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Zoom CEO says workers can't build trust or unite... on Zoom
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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Technology
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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.
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
Basically, I think it's exactly what @Gaywallet@beehaw.org was saying: these decisions aren't being made with any actual facts/ data as the basis. The decisions are solely based on "gut feelings" of the higher-ups. Attendance is the only way the higher-ups know how to gauge productivity, and that is going to trump any actual productivity data.
Funny thing; my company was using Zoom long before the pandemic. It was useful for organizing meetings between offices, and at the time was the only product with good enough sound quality to actually understand people connecting from low bandwidth connections.
As the pandemic was moving to “business as usual” mode, the company did a quantitative analysis of 5-day vs WFH, plus did an employee survey on 5-day vs hybrid vs WFH. Based on those results, they went to a hybrid model for a few months and then ran another quantitative analysis: end result was that WFH model was permanently adopted for all roles where it made sense, and the company started selling off properties.
Zoom’s still used because it was able to handle all these work models, but the company has its own contract with Zoom and would never touch the default agreement. If Zoom tried that at this point, they’d just lose a large customer.
I think it is less gut feelings than many of these top execs being personally invested in the same financial securities the company is invested in, like commercial real estate securities. But they don't want to say that part out loud.