Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zoom lays off 15% of employees

blog.zoom.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 596 posts

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#281

Post by ghaff »

smueller1234 wrote: post #252
kerpotgh wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think google meet is way cleaner feeling and I would pick it over zoom or teams. We do continue to use Zoom for very large 200+ meetings with the idea being that Zoom handles those better than Meet. Not sure if that information is outdated at this point.

No idea about Zoom scaling but I can say with confidence that Meet works perfectly fine with >200 these days. (I work at Google, use Meet 8+h per day in meetings small and large.)

We use Meet for most purposes because it's "free" given that we use Google Workplace for other things. Just use Bluejeans these days for the largest meetings.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#282

Post by MuffinFlavored »

ghaff wrote: post #248
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Zoom is actually a company where it wasn't unreasonable to think there was really a "new normal" and Zoom was well-positioned to capitalize on that shift. I agree from the perspective of, how much travel related to business is non-essential (could be solved over Zoom/equivalent but instead isn't)? Face to face with clients, seminars Maybe I'm missing data on the intangibles of in-person meeting vs digital meeting

I don't know about data but there are definitely intangibles relating to building relationships over food/drink/activities that aren't really replaced by a more transactional video call intended to communicate information. That's not really a surprise to most people but there was still a pretty broad assumption that the practicalities of reducing travel in favor of video would win out to a significant degree. And tha…

> I don't know about data but there are definitely intangibles relating to building relationships over food/drink/activities that aren't really replaced by a more transactional video call intended to communicate information.

100% agree. It's just fun to think about just how much, for example, "waste" happens with this. Think of the impact to the climate from all of the planes traveling, etc.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#283

Post by stronglikedan »

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…

> executives put themselves financially in the same situation as the lowest level people they are letting go

Except, lately anyway, those people were probably already living close to paycheck-to-paycheck, as many low six figure earners are in this horrible economy. Whereas, the CEO and other execs will likely not even miss the money.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#284

Post by s1artibartfast »

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…

>I'd really like to learn the truth to why this statement is wrong:

I can steel man that.

The pandemic was a once in a lifetime moment for the the adoption of video meetings. Market share captured during those couple years will largely define the players for decades to come. It would be financially responsible not make every effort to seize the opportunity. If this means massive temporary staffing, so be it.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#285

Post by ghaff »

heleninboodler wrote: post #251
frankc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The average person has more business sense than the CEO of Zoom and its entire board of executives who allowed rampant hiring because I could've guessed during COVID, despite the surge in demand given all of the work-from-home during lockdowns, my company most likely won't grow forever, therefore I won't triple my staff over the next 3 years and then need to just end up laying them off" I don't mean this to be snark…

I think there's a valid discussion to be had about whether we as an industry should expect massive hiring binges to be temporary and necessarily followed years later by layoffs, but these weren't billed as temporary jobs, so I think some shame is warranted. People probably relocated for these jobs, expecting them to be stable. I don't really want to become complacent to working in an industry where major players just…

Lots of companies in lots of industries can be very cyclical. Try working for an aerospace company--or one of their many subcontractors--if they lose a big contract.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#287

Post by JohnFen »

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?

"Teamster" was actually a job title, not a cute nickname.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#288

Post by bengale »

heleninboodler wrote: post #251
frankc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The average person has more business sense than the CEO of Zoom and its entire board of executives who allowed rampant hiring because I could've guessed during COVID, despite the surge in demand given all of the work-from-home during lockdowns, my company most likely won't grow forever, therefore I won't triple my staff over the next 3 years and then need to just end up laying them off" I don't mean this to be snark…

I think there's a valid discussion to be had about whether we as an industry should expect massive hiring binges to be temporary and necessarily followed years later by layoffs, but these weren't billed as temporary jobs, so I think some shame is warranted. People probably relocated for these jobs, expecting them to be stable. I don't really want to become complacent to working in an industry where major players just…

I think an argument can be made that all jobs are temporary jobs. If you're increasing headcount during a period of high growth then there is often hope that the growth continues enough to support those numbers when things taper off but it's not as easy as people seem to be saying.

It looks like they grew somewhere around 300% since the start of COVID, a rif of 15% doesn't seem too far off estimates to me.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#289

Post by yibg »

bell-cot wrote: post #158
credit_guy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

How about a few CEO's getting fired for cause by their Boards, because their "I just do whatever the cooler kids are doing" hiring/firing binges show that they really aren't competent to run a company?

Surely there is a more holistic measure of a CEOs performance than just a round of layoffs. Is Eric a bad CEO? If yes then he should be fired. If not then I don’t see how layoffs would justify it.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#290

Post by cycomanic »

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?

Somebody up top commented that he is getting 10M in stocks and giving up on 300k in salary. If that is the case this is a clitch in his earning. A real impact would be to reduce his stock by 20%. Like this it is simply virtue signalling. I mean supposedly CEO pay is meant to be tied to company performance, then make it so in a meaningful way.
Post reply on HN