[HN Gopher] Zoom lays of 15% of employees
___________________________________________________________________
Zoom lays of 15% of employees
Author : brakmic
Score : 378 points
Date : 2023-02-07 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.zoom.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.zoom.us)
| bufordtwain wrote:
| If your employer has a pet name for its employees (zoomies,
| tweeps...) and layoffs haven't happened yet, consider updating
| your resume.
| trynewideas wrote:
| a Lattician, a Flexporter, a Scalien, a Relativian, a Plaid, a
| Swyftxer, an Elastician, a Krakenite, a Dragon, an Asana, a
| Wistian, a Nuron, a Bird, a Twilion, a Pitcher, an Olivian, a
| Snyker, a Panda, an Astronaut, a Superhuman, a VTEXer, a
| Klarnaut, a Lacer, a Mozillian, a Paddler, an Oyster, a
| SoundHounder, a Vimean, a Zoopligan, a Motive, a Stasher, a
| Plerker, a Lokaliser, a Courserian, a Udacian, a Racker, a
| Gitpodder, a Dutonian, a Googler, a HubSpotter, a Workmate, a
| Splunker, and a Zoomie walk into a bar
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I think they're fun. Feels like summer camp, or college "Go
| banana slugs!" .
|
| But please never call us family, unless you're going to back it
| up with what a healthy family does. Else, That's just
| psychological abuse.
| trynewideas wrote:
| They're fun when you work there. Every one of those titles
| was used in a layoff letter addressed to employees or a press
| release announcing layoffs. https://docs.google.com/spreadshe
| ets/d/e/2PACX-1vSdHsrGdZPnI...
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I see your point.
| [deleted]
| r0m4n0 wrote:
| Wow... doing the math on the layoff count, 100k employees total,
| that's a lot of employees for a video chat app
| gnabgib wrote:
| Think you might have forgotten to carry a one somewhere (approx
| 8.5K total)
| baggy_trough wrote:
| I cannot stand these cutesy names for employees. "Zoomies"? Yech.
| hekec wrote:
| Hope they will finally be able to work on a good product.
| trynewideas wrote:
| > On September 1, 2020, Yuan's net worth was estimated to be
| US$16.4 billion, a figure 360% higher than his net worth at the
| beginning of the year. In March 2021, Yuan transferred $6 billion
| worth of Zoom shares to a grantor retained annuity trust, for
| which Yuan is a trustee.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Yuan
|
| Fun trivia: Six billion divided by 1,300 is 4,615,384.62
| cwkoss wrote:
| executive compensation is pretty disgusting
| [deleted]
| buggy6257 wrote:
| - Comments about how this is a good thing and bravo to the CEO
| for actually taking accountability - Replies saying how
| it's never enough and the CEO should be fired for doing something
| as stupid as hiring people during an economic boom -
| Comments off ^^^ talking about how much net worth the CEO has
| based on stock that he hasn't liquidated, and how much he made
| off this temporary stock bump from cutting "cruft" -
| Comments questioning why <Company> needs # employees to do
| <overly-reductive description of their product> -
| Comments pointing out that they still have more employees than
| pre-covid - Comments assuming that every person laid off
| was an engineer because why would a tech company hire anything
| else. - Comments off of ^^^ talking about how it's a
| rough time to be job hunting despite the massive labor shortages
| in many sectors including tech - Comments about how
| stupid the demonym for the employees was/is
|
| I filled out my bingo card. Anyone else?
|
| EDIT: I always get HN list formatting wrong.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| I'd pay for HN thread summaries like this
| rchaud wrote:
| this is a solved problem: http://n-gate.com/hackernews/
| cryptoboy2283 wrote:
| You've forgot meta comment categorizing comments
| shapefrog wrote:
| TLDR: We have made the tough but necessary decision to reduce our
| team by approximately 15% and say goodbye to around 1,300
| hardworking, talented colleagues.
|
| Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to
| pay you.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34515267
|
| ZM stock: 83.26 +6.19 (+8.03%) - thats a profit of 400mil on the
| day for the CEO.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| That's not how stock value works. It's not real money.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| good?
| slig wrote:
| >thats a profit of 400mil on the day for the CEO
|
| He was the one that sold that much? If not, it's not his
| profit.
| blfr wrote:
| _Zoom has become an indispensable source of connection for
| businesses_
|
| I haven't been to an online meeting that wasn't MS Teams or
| Google Meet in three months. Sadly, Slack, Zoom, and other
| similar nice-to-have corporate tools seem bound to get eaten by
| the integrated productivity suites.
| nicce wrote:
| MS Teams or Google Meet also feels to be working much better
| with better features.
| [deleted]
| theusus wrote:
| I don't understand, Zoom for my perspective is everywhere today.
| What business issues are they facing?
| dagw wrote:
| Here in Sweden I'm in 20 Teams meetings for every Zoom meeting.
| Outside of academia I can't think of any company I regularly
| deal with that uses Zoom.
| codegeek wrote:
| During Pandemic, their demand went up like crazy. Lot of
| businesses/schools were forced to use zoom. Now as many orgs
| are getting back out of virtual, the demand must be down at
| least somewhat. For example, my kids school district was 100%
| on zoom during Pandemic. Now we are back to in person
| (thankfully)
| taytus wrote:
| Potential cause: Growth has plateau or even declining in a post
| pandemic world.
| braingenious wrote:
| The "How We Got Here" paragraph is a great example of opaque
| nonsense.
|
| > 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.
|
| This is... a completely meaningless sentence. All of these
| ridiculous layoff emails are so condescending (the PagerDuty CEO
| quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in one of them was a fantastic
| example of how full of themselves these tech C-level people are)
|
| It would be refreshing for one of them to come out and just say
| "We never planned on employing you longer than we were on the
| train of sweet sweet covid relief money. We absolutely could
| afford to keep you, but we plan on doing stock buybacks/buying a
| company yacht for me and my dog.
|
| Fuck you, got mine!
|
| Sincerely,
|
| Guy Who Genuinely Believes Saying "Disruptive" Is An Immeasurably
| Valuable Skill
| [deleted]
| SeanLuke wrote:
| I didn't do my job as CEO to keep the company sufficiently
| profitable, so you must be fired instead of me.
| [deleted]
| p1esk wrote:
| He cut his salary by 98%, but it's most likely refers to the
| base salary, while most of his total comp is in stock.
| qup wrote:
| More like 'as CEO, firing you to keep the company sufficiently
| profitable is my job.'
| deltree7 wrote:
| The employees can actually go build their own company and make
| their own poor decisions.
|
| The amount of entitlement among HNers is mind-boggling.
|
| Newsflash: I fired my grass-cutter and snow-remover this year.
| According to the dumb logic presented on all social media, I
| should have fired myself for not seeing inflation and having to
| cut costs on a few things.
| Frost1x wrote:
| To be completely fair, it is one of those situations where the
| damage is done and layoffs are probably one of the best options
| for the company from a completely financial point of view. He
| messed up and as such, there are consequences.
|
| With that said, seems like admittance of this level of error at
| a leadership level should be grounds to lose your job and be
| replaced, so the CEO should also be replaced in this process. I
| realize there are stability issues where you need to bring
| someone else in and catch them up to speed before doing this
| since the role likely requires a lot of contextual awareness
| but none the less, that process _should be_ (but almost
| certainly isn 't) underway at most these organizations.
|
| If anyone not in the c-suite made these levels of errors and
| clearly admitted to them, they'd be gone yesterday.
| whalesalad wrote:
| Love the "Don't forget to share this post" at the end of the
| message.
| weakwire wrote:
| Looks like we love the same things.
| [deleted]
| dmamills wrote:
| three billion dollars in revenue last year
| outworlder wrote:
| This is not about revenue.
|
| Companies are noticing that every time they do a layoff, their
| stock skyrockets. Decreasing expenses is the icing on the cake.
| falcolas wrote:
| Over 3B in _profit_ , actually.
|
| > Zoom Video Communications gross profit for the twelve months
| ending October 31, 2022 was $3.283B, a 15.34% increase year-
| over-year.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ZM/zoom-video-comm...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Gross profit is not profit as we commonly understand it.
| falcolas wrote:
| A good point. TIL gross profit only counts the cost of
| producing the product, but not payroll, taxes etc.
|
| That same link does show a $900M traditional profit on $4B
| of revenue, so roughly a 20% profit margin. It is a
| decrease year over year, but still remarkably good.
|
| At an estimated 12k employees, it's also around $360k in
| revenue per employee, which is pretty decent (though not
| top-10 for the tech industry).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Must be doing a good job managing the company. Somebody give
| this man a bonus!
| xwowsersx wrote:
| > For those Zoomies
|
| Every fucking time. I just can't anymore.
| [deleted]
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > We have made the tough but necessary decision to reduce our
| team by approximately 15% and say goodbye to around 1,300
| hardworking, talented colleagues.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ZM/zoom-video-comm...
|
| Zoom Video Communications total number of employees in 2022 was
| 6,787, a 53.48% increase from 2021.
|
| Zoom Video Communications total number of employees in 2021 was
| 4,422, a 74.64% increase from 2020.
|
| Zoom Video Communications total number of employees in 2020 was
| 2,532, a 48.77% increase from 2019.
|
| Zoom Video Communications total number of employees in 2019 was
| 1,702, a INF% increase from 2018.
|
| Probably not the most up to date/accurate info.
|
| If 1300 is 15% of their workforce, they are up to 8.6k employees,
| headed back down to 7366, still all time high.
|
| Did they really think COVID lifestyle was going to stay forever
| and their business would be gangbusters forever?
|
| What % of their 7000-8000 employees (ignoring any contractors I
| guess) are engineers? 60%?
|
| 4200 engineers to work on an app that at its core is... video
| conferencing?
|
| > Zoom has 300 million users in meetings daily. 89% of zoom users
| use it for work meetings. 73.41 million downloads of the Zoom app
| were recorded worldwide in the first quarter of 2022.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+daily+active+users
|
| What new features have they rolled out past 12 months that
| justify needing 4,000 engineers/project managers/product
| managers/QA team/dev ops/whatever fulltime?
|
| I'd really like to learn the truth to why this statement is
| wrong: "The average person has more business sense than the CEO
| of Zoom and its entire board of executives who allowed rampant
| hiring because I could've guessed during COVID, despite the surge
| in demand given all of the work-from-home during lockdowns, my
| company most likely won't grow forever, therefore I won't triple
| my staff over the next 3 years and then need to just end up
| laying them off"
|
| Like there's no way it's just that simple. Google says the CEO is
| worth between $4bn and $25bn. He has to be smarter than the
| average bear. What am I missing?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Did they really think COVID lifestyle was going to stay
| forever and their business would be gangbusters forever?
|
| I presume competition by the likes of Microsoft teams is a
| bigger factor.
| bilater wrote:
| I've thought about this a lot as well and don't have a good
| answer. My best guess is that this comes about via group
| dynamics (so and so is hiring and we should too!) and external
| investor pressure (you should grow faster says investor!) that
| forces the hand of executives who know deep down it's gonna go
| south eventually.
|
| Also we have to understand that sometimes the callous decision
| to do this deliberately (better to hire fast and grow faster
| now and then lay off the bottoms X%) is made.
|
| In my experience in tech its hard for me to see how that makes
| sense considering the resources + time it takes for a new
| engineer to become productive but perhaps in FAANG level
| companies the onboarding process is good enough for that to
| work at scale i.e. getting 0.5x of a new engineer for 6 months
| is still better than the costs to train and pay em for that
| time.
| chazeon wrote:
| Speaking from inside Academia, Zoom remains an important part
| of communication. We never used Zoom or any form of video chat
| before COVID, but even after COVID, Zoom is here to stay now.
| We meet in Zoom because it has unmatched quality and stability
| for video-conferencing / screen sharing compared to Skype etc.
| Office hour have Zoom sessions, etc.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| I think google meet is way cleaner feeling and I would pick
| it over zoom or teams. We do continue to use Zoom for very
| large 200+ meetings with the idea being that Zoom handles
| those better than Meet. Not sure if that information is
| outdated at this point.
| smueller1234 wrote:
| No idea about Zoom scaling but I can say with confidence
| that Meet works perfectly fine with >200 these days. (I
| work at Google, use Meet 8+h per day in meetings small and
| large.)
| ghaff wrote:
| We use Meet for most purposes because it's "free" given
| that we use Google Workplace for other things. Just use
| Bluejeans these days for the largest meetings.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I love meet but I have to reluctantly admit that zoom
| behaves better when you have a very low and/or irregular
| bandwidth. It reacts very well to temporary packet losses,
| by replaying the audio a little faster until it catches up
| with realtime, and video syncs up with audio quite well.
| rconti wrote:
| Speaking from inside tech, we were using Zoom before the
| pandemic, its usage exploded during the pandemic, and our
| usage of it has never come back down.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| But it's not going to go up either.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| Teams & Meet are improving rapidly; I can't help but ask why
| when it comes to Zoom these days.
| fencepost wrote:
| Never really used Meet, but for Teams I'll say "which one?"
| Microsoft provided a free Teams business license during the
| pandemic, but that ends in April - at which point you need
| either a $4/month license managed through the M365 admin
| portal or you switch to a Personal account through live.com
| and use that for Teams. Haven't tried in a while, but that
| always seemed troublesome when I tried it early on.
|
| Zoom may not be perfect, but it's a lot more accessible for
| a lot of non technical people. They're also pushing things
| like phone service as well, competing with VoIP providers
| including Microsoft, cable companies, phone carriers and
| third party companies.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I like Meet best. It never tries to force me to download an
| app, it just works in the browser.
| none_to_remain wrote:
| > Did they really think COVID lifestyle was going to stay
| forever and their business would be gangbusters forever?
|
| Thinking of Covid as forever seems surprisingly common- all the
| people who full-on moved houses. The people still indefinitely
| isolating and masking. People expecting the pandemic emergency
| working arrangements to continue forever
| nradov wrote:
| If it was so obvious then I assume you purchased puts on $ZM
| during the pandemic?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| > Did they really think COVID lifestyle was going to stay
| forever and their business would be gangbusters forever?
|
| Very likely not, but what else could they have done to deal
| with demand other than hiring more people for a few years?
| ActionHank wrote:
| This is tragic for those involved, but I really don't
| understand how there were 6700+ people working on Zoom.
|
| I feel like the CEO should be under review by the board for
| allowing this to happen and there should be further
| investigations into how they even arrived at this point because
| this is just bananas.
| alchemist1e9 wrote:
| Totally agree. Would be fascinating to see some breakdown by
| job title of those 6700 employees.
| mjr00 wrote:
| 99% chance the board was also pushing for massive hiring to
| focus on growth during the pandemic and the zero-interest
| rate era, and 99% chance they're pushing for layoffs and
| focus on operating profits now that we're in the expensive
| money era.
|
| The board will review the CEO and say "yes this is exactly
| what we wanted you to do, thank you."
