[HN Gopher] Zoom CEO says employees can't be as innovative or ge...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Zoom CEO says employees can't be as innovative or get to know each
       other on Zoom
        
       Author : jordanpg
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2023-08-23 22:13 UTC (47 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
        
       | pxc wrote:
       | Regardless of Zoom's quality as a video calling platform, the
       | real place that daily collaboration and cross-pollination of
       | ideas happens for remote workers is never video calls anyway IME.
       | It's open-ended, text-based group discussions-- not meetings!
       | 
       | What is Zoom using internally for chat?
        
       | jfghi wrote:
       | None of these arguments were ever made when sending engineering
       | teams offshore.
        
         | missedthecue wrote:
         | Well there's a major difference here. Paying a dev overseas
         | $50,000 a year instead of $180,000 a year could be well worth
         | it even though you incur losses in areas like coordination,
         | community, and communication.
         | 
         | But paying devs $180,000 a year to sit alone 20km away from
         | each other, while they slack and zoom doesn't have the same
         | cost/benefit ratio to consider. You still lose the benefits
         | mentioned above, but don't save anything on costs.
         | 
         | This isn't an argument for or against remote work, but
         | offshoring and WFH have important differences.
        
           | [deleted]
        
       | timetraveller26 wrote:
       | You know what would be cool? If some company would fix those
       | remote working problems instead of forcing people to work in
       | place. But I guess it's not their job.
        
         | chucky_z wrote:
         | Maybe I'll take flak for this. I feel like Slack and kin have
         | done the best job here for providing remote collaboration
         | tools.
         | 
         | I feel much more productive in write-first teams. Meetings
         | _can_ be done over Zoom then, and they're always short and
         | productive. Anything works at that point.
        
       | samorozco wrote:
       | That seems bad for business.
        
       | blinded wrote:
       | Yes I think of solutions for all my awesome work problems in
       | bumper to bumper traffic on my hour long commute. <sarcasm>
        
       | adamckay wrote:
       | It's a bold move to say the product your company sells is total
       | crap, but not unheard of.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner#Career
        
         | Waterluvian wrote:
         | There's a level of honesty in Ratner's response that I doubt
         | most tech execs are capable of.
        
       | version_five wrote:
       | Why is that incongruous? I bet the McDonald's CEO doesn't think
       | you should eat it at every meal. It has a place. It would
       | actually be a lot weirder or untenable if he advocated moving all
       | work to zoom.
        
         | add-sub-mul-div wrote:
         | People here are obviously working backwards from a strong
         | desire to work from home. It's not worth your time to take the
         | specific arguments literally or seriously. It's a community of
         | severe introverts I guess, I don't consider it representative
         | of the greater culture.
        
           | shadowofneptune wrote:
           | If the workplace sucks, as most do right now, there's about
           | two options for what to do:
           | 
           | 1. Force out the people who are making it suck. This is
           | difficult with how managers are trained nowadays, never to
           | take sides even if one party is clearly a drag on the group.
           | Shunning and isolation are options, but ones very hard to
           | keep up without support.
           | 
           | 2. Stop caring about work. Phone it in. Don't care anymore.
           | 
           | 3. Don't be present physically in that environment.
           | 
           | Of course people want to work from home when every
           | interaction is unpleasant. It also saves on transportation
           | cost, cost of caring for family, every single thing that an
           | employer likes to pretend is not their cost to pay. It's not
           | about people being naturally 'introverted' or 'extroverted,'
           | it's about the social environment everyone, including
           | management, creates around them.
        
       | catchnear4321 wrote:
       | spending more time trying to internally prove that the product is
       | bad than time spent externally trying to prove it is good is a
       | very strange approach at selling product.
        
       | kylecazar wrote:
       | Working in-office and I still use Zoom pretty regularly. I don't
       | think this negates it's value as a tool...
        
       | HWR_14 wrote:
       | Given that Zoom is paid for monthly but accrues costs by the use,
       | maybe they want to lower the average use of the product to save
       | money. Like how people subscribed to HBO just for GoT.
        
       | AA-BA-94-2A-56 wrote:
       | Zoom CEO wants to tank the stock price apparently
        
         | klyrs wrote:
         | Or, he's more focused on his real estate holdings and he'll
         | still be fuck-you rich if Zoom collapses.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-08-23 23:01 UTC)