Zoom, the videoconferencing platform that profited substantially from remote work during the pandemic, is now asking employees to return to the office. Its CEO, Eric Yuan, claims Zoom meetings don’t let people build trust or be innovative.
[…]
Yuan explained that trust is essential “for everything,” and he finds it hard to build not only that but also innovation and debates over Zoom.
“Quite often, you come up with great ideas, but when we are all on Zoom, it’s really hard,” Yuan said, according to Insider. “We cannot have a great conversation. We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call.”
My guess: This guy, and all his rich friends have a ton of money invested in commercial real estate. He’s putting his own interest before the interest of his company. The more people work from home the better for Zoom, but the worse off he and his rich friends are.
Wow that’s pretty cynical. Is it so hard to believe someone might not want their influence on the world to be negative?
No. Being valued at $39M is not a success story, it’s a mental disease.
People say that way of thinking is cynical, but I have worked in the system implementation and system consulting arms of EDS, IBM, and Accenture and that assumption (that the whole thing can be maintained by junior devs one the initial build is complete) is actually how middle managers within client companies have to budget their transition from “build” into “business as usual” stage so that senior managers approve the system implementation/migration.
While the concept that it takes specialized knowledge and experience is true, not having means to retain experience means that it will be chaos some six months down the road when some manager wants to do an enhancement as none of the juniors will understand why certain design choices were made and the implications on the rest of the architecture
The amount of “innovation and debate” I’ve seen during remote meetings is no different than when I used to work in an office. Meetings are either exhausting and dead (when they’re the usual bullshit administrative meetings that no one wants to be in and could’ve been handled via email) or they’re fun and engaging (when its something like a working session where the participants want to be there).
This guy is an idiot and, as others in this thread have already stated, he’s got ulterior motives beyond “innovation and debate.”
I’ve never seen a CEO this publically against their own business lmao
Him and his buddies must have large investments in commercial real estate. I can’t possible think of another reason why he would willingly tank the company. Make as many short-term gains as possible then bail.
Her, personally, cannot handle remote communication methods and is projecting his inability onto everyone else. People that make it to CEO if large companies are used to in person communication without any possible recording of their behavior as they berate coworkers.
He is complaining about everyone being nice on zoom. He wants to not be nice.
You sleuthed it out, Holmes!
This isn’t going to rank the company. It’s going to improve the company’s karma. Detatching from the least valuable use cases for your product is a good move because nothing fuels performance better than meaning, and customers who truly benefit from your product are a source of meaning, hence morale, hence attracting the best candidates, etc.
He’s exhibiting a trait known as ”honor” here, and it’s a successful strategy.
This isn’t against his business. This is against his business getting deeply enmeshed with a bunch of ineffective organizations.
A company has health just like a body has health. A healthy company will succeed long term, and selling to customers who either don’t need or are harmed by your product is a recipe for a sick company.
It’s against his company because he’s saying their clients are losing something by using their product. He can’t pretend that it’s exclusive to Zoom and all of his clients aren’t affected.
That’s the CEO saying “our product isn’t good at what it was meant to do”… A good board would get rid of him ASAP.
No, he’s saying their clients are losing something by using their product too extensively.
You know how Soylent puts this on their bottles:
Soylent is not intended to replace every meal, but can replace any meal.
It’s a similar thing. They’re just being realistic about how the intention isn’t to eliminate food. And Zoom was developed with the intention to handle some business communication, not all.
I do this same thing. When a customer isn’t sure about some appliances they want to buy, I tell them to hold off. Sometimes I tell them to spend $20 and get a new dryer belt because I can tell they don’t need a $600 new dryer.
Is that “against my business” because I’m making a little less money that day? No. It’s for my business because my business isn’t just about optimizing today’s revenues. I want relationships. I want a trail of happy customers who have truly benefitted from doing business with me. I want people talking about how shopping with me was a good choice for them.
