The irony is not lost on us.

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.”

  • harmonea@kbin.social
    34·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • st0v@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • harmonea@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
      418·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • harmonea@kbin.social
        18·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
          14·
          1 year ago

          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.