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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

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Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#431

Post by savanaly »

buggy6257 wrote: post #361

- Comments about how this is a good thing and bravo to the CEO for actually taking accountability - Replies saying how it's never enough and the CEO should be fired for doing something as stupid as hiring people during an economic boom - Comments off ^^^ talking about how much net worth the CEO has based on stock that he hasn't liquidated, and how much he made off this temporary stock bump from cutting "cruft" - Comm…

> Comments about how stupid the demonym for the employees was/is

I'm so done with these. I sort of agree but jesus christ they are so pervasive. Maybe I had bad timing but today on the discussion about layoffs at Zoom fully more than 5 of the top 10 comments were about it. We get it! I hate it too! It's boring to talk about though, for the twentieth time in 2023.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#432

Post by phtrivier »

lazide wrote: post #221
phtrivier wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you want the guy who is doing less bad than others to quit (aka take the heaviest hit), because some small portion of the company needs to be laid off (15%), even though he is giving up far more than 15% of his compensation? And by quitting, giving up any power or doing that job he is doing less bad than others ? How did that work out for Senator Franken? Or the Democrats in general? I swear, it’s like folks can’t…

Oh, no, I also wish the other CEOs who claim to "take full responsibility for mistakes" do in fact, take some responsibility.

I'm not forcing them to write the words.

If they want to say "we tried, it did not work, the economy got worse than we expected, yet we think we're still in the best position to run the companies, but we have to make hard decisions now", that's their stuff.

I wonder how it would play out for any other employee using this strategy in performance review.

"I take full responsibility for not fulfilling my OKRs, and therefore I will demand that your fire every one else in the team to afford my promotion and raise."

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#433

Post by lazide »

phtrivier wrote: post #432
lazide wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want the guy who is doing less bad than others to quit (aka take the heaviest hit), because some small portion of the company needs to be laid off (15%), even though he is giving up far more than 15% of his compensation? And by quitting, giving up any power or doing that job he is doing less bad than others ? How did that work out for Senator Franken? Or the Democrats in general? I swear, it’s like folks can’t…

Oh, no, I also wish the other CEOs who claim to "take full responsibility for mistakes" do in fact, take some responsibility. I'm not forcing them to write the words. If they want to say "we tried, it did not work, the economy got worse than we expected, yet we think we're still in the best position to run the companies, but we have to make hard decisions now", that's their stuff. I wonder how it would play out for a…

How is not throwing away millions in compensation - or for this example, almost all compensation - not taking responsibility?

I’ve yet to see any line employee willing to take a major pay-cut because they screwed something up.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#434

Post by phtrivier »

Laymen question : do you know how the magic number of "12-15%" gets decided ? Either is just everyone copying each other to please their boards (reasonable hypothetical), or there is one investor that make the same demand everywhere, or there is some regulation behind it, or there is some math ?

I mean, it seems like the stock price would go up too if they laid off 20 or 25, or maybe 50%, and maybe some bold CEO is going to get a huge bonus by taking the full responsibility of firing everyone except the accounting department ?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#435

Post by ralph84 »

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…

Even if you own 51% of the company you're disposable. The company itself is disposable. The CFO at a lot of Zoom's customers is asking why are we paying so much for Zoom when Microsoft will give us Teams for "free". It doesn't matter if Zoom is better, it's still disposable.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#436

Post by [deleted] »

buggy6257 wrote: post #361

- Comments about how this is a good thing and bravo to the CEO for actually taking accountability - Replies saying how it's never enough and the CEO should be fired for doing something as stupid as hiring people during an economic boom - Comments off ^^^ talking about how much net worth the CEO has based on stock that he hasn't liquidated, and how much he made off this temporary stock bump from cutting "cruft" - Comm…

[deleted]

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#437

Post by pvg »

buggy6257 wrote: post #361

- Comments about how this is a good thing and bravo to the CEO for actually taking accountability - Replies saying how it's never enough and the CEO should be fired for doing something as stupid as hiring people during an economic boom - Comments off ^^^ talking about how much net worth the CEO has based on stock that he hasn't liquidated, and how much he made off this temporary stock bump from cutting "cruft" - Comm…

Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#438

Post by simplotek »

actually_a_dog wrote: post #421
missedthecue wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Against the backdrop of losing like $5 billion over the past 12 months.

So? What's the functional difference between $6 billion and $1 billion (which is roughly what Google says his current net worth is). Unless your net worth is $500M or more, you're closer to being homeless than ever seeing that kind of wealth.

> So?

It doesn't make sense to accuse someone of not feeling the economic impact of a downturn at all while downplaying the fact that they actually lost $5billion.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#439

Post by ghaff »

nicce wrote: post #148
blfr wrote: post #108

Zoom has become an indispensable source of connection for businesses I haven't been to an online meeting that wasn't MS Teams or Google Meet in three months. Sadly, Slack, Zoom, and other similar nice-to-have corporate tools seem bound to get eaten by the integrated productivity suites.

MS Teams or Google Meet also feels to be working much better with better features.

We saw the same pattern 20+ years ago. Office suites won out over individual products even if some word processor was arguably better.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#440

Post by simplotek »

jo6gwb wrote: post #235
HollywoodZro wrote: post #182

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.

> Whatever you do, it will never be enough.

To be fair, it's only a pair of random internet forum posters who are complaining that this is not enough. There are plenty of people in this discussion arguing otherwise.

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