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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

blog.zoom.us

441–450 of 596 posts

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#441
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t taking ownership, that’s falling on your sword. There is a difference.

Falling on your sword is literally exactly what accountability used to be. …and the stakes are even higher today if you count the number of people impacted by poor decisions.

> Falling on your sword is literally exactly what accountability used to be.

I wonder if you hold this level of rigour towards your own failings and shortcomings, or if this desire is directed exclusively at everyone besides yourself.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If there's no functional difference between before and after the loss, it damn well does.

Tell me, how did his lifestyle change as a result of losing this $5 billion? What actual pain of loss did he feel, above and beyond seeing some numbers go down?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#443
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are a US-based employee who is impacted, you will receive an email to your Zoom and personal inboxes in the next 30 minutes that reads [IMPACTED] Departing Zoom: What You Need to Know. This is the way to notify people of a layoff. Immediate binary yes/no. Although there is no great way to do it, this layoff seems pretty respectful and well done.

Are you kidding? Passing the message that you're CANNED in the SUBJECT of the email is now considered respectful ? No, it's robotic, and pathetic. They'll soon be writing these lovely messages to their employees, as well as you're fired emails with ChatGPT.

> No, it's robotic, and pathetic.

Which way do you feel its the best way to be notified you're being fired?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#445

> 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…

> 4200 engineers to work on an app that at its core is... video conferencing? Low latency video in general is an extremely hard problem to get right. Video conferencing is that, and more. Is the number of employees likely overinflated? Clearly as they just had layoffs. But let's not pretend the problem space is some super easy thing that can be handled by one engineer in their basement.

What fraction of the zoom engineers do you think are working on either the video and audio codecs, the networking code, and the video/audio I/O?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#447

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 g…

I'm guessing it goes back to the 70-20-10 employee grading nonsense.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#448

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’s symbolic. He built a juggernaut that went from nothing to industry leader in a few years. Just like Cisco did with WebEx, they can park the company for a few years and print billions until the next disruptor arrives.

Indeed. Such a drag to share the spoils with the proles who built such a successful company.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#449
post #109

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

Its the bootcamps that worry me and the endless YouTubers preaching how they became a so and so after 3 months. But yeah nothing is secure.

Bootcamps are great for people with non-CS STEM backgrounds. I'm happy to have engineers of other disciplines come into the field. But I do think companies should try to raise the bar of who they hire. Other engineering disciplines have government licenses to get. It would be nice if companies required Software Engineers to do the same.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#450
post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laying off employees is not 'the company failing'; he reports to investors, not employees. The employees have very little on the line with respect to the company.

Damn, whoever made a comment has probably has never had a job that's genuinely engaged them (and certainly has never been unexpectedly laid off). What a sad reality most people's jobs are :(

Working for someone else's company means you are a tool to generate profit. That does not mean you cannot enjoy it, and your team, and even make some friends. Still it is vital to understand the business itself is not a family. Companies that pretend to be families seek to build stockholm syndrome which will make you unwilling to look for a better deal for your talent.

It also makes it hurt more when you are laid off and the illusion is broken.

You only ever work for yourself. A single employer means you have a single client. It also means you only have one source of income. That is always risky, because work done for others is always temporary. Honestly full time employment is way way -more- risky than being an independent contractor with a few small predictable retainer contracts.

Also key to remember is that no matter how rewarding and interesting the work is you will eventually lose access to that too unless you fought hard enough for it to be open source.

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