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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

blog.zoom.us

271–280 of 596 posts

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#271
post #78

"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 infrastru…

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

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ always. No bad mouthing the company and no poaching for at least 1 year is a standard clause.

Serious question, how can they enforce this?

By burying you in attorney's fees until you crumble.

Severance packages always come with strings attached.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ always. No bad mouthing the company and no poaching for at least 1 year is a standard clause.

Serious question, how can they enforce this?

You sign a contract. If you violate it, they sue you to get your severance back.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#275
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#276

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 Geor…

> 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.

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#277
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wow ok.. Your comment should be on the first node all the way up. That’s really different from what I was imagining!

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

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#278
post #78

"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 infrastru…

> 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…

I honestly think it's a red flag when companies do this.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#279

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 Geor…

> 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.

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.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#280
post #126

Given that no-one here is talking about Keybase, I am going to assume they were significantly affected.

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.
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