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Of course no ! We want him to resign. (I meant some people will, I personally don't expect anything, and don't really care - none of this is in my power in any

Of course no ! We want him to resign. (I meant some people will, I personally don't expect anything, and don't really care - none of this is in my power in any way, shape or form.) Or at least, to give the rough date at which he will resign, so that someone more competent will run the company, avoiding the mistakes that brought it so bad that it has to lay off 15%. There are mistakes that you can recover from, and you don't fire an exec (or anyone) at the first blunder. But if you have to cut an arm to recover from your mistake, you have to be shown the door, or at least the direction of the door. Baring that, he can substantially reduce his income in the next few years, so that the company can be more generous with the laid off people. Reducing his salary is a step in this direction, but we don't know how the structure of his compensation - salary might be symbolic. Also, has he made clear to his board that the situation is so bad that shareholders will also have to chip in, and accept reduced or no return on their investment for a number of years ? Again, sharing the burden. Again, in the grand scheme of things, this is a least closer to "taking responsibility". Just, not there yet.

vineyardmike 4y ago
So I totally get your position, and I think many of the big tech companies that are laying off are doing it because “we made an oopsies” or as a me-too tag-along, but zoom seems unique in that their business and it’s place in society truly was transformed in the last few years. They tripled their headcount, because they needed more staff to keep up, and overshooting long-term sustainability by 15% when you grew 300% doesn’t seem so reprehensible. Disclosure: I was laid off by a big tech company and I think it was BS.
dahfizz 4y ago
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 for the people fired, but that doesn't mean the CEO did a bad job. It means you need to be realistic about what your relationship is to your employer.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I think it does mean that the CEO did a bad job. The growth over the last two years was clearly going to be a temporary blip. Hiring theoretically permanent employees in response is simply bad judgement. There are plenty of companies that exist in very cyclic industries who show the right way to handle this sort of thing. It's not like it's all a big mystery.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I think this is the key opinion in a nutshell. Some people see layoffs as bad management and other people simply don't
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    > Hiring theoretically permanent employees in response is simply bad judgement. This is not self-evident. Hiring the salaried employees over 2+ years could very well be cheaper than contractors. If they had under-hired during to boom, then we would not have layoff today but the company would not have grown as much. The incentives are set to hire people when you need them and fire them when you don't anymore. Layoffs are not expensive or damaging to the company; they don't have any reason to avoid them. Zoom's stock went up in response to the firing.
  - agar 4y ago
    I'm confused as to your proposed solution. Should the new employees not been hired, and existing employees overworked due to understaffing? Should they have hired contractors and not paid benefits like healthcare? The companies I'm aware of that exist in cyclic industries (game dev, retail) tend to either have brutal cyclical layoff periods, leverage a ton of contractors, outsource their work to other firms, or hire seasonal workers. What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort of thing"?
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      > What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort of thing"? Don't lead people to think that their positions are permanent when you know very well that there's a good chance they aren't. The easiest way to to make time-limited contracts. That doesn't mean you can't give them benefits such as health insurance.
lazide 4y ago
So you want the guy who is doing less bad than others to quit (aka take the heaviest hit), because some small portion of the company needs to be laid off (15%), even though he is giving up far more than 15% of his compensation? And by quitting, giving up any power or doing that job he is doing less bad than others? How did that work out for Senator Franken? Or the Democrats in general? I swear, it’s like folks can’t help but cut their nose off to spite their faces.
- phtrivier 4y ago
  Oh, no, I also wish the other CEOs who claim to "take full responsibility for mistakes" do in fact, take some responsibility. I'm not forcing them to write the words. If they want to say "we tried, it did not work, the economy got worse than we expected, yet we think we're still in the best position to run the companies, but we have to make hard decisions now", that's their stuff. I wonder how it would play out for any other employee using this strategy in performance review. "I take full responsibility for not fulfilling my OKRs, and therefore I will demand that your fire every one else in the team to afford my promotion and raise."
  - lazide 4y ago
    How is not throwing away millions in compensation - or for this example, almost all compensation - not taking responsibility? I’ve yet to see any line employee willing to take a major pay-cut because they screwed something up.
    - phtrivier 4y ago
      As posited by other commentors, foregoing his salary while making the stock go up (by laying people off) is probably not "throwing away millions in compensation". The analogy might be a saleperson violating a minor policy to ensure a sale. They would take a fee for violating the position, but their sale bonus would compensate.
autoexec 4y ago
> There are mistakes that you can recover from, and you don't fire an exec (or anyone) at the first blunder. Their first "blunder" would have been lying about their security and sending encryption keys and private data to china (https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto...) Even the most generous and forgiving view of Zoom makes them look completely incompetent and unfit for anything you want secure/private. A less generous view would see Zoom as a deceitful and malicious tool for data collection. At this point, after so many lies and security issues I honestly can't believe anyone trusts Zoom for anything even remotely sensitive, but I'd think even the most trusting people would agree the company has a history of terrible actions/choices and the CEO is the person who is ultimately responsible. I hope the employees who were laid off find satisfying work with a much better employer.