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| How long is it expected for the expensive money era to end?
| aka, don't we have SOME insight into the fact that the fed
| will probably be done hiking around the 5.00%-5.25% range
| soon, and then either hold it there for _maybe_ 6 months
| before doing cuts?
|
| how long can the Fed really keep rates at 5% despite the
| pressure of... wall street? the economy's well being
| (despite it being too dependent on cheap capital)? how much
| higher can they go above 5%? i thought the consensus was
| "not much" / "the fed says one thing and nobody really
| believes they'll be strong enough to do it"
| mjr00 wrote:
| Nobody has a crystal ball. The last time inflation was
| this big of a problem in the west (~1980) rates touched
| over 20% and stayed above 10% for multiple years. What
| makes you so sure that 5% is the limit, or that there
| will be cuts after 6 months?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-
| fedwatch...
|
| This stupid, basically gambling insights tool.
|
| > The CME FedWatch Tool is a tool used by traders and
| investors to track the probability of interest rate
| changes by the Federal Reserve (Fed). It uses Fed funds
| futures prices traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange
| (CME) to calculate the market's expectations for the
| future direction of interest rates.
|
| > The data represented by the CME FedWatch Tool
| represents the market's perception and expectation of
| future Fed decisions on interest rates. It is not a
| prediction made by the Fed, nor is it an official
| statement by the Fed on future interest rate plans.
|
| > It is difficult to assess the accuracy of the CME
| FedWatch Tool overall as it can be influenced by many
| factors including market speculation, economic data
| releases, and changes in global events. Some market
| participants may find it to be a useful tool to
| understand market sentiment, while others may consider it
| to be speculative at best. Ultimately, the accuracy of
| the tool can only be determined in hindsight, after the
| Fed has actually made its interest rate decisions.
|
| I believe the Fed also releases what they call a dotplot
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/fomcp
| roj...
|
| On page 4 you can see that they have rates forecasted as
| coming down 2024, 2025, etc.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| This is a big discussion in the financial news at
| present. Essentially the central banks keep saying that
| they will keep rates high for a while, and the market
| doesn't believe them.
|
| Personally, I never bet against people who run the money
| printers, but you do you.
| mjr00 wrote:
| Projections are just projections and subject to change.
| Check out the projections the Fed made in 2020: https://w
| ww.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcprojtabl20...
|
| In 2020 they were projecting that 2022 inflation would be
| less than 2%, and rates continuing to be near-zero into
| 2023.
| outworlder wrote:
| How is it difficult to understand? It's not 6700 engineers,
| it's all the support staff. I can easily budget 1k people
| just to support all compliance activities and sales in order
| to be able to sell to governments.
| lxgr wrote:
| > the CEO should be under review by the board for allowing
| this to happen
|
| Unfortunately, "all the other CEOs were doing it too" will
| probably hold up extremely well as a justification - in the
| unlikely case it ever comes to that.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It's likely also exactly what the board would have wanted
| or even demanded when the hiring was happening.
| ActionHank wrote:
| If there is fat to cut that means they were paying staff to
| do work that was unnecessary or wasteful which is money out
| of investor's pockets.
| lxgr wrote:
| "Unnecessary or wasteful" is as subjective and
| context/environment-dependent a judgement as it gets.
|
| Other than that, the sometimes toxic dynamics of sudden
| windfalls in funding have also been discussed here at
| length: Paradoxically, _not_ spending investors ' money
| can sometimes be considered worse than wasting it on
| moonshot projects (or even outright on fancy office
| furniture and eye-catching employee perks).
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I work for a startup that raised a bunch of money and
| hasn't spent most of it. It might have seemed bad last
| year, but I'm sure their investors have come round to the
| idea now ;)
| [deleted]
| jeffwask wrote:
| This is one of the layoffs where I go... yeah you really did
| over hire WTF were you thinking. How do you even effectively
| onboard that many people as a percentage of existing staff?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I've never worked in customer support, but if they're
| customer support people wouldn't they just get something
| like a binder with questions and answers, and some
| flowcharts?
| jeffwask wrote:
| Back in the long long ago, I worked in a call center and
| we doubled the staff. It was a lot of of work, training,
| equipment, leadership, realignment of L2... it was still
| a lot.
| frankc wrote:
| "The average person has more business sense than the CEO of
| Zoom and its entire board of executives who allowed rampant
| hiring because I could've guessed during COVID, despite the
| surge in demand given all of the work-from-home during
| lockdowns, my company most likely won't grow forever, therefore
| I won't triple my staff over the next 3 years and then need to
| just end up laying them off"
|
| I don't mean this to be snarky but this is like saying its
| stupid for a department store to hire in the lead-up to
| Christmas. They are going to have to lay many or most of them
| off after. Couldn't they see that Christmas wouldn't last
| forever?
|
| Think of it this way - if there is a huge market/demand
| expansion, and you don't meet that need/demand, someone else
| will. Even if you think that much of that expansion is
| temporary, you will have fallen behind competitors in
| technology and market share. When the boom ends, they lay
| people off and you don't have to, but you are still behind now.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I think there's a valid discussion to be had about whether we
| as an industry should _expect_ massive hiring binges to be
| temporary and necessarily followed years later by layoffs,
| but these weren 't billed as temporary jobs, so I think some
| shame is warranted. People probably relocated for these jobs,
| expecting them to be stable. I don't really want to become
| complacent to working in an industry where major players just
| lay off thousands of people periodically.
| bengale wrote:
| I think an argument can be made that all jobs are temporary
| jobs. If you're increasing headcount during a period of
| high growth then there is often hope that the growth
| continues enough to support those numbers when things taper
| off but it's not as easy as people seem to be saying.
|
| It looks like they grew somewhere around 300% since the
| start of COVID, a rif of 15% doesn't seem too far off
| estimates to me.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I think there's a valid discussion to be had about
| whether we as an industry should expect massive hiring
| binges to be temporary and necessarily followed years later
| by layoffs
|
| Devil's advocate but at the end of the day, if you're an
| engineer and Zoom wants to offer you a low-six figure job
| ($100k-$300k/yr total comp I'm sure is within the normal
| range for most people), as an employee are you "grateful"
| and just shut up and take it and don't think twice from the
| perspective of, who cares if I get laid off in 18 months?
|
| Like the company doesn't owe it to you to keep you
| employed, so the question becomes, do they owe it to you to
| at least give you a heads up that your full time job isn't
| really that permanent? No company really gives any salaried
| employee any guarantee like that. Who are we as employees
| to say "hey, I think I deserved more communication in your
| intentions with me/my job"?
| ghaff wrote:
| Lots of companies in lots of industries can be very
| cyclical. Try working for an aerospace company--or one of
| their many subcontractors--if they lose a big contract.
| gnaritas99 wrote:
| [dead]
| brundolf wrote:
| Yeah, a lot of layoffs make a lot more sense when you re-
| evaluate the assumption that these CEOs are hiring people
| with the intent of keeping them indefinitely. For many, I'd
| bet this was the plan all along
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I don't mean this to be snarky but this is like saying its
| stupid for a department store to hire in the lead-up to
| Christmas.
|
| You aren't wrong, I'd say the only subtle difference there
| is, when you are hired for a Christmas seasonal job, you're
| informed that it's seasonal and are expected to be laid off,
| right?
| scruple wrote:
| Yes, from what I recall, from working in retail in
| highschool and beyond, it's specifically temp work and
| typically staffed through a temp agency.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > 4200 engineers to work on an app that at its core is... video
| conferencing?
|
| Low latency video in general is an _extremely_ hard problem to
| get right. Video conferencing is that, and more.
|
| Is the number of employees likely overinflated? Clearly as they
| just had layoffs. But let's not pretend the problem space is
| some super easy thing that can be handled by one engineer in
| their basement.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Latency isn't the problem. The problem is having anywhere
| between 2 and 1000 participants in a room, with different
| quality/bandwidth of connections, and transmitting those
| streams back out to everyone else in the room.
|
| We use Janus Gateway with our product, and it works fine up
| to 15 or 20 users, but there is no way that I would ever
| recommend it (or anything other than Zoom) for a large number
| of users in the same room.
|
| Having said that, I think they have already solved all those
| problems now, so I don't really see the need for a huge
| number of engineers at Zoom, other than what is required to
| keep the whole shebang running.
| moduspol wrote:
| > Latency isn't the problem. The problem is having anywhere
| between 2 and 1000 participants in a room, with different
| quality/bandwidth of connections, and transmitting those
| streams back out to everyone else in the room.
|
| And don't forget they're often doing it with end-to-end
| encryption involved, and they've somehow done it without
| impacting the user experience much. In a vacuum, I'd expect
| that to introduce non-trivial latency / performance issues
| that would lead to "just turn off end-to-end encryption for
| this call so it'll work," but it really hasn't. They really
| deserve some praise for this.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Janus gateway and webrtc in general has encryption as
| well, so I wouldn't say that is a major engineering
| problem. It just requires a certain amount of hardware to
| be thrown at it.
| moduspol wrote:
| I don't just mean encryption--I mean end-to-end
| encryption.
|
| That means you can't throw hardware at it. You're limited
| to the hardware end users are using. Every client needs
| to be able to meet the needs of every other client, when
| each could be on a flaky cellular connection, or on a
| Raspberry Pi, or on a high-end PC with dedicated
| bandwidth. And how much CPU / memory / bandwidth /
| latency you have will often change during the call.
|
| You can't just have the client send out the best video /
| audio it can and transcode it to meet other clients'
| capabilities server-side because of the end-to-end
| encryption. Getting it to work as seamlessly as Zoom does
| is an accomplishment.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| i don't disagree but at its core haven't they already solved
| this problem?
|
| i don't hear any release notes about it getting any faster or
| better quality
|
| i'm sure they have scaling semi solved now at 300m+ daily
| users (if that's true)
| ec109685 wrote:
| At some point you reach diminishing returns and can call that
| aspect of your product finished.
|
| Given the changes from Mac OS 12 to Mac OS 13 of the photos
| app (and other parts of the OS), there is no way Apple has as
| big of a team on Photos as they once did. Companies have a
| terrible problem perpetually funding teams, despite the
| impact of the team's work naturally diminishing as things get
| to a "good enough" state.
| roughly wrote:
| I wouldn't have had a problem if Zoom had been focused on the
| core product, but they added a goddamn App Store.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| In gaming we call that "mod support" and it usually helps
| improve the product by allowing 3rd parties to innovate on
| the core.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Video conferencing is hard, but putting 4200 engineers on
| that problem reminds of the analogy of trying to make a baby
| in 1 months with 9 women.
| f311a wrote:
| How would you imagine 1-2k of engineers working on this
| problem?
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| I'd be hugely surprised if they had more than 40% engineering.
| pnw wrote:
| From LinkedIn Insights:
|
| Sales 21% Engineering 18% Other 12% IT 10% Support 5% PM 3%
|
| The rest is split between finance, BD, education and admin
| roles. This seems pretty typical for a public company with
| lots of compliance and red tape.
|
| Highest growth areas in the last year are admin, operations,
| PM and engineering.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| The best case I can make is that their reasoning might have
| been like this:
|
| (1) Permanent or not, right now the pandemic is clearly
| generating huge interest in videoconferencing.
|
| (2) Our big competitors (Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc.)
| can afford to speculatively invest heavily into their products
| just in case it does take off, remote work really is the
| future, etc.
|
| (3) For us, things are unlikely to ever go back to how they
| were before the pandemic. If we do nothing, we risk getting
| left behind. If we invest heavily too, although it may turn out
| badly, at least we're giving ourselves a fighting chance. We
| are betting the company on something; it's just a matter of
| choosing what to bet it on.
|
| It's hard to evaluate the risk of getting left behind. Network
| effects (don't want to ask all your friends who have Zoom set
| up already to switch technologies) might be a big enough moat
| that they never even needed to worry. Or maybe not.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Very insightful, thank you.
|
| For "fun", a counter argument I would make is,
|
| if you took the Zoom product right when the pandemic hit and
| lockdowns started, and just did the bare minimum necessary to
| make it stable, performant, and scalable to handle HUGE
| influx in demand
|
| would that have been good enough? with focus on, other than
| improving latency/audio quality/video quality and supporting
| small meetings all the way up to 500 person meetings, did you
| need to double engineering staff to achieve this, or could
| you have gotten away with less and the rest of the engineers
| got stuck working on random useless features just because it
| was cheap to borrow money and finance their salary at the
| time?
|
| > Basic (free or free with credit card): 100 participants.
| Pro: 100 participants. Business: 300 participants.
| Enterprise: 500 participants.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What is good enough?
|
| I think the relevant question is if the company would be in
| a better position _today_ if they did the minimum vs
| loading up on staff and then laying them off.
|
| How much did it actually cost them to pay the extra
| employees? How much market share is worth paying ~1500
| employees for two years?
|
| If Zoom fails, will it be because of this cost, or because
| they couldn't _do more_.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I'd really like to learn the truth to why this statement is
| wrong:
|
| I can steel man that.
|
| The pandemic was a once in a lifetime moment for the the
| adoption of video meetings. Market share captured during those
| couple years will largely define the players for decades to
| come. It would be financially responsible not make every effort
| to seize the opportunity. If this means massive temporary
| staffing, so be it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Right. And, if I had stood up in June 2020 and made the
| prediction that 50% of business travel would be replaced by
| video conferencing because companies would realize that their
| T&E spend was bloated and unnecessary to a significant degree
| --you might have disagreed but you probably wouldn't have
| laughed me out of the room.
|
| Instead, air travel is pretty much back to pre-pandemic
| levels in spite of economic headwinds.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yet Video conferencing is _still_ an 10 billion dollar
| market and growing, and Zoom is a, if not _the_ leading
| player. It is projected to hit 19 billion by 2027.
|
| https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-
| release/2023/01/12/258...
