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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

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Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#531

Post by ChickenNugger »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #5

> 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…

>Like there's no way it's just that simple. Google says the CEO is worth between $4bn and $25bn. He has to be smarter than the average bear. What am I missing?

Does he?

Perhaps this is what you're missing: https://www.vox.com/2014/7/23/5927165/chart-the-weak-relatio...

I have no idea, but it's the most salient thing I know about CEO pay having never been one.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#532

Post by ChickenNugger »

cpncrunch wrote: post #116
rconti wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from inside tech, we were using Zoom before the pandemic, its usage exploded during the pandemic, and our usage of it has never come back down.

But it's not going to go up either.

Perhaps with population growth?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#533

Post by ChickenNugger »

rbetts wrote: post #211
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree, so let’s move the goal post in an engineering org what’s the ratio of engineers (hands on keyboard) to non engineers? 50-50? 8 hours a day 5 days a week 20 days a month what are 2000 engineers working on related to zoom?

The ratio is likely closer to 20-30%. I searched the internet until I found data that confirmed my guess ;-). https://blossomstreetventures.medium.com/the-makeup-of-saas-... . Zoom includes network, compute, video, voice, recording, recording-storage, transcription, mobile clients, telecom/phone-in, meeting controls, webinar controls, in app messaging, presumably global data centers, calendars, whiteboards, 3rd party…

>I searched the internet until I found data that confirmed my guess ;-).

As is tradition.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#534

Post by 29athrowaway »

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…

"I am accountable" means "I am taking the blame on behalf of the board"

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#535

Post by phist_mcgee »

EMM_386 wrote: post #343
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…

> 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…

> profits margins are tightening

Not even close for many corporations.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#536

Post by rightbyte »

trynewideas wrote: post #197
maerF0x0 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're fun. Feels like summer camp, or college "Go banana slugs!" . But please never call us family, unless you're going to back it up with what a healthy family does. Else, That's just psychological abuse.

They're fun when you work there. Every one of those titles was used in a layoff letter addressed to employees or a press release announcing layoffs. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSdHsrGdZPnI...

Nice work. The names are silly but in the subject of layoffs they come out as distasteful. Like throwing in a crying smiley in the notice.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#537

Post by uxcolumbo »

bruce511 wrote: post #519
joegahona wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Parent’s post has an invisible /s.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#539

Post by trashface »

coolbreezetft22 wrote: post #77

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

New grads will probably be fine, most of them. But IMO we have indeed produced too many programmers. But its the older ICs, 40+, that are going to get cast out, not the new grads. Older ones are the expensive ones with families and other inconvenient stuff employers dislike. First to go will be the ones that went full remote.

Overtime if we continue to overproduce CS grads the defacto age limit will drop lower and lower. So maybe in a decade or two there won't be many ICs over 30 (obviously some will survive).

At least that is how it seems to this unemployed near-50 programmer. My job leads started to dry up at around 41 or 42. Now its crickets. LinkedIn telling me I appeared in 2 search this week, if I get that message at all.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#540

Post by culi »

birdyrooster wrote: post #481
password11 wrote: post #152

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.

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 $).

Many people here have worked in tech long enough to know that's how executive salaries often work in big tech companies and that the decrease in actual money flowing in isn't nearly as dramatic as "98%" sounds. I think everyone's just seen enough of these messages at this point that our standards have just been substantially lowered.

It's at least something more than we've seen from the majority of other layoffs. The severance is decent too so it's hard to deny Zoom's handled it better at least relative to how others have

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