vineyardmike 4y ago

So I totally get your position, and I think many of the big tech companies that are laying off are doing it because “we made an oopsies” or as a me-too tag-along, but zoom seems unique in that their business and it’s place in society truly was transformed in the last few years. They tripled their headcount, because they needed more staff to keep up, and overshooting long-term sustainability by 15% when you grew 300% doesn’t seem so reprehensible. Disclosure: I was laid off by a big tech company and I think it was BS.

dahfizz 4y ago

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 for the people fired, but that doesn't mean the CEO did a bad job. It means you need to be realistic about what your relationship is to your employer.

JohnFen 4y ago
I think it does mean that the CEO did a bad job. The growth over the last two years was clearly going to be a temporary blip. Hiring theoretically permanent employees in response is simply bad judgement. There are plenty of companies that exist in very cyclic industries who show the right way to handle this sort of thing. It's not like it's all a big mystery.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I think this is the key opinion in a nutshell. Some people see layoffs as bad management and other people simply don't
- dahfizz 4y ago
  > Hiring theoretically permanent employees in response is simply bad judgement. This is not self-evident. Hiring the salaried employees over 2+ years could very well be cheaper than contractors. If they had under-hired during to boom, then we would not have layoff today but the company would not have grown as much. The incentives are set to hire people when you need them and fire them when you don't anymore. Layoffs are not expensive or damaging to the company; they don't have any reason to avoid them. Zoom's stock went up in response to the firing.
- agar 4y ago
  I'm confused as to your proposed solution. Should the new employees not been hired, and existing employees overworked due to understaffing? Should they have hired contractors and not paid benefits like healthcare? The companies I'm aware of that exist in cyclic industries (game dev, retail) tend to either have brutal cyclical layoff periods, leverage a ton of contractors, outsource their work to other firms, or hire seasonal workers. What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort of thing"?
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    > What in your view is "the right way to handle this sort of thing"? Don't lead people to think that their positions are permanent when you know very well that there's a good chance they aren't. The easiest way to to make time-limited contracts. That doesn't mean you can't give them benefits such as health insurance.

lazide 4y ago

So you want the guy who is doing less bad than others to quit (aka take the heaviest hit), because some small portion of the company needs to be laid off (15%), even though he is giving up far more than 15% of his compensation? And by quitting, giving up any power or doing that job he is doing less bad than others? How did that work out for Senator Franken? Or the Democrats in general? I swear, it’s like folks can’t help but cut their nose off to spite their faces.

phtrivier 4y ago
Oh, no, I also wish the other CEOs who claim to "take full responsibility for mistakes" do in fact, take some responsibility. I'm not forcing them to write the words. If they want to say "we tried, it did not work, the economy got worse than we expected, yet we think we're still in the best position to run the companies, but we have to make hard decisions now", that's their stuff. I wonder how it would play out for any other employee using this strategy in performance review. "I take full responsibility for not fulfilling my OKRs, and therefore I will demand that your fire every one else in the team to afford my promotion and raise."
- lazide 4y ago
  How is not throwing away millions in compensation - or for this example, almost all compensation - not taking responsibility? I’ve yet to see any line employee willing to take a major pay-cut because they screwed something up.
  - phtrivier 4y ago
    As posited by other commentors, foregoing his salary while making the stock go up (by laying people off) is probably not "throwing away millions in compensation". The analogy might be a saleperson violating a minor policy to ensure a sale. They would take a fee for violating the position, but their sale bonus would compensate.

autoexec 4y ago

> There are mistakes that you can recover from, and you don't fire an exec (or anyone) at the first blunder. Their first "blunder" would have been lying about their security and sending encryption keys and private data to china (https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/ https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto...) Even the most generous and forgiving view of Zoom makes them look completely incompetent and unfit for anything you want secure/private. A less generous view would see Zoom as a deceitful and malicious tool for data collection. At this point, after so many lies and security issues I honestly can't believe anyone trusts Zoom for anything even remotely sensitive, but I'd think even the most trusting people would agree the company has a history of terrible actions/choices and the CEO is the person who is ultimately responsible. I hope the employees who were laid off find satisfying work with a much better employer.