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough. What we've seen since pre-pandemic but
| accelerated by it is that companies have mostly decided
| that video conferencing vs. voice-only is basically free
| in the grand scheme of things and it's useful for a great
| many circumstances. It hasn't mostly replaced in-person
| though and, for events, it feels like there's a great
| deal of virtual fatigue at this point. In fact, the main
| event observation I'd make is that people going to events
| in-person seem more inclined to socialize/network rather
| than parachuting in to give a talk relative to pre-
| pandemic.
| ketralnis wrote:
| > Did they really think COVID lifestyle was going to stay
| forever and their business would be gangbusters forever?
|
| It's easy to feel superior with hindsight, but possibly, yeah.
| Maybe it's not the right bet but it's not totally crazy to
| think that companies shifting to working from home might
| continue to work from home after trying it out.
|
| I can certainly think of some "they should have known" examples
| but this isn't one of them. Nobody knew one way or the other.
| Heck my company is now majority remote so I'd say we still
| don't know.
| ghaff wrote:
| Zoom is actually a company where it wasn't unreasonable to
| think there was really a "new normal" and Zoom was well-
| positioned to capitalize on that shift. As it turned out,
| things reset to be more like pre-pandemic than many thought--
| especially outside the tech bubble--and Google and Microsoft
| were probably better able to capitalize on an overall
| increase in videoconferencing as part of their office suites.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Zoom is actually a company where it wasn't unreasonable
| to think there was really a "new normal" and Zoom was well-
| positioned to capitalize on that shift.
|
| I agree from the perspective of, how much travel related to
| business is non-essential (could be solved over
| Zoom/equivalent but instead isn't)?
|
| Face to face with clients, seminars
|
| Maybe I'm missing data on the intangibles of in-person
| meeting vs digital meeting
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know about data but there are definitely
| intangibles relating to building relationships over
| food/drink/activities that aren't really replaced by a
| more transactional video call intended to communicate
| information.
|
| That's not really a surprise to most people but there was
| still a pretty broad assumption that the practicalities
| of reducing travel in favor of video would win out to a
| significant degree. And that mostly hasn't happened.
|
| It's probably also the case that a lot of people in
| companies, including execs, complain about business
| travel but actually really like the change of scenery so
| they find excuses to do it.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > I don't know about data but there are definitely
| intangibles relating to building relationships over
| food/drink/activities that aren't really replaced by a
| more transactional video call intended to communicate
| information.
|
| 100% agree. It's just fun to think about just how much,
| for example, "waste" happens with this. Think of the
| impact to the climate from all of the planes traveling,
| etc.
| JohnFen wrote:
| At the very least, it was (or should have been) very clear to
| everybody that the future was uncertain. Permanently hiring
| people is a thing you do when you're certain.
|
| Why did they not hire on time-limited contracts until they
| could be more sure of how things would shake out? If it
| turned out that the growth was permanent, you offer permanent
| jobs to the contractors. If it turned out it was temporary,
| you haven't made a promise to anyone that you could keep.
|
| Either way, nobody gets burned.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are very few certainties in business. In the US, it's
| generally not even legal to just hire everyone as a
| contractor--and many people wouldn't even take a 12-month
| contract job, perhaps with no benefits.
| lkbm wrote:
| > What % of their 7000-8000 employees (ignoring any contractors
| I guess) are engineers? 60%? > > 4200 engineers to work on an
| app that at its core is... video conferencing?
|
| If you think 4200 is an absurd number of engineers, why did you
| use that number as your estimate? Maybe it's 90% sales and
| customer support.
| anon7725 wrote:
| There is no way that 60% are engineers. This kind of scale up
| is usually in sales and customer support roles, and moderation
| if applicable.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| What's a better guess for all in number related to
| engineering staff? Engineers, QA (if any), resource managers,
| product managers to work with engineers to develop new
| features/ideas, project managers to manage "sprints" or
| "agile" or "waterfall" or "kanban" or whatever
| ketzo wrote:
| For a company that focuses on enterprise sales as hard as
| Zoom does, I think a _super_ rough ballpark is that all-in
| engineering staff are not more than 50% of headcount.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| agree, so let's move the goal post
|
| in an engineering org what's the ratio of engineers
| (hands on keyboard) to non engineers? 50-50?
|
| 8 hours a day 5 days a week 20 days a month what are 2000
| engineers working on related to zoom?
| ketzo wrote:
| It's a good question, honestly. My go-to answer is just
| "scale" -- the number of people required to go from
| "1,000 video calls that are pretty good" to "1,000,000
| video calls that are close to perfect" is probably
| insane, for a lot of reasons that I won't even speculate
| on.
|
| But 2,000 still seems like a LOT.
| rbetts wrote:
| The ratio is likely closer to 20-30%. I searched the
| internet until I found data that confirmed my guess ;-).
| https://blossomstreetventures.medium.com/the-makeup-of-
| saas-....
|
| Zoom includes network, compute, video, voice, recording,
| recording-storage, transcription, mobile clients,
| telecom/phone-in, meeting controls, webinar controls, in
| app messaging, presumably global data centers, calendars,
| whiteboards, 3rd party app integrations for calendars and
| schedule, zoom-rooms/hardware, "zoom apps" - 3rd party
| application integration, bot integration, and a whole
| enterprise VOIP business on top of it all.
| pictur wrote:
| You should change this ridiculous title to summarize the article.
| Don't waste people's time.
| HollywoodZro wrote:
| I think an executive who REALLY means it should forgot EQUITY
| GRANT and distribute that as compensation to the departing
| individuals.
|
| For some orgs it can mean millions more in severance for the
| individuals whose lives are impacted because of the decisions of
| those company executives.
| [deleted]
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Title needs to be fixed. Lays "off*"
| aftbit wrote:
| Surely the title should be: "Zoom lays off 15% of employees".
| p1esk wrote:
| Severance: "Up to 16 weeks' salary" - what does "up to" means
| exactly?
| tptacek wrote:
| Presumably it's a function of your tenure at the company.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| And your willingness to go quietly.
| aioprisan wrote:
| ^ always. No bad mouthing the company and no poaching for
| at least 1 year is a standard clause.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| Serious question, how can they enforce this?
| Alupis wrote:
| By burying you in attorney's fees until you crumble.
|
| Severance packages always come with strings attached.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You sign a contract. If you violate it, they sue you to
| get your severance back.
| mr90210 wrote:
| "Up to" implies a range ;)
| kevviiinn wrote:
| [dead]
| raverbashing wrote:
| It's probably related to employee tenure
| par wrote:
| He is taking a 98% paycut on salary and foregoing his bonus, but
| I wonder what his equity based comp is as a % of his total comp.
| My guess is he is mostly compensated in equity.
| shapefrog wrote:
| He owns 22% of the company already.
| olliej wrote:
| It's not how much he owns, it's that executive comp is often
| heavily weighted to equity not salary: dropping your salary
| by 98% only matters if that salary represents a significant
| amount of your actual income.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| You all are talking past each other. If he owns 22%, most
| of his "comp" will just come from the company being valued
| higher.
| chippiewill wrote:
| With the proportion of the business he owns the majority of
| his comp will be in growing the stock price. He'll be
| taking a massive hit without the salary decrease from
| market conditions.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Likely earning ~50% less in the past year due to stock
| valuation decline. Possibly much less from underwater
| options.
| esoterica wrote:
| You're missing the point entirely; if you're a founder CEO
| who owns a large chunk of the company, then your existing
| ownership dwarfs all of your salary, bonus, and equity
| compensation. You get "paid" in share price increases, not
| cash or stock. Surrendering any part of your compensation
| is just a gimmick.
| olliej wrote:
| My thought exactly. How about resetting unvested equity to zero
| or some similar "I got all these grants while apparently
| mismanaging the company so maybe I should not have"
| swyx wrote:
| so binary. he still ran the company. overhiring doesnt
| necessarily equate to mismanaging.
| olliej wrote:
| If you're firing 15% of your employees it's mismanagement.
| Either you didn't need the additional staff, or you had an
| opportunity that needed that staff and you failed to
| deliver on it and are now discarding those people like
| garbage.
|
| But apparently we're ok with the binary of "management
| screwed up" -> "individual employees no longer have a job
| or health insurance".
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How about you needed staff, payed them well, and no
| longer need them?
|
| Is this strictly impossible?
| msoad wrote:
| The value of his $4b equity went up by about 5% after release
| of this news.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| I find it kind of funny, kind of disappointing how in every one
| of these threads a bunch of the highly voted comments are
| complaining about some aspect of the layoff, like the goalposts
| keep moving.
|
| The way the layoffs were communicated, the fact that they were
| staggered, the fact that they weren't staggered, that the
| ceo/founder doesn't take responsibility, that they do but they
| don't take action to punish themselves/their team, that the
| packages weren't good enough, or as in this case, that the
| company (that they don't even work for) has a name for their
| employees.
|
| Endless whinging. And it's exhausting to read.
| sixhobbits wrote:
| As opposed to meta whinging, which of course is the opposite of
| exhausting ;)
| [deleted]
| sarkhan wrote:
| How is your wining different than theirs? Genuine question.
| It's human nature to cope with stress via wining.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If you're hired for the Christmas rush, you know it's temporary.
| These poor people probably didn't realize they were just a
| temporary hire.
|
| Would they have joined if Zoom had disclosed on hiring them,
| "We're experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime growth spurt because of
| COVID. If and when that ends, we may have to lay you off." ??
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| "If ___ we may have to lay you off" is _always_ true, I
| wouldn't believe anyone who promised that can't happen. Unlike
| Christmas, Zoom couldn't know when or if demand might subside,
| and their goal was that it wouldn't.
|
| We shouldn't punish employers for leaning into strong markets,
| because unemployment is much worse when they're reluctant to
| ever hire even at the best of times.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Well, no. Black Swan events are fundamentally different than
| "strong markets."
|
| It would be like a "survival supplies" store hiring 10,000
| "permanent" employees when there's threat of a nuclear
| apocalypse.
|
| You could argue that the Zoom employees knew, or should have
| known, that they were really temp hires.
| haswell wrote:
| > _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. To that
| end, I am reducing my salary for the coming fiscal year by 98%
| and foregoing my FY23 corporate bonus. Members of my executive
| leadership team will reduce their base salaries by 20% for the
| coming fiscal year while also forfeiting their FY23 corporate
| bonuses._
|
| It's nice to see the phrase "I am accountable" followed by a
| description of what that accountability entails.
|
| Whether or not the steps taken seem fair is a separate
| conversation, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
|
| When you're making CEO salary, no amount of salary reduction will
| have a day to day impact, but this seems strongly symbolic at
| least.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << When you're making CEO salary, no amount of salary reduction
| will have a day to day impact, but this seems strongly symbolic
| at least.
|
| Even symbolic gesture is more than I have come to expect these
| days. While it may not be what is demanded, I welcome it as a
| welcome change.
|
| That said, I disagree with the categorical phrasing. Clearly
| some reduction would make an impact ( I think we agree that
| 100% would; if so, at this point it only becomes a question of
| what is reasonable ).
| haswell wrote:
| I guess my point was that it would be very surprising if
| someone making that amount of money did not have finances
| structured such that they could stop working tomorrow and be
| fine through the end of their lives.
|
| To your point, if one has a habit of spending lavishly, it
| seems fair that the source of funding has to come from
| somewhere that isn't this year's paycheck, but it seems like
| the end result would be a faster-than-planned depletion of
| resources rather than impacting day to day living. And he's
| presumably back to making normal salary within a year.
| hgsgm wrote:
| >To that end, I am reducing my salary for the coming fiscal
| year by 98% and foregoing my FY23 corporate bonus.
|
| What about equity grants?
| endisneigh wrote:
| Lol, no good deed unpunished.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| He owns 22% of the company. He literally just made ~1
| billion on this decision and is foregoing a salary of ~1
| million.
