“Our product is so bad, WE won’t even use it.”
It’s not bad though. Zoom is great. Apparently their leadership sucks, but as a product its always done what I needed it to do without issue.
What are you comparing it to? Zoom is mediocre, in my experience. I’ve honestly had a better experience just using hangouts on Slack
Zoom had higher quality video for screen sharing.
Multiple people can screen share at once over Slack, plus people not sharing can use a pencil tool to highlight specifics on the screen, as in “you need to change this setting”
It’s pretty bad when your CEO disparages your product that much. It’s like if Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said they’d be switching to Google Workspace because Microsoft Teams was inefficient and difficult to use.
Absolutely scathing.
Isn’t this like the second time the ceo said something like that? I think he probably needs to be unseated from his position.
Zoom does legitimately suck though, but not for the reasons he thinks. Moreso from a privacy perspective.
Let him keep shit-talking Zoom until my employers switch to a better alternative!
Unless he doesn’t believe zoom is intended to solve the problem of remote work.
There’s a difference in scale of making a zoom call occasionally to add flexibility and having your entire business run off zoom for its day to day. Some things you’d want to solve for in the second but not the first case: Remote learning, team building events, snack distribution.
Offloading the entire office experience to remote isn’t as easy as just using a video conferencing app.
Unless he doesn’t believe zoom is intended to solve the problem of remote work.
Remote work fucking MADE his company into what it is today. Nobody even heard of Zoom before the pandemic. They were a nothing company with a shitty product amongst many. He knows this very well, he just can’t keep his own micro-managing inner asshole down.
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The truest test of post capitolism. Can a company make a communication product so poorly that said company couldn’t even use it to unionize?
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Remote work is such a boon to workers, and from my perception there is not a lot of benefit of mandating in-person work.
It really feels like the push to return to in-person is primarily driven by a combination of propping up the industrial real estate industry as well as managers not trusting their employees, and perhaps some level of maliciousness towards employees.
The return on investment on operating an office space for the nominal increase in productivity really makes in-person work feel like it’s only for the managers’ egos.
The fact that the Zoom CEO is pushing for this to me does not represent a lack of faith in their product, but a strong desire to squeeze every drop of productivity out of their employees regardless on quality of life and regardless of return on investment of the cost of operating the office.
Nestled at the end of the article is the following quote, coming from survey data
But there’s also the power trip. Remarkably, a recent survey of company execs revealed that most mandated returns to the office were based on something as ironclad as “gut feeling,” and that 80 percent actually regret ever making the decision.
I think the reality is that like most policy decisions at a workplace, they are based on nothing. They simply are drawn from how the people at the top feel like an organization should be or because that’s simply how these decision makers are used to (or comfortable with) doing things.
We keep hearing about ‘productivity’ in this context. Let’s explore that - back in the days when people were 5 days/week in the office, supervisors and managers concentrated on attendance and punctuality. They still could but now they are focusing on being in the office. In both cases these are proxy measures- they don’t directly measure output. What is this ‘productivity’ here? Because the actual verifiable data tells the opposite story
Realistic scenario: half the workers show up in person just to log into a video conference anyway because the other half is remote.
It’s funny because it’s true.
I work in a field where the vast majority of the work done requires an on-site presence. But meetings? I log into those. Even when the physical venue is a half dozen offices from me.
If they can’t have debates over zoom meetings that’s a culture problem, not a technology problem
Yeah. I doubt they can have debates in person, either. But getting 7 people in a room so that the 2 highest paid ones can ideate all over each other while the other 5 nod along as a paid audience just feels better for those 2 than looking up to see the glassy-eyed stares of people who are trying to get their work done while sitting in on a pointless vanity meeting.
Wow, well said. I wonder if the arguement that “working in the office is important so that younger/newer employees can recieve mentorship” is just a theme and variation on the same thinking.
working in the office is important so that younger/newer employees can recieve mentorship
That has real “I can’t mentor someone unless we’re at the strip club” energy.
Not really. There is a lot of mentor activity that is easier in person because of how asking follow up questions works. In person it is easier to convey intent and ease worry for people doing new things just like how video conferencing can be easier than email depending on the topic. Or how mentoring is generally better than just giving someone a manual and not answering any questions for complex tasks.
That is not to say it is necessary most of the time, and the cries about everyone needing to be in the office because of mentoring doesn’t make sense for people other than the mentor and new staff. That tends to be projection by people who can only handle communication in person.
Maybe it depends on the specific field, but I’ve had no issues mentoring people remotely, and even when I was in the office I was doing it via Teams half the time.
In many contexts it isn’t that hard if you have the tools. The fact that many workplaces skimp on the tools is a them issue, not a mentoring issue.
Yeah yeah, let’s unite together into a union then
So thoroughly CEO-brained he’s sabotaging his own business. He’d rather have his serfs in spitting distance than a future for his company. Truly incredible.
Have you ever micromanaged so hard that you micromanaged your way out of micromanaging?
One consistent thing I notice in all these declarations, especially in speaking with other high-level management sorts… They’ll declare “we have better conversations in the office”, to which I simply ask “do you not ever simply call someone to shoot-the-shit?”
