Leaked Zoom all-hands: CEO says employees must return to offices because they can't be as innovative or get to know each other on Zoom
Leaked Zoom all-hands: CEO says employees must return to offices because they can't be as innovative or get to know each other on Zoom
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan discussed the benefits of in-person work in a leaked meeting.
Leaked Zoom all-hands: CEO says employees must return to offices because they can't be as innovative or get to know each other on Zoom::Zoom CEO Eric Yuan discussed the benefits of in-person work in a leaked meeting.
Why tf do out of touch executives and managers always think that we want to make friends at work? I don't really care to know any of my coworkers, I just want to do my job in a professional manner, get paid well for it, and then either go home or close the laptop and leave my home office.
Also the only creativity that the office gives me is how to creatively get around the Internet restrictions they place on us, or how to creatively appear to be working when there's nothing to do.
If I wanted to make friends I'd go to a bar or something else that adults do together in groups, like bowling leagues.
The fact of the matter is when your company revolves around you being able to communicate and work from anywhere, it is a bad look for you tell people you can’t communicate effectively over the product you make. Anyone who knows business should know this and should know to keep their mouth shut and their policies focused on trying to destroy business.
I don't get corporate blokes.
They spend their whole working hours finding ways to increase profits by reducing costs everywhere, to the detriment of the company even. Then we finally give them an easy way to reduce costs that make the employees happy, by removing the need for real estate. And they do a complete 180° to not do so?
Even if they have a lease of multiple years, not having to heat/cool the building nor pay the electricity is still cheaper.
Is it really about micromanagement?
The number of jobs I've missed out on and lost exclusively because I'm not normative enough to tell milquetoast jokes around a water cooler with a bunch of people I know two facts about but treat like my best friend numbers in the 100s.
Fuck all these people trying to force the old ways forever just so they can exercise their social capital upon the rest of us.
Socialization is always brought up as an excuse not to allow WFH. The thing is though, replacing real socialization with work fucking blows. Talking to a coworker to get the latest TPS report isn't socialization. It's work. The only time you do any real socialization is after work ends. And there's nothing stopping you from going out to dinner with coworkers when you work from home.
It's not about improving productivity, increasing innovation or 'sharing best practice', as a former workplace put it. Corporations are forcing a return to office work in an attempt to curb a post-COVID real estate crash - which we honestly need since we have far too many luxury offices being built and not enough homes.
For one place where I used to work, RTO drove down staff morale to an all-time low (already low due to high workloads and bad wages) and pushed the staff turnover rate in my department to 95%. They ended up having to outsource the function to an overseas firm.
Ya know, I'm not super happy with my salary (they're really bad at keeping up with inflation), but ... the promise of permanent WFH (we are actively getting rid of our last office, and hiring fully remote) with ability to live in ~half of the states without salary adjustment is basically keeping me complacent for now.
At first, I thought this was an Onion story
I've been working remotely for over 10 years. Even without Zoom, it's never been a problem. I've met people and developed many relationships with just Slack. Heck I'm sure I'd manage that even with just email.
When I finally met everyone in person at the company retreat, everyone was super happy to know me in person. I was about exactly as they imagined.
Company culture is how you develop it. At every company I've worked with, I introduced social channels and established a continuous background chatter that's for people to share memes or whatever they want, to help establish a personnality that goes beyond "I just deployed X which puts project Y live on production". I have DMs with all sorts of people from all departments, just idle occasional chatter. It makes connections with other departments when you need their help. It works. I always somehow become the guy to reach out to for anything that doesn't necessarily fit a Jira ticket, or sometimes just need help making sure they file the right kind of ticket.
If it doesn't work, then either you have hermits that wouldn't be much more active in an office anyway, or the company is holding it back by discouraging or forbidding any sort of unprofessional or otherwise non-work related activity and the only way to socialize is in the break room in the office.
IMO idle chats on Slack are way less disruptive than in-person, it doesn't take you off your work stretch, you can send replies during Zoom meetings, you can even have textual side threads during a video meeting to go over details without holding the meeting for everyone. Sometimes I have hours long conversations going about projects on Slack, with everyone essentially just chiming in whenever they have new ideas or feedback. It gives people time to think and refine the specs without any "now or never" pressure.
Remote work works, if it doesn't work, it's a company culture problem not an office problem.
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Hey, I need to expand my lease.
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it is X amount of money
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What if I commit 10 years
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it is X/2
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Deal!
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Oh, he reduced costs and increased footprint. He is a genius!
https://www.wsj.com/articles/zoom-offices-hybrid-remote-work-11661977375
- Well. Out workers are remote. What the hell do we do with the office?
- Eeerrrrr. Ok let people have fun.
- But we are starting to need ways of saving costs. What do we do?
- The plan was always to return to office.
- Let's do that, then.
Older than life. A situation changes and somebody whose personal interests are over the groups interests.
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Offices are cages for humans, no less than that. They want to own us.
maybe they should use teams
If my work told me i needed to be on the office even a day a week, i would be searching for another job immediately
They want even your time off
2010 is the year we started going full "remote work" and we sold our office building in 2012. Since then we have somehow managed to thrive and innovate like crazy. I am pretty sure these guys know that what they are saying is bullshit, at least as it relates to tech. Creatives, maybe, but in tech it is far easier to screenshare and discuss than it is to lean over some dude's shoulder to look at their screen...in dark mode...with nano fonts.
Dang, I just applied to a couple positions there. I'll go ahead and retract those :D
It's purely about control. WFH is cheaper and more efficient.
Don’t get high on your own supply? I guess?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told employees this month that the company was making the surprising decision to send some workers back to the office regularly because its flagship remote-work product didn't allow employees to build as much trust or be as innovative as in the office, according to a leaked meeting recording viewed by Insider.
