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Zoom lays off 15% of employees
- whalesalad 4y agoLove the "Don’t forget to share this post" at the end of the message.
- weakwire 4y agoLooks like we love the same things.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- luismedel 4y agoI find the use of infantile terms like 'zoomie' insulting. Please, treat your employees with due respect. You're giving them life-changing news.
- sneak 4y agoChanging jobs should not be life-changing.
- qup 4y agoDepends on the job.
- Jcowell 4y agoIt’s shouldn’t but when your health insurance relies on it , it pretty much is
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoAnd depending on industry having to relocate or increase your commute.
- kortilla 4y agoMany jobs have very similar health care offerings and access to the same doctors. Changing your commute and your total compensation will have more life impact than the healthcare insurance provider change.
- tgma 4y agoPeople keep talking about this as if it is preACA. With COBRA you can keep your health insurance for a while and you can get similar plans from the exchanges. It shouldn’t be a huge deal considering the severance frequently also includes some lump some to cover it.
- brycewray 4y agoThe existence of the ACA is no panacea. Many physicians and clinics purposely refuse to honor any ACA plan (for political reasons, in at least some cases of which I unfortunately know from personal experience). And everyone who’s been on COBRA for any length of time knows it is God-awful expensive since you’re now paying for the whole piece.
- tgma 4y agoIt’s good to put a number out for people who don’t know: I estimate ~500/month for the employer portion for an individual coverage. Whether that’s considered “God awful” or “peanuts” is dependent on one’s situation but most probably for the average tech employee in California it shouldn’t be the end of the world compared to their other expenditures. Sure, I also prefer disassociation of health care from employment but I think it’s important not to scare people away from layoffs or discourage exploration of other opportunities because they’d be scared of losing health coverage.
- drstewart 4y agoSo to be clear, layoffs aren't life changing outside the US?
- maerF0x0 4y agobut they're statement was it shouldnt. They shouldnt be downvoted for what they didnt say.
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoWithout additional context on which parties the "shouldn't" applies to, and why it shouldn't, the comment doesn't add to the conversation. Seems like a reason to downvote to me.
- anon7725 4y agoLayoffs are life changing. Not everyone who is laid off is an in-demand engineer. “Tech jobs” obscure the fact that most roles are non- or light-technical jobs that are common at many companies (HR, sales, support, etc).
- ssnistfajen 4y agoIt has a very high likelihood of being life-changing for people on work visas. It is also life-changing for anyone who genuinely believed in their job, whether out of passion or naïveté. Work is (unfortunately) a major pillar of people's lives in modern society and having that pillar collapse on you unexpectedly can be traumatic especially for younger adults early in their careers. Also, there's a big difference between changing jobs on your own accord vs. being fired/laid off against your own desire.
- recursive 4y agoThis is a should-be vs is-actually confusion. While you're working to create the future you hope to see, you still need to exist in the world as it actually is.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoAny ex-Googlers care to comment? They seem to embrace it: https://xoogler.co https://xoogler.co
- jastanton 4y agoI always thought Xoogler was a moniker that wasn't given but was chosen by x-Googlers. Source: Me, Xoogler.
- hgsgm 4y agoZoomer Zoomers.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gedy 4y agoGiven how zoom took over the universe in past 3 years, seems like a serious leadership failing to now have to cut 1300 people.
- gardenhedge 4y agoI actually think this is one of the companies where it made sense that they scaled up staff during covid and now need to let them go.
- bink 4y agoI agree. Salesforce, Meta, Alphabet? Those were already giant companies that saw a bump in traffic due to covid. Zoom was a relatively small company that became a cultural phenomenon and no doubt had to onboard a completely unexpected number of new customers. It's one company where I could see tripling the workforce as reasonable if not aiming low.
- sneak 4y ago1300 people is a ton of salary every month. Google Meet is free with G Suite/Workspace/Gmail which everyone already has.
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoFor $1 notes it would be quite a bit more than a ton: https://goodcalculators.com/money-weight-calculator/ https://goodcalculators.com/money-weight-calculator/ > This means that $1,000,000 in $100 bills weighs around 10 kilograms (22.046 pounds). However, if you wanted your million in single dollar bills, that same amount of money would weigh a metric ton (2,204.623 pounds).
- qup 4y agoHow much of that was schools that are now back to classrooms?
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI'm not sure how you get that conclusion. "taking over the universe" seems like successful leadership to me. I'm sure those 1300 people helped them do it. If they are no longer needed, letting them go also seems like successful leadership. I don't pay the workers that built my house after the job is done.
- shapefrog 4y agoTLDR: 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. Macroeconomic changes have made it impossible for me to want to pay you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34515267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34515267 ZM stock: 83.26 +6.19 (+8.03%) - thats a profit of 400mil on the day for the CEO.
