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Ironically, Zoom tells employees to return to office for work
- Qem 3y agoDid they use Teams internally and got fed up?
- NoZebra120vClip 3y ago> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
- kowalej 3y agoThey probably force themselves to use their own product which is why remote comms is failing.
- goldenshale 3y agoIs that ironic? Work is rarely accomplished over zoom. In fact it’s typically the opposite of productivity.
- mykowebhn 3y agoI believe somebody didn't get the irony.
- avidiax 3y agoIt is ironic. It's true that work isn't accomplished over Zoom. More generically, it's not accomplished by meetings. What does being in-office accomplish other than face-to-face meeting? Zoom is a replacement for face-to-face meeting, but they themselves want to meet face-to-face. Hence the irony.
- j45 3y agoThat type of video usage is a new medium and just blasting cameras everywhere isn’t a good use of video meetings
- skunkworker 3y agoI find technical work is better over zoom. I’ll take a shared screen on zoom over a display or projector that’s hard to read and 40 feet away.
- charcircuit 3y agoI don't see how this is ironic. How are people going to attend meetings on any day if they are only coming 2 days a week. Similarly, Zoom has multiple offices so even if people had to go to the office 5 days a week there would still be a point to have zoom for calling between offices.
- Kon-Peki 3y agoIt's ironic in the Alanis Morissette way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jne9t8sHpUc
- sidlls 3y agoThe song itself is ironic.
- hotsauceror 3y ago"It's not ironic, it's just stupid." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg
- JimtheCoder 3y agoThis may be true, but a song named "Stupid" probably wouldn't have been as popular...
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> How are people going to attend meetings on any day if they are only coming 2 days a week. By... using Zoom to connect to those meetings? > Similarly, Zoom has multiple offices so even if people had to go to the office 5 days a week there would still be a point to have zoom for calling between offices. What's the point of joining a Zoom call from an office when you could join it from home?
- charcircuit 3y ago>By... using Zoom to connect to those meetings? It was a rhetorical question pointing out that zoom would still be used for meetings. >What's the point of joining a Zoom call from an office when you could join it from home? Because you are already in the office.
- spaceguillotine 3y agoi still think every single one of these return to office orders are from investors that are heavily portfolio'd (new word!) in commercial real estate and are trying to keep the bubble from bursting like it should. There is soooo much vacant office space right now and no one is lowering prices like should happen with this much surplus.
- skybrian 3y agoIt seems hard to believe that a company’s managers would want to do their landlords a favor by paying more rent when they don’t have to. How would investors even ask for that?
- coffeebeqn 3y agoThe theory was that they are also the landlords
- adastra22 3y agoI hear you’re looking to raise another round. It’d be a real shame if a board member got in the way of that.
- mschuster91 3y ago"We happen to have some cheap rental space near other companies we own, no credit checks, and you're near <insert other SaaS companies that can be used so you have close accss to them>" If you're a startup, getting office space without much bullshit is worth a premium.
- danjac 3y agoWhere else are the investors investing?
- foepys 3y ago> How would investors even ask for that? What do you mean "ask"? They demand because it's their capital that fuels the company. It's not like a VC gives money to a company and then cannot do anything but wait for returns.
- villgax 3y agoWhat joke, insecure managers. Heck every company which has international offices is remote but with localised offices just to access servers across the continent once again.
- tsuujin 3y agoIt’s not the managers that are pushing for return to office, they’re just the messengers for senior leadership who have spent millions buying real estate and want the return on investment.
- jen20 3y agoI think there’s a bit of both. Ineffective middle management (which is most of it) has no place in a world where they cannot lord over their minions in an office setting. So builds an echo chamber between executives (with real estate investment) and middle management (the existence of whose very job requires them not to understand and promote remote work), at the expense of the actually productive.
- compacct27 3y agoWish my company would do the same.
- michaelmrose 3y agoYou wish other people were forced back in the office for your benefit?
- compacct27 3y agoI’ve met plenty of people, currently remote, who suffer in a 100% remote setup, and frankly I care about them way more than the “how dare you put me around people” crowd.