The top reason for the mandate, Yuan said at the August 3 meeting, is that it's difficult for employees to get to know each other and build trust remotely.
The comments, much like the decision to return some employees to offices, are surprising given the role Zoom's technology plays in remote work.
The company's videoconferencing service became so ubiquitous early in the pandemic that its corporate name became a verb describing the act of firing up any video chat to connect with coworkers online.
Amazon recently asked employees to relocate to their teams' offices or find new jobs.
Zoom's return to office, at least from Yuan's comments, appears less strict, as he directed employees who have issues with the policy to apply for exceptions with the heads of their departments.
The original article contains 395 words, the summary contains 185 words. Saved 53%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Oh cool, guess I can cancel my Zoom subscription then.
Leadership realized they weren't getting the ego stroke they needed virtually. Time to go back to cube hell so this guy can justify his existence.
Lol. Looking for trouble.
Eric, you need to un-moot
Point barrel at foot. Pull trigger
I want to start off by saying that I work from home and would like to continue doing so indefinitely. I also think these CEOs are chodes and aren't really thinking about the point I'll attempt to make next and typically do not care about such concerns.
Now, I do wonder what effect the loss of the "2nd place" (home, work, community being the "working definition" of places) for vast swathes of the American public will have in a country where the "3rd place" is already pretty non-existent.
In other words, we're already quite an isolated society. What will a large percentage of us also working in isolation have on the country and on mental health in the long run?
I think there's a potential that it could be a good effect or a bad one (or a mixture like most things), and I'm not sure which outcome is more likely.
We could become even more withdrawn from each other...or we could use the time we used to spend in traffic and with coworkers to build up local, community bonds instead. I suppose only time will tell, but I think it's an interesting discussion that I haven't seen talked about much yet.
If you're in a tech job, working from home should be the default. If you're in a service job, working on-site is a requirement. This can have a negative impact on a company overall because you may have both in your workforce, and the ability to work from home breeds resentment and impacts morale.
Amidst COVID, our office workers were told to return to work. The reasoning was a perceived inequity held by the field workers toward those that sit at a desk all day. Nevermind that having everyone return up's everyone's chance for getting infected. Truth be told, those forced to come in would rather risk that than be left out.
I feel that they might change their logo to snake eating its own tail.
sounds rapey
Clown 🤡
The article is behind a paywall for me. I have to admit that I don't like online meetings and much prefer the direct contact with people. However, I can be totally productive remotely via email and chat. It's just that I don't like online meetings. Remote work is absolutely fine. It's even better for days that I am working alone on my computer and desk. I avoid all the traffic and waste of time to make myself presentable for the outside world. I've just realised that I don't like meetings with too many people in general; neither live nor online. A huge waste of everyone's time.
Wow, just wow. I liked Zoom when it was an upstart company making good tools for remote work When it got big, ugh.
I've been doing a combination of working from home and working from the office since the start of COVID. I generally only go into work when there is something broken that needs me to physically repair it. I can honestly say that the times I'm working from home, my productivity is exceptionally higher than it would be otherwise. No distractions from coworkers, a more comfortable environment, better computers and desk ergonomics, no commute.
Employers need to realize that good employees work better from home, and the ones that don't are not worth keeping on the payroll.
Something something dogfooding
This is a weird debate for me. I do feel like I'm able to coordinate and communicate with my coworkers more effectively in person. Especially with people I don't already have a close working relationship with. On the other hand i hate being at an office when i could be making lunch and doing laundry while being on a call.
Fucking muppet...
Zoom software inefficient and ineffective. Got it.
It's worth noting, and not mentioned in most of these articles, that the CEO is saying that Zoom employees that live near offices must return at least 2 days a week.
They have not demanded that all employees return 5 days a week, but other CEOs don't do their own research and just think "we need to! Look at Zoom!".
Why tf is his personal fortune still 200b??? Deam what if he's sabotaging his fortune so that he can keep making way to much money in different projects. Without people freaking out cuz he has 500b, the only what to do that would be in fact to tank a couple of companies in a way that seems not accidental.
Oops.
I'll get downvoted to hell for this, but the CEO is at least partially right. It is really hard to get to know people and build trust remotely.
I started my first post-college job in August of 2020. Most people were remote, but I was not due to the nature of my work. It is extremely hard to get to know people exclusively over email, phone calls, and video calls. It's frustrating not being able to get to know people even at the surface level. Knowing a little bit about your coworkers allows you to build rapport with them. Video and voice calls can be unreliable, and people can be very difficult to understand without in person cues and the ability to read lips. I say all of this as a very introverted person with social anxiety.
It seems like the vast majority of people are coming at this from the standpoint of "I know how to do my job, why do I need to be an office". This may be unpopular but you do it for the new people who need a Lot of company support to get on their feet. I remember starting out and how much easier it was to ask people questions in person over lunch etc. It's intimidating for a new person to sit in front of a computer and ask random people they've never met questions, really amps that imposter syndrome.
I honestly don't know why people use zoom or google meet when Jitsi exists.
I don't see anything ironic about this. Zoom is just a tool for making video calls, it's not even close to being a sufficient replacement for face-to-face interaction with people. A lot of people aren't motivated to get work done when they are at home by themselves. In isolation you can feel like the work you're doing is meaningless and not providing any value to anyone. When lockdowns affected my workplace productivity plummeted - we had people ostensibly 'working from home' that were answering a few emails here and there and then checking out without having done any actual valuable work at all.
If you hate your job, maybe it's the work/management/culture that is the problem. WFH isn't a solution to that, it's just hiding away from the causes of your misery.
Oh nooooo people have to come into the workplace and cant have 5 full time jobs!!! Think of those poor programmers who cant afford to retire by 27 by taking advantage of their colleagues anymore.