| [deleted]
| prewett wrote:
| Only if he sells right now, otherwise he literally hasn't
| made any money, just his current potential-money (like
| potential-energy) has increased. It remains to be seen
| what will happen in the future. He is also exposed to all
| sorts of other things, like he could lose a billion
| dollars of the course of a year because the Fed decides
| to hike interest rates 4%.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sure, it also remains to be seen what the value of the
| dollar is in the future. You could lose a billion in real
| dollars just holding cash.
|
| Don't really think it diminishes my point.
| urmish wrote:
| The volatility in equity prices and dollar strength is
| not comparable. This analogy is just absurd.
| urmish wrote:
| even if he resigns and donates his entire nw to charity,
| someone on HN will ask what about the oxygen he's using up
| breathing.
| password11 wrote:
| > _If you are a US-based employee who is impacted, you will
| receive an email to your Zoom and personal inboxes in the next
| 30 minutes that reads [IMPACTED] Departing Zoom: What You Need
| to Know._
|
| This is the way to notify people of a layoff. Immediate binary
| yes/no.
|
| Although there is no great way to do it, this layoff seems
| pretty respectful and well done.
| klabb3 wrote:
| I think the best way is:
|
| - invite everyone 2 weeks before to a townhall named
| [REQUIRED] An update on your employment
|
| - read the names of the fired people from a fancy envelope
|
| - when someone is called, their corp access is revoked in
| real time and they are kicked off the call
| warning26 wrote:
| Well _I_ thought your comment was amusing. It should also
| be held in front of a live studio audience and involve
| several elaborate dance numbers.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Hopefully they're also sending a NACK email too.
|
| Having been through it, let me tell you that's a gut
| wrenching _n_ minutes to wait, though.
| MollyRealized wrote:
| Okay, gotta ask for learning purposes: what's a NACK email?
|
| *EDIT: Ah. "Negative acknowledgement." In other words,
| someone hears from them regardless of whether they're
| impacted or not, i.e. [NOT IMPACTED].
| domber wrote:
| Are you kidding? Passing the message that you're CANNED in
| the SUBJECT of the email is now considered _respectful_?
|
| No, it's robotic, and pathetic.
|
| They'll soon be writing these lovely messages to their
| employees, as well as you're fired emails with ChatGPT.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> When you're making CEO salary, no amount of salary reduction
| will have a day to day impact, but this seems strongly symbolic
| at least._
|
| If I remember correctly, Steve Jobs had a $1 salary.
|
| And a Learjet.
|
| A lot of these folks don't make most of their money from
| salary. If his main income is from stocks, then he may actually
| be doing fairly well.
| rchaud wrote:
| Which is what makes it galling to see other CEOs, also
| receiving most of the compensation in stock, 'taking
| responsibility' by....leaving their personal bottom lines
| unchanged.
|
| Unlike Steve Jobs though, the Zoom CEO won't be able to back-
| date his options to collect a cool $20 mill in capital gains
| [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.cultofmac.com/443542/steve-jobs-apple-stock-
| back...
| 2devnull wrote:
| I really want to agree. On an emotional level, I do agree. It's
| important that the entire organization feel they rise or fall
| together, as a team, and this should impact leadership more
| heavily than the rank and file.
|
| But on the other, as you note, it's just a symbolic thing. As
| such, a large part of me feels, do we really benefit as a
| society for those increasing even more the extent to which
| virtue signaling is institutionalized?
|
| So I agree in spirit, but worry that this is an under
| appreciated long term risk to business culture specifically,
| and society more generally. "Symbolic" on some level really
| just translates to "BS" and we have more than enough of that
| already.
| pastor_bob wrote:
| I agree, but it's a lot easier for a Founder CEO with 22%
| ownership of the company to do.
|
| It's completely not comparable to a CEO hired with no initial
| equity stake.
|
| Just for illustration. The 10% stock price jump this message
| caused just earned him $500+ million
| jonathankoren wrote:
| That's why you clawback the equity as well
| gwbrooks wrote:
| "You" who? He's the largest shareholder both by share count
| and, even more so, via his super-voting shares.
|
| As another commenter noted, the layoffs made shareholders
| money. Assuming the board is largely made up of equity
| holders, a clawback would punish _exactly the sort of
| behavior and performance they want._
|
| Equity confers different responsibilities, rights and, yes,
| paydays than labor. Acting like every hit the latter takes
| should somehow mean a haircut to the former ignores that.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Why? Because the CEO did his job and made the stock price
| go up?
| Kranar wrote:
| That would be counterproductive. The fact he made these
| measures is what made the stock price go up. The goal isn't
| to just punish someone for the sake of punishing them, the
| goal is to improve the value of the company, which the CEO
| just did by taking these steps.
| vsareto wrote:
| This is probably the best you can hope for in terms of fairness
| right now. You'll never see executives put themselves
| financially in the same situation as the lowest level people
| they are letting go.
|
| This is actually a pretty big step, but the move will need some
| benefit to the company for it to become more common-place.
|
| They might roll these bonuses into subsequent bonuses, but that
| may actually end up being a motivator if these bonuses are
| truly forfeit until things are improved by the executives.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > probably the best you can hope for
|
| The cynic in me suspects that this is going to trickle down -
| there will be 20% salary reductions for _everybody_ , and
| this will become a trend just like the layoffs did.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| The best you can hope for is for the CEO to have his
| incentives aligned fully with the company. Given his enormous
| ownership stake, that's already true. This is a rounding
| error compared to the billions of book value he lost and the
| billions he still retains.
|
| Any CEO in his position is accountable by default. They lose
| a literal fortune when the company doesn't perform. This meme
| of "but how are you taking accountability" confuses the heck
| out of me given this context.
| speby wrote:
| Seriously? What 'fairness' exactly is it people want when
| companies do layoffs?
|
| "Hey, we are laying off 3,000 people. Because of that, I am
| firing myself and the company will no longer have a CEO and
| will have to find someone else, starting immediately. In
| addition, I plan to donate all of my life's savings and file
| for unemployment like everyone else and, if needed, live in
| my van down by the river. I hope this makes everyone feel
| vindicated and that the scales of justice remain balanced.
| God Bless."
| lkrubner wrote:
| "Because of that, I am firing myself"
|
| A team does terrible for awhile -- should the coach be
| removed? A company does terrible -- should the CEO be
| removed? This is what accountability means. Just this year
| I was hired by a Board Of Directors, of a startup with 150
| people, to do an evaluation of the technology and code, and
| I found epic levels of tech debt and irresponsible decision
| making. When I gave my report to the Board Of Directors,
| the Board responded by firing both the CTO and the CEO.
| This seems normal to me.
| colinmorelli wrote:
| I don't know who needs to hear this, but laying people
| off _does not mean the company is doing terrible_ and
| this narrative is the reason why you get vastly different
| opinions about handling this scenario.
|
| All laying people off means is that there are items that
| the company will _not_ be executing against in the
| future. It may or may not mean that they 're in a bad
| spot, but very often - and the case with many of the
| current tech giants laying off that we're seeing - it
| simply means they grew more than they needed for the road
| ahead.
|
| Whether or not that's good or bad is a fair question. It
| was asked on a previous thread whether we as a society
| should be comfortable with companies gabling with the
| jobs of their employees, and I think that's a worthwhile
| question. But it most certainly does not mean that a
| company is "doing terrible."
| frellus wrote:
| That seems like the call of the board, no? Certainly,
| CEOs at any substantial level are accountable to a group
| of people. Everyone answers to someone.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's not that Zoom has done terrible for a while, in fact
| the opposite is true. Yuan is the founder, and the
| company went from nothing to being pretty huge under his
| leadership. On the other hand, he signed off on hiring a
| lot of people because the company grew really fast during
| the pandemic -- too many, as it turns out. What do you
| make of that? Should the CEO be considered a failure
| because too many people were hired, or a success because
| the company's revenue grew by like 1000% in the last
| three years? Both are really responses to the pandemic,
| and it may be that neither are really his fault, even if
| they are on his plate to deal with.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| zoom is profitable despite layoffs. workers want some of
| that profit rather than a layoff
| memonkey wrote:
| Who is saying that?
| riceart wrote:
| Implied in the second sentence of the comment being
| replied to.
| HollywoodZro wrote:
| The big thing would be for Mr. Yuan to forgo his equity grant
| for FY23 and also take his equity grant from FY22 and
| distribute that as severance for the employees who lives are
| impacted negatively due to the decisions of executives in the
| organization.
|
| That truly means "taking ownership" of what happened.
|
| The individuals leaving were not the ones who hired or
| authorized the hires without the evaluation of long-term
| viability for the organization. They were just doing their
| jobs.
| jo6gwb wrote:
| I think the reason we don't see other CEOs acting like Mr.
| Yuan is because of this sentiment. Whatever you do, it will
| never be enough.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| We tell ourselves perfect is the enemy of good and then
| try anyways. But it seems like they get to say, perfect
| is the enemy of good, so I'll give up before I start.
| It's this difference in character that creates greater
| division rather than lessening it.
| neon_electro wrote:
| Perhaps "we" need to do a better job defining what
| "enough" is, then? So that we don't allow the goalposts
| to be moved.
|
| People lost their livelihoods, and in the US, their
| access to affordable healthcare until they figure out a
| new solution or get a new job.
| fatnoah wrote:
| They haven't released 2022 financials, but for 2021 base +
| bonus for Mr. Yuan was about $313,000 and he received ~8400
| RSUs (about $670k at today's price), which fully vest on
| April 8. Additionally, it looks like he received an RSU
| grant of 612,000 shares on July 8, that vest quarterly over
| 4 years.
|
| So, for those keeping track, Mr. Yuan is giving up about
| $300k in cash, but still receiving about $13M in stock.
| That's a 2.3% level of "accountability".
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's symbolic. He built a juggernaut that went from
| nothing to industry leader in a few years. Just like
| Cisco did with WebEx, they can park the company for a few
| years and print billions until the next disruptor
| arrives.
| vsareto wrote:
| You could take all of his comp, then fire him, then bar
| him from any work for the next 5-10 years and he'd still
| probably be a millionaire. In terms of quality of life,
| he will never face the same situation.
|
| But at the end of the day, he won't work for nothing if
| you took all of his comp, so fair accountability is not
| really possible in this light.
| nazka wrote:
| Wow ok.. Your comment should be on the first node all the
| way up. That's really different from what I was
| imagining!
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| I feel like this is a weird comment. There has basically
| never been a CEO taking meaningful accountability for a
| company failing. Taking a reasonable chunk of one's
| wealth and giving it to fired employees is actually
| remarkable, even if it's not as large as it could be
| nickff wrote:
| Laying off employees is not 'the company failing'; he
| reports to investors, not employees. The employees have
| very little on the line with respect to the company.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| Damn, whoever made a comment has probably has never had a
| job that's genuinely engaged them (and certainly has
| never been unexpectedly laid off). What a sad reality
| most people's jobs are :(
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is all in the noise financially. Mr. Yuan owns 22% of
| the company. He owns 22% of the salary savings on the
| balance sheet.
| jonas21 wrote:
| In other words, he's lost $30B in the last ~2 years.
| Seems like a fair amount of accountability to me.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, I agree that his ownership position gives him direct
| financial accountability for the performance of the
| company. He does well when it does well.
|
| That said, the swings tech stock over the last couple
| years have very little to do with his leadership. Yuan is
| not responsible for the tech bubble and its deflation. No
| human on the planet could have made zoom hold its peak
| stock price.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Given the stock went up 9% on this announcement, he just
| made $500M.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| He didn't make the money because it's unrealized gains,
| but your point still stands. The market certainly agrees
| that this is a good direction for the company, and if the
| market is correct, he will stand to benefit eventually
| missedthecue wrote:
| Against the backdrop of losing like $5 billion over the
| past 12 months.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| So? What's the functional difference between $6 billion
| and $1 billion (which is roughly what Google says his
| current net worth is). Unless your net worth is $500M or
| more, you're closer to being homeless than ever seeing
| that kind of wealth.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The phrase "net worth" claims another victim's mind.
| lazide wrote:
| That isn't taking ownership, that's falling on your sword.
|
| There is a difference.
| [deleted]
| orangesite wrote:
| Falling on your sword is literally exactly what
| accountability used to be.
|
| ...and the stakes are even higher today if you count the
| number of people impacted by poor decisions.
| lazide wrote:
| Cite?
|
| Accountability means (from every definition I've found!)
| taking responsibility for one's actions and their
| consequences.
|
| Falling on one's sword has, from what I've always read,
| has been portrayed as someone accepting too much
| responsibility, to the point they actually _avoid_
| dealing with the consequences of their actions and make
| the situation worse overall by killing themselves.
|
| After all, no need to actually work hard making amends or
| doing better if you're dead, eh?
|
| And it can even make the person doing it somewhat of a
| martyr, even if they created the whole situation to begin
| with, as it can make it look like those calling for it or
| pushing for retribution were actually just looking for a
| scapegoat and the dead one is actually a victim.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I have never heard your definition.
|
| My connotation has always been ritual suicide.
|
| E.g. Seppuku in Japan, captains going down with the ship,
| ect.
|
| The origin of the phrase in the west stems from the roman
| practice of military ritual suicide following defeat. It
| was more a matter of honor than seeking victimhood.
|
| A captured general represented an embarrassment to the
| empire, provides the enemy with a hostage, and would
| likely be tortured to give up information. Suicide in
| defeat was honorable as it served the empire and denied
| the enemy leverage.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Roman_mili
| tar...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorinus_(died_53_BC)
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/43830420
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| Are you talking about "accountability" or "falling on
| your sword?"
