[HN Gopher] Meta and Google are cutting staff
___________________________________________________________________
Meta and Google are cutting staff
Author : pondsider
Score : 276 points
Date : 2022-09-21 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Google has required some employees to apply for new jobs
|
| is this the new way to say "fired"?
| Rafuino wrote:
| This was standard practice at my former old school tech company
| employer. People were "redeployed" and given 30-90 days to
| apply for new roles, with many unable to get jobs secured in
| time they were let go with minimal severance.
| smileysteve wrote:
| "quiet fired"
|
| Or better yet, give them hope, then take it away
| lordswork wrote:
| I don't understand how the article states this and concludes
| Google is cutting staff:
|
| >A Google spokesman said almost 95% of employees who expressed
| interest in staying with the company found new roles within the
| notice period. Alphabet had 174,014 employees at the end of the
| second quarter, up 20.8% from the previous year.
| puglr wrote:
| I believe they mean jobs within Google for the folks whose
| entire team is being dissolved, but aren't being laid off
| directly. I recall something similar during my time there, when
| the Google Play team was merged with the YouTube Music team.
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| Some of these comments mentioned in the article coming from
| Meta's leadership about there being people who shouldn't probably
| be there or to get rid of coasters seems so inhumane and
| demoralizing. What kind of leadership is that? I mean it's
| understandable that businesses have to cut costs, but have some
| empathy, and understand how words affect people. Just wow. It's
| so cynical and depressing.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It also suggests that they have known about slackers and have
| been OK with it.
|
| 1. Very unlikely. Which means they're lying.
|
| 2. They are incompetent for keeping people that are slacking
|
| If people are truly just slacking off then they should be let
| go as part of the normal business process. This focused effort
| to get leaner suggests that there are many known slackers that
| they were OK with up to this point.
|
| There is really no reason to call people slackers even if it's
| true. They should have went the patreon route of saying they
| fucked up and hired too many people into roles that didn't
| provide as much value as they need.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| Everybody is incompetent about detecting slackers for last
| two years. I've seen multiple people having two or even three
| full time contracts and successfully juggling tasks at
| minimal required level, due to remote work and flexible
| hours. I guess they'll finally spoil it for everyone.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| If they're doing what's required, what's the problem?
| dzikimarian wrote:
| They don't. Some of them try to raise arguments, that
| they completed given tasks, but forget to mention that
| they compromised quality along the way.
|
| Couple years ago, we had a lot of talks saying that
| engineers should have slack time to polish things. That's
| kinda counter-productive if slack time goes into working
| for other companies.
| thebradbain wrote:
| If they're contracts, they're not employees and they're
| fully in their rights to work for others too. They owe
| that company no loyalty, and if they're doing what's laid
| out in the contract, there is no expectation for them to
| do more, either. Nevertheless, I don't see how this is
| slacking either way.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| If they have agreed to task-based work and that's clear
| for both parties, then sure. Zero issues there.
|
| If they entered agreement (no matter legal form), that
| led company to believe that they will dedicate full time
| equivalent to given company and then did the same with
| another company, and charge both for full time, then it's
| obvious scam. It's simply beyond mental capacity of
| regular human being to carry out such contract.
|
| People tend to rationalize latter one, but they will end
| on bad side of the layoffs, because it's simply
| unsustainable to pay full compensation for half-time
| work.
| [deleted]
| nafix wrote:
| I like it. I really dislike working with under-performers and
| people who just refuse to do due diligence on their end. I
| dislike working with people who always want you to come over to
| their frame of mind rather than trying to get into yours or
| meet in the middle. I saw a ton of people coasting during
| Covid. People need to get negative feedback when they deserve
| it.
| noncoml wrote:
| > I dislike working with people who always want you to come
| over to their frame of mind rather than trying to get into
| yours or meet in the middle.
|
| I agree with due diligence, but the "frame of mind" argument
| is way to subjective.
|
| What if, hear me out, in their opinion it's me who refuses
| get in their frame of mind or meet them in the middle?
| sfvegandude wrote:
| I also like it, and believe that Meta's way of going about
| this is more humane than keeping people on who aren't
| performing. We are not talking about underpaid wage slaves
| here. These are professionals who deserve honest feedback
| about their work.
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| The arrival of Covid was a period of great stress and change
| in people's lives. Maybe they were dealing with some things
| and not really coasting? Just maybe needed some more support?
| This way of thinking about people, coworkers, without
| understanding the situation in their lives and what they've
| been talking to with their managers about, is just alien to
| me and I don't understand it. I don't think it's a good way
| to manage people.
|
| If you have a problem with someone being a burden on your
| team that you and others have to deal with, that's
| understandable and you should bring it up with your team, but
| managers talking in these sorts of ways in public
| conversation about the people working at their company, it's
| just awful.
| ejb999 wrote:
| IMO, it is not awful to state the obvious.
|
| Every company - especially every company over a certain
| size, knows there are a certain percentage of people that
| just 'phone it in' and aren't pulling their weight relative
| to others - pretending that isn't true, really doesn't help
| anyone.
|
| More importantly, it is demoralizing to the people you want
| to keep - to make it seem to them that putting in the extra
| effort doesn't do anything for you, so they start looking
| for the exits to find a position where there effort and
| talents are better appreciated; retaining the best people,
| at the end of the day is more important than a low-
| performer's hurt feelings.
| convolvatron wrote:
| if its 10% phoners, this isn't a problem. because there
| is a natural turnover with everyone else, and the phoners
| tend to stick they generally represent an increasing
| faction over time.
|
| as they start to dominate the organization, they actually
| cast shade on people that are trying to get something
| done. nothing is getting done so the giant company starts
| sucking in as many people as possible to try to replace
| the outflow and to try to start getting something done.
|
| does anyone know of a company that survived this process?
| retinaros wrote:
| the problem is that it is really hard to identify. to
| some manager even a good employee might be a low
| performer. some managers only see like 1% of you through
| your days. now imagine you are having a bad day or a bad
| meeting and on the day your manager is looking at your
| performance it appears to be subpar because that day you
| had other worries?
|
| sometimes it only takes one conversation or someone else
| saying something about you to your manager.
