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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

blog.zoom.us

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Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#31

Post by ketralnis »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #5

> 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. Zo…

> 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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#32

Post by [deleted] »

ActionHank wrote: post #13
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #5

> 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. Zo…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#33

Post by jeffwask »

ActionHank wrote: post #13
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #5

> 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. Zo…

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.

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?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#35

Post by olliej »

shapefrog wrote: post #27
par wrote: post #7

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.

He owns 22% of the company already.

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#36

Post by gardenhedge »

gedy wrote: post #15

Given how zoom took over the universe in past 3 years, seems like a serious leadership failing to now have to cut 1300 people.

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#37

Post by anon7725 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #5

> 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. Zo…

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#38

Post by Frost1x »

SeanLuke wrote: post #3

I didn't do my job as CEO to keep the company sufficiently profitable, so you must be fired instead of me.

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#39

Post by sneak »

gedy wrote: post #15

Given how zoom took over the universe in past 3 years, seems like a serious leadership failing to now have to cut 1300 people.

1300 people is a ton of salary every month.

Google Meet is free with G Suite/Workspace/Gmail which everyone already has.

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