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm talking about the meaning and entomology of falling
| on your sword.
|
| That said, I think it is a huge stretch to translate this
| history to the context of CEO accountability.
| wheelinsupial wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying. I was having a really tough time
| understanding your response. I thought you were saying
| you hadn't heard the dictionary definition that lazide
| was quoting, and were saying lazide made that definition
| up and you had a different definition you made up that
| doesn't match.
| lazide wrote:
| Are you referring to 'falling on your sword', or
| 'accountability' in your response? Some of your examples
| are not equivalent to falling on their sword. Notably,
| going down with the ship is the opposite (in some ways),
| as it is 'fighting to the end to save the ship and it's
| people'.
|
| If someone (going down the ship wise) doesn't get on a
| lifeboat when everyone else has already gotten off, then
| yeah it's probably more about avoiding actual
| accountability (aka having to stand and take
| responsibility/long term consequences).
|
| Regarding Victimhood/Martyrdom, there are many apocryphal
| accounts and personal anecdotes one can throw out. You'll
| get stories anyone in senior leadership when a CEO gets
| pushed out, to
| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABshingura]
| (specifically Lord Asano), to Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo
| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnaeus_Domitius_Corbulo],
| and many others.
|
| Sometimes folks want blood, and they won't be satisfied
| until they get it. And often someone either stupidly
| volunteers (actually), or gets 'volunteered' by their
| boss.
|
| Also, how is killing yourself quickly and (relatively)
| painlessly after a military failure NOT the relatively
| easy way out - instead of say, dying while fighting the
| enemy to the death (probably horribly disfigured and
| maimed in the process), or dying in torture while not
| giving anything up, or dying while trying to save the
| ship and the other crew, or returning in shame and being
| a social outcast, or dying after being shamed in trial
| followed by an execution, etc.
|
| Literally all those other options can seem a whole lot
| harder than a gladius through the solar plexus at the
| moment. Also, notably, sometimes folks had 'help' on that
| last bit, though rarely was it featured prominently in
| the PR.
|
| Seppuku - similar. Rather than 'living with dishonor'
| (aka being outcast from a insular and all encompassing
| society), or having to stand trial and defend yourself
| and getting shamed then executed anyway, etc. it's
| killing yourself 'with honor', so your family doesn't get
| their benefits taken and similarly outcast (as badly).
| Seppuku generally involves the second beheaded the person
| before they've had a chance to suffer much too, though
| there have been famous 'mistakes' made at times.
|
| It also could be ordered by the Daimyo, Shogun, etc. and
| it was pretty common (from accounts at the time) for
| folks to be thrown under the bus and ordered to commit it
| if they didn't succeed at what the lord had ordered them
| to do or were just being inconvenient to the narrative.
| Including significant 'help' from seconds. Which is,
| well, pretty much the example of a scapegoat.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I am addressing what you said here:
|
| >Falling on one's sword has, from what I've always read,
| has been portrayed as someone accepting too much
| responsibility, to the point they actually avoid dealing
| with the consequences of their actions and make the
| situation worse overall by killing themselves.
|
| Yes there are differences in my examples. Captains are on
| boats, and Samurai are in Japan. I'm not trying to say
| they are identical in every way.
|
| The common factor is that these actions are all seen as
| honorable positive within the context of the society
| where they took place.
|
| I get that you might have your own personal take and
| values on these types of actions. People could have
| suffered more or made a more utilitarian Choice if their
| objective was the greater social good.
|
| Yes, I'm sure many people have been made to fall on their
| sword as patsies. However, I don't think that changes the
| common understanding of the idiom, or how the practice
| was viewed in the historical context.
|
| You may see it as the coward's way out to avoid living
| with shame or fixing your problems, which is fine. I just
| don't think it is an accurate depiction of how
| contemporaneous people viewed it. People did not look at
| a captain going down with the ship or a general falling
| on their Gladius as a coward dodging their
| responsibilities. I don't think most people today feel
| that way either, but obviously there are exceptions with
| you being one
| lazide wrote:
| You got a very different take than what I wrote -
| especially in the captain going down the ship example.
|
| Unless the Captain saw everyone off in lifeboats and then
| stayed on the ship (very unlikely), it's far from what
| you are describing and I was clear on that.
|
| I also pointed out that the actual reality on the ground
| is almost never what the mental image or PR is meant to
| instill, and is often (in reality) a way to take someone
| out somewhere and pin all the blame on them.
|
| I very much doubt, for instance, in ANY of those examples
| I gave, they _actually_ did what they were said to have
| done in the way and for the reasons they were said to
| have done it.
|
| But there are situations where it definitely is the
| easier way out to do it that way literally.
|
| Someone who gets into an obstinate fight with a boss over
| a minor issue, or who does something common and then when
| it turns out it's a problem stands up and tries to defend
| it, and then gets fired, would be a common use of the
| idiom in my experience.
|
| A Phyrric victory, 'he picked that hill to die on', he
| died tilting at windmills', etc. could also be used.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > executives put themselves financially in the same situation
| as the lowest level people they are letting go
|
| Except, lately anyway, those people were probably already
| living close to paycheck-to-paycheck, as many low six figure
| earners are in this horrible economy. Whereas, the CEO and
| other execs will likely not even miss the money.
| bitL wrote:
| Most of the comp comes from stocks so he should also renounce
| any stock-related gains to make it more than cosmetic.
| gregschlom wrote:
| Now if they could please stop using "to say goodbye" as a
| euphemism for "to layoff", that would be great.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It sure beats "rightsizing," though.
| Kankuro wrote:
| If find "let [people] go" much worse euphemism. I was shocked
| the first time I heard it, like if it was just the fate and
| the people deciding were not involved in this situation. In
| France, the local euphemism is to say that someone has been
| thanked ("remercie").
| blululu wrote:
| Symbolic gestures mean a lot - especially when you are in a
| position of leadership. It will not break the bank for him (I
| would be surprised if the effected employees will be ruined by
| this either), but it is important for the people making
| decisions to have a bit of skin in the game. None of the other
| CEO's who "took full responsibility" (running tally here:
| https://www.itakefullresponsibility.fyi) did anything close to
| this. I have to give a some respect that this man didn't just
| pass the pain off onto his subordinates.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| At least they are taking some hit to themselves? I know a lot
| of folks are going to complain about equity. But equity is
| already down. This is a nice gesture, much much better than
| other layoff peers.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Also he and the C-suite are foregoing their bonuses but
| giving them out to departing employees. Pretty decent.
| HollywoodZro wrote:
| It's a gesture, but the issue is that salary and bonus are
| often a smaller part of executive compensation.
|
| The equity grant that they receive is often millions more
| than the salary and the company performance bonus.
|
| I think forgoing the equity and instead adding it to the
| severance pool would be truly owning up to the decisions
| made by executive management.
| fatnoah wrote:
| Looking at SEC filings, he received a grant of 612,499
| shares of stock on July 8, vesting quarterly over 4
| years. That means ~153k shares will vest in 2023. Zoom
| stock is up $4 based on the announcement, making his RSUs
| worth over $600k more. He gave up just over $300k in cash
| compensation to do so. That's an ROI of 100% in one day.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It would have gone up anyway just based on the workforce
| cuts, no? Also, I think it's better to look at the price
| over time rather than assume the pop from an announcement
| is the new baseline.
|
| It's not that I think the guy is a saint or anything, but
| many CEOs conduct layoffs and write about how sad they
| are without making _any_ financial sacrifice. So even a
| limited gesture of giving up ~30% of his potential gains
| this year is unusual by prevailing norms.
| squokko wrote:
| He owns billions in founder's stock so this is immaterial. It's
| not like Satya Nadella or another hired CEO.
| kfir wrote:
| While I understand your point, your example is a tad flawed
| https://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-
| businessmen/ceos/s...
| kevviiinn wrote:
| [dead]
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Didn't look super deeply, but from an SEC filing dated 2018 -
| he was making a base pay of $300k/year. Some research online
| indicated his most recent bonuses were nearly the million mark.
|
| So he goes from making over $1mil USD to $6,000/year. If the
| above is correct.
|
| The salary alone should be enough to keep a couple people
| around. Yes, that doesn't make a big dent in ~1300 people laid
| off. But I imagine for those being laid off it's slightly less
| shitty (still super shitty) knowing that the CEO isn't still
| making 7 or 8 figures, like at most companies.
|
| https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1585521/000119312519...
| cycomanic wrote:
| See comment above he is making another $10M in stock.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I agree! I have a habit of ignoring claims of accountability
| because so often, the "accountability" seems to be nothing more
| than saying "I accept the accountability". Empty talk. It's
| nice to see at least a gesture towards making it mean
| something.
| jeffbee wrote:
| MFer made > 1000 million dollars just by putting out this press
| release.
| justapassenger wrote:
| Salary and bonus are tiny part of the compensation for folks at
| their level. Are they also forfeiting their equity grants for
| FY23?
| [deleted]
| ren_engineer wrote:
| short of giving shares away to laid off employees there isn't
| much a founder can do, majority of their net worth is equity.
| Even for the CEOs their income is mostly tied to stock
| performance. If the CEO was much worse than the average tech
| CEO the board would fire them
|
| the biggest reason these companies are getting flak is due to
| pretending they weren't like other industry "soulless
| corporations". People naturally don't like hypocrisy, you can't
| LARP like your employees are family to squeeze productivity out
| of them and then drop them at the slightest downturn in profit.
|
| the social contract has been broken for the worse between
| employees and companies, people just need to act accordingly
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > short of giving shares away to laid off employees there
| isn't much a founder can do
|
| is it realistic to ask a company not to hire if they think
| they're just going to lay people off 12-18 months later or is
| that too perfect of a science?
|
| obviously you don't want to ask companies not to try to
| grow/be conservative because then we'll have too much
| unemployment... i think?
|
| it's just so "convenient" the timing of all of these layoffs.
| it's like because one company did it, the climate is "ok,
| it's acceptable, let's do it now while we can squeeze it in
| with everybody else doing it so we don't look so bad/get
| singled out"
|
| i get it, monetary rates/fiscal policy changed. but the fed
| has been signaling this change for months, going slow. how
| long has zoom known they need to layoff 15% of people?
| they've probably been carrying this "weight"/burden for a
| while?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The most ethical way to do it would have been to tell your
| candidates "We're hiring for excess capacity, so this would
| be a contract to hire position."
|
| Then candidates might have made different decisions, like
| "Maybe this job isn't worth relocating my family
| internationally for."
|
| It's pretty Machiavellian to present the role as otherwise,
| when HR had strong suspicions it'd be first on the chopping
| block.
|
| Does a company _have_ to telegraph the nature of the
| position this? No. Of course not! And it 's not even in
| their best interest to do it.
|
| But does it make them ethically shitty to optimize their
| offer attractiveness at the expense of people's lives? In
| my book, yes.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This assumes that things are all known and planned out in
| advance.
|
| It also ignores that contract positions are a huge
| liability in California.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, they'll get flak by _someone_ no matter what they do.
| It's a matter of degrees, and general expectations, and where
| they chart their course relative to that.
|
| Zoom has little control over the overall societal state of
| 'social contract', they can just pick where they are relative
| to it and then reap the effects of that.
|
| If they never laid off anyone, in this environment that has
| effects too, and it will look different than if this was the
| 50's or 60's or whatever idealized situation we might
| imagine.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Goalpost moving. The people who complain that CEO's don't
| show any accountability, will then complain that whatever
| consequences the CEO's face (or self impose) are
| insignificant.
|
| Would you like this guy to commit hara-kiri?
| bell-cot wrote:
| How about a few CEO's getting fired for cause by their
| Boards, because their "I just do whatever the cooler kids
| are doing" hiring/firing binges show that they really
| aren't competent to run a company?
| yibg wrote:
| Surely there is a more holistic measure of a CEOs
| performance than just a round of layoffs. Is Eric a bad
| CEO? If yes then he should be fired. If not then I don't
| see how layoffs would justify it.
| creato wrote:
| In the case of zoom, they had an explosion in users and
| demand due to their product being a good solution to some
| of the problems imposed by the pandemic. What is your
| suggestion? Companies hire when they have a lot of
| demand, the fire when they don't. Just like basically any
| other organism's response to its situation.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| A pay cut of sorts is sufficient accountability in my eyes.
| It is worth noting that most previous tech CEOs financially
| gained from lay-offs, assuming that these layoffs would
| make the company more profitable in the long run.
| cycomanic wrote:
| It's likely he will also gain from layoffs, as most of
| his compensation is in stock (see somebody else's comment
| above).
| cycomanic wrote:
| Somebody up top commented that he is getting 10M in stocks
| and giving up on 300k in salary. If that is the case this
| is a clitch in his earning. A real impact would be to
| reduce his stock by 20%. Like this it is simply virtue
| signalling. I mean supposedly CEO pay is meant to be tied
| to company performance, then make it so in a meaningful
| way.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Of course no ! We want him to resign.
|
| (I meant some people will, I personally don't expect
| anything, and don't really care - none of this is in my
| power in any way, shape or form.)
|
| Or at least, to give the rough date at which he will
| resign, so that someone more competent will run the
| company, avoiding the mistakes that brought it so bad that
| it has to lay off 15%.
|
| There are mistakes that you can recover from, and you don't
| fire an exec (or anyone) at the first blunder. But if you
| have to cut an arm to recover from your mistake, you have
| to be shown the door, or at least the direction of the
| door.
|
| Baring that, he can substantially reduce his income in the
| next few years, so that the company can be more generous
| with the laid off people. Reducing his salary is a step in
| this direction, but we don't know how the structure of his
| compensation - salary might be symbolic.