- slig 4y ago>thats a profit of 400mil on the day for the CEO He was the one that sold that much? If not, it's not his profit.
- suddenclarity 4y agoThat's not how stock value works. It's not real money.
- s1artibartfast 4y agogood?
- shapefrog 4y agoCEOs everywhere will be looking at a +10% day in their stock price and consider writing a blog post themselves.
- SeanLuke 4y agoI didn't do my job as CEO to keep the company sufficiently profitable, so you must be fired instead of me.
- qup 4y agoMore like 'as CEO, firing you to keep the company sufficiently profitable is my job.'
- p1esk 4y agoHe cut his salary by 98%, but it’s most likely refers to the base salary, while most of his total comp is in stock.
- Frost1x 4y agoTo be completely fair, it is one of those situations where the damage is done and layoffs are probably one of the best options for the company from a completely financial point of view. He messed up and as such, there are consequences. With that said, seems like admittance of this level of error at a leadership level should be grounds to lose your job and be replaced, so the CEO should also be replaced in this process. I realize there are stability issues where you need to bring someone else in and catch them up to speed before doing this since the role likely requires a lot of contextual awareness but none the less, that process should be (but almost certainly isn't) underway at most these organizations. If anyone not in the c-suite made these levels of errors and clearly admitted to them, they'd be gone yesterday.
- deltree7 4y agoThe 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.
- SeanLuke 4y agoWait, 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.
- dmamills 4y agothree billion dollars in revenue last year
- outworlder 4y agoThis is not about revenue. Companies are noticing that every time they do a layoff, their stock skyrockets. Decreasing expenses is the icing on the cake.
- falcolas 4y agoOver 3B in profit, actually. > Zoom Video Communications gross profit for the twelve months ending October 31, 2022 was $3.283B, a 15.34% increase year-over-year. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ZM/zoom-video-communications/gross-profit https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ZM/zoom-video-comm...
- mardifoufs 4y agoGross profit is not profit as we commonly understand it.
- falcolas 4y agoA good point. TIL gross profit only counts the cost of producing the product, but not payroll, taxes etc. That same link does show a $900M traditional profit on $4B of revenue, so roughly a 20% profit margin. It is a decrease year over year, but still remarkably good. At an estimated 12k employees, it's also around $360k in revenue per employee, which is pretty decent (though not top-10 for the tech industry).
- s1artibartfast 4y agoMust be doing a good job managing the company. Somebody give this man a bonus!
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago> 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-communications/number-of-employees 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. Zoom Video Communications total number of employees in 2020 was 2,532, a 48.77% increase from 2019. Zoom Video Communications total number of employees in 2019 was 1,702, a INF% increase from 2018. Probably not the most up to date/accurate info. If 1300 is 15% of their workforce, they are up to 8.6k employees, headed back down to 7366, still all time high. Did they really think COVID lifestyle was going to stay forever and their business would be gangbusters forever? What % of their 7000-8000 employees (ignoring any contractors I guess) are engineers? 60%? 4200 engineers to work on an app that at its core is... video conferencing? > Zoom has 300 million users in meetings daily. 89% of zoom users use it for work meetings. 73.41 million downloads of the Zoom app were recorded worldwide in the first quarter of 2022. https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+daily+active+users https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+daily+active+users What new features have they rolled out past 12 months that justify needing 4,000 engineers/project managers/product managers/QA team/dev ops/whatever fulltime? I'd really like to learn the truth to why this statement is wrong: "The average person has more business sense than the CEO of Zoom and its entire board of executives who allowed rampant hiring because I could've guessed during COVID, despite the surge in demand given all of the work-from-home during lockdowns, my company most likely won't grow forever, therefore I won't triple my staff over the next 3 years and then need to just end up laying them off" 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?
- ActionHank 4y agoThis is tragic for those involved, but I really don't understand how there were 6700+ people working on Zoom. I feel like the CEO should be under review by the board for allowing this to happen and there should be further investigations into how they even arrived at this point because this is just bananas.
- p1esk 4y agoSeverance: “Up to 16 weeks’ salary” - what does “up to” means exactly?
- tptacek 4y agoPresumably it's a function of your tenure at the company.
- optimalsolver 4y agoAnd your willingness to go quietly.
- aioprisan 4y ago^ always. No bad mouthing the company and no poaching for at least 1 year is a standard clause.
- Aaronstotle 4y agoSerious question, how can they enforce this?
- mr90210 4y ago"Up to" implies a range ;)
- kevviiinn 4y ago[dead]
- par 4y agoHe is taking a 98% paycut on salary and foregoing his bonus, but I wonder what his equity based comp is as a % of his total comp. My guess is he is mostly compensated in equity.
- olliej 4y agoMy thought exactly. How about resetting unvested equity to zero or some similar “I got all these grants while apparently mismanaging the company so maybe I should not have”
- swyx 4y agoso binary. he still ran the company. overhiring doesnt necessarily equate to mismanaging.
