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.
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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.
Or it’s a way to lower the head count without doing layoffs. The problem with doing it this way of course is that you’ll lose your best employees.
They don’t care. They think once the initial build is complete you only need junior devs to maintain.
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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
Interesting that Zoom is not making an attempt to build features that increase trust, enable innovation and encourage robust debates in their app. Seems like a missed opportunity.
Evidently they couldn’t figure out how to do it over zoom.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Seems like the opposite of what they should be saying.
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.
everyone tends to be very friendly when you join a zoom call
I’m sorry but are you suggesting hostility leads to innovation? Are you a fucking sociopath?
Are you a fucking sociopath?
Very likely. Capitalism encourages this type of behavior, to get (and stay) at the top you need to be a greedy, unhinged sociopath.
No, but I think he means that people hold back opposing ideas because of fear of hurting others. Then there are other group dynamics involved which suppress people expressing them selfies. I would have thought this wold be less of a problem in online meetings
Shit take lol
What a fucking idiot.
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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.
For me it’s like this, I have a useful point to add to the conversation but when I interject the lag is juuuuust long enough that it ends up I’m talking over the next person.
So when I lead a meeting with zoom participants I either force dead air to allow the remote people to jump in, or I eat as much dead air as possible to lock them out of the conversation. depending on my own agenda.
incidentally this problem doesn’t exist in asynchronous collaboration methods. but zoom and it’s like win out on shear informwtion bandwidth.
The current video conferencing and remote working systems are indeed amazing feats of technology and social acceptance, but we still need to work on it. a lot.
I’m definitely not pretending Zoom is perfect. It has issues. Not enough issues to make a return to office worthwhile for those who function far better from home, but issues.
I just think that if there’s one person who has a huge state in pretending it is perfect, it should be this guy. And the most baffling part is that the issues he’s making up are rooted in human behavior that would still be present in an office setting (like being too nice to avoid HR), not his tech.
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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.
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Consider that star trek is fiction and not real life. It’s a damn tv show.
“Quite often, you come up with great ideas, but when we are all on Zoom, it’s really hard,”
Easy, close the company down.
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.
Yup, they have whiteboards, which is the most kindergarten-level attempt to “increase trust, enable innovation and encourage robust debates”. There is so much potential in this space. Check out these demos of Loomio for a glimpse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuWfEwlWFlw
https://youtu.be/itXYid8eSiI?si=hsq4RzMFAe_mVlG_&t=212
bro has clearly not been in any of my discord chats
Zoom is dead in the water. They cannot innovate and this will cause them to fall further behind. Workers are more productive remote.
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