|
| if you think companies work fairly at identifying people
| << coasting >> you are deadwrong. everything is politics.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| This is under the presumption that most/all of the people
| being let go _are actually_ low performers, and that
| leadership is able to correctly identify them.
|
| The same leadership that thought those people met the caliber
| for working there in the first place.
|
| I won't deny that there's low performers at any organization,
| but this is giving the people making the cuts too much credit
| imo. Double-digit cuts say more about leadership than the
| people being let go.
| sfvegandude wrote:
| Performance isn't static. Hiring is hard. Organizational
| priorities shift, people lose interest, etc. It's often
| better for both parities if one just moves on.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Microsoft ruthlessly fired tons of "low performers" for
| over a decade, which gave them the organizational
| efficiency they needed to ship such resoundingly successful
| products as Bing Search, Windows Mobile, and Windows 8
| strix_varius wrote:
| Agreed. It's demoralizing to have an under-performing
| colleague stick around for months or years. It's even worse
| to work with someone who's mastered the art of "talking the
| talk" to get a job, who makes big promises but always has
| some excuse for why they can't deliver, and who never
| actually ships anything.
|
| Most first-level tech managers don't have the courage to fire
| fast enough. The best feedback I've ever gotten from a member
| of my team is that I should have fired under-performers
| faster to preserve the motivation of my top-performers.
|
| It's absurd that someone who has negligible, or oftentimes
| negative impact, should stick around claiming their $250k
| participation check every year.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| Seems like you have a responsibility to yourself and your
| team to bring this up with the appropriate party and go
| farther if need-be. Proactive feedback is more useful than
| passive resentment.
| strix_varius wrote:
| Of course, and that tends to happen, but the alignment of
| the manager to their team's mission isn't perfect. So
| you'll see:
|
| "Soft coaching" instead of a PIP.
|
| PIPs that end in "retain," leaving the PIP recipient to
| revert to their previous level of output afterwards.
| These are often celebrated as management success stories.
|
| Working out an "exchange" deal with another team that has
| headcount or backfill so the under-performers float
| around.
|
| The most common strategy from a manager who knows of a
| disparity in competency, but is unwilling to address it
| directly, is to over time expect (and ask) less and less
| of the under-performer, implicitly putting more workload
| on the rest of the team. Basically, take the under-
| performer out of all critical paths. This is especially
| likely if the direct manager was also the hiring manager,
| in which case they're reticent for their peers & boss to
| recognize that they made a hiring mistake. Even moreso if
| the hire helped the org's D&I numbers.
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| Seems like I've ruffled a few feathers and ended up -2 on
| my previous comment here, not clear what rule I violated
| but that's beside the point.
|
| I have a suggestion: take these findings and send them to
| your direct report and their direct report too (or
| whoever the appropriate party is in your organization).
| You've spotted some major issues and I think your
| organization would benefit from your insights. Include
| the names of the specific underperformers to establish
| credibility, and so that the appropriate parties can
| observe and take action to benefit the team.
|
| These operational insights are too valuable to languish
| on an anonymous forum.
| strix_varius wrote:
| While that's a nice ideal, it's often not practical. As
| an IC, you'll rarely be rewarded for pointing out
| inefficiencies like this publicly - especially if it
| makes your boss look bad. As a manager, it's often better
| to expend your social/political capital to advocate for
| your best employees, rather than to address your worst.
|
| Relevant to the top-level topic here, that's why many
| managers welcome environments in which the barrier drops
| for cutting their worst employees. It's nice to be able
| to do that, when the whole company is going through it,
| without bringing scrutiny down on your team (and you,
| specifically, as someone who potentially made a bad
| hire).
| fleetwoodsnack wrote:
| Seems like the deficiencies exist throughout the entire
| organization's vertical. Under-performing workers and
| underperforming managers acting in their own self
| interest and shirking responsibilities that would
| otherwise benefit the organization.
| strix_varius wrote:
| I think you have just described most organizations after
| they grow beyond their first 1k employees :)
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| You do understand that this is entirely different than
| company leadership laying off entire teams right?
|
| It could be like SNAP that fired the entire company that
| they acquired because they had to cut costs but the product
| was meaningful and I'm sure the team worked very hard on
| it.
| strix_varius wrote:
| > You do understand that this is entirely different than
| company leadership laying off entire teams right?
|
| No, this thread:
|
| > Some of these comments mentioned in the article coming
| from Meta's leadership about there being people who
| shouldn't probably be there or to get rid of coasters
| seems so inhumane and demoralizing.
|
| ...is specifically about this quote from the article:
|
| > Separately, the company's head of engineering issued a
| call for managers to identify employees who were coasting
| and place them on remediation plans as a prelude to their
| termination.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Ah my mistake. I see the context now. If that's truly
| what Meta is doing, all the more a garbage company.
|
| It does still feel like a marketing spin on "we're
| cutting headcount, make it work" to me though. I find it
| impossible to believe that Meta wasn't already doing
| this.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| Should you be worried that others might consider you the
| under-performer? Perhaps others felt you were coasting.
|
| When you said you hate others who won't come over to your
| point of view. How many feel similiar that you won't come
| over to theirs?
| karmasimida wrote:
| Empathy is anti-capitalist.
|
| I think the executive getting rid of their usual fake friendly
| corporate talk, reflecting the degree how bad their bottom line
| is hurt.