- olliej 4y agoIf you're firing 15% of your employees it's mismanagement. Either you didn't need the additional staff, or you had an opportunity that needed that staff and you failed to deliver on it and are now discarding those people like garbage. But apparently we're ok with the binary of "management screwed up" -> "individual employees no longer have a job or health insurance".
- s1artibartfast 4y agoHow about you needed staff, payed them well, and no longer need them? Is this strictly impossible?
- shapefrog 4y agoHe owns 22% of the company already.
- olliej 4y agoIt’s not how much he owns, it’s that executive comp is often heavily weighted to equity not salary: dropping your salary by 98% only matters if that salary represents a significant amount of your actual income.
- haswell 4y ago> 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 FY23 corporate bonuses. It’s nice to see the phrase “I am accountable” followed by a description of what that accountability entails. Whether or not the steps taken seem fair is a separate conversation, but it seems like a step in the right direction. When you’re making CEO salary, no amount of salary reduction will have a day to day impact, but this seems strongly symbolic at least.
- kevviiinn 4y ago[dead]
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago<< When you’re making CEO salary, no amount of salary reduction will have a day to day impact, but this seems strongly symbolic at least. Even symbolic gesture is more than I have come to expect these days. While it may not be what is demanded, I welcome it as a welcome change. That said, I disagree with the categorical phrasing. Clearly some reduction would make an impact ( I think we agree that 100% would; if so, at this point it only becomes a question of what is reasonable ).
- haswell 4y agoI guess my point was that it would be very surprising if someone making that amount of money did not have finances structured such that they could stop working tomorrow and be fine through the end of their lives. To your point, if one has a habit of spending lavishly, it seems fair that the source of funding has to come from somewhere that isn’t this year’s paycheck, but it seems like the end result would be a faster-than-planned depletion of resources rather than impacting day to day living. And he’s presumably back to making normal salary within a year.
- mertd 4y agoI really dislike the trend of calling employees by some nickname. "Googler" may have been cute back in the day. Zoomies is pure cringe.
- ActionHank 4y agoI've seen a few using "Xoogler" on LinkedIn after being laid off and it just smacks of Stockholm syndrome.
- endtime 4y agoI don't think so? My current employer has a #xoogler Slack channel, so named because that's what people will look for. You can say it's uncool if you like, but that's the word people use.
- stagger87 4y agoDoes it also bother you when people have bumper stickers of the college they went to?
- hbn 4y agoI think in the case of FAANG (or whatever the acronym is these days), if you worked for one of the big guys in the past it's worth making it obvious if you're looking for work. If not only to stand out from other applicants, also to set an expectations for higher desired salary.
- 2b3a51 4y agoFor people in my age group (old) Zoomie sounds very close to Zoonie... https://gerryanderson.fandom.com/wiki/Zoonie https://gerryanderson.fandom.com/wiki/Zoonie Good luck for those looking for work now as a consequence of this
- Spivak 4y agoAh yes, cringe: the act of doing something you don’t like with sincerity. You mean you actually like your job and your company and aren’t a cold cynic who thinks that being emotionally detached from the thing you do for the majority of your waking hours and deciding that anything cute and fun is childish makes you somehow superior — haha criiiiiinge.
- jasonlfunk 4y agoOn a side note.... "Zoomies", really?
- 10729287 4y agoTrying to steal some feeling of belonging to employees in such circumstances is incredible. Please, some decency.
- diveandfight 4y ago^All former Midshipmen thinking this as well.
- slig 4y agomidshipperson
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- DueDilligence 4y ago.. yawn. next.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- baggy_trough 4y agoI cannot stand these cutesy names for employees. "Zoomies"? Yech.
- pictur 4y agoYou should change this ridiculous title to summarize the article. Don't waste people's time.
- AlbertCory 4y agoIf you're hired for the Christmas rush, you know it's temporary. These poor people probably didn't realize they were just a temporary hire. Would they have joined if Zoom had disclosed on hiring them, "We're experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime growth spurt because of COVID. If and when that ends, we may have to lay you off." ??
- erik_seaberg 4y ago“If ___ we may have to lay you off” is always true, I wouldn’t believe anyone who promised that can’t happen. Unlike Christmas, Zoom couldn’t know when or if demand might subside, and their goal was that it wouldn’t. We shouldn’t punish employers for leaning into strong markets, because unemployment is much worse when they’re reluctant to ever hire even at the best of times.
- AlbertCory 4y agoWell, no. Black Swan events are fundamentally different than "strong markets." It would be like a "survival supplies" store hiring 10,000 "permanent" employees when there's threat of a nuclear apocalypse. You could argue that the Zoom employees knew, or should have known, that they were really temp hires.
