Technology

Zoom CEO says that his companies product is trash.

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.

CEO can't even eat its own dog food. How pathetic

Ya this guy is toast lol.

I don't want to 'get to know' my coworkers. I'm not there for friendships, or a pseudo family. I'm there to do a job and be paid for it.

But, this might just be my introvert side.

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?

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.

man i just spent 30m this morning telling jokes to my remote coworker over slack, I've seen him only once in my life, according to this CEO I couldn't have possibly gotten to know him.

Funny watching the CEOs trying to do the verbal splits, coming up with excuses where it's just "waah we're paying for an office that nobody uses :("

we have nothing to lose but our commutes

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.

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

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190625005362/en/Zoom-Expands-Its-Lease-at-KBS%E2%80%99-The-Almaden-to-More-than-87000-Square-Feet

• Hey, I need to expand my lease.

• it is X amount of money

• What if I commit 10 years

• it is X/2

• Deal!

• 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.

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.

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

It's not about improving productivity, increasing innovation or 'sharing best practice' (as my former workplace put it.) Corporations are forcing a return to office work in an attempt to curb a post-COVID real estate crash.

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.

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.

Someone is getting tired of paying for HVAC, electricity, and plumbing for a vacant office building 😢

I mean, scientifically speaking, they're not wrong. Physical contact with another person causes trust to grow because it causes oxytocin secretion.

But it's still funny that the owner of a video calling company is telling people to go back to the office.

"I can't be as innovative over zoom"

Fixed that for you

His argument is essentially that people are not toxic enough in online meetings to innovate.

Alanis Morissette perks up

It's purely about control. WFH is cheaper and more efficient.

Doesn't matter what you think, Big techs ceos are laughing their ass off every time their products gets mentioned and reach the frontpage. Purge their ads and remove their visibility

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.

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.

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.

Point barrel at foot. Pull trigger

Ironic that the CEO of a company producing a product designed for remote online meetings telling their staff that remote online meetings don't work for his goals.

From what I understand, it's all about the companies trying to inflate their value with real estate.

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.