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| Right, I wasn't suggesting fake friendliness, just like
| something better than making generalizations that bring up
| the spector of hidden bad people working at the company and
| nobody knows whose head is going to roll. It creates
| uncertainty, fear and just general demoralization in the
| ranks if you ask me.
| pm90 wrote:
| Its sort of lazy thinking, so of course a lot of people
| will come to the same conclusion.
|
| I mean, sure there might be people not giving their best.
| But most people want to do work, want their work to be
| meaningful, and will generally do the right thing if guided
| correctly. The number of "slackers" who try to get by with
| no/0 effort is small, no way it could be large enough to
| meaningfully affect the bottomline.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Your take is entirely reasonable. The lack of empathy often
| comes from the well off who have never had to struggle and
| can't conceptualize what that even means.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Loyalty is anti-capitalist.
| karmasimida wrote:
| As software engineers, I don't think this industry value
| loyalty in the past decade. Job hopping is the norm and is
| encouraged essentially by the market.
|
| Nothing is wrong doing it, we are following the money as we
| should.
|
| Just neither empathy or loyalty is relevant to me, not
| reliable both ways.
| [deleted]
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| Amazon seems to be on the short list of big tech companies still
| not completely frozen the hiring. They seem to have slowed down,
| according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32929483 but
| not full pause.
| dominotw wrote:
| They don't need to do any layoff because high attrition that
| endemic to the company. They are always hiring. There is always
| money in the bananastand.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Amazon always comes as the less desirable among the big techs.
|
| I mean it is cheap comparing to Google/Meta, but again, in a
| much changed environment that is still better than not being
| hired at all I guess.
| actusual wrote:
| My buddy at Meta literally has to re-interview for his job. Same
| with his entire team. What a colossal waste of time.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| I can't read WSJ while at work, but after checking on the
| financials for both Meta and Alphabet, I do not understand why
| either would be cutting staff. Both look pretty strong, so I am
| not sure how cuts are justified or why Zuckerberg has a negative
| outlook, especially since 2021 was such a great year for both.
|
| Do American executives, investors, and start up owners not have
| the guts for even a moderate stock price drop? I guess the
| reaction is to cut staff, or threaten to, when there is a whiff
| of negativity. Fuckin weak.
| mmmpop wrote:
| Is WSJ blocked by your employer? Or would you rather not have
| such an icky source showing up in your browsing logs?
| theanarcrist wrote:
| My current theory on this, particularly for Google, is they're
| just taking advantage of the macroeconomic moment to cut some
| fat. Slowing growth or outright letting people go is a no-go in
| times of macroeconomic growth. Big companies, even if not
| strictly needed, can be opportunistic here and make some cuts
| they wouldn't be able to in other circumstances.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Yep. The hiring market has shifted from ultra-competitive
| during the COVID economic boom to being much tighter and more
| competitive during this economic downturn. You can't hire at
| Meta and Google scale without collecting some mis-hires and
| poor performers.
|
| When the hiring market is tight you might keep them on longer
| and try to mentor them up to par, but when the hiring market
| shifts and there are a lot of great candidates on the market
| it's better to let the underperformers go and re-fill those
| jobs with great performers who are back on the market for
| whatever reason.
|
| They're still hiring. This is more like cycling out hires
| that didn't work AND some collateral employees who
| unfortunately got lumped into those teams and cancelled
| projects. Often, the great employees who get "laid off" are
| quickly scooped up by other teams within the company who need
| their talent. It's not good business to let great engineers
| go.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| > This is more like cycling out hires that didn't work AND
| some collateral employees who unfortunately got lumped into
| those teams and cancelled projects
|
| I see - if they are cycling out the lower performers and
| hire recently laid off people on the market for a bargain,
| then that kind of makes sense, assuming they are not in a
| hiring freeze.
| singron wrote:
| If they are laying off their poor performers so they can
| hire the laid-off from other companies, wouldn't they
| just be trading lemons?
|
| The strategy probably works regardless of macro economic
| conditions assuming you let go of "lemons" at a greater
| rate than you hire them, but it seems easier when the
| market isn't being flooded. You could maybe argue that
| layoffs at other companies are reducing the proportion of
| lemons, but it's not clear to me.
|
| I think reducing headcount gives an immediate outlook of
| lower expenses without affecting revenue in the medium
| term. Tons of employees at these companies aren't working
| on projects that will have monetary significance within
| several years if ever.
| shostack wrote:
| Is there data suggesting comp bands are reducing as a
| result of the hiring climate? Cost of living is still
| through the roof, so while companies should pay based on
| value, there will presumably still be pressure based on
| that.
| duckmysick wrote:
| I'm confused. It was ultra-competitive before and now it's
| more competitive?
| hwbehrens wrote:
| Given the context of their message, I think the parent
| switched perspectives mid-stream: ultra-competitive from
| the perspective of the employers (very hard to hire) to
| competitive from the perspective of the employees
| (somewhat hard to be hired).
| scarface74 wrote:
| I can't speak for Meta. But Google has the focus of a crack
| addled flea. They probably have four or five teams working on
| separate messaging apps. They could probably drop a third of
| their teams and it wouldn't affect their successful products
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Maybe if a third of their teams are 3 person teams working on
| moonshots and the other 2/3rds are 20 person teams working on
| Ads, Search, Cloud, & Android...
| baq wrote:
| Growth slowing = repricing from growth basket to value basket =
| 70% stock price cut
| baby wrote:
| Layoffs are a way to get rid of low performers without legal
| issues.
| dymk wrote:
| Thats what a PIP is for. Layoffs are for firing a lot of
| people at once. Doesn't have to be due to performance.
| jedberg wrote:
| PIPs are lawsuit fodder. A general layoff where a bunch of
| people are let go at the same time makes it a lot harder
| for the person who was let go say it was targeted at them.
| dymk wrote:
| Why do you think PIPs are lawsuit fodder?
| dzikimarian wrote:
| >Do American executives, investors, and start up owners not
| have the guts for even a moderate stock price drop?
|
| But why should they? If staff being cut is low performers, as
| companies stated, then it would be equivalent to burning money
| for no reason.
| Jensson wrote:
| Maybe Meta and Alphabet has gotten to the point where they
| don't need more people? The return from adding another guy
| optimizing ads isn't that high when you already have 10 000
| people doing it.
|
| Google has 3x more people today than when I worked there, and
| those people are working on the same products as back then.
| There must be some point which it no longer makes sense to hire
| more people.
| water-your-self wrote:
| Ah yes, that one manager and their 10,000 direct reports.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I can't speak formally for any of the companies, of course, but
| I suspect like another commenter said, its an opportunity to
| cut fat. Beyond that, the last two years saw many tech
| companies grow stupid-fast. For example, Snap hired more than
| 50% of their pre-layoff workforce since start of the pandemic.
| Google, Meta have both doubled headcount in a similar (slightly
| longer) time scale.
|
| I suspect that despite being rich, headcount is expensive. If
| the median googler makes 300k, it probably costs Google 500k to
| employ. A team of 100 is $50M! A news article claimed google
| hired 10k people in Q2, so that'd be $5B in commitment
| (probably actually less, but on that scale). Doesn't take many
| quarters of that sort of growth to outpace income.