- justinzollars 4y agoGenerally, (disregarding the Zoom news) How is everyone holding up? Have you been effected, or know friends effected? How are they holding up? Are they finding jobs?
- coolbreezetft22 4y agoHow 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
- saos 4y agoIts 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.
- 908B64B197 4y ago> Its the bootcamps that worry me and the endless YouTubers preaching how they became a so and so after 3 months. At one point we broadened our hiring pipeline to grads of a local bootcamp (their sales rep were apparently very convincing). About two thirds of the candidates couldn't write three lines of code on a whiteboard.
- saos 4y agoI don't have anything against bootcamp but I see common pattern: 1. They are in it for money 2. They are in it for the lifestyle 3. They suffer big on by imposter syndrome The programmers I've worked with over the years were just passionate about programming and thats why they entered the field. They spend years refining the craft. But, now it has drastically changed. The next generation what it "now". Everything "now". They want to buy a home "now". They want new shows "now".
- rchaud 4y agoI think the pendulum has swung back the other way on bootcamps, they're seen with the same kind of awful ROI as a college degree in a non-marketable discipline. I'd worry more about the Youtube influencers you mention. They've littered my YT front page with all kinds of promises that just remind me of previous gold rushes...dropshipping, crypto, and now AI.
- brk 4y ago"Zoomies" Just fucking stop with this already. Quit pretending like your employees are so aligned with the company that some kind of special terminology is needed, or even logical. The recent tech layoffs have clearly demonstrated, again (again, as in we've seen this play out a few times in the 2000's), that employees are basically assets that are scaled up and down as needed, like all the rest of corporate infrastructure these days. Also, when your company is something that more or less is a B2B or B2C app (like zoom) and 1,500 employees is a number that you can lay off and still keep operating, you should have recognized this massive over staffing a LONG time ago and made more gradual corrections to get to a logical and supportable number. Note, this could be slowing down hiring, or charging a lot more for your product, but given the lingering freemium pricing, it's mostly going to be hiring less and not charging more. These layoff emails are almost parody at this point.
- eska 4y agoEspecially because 15% of them are now Ex-Zoomies
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago> Just fucking stop with this already. Quit pretending like your employees are so aligned with the company that some kind of special terminology is needed, or even logical. I cannot judge how Zoom works internally but a lot of companies (ours included) has a term to refer to employees. They are usually not born out of some leader making up a ridiculous term, but out of some sort of chaotic process where the origin of that term is often not found.
- 4y ago
- Animats 4y agoDid Zoom file the required layoff pre-notice?
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThat's not really how it works when companies give severance in the US/ California. Pre-notice only really matters if you are letting people go with nothing.
- rodw 4y agoIANAL and this may be minor nit, but I think when the WARN act is applicable, the laid-off employees are still _technically_ employed for 90 days (the pre-notice duration) and any additional severance benefits happen after that. In other words, when the WARN act applies I don't think it's sufficient to give 90 days of severance. Those employees must remain on the payroll during the notice period. I think it's common to tell these laid-off employees "you're on the payroll but not expected to report to work during the next 90 days", so it's kinda a distinction without a difference, but it does or at least could have an impact on things like benefits, bonus payouts and vesting.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoFirst off, the ACT is for 60 days not 90. Second, the active quite clear on what happens if you don't provide the notice. In that case, you have to pay the employees in 60 days of severance. This means that you can give the full notice and no severance whatsoever. Alternatively, you can give no notice but a minimum of 60 days worth of pay.
- rodw 4y agoYou're right. I don't know where I got 90 from but the period is 60 days. Curiously, based on the DOL guide at [1], which to be fair isn't text of the actual law but it is an official government publication meant to explain it, _technically_ it is _not_ acceptable to give 60 days of severance in lieu of notice, but since the penalty for violating the act is a 60 days pay and benefits to all impacted employees, it works out the same either way. > Can I pay my workers their salary and benefits for 60 days in lieu of notice? > > Neither the Act nor the regulations recognize the concept of pay in lieu of notice. WARN requires notice, making no provision for any alternative. Failure to give notice does a significant disservice to workers and under-mines other services that are part of the purpose of the WARN Act. However, since WARN provides that the maximum employer liability for damages, including back pay and benefits, is for the period of violation up to 60 days, providing your employees with full pay and benefits for the 60-day period effectively precludes any relief [1] https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/_EmployerWARN2003.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/_Empl...
- saos 4y ago> Within 24 months, Zoom grew 3x in size to manage this demand while enabling continued innovation. Insane
- oceliker 4y agoI 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.
- sct202 4y agoZoom is trying to compete by launching Zoom email, calendar, and group chat. Probably a lot of the headcount increases are due to moving fast and trying to get to market as fast as possible.