|
| Also, has he made clear to his board that the situation is
| so bad that shareholders will also have to chip in, and
| accept reduced or no return on their investment for a
| number of years ? Again, sharing the burden.
|
| Again, in the grand scheme of things, this is a least
| closer to "taking responsibility". Just, not there yet.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| So I totally get your position, and I think many of the
| big tech companies that are laying off are doing it
| because "we made an oopsies" or as a me-too tag-along,
| but zoom seems unique in that their business and it's
| place in society truly was transformed in the last few
| years. They tripled their headcount, because they needed
| more staff to keep up, and overshooting long-term
| sustainability by 15% when you grew 300% doesn't seem so
| reprehensible.
|
| Disclosure: I was laid off by a big tech company and I
| think it was BS.
| autoexec wrote:
| > There are mistakes that you can recover from, and you
| don't fire an exec (or anyone) at the first blunder.
|
| Their first "blunder" would have been lying about their
| security and sending encryption keys and private data to
| china (https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-
| own-crypto...)
|
| Even the most generous and forgiving view of Zoom makes
| them look completely incompetent and unfit for anything
| you want secure/private. A less generous view would see
| Zoom as a deceitful and malicious tool for data
| collection.
|
| At this point, after so many lies and security issues I
| honestly can't believe anyone trusts Zoom for anything
| even remotely sensitive, but I'd think even the most
| trusting people would agree the company has a history of
| terrible actions/choices and the CEO is the person who is
| ultimately responsible.
|
| I hope the employees who were laid off find satisfying
| work with a much better employer.
| dahfizz wrote:
| I don't understand this position. You imply that any
| layoff is a fundamental and serious mistake.
|
| Zoom's revenue grew like 10X over the past two years.
| They had a legitimate need to hire and grow the business,
| and now the market has corrected and they don't need as
| many employees. The hiring and firing decisions are
| exactly what I would expect from someone optimizing
| solely for the well-being of the company.
|
| It sucks for the people fired, but that doesn't mean the
| CEO did a bad job. It means you need to be realistic
| about what your relationship is to your employer.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think it does mean that the CEO did a bad job. The
| growth over the last two years was clearly going to be a
| temporary blip. Hiring theoretically permanent employees
| in response is simply bad judgement.
|
| There are plenty of companies that exist in very cyclic
| industries who show the right way to handle this sort of
| thing. It's not like it's all a big mystery.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Hiring theoretically permanent employees in response is
| simply bad judgement.
|
| This is not self-evident. Hiring the salaried employees
| over 2+ years could very well be cheaper than
| contractors.
|
| If they had under-hired during to boom, then we would not
| have layoff today but the company would not have grown as
| much. The incentives are set to hire people when you need
| them and fire them when you don't anymore. Layoffs are
| not expensive or damaging to the company; they don't have
| any reason to avoid them. Zoom's stock went _up_ in
| response to the firing.
| gnaritas99 wrote:
| [dead]
| mbesto wrote:
| > The growth over the last two years was clearly going to
| be a temporary blip.
|
| I'm sorry, but this is the most hindsight is 20/20,
| armchair CEO thing I've ever heard. Unless you have some
| sort of magic 8 ball, there was _nothing_ clear about it
| being temporary, a blip, or any timeline of such.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| In fact some people relocated away from tech hubs, a huge
| bet on a remote first future. (I'm not one of them.)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think this is the key opinion in a nutshell. Some
| people see layoffs as bad management and other people
| simply don't
| agar wrote:
| I'm confused as to your proposed solution. Should the new
| employees not been hired, and existing employees
| overworked due to understaffing? Should they have hired
| contractors and not paid benefits like healthcare?
|
| The companies I'm aware of that exist in cyclic
| industries (game dev, retail) tend to either have brutal
| cyclical layoff periods, leverage a ton of contractors,
| outsource their work to other firms, or hire seasonal
| workers.
|
| What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort
| of thing"?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort
| of thing"?
|
| Don't lead people to think that their positions are
| permanent when you know very well that there's a good
| chance they aren't. The easiest way to to make time-
| limited contracts. That doesn't mean you can't give them
| benefits such as health insurance.
| tomnipotent wrote:
| Except no position is permanent, even by the most liberal
| interpretation of full-time.
| neon_electro wrote:
| >someone optimizing solely for the well-being of the
| company
|
| Is this how we're going to forever define an "employer"?
| I agree with your sentiment broadly, but what a terrible
| system we've created for ourselves.
| lazide wrote:
| So you want the guy who is doing _less bad than others_
| to quit (aka take the heaviest hit), because some small
| portion of the company needs to be laid off (15%), even
| though he is giving up far more than 15% of his
| compensation?
|
| And by quitting, giving up any power or doing that job he
| is doing _less bad than others_?
|
| How did that work out for Senator Franken? Or the
| Democrats in general?
|
| I swear, it's like folks can't help but cut their nose
| off to spite their faces.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Course not, the polite way is sepuku!
|
| But seriously, once MS Teams rolled out video conferencing,
| I wondered how long Zoom will manage to stay around at all.
| to11mtm wrote:
| Zoom still does a lot of stuff better.
|
| At least the last time I used MS teams, Zoom had a much
| better 'upper limit' for participants in a call. Both
| from a 'hard limit' standpoint as well as an 'after this
| number the experience degrades'.
|
| To say nothing of dealing with an outage of microsoft
| services and needing to get on a call to resolve...
| flandish wrote:
| Depends on the industry. With tech like this.. salary/bonus
| changes are fine. Or wage labor pay increases. Anything and
| including in all cases no stockholder dividends or
| buybacks. Price should tank accordingly.
|
| When it comes to industry directly related to life, like
| health, pharmacy, electric/fuel, housing - those kinds of
| choices made should result in prison.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It's also interesting to me that people who got into FAANG
| and got that onto their resume (which is extremely
| valuable) - see it as this MASSIVE disservice to have been
| hired by mistake.
|
| I mean, sure, it would've been better to _not_ get laid
| off. Obviously!
|
| But do you really think you would've been better off
| working somewhere else?
|
| Almost everybody that did get laid off was better off
| working where they did and enjoying the boom for however
| long it lasted.
|
| Before someone replies - I know there's exceptions. You
| moved, you bought house because of your job, just got
| pregnant, etc. I get it. Obviously layoffs don't impact
| everyone equally.
|
| But I think a strong majority of people that got laid off
| were better off working where they did for however long it
| lasted.
| justinzollars wrote:
| Generally, (disregarding the Zoom news) How is everyone holding
| up? Have you been effected, or know friends effected? How are
| they holding up? Are they finding jobs?
| mertd wrote:
| I really dislike the trend of calling employees by some nickname.
| "Googler" may have been cute back in the day. Zoomies is pure
| cringe.
| [deleted]
| 2b3a51 wrote:
| For people in my age group (old) Zoomie sounds very close to
| Zoonie...
|
| https://gerryanderson.fandom.com/wiki/Zoonie
|
| Good luck for those looking for work now as a consequence of
| this
| naillo wrote:
| Especially in the context of getting fired. I doubt google
| would call them 'googlers' in the very email they're getting
| laid off in.
| Spivak wrote:
| Ah yes, cringe: the act of doing something you don't like with
| sincerity.
|
| You mean you actually like your job and your company and aren't
| a cold cynic who thinks that being emotionally detached from
| the thing you do for the majority of your waking hours and
| deciding that anything cute and fun is childish makes you
| somehow superior -- haha criiiiiinge.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Ah, but as a pro-union crowd, you love terms like Teamster,
| Brotherhood, right?
| JohnFen wrote:
| "Teamster" was actually a job title, not a cute nickname.
| kylestlb wrote:
| the union is literally called 'the international brotherhood
| of teamsters'. what else do you expect them to be called?
| [deleted]
| ActionHank wrote:
| I've seen a few using "Xoogler" on LinkedIn after being laid
| off and it just smacks of Stockholm syndrome.
| endtime wrote:
| I don't think so? My current employer has a #xoogler Slack
| channel, so named because that's what people will look for.
| You can say it's uncool if you like, but that's the word
| people use.
| stagger87 wrote:
| Does it also bother you when people have bumper stickers of
| the college they went to?
| hbn wrote:
| I think in the case of FAANG (or whatever the acronym is
| these days), if you worked for one of the big guys in the
| past it's worth making it obvious if you're looking for work.
| If not only to stand out from other applicants, also to set
| an expectations for higher desired salary.
| resource0x wrote:
| "Googler" may sound cute for the 7-year old. Calling an adult
| person "googler" is weird IMO.
| crazygringo wrote:
| What's even weirder is Googlers being given rainbow propeller
| beanies during orientation week that they're expected to
| wear.
|
| Between that and the Lego bins and slides, it can be kind of
| hard to tell if you've joined an elite engineering org or a
| kindergarten.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Slides have been closed for almost a decade.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| It wasn't the same since
| https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/traveling-by-zip-
| lin....
| martyvis wrote:
| Internal cute nicknames is nothing new - I was a "Digit" when
| I started at DEC in 1997. 25 years later I'm just a boring
| old HPEer.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I was around back in the day. "Googler" wasn't cute then,
| either.
| rvz wrote:
| Given that no-one here is talking about Keybase, I am going to
| assume they were significantly affected.
| sunaurus wrote:
| Keybase was such a great project that didn't deserve its fate.
| If Zoom really just acquired Keybase to effectively kill it and
| then later laid off the engineers... that would be horrible.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| F* Zoom for acquiring Keybase.io and essentially neglecting it.
| Much negative credit to Keybase for selling to Zoom, as if a
| more responsible buyer couldn't have been identified. Sorry for
| the rant.
| luismedel wrote:
| I find the use of infantile terms like 'zoomie' insulting.
| Please, treat your employees with due respect. You're giving them
| life-changing news.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Any ex-Googlers care to comment?
|
| They seem to embrace it: https://xoogler.co
| jastanton wrote:
| I always thought Xoogler was a moniker that wasn't given but
| was chosen by x-Googlers.
|
| Source: Me, Xoogler.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Zoomer Zoomers.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| Changing jobs should not be life-changing.
| Jcowell wrote:
| It's _shouldn't_ but when your health insurance relies on it
| , it pretty much is
| kortilla wrote:
| Many jobs have very similar health care offerings and
| access to the same doctors. Changing your commute and your
| total compensation will have more life impact than the
| healthcare insurance provider change.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| but they're statement was it shouldnt. They shouldnt be
| downvoted for what they didnt say.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Without additional context on which parties the
| "shouldn't" applies to, and why it shouldn't, the comment
| doesn't add to the conversation. Seems like a reason to
| downvote to me.
| drstewart wrote:
| So to be clear, layoffs aren't life changing outside the
| US?
| tgma wrote:
| People keep talking about this as if it is preACA. With
| COBRA you can keep your health insurance for a while and
| you can get similar plans from the exchanges. It shouldn't
| be a huge deal considering the severance frequently also
| includes some lump some to cover it.
| brycewray wrote:
| The existence of the ACA is no panacea. Many physicians
| and clinics purposely refuse to honor any ACA plan (for
| political reasons, in at least some cases of which I
| unfortunately know from personal experience). And
| everyone who's been on COBRA for any length of time knows
| it is God-awful expensive since you're now paying for the
| whole piece.
| tgma wrote:
| It's good to put a number out for people who don't know:
| I estimate ~500/month for the employer portion for an
| individual coverage. Whether that's considered "God
| awful" or "peanuts" is dependent on one's situation but
| most probably for the average tech employee in California
| it shouldn't be the end of the world compared to their
| other expenditures.
|
| Sure, I also prefer disassociation of health care from
| employment but I think it's important not to scare people
| away from layoffs or discourage exploration of other
| opportunities because they'd be scared of losing health
| coverage.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| And depending on industry having to relocate or increase
| your commute.
| ssnistfajen wrote:
| It has a very high likelihood of being life-changing for
| people on work visas.
|
| It is also life-changing for anyone who genuinely believed in
| their job, whether out of passion or naivete. Work is
| (unfortunately) a major pillar of people's lives in modern
| society and having that pillar collapse on you unexpectedly
| can be traumatic especially for younger adults early in their
| careers.
|
| Also, there's a big difference between changing jobs on your
| own accord vs. being fired/laid off against your own desire.
| recursive wrote:
| This is a should-be vs is-actually confusion. While you're
| working to create the future you hope to see, you still need
| to exist in the world as it actually is.
| anon7725 wrote:
| Layoffs are life changing. Not everyone who is laid off is an
| in-demand engineer. "Tech jobs" obscure the fact that most
| roles are non- or light-technical jobs that are common at
| many companies (HR, sales, support, etc).
| qup wrote:
| Depends on the job.
| chad_strategic wrote:
| They might want to take off "Don't forget to share this post"
| seems like bad optics.
| gedy wrote:
| Given how zoom took over the universe in past 3 years, seems like
| a serious leadership failing to now have to cut 1300 people.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I'm not sure how you get that conclusion. "taking over the
| universe" seems like successful leadership to me. I'm sure
| those 1300 people helped them do it. If they are no longer
| needed, letting them go also seems like successful leadership.
|
| I don't pay the workers that built my house after the job is
| done.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| I actually think this is one of the companies where it made
| sense that they scaled up staff during covid and now need to
| let them go.
| bink wrote:
| I agree. Salesforce, Meta, Alphabet? Those were already giant
| companies that saw a bump in traffic due to covid. Zoom was a
| relatively small company that became a cultural phenomenon
| and no doubt had to onboard a completely unexpected number of
| new customers. It's one company where I could see tripling
| the workforce as reasonable if not aiming low.
| sneak wrote:
| 1300 people is a _ton_ of salary every month.