| acchow wrote:
| > If the median googler makes 300k
|
| The median googler does not make 300k. The median Google
| engineer/manager in the US might make 300k but Google hires
| plenty of people in other roles and in other countries.
| loeg wrote:
| Moderate stock price drop? Facebook is down 63%.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Google and Meta doubled head count during covid. They probably
| just realize they don't have the ability to productively manage
| that many people/the unique opportunities covid presented are
| gone, so they're trying to get back to a more manageable size.
| [deleted]
| Ferrotin wrote:
| They don't have useful things for those employees to do.
|
| And why would they need justification? They don't owe anyone
| permanent sinecures.
| kevstev wrote:
| Google's profits dropped last quarter, and that is a rare
| occurrence for them. Metas revenue actually fell last quarter,
| with profits dropping 35%. IIRC, that's the first revenue drop
| they have had since going public.
|
| This isn't about stock prices, this is about the strength of
| the underlying business.
| lordswork wrote:
| >Google's profits dropped last quarter, and that is a rare
| occurrence for them.
|
| Google's net income went from $16.4B Q1 to $16B Q2. Such an
| insane amount of money.
|
| [Q1]: https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2022Q1_alphabet_ear
| nings...
|
| [Q2]: https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2022Q2_alphabet_ear
| nings...
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Judging by the financials, the underlying business for both
| is strong, especially relative to many other kinds of
| businesses. The drop, still, does not look fatal when
| considering how much growth there was in 2020 and 2021.
| seibelj wrote:
| They have much better insight than the rosy numbers put
| forth in their quarterly earnings. I think they are sensing
| rough waves ahead.
| kevstev wrote:
| I agree, I mean the businesses overall are very strong.
| That said, as a shareholder, watching Google and FB's
| headcount soar over the last 5-10 years to stratospheric
| numbers, they have to have a point where they sit down and
| take a hard look at what everyone is doing and be realistic
| about whether the projects make sense. I am all about R&D
| and experimentation and moonshots and the like, but the
| sheer number of bodies, especially in relation to "hits"
| that have been made, it all feels very low. The latest
| Pixel phones come to mind as a real home grown hit at
| Google, but so many of their products seem rudderless and
| the result of a sprawling bureaucracy[1]. It certainly
| feels to me that at least 20% of the workforce could be cut
| with probably a net gain to the organization overall. Is it
| fatal? Of course not- but it could be if you just let the
| rot sit around.
|
| FB/Meta is the same- They have made some low key progress
| with Groups, have essentially wiped out craigslist as a
| marketplace, made some great strategic investments like
| WhatsApp, and essentially cut their potential replacements
| off at the knees by quickly copying snapchat and to some
| extent tik-tok, but Meta also seems poised to throw
| billions and billions of dollars into this Metaverse
| furnace, and I just don't see that working out.
|
| I say this as a shareholder of both firms, that I have held
| since their IPOs or shortly thereafter.
|
| [1] Take their home products for instance. There are nNest
| protects (smoke detectors/motion detectors), thermostats,
| cameras and doorbells... its an absolute layup to turn this
| into a security system far better than the crap ADT pushes.
| Yet... they just haven't for over 10 years now. And then
| they try to force a shitty subscription on you to use their
| cloud features that are really worthless, and have cut off
| APIs to third parties so I can no longer have my doorbell
| play through my Sonos. Its kind of maddening to watch.
| ras3022 wrote:
| Sure but the future is uncertain and when you're selling
| ads it's hard to control revenue. It's much easier to
| control expenses.
| baby wrote:
| > the future is uncertain
|
| much less uncertain than any other companies IMO. They're
| printing money.
| karmasimida wrote:
| I mean how? Advertising expenses drain much faster in
| down turn.
| ras3022 wrote:
| Today sure. But remember you have to boil the frog slowly
| lest it jump away.
| water-your-self wrote:
| They've pretty much thrown the frog straight into the
| boiling pot havent they?
|
| In april they held a private concer featuring lizzo, then
| in july tell employees to increase productivity.
|
| From lizzo to layoffs in two months.
| o10449366 wrote:
| The article highlights that the easiest way for these companies
| to let go of staff right now is to dissolve entire teams. I've
| heard from friends that work at these companies that recent
| hiring freezes have actually made managers more hesitant to fire
| low performers because anyone they fire can't be replaced and
| they'd rather have a low performer than no one at all. The team
| dissolving process seems to sidestep this management hesitation
| to fire.
| cpeterso wrote:
| > the easiest way for these companies to let go of staff right
| now is to dissolve entire teams.
|
| The options seem to be:
|
| * Cut risky or underperforming products or teams and focus
| company resources on the products and teams that are doing
| well.
|
| * Or cut staff across the board, leaving all teams struggling
| to succeed with fewer resources.
|
| The first option seems wiser. "More wood behind fewer arrows",
| as the saying goes.
| ReaLNero wrote:
| If you layoff a bunch of people working on greenfield
| projects, people will catch on and try to avoid working on
| more research-like roles out of fear of it happening again.
| Frost1x wrote:
| >...they'd rather have a low performer than no one at all.
|
| Seems contradictory to many modern interview process opinions
| that low performers introduce a net negative effect.
| Jagerbizzle wrote:
| Agreed. It's easy to plan around and measure the potential
| business impact of no one. It's challenging to do the same
| with a low performing or otherwise inconsistent employee.
| cdavid wrote:
| It is more complicated than that
|
| * losing the low performer in this context means you lose a
| head count. If you keep the low performer during hard times,
| you can hope to get them backfilled when the economic
| environment gets better * there are often more work to do
| than you have resources for: if as an EM, you have to deal
| with PM who refuse to adapt to capacity, you can simply
| assign the low perfomers to the projects you don't care
| about. * etc.
|
| once you reach a certain size, those issues happen in pretty
| much any organization in my experience.