- jeffbee 4y agoThat ... does not sound like it would work. Zoom is a success because the founder and the founding team came with decades of video conference experience and really just re-implememted webex/cisco products without any bullshit. What do any of these people know about hosting email?
- ec109685 4y ago“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.” http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.html I'd add that Chat seems like a modern day corollary.
- madamelic 4y agoThis 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 George from Engineering, you are employee #3223 and you cost $x per year. Past maybe 20 - 25 people, you are nothing but a number and quickly after you no longer create more value than you are paid, you are out. Unlike others cough Facebook cough Google cough, Zoom actually a reason to scale during COVID; they were relatively new, they had crazy demand, and the access to money to do it. Zoom was given a blank check and leadership would've been worse for _not_ taking it. That happened, now it is waning and it is time to 'right size' (barf) and continue what they were doing before. Good on him for cutting his own salary and comp even if I don't think he is as dumb as Zuckerberg or others for their company's paper growth.
- BurningFrog 4y ago> You were used, they got what they needed and now it is time to go. Both sides got what they needed. The company got work done, and the employee got paid. Calling either side "used" makes no sense to me. Employment is always a temporary relationship that can be ended by either side at will.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross injustice. I use a worker to build my house, but that doesn't mean I am abusing them. They are using me too. no hard feelings.
- haswell 4y ago> I think "used" is fine, but it doesn't imply any gross injustice. One of the primary definitions of that word describes a scenario where one person exploits another person for their own gain. Any time the word is used to describe the nature of one’s relationship with another person, that definition is going to come to mind. I can’t agree that there is no implication of injustice.
- ITB 4y agoWhy do people in HN get so upset that companies hire and fire employees? It sucks as an individual to have to deal with a layoff, but it’s the dynamic of an economy. Optimal growth comes from over and under dampening, not from steady state.
- secondcoming 4y agoFear most likely. ‘Learn to code’ won’t help coders who’ve been laid off.
- elforce002 4y agoAdd to that the "AI" revolution we're living rn and voilà ! Fear a a service.
- deltree7 4y agoYep, The amount of 'intelligent' people who are so out of touch with reality of economics, supply/demand, interest rates is mind-boggling. How did an entire generation become so entitled? Yep, these are the same people who jump companies if the other company offers $10k extra TC. So, it's not that they are saints when it comes to loyalty or money.
- jeffbee 4y agoHello, typically misinformed internet person. The "entire generation" as currently understood are the least-mobile generation of employees ever recorded. A 30-year-old Millenial was only half as likely in 2020 to have switched jobs in the prior year than a 30-year-old Boomer was in 1990. Millenials of all ages had all-time-lowest probability of multiple employers in a year, compared with Gen X, Boomers, and Silent.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoA distinction needs to be made between firings (which are for cause) and mass layoffs. Companies that don't lay off employees do exist: https://www.ajobthing.com/blog/this-company-has-never-laid-off-an-employee-in-86-years--heres-how-they-do-it https://www.ajobthing.com/blog/this-company-has-never-laid-o... Being "laid off" is a novel concept that primarily exists with the formation of corporations. Prior to that most people who lost jobs knew that the job was temporary going into it. Or lost due to factors such as disability (which, admittedly, would be far worse than a modern layoff). This more modern concept of losing a job is typically very stressful, as most people's wealth support is fairly precarious. Given that there are often alternatives for a corporation there's the fact that the stress is inflicted when it need not be. So yeah, people get upset. Just like people get upset about things like cancel culture, lack of healthcare, what have you. It used to be that getting kicked out of the tribe was a last resort for the most serious of crimes. Now petite expulsions happen all of the time and we're supposed to just be okay with it?
- pearjuice 4y agoI find it remarkable that after the pandemic bump, zoom stock value is basically back at where it started. Peaking at almost a x10 price increase pre-pandemic to pandemic-top, investors are now stating "zoom is worth almost as much to us as it was pre-pandemic". Meaning that in a business sense, they seem to have captured near zero value of the entire pandemic-boom in their stock price?
- trynewideas 4y agoa Lattician, a Flexporter, a Scalien, a Relativian, a Plaid, a Swyftxer, an Elastician, a Krakenite, a Dragon, an Asana, a Wistian, a Nuron, a Bird, a Twilion, a Pitcher, an Olivian, a Snyker, a Panda, an Astronaut, a Superhuman, a VTEXer, a Klarnaut, a Lacer, a Mozillian, a Paddler, an Oyster, a SoundHounder, a Vimean, a Zoopligan, a Motive, a Stasher, a Plerker, a Lokaliser, a Courserian, a Udacian, a Racker, a Gitpodder, a Dutonian, a Googler, a HubSpotter, a Workmate, a Splunker, and a Zoomie walk into a bar
- maerF0x0 4y agoI 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.
