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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

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Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#481

Post by birdyrooster »

password11 wrote: post #152
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…

> 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.

I found it particularly respectful the way he called them Zoomies as he was laying them off. It was even more classy and respectful when he went out of his way to mislead people about his compensation when the vast vast majority of his comp is RSU and he can easily borrow against them (worth tens of millions of $).

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#482

Post by bcrosby95 »

lkrubner wrote: post #412
speby wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? What 'fairness' exactly is it people want when companies do layoffs? "Hey, we are laying off 3,000 people. Because of that, I am firing myself and the company will no longer have a CEO and will have to find someone else, starting immediately. In addition, I plan to donate all of my life's savings and file for unemployment like everyone else and, if needed, live in my van down by the river. I hope this make…

"Because of that, I am firing myself" A team does terrible for awhile -- should the coach be removed? A company does terrible -- should the CEO be removed? This is what accountability means. Just this year I was hired by a Board Of Directors, of a startup with 150 people, to do an evaluation of the technology and code, and I found epic levels of tech debt and irresponsible decision making. When I gave my report to th…

I'm sure you can't speak about it, but now I'm very curious what levels of technical debt it takes for the board to fire a CTO.

I have to assume it goes beyond just not following best practices, and perhaps into deep levels of pointless "not invented here syndrome" or some other massive waste of resources.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#483

Post by b112 »

to11mtm wrote: post #257
hef19898 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Course not, the polite way is sepuku! But seriously, once MS Teams rolled out video conferencing, I wondered how long Zoom will manage to stay around at all.

Zoom still does a lot of stuff better. At least the last time I used MS teams, Zoom had a much better 'upper limit' for participants in a call. Both from a 'hard limit' standpoint as well as an 'after this number the experience degrades'. To say nothing of dealing with an outage of microsoft services and needing to get on a call to resolve...

At least the last time I used MS teams, Zoom had a much better 'upper limit' for participants in a call.

That's probably because M$ switched away from bsd to windows again.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#484

Post by b112 »

creato wrote: post #267
bell-cot wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In the case of zoom, they had an explosion in users and demand due to their product being a good solution to some of the problems imposed by the pandemic. What is your suggestion? Companies hire when they have a lot of demand, the fire when they don’t. Just like basically any other organism’s response to its situation.

I wonder. Where were all these detractors, when all the hiring was happening, at record salaries, over the last 2 years?

Did they heap praise on this same CEO, when he hired, provided jobs, record salaries, and more?

Even now, after these layoffs, this same CEO resides over a company worth immensely more, with more employees than 2+ years ago, and at excellent salaries.

So where were the praises before the layoffs? Because that's the logical inverse of the current behaviour. If not, then all these complaints are just immensely hypocritical.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#486

Post by b112 »

neon_electro wrote: post #260
dahfizz wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this position. You imply that any layoff is a fundamental and serious mistake. Zoom's revenue grew like 10X over the past two years. They had a legitimate need to hire and grow the business, and now the market has corrected and they don't need as many employees. The hiring and firing decisions are exactly what I would expect from someone optimizing solely for the well-being of the company. It sucks…

>someone optimizing solely for the well-being of the company Is this how we're going to forever define an "employer"? I agree with your sentiment broadly, but what a terrible system we've created for ourselves.

What? It is an excellent system. If you do not optimize as such, then the company implodes and dies.

How is this a "terrible system"? What is the replacement system, if so?

Should companies ... what? Provide make work projects? Build things the market will not support?

Or should companies just sell shares, then use the money as a form of welfare. Turn companies into a way for people to donate, so engineers can make 10x what the average employee does?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#487

Post by linkjuice4all »

There are several points that I don’t see being made in these discussions.

1. Layoffs would be less painful is major aspects of your life (read: health insurance or your visa) wasn’t tied to employment. Yes the layoffs would still hurt but it wouldn’t be such a catastrophe for the actual workers. This is a discussion for another thread but it’s at least worth mentioning here.

2. Unions could certainly provide some protection and security for affected workers. There’s obviously a lot of pluses and minuses about “US” unions but workers guilds, the AMA and bar associations show that there’s other ways for professionals to protect their employment while still providing training, certification, and quality workers.

3. The bigger issue seems to be lack of employee ownership in the company. Yes you can purchase stock on the market or through equity grants but they are an optional expense. If these laid off employees were earning actual vested stock from their start date they’d at least leave the company with some tangible asset and be in the same boat as these executives. If laying off workers is a good financial move for the company then at least they will get a softer landing. Employees will also have the same incentives as executives to boost stock prices and could flex their power to punish poorly performing executives. That last reason is likely why employees have to buy their way in instead of just getting stock as part of their comp. Obviously it isn’t as simple as giving away stock and hoping everything works out alright but you’d cut down on a lot of these discussions about executives not feeling the pain.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#488

Post by nickpeterson »

speby wrote: post #390
vsareto wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seriously? What 'fairness' exactly is it people want when companies do layoffs? "Hey, we are laying off 3,000 people. Because of that, I am firing myself and the company will no longer have a CEO and will have to find someone else, starting immediately. In addition, I plan to donate all of my life's savings and file for unemployment like everyone else and, if needed, live in my van down by the river. I hope this make…

This feels ok, but they should also sell all their gold fillings.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#489

Post by stumblindrunk »

frankc wrote: post #479
brundolf wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, a lot of layoffs make a lot more sense when you re-evaluate the assumption that these CEOs are hiring people with the intent of keeping them indefinitely. For many, I'd bet this was the plan all along

I don't even think it requires that in a strict sense. No one knows how long the cycle time is or if you are will reach a new long-term mean or not. Another important point is its not the case that all the hiring is LIFO. In fact we know that many old-time googlers were let go. I am sure many of the more recent hires have stuck around.

To the extent it doesn’t overly impact institutional knowledge, etc. hiring/firing should be FIFO, if you want to minimize costs. Hire new people, train them up, fire (some) experienced people that cost more.

Whether that’s a “good” property of the system or not, I suppose depends at some level on how you feel about capitalism. Should a business owner be allowed to fire an employee to maximize their company’s value, and eventually their own income?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#490

Post by blobbers »

lkrubner wrote: post #412
speby wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? What 'fairness' exactly is it people want when companies do layoffs? "Hey, we are laying off 3,000 people. Because of that, I am firing myself and the company will no longer have a CEO and will have to find someone else, starting immediately. In addition, I plan to donate all of my life's savings and file for unemployment like everyone else and, if needed, live in my van down by the river. I hope this make…

"Because of that, I am firing myself" A team does terrible for awhile -- should the coach be removed? A company does terrible -- should the CEO be removed? This is what accountability means. Just this year I was hired by a Board Of Directors, of a startup with 150 people, to do an evaluation of the technology and code, and I found epic levels of tech debt and irresponsible decision making. When I gave my report to th…

Can you comment on how you got that job?
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