| lmm wrote:
| Even if a low performer reduces team productivity, having
| more team members rather than fewer might be in the manager's
| personal interest.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| At Meta managers can't really get away with hiding low
| performers. Your performance review isn't finalized by your
| manager, but rather the manager submits your review to a
| calibrating board that tries to ensure fairness and maintain
| quality standards. They will refute at all cost that this is
| stack ranking but you are absolutely graded on the curve of the
| other engineers in your department and level.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| That's nowhere near the same as "stack ranking" in the way
| that the term generally used in the tech industry...
|
| I wouldn't want to work somewhere at FB scale that doesn't
| grade you on the curve of other engineers in your department
| and level, once your departments are large enough that's
| exactly how it should work.
|
| What's problematic is forcefully defining X percent as being
| low performing, the comparison to peers is a misused kernel
| of benefit.
| bin_bash wrote:
| They have a policy that XX% of engineers in a given
| department should* be given "Meets Most". If that's not
| stack ranking I'm not sure what would be.
|
| BTW "meets most" likely doesn't sound too bad to non-
| Metamates. Internally it's a pretty bad mark on your
| record. It doesn't directly relate to being fired but a ton
| of people quit when they receive it. I view it as sort of a
| "pre-PIP" state.
|
| (* Managers/directors will say it's only a suggestion but
| nobody really believes that. I'm sure management themselves
| are frowned upon for not having enough MM under them.)
| piva00 wrote:
| > "meets most" likely doesn't sound too bad to non-
| Metamates. Internally it's a pretty bad mark on your
| record.
|
| The kind of newspeak I've heard from multiple friends and
| former coworkers that ended up at FB/Meta at some point.
| Well, the ones that didn't fall into the cult of Mark.
|
| It might be because I'm getting older but this is the
| kind of stuff that makes me want to puke. The co-optation
| of language to exude an aura of friendliness is
| absolutely disgusting.
| geodel wrote:
| See the comments in this thread and elsewhere about HR
| related issues and you can gauge how much plain speak is
| hated. So no wonder companies, HR departments resort to
| newspeak.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| People hate it when they realize they wasted their lives
| trying to appease some faceless corporate masters, only
| to be stabbed in the back.
|
| It doesn't matter how much friendly-sounding bullshit you
| slather on if that's what's happening.
|
| relevant to the overarching topic:
| https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-05-24
| ras3022 wrote:
| It's basically a 3 star review, the labels don't actually
| matter. Is a 3 star good? or is it bad? Who knows. It
| either depending on context. And that's why people don't
| like it.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Are you talking about "Metamates"--if so I said that
| ironically. I don't think I've ever heard anyone outside
| of the execs use that term when they weren't being
| sarcastic.
| piva00 wrote:
| No, I meant in the case of "meets most" being used in an
| extremely negative connotation.
| bin_bash wrote:
| ah apologies, I'm not sure why I didn't read that
| correctly the first time. It's wrong to call it
| "extremely negative" though, my words were "pretty bad".
| There are 2 levels lower than MM but they're rarely used.
|
| MM is a warning--it means you need to improve or you'll
| likely be put on a PIP.
| piva00 wrote:
| No worries! I apologise for misrepresenting it as
| "extremely negative", still with the meaning of "pretty
| bad" I believe it's a specially disgusting type of
| language, why use positive-sounding jargon for
| "underperforming"? What's wrong with using
| "underperfoming" if that's what "meets most" means?
|
| I despise this, the dissonance between a positivity-
| sounding "meets most" with the actual meaning being
| "pretty bad" is what I expect from the North Korean
| regime, or Russia. It's a disgusting type of
| newspeak/corporatespeak which, admittedly irrationally,
| boils my blood.
| bin_bash wrote:
| There actually is a reason (though you might not like
| it). The internal docs are pretty open about this, I
| think I can do a decent job capturing the idea:
|
| The idea is they consider themselves to have a very high
| bar (which I think is largely accurate). They say you
| "meet most expectations" which means you hit the marks on
| all but 1 or 2 criteria. It's not that you're not good at
| your job, it's that that's not good enough for them.
|
| Of course anyone receiving a MM is having a very shitty
| day despite that. They could use more direct language but
| I'm not sure it would have any practical difference.
| acchow wrote:
| > XX% of engineers in a given department should* be given
| "Meets Most"
|
| Hmmm this doesn't sound like the Facebook I worked at
| bin_bash wrote:
| it used to be documented publicly (internally). Last I
| checked (around a year ago) you could still find the doc
| somewhere in history. Ask on Blind, they'll send you a
| link.
|
| EDIT: sorry I see you said "worked at". So I guess you
| won't be able to verify.
|
| In this thread someone mentions it exactly how I remember
| the doc describing it:
| https://www.teamblind.com/post/Companies-With-Stacked-
| Rankin...
| pianoben wrote:
| By definition, that's how "grading on a curve" works. You
| fit your population to the curve. Some end up at the
| extremities.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| My entire point is that grading on a curve is not the
| same "defining the curve such that X% of our people are
| at the low end".
|
| The curve is defined by the organization. They can
| carefully examine it, refine it, backtrack how it's
| performed... or you can have someone clueless hear that
| so and so company fires Y percent, so let's tweak the
| curve until Y percent are at the "extremities"
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > ensure fairness and maintain quality standards
|
| Got a good chuckle out of this.
|
| My experience with calibration at multiple companies is it's
| where you realize not only does your review depend on how
| happy you make your manager, but how politically savvy your
| manager is coupled with how much you were able to impress the
| people on the calibration committee.
|
| It also gives your manager a nice out if you work hard, but
| they don't quite like you. All they have to do is not fight
| for you in calibration and you'll never be able to get much
| beyond a "meets expectations" rating.
| water-your-self wrote:
| And why should you work hard for a manager that doesn't
| like you in the first place? Clear signal to find another
| place to be, imo.
| acchow wrote:
| > They will refute at all cost that this is stack ranking
|
| Graded in the context of peers' performance does not imply
| that they sort employees by performance.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Interesting. I can't find a way to read "graded in the
| context of peers" that doesn't parse into exactly the same
| concept as "sort employees by performance". AFAIK, it's not
| something you can interpret as, those are literally
| synonyms.
|
| But well, stack ranking is not only about sorting (the name
| is a lie), it's about placing people in fixed sized
| cohorts. The real question is if there is a limitation on
| the number of raises or a minimum on the number of people
| treated as "low performant".