- michaelmrose 3y agoThose people may want to develop hobbies where they meet people who want to be around them rather than forcing their coworkers to spend hours every week commuting so they can have work friends. You also are attempting to transparently reframe your selfish desire in terms of caring about others while spinning the rational desire to be maximize ones personal well-being as being somehow ridiculous or antisocial. It's a bad pitch and if you are going to sell it next time start with the manufacturered concern it would play better.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- williamstein 3y agoWow, I didn't know Zoom stock is now worth only 12% of what it was at its pandemic highs, putting it almost exactly back to how it was right before the pandemic. https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+stock https://www.google.com/search?q=zoom+stock
- rolph 3y agoas it should be ;-]
- coffeebeqn 3y agoI guess that makes sense. There was some ridiculous extrapolation on the “new normal” like COVID would last forever
- giantrobot 3y agoZoom got a huge boost of non-commercial use. Everything from book clubs to AA meetings started Zoom sessions during COVID. These are very localized sort of meetups without too much out-of-area participation. Once restrictions on in-person meet ups were eased or obviated Zoom wasn't really offering anything special so usage dropped off. Google Meet and Microsoft Teams also beefed up their offerings. My current gig is an Office 365 shop (or whatever the brand is) so it's all Microsoft cloud stuff. Meetings including broadcast type things like all-hands are all done via Teams which integrates directly into Outlook and ActiveDirectory. I know Google has equivalent integration with their offerings. So Zoom in my experience doesn't quite offer anything all that unique to a lot of COVID era adopters. It completely makes sense their usage would drop back to their pre-COVID numbers. Remote work isn't dependent on Zoom nor does it offer the same integration as other platforms.
- Lev1a 3y ago> like COVID would last forever COVID will be forever with us from now on just like the flu has been since forever and I haven't heard of a currently realistic/feasible way to snuff it out. It will be just one of those infectious diseases everyone gets the yearly shots for. That the lockdown situation wouldn't last forever however was clear to anyone who hadn't gotten high off the farts of <insert any conspiracy theorist nut's name here>. In the end society mirrored the body's immune system with their reaction to new viral threats: - active defense mode: fever (lockdown) and try to sweat most of it out (first vaccines for broad herd immunity), followed by - continual defense mode: producing and tuning antibodies to ever new mutations to the original viral aggressor (releasing lockdowns step-by-step, yearly boosters, learning to live with the chance of catching another of the myriad of diseases out there).
- Xenoamorphous 3y agoI say this as someone who’s been working remotely for the past 10+ years: could it be that the productivity has actually been affected? I know that (sadly) remote work is not for everyone and in some cases productivity nosedives.
- Uvix 3y agoThen that should be addressed with the specific individuals, not a global policy.
- j45 3y agoHybrid seems interesting
- dutchbrit 3y agoTry telling one person they can work from home and someone else they can’t, it’s hard for some people to accept.
- Tade0 3y agoSet them productivity targets and allow for WFH if they are met. It's what's being done with junior employees anyway.
- smcl 3y agoI don't think it'd work like that. If anyone's underperforming should they be identified and handled through the process you'd normally follow, not by specifically retracting home-office priviledges as a punishment. From what I've seen (anecdotally of course, a few friends) these "no more home office" orders don't tend to come as a response to any objectively measured drop in productivity, they come from CEOs and managers who benefit from being able to control things or crack the whip in-person.
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoEh, if you treat it as a perk for good performance, like a salary increase, bonus, or additional PTO, then I don't see the problem? Either you earn it or you don't.
- sys_64738 3y agoNah, don't think we'll bother going back to the office.
- crlln 3y agoPersonally, working from home and not seeing my teammates and colleagues in person for long periods of time makes me more depressed and increases anxiety level. Effect is very subtle and at first it was hard to notice and pinpoint the exact reason — but in the end zoom colored squares or even webcams lacks something of IRL communication.
- x86x87 3y agoHow about a face to face meeting once per quarter?
- paulcole 3y agoWhy not a face-to-face meeting everyday? It’s what some people prefer.
- tiernano 3y agoSome people, yes, but not everyone.
- dylan604 3y agobecause it's as obvious as the nose on your face it is not what all prefer.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- paulcole 3y agoBut you can then also see that it’s obvious that people who like seeing people face-to-face every day do not prefer this: > How about a face to face meeting once per quarter?
- midasuni 3y agoNobody’s stopping you from doing whatever you want. You want to pay for an office building and sit it it that’s fine. The problem comes when you try to stop what others want.
