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Zoom lays off 15% of employees

blog.zoom.us

581–590 of 596 posts

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#581

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 lo…

This is my fear too but does this apply to programming jobs at "non-tech" companies? Past few years it was very difficult for these businesses to hire software engineers because they couldn't compete with faang and hot tech startups. Now that those places are laying off and freezing hiring the time has come for non-tech companies to finally get people?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#582
post #3

I didn't do my job as CEO to keep the company sufficiently profitable, so you must be fired instead of me.

The employees can actually go build their own company and make their own poor decisions. The amount of entitlement among HNers is mind-boggling. Newsflash: I fired my grass-cutter and snow-remover this year. According to the dumb logic presented on all social media, I should have fired myself for not seeing inflation and having to cut costs on a few things.

Wait, you actually think CEOs own their companies?

The CEO is an employee like any other. He was hired to do a specific job. He didn't do it. He should be the first to be fired.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn’t obvious from the North Korean prison camp mention? The comment literal dripped sarcasm

This is the internet, it's hard to tell where some opinions end and where sarcasm starts these days. :)

>> 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 live in squalor going forward, effective immediately.

I mean honestly…you thought the above (emphasis is mine) was serious?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#584
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from inside Academia, Zoom remains an important part of communication. We never used Zoom or any form of video chat before COVID, but even after COVID, Zoom is here to stay now. We meet in Zoom because it has unmatched quality and stability for video-conferencing / screen sharing compared to Skype etc. Office hour have Zoom sessions, etc.

I think google meet is way cleaner feeling and I would pick it over zoom or teams. We do continue to use Zoom for very large 200+ meetings with the idea being that Zoom handles those better than Meet. Not sure if that information is outdated at this point.

Which is why it's good when there's a big outage and you need a ton of engineers in a call to debug it - Zoom is the only one I've seen that doesn't fall over.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lo…

This is my fear too but does this apply to programming jobs at "non-tech" companies? Past few years it was very difficult for these businesses to hire software engineers because they couldn't compete with faang and hot tech startups. Now that those places are laying off and freezing hiring the time has come for non-tech companies to finally get people?

I would expect down-tier companies to still be hiring and at higher age thresholds, but in general too many programmers still applies. There will be openings but they will be low pay, probably Of course this is just my generally pessimistic viewpoint. Could be wrong, I'd note however that I used to be more optimistic. 10 years or so ago, I did not expect the industry and my personal career to be in the sorry state they are in now. If I had been _less_ optimistic I would have made better choices, purely to mitigate risk. So I'm paying for that misplaced optimism now.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#586

I wonder if they're keeping the Keybase team around

https://keybase.pub/

> We regret to inform you that the Keybase.pub web hosting service will be shutting down on March 1, 2023. Although the service was a great showcase for the kinds of cool things that could be built with Keybase, the usage of this product never took off.

That doesn't bode well.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#587

I feel like Zoom is the Coca-Cola to Google and Microsoft's Pepsi. Zoom is the "OG" product (in the post-March-2020 remote working world), and probably most people's personal favorite. But their competitors have caught up, and they are getting a significant portion of corporate contracts now. And unlike with soda, I don't think there is a lot of direct-to-consumer opportunity in this field.

They’re definitely not the OG. Anyone remember Skype before Microsoft mothballed them?

Hence my qualifier:

> Zoom is the "OG" product (in the post-March-2020 remote working world)

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point, which you failed to address with your smug response, is the well-understood fact that the utility value of money falls greatly, the more money one has. The utility of 5 billion dollars is essentially zero to someone who already has a billion.

The marginal utility falls, but it's a hell of a lot more than zero.

Other than ownership of an NFL/NBA/Premier League/etc sports team, what life satisfaction or happiness improvements are unavailable to a one-billionaire?

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully they're also sending a NACK email too. Having been through it, let me tell you that's a gut wrenching n minutes to wait, though.

At my first company they announced layoffs almost a month out but not who was impacted. A horrible idea that created a very paranoid environment for at least the next year

This is Microsoft right now, except make it ~2 months. Don’t know what the executives were thinking.

Re: Zoom lays off 15% of employees

#590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

In that case, how did his life change from his net worth going up 9% after layoffs? Which was the comment I replied to.
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