| strulovich wrote:
| The cohorts at Meta are not fixed size (at least not at
| the team level).
|
| You do get to see the average size of cohorts, and you
| will need to explain why your team doesn't meet them -
| for example if the entire team project is going
| exceedingly well, or the team is really made out if a lot
| of extraordinarily talented people - then you can argue
| why you have more than the average rate of excellent
| rankings.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... To me that sounds like the cohorts have fixed
| sizes, but the top management will break the rules for
| their friends.
|
| Anyway, even if it honestly for "extraordinarily
| talented" people, that's still stupid stack-ranking.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| That's because once you have a score for each employee
| you already have a sort button in excel. Who wouldn't?
| purpleblue wrote:
| If you are grading in the context of peers, it's absolutely
| a form of sorting. Think of it like a partition-exchange
| sort, where everything past a particular level is in one
| bucket and everything above that level is in another
| bucket.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| What does sorting by performance look like to you?
|
| The curve determines rating and compensation, influences
| promotion decisions, projects people get to work on and
| what opportunities come their way. The seems like a sort to
| me given that budget and project opportunities are fixed in
| many places.
| nightpool wrote:
| The key component of stack ranking / sorting by
| performance is that there's no _absolute_ measure of your
| contribution, only a _relative_ measure by which you have
| to outcompete everyone else in your team /department. If
| you fire your lowest 15% of engineers--no matter how good
| they are on an absolute level--that's a stack ranking
| system. It's a horrifying Red Queen's Race that punishes
| high-quality teams. I'm not necessarily saying that
| Meta's system is _good_ , but at least it's not _that_.
|
| EDIT: It sounds like at least some people are claiming
| that Meta has an internal policy that X% of your
| engineers under you are supposed to be given "Meets Most
| Expectations" ratings, which would also be pretty close
| to stack ranking (if at least allowing for _some_
| management leniency)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32930370
| epolanski wrote:
| In other words, it's like if you get rid of the worst
| player in each NBA team.
|
| They are still super atheletes, but they are judged
| against other NBA teammates, not average professional
| basketballer in the world.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| The _other_ key component of stack ranking was that it 's
| on a per team basis.
|
| A team of 20 people may have no low performers. An org of
| 400 probably has a couple, at some point the law of large
| numbers does really start to apply, and you're no longer
| in competition with the people you're working with on the
| daily.
|
| If one member of your two-pizza team is going to get
| fired each year, it makes sense to throw someone under
| the bus on the reg. If one member of your 100 person org
| is going to get fired each year, that strategy doesn't
| make sense.
| evgen wrote:
| Having endured several such calibration sessions at
| FB/Meta I can also assure you that we are not even
| talking about 'large' numbers before there is a strong
| expectation that the ranking totals within an org will
| meet the predicted curve when it comes to the percentage
| at exceeds, meets, and meets most. I distinctly remember
| wasting more than 15 minutes of my life arguing with a
| skip level manager that someone who had course corrected
| and delivered solid work while digging themselves out of
| a PIP was at least a meets before eventually realizing
| this manager had a quota of meets most to fill and the
| person we were discussing was destined for that bucket
| just to make the numbers look as expected.
| znpy wrote:
| I was contacted by meta just less than a month ago, and I
| declined the offer of an interview... I guess i dodged a
| bullet?
| bergenty wrote:
| Yeah the good life bullet.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| The pay is near top and the engineers are talented. There
| are a lot of systems in place to get you to work near max
| capacity all the time with little slowdown time. There are
| lots of processes and political upheavals that make it hard
| to ship code. Some people love it.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| do they have bidets yet? Try google instead.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| How many Michelin stars on the food?
| waynesonfire wrote:
| But, I'm not joking. Google has bidets.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That sounds like a place you'd go if you were using work
| to distract you from a problem in your personal life.
| VHRanger wrote:
| Or distract that you're writing code for a platform that
| harms people
| gagege wrote:
| IDK, I wouldn't be able to be distracted from the fact
| that I'm working for Lord Sauron.
| wallscratch wrote:
| Can you give an example of a system that's in place to
| ensure workers are near max capacity most of the time?
| [deleted]
| myko wrote:
| and rarely shipping, to boot!
| rockinghigh wrote:
| It comes down to the extreme focus on performance review.
| It creates an environment where every engineer is
| pressured to move some metrics like time spent on app,
| number of videos watched, or ad revenue. Because you're
| compared with your peers, you have to work a little more
| than them to maintain a good rating and stay in the race.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| yeah well put
| battery_glasses wrote:
| Diff count/LoC count is recorded and made publicly
| available for all engineers in a graph that lets you
| easily compare metrics between developers and teams. This
| means if you are constantly comparing your output to the
| rest of the team.
|
| The multi-axis performance review criteria that requires
| you to show deliverables on things like your impact on
| team-building or culture. This means that when you might
| normally get a couple week low-output time between
| projects, you are usually looking for something to fill
| in the non-coding axis, like organizing a team virtual
| offsite event or searching for a way to improve the
| codebase.
|
| Organizing team activities and code quality initiatives
| are a good thing, but the explcitivity in which you need
| to show deliverable impact on all axis is something I
| found unique to Meta and very exhausting.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Doesn't that just encourage writing code for max LoC
| rather than efficiency or maintainability? Instead of
| generalizing a procedure you use in multiple places to
| make it a single function, if you write it out (slightly
| differently) each time you do it, then you get a higher
| LoC count?
| battery_glasses wrote:
| I mean people there aren't stupid and there is a fairly
| high engineering bar, your code won't get through review
| if you're doing stuff like that.
|
| Where it really digs is when you are 1.5 weeks into
| writing an in depth project plan, meeting with other
| engineers, coordinating cross teams, researching,
| reviewing code etc. you better have a good explanation
| why your delivery over time graph has a big flat spot.
| aaaaaaaaaaab wrote:
| I've never experienced this at Meta. In fact I've worked
| considerably less intensely there than at my previous
| place, and I was considered a high performer in my team.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| Were you on a product or a platform team?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| That penalizes those implementing one line bug fixes
| buried in the codebase. Each one may be worth 10K lines
| of new code but numeric driven management will never
| know.
| [deleted]
| pas wrote:
| it depends. likely yes, but.