|
| Google Meet is free with G Suite/Workspace/Gmail which everyone
| already has.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| For $1 notes it would be quite a bit more than a ton:
| https://goodcalculators.com/money-weight-calculator/
|
| > This means that $1,000,000 in $100 bills weighs around 10
| kilograms (22.046 pounds). However, if you wanted your
| million in single dollar bills, that same amount of money
| would weigh a metric ton (2,204.623 pounds).
| qup wrote:
| How much of that was schools that are now back to classrooms?
| SergeAx wrote:
| The industry is just walking in circles. Nothing new since
| "Silicon Valley" ended: https://youtu.be/u48vYSLvKNQ
| neilv wrote:
| Is layoffs in the neighborhood of 15% right now because it's an
| amount that large companies think is safe to trim, in terms of
| work to be done or their capacity to get work done?
|
| Or is it a psychological number that's high but not _too_ high
| for some party?
|
| Or something else?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| If it was rooted in logical formula versus emotions it wouldn't
| be exactly 15 percent
| jasonlfunk wrote:
| On a side note.... "Zoomies", really?
| [deleted]
| 10729287 wrote:
| Trying to steal some feeling of belonging to employees in such
| circumstances is incredible. Please, some decency.
| diveandfight wrote:
| ^All former Midshipmen thinking this as well.
| slig wrote:
| _midshipperson_
| bhouston wrote:
| Zoom needs to start integrating a lot of AI into its meetings
| like Microsoft Teams Premium:
|
| https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-just-said...
|
| This will be the new standard and Zoom needs to get on the train
| or people will stop using it.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Lol at this point it's just comical.
|
| Not fun for those laid off, but this is a great life lesson for
| all those people who have given "loyalty" to their employer.
|
| We - the people who you often view as cynical and negative - live
| by the following rules:
|
| - People at work are not your friends. You can have friendly
| relationships, but they ain't your real friends. You will only
| know if they can become your real friends once you don't work at
| the same company anymore.
|
| - NEVER accept less pay for your work than the market rate. If
| they don't pay 100% you never work 100%. Take a second job and do
| only 50% or less for a company that doesn't pay you market rate.
|
| - Don't work as a full time employee if you can make twice as
| much as a contractor. Employees have supposedly the benefit of
| "job security". LOL. Contractors get paid more because they need
| to factor in dry spells. Also there are tax benefits for
| companies to use contractors. The software industry is so robust
| and even despite all the layoffs the demand for devs is higher
| than the supply. There is no reason to take on full employment if
| you can contract with the same level of job security for much
| more money and much less internal politics.
|
| - Shares don't mean anything if the company never IPOs. Fuck
| shares. Ask for hard cash. If you want to have shares and become
| a millionaire over night then start your own startup. Why suck up
| to some stranger who gives zero shit about you. You didn't invest
| money into the startup, you didn't found it, you are a nobody to
| them. You do a job for them and they fool you to take on company
| shares so they can massively underpay you. If you want to earn
| little and have lots of shares then start a startup yourself. In
| every other case tell them to get fucked and ask for hard cash.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| I agree with the spirit of your comment, but not with the
| particulars. Yes, employees and contractors both have to deal
| with job uncertainty, but not to the same degree. An employee
| is unlikely to be laid off with anywhere near the frequency
| that a contractor's gig ends and for a lot of people, the
| tradeoff of the extra stability is worth potentially less
| earnings. Similarly, while shares are often worth nothing,
| sometimes they aren't, and the payoff can be big. It depends on
| what risks you are willing to take. Maybe I've been lucky, but
| I've actually managed to get value from options/RSUs that
| exceeded what I'd likely have earned more often than not.
| Finally, I think it's a terrible idea to take a second job if
| you don't like your pay. Doing a shit job for two companies may
| make you some money but is no way to live. If you are being
| underpaid, go find a job that pays. If you can't find one that
| pays better, maybe you aren't being underpaid.
|
| That said, I agree with your essential point that loyalty is
| not owed to your employer. It's a tool an employee can
| sometimes use for career purposes, but that's it. Your
| employment is a business arrangement and needs to be treated as
| such. Employers will talk as though they see it otherwise, but
| when times get tough, those pretenses are revealed for what
| they are. I really wish we could dispense with this "we're a
| big family with a mission" crap as it makes the whole thing
| more painful than it needs to be.
| [deleted]
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| How quickly times can change. A few years ago a CS degree and
| software job seemed like the most secure and easy way to a
| guaranteed high paying job while everything else was harder. Now
| it seems every software company is laying people off while the
| overall job market outside of tech is stronger than ever.
|
| Sucks to be a new CS grad this summer
| Cuuugi wrote:
| Seems like there's always been a boom and bust in the tech
| world though? In all markets of course, but i am old enough to
| remember the first dotcom bubble?
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| Yeah, maybe this will have the same impact as well and we see
| a decline in people getting CS degrees and going into other
| (much-needed) professions.
|
| I know some older people who started off in software and
| after the dotcom bust switched to a trade for more reliable
| work.
|
| And I know I'm a big hypocrite for saying this but I really
| feel like a lot of places need less software developers
| building social media or video chat code and more
| nurses/teachers/trades-people/etc .
| saos wrote:
| Its the bootcamps that worry me and the endless YouTubers
| preaching how they became a so and so after 3 months.
|
| But yeah nothing is secure.
| rchaud wrote:
| I think the pendulum has swung back the other way on
| bootcamps, they're seen with the same kind of awful ROI as a
| college degree in a non-marketable discipline.
|
| I'd worry more about the Youtube influencers you mention.
| They've littered my YT front page with all kinds of promises
| that just remind me of previous gold rushes...dropshipping,
| crypto, and now AI.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Its the bootcamps that worry me and the endless YouTubers
| preaching how they became a so and so after 3 months.
|
| At one point we broadened our hiring pipeline to grads of a
| local bootcamp (their sales rep were apparently very
| convincing).
|
| About two thirds of the candidates couldn't write three lines
| of code on a whiteboard.
| saos wrote:
| I don't have anything against bootcamp but I see common
| pattern:
|
| 1. They are in it for money 2. They are in it for the
| lifestyle 3. They suffer big on by imposter syndrome
|
| The programmers I've worked with over the years were just
| passionate about programming and thats why they entered the
| field. They spend years refining the craft. But, now it has
| drastically changed. The next generation what it "now".
| Everything "now". They want to buy a home "now". They want
| new shows "now".
| keithnz wrote:
| while there is some high profile layoffs, is the actually job
| market that bad? It still seems quite active still to me.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Jobs are plentiful. Jobs that pay $400k+ ... less so.
| Quikinterp wrote:
| Jobs that hire new grads or juniors in general seem to be a
| lot harder to find as well
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Oversaturation to some degree. The same thing happened in
| the legal field. Becoming a lawyer used to be a one way
| ticket to the upper middle class. Not so much anymore.
| The same thing is happening with CS and SWE degrees.
| They're still great degrees, and probably still worth the
| money. But much less so than they were even a few years
| ago.
| brk wrote:
| "Zoomies"
|
| Just fucking stop with this already. Quit pretending like your
| employees are so aligned with the company that some kind of
| special terminology is needed, or even logical.
|
| The recent tech layoffs have clearly demonstrated, again (again,
| as in we've seen this play out a few times in the 2000's), that
| employees are basically assets that are scaled up and down as
| needed, like all the rest of corporate infrastructure these days.
|
| Also, when your company is something that more or less is a B2B
| or B2C app (like zoom) and 1,500 employees is a number that you
| can lay off and still keep operating, you should have recognized
| this massive over staffing a LONG time ago and made more gradual
| corrections to get to a logical and supportable number. Note,
| this could be slowing down hiring, or charging a lot more for
| your product, but given the lingering freemium pricing, it's
| mostly going to be hiring less and not charging more.
|
| These layoff emails are almost parody at this point.
| [deleted]
| eska wrote:
| Especially because 15% of them are now Ex-Zoomies
| tgma wrote:
| Xoomies?
| tezza wrote:
| Zoombies
| empathy_m wrote:
| What is the word for "name for employees of a company"? It's
| not "demonyms" but I've seen a whole lot of these names in the
| layoff notices. I think there is room for a small
| "employeenames.fyi" site with a table.
|
| Scaliens, Stripes, Tweeps
| RagnarD wrote:
| I think the idea is to try to create a kind of 'esprit de
| corps' specific to a particular organization - the idea that
| there is a bond and that working there is "special", out of the
| ordinary. It's good psychology, but rings hollow if a competent
| person is let go because of an economic downturn.
| brk wrote:
| Yes, I think that is definitely the point, but so far pretty
| much all of them have proven to be a fraud.
|
| If the CEO emails out "Zoomies, I fucked up and now I am
| cutting my paycheck to $1, and selling my personal stock, to
| help cover your salaries until we get this figured out", then
| it maybe means something. But "Zoomies, UR fired, wait to see
| if you win the email lottery, K thx" is not creating any
| esprit de corps.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Just fucking stop with this already. Quit pretending like
| your employees are so aligned with the company that some kind
| of special terminology is needed, or even logical.
|
| I cannot judge how Zoom works internally but a lot of companies
| (ours included) has a term to refer to employees. They are
| usually not born out of some leader making up a ridiculous
| term, but out of some sort of chaotic process where the origin
| of that term is often not found.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some of them are legitimate, but even then there should be a
| form of respect where the term isn't _used_ (though I observe
| they avoided the "hard-r" Zoomer because of the
| connotations).
|
| And especially shouldn't be used in a case where you're
| laying off some of them.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I would find it odd if the only time you don't use that
| term on emails then happens to be layoffs.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is why I wouldn't use the term in general, at least
| from the top-down. It's inherently a "we're all in this
| together" term which especially isn't applicable _when
| you aren 't_.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| TBH I did not think much of this practice ever. I see
| that it's weird seeing that in layoff emails but I don't
| bat an eye normally.
| brk wrote:
| > a lot of companies (ours included) has a term to refer to
| employees
|
| Why? Employee is a perfectly suitable and applicable term.
| You're not "associates" or anything else that implies there
| is some kind relationship that is anything other than work
| for hire.
|
| Granted, if you have some kind of internal way to refer to
| yourselves or your teams, that's great. But like politics or
| religion, it should probably be a thing that is internal only
| and not referred to in the outside world/public comms.
|
| Terms like "Zoomies" are just childish. If some chain of
| events led you to be calling yourselves "The Ruby Death
| Squad", and you use that publicly, then I might change my
| perspective.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Why? Employee is a perfectly suitable and applicable
| term.
|
| Because a lot of communication in companies is on the same
| level. People eventually send emails to "hey demonym"
| rather than "hey coworkers". I think these sort of things
| develop pretty naturally and unforced.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Because Millennials eat up cheesy tribalistic terms to wrap
| their sense of identity around and corporations exploit
| that.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| FWIW, we all do that to an extent. Pick a label and make
| it good or bad, but something you can use as a yard
| stick. You are on the money, but oddly fall into the same
| trap by using label 'millenials' in a tribalistic manner
| ( the term has been largely made up to describe a giant
| cohort, and as most giant population terms, it shares the
| same flaws ).
|
| I do not think you are wrong in general. I am not sure,
| however, if it applies to that particular group only or
| even in general.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Qualitatively I think there's something different about
| the way that people under-40 tend to think about
| identity, particularly the people working in tech that
| we're discussing here. We used to have thirtysomethings
| and yuppies and other groups like that. But it hadn't
| infested everything the same way that Zoomies and
| Googlers and Pythonistas/Rubyists/Rustaceans has.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Ahh, I think I see what you mean. Based on that, I think
| I agree.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I honestly think it's a red flag when companies do this.
| dymk wrote:
| The bigger red flag is Stripe not allowing its employees to
| use the term "Stripper"
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| "Zoomies", "Googlers", "Softies"
|
| As part of their compensation package, they receive a
| diminutive pet name, like a child would.
| dymk wrote:
| I'll let you call me a lot of things for $50k
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| I bet I could get much more out of you by treating you like
| an adult.
| nunez wrote:
| > To that end, I am reducing my salary for the coming fiscal year
| by 98% and foregoing my FY23 corporate bonus. Members of my
| executive leadership team will reduce their base salaries by 20%
| for the coming fiscal year while also forfeiting their FY23
| corporate bonuses.
|
| Eric is probably already wealthy and can withstand a 98% cut to
| his base, but I definitely respect him more for doing that than
| the nothing other execs have done (at least publicly).
| tux2bsd wrote:
| [dead]
| paxys wrote:
| I have greater respect for him for reducing executive pay by
| 20% and cutting their annual bonuses to 0.
| Animats wrote:
| Did Zoom file the required layoff pre-notice?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That's not really how it works when companies give severance in
| the US/ California.
|
| Pre-notice only really matters if you are letting people go
| with nothing.
| DueDilligence wrote:
| .. yawn. next.
| [deleted]
| knewter wrote:
| Somehow, I'm sure that the person in charge of the ux of the
| godforsaken green bar was not laid off
| saos wrote:
| > Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand
| while enabling continued innovation.
|
| Insane
| pyrophane wrote:
| Et tu, Zoom.us?
| oceliker wrote:
| I feel like Zoom is the Coca-Cola to Google and Microsoft's
| Pepsi. Zoom is the "OG" product (in the post-March-2020 remote
| working world), and probably most people's personal favorite. But
| their competitors have caught up, and they are getting a
| significant portion of corporate contracts now. And unlike with
| soda, I don't think there is a lot of direct-to-consumer
| opportunity in this field.
