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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

blog.zoom.us

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Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#511

Post by youssefabdelm »

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…

This would be nice if the CEO was not the founder, but in this case, he's the founder and his net worth is $3.8B.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#512

Post by youssefabdelm »

martin82 wrote: post #506
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…

Now, CEOs are incentivised to make absolutely ridiculous amounts of money one year so that they can then pretend to be "accountable" the next year No big corp CEO will ever be accountable for anything.

You forgot the most important part: his net worth is $3.8 BILLION with a big fat juicy B

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#513

Post by insane_dreamer »

> zoomies

can we please stop with all the pet name bs? a large corporation is not a "big family". it's simply degrading. you're a number -- you get hired when money is plentiful and the company is expanding, and you get fired when the economy contracts and/or shareholders demand even more profits. period.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#514

Post by joegahona »

Whoever runs the blog at Zoom might want to remove the giant, cheerful “Don’t Forget To Share This Post!” at the bottom.

I would also strongly discourage referring to impacted employees as “Zoomies” or “Latticians” or “Microsofties” in these types of correspondence.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#515

Post by insane_dreamer »

Did every tech company CEO have the same brain fart that the 2020-2021 artificial growth created by COVID was going to last a decade or more? I don't think so -- because if they did they'd all be pretty stupid, and I don't think they're that stupid. But I guess it's a convenient excuse and sounds better than "we always knew we'd have to get rid of you when the music stopped".

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#516

Post by zdragnar »

linkjuice4all wrote: post #487

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 pr…

I'm on board with #1. #3 is tough because you'd have to offer lower salaries to make up for the expense of essentially pre-paying a severance package.

#2, however, is way off base. The AMA played a significant role in our current health system's mess. It recently backed off of some of its previous bad decisions (i.e. in 2019 it lobbied to remove the caps on medicare-funded residency slots that it had originally gotten put in place), but it still spends a ton lobbying on "scope of practice" laws that keep doctors overburdened and limited in supply.

Becoming a doctor in the US requires far more years of education than many other countries, drastically driving up salary requirements (how else do they pay for all of that schooling?), limiting supply and providing only comparable care.

The AMA managed to avoid what the bars failed- we didn't experience a glut of doctors like we did lawyers. Unfortunately, we're experiencing the flip side to that coin- doctor shortages may be good for doctors, but it is profoundly bad for everyone else.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#517

Post by jimbokun »

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.

5 billion dollars.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#519

Post by bruce511 »

joegahona wrote: post #509
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…

This warrants maximum punishment and humiliation: 1. Yuan should immediately terminate himself as CEO, and his salary/bonus should be divvied up among those who were [IMPACTED]. In fact, all 1,300 people should be named co-CEOs and together they shall lead the company to prosperity and avoid such a boneheaded misstep in the future. 2. He should have to give his life savings to those 1,300 people. His family should li…

Clearly being laid off is painful. I'm sensing some of that pain in your reply. I have a lot of sympathy for those who have been laid off.

However your solution, as seen from outside that pain, is "worse than the disease".

Firstly it's worth pointing out that most (but not all) layoffs right now are a result of over-hiring during the pandemic. Now, granted, those jobs didn't last forever, but they did last a while and kept a lot of people working during a time when a lot of people couldn't work. It would likely have been very profitable to not make those hires in the first place.

Secondly, you are proposing penalties out of proportion to the mistake. Or put another way you are strongly disincentiving hiring in the first place.

The more penalties there are for failure, the lower the chance that people will try at all. Your suggestion that over-hiring leads to criminal fraud, or personal destitution, has out outcome - no one will ever hire anyone.

In a private company the decision makers are typically the owners. They're taking risks everyday, spending "their money" and working hard to keep everyone employed. It's a weighty responsibility. But life happens and things don't always work out as planned. Management-via-hindsight is easy.

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