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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

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Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#181

Post by phtrivier »

credit_guy wrote: post #127
ren_engineer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

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?

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#182

Post by HollywoodZro »

vsareto wrote: post #119
haswell wrote: post #8

> 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…

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 motiv…

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#183

Post by kylestlb »

deltree7 wrote: post #121
mertd wrote: post #11

I really dislike the trend of calling employees by some nickname. "Googler" may have been cute back in the day. Zoomies is pure cringe.

Ah, but as a pro-union crowd, you love terms like Teamster, Brotherhood, right?

the union is literally called 'the international brotherhood of teamsters'. what else do you expect them to be called?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#186

Post by jeffbee »

sct202 wrote: post #129
oceliker wrote: post #85

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.

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.

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?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#187

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

bombcar wrote: post #166
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

I would find it odd if the only time you don't use that term on emails then happens to be layoffs.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#188

Post by prewett »

whimsicalism wrote: post #102
endisneigh wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, no good deed unpunished.

He owns 22% of the company. He literally just made ~1 billion on this decision and is foregoing a salary of ~1 million.

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%.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#189

Post by HollywoodZro »

anigbrowl wrote: post #112
nine_zeros wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also he and the C-suite are foregoing their bonuses but giving them out to departing employees. Pretty decent.

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#190

Post by hef19898 »

credit_guy wrote: post #127
ren_engineer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

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?

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.

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