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.
Teams and Zoom are great for remote work, and I get how a lot of people love just dialing in to meetings, but there’s definitely a different dynamic to being in the office.
During the pandemic my dev team grew from two people to six. Since it was in waves we got to try being at the office and being at home using remote work only interchangeably.
Especially as a manager I see the benefits of working in the office. Not necessarily every day, but regularly.
Not necessarily from a raw productivity perspective. The office has a lot of apparent drawbacks, but these drawbacks are what triggers the dynamic that makes the office better - at least for me and my team.
I find that the office conversations triggers more ideas and better collaboration.
With my manager hat on I find that it’s easier for me to see if I need to get involved in discussions or let people handle it themselves.
People are different, teams are different, but it’s not black and white.
People love the flexibility of remote work, and some people are certainly better off working “alone” at home than being with the team, but for me it’s all about finding the balance. I don’t want to micromanage anyone, but there’s a reason a lot of people need managers, and that is simply that left to their own devices they will start working on 200 things and not finish anything.
As boring as it is our job is to deliver value to the company.
But on occasion, I will let people run wild with ideas and see where it goes. And then rein them back in when there are deadlines to be met.
As someone else in management I would take the higher morale boost I have from my completely remote engineering team to some “good conversations” and “interesting ideas” that may pop up from time to time. It’s not their job to come up with that shit. It’s either mine or products and they are definitely able to do it organically if you facilitate casual working sessions that promote conversation over productivity.
Edit: also if you have people who can’t manage their work without you stating over their shoulder that’s a failure on your part not theirs. Yes some people just aren’t cut out for some jobs but if the difference is being remote or in the office that is totally on you.
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.
I've been working remotely in game development for 10 years. A highly collaborative field. Requiring artists, producers, engineers, designers, QA, and marketing all communicating across levels. Meaning junior designers need to talk to lead engineers and everyone wears many hats.
You are completely correct. In fact, zoom is a terrible system to use. I highly recommend no one use it for remote work. Use Google meet, discord or mumble for persistent voice and video. Use slack, discord, or teams for text. Use Google docs or confluence for document sharing. Use trello, Asana, jira, or hacknplan for task planning. Use Miro for idea boards.
You need a full suite of services but not in a single field would I recommend zoom. It's such a bad piece of software that I'd literally recommend jitsi over it.
This is probably why they are returning to the office. Their software is so bad they'd have to use something else to be productive and the best way to save face there is to say that your software isn't unique and that no software can replace physical offices. In reality you have full business that have been remote for decades without problems. Business that require far more collaboration than zoom.
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.
I truly think it's just the corporate real estate thing. Those 80% that regret return to office are CEOs that weighed the loss from real estate contracts against the blowback from forcing employees back to office, and they are saying that they feel they made the wrong decision.
I might argue this statistic also shows that 80% of CEOs underestimate the value of their employees. Not exactly a hot take in 2023, but it's fun to put a number to it.
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.
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.
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.
After 10 years working in offices, the last 3 being mostly remote, I hate to say it because I am lazy and it makes no sense to commute 2hours a day to go into an overcrowded city, but being in a physical location beats remote if done right.
The problem is, it is rarely done right. Some workplaces also just happen to be filled with people I will never bond with.
I also fucking hate to have my calendar filled with meetings and useless 1:1. It is worst than it ever been. What could have been a quick chat at my desk is now a reserved 1h long meeting for which I have to prepare and stay glued at my webcam for.
I have a friend who absolutely love remote and webcams. He loves sitting still in front of the computer and making faces and everything. Well I am not like that. I like multitasking, talking to people while I work or moving around. I loved going out for dinner with the people I bonded with to talk about stuff.
Work in the office can be made to not feel like work, I experienced it in at least 1 place. Made me feel like I was hanging out with friends all day. Remote work will sort of always feel like work for me, even with the people I like it is sort of meh. Being on call is too intrusive and not being on call is too isolated. We're sort of missing the in-between. Anyway I could go on.
I always wished I could simply teleport into the building, because the commute has always been the worsy part of the day, by far.
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.
All of these can easily be replaced in digital environments, but you're correct that not all environments will be conducive to this. Don't see something you can immediately comment on? You can ask nearly anyone any of the following questions and get a response:
What do you like to do to relax after work?
Do you have any media recommendations for me? I'm looking for new content and curious what you like
What's something you wished you never had to do at work?
In terms of direct replacements or stand ins, I'd suggest some of the following:
Somewhere for people to showcase what normally might be on their desk or on their person- this could be an internal directory of coworkers which contains some info on each person such as hobbies or pictures of their life and family and hobbies. Or it might be a simple template that you fill out and share with management to encourage others to share. It could also be something you insert into your email signature. Feel free to be creative, humans like to socialize and while some may resist sharing this info, many will be excited to.
Public channels of various sorts, especially random and general style channels for larger team or cross team collaboration are great ways to have conversations that you can 'drop in' on. You can also start or end meetings with open discussions about life, prompts, or ice breaker style questions to get to know your teammates and give you conversation starters.
Sending direct messages to see who's available and wants to talk, creating office hours for people to drop in, or simply letting people know that you're available regularly and frequently are all ways to open the digital door to conversation.
