Laid off from Zendesk.

What Zendesk layoffs have meant for employees

Zendesk's published plans, in its November 2022 announcement and Eggemeier's May 2023 note, set the severance base by tenure, so the arithmetic is quick to run. Under the 2022 plan, whose terms the company listed as a minimum, five full years of service came to three months and five weeks of base salary, before the bonus and the other items. If you're offered severance after a Zendesk cut, you can work out what that 2022 base would have come to for your years of service, and there's more on pressing for a better package in negotiating severance.

Both notes put the cuts down partly to hiring that ran ahead of the business. In 2022 the executive team wrote that Zendesk had grown its team much faster than it should have on revenue expectations that weren't pragmatic, and that the new chapter it expected under Hellman & Friedman and Permira required pulling back from hiring ahead of growth. It added that the choice of roles to cut was informed by five strategic priorities, among them reducing duplication of effort, increasing spans of control and rebalancing roles toward go to market. In 2023 Eggemeier wrote that the hiring of 2020 through 2022 had outpaced Zendesk's business realities, and he pointed as well to an increasingly competitive market and customers' turn toward generative AI, with resources going to priorities that included maturing how Zendesk goes to market and building new products.

Both notes also describe other steps coming before the layoffs. The 2022 note mentions two quarters of measures aimed at the bottom line, more than 100 closed requisitions and a review of open roles for other ways of working before current roles were cut, and Eggemeier wrote that when he joined at the end of November he had hoped better conditions and streamlined costs would spare Zendesk the 2023 cut. If interviewers ask why your Zendesk job ended, you're free to point to that published account of hiring and costs when explaining a layoff comes up.

In some countries, Zendesk said both times, the process could take longer. Local law and consultation requirements might stretch the 2022 reduction past the first quarter of 2023 in certain countries, its 2022 filing said, and the 2023 note said that in some countries the process, including notifications about potential role impact, would take longer because of local requirements and practices. In other countries, that note said, affected people would get an email within the hour, at work and personal addresses, with severance information and a way to book an optional one-on-one with a leader. For people cut in either round, then, the company tied how long the process would take to local requirements in the country where they worked.

For the February 2025 and August 2026 cuts, none of the reporting, KRON4's story on the California filing, the Blind thread or Global Corporate Venturing's report, describes a package, so the 2023 plan is the newest set of terms on record. If Zendesk offers you a package after one of those rounds, the 2023 plan shows what Zendesk offered then, which may not match what it offers you now. If the health coverage in a package runs out before you're on a new employer's plan, how COBRA works covers keeping that coverage going, and if you're filing for unemployment in California, there's more on California unemployment benefits.

If you're on a visa

Zendesk's May 2023 severance plan included one-on-one immigration support through its global mobility team for people on work visas. If your role is cut while you're on a work visa, that's help the company has offered before, and there's more on visa timing in layoff deadlines.