was letting around 15% of its workforce go, which he said would affect teams across the company. Like many other companies that have recently announced layoffs, he attributed the move to over-hiring during the pandemic.

"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 own actions," Yuan wrote in an email to staff on Tuesday. "To that end, I am reducing my salary for the coming fiscal year by 98% and foregoing my FY23 corporate bonus."

This would bring Yuan's salary down to $10,000, Zoom wrote in a regulatory filing. This would put his annual salary at $500,000.

For the 2022 financial year, Yuan's salary was $300,000 and his total compensation was around $1.1 million, which included roughly $800,000 for security services, regulatory filings show.

Yuan wrote in the email that other members of the executive leadership team would reduce their base salaries by 20% in the coming year and forfeit their corporate bonuses.

Tech giants have collectively laid off tens of thousands of workers over the past few months. Google is laying off 12,000 employees, or 6.4% of its workforce. PayPal, Microsoft, Meta, Salesforce, and Amazon have also reduced their headcounts.

Some CEOs at companies that announced layoffs have opted to take pay cuts, including Alphabet's Sundar Pichai and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.

Yuan attributed the layoffs to Zoom growing too rapidly when the platform's user numbers rocketed during the pandemic.

"Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand while enabling continued innovation," Yuan wrote. "We worked tirelessly and made Zoom better for our customers and users. But we also made mistakes. We didn't take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities."

Yuan also cited the "uncertainty of the global economy" and its effects on Zoom's customers.

"We did not take a single departure lightly – our leadership carefully examined and made decisions based on critical priorities for long-term growth, and also looked for functions that have become overly complex or duplicative," Yuan wrote.

He said that laid-off US staff would be given up to 16 weeks' severance pay and healthcare as well as access to one-on-one coaching, workshops, and networking groups.

Zoom said in its filing that the layoffs and resultant restructuring would cost it between $50 million and $68 million.