| sct202 wrote:
| Zoom is trying to compete by launching Zoom email, calendar,
| and group chat. Probably a lot of the headcount increases are
| due to moving fast and trying to get to market as fast as
| possible.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That ... does not sound like it would work. Zoom is a success
| because the founder and the founding team came with decades
| of video conference experience and really just re-implememted
| webex/cisco products without any bullshit. What do any of
| these people know about hosting email?
| ec109685 wrote:
| "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.
| Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones
| which can."
|
| http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html
|
| I'd add that Chat seems like a modern day corollary.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Remember the time Facebook tried to take on Gmail?
| Neither does anyone else.
| bismark wrote:
| uh, I do? https://techcrunch.com/2010/11/15/facebook-
| email-killer/
| Thrymr wrote:
| > I feel like Zoom is the Coca-Cola to Google and Microsoft's
| Pepsi.
|
| I'm not sure I buy this, Microsoft and Google were into video
| conferencing well before Zoom existed. Zoom was well positioned
| to eat _Microsoft 's_ lunch with their product when the
| pandemic hit. But MS is catching up a bit, and the WFH pressure
| is easing a bit. This seems like a normal contraction after a
| Zoom boom.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| We are at the point where every org is going to pay for zoom
| anyhow like they pay for both ms office and gsuite for the same
| set of workers. People send meeting links on zoom to clients
| and collaborators at other orgs. Its the standard now. Try
| sending a teams link and your clients will say "well we dont
| use teams can you send a zoom link?"
| ghaff wrote:
| That's not my experience at all. We basically use Google
| Workspace for everything except Bluejeans for large meetings.
| We don't use Zoom at all.
| emmp wrote:
| I work in a customer facing role for enterprise software. I
| have to join plenty of customer Teams and WebEx links whether
| I like it or not. We use Zoom internally.
| madamelic wrote:
| This sucks but something like COVID should normalize the idea in
| the minds of workers that all workers are disposable regardless
| of education or skill. If you don't own 51% of the company, you
| are disposable.
|
| Zoom had a use for you during COVID, now they don't: bye-bye. You
| were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go.
| That's how workers are treated and people should understand that.
| You are not George from Engineering, you are employee #3223 and
| you cost $x per year. Past maybe 20 - 25 people, you are nothing
| but a number and quickly after you no longer create more value
| than you are paid, you are out.
|
| Unlike others _cough_ Facebook _cough_ Google _cough_ , Zoom
| actually a reason to scale during COVID; they were relatively
| new, they had crazy demand, and the access to money to do it.
| Zoom was given a blank check and leadership would've been worse
| for _not_ taking it.
|
| That happened, now it is waning and it is time to 'right size'
| (barf) and continue what they were doing before.
|
| Good on him for cutting his own salary and comp even if I don't
| think he is as dumb as Zuckerberg or others for their company's
| paper growth.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time
| to go._
|
| Both sides got what they needed. The company got work done, and
| the employee got paid.
|
| Calling either side "used" makes no sense to me. Employment is
| always a temporary relationship that can be ended by either
| side at will.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| Just because it can be terminated at will doesn't mean people
| wake up every morning going to work thinking "hmm... wonder
| if I'll be let go today, or hey maybe I'll quit!"
|
| Similarly most non-marriage romantic relationship can be
| trivially ended "at will", but people get plenty upset when
| those end early than one party had anticipated.
|
| More important though is the inherent asymmetry: it hurts
| employees much more to be terminated from an employer than
| the employer hurts when employees leave. You know, unless
| those employees organize and all leave at the same time. And
| we know well that companies put a fair bit of energy keeping
| that from happening.
|
| Historically the way to resolve this asymmetry was an
| implicit understanding that you _won 't_ arbitrarily get
| terminated unless the employer has no other choice. This
| implicit assumption has been weakening over time.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross
| injustice.
|
| I use a worker to build my house, but that doesn't mean I am
| _abusing_ them. They are using me too. no hard feelings.
| haswell wrote:
| > _I think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross
| injustice._
|
| One of the primary definitions of that word describes a
| scenario where one person exploits another person for their
| own gain.
|
| Any time the word is used to describe the nature of one's
| relationship with another person, that definition is going
| to come to mind.
|
| I can't agree that there is no implication of injustice.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That is one definition, but not the only. I think it is
| interesting how people chose which definition to go with.
|
| It all comes down to social expectations of if the nature
| of the transaction.
|
| "I used Bob the contractor to build my house" has no
| implication of injustice.
|
| "My ex-wife used me for money" has significant
| implications.
|
| Used has no negative implication if used to describe a
| honest and mutually beneficial transaction.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| "90+ percent of all internet arguments are over
| semantics."
|
| I honestly wish HN would adopt a "no semantics arguments"
| rule. These debates over what one person thinks a word
| means vs what another person thinks they mean are just
| uninteresting and really never lead anywhere, especially
| when all sides pretty much agree on the underlying issue.
|
| A couple days ago I made a comment,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34656626 , where I
| even started off by saying "well, perhaps word X isn't
| exactly the right word", and still the original commenter
| felt compelled to reply _in 6 different comments_ why he
| was so sure his definition of that word was the right one
| and it was important that everyone else agree with him.
| :shrug:
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I sometimes wonder if Americans are uniquely prone to
| focusing on words rather than the underlying _concepts_
| that the words, somewhat imperfectly, attempt to
| describe.
|
| Once you learn a second language, you have to confront
| this reality. But many Americans only ever use English,
| and it's maybe easier to never have to think about this
| then?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Words and language are how humans communicate information
| so I think it is worthwhile to talk about. That said, I
| think everyone would benefit from being more Curious and
| less dogmatic. It is ultimately subjective. I can choose
| to use the word up to refer to down. It would certainly
| cause some confusion, but at the end of the day nobody
| can force me to change. The best that they can do is
| point out that they use a different definition and why
| that makes sense to them.
|
| That's all I was trying to do here, and in this other
| more interesting thread
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34697045
| SilverBirch wrote:
| And in fact almost certainly what happened was the employees
| got paid to work on a bunch of new exploratory, speculative
| work that now all needs to get canned.
| xtracto wrote:
| There's an AMAZING managing podcast that I never get tired
| of recommending called Managers Tools [1], where in one of
| their episodes they talk about hiring/firing: They
| correctly mention that, as a manager, you should be
| able/willing to FIRE people when you are asking to HIRE. If
| you say you need more headcount and thus more money for it,
| be ready to shrink it when you don't need it anymore.
| Nothing is forever.
|
| That's what a lot of people fail to internalize: If a
| company is able to grow, then it must equally be able to
| shrink. Otherwise, you hire contractors or third parties.
|
| [1] https://www.manager-tools.com/podcasts
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I feel like this is a pretty naive take.
|
| For all the companies like Zoom and Shopify claiming they
| thought the COVID gravy train would never end, there was
| never a chance of that. But they hired as if that was the
| reality because because of the asymmetry: Your output is
| .000001% of what the company needs to function.
|
| Meanwhile even if you're saving 50% of your pay and living on
| the other 50%, that's many orders of magnitude more need
|
| So yes, either side can walk away tomorrow morning, but who's
| more likely to be hurt? Definitely not the company, so
| there's no real punishment for overhiring knowing you'll need
| to fire.
|
| If anything you get rewarded by the market: If company A
| hires in a sustainable way that can weather headwinds
| (believe it or not, this used to be somewhat common) and
| company B goes full "feast or famine", the market rewards B
| for their growth, then rewards B when they lay off a bunch of
| people. Meanwhile A is punished for limiting growth, and not
| really rewarded for not having fired people, since valuations
| are bad at capturing nuanced ideas like "B just fired their
| best minds, while A has cultivated an effective workforce"
| (just check out Zoom's ticker today)
| EMM_386 wrote:
| > You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time
| to go. That's how workers are treated and people should
| understand that.
|
| I can't tell if all of this is due to the age of people who
| have joined the workforce over the last decade, when we were in
| a constant uphill swing.
|
| Markets go through cycles, boom and bust. We happen to be in
| part of the cycle where interest rates are rising, inflation is
| high, profits margins are tightening and companies are laying
| off.
|
| "You were used" is a bit much. You go to work to earn a
| paycheck. I'm not sure how many people bought into the whole
| "we're a family" stuff, but obviously these are for-profit
| corporations and they are beholden only to their shareholders.
| There was never the illusion otherwise, unless you truly
| believed that now that you're in, you're in.
|
| I'm older so I've been through a number of these cycles,
| including having been laid off. Perhaps the decade+ of constant
| upward tragectory had people disillusioned that this was
| "normal". It wasn't, and now companies are downsizing.
| madamelic wrote:
| > "You were used" is a bit much.
|
| I'd generally agree. I think my sentiment was a counter-point
| to the whole "we are a family", "we care about you" that
| companies put out to employees.
|
| Employees especially need to understand that's fine and good,
| but companies exist to make money. They _can_ care about you
| but only to the extent that it makes them money through your
| continuing loyalty. Your manager as a human can care about
| you, your manager as a boss cannot.
|
| I don't think many top-level managers is fooling themselves
| into thinking this behavior is anything but company loyalty.
|
| I am not quite entirely jaded, but I would certainly have
| choice words for my 24 year old self being overjoyed about my
| company buying me dinner at the office. It's a fun gesture
| but you need to understand as an employee what your company's
| priorities are and not get fooled into it being anything but
| a monetary transaction.
|
| But yes, to summarize, my language was a bit more coarse and
| pointed than the situation probably calls for.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| >"You were used" is a bit much. You go to work to earn a
| paycheck. I'm not sure how many people bought into the whole
| "we're a family" stuff, but obviously these are for-profit
| corporations and they are beholden only to their
| shareholders. There was never the illusion otherwise, unless
| you truly believed that now that you're in, you're in.
|
| There is a lot of corporate ink spilled trying to convince
| people of exactly this. The counter to this kind of treatment
| is a strong union. Hopefully this goes a ways toward
| convincing people they need that level of protection.
| gitfan86 wrote:
| If people are always "protected" how do you deal with low
| performing companies?
|
| If Zoom becomes unusable because it is crashing all the
| time and everyone switches to another service where do you
| think the money is going to come from to pay these
| "protected" employees? Fire the CEO, sure, but where is the
| money coming from for the thousands of other employees?
| somedude895 wrote:
| > This sucks but something like COVID should normalize the idea
| in the minds of workers that all workers are disposable
|
| I don't know who you're talking about but it should have only
| taken common sense to know you're disposable as an employee.
| weakwire wrote:
| I love the "Don't forget to share this post" at the end of the
| blog post.
| [deleted]
| revskill wrote:
| I hate it.
| y-curious wrote:
| Sharing to my `layoff blog post cringe` collection. Thanks for
| the reminder.
| ITB wrote:
| Why do people in HN get so upset that companies hire and fire
| employees? It sucks as an individual to have to deal with a
| layoff, but it's the dynamic of an economy. Optimal growth comes
| from over and under dampening, not from steady state.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Yep, The amount of 'intelligent' people who are so out of touch
| with reality of economics, supply/demand, interest rates is
| mind-boggling.
|
| How did an entire generation become so entitled? Yep, these are
| the same people who jump companies if the other company offers
| $10k extra TC. So, it's not that they are saints when it comes
| to loyalty or money.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Hello, typically misinformed internet person. The "entire
| generation" as currently understood are the least-mobile
| generation of employees ever recorded. A 30-year-old
| Millenial was only half as likely in 2020 to have switched
| jobs in the prior year than a 30-year-old Boomer was in 1990.
| Millenials of all ages had all-time-lowest probability of
| multiple employers in a year, compared with Gen X, Boomers,
| and Silent.
| [deleted]
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| A distinction needs to be made between firings (which are for
| cause) and mass layoffs.
|
| Companies that don't lay off employees do exist:
| https://www.ajobthing.com/blog/this-company-has-never-laid-o...
|
| Being "laid off" is a novel concept that primarily exists with
| the formation of corporations. Prior to that most people who
| lost jobs knew that the job was temporary going into it. Or
| lost due to factors such as disability (which, admittedly,
| would be far worse than a modern layoff).
|
| This more modern concept of losing a job is typically very
| stressful, as most people's wealth support is fairly
| precarious. Given that there are often alternatives for a
| corporation there's the fact that the stress is inflicted when
| it need not be.
|
| So yeah, people get upset. Just like people get upset about
| things like cancel culture, lack of healthcare, what have you.
|
| It used to be that getting kicked out of the tribe was a last
| resort for the most serious of crimes. Now _petite_ expulsions
| happen all of the time and we 're supposed to just be okay with
| it?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Optimal growth comes from over and under dampening, not from
| steady state.
|
| Really? Then why are people hoping for a "soft landing" from
| the Fed's interest rate dance?
| secondcoming wrote:
| Fear most likely. 'Learn to code' won't help coders who've been
| laid off.
| elforce002 wrote:
| Add to that the "AI" revolution we're living rn and voila !
| Fear a a service.
| pearjuice wrote:
| I find it remarkable that after the pandemic bump, zoom stock
| value is basically back at where it started. Peaking at almost a
| x10 price increase pre-pandemic to pandemic-top, investors are
| now stating "zoom is worth almost as much to us as it was pre-
| pandemic". Meaning that in a business sense, they seem to have
| captured near zero value of the entire pandemic-boom in their
| stock price?
| henry_viii wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum?url=https://blog.zoom.us/a-mess...
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, but nowadays I'm reluctant of the "We are a
| big family" shenanigans. If I read "Zoomies", I'm pretty sure
| that won't help the people that are being laid off today.
|
| You aren't family, you are workers.
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