- trynewideas 4y agoThey'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__ph9SCt5TBs3QVk1fNgMYACGWH7GVLNbSwVr6R01jJiVJUmdzzut-GPhYAkZfMifNH/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSdHsrGdZPnI...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- r0m4n0 4y agoWow... doing the math on the layoff count, 100k employees total, that's a lot of employees for a video chat app
- gnabgib 4y agoThink you might have forgotten to carry a one somewhere (approx 8.5K total)
- trynewideas 4y ago> On September 1, 2020, Yuan's net worth was estimated to be US$16.4 billion, a figure 360% higher than his net worth at the beginning of the year. In March 2021, Yuan transferred $6 billion worth of Zoom shares to a grantor retained annuity trust, for which Yuan is a trustee. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Yuan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Yuan Fun trivia: Six billion divided by 1,300 is 4,615,384.62
- cwkoss 4y agoexecutive compensation is pretty disgusting
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- blfr 4y agoZoom has become an indispensable source of connection for businesses I haven't been to an online meeting that wasn't MS Teams or Google Meet in three months. Sadly, Slack, Zoom, and other similar nice-to-have corporate tools seem bound to get eaten by the integrated productivity suites.
- theusus 4y agoI don't understand, Zoom for my perspective is everywhere today. What business issues are they facing?
- taytus 4y agoPotential cause: Growth has plateau or even declining in a post pandemic world.
- codegeek 4y agoDuring Pandemic, their demand went up like crazy. Lot of businesses/schools were forced to use zoom. Now as many orgs are getting back out of virtual, the demand must be down at least somewhat. For example, my kids school district was 100% on zoom during Pandemic. Now we are back to in person (thankfully)
- dagw 4y agoHere in Sweden I'm in 20 Teams meetings for every Zoom meeting. Outside of academia I can't think of any company I regularly deal with that uses Zoom.
- dopeboy 4y agoLess a fundamental issue and more a receding of the wave post pandemic. I’m going to guess they assumed that growth would last and hired against it.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y agoI find it kind of funny, kind of disappointing how in every one of these threads a bunch of the highly voted comments are complaining about some aspect of the layoff, like the goalposts keep moving. The way the layoffs were communicated, the fact that they were staggered, the fact that they weren’t staggered, that the ceo/founder doesn’t take responsibility, that they do but they don’t take action to punish themselves/their team, that the packages weren’t good enough, or as in this case, that the company (that they don’t even work for) has a name for their employees. Endless whinging. And it’s exhausting to read.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sixhobbits 4y agoAs opposed to meta whinging, which of course is the opposite of exhausting ;)
- sarkhan 4y agoHow is your wining different than theirs? Genuine question. It's human nature to cope with stress via wining.
- rvz 4y agoGiven that no-one here is talking about Keybase, I am going to assume they were significantly affected.
- howmayiannoyyou 4y agoF* Zoom for acquiring Keybase.io and essentially neglecting it. Much negative credit to Keybase for selling to Zoom, as if a more responsible buyer couldn't have been identified. Sorry for the rant.
- sunaurus 4y agoKeybase was such a great project that didn't deserve its fate. If Zoom really just acquired Keybase to effectively kill it and then later laid off the engineers... that would be horrible.
- bhouston 4y agoZoom needs to start integrating a lot of AI into its meetings like Microsoft Teams Premium: https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-just-said-its-infusing-openai-in-microsoft-teams-heres-what-that-means https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-just-said... This will be the new standard and Zoom needs to get on the train or people will stop using it.
- dustedcodes 4y agoLol at this point it's just comical. Not fun for those laid off, but this is a great life lesson for all those people who have given "loyalty" to their employer. We - the people who you often view as cynical and negative - live by the following rules: - People at work are not your friends. You can have friendly relationships, but they ain't your real friends. You will only know if they can become your real friends once you don't work at the same company anymore. - NEVER accept less pay for your work than the market rate. If they don't pay 100% you never work 100%. Take a second job and do only 50% or less for a company that doesn't pay you market rate. - Don't work as a full time employee if you can make twice as much as a contractor. Employees have supposedly the benefit of "job security". LOL. Contractors get paid more because they need to factor in dry spells. Also there are tax benefits for companies to use contractors. The software industry is so robust and even despite all the layoffs the demand for devs is higher than the supply. There is no reason to take on full employment if you can contract with the same level of job security for much more money and much less internal politics. - Shares don't mean anything if the company never IPOs. Fuck shares. Ask for hard cash. If you want to have shares and become a millionaire over night then start your own startup. Why suck up to some stranger who gives zero shit about you. You didn't invest money into the startup, you didn't found it, you are a nobody to them. You do a job for them and they fool you to take on company shares so they can massively underpay you. If you want to earn little and have lots of shares then start a startup yourself. In every other case tell them to get fucked and ask for hard cash.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- seti0Cha 4y agoI agree with the spirit of your comment, but not with the particulars. Yes, employees and contractors both have to deal with job uncertainty, but not to the same degree. An employee is unlikely to be laid off with anywhere near the frequency that a contractor's gig ends and for a lot of people, the tradeoff of the extra stability is worth potentially less earnings. Similarly, while shares are often worth nothing, sometimes they aren't, and the payoff can be big. It depends on what risks you are willing to take. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've actually managed to get value from options/RSUs that exceeded what I'd likely have earned more often than not. Finally, I think it's a terrible idea to take a second job if you don't like your pay. Doing a shit job for two companies may make you some money but is no way to live. If you are being underpaid, go find a job that pays. If you can't find one that pays better, maybe you aren't being underpaid. That said, I agree with your essential point that loyalty is not owed to your employer. It's a tool an employee can sometimes use for career purposes, but that's it. Your employment is a business arrangement and needs to be treated as such. Employers will talk as though they see it otherwise, but when times get tough, those pretenses are revealed for what they are. I really wish we could dispense with this "we're a big family with a mission" crap as it makes the whole thing more painful than it needs to be.