Me telling a customer they don’t need to buy the $600 dryer they came in to buy is a win. And this is evidenced by my massive sales numbers. People appreciate it when other people constrain themselves for their benefit.
What he’s doing is a powerful move that will result in his company’s success: he’s demonstrating a commitment to the truth, and a sense of his product’s place in a larger context. That’s rare, and highly valued, and it will help him win.
As I said in another reply to you, their stock is back down to pre pandemic level, what the CEO is doing will lower the demand for their product, thus lowering their stock even more.
So as I said, a responsible board would kick him out and find someone that wants to push for 100% remote work to set the example to increase demand for their product.
Yeah but isn’t this more like you telling the customer that you don’t personally use a dryer because you don’t know how to make it work? Sure it’s possible you know all of the mechanics of a dryer without knowing what the controls on the top do, but it doesn’t really inspire a lot of confidence from the customer if you can’t make the product you’re selling work for yourself.
I wish everyone who works at zoom a very fruitful soft quitting.
This is all a method to get people to quit so they don’t have to list layoff nor have to pay severance.
Fuck them. Go to the office, but give it your 10% at best. Stall things. Claim lack of motivated leadership if HR makes a stink. Make them fire you and get that bread in the meantime.
What a fucking idiot.
deleted by creator
This guy words his argument as though he’s upset his product prevents him from having non-recorded temper tantrums at junior employees.
Yeah that’s probably the most likely reason for this. Shitty managers bothered by the fact that yelling at employees over zoom makes it easy to report this abusive behaviour to HR.
Translation: I fucked up and want to beat the employees for my failure
This part is my favorite:
“Quite often, you come up with great ideas, but when we are all on Zoom, it’s really hard,” Yuan said, according to Insider. “We cannot have a great conversation. We cannot debate each other well because everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a Zoom call.”
Sounds like the issue is people wanting to avoid a talking to by HR for being “uncooperative” to me, but what do I know, I’m not the CEO of a company actively portraying the company’s product as bad at its sole purpose of existing.
The entirety of business being conducted over Zoom isn’t the company’s sole reason for existing, any more than the purpose of a toaster is so you can eat toast for every meal.
Consider Star Trek. When shit gets real, they beam over to talk.
I just love these near-daily reminders that the “new car smell” of kbin and lemmy is starting to wear off, as people stop being kind and fall back into old habits… like taking a flippant comment to its most extreme possible interpretation despite it being clear that wasn’t even close to the intent.
The sole purpose of Zoom is to collaborate over long distances. The CEO of Zoom says it’s too hard to build trust, innovate, or debate on Zoom. He didn’t qualify the statement as “you can’t build trust, innovate, and debate when all collaboration is done entirely on zoom,” and neither did I. Taking it to that new context is the same as taking it out of context, intentionally, so that you can be right on the internet. Stop it. Bad commenter. Bad. Down.
I don’t really understand what you’re saying with talking to me like a dog.
Not every business interaction needs to be building trust, innovating, or debating. There are other valuable modes of communication such as reporting, inquiring, coordinating, and those work fine over Zoom.
The guy is not saying that Zoom has no use. He’s saying that Zoom does not fulfill all the communication functions of a business, and that some things (not all) are only possible in person.
Consider that star trek is fiction and not real life. It’s a damn tv show.
Zoom needs to implement whiteboards and people need to be issued digitizing pens/tables so they can draw diagrams freely
Zoom has had a whiteboard since multiple years… But yeah, issuing tablets would make that feature more productive.
Zoom needs to be nuked from the orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
What an insightful comment.
Game over, man, GAME OVER!
It’s not over until it’s over. And it’s not over yet.
Zoom is dead in the water. They cannot innovate and this will cause them to fall further behind. Workers are more productive remote.
📉
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Head Accountant: “Sir, our stocks have plummeted to Zero!” Eric:
HD surprised pikachu, whaat?
The future is now old man
neat. time to deplatform
