231–240 of 596 posts
> 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
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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?
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.
> 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…
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…
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.
Love the "Don’t forget to share this post" at the end of the message.
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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 v…
I love the "Don't forget to share this post" at the end of the blog post.
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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 yo…
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…
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.
I don't understand, Zoom for my perspective is everywhere today. What business issues are they facing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 v…
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".
.. yawn. next.