- weakwire 4y agoI love the "Don't forget to share this post" at the end of the blog post.
- henry_viii 4y agoTL;DR: https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum?url=https://blog.zoom.us/a-message-from-eric-yuan-ceo-of-zoom/ https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum?url=https://blog.zoom.us/a-mess...
- xwowsersx 4y ago> For those Zoomies Every fucking time. I just can't anymore.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- HollywoodZro 4y agoI think an executive who REALLY means it should forgot EQUITY GRANT and distribute that as compensation to the departing individuals. For some orgs it can mean millions more in severance for the individuals whose lives are impacted because of the decisions of those company executives.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- braingenious 4y agoThe “How We Got Here” paragraph is a great example of opaque nonsense. > We didn’t take as much time as we should have to thoroughly analyze our teams or assess if we were growing sustainably, toward the highest priorities. This is… a completely meaningless sentence. All of these ridiculous layoff emails are so condescending (the PagerDuty CEO quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in one of them was a fantastic example of how full of themselves these tech C-level people are) It would be refreshing for one of them to come out and just say “We never planned on employing you longer than we were on the train of sweet sweet covid relief money. We absolutely could afford to keep you, but we plan on doing stock buybacks/buying a company yacht for me and my dog. Fuck you, got mine! Sincerely, Guy Who Genuinely Believes Saying “Disruptive” Is An Immeasurably Valuable Skill
- MrGilbert 4y agoMaybe it’s just me, but nowadays I'm reluctant of the "We are a big family" shenanigans. If I read "Zoomies", I'm pretty sure that won't help the people that are being laid off today. You aren’t family, you are workers.
- coffeebeqn 4y agoI mean you don’t lay off your kids during tough times so anyone who bought into that was a fool anyway
- neilv 4y agoIs layoffs in the neighborhood of 15% right now because it's an amount that large companies think is safe to trim, in terms of work to be done or their capacity to get work done? Or is it a psychological number that's high but not too high for some party? Or something else?
- kjkjadksj 4y agoIf it was rooted in logical formula versus emotions it wouldn’t be exactly 15 percent
- chad_strategic 4y agoThey might want to take off "Don’t forget to share this post" seems like bad optics.
- pyrophane 4y agoEt tu, Zoom.us?
- hekec 4y agoHope they will finally be able to work on a good product.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- buggy6257 4y ago- Comments about how this is a good thing and bravo to the CEO for actually taking accountability - Replies saying how it's never enough and the CEO should be fired for doing something as stupid as hiring people during an economic boom - Comments off ^^^ talking about how much net worth the CEO has based on stock that he hasn't liquidated, and how much he made off this temporary stock bump from cutting "cruft" - Comments questioning why <Company> needs # employees to do <overly-reductive description of their product> - Comments pointing out that they still have more employees than pre-covid - Comments assuming that every person laid off was an engineer because why would a tech company hire anything else. - Comments off of ^^^ talking about how it's a rough time to be job hunting despite the massive labor shortages in many sectors including tech - Comments about how stupid the demonym for the employees was/is I filled out my bingo card. Anyone else? EDIT: I always get HN list formatting wrong.
- GaryNumanVevo 4y agoI'd pay for HN thread summaries like this
- rchaud 4y agothis is a solved problem: http://n-gate.com/hackernews/ http://n-gate.com/hackernews/
- cryptoboy2283 4y agoYou've forgot meta comment categorizing comments
- buggy6257 4y agoMiddle square. ;)
- savanaly 4y ago> Comments about how stupid the demonym for the employees was/is I'm so done with these. I sort of agree but jesus christ they are so pervasive. Maybe I had bad timing but today on the discussion about layoffs at Zoom fully more than 5 of the top 10 comments were about it. We get it! I hate it too! It's boring to talk about though, for the twentieth time in 2023.
