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End of an era: Zoom tells employees to return to office for work (nypost.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M, B] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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End of an era: Zoom tells employees to return to office for work::Zoom is asking all of its employees to return to the office for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, when the tech company blew up as one of the main means of communication when people were forced to work from home.

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[–] 218 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Pretty bad optics when your company depends on enabling collaboration in virtual settings.

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  • [+] 86 points 3 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)
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  • [–] 22 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Exactly this. My previous employer announced an end to wfm followed shortly by some people I knew getting warned that they may be laid off. But enough people quit that nobody got laid off.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    did the people who quit get reasonable severance packages? If so, were they reasonable compared to if they had been laid off?

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  • [–] 12 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I never understood this tactic. Why demoralize your whole workforce for months until enough motivated and talented people leave that you don't have to fire anyone. The useless ones are never the first ones to leave, especially if they don't have any talents to sell to other companies. Also people don't leave immediately after it turns bad, it usually takes months for them to be demoralized enough and find new arrangements.

    By that time wouldn't it be smarter to eat the cost of firing people from the start, get rid of the fat, pay the severance and move on with those that can still lead you to success? I'm convinced the moral hit would be a lot less this way and the bounce back would be faster.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago

    I worked for a guy who referred to it as "layoff by attrition" who essentially explained that they only have a couple heads over what they predicted based on production volume, and they know the conditions at the plant aren't nice to be in, 95° F and 50% through most of the summer in a stamping and welding shop. So instead of a tiny layoff or firing people they just wait until the people who won't put up with the conditions on the floor take care of it themselves.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    It makes the short term numbers look good. They just want to produce a spreadsheet that tells Wall Street that they cut $x million in labour costs, and don't really care how that affects the long term health of the company.

    Besides, when a corporation becomes a certain size, they don't invest in innovation any more, they just buy a start-up that did something innovative, integrate it into their existing product and then repeat the cycle.

    Capitalism is trending more and more into short term thinking, because Wall Street realised that capital can be moved at the press of a button. When a corporation is sucked dry, you load it with debt, sell your stock to retail investors, pension funds and/or the government and move on to the next opportunity.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago

    I have hopes that this creates a lower barrier to entry to tech markets in a short run.

    There will be a lot of talent, a lot of which is quite financially secure, that would MUCH rather continue remote than work in office.

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