|
| there are good (usually small) teams doing interesting and
| professionally fulfilling work that's not really common
| elsewhere. (things that come due to "hyperscale". a-a-and,
| unfortunately, in this regard all big corps are alike. so
| if you want to do something like that, then your best bet
| is a corp like FB. though of course there are smaller niche
| companies for everything, so just because of some niche
| don't rush to big co-s.)
| curiousllama wrote:
| Anecdotally, I know this process got rid of at least 1
| engineer in the past few months. No egregious mistakes, just
| general underperformance.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| It gets rid of plenty of performing/overperforming
| engineers too because it is exhausting.
| ynx wrote:
| Yep.
|
| I saved my team a couple of times over but pissed off a
| manager in the process. My performance review had
| multiple contradictions praising me and admonishing me
| for the same things (being a good mentor but not spending
| any time onboarding new team members, etc). I left rather
| than deal with the gaslighting that was all but certain
| to ramp up.
| musicale wrote:
| Interesting that they seem to think that software developer
| performance can be measured meaningfully and accurately in a
| standard way across teams.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| So should they hand out promotions and fire people based on
| randomness?
|
| Take the manager's word for it and go all in on nepotism?
|
| What's the better solution?
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Less scaling, smaller focus? I kid, but there's not an
| actual correct answer to any of this. Nobody likes
| nepotism except the family that it serves.
| godelski wrote:
| This may not be surprising at all actually. Look at how
| they form their feeds. It is hyper-dependent on a singular
| metric: engagement. Engagement doesn't mean you're making
| your users more connected or happier, it just means they
| are using your product more (e.g. fighting and yelling at
| one another). Goodhart's Law in action. But I agree that
| something like human performance is incredibly difficult to
| quantify and requires a lot of nuance. But people, and
| especially bureaucrats, don't like nuance.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| Maybe some of these engineers can take some time to reflect on
| their lives and possibly retire. I did a few months ago and I
| love it.
| mmmpop wrote:
| YEAH THIS
|
| My company is being eaten again by another company that makes
| them a market leader and rather than compete for a new job in a
| much bigger tech department, I'm taking my stack of cash and
| finishing my engineering degree of which I have about 75
| applicable credits toward. Fuck "development" as a career,
| that's just a toolset now.
|
| I'm still sticking around the old gig to support the legacy
| systems for 10 hours a week and keeping the channel open for
| the future, but I'm gonna sit back and watch the industry
| smolder for a bit.
|
| The prospect of interviewing for a development job makes me
| shudder.
| mrazomor wrote:
| > after the biggest companies hired at breakneck speed through
| the pandemi
|
| Isn't this the main reason why this "frugality excercise" is
| being held, and unnecessary stress generated? Sounds like a major
| VP+ screwup. I hope that layer will answer.
|
| I'm not into conspiracy theories, but this mess seems
| orchestrated. Or simply CEOs trying to keep the feature parity at
| the HR level...
| jedberg wrote:
| It is fairly well known that Google and Facebook have been making
| defensive hires the last few years. Ie. They would hire someone
| not because they necessarily wanted them but because they were
| worried they might go to the other competitor.
|
| Now that hiring has cooled they are willing to drop those folks.
| alchemooly wrote:
| I've noticed news articles saying that Meta have been cutting
| back on support staff, like cleaners and custodial roles. To me,
| these are the wrong people to be cutting. The people who clean
| Meta are not the reason why Meta is hemorrhaging money. I'm sure
| they actually do their jobs very well.
|
| They should fire the people who are actually causing the
| problems. Everyone stopped using facebook because they are
| uncomfortable using a giant, ad serving, spy machine. They are
| also discouraged that facebook started deciding which friends are
| important to the user instead of letting the user pick. The
| people who implemented these ?features? should be the first to be
| fired.
|
| Similarly, the reason everyone is walking away from Google is
| because the search is getting worse. Why? Because Google
| increasingly doesn't allow you to search for what actually
| exists, but instead what it thinks you should see. Fire the
| people who did this. Fire them because they are destroying your
| company.
|
| I don't care if you don't, it's your wealth to lose, but I also
| know that's not who will be shouldering the burden of yet another
| recession. I could easily do this for every company: Netflix:
| it's the crappy political shows, Microsoft: it's the telemetry
| and continually slower product, Apple: it's intentionally slowing
| working products, Goldman Sachs: it's the bro/frat culture, Most
| Banks: it's the insulting fees, Amazon: it's the way you treat
| your warehouse staff: Most Fast Food: it's the price gouging Most
| Food companies: it's the annoying shrinkflation. Fire these
| people. They made you short term profits and now your brand is
| ruined and everyone hates you.
|
| But instead they will fire the people who are actually doing
| their job, and keep all the executives and "thought leaders", or
| whatever, in their protected positions. I _think_ everyone
| basically knows why everyone hates facebook and left. Just stop
| doing that, is what I 'm getting at.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| > Apple: it's intentionally slowing working products
|
| This is really disingenuous. They slowed the CPU on products
| with a worn out battery in order to prevent the CPU from
| overdrawing from the battery, causing a reboot. Not exactly
| what I would call "intentionally slowing working products" but
| rather "reducing CPU power consumption to mitigate abrupt
| reboots to keep a reliable user experience".
|
| Granted, Apple was a bit shady by not documenting this and
| giving the user the option to toggle it, until they were
| "caught".
| water-your-self wrote:
| > They slowed the CPU on products with a worn out battery in
| order to prevent the CPU from overdrawing from the battery,
| causing a reboot
|
| Only after they have made it impossibly expensive to replace
| some lithium.
|
| This is an incredibly disingenuous defense of their actions.
| Apple is fully trying to tie hardware refreshes to the
| cadence of should be battery refreshes and the frog has been
| so boiled that android devices realized it was more
| profitable to follow suit.
|
| Apple is incredibly shady and there simply isnt a defense
| here.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _I 've noticed news articles saying that Meta have been
| cutting back on support staff, like cleaners and custodial
| roles. To me, these are the wrong people to be cutting._
|
| In my experience, some non-trivial amount of these cost-control
| measures is about signaling. I worked in Japan for a large
| company that allowed employees to ride in first class (Green
| Car) on the Narita Express when traveling internationally for
| business; that went away during a period of belt-tightening.