- nunez 4y ago> 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 FY23 corporate bonuses. Eric is probably already wealthy and can withstand a 98% cut to his base, but I definitely respect him more for doing that than the nothing other execs have done (at least publicly).
- paxys 4y agoI have greater respect for him for reducing executive pay by 20% and cutting their annual bonuses to 0.
- nunez 4y agoIndeed.
- pjot 4y agoI wonder if employee bonuses were cut to 0 as well.
- Aperocky 4y agolol he could forfeit 100% of either and it wouldn't significantly affect his bottom line, whereas stock price changes would (owns 22% of zoom). I don't think I would fault him even if he didn't take any pay cut. Founders and professional CEO are different beasts.
- tux2bsd 4y ago[dead]
- knewter 4y agoSomehow, I'm sure that the person in charge of the ux of the godforsaken green bar was not laid off
- SergeAx 4y agoThe industry is just walking in circles. Nothing new since "Silicon Valley" ended: https://youtu.be/u48vYSLvKNQ https://youtu.be/u48vYSLvKNQ
- xwowsersx 4y agoTitle needs to be fixed. Lays "off*"
- aftbit 4y agoSurely the title should be: "Zoom lays off 15% of employees".
- bufordtwain 4y agoIf your employer has a pet name for its employees (zoomies, tweeps...) and layoffs haven't happened yet, consider updating your resume.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Patrol8394 4y ago> Supporting departing Zoomies Zoomies??? stop using this language, these are people with a life outside your company. Refer to them as such, not fck zoomies….
- nibbleshifter 4y agoMore CEO's virtue signalling their lack of virtue by engaging in the social contagion known as downsizing. Yay.
- phtrivier 4y agoLaymen 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 going to get a huge bonus by taking the full responsibility of firing everyone except the accounting department ?
- omega3 4y agoI'm guessing it goes back to the 70-20-10 employee grading nonsense.
- JohnBooty 4y agoI mean, it seems like the stock price would go up too if they laid off 20 We laid off 20% on Jan 31st, and our stock price... ...or, uh, I should say their stock price, because I was one of the 20%... ...did go up. If you lay off too many, it starts to look like panic and/or it starts to look like you were running your business in an clueless way, with tons of dead weight and/or bad hires. 10-20% seems "safe" to me. It doesn't spook investors too much. Generally, if you look at almost any team, at least 1 in 5 are not performing amazingly. IMO this happens even in well run companies and is often purely a fit issue and is not necessarily an indictment of either employer or employee. It also means you're not necessarily destroying any particular team (Example: you have a talented front end engineer, but they've been pressed into more of a "full stack" role and they're forced to do a bunch of backend work that is far from their strengths. No, I'm not describing myself. Not a front end guy.) This wave of 10-20% cuts feels like an opportunistic version of the notorious "stack ranking" that Microsoft used to do. I'm not defending any of this. I'm not really criticizing it either. It's just my strong impression of what it is. I'm f'ing numb to this industry at this point, honestly.
- tagawa 4y agoTitle typo: “lays off”
- smm11 4y agoZoom is only a thing because of Covid. Didn't they grow 75 times over basically overnight? Supply/demand.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gwill 4y agoi've viewed zoom as largely a joke company given their e2e encryption talk in the past, but this is a solid letter and way to go about laying off that many workers. when first reading this i realized that i had just assumed that zoom had already done layoffs as they were one of the big profiteers of the pandemic. the way they're handling this however gives me a lot of respect for the company.
- stevespang 4y ago[dead]
- nemo44x 4y agoZoomies were impacted.
- linkjuice4all 4y agoThere 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.
- zdragnar 4y agoI'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.
- fijiaarone 4y agoHere’s a free feature zoom could implement in only a few months with hundreds of workers — tell me which meeting I’m attending. Here’s another which would be impossible for them to implement correctly — let me see my screen when I’m presenting and don’t cover it with stupid controls, or maybe if you can’t do that, let me see the useful controls too
- insane_dreamer 4y ago> 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.
- joegahona 4y agoWhoever 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.
- insane_dreamer 4y agoDid 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".
- nathanvanfleet 4y agoWe won the pandemic but blood sacrifice to the market is also good
- toastal 4y agoI wonder if they're keeping the Keybase team around
- toastal 4y agohttps://keybase.pub/ 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.
- josephcsible 4y ago> 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. By "necessary", do they mean "we'd go out of business if we didn't do this" or "we'd still be profitable if we didn't do this, just not as profitable as we want to be"?
- gtirloni 4y agoThis comment should be pinned to the top. It's the only reason for all these tech layoffs: owners/shareholders don't want their profit margin to drop during a self-inflicted crisis and someone must pay.
- thinkmassive 4y agoAnyone still maintaining Keybase?