The industry is just walking in circles. Nothing new since "Silicon Valley" ended: https://youtu.be/u48vYSLvKNQ
Zoom lays off 15% of employees
371–380 of 596 posts
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
so binary. he still ran the company. overhiring doesnt necessarily equate to mismanaging.
If you're firing 15% of your employees it's mismanagement. Either you didn't need the additional staff, or you had an opportunity that needed that staff and you failed to deliver on it and are now discarding those people like garbage. But apparently we're ok with the binary of "management screwed up" -> "individual employees no longer have a job or health insurance".
How about you needed staff, payed them well, and no longer need them?
Is this strictly impossible?
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#373This 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. That's how workers are treated and people should understand that. I can't tell if all of this is due to the age of people who have joined the workforce over the last decade, when we were in a constant uphill swing. Markets go through cycles, boom and bust. We happen to be in part of the cycle where interest rates are rising, inflation is high, profi…
>"You were used" is a bit much. You go to work to earn a paycheck. I'm not sure how many people bought into the whole "we're a family" stuff, but obviously these are for-profit corporations and they are beholden only to their shareholders. There was never the illusion otherwise, unless you truly believed that now that you're in, you're in.
There is a lot of corporate ink spilled trying to convince people of exactly this. The counter to this kind of treatment is a strong union. Hopefully this goes a ways toward convincing people they need that level of protection.
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#374Earlier 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.
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.
I love meet but I have to reluctantly admit that zoom behaves better when you have a very low and/or irregular bandwidth. It reacts very well to temporary packet losses, by replaying the audio a little faster until it catches up with realtime, and video syncs up with audio quite well.
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#375Earlier 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.
> The growth over the last two years was clearly going to be a temporary blip. I'm sorry, but this is the most hindsight is 20/20, armchair CEO thing I've ever heard. Unless you have some sort of magic 8 ball, there was nothing clear about it being temporary, a blip, or any timeline of such.
In fact some people relocated away from tech hubs, a huge bet on a remote first future. (I’m not one of them.)
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Except no position is permanent, even by the most liberal interpretation of full-time.
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#377> 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…
I really want to agree. On an emotional level, I do agree. It’s important that the entire organization feel they rise or fall together, as a team, and this should impact leadership more heavily than the rank and file.
But on the other, as you note, it’s just a symbolic thing. As such, a large part of me feels, do we really benefit as a society for those increasing even more the extent to which virtue signaling is institutionalized?
So I agree in spirit, but worry that this is an under appreciated long term risk to business culture specifically, and society more generally. “Symbolic” on some level really just translates to “BS” and we have more than enough of that already.
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cite? Accountability means (from every definition I’ve found!) taking responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences. Falling on one’s sword has, from what I’ve always read, has been portrayed as someone accepting too much responsibility, to the point they actually avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions and make the situation worse overall by killing themselves. After all, no need to actually w…
I have never heard your definition. My connotation has always been ritual suicide. E.g. Seppuku in Japan, captains going down with the ship, ect. The origin of the phrase in the west stems from the roman practice of military ritual suicide following defeat. It was more a matter of honor than seeking victimhood. A captured general represented an embarrassment to the empire, provides the enemy with a hostage, and would…
Are you talking about "accountability" or "falling on your sword?"
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cite? Accountability means (from every definition I’ve found!) taking responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences. Falling on one’s sword has, from what I’ve always read, has been portrayed as someone accepting too much responsibility, to the point they actually avoid dealing with the consequences of their actions and make the situation worse overall by killing themselves. After all, no need to actually w…
I have never heard your definition. My connotation has always been ritual suicide. E.g. Seppuku in Japan, captains going down with the ship, ect. The origin of the phrase in the west stems from the roman practice of military ritual suicide following defeat. It was more a matter of honor than seeking victimhood. A captured general represented an embarrassment to the empire, provides the enemy with a hostage, and would…
Are you referring to 'falling on your sword', or 'accountability' in your response? Some of your examples are not equivalent to falling on their sword. Notably, going down with the ship is the opposite (in some ways), as it is 'fighting to the end to save the ship and it's people'.
If someone (going down the ship wise) doesn't get on a lifeboat when everyone else has already gotten off, then yeah it's probably more about avoiding actual accountability (aka having to stand and take responsibility/long term consequences).
Regarding Victimhood/Martyrdom, there are many apocryphal accounts and personal anecdotes one can throw out. You'll get stories anyone in senior leadership when a CEO gets pushed out, to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%ABshingura] (specifically Lord Asano), to Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnaeus_Domitius_Corbulo], and many others.
Sometimes folks want blood, and they won't be satisfied until they get it. And often someone either stupidly volunteers (actually), or gets 'volunteered' by their boss.
Also, how is killing yourself quickly and (relatively) painlessly after a military failure NOT the relatively easy way out - instead of say, dying while fighting the enemy to the death (probably horribly disfigured and maimed in the process), or dying in torture while not giving anything up, or dying while trying to save the ship and the other crew, or returning in shame and being a social outcast, or dying after being shamed in trial followed by an execution, etc.
Literally all those other options can seem a whole lot harder than a gladius through the solar plexus at the moment. Also, notably, sometimes folks had 'help' on that last bit, though rarely was it featured prominently in the PR.
Seppuku - similar. Rather than 'living with dishonor' (aka being outcast from a insular and all encompassing society), or having to stand trial and defend yourself and getting shamed then executed anyway, etc. it's killing yourself 'with honor', so your family doesn't get their benefits taken and similarly outcast (as badly). Seppuku generally involves the second beheaded the person before they've had a chance to suffer much too, though there have been famous 'mistakes' made at times.
It also could be ordered by the Daimyo, Shogun, etc. and it was pretty common (from accounts at the time) for folks to be thrown under the bus and ordered to commit it if they didn't succeed at what the lord had ordered them to do or were just being inconvenient to the narrative. Including significant 'help' from seconds. Which is, well, pretty much the example of a scapegoat.
Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
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%.
Sure, it also remains to be seen what the value of the dollar is in the future. You could lose a billion in real dollars just holding cash. Don't really think it diminishes my point.
The volatility in equity prices and dollar strength is not comparable. This analogy is just absurd.