Available evidence strongly supports Chamath’s prediction about how Zendesk would be run post‑acquisition.

Key points:

• Private‑equity takeover and leadership change: Zendesk was acquired by a Hellman & Friedman / Permira–led group in November 2022 and taken private. Shortly after closing, founder‑CEO Mikkel Svane resigned and was replaced by Tom Eggemeier, a former Permira partner and PE operating executive, which is consistent with a classic PE control and governance reset. (businesswire.com)

• Layoffs of higher‑paid staff and leadership turnover:

  • November 2022: ~5% of the workforce (about 300 employees) laid off as a cost‑reduction move while the sale to PE was pending. (sfchronicle.com)
  • May 2023: a further 8% global workforce reduction (~440 people), including dozens of California managers, ordered by the new CEO to correct “overhiring” and reduce operating expenses. (zendesk.com)
  • February 2025: another layoff of 51 SF employees, again framed as reallocating resources and cutting costs. (sfchronicle.com)
  • A 2025 Glassdoor review by a software engineer describes five rounds of layoffs, “offshore talent to cut costs,” “gutted” leadership (founder fired, board replaced), and a culture now run by lawyers and finance to dress the company up for exit—exactly the “private‑equity type play” Chamath described. (glassdoor.com)
    Altogether, this matches his forecast of getting rid of many high‑priced engineers and executives.

• Shift away from stock‑based compensation toward cash/bonuses:

  • As a public company, Zendesk had large share‑based compensation; Q2 2022 alone included over $73m in share‑based comp, a major component of operating expenses. (content.edgar-online.com)
  • A post‑buyout Glassdoor Q&A explicitly states that under the new leadership “Employees are no longer offered RSUs, bonuses have dropped below the 10% range, and performance evaluations are based on percentile ranking.” (glassdoor.co.in)
  • Current job postings across functions (engineering, sales, customer success, compensation) systematically describe pay as base salary plus commission/bonus, with no mention of equity or RSUs, reinforcing that new packages are cash/bonus‑heavy rather than stock‑heavy. (builtinaustin.com)
    This is very close to Chamath’s claim that stock‑based comp would “go away” and be replaced with bonus‑based pay tied to targets.

• Retaining customer‑facing/support functions while cutting elsewhere: Zendesk remains a large customer‑support SaaS platform; customer support and CX roles continue to be heavily recruited (e.g., customer success, support‑adjacent roles), while multiple rounds of layoffs have focused on HQ staff, managers, and higher‑cost locations. (sfgate.com) This is consistent with keeping frontline/support capacity while trimming expensive engineering/leadership layers.

• Classic PE value‑extraction pattern: Employee reviews explicitly attribute the new culture and incentive structure to PE ownership, citing PE “squeezing the company,” harsher commission/bonus schemes, cost‑cutting, offshoring, and a focus on near‑term profit and IPO positioning rather than long‑term product vision. (repvue.com) That is exactly the “run it like a private‑equity type play” scenario that was predicted.

Because:

• the acquisition closed in late 2022 (so “within the next few years” has now elapsed),
• stock‑based compensation for rank‑and‑file employees appears to have been largely eliminated in favor of cash and relatively small bonuses,
• there have been multiple cost‑driven layoff waves and leadership turnover in line with targeting high‑cost engineers and executives, and
• the company is now being operated with a textbook PE cost‑cutting and incentive model,

Chamath’s prediction is best characterized as right in substance, even if his language (“all the high priced engineers”) was somewhat hyperbolic.