Case in point: we had a leaver recently, my boss had had a one-on-one and came to me saying “X is leaving, some flaky reason about job security”.
My response: “They’ve got a kid in a new school, and they’ve been a bit worried about operational security here. They just wanted to work for a bigger company because there’s inherently more stability in that sort of environment. Did X not tell you this?”
Boss: “No.”
Me: “…How long did you chat to them?”
Boss: “5 min call”
Me: “I pulled X in for a chat, we were talking for 30 mins… Do you not do this with everyone? Do you ever just take people aside for a social call?”
Boss: “…”
It’s just people from a different era, they didn’t grow up socializing on MSN etc. This is all foreign and scary to them. They’ll die (in the workplace) off soon enough.
On top of this, they don’t care about best practices. They’re shit managers who were better at getting promoted than managing people.
Meetings on Zoom suck? Well, you don’t use agendas, meeting notes, etc. Your meetings always sucked, you’re just missing the dopamine hit from socializing on the way to and from the meeting.
Bad employee relations? Well, your 1:1s are really only status calls. Your relations always sucked, you’re just missing talking to Bill about your kids when you corner him at the coffee machine.
Missing team bonding? Well, your team went to happy hour to bitch about you. They always hated trust falls. You just miss hanging out with your yes-chums.
Geezus this is so accurate my balls just got sucked up into my body cavity.
I think amongst all this is where people get lost. Nearly everyone is capable of having these conversations, not everyone recognizes all the opportunities they have to have them. For the older folks, they can’t imagine having conversations like this anywhere but the water cooler, or after a meeting is over, over a lunch they invite their coworker to, or in a closed office. Younger generations, as you mentioned, grew up socializing on the internet so opening a DM, sending a text, or otherwise chatting off topic in a digital channel are all skills they already use. One might make the argument that short videos, text on images, voice chat, streaming, emoji, and other kinds of more modern communication modalities are all extensions of the same thought. If more CEOs and people in power spent time asking their workers and reaching out to people who are capable of socializing effectively online, rather than simply blaming the modality, we’d be in a much better place today. In fact, finding the companies which do this right is likely finding the companies which will be successful in the future - virtual work brings a lot of clear and unambiguous benefits, the trick will be finding out how to offset the negatives.
I don’t understand how you do that. If you’re in person, you have many ways to get a conversation going. For example:
- Seeing something they’re wearing/carrying or that they have on their desk and commenting on that
- Overhearing a conversation and joining in
- Being physically present alone in a location conducive to socializing while giving off inviting vibes
You can also easily see if someone is available to chat or if they’re deep in their work, and get a vague idea of their general state of mind so you know if it’s a good idea to start a conversation at all, and know what to expect from it if you do.
You get none of that from video calls. You start with a completely blank slate. When you call, all you have to go on is their face looking into the camera.
A video call is also a whole ordeal. You need to set up in one location, and you’re stuck there for the entire duration of the call. It takes time to prepare your headset and webcam, make sure you have water, etc. So it’s hard to justify a call to just make some quick exchanges like your typical “good morning” and 2-3 sentences of small talk, whereas you can easily do that in person at no cost as you walk past each other in the hallway. You can also easily just have someone walk with you as you chat, so you don’t need to make any kind of preparations ahead of time.
This is all coming from someone who’s likely autistic, so maybe my experience is different from everyone else’s, but I can say for sure that I have more difficulties with socializing in a remote setup than in person.
Some of this is accurate. but with Teams or Webex you can set your status, and courtesy is message first and wait for confirmation before a cold call. invest in a Bluetooth headset like: MS modern headset with USB link and Bluetooth, is a game changer. i can be making a coffee in the kitchen and answer a call from the PC USB wifi , or my phone BT connection.
Yeah, a BT headset would make things easier for me for sure, but my concern is for the other party. Not a fan of inconveniencing people.
I think its time for you zoomies to start doing the voomies and voom out of that company. lots of nice companies that value you and pay well that are remote.
The Board of Directors at Zoom should be having an emergency meeting right now to fire this guy with prejudice for comments directly damaging to the brand. Wonder why that isn’t happening? Zoom shareholders should be revolting.
At work Teams has been great.
Zoom is too bare-bomes.
The I hacked it together at 3am feel of the zoom interface makes me actively hate the damn thing.
Like teams feels like a communication application. Zoom feels like a hobby project.
wow zoom just wow.
Maybe it’s different for the upper management types, but for me I am easily 3x more productive at home in < 6 hours than I ever was at 8+ hours in the office.
There are soo many distractions in the office environment we had (cubicle farm). People chatting behind me, constant noise, people coming up to my desk throughout the day to ask me something and disrupt my entire workflow.
I work in my quiet home with headphones on listening to music. When people need something from me they ping me in Teams or send an email and I get to choose when to stop my work to respond. And when I really need to focus I can throw on Do Not Disturb mode. In the office “Do Not Disturb” was me booking a conference room for myself to work in silence.
This is ridiculous. CEO must be a nightmare of a boss