I don't think it always has to be a video call, and learning how to listen and invite through multiple mediums of communication is a good skill to tap into. Humans are quite varied which unfortunately means there's no one size fits all solution here so much as there's a million doors that you can try to open and hope that at least a few will stick with the people you work with. As an aside a contact management system or notes can also help you to keep track of what people enjoy, the names of important figures in their lives, how they like to communicate, etc.
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.
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.
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.
I love how they sometimes record these higher-level presentations, stage lights and all, right in front of where I work in the office. I am way more productive at home.
There are people who have distractions at home and want to escape of course. I'm not stopping them from working in the office though...
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.
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.
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.
Zoom is fast, can handle 100+ streams with ease, and allows mods/plugins to extend as far as you want, and
on zoom you can draw on the other person's screen while sharing.
On zoom, when a meeting starts I have a "incoming call sound" so I drop what I am doing and jump on the meeting. (I can't install on my work compy though... Sigh)
Teams definitely feels bloated, but having used it for years at my lost job, I can't say I ever found it buggy. The only issue I ever had with it was actually with my bluetooth headset sometimes not being recognized, but it was never clear if that was an issue with Teams, or Windows, or the headset itself.
The Outlook integration for planning and joining meetings was super handy. If there was some way to get email in Teams then I never would have had to open Outlook again. That would have been nice.
I think the features need a lot of refinement, though. Having threaded and non-threaded chats is clumsy at best. I found the threaded chats to be far inferior, and the inability to search for non-threaded chats was very limiting. Search in general was borderline useless.
Teams on Linux is pretty garbage though. They removed the desktop app and replaced it with a half-baked PWA which is exceptionally buggy on every browser, even Edge. I can't believe I did so many interviews over Teams this year, thankfully none of those jobs hired me and I got another job using Google Meet which actually works lol
Unfortunately it's the only viable option for some of our executive team meeting. I live in a country where there are two official languages and we sometime needs to have interpreters so that those who only speak one language can participate. The Interpreter feature of Zoom, with multiple audio tracks is mostly the only reason we're stuck with them.
The irony of the situation still seems distant to the CEO. According to the leaked meeting on August 3, Yuan told employees that Zoom the product does not allow Zoom the company to "build as much trust or be as innovative as in the office."
Of course it doesn't. It allows people to communicate remotely. But it's not a 100% substitute for meeting people in person, and pretending otherwise would be stupid. Of course meeting in person builds more trust than video-chats. And discussions on a real whiteboard can be much more productive than on a video call, depending on the topic.
So why does it even exist
Why does the telephone exist? Zoom exists for the same reason. To let people talk remotely. It has some extra features a telephone doesn't, but that's it. It's not supposed replace meeting other people.
Now,
I totally think that in Zoom's case, there's no real reason to bring employees to the office, and this is just a corporate power play.
I also think there's no point for Zoom to exist when there are great open source alternatives.
But the particular argument this article lays out just makes no sense.
Of course meeting in person builds more trust than video-chats
I disagree with this statement. Every study I've seen trying to examine the difference between "in person" and "virtual" has been poorly designed or resulted in inconclusive results. Retrospective studies on team dynamics often fail to account for spaces critical to trust-building such as water-cooler talk and outside of work events, and fail to replicate virtual versions of predominantly in-person activities. Studies which use naive individuals and compare person to person interaction as compared to virtual are either inconclusive because they involve tasks in which trust is built in the concept of a game and how personal someone is does not matter as much as the task at hand, or do a poor job of measuring trust and are actually measuring other aspects of interpersonal relationships.
And discussions on a real whiteboard can be much more productive than on a video call, depending on the topic.
I primarily see this as a failure of digital technologies and adoption. There are wonderful digital whiteboarding apps, but they are not included in the most prominent digital meeting technologies yet and free products tend to have a poor user experience. There's also an issue of how you are measuring "productive". Scientific measurements on productivity show that whiteboarding and brainstorming are often not actually productive when you evaluate based on the quality of the end product, despite being perceived as productive. If you're measuring how people who worked on the product feel about the direction and the end result, however, there's a bit to unpack about teamwork and managing emotions.
But the particular argument this article lays out just makes no sense.
I think the point of the article is to show that the CEOs empty words are empty and to provide a framework for which one can critically examine them. You're probably overthinking the difference in meeting modality, which is a much more complicated question - in fact, I would argue that a lot of commonly bandied insights about business are based on fluff or nothing at all, but rather "gut feeling" as the article so aptly puts it.
I think the point of the article is to show that the CEOs empty words are empty
Maybe. To me it read more like: "According to Zoom's CEO, Zoom can't fully replace in-person interaction for work. Therefore, it's bad/useless software - or the CEO is bullshitting." Which is just bad reasoning. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. Maybe I'm just taking it too literally, but I just don't like when articles use such bad reasoning, even if I agree with their conclusion.
fail to account for spaces critical to trust-building such as water-cooler talk and outside of work events
What do you mean by that? If you are fully virtual there's going to be no water cooler talk - but that's a legitimate difference between in-person and virtual that should affect the results of the study. So it makes sense to me that the study shouldn't try to control for that.
and fail to replicate virtual versions of predominantly in-person activities
I don't think you can. Take for example board games as an in-person activity. The virtual replacement would be video games. A video game can do everything a board game can (with some exceptions) - but it can do so much more. So, purely from a game design perspective, video games would be much better. The main thing that video games don't have, while board games do, is the in-person interaction. Yet, there's plenty of people who play board games, but not video games. Clearly the in-person part is important.