| Saved a whole $15 each way.
| kube-system wrote:
| Remember that their users are not their customers. User
| experience at either of those businesses is only relevant as
| much as it is useful in attracting advertisers to the platform.
|
| Your butcher isn't too concerned about whether the chickens
| like the decor in their cage.
| water-your-self wrote:
| Chickens arent at liberty to choose their butcher, typically.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| One day you'll enter the corporate world and understand that
| getting rid of an executive that took a few bad decisions is a
| lot more damaging than getting rid of the best unqualified
| worker in the world.
|
| On top of that, I'd argue that steering Facebook and Google in
| those directions is exactly what their executives and their
| customers want.
| dqpb wrote:
| They're also still recruiting
| metadat wrote:
| Just because a job gets posted doesn't mean it is actually
| available to be filled. The barrier to posting jobs to LinkedIn
| is extremely low.
|
| Don't let yourself be fooled into a false sense of confidence,
| you'd really need to test the process out to see if it yields
| an offer!
| dqpb wrote:
| I don't mean jobs posted
| makoz wrote:
| Data point of one and all but I chatted with a Meta recruiter
| a month ago and asked specifically about the hiring freeze
| that was on-going at the time. They mentioned they were still
| hiring for more senior engineers so YMMV.
| metadat wrote:
| Recruiters' whole primary job is to recruit, and they don't
| get a lot of top secret information about what's coming
| next, either. It's in their best interest to always say
| they are hiring, otherwise why are they even employed by
| Senor Zuckerberg? They don't get a two month vacation
| during a hiring freeze.
|
| And yeah, if you are top, top egghead talent it's possible
| there is always at job for you at Meta. It might just save
| that recruiters job if they source you and you pan out.
|
| Think about it like this: earlier this year the bar to get
| an offer was that you need to be hot, like a 6/10 before.
| In this new climate, you need to be more like a 9.5/10 to
| make it through their little hiring game.
|
| With that said..
|
| Don't let some random on the Internet stop or discourage
| you; go get that job if you are up to the task and actually
| want to work at Meta! Have fun.. yeah.
|
| My original comment was more about the non-Bigco job
| postings, a lot of times they may just be testing the
| waters to see what they can dredge up. If it looks
| appealing, they might bite. It's mostly a huge waste of
| time for the poor candidates, though.
| dominotw wrote:
| I just spoke to a META recruiter
| tempsy wrote:
| This will be the trend among most tech companies.
|
| Very clear the market has now negatively reacted to high
| operating expenses that largely stem from excessive headcount.
|
| Most companies will likely not reduce pay if they can help it to
| maintain competitiveness, but if you're a bottom or middle
| performer or on a non-revenue generating team suddenly your job
| security even at "safe" companies like Google is at risk.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| Personally, being laid off sounds pretty good right about now.
| Paid vacation before going back into a hot job market for a
| full remote job.
| paganel wrote:
| > hot job market for a full remote job.
|
| I honestly don't think there are that many remote jobs
| available that pay at the FAANG level, outside of FAANG
| companies, that is. Unless one goes into consulting, which
| comes with its own risks even during a non-turbulent and
| recession-proof market, which most definitely we don't have
| right now.
| jzb wrote:
| The job market seems to have cooled substantially from where
| I'm looking. I have friends at a lot of different major tech
| companies and hiring has slowed or stopped in all cases.
| Earlier this year it was full steam ahead hiring, now it's
| harder to get reqs, reqs are being pulled, etc.
|
| Now, if you have really in-demand skills / experience that
| may not matter much. But companies are slamming on the
| breaks. If I was laid off tomorrow I'd expect it to take
| twice as long to find a job as it would've at the end of 2021
| or early this year. Not "there aren't any jobs" but I
| wouldn't consider this a "hot" market for the majority of
| roles.
| iepathos wrote:
| Yeah, it definitely depends on what your occupation is. If
| you're a software engineer it's still crazy hot right now.
| mmmpop wrote:
| I presume it's web dev because good lord the market
| doesn't need more people that only know how to do a
| React.
| marktangotango wrote:
| I think the parent was posting ironically or forgot to add
| the \s? Otherwise, yeah, folks need to hang on to those
| '21/'22 salaries if they can. We may not see those again
| for some time.
| jollyllama wrote:
| It's cooling off. Zombie companies are going to have trouble
| continuing as rates rise.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| people have been saying this for 2 decades. I'll believe it
| when I see it.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Well you can always test the market, it won't hurt
| anyway.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| rates haven't been rising for two decades.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| there's been a new reason for why "this time is
| different" for the past 2 decades.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I mean a number of tech companies are declining in value.
| What would you need to see happen to consider them "in
| trouble"? More layoffs?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| The boom of the past two decades was fueled by low
| interest rates!
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| and before that it was the other thing. As I said, I'll
| believe it when I see it ;)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| You're about to.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32928803
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| tempsy wrote:
| You haven't noticed a bunch of multi bil tech cos down
| 90% in less than a year?
|
| Carvana is the poster child of zombie tech co that only
| made sense in a zero rate environment. Many others like
| it.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I see your Carvana and raise you a Klarna
| jszymborski wrote:
| I must be pretty out of the loop because these sound like
| new Pokemon names.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Well, there was at least one significant downturn during
| that time. Raising rates are causing problems. This isn't
| an apocalyptic prediction.
| lumost wrote:
| This. There are more than a few companies where their burn
| rate + valuation make it impossible to do anything except
| go full steam ahead. If you lose a billion dollars a year
| on 500 MM in revenue with 2 billion in the bank and cost of
| goods sold of 600 MM /yr what else can you do? Hopefully
| you'll continue growing and get to the point where cutting
| costs leaves a viable business.
| boringg wrote:
| What job market are you looking at? The small shops with help
| wanted? I don't know any tech companies on major hiring and
| not many small companies have had any big rounds to raise and
| grow on AFAIK...
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| you don't know any tech companies hiring?
| tempsy wrote:
| Depends what your salary expectations are, I guess. Finding a
| role with the same compensation as a Meta/Google is more
| difficult than finding one of many dozens of companies that
