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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

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Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#331

Post by fencepost »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #266
chazeon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from inside Academia, Zoom remains an important part of communication. We never used Zoom or any form of video chat before COVID, but even after COVID, Zoom is here to stay now. We meet in Zoom because it has unmatched quality and stability for video-conferencing / screen sharing compared to Skype etc. Office hour have Zoom sessions, etc.

Teams & Meet are improving rapidly; I can't help but ask why when it comes to Zoom these days.

Never really used Meet, but for Teams I'll say "which one?" Microsoft provided a free Teams business license during the pandemic, but that ends in April - at which point you need either a $4/month license managed through the M365 admin portal or you switch to a Personal account through live.com and use that for Teams. Haven't tried in a while, but that always seemed troublesome when I tried it early on.

Zoom may not be perfect, but it's a lot more accessible for a lot of non technical people. They're also pushing things like phone service as well, competing with VoIP providers including Microsoft, cable companies, phone carriers and third party companies.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#332

Post by ryanSrich »

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?

Very likely not, but what else could they have done to deal with demand other than hiring more people for a few years?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#333

Post by boring_twenties »

keithnz wrote: post #321
coolbreezetft22 wrote: post #77

How quickly times can change. A few years ago a CS degree and software job seemed like the most secure and easy way to a guaranteed high paying job while everything else was harder. Now it seems every software company is laying people off while the overall job market outside of tech is stronger than ever. Sucks to be a new CS grad this summer

while there is some high profile layoffs, is the actually job market that bad? It still seems quite active still to me.

Jobs are plentiful. Jobs that pay $400k+ ... less so.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#334

Post by brk »

RagnarD wrote: post #154
brk wrote: 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…

I think the idea is to try to create a kind of 'esprit de corps' specific to a particular organization - the idea that there is a bond and that working there is "special", out of the ordinary. It's good psychology, but rings hollow if a competent person is let go because of an economic downturn.

Yes, I think that is definitely the point, but so far pretty much all of them have proven to be a fraud.

If the CEO emails out "Zoomies, I fucked up and now I am cutting my paycheck to $1, and selling my personal stock, to help cover your salaries until we get this figured out", then it maybe means something. But "Zoomies, UR fired, wait to see if you win the email lottery, K thx" is not creating any esprit de corps.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#335

Post by JohnFen »

agar wrote: post #325
JohnFen wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does mean that the CEO did a bad job. The growth over the last two years was clearly going to be a temporary blip. Hiring theoretically permanent employees in response is simply bad judgement. 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'm confused as to your proposed solution. Should the new employees not been hired, and existing employees overworked due to understaffing? Should they have hired contractors and not paid benefits like healthcare? The companies I'm aware of that exist in cyclic industries (game dev, retail) tend to either have brutal cyclical layoff periods, leverage a ton of contractors, outsource their work to other firms, or hire…

> What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort of thing"?

Don't lead people to think that their positions are permanent when you know very well that there's a good chance they aren't. The easiest way to to make time-limited contracts. That doesn't mean you can't give them benefits such as health insurance.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#336

Post by time_to_smile »

BurningFrog wrote: post #269
madamelic wrote: post #86

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.

Just because it can be terminated at will doesn't mean people wake up every morning going to work thinking "hmm... wonder if I'll be let go today, or hey maybe I'll quit!"

Similarly most non-marriage romantic relationship can be trivially ended "at will", but people get plenty upset when those end early than one party had anticipated.

More important though is the inherent asymmetry: it hurts employees much more to be terminated from an employer than the employer hurts when employees leave. You know, unless those employees organize and all leave at the same time. And we know well that companies put a fair bit of energy keeping that from happening.

Historically the way to resolve this asymmetry was an implicit understanding that you won't arbitrarily get terminated unless the employer has no other choice. This implicit assumption has been weakening over time.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#337

Post by jonas21 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #319
fatnoah wrote: post #239

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…

It is all in the noise financially. Mr. Yuan owns 22% of the company. He owns 22% of the salary savings on the balance sheet.

In other words, he's lost $30B in the last ~2 years. Seems like a fair amount of accountability to me.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#338

Post by erik_seaberg »

AlbertCory wrote: post #67

If you're hired for the Christmas rush, you know it's temporary. These poor people probably didn't realize they were just a temporary hire. Would they have joined if Zoom had disclosed on hiring them, "We're experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime growth spurt because of COVID. If and when that ends, we may have to lay you off." ??

“If ___ we may have to lay you off” is always true, I wouldn’t believe anyone who promised that can’t happen. Unlike Christmas, Zoom couldn’t know when or if demand might subside, and their goal was that it wouldn’t.

We shouldn’t punish employers for leaning into strong markets, because unemployment is much worse when they’re reluctant to ever hire even at the best of times.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#339

Post by s1artibartfast »

ghaff wrote: post #320
s1artibartfast wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Right. And, if I had stood up in June 2020 and made the prediction that 50% of business travel would be replaced by video conferencing because companies would realize that their T&E spend was bloated and unnecessary to a significant degree--you might have disagreed but you probably wouldn't have laughed me out of the room. Instead, air travel is pretty much back to pre-pandemic levels in spite of economic headwinds.

Yet Video conferencing is still an 10 billion dollar market and growing, and Zoom is a, if not the leading player. It is projected to hit 19 billion by 2027.

https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2023/01/12/258...

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#340

Post by emmp »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #307
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.

We are at the point where every org is going to pay for zoom anyhow like they pay for both ms office and gsuite for the same set of workers. People send meeting links on zoom to clients and collaborators at other orgs. Its the standard now. Try sending a teams link and your clients will say “well we dont use teams can you send a zoom link?”

I work in a customer facing role for enterprise software. I have to join plenty of customer Teams and WebEx links whether I like it or not. We use Zoom internally.
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