- quonn 3y agoI sometimes wonder if people just slack off if working remote. Honestly, it‘s the only real „problem“ I can imagine. And wouldn‘t there be better options to fix that than having everyone come to the office? Large screens, whiteboards, audio and video are almost perfect nowadays. edit: I don‘t understand the downvotes. I‘ve been working myself fully remote for years and I do my work. I just see zero drawbacks in terms of efficiency.
- j45 3y agoSome Startups and their industries can get more done quicker in the same physical space together.
- deadbunny 3y ago[Citation Needed]
- treyd 3y agoAnecdotal but my otherwise-entirely-remote (small) company just finished a 5 day week of all-day in-person meetings and did an incredible amount of planning for the next ~year that would have otherwise taken at least a month if we tried it over video calls and didn't work at a pace that would have burned us out. It was not particularly exhausting as one would expect.
- jen20 3y agoSo get people together once a year for an offsite in a central-ish city. Not that hard. Almost every team which is naturally distributed (sales is a good example, where regional coverage is required) do this once per quarter.
- j45 3y agoOnce a quarter is not nearly enough for any group executing vs planning all the time. Once or twice a month? Sure. Once or twice a week? Can be ideal especially as a company is finding it's repeatable and scalable path. I love remote, but it's just a tool. Same for hybrid, and being in the same office.
- jen20 3y agoRemote detailed planning on a weekly basis is fine. Quarterly meet-ups is perfectly sufficient for setting a roadmap. That's how my entire team operates (since before the pandemic!) and have never had an issue with it.
- markus_zhang 3y agoWell many of them would just use office space for zoom calls then. Eben after rto I'd never climb a few floors to find a meeting room for f2f anyway.
- skybrian 3y ago> Zoom, which remains a leader in the post-pandemic remote work trend, is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule. This doesn’t seem like all that stringent a requirement.
- edu 3y agoFor me, the hybrid schedule is the ideal situation. It allows me to save some commuting time and helps with isolation and detachment issues.
- michaelmrose 3y agoWhy 50 miles this is actually something I've seen quite a bit. Depending on specifics 50 miles could be 2 hours. I don't understand why it isn't defined in terms of average commute time.
- skybrian 3y agoWe don’t know the actual policy, though. It sounds top-down, one size fits all, but there may be more slack.
- TheCleric 3y agoI would never commute to a job 50 miles away unless I had zero other choice. That's 1.5-4 hours a day commuting depending on where you live.
- chrjxnandns 3y ago[dead]
- j45 3y agoCan’t run ai on employees in personal as easily so their meetings are secure.
- jmyeet 3y agoThere has been a vast increase in understanding in the myth of meritocracy [1] and increased awareness of the adversarial (and, really, exploitative) nature of work in the last few years. What you are seeing is a concerted effort to suppress wages and make labor more compliant through greater insecurity. That's all. Poor leaders want their underlings dressed to a certain standard, driving into the office and sitting at their desks as long as possible as a method of control. There may be an element of commercial real estate usage but I honestly think bad leadership and control explains most of this. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_meritocracy
- mycentstoo 3y agoHow much is the average person's exposure to commercial real-estate holdings versus the VC class' exposure?
- gonzo41 3y agoSo if no ones been doing work for 3 years and these companies are cracking out record profits, wouldn't it be the logical thing for the C suite to just fire everyone in the company, ride like 12 more quarters of amazing results and then just hire back a new workforce. Btw, I know this is about real estate. It's happening to me too.
- renewiltord 3y agoThere are no massive network effects here. If this is a bad move for Zoom, start a teleconferencing company that works all-remote. Delete "news." From the domain name in your URL bar and apply.
- Tao3300 3y agoHow do we get a bunch of people to quit without the hassle of layoffs? > all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule. Brilliant!
- ianbutler 3y agoI've made long enduring friendships with people at various jobs. Everyone acting like work should be strictly professional has missed out on a lot in life clearly. It almost borders on anti-social, but I guess I should expect as much from a lot of engineers.
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoIt's a mistake to think that people who don't socialise with work colleagues a lot have a bad social life. I'm glad you like the social aspect of work. My friends are mainly not work related. We are all different and one size does not fit all.
- frays 3y agoThe company, whose product enables remote video conferencing, is trying to get everyone back at the office so they can Zoom each other. What a world we live in. This applies to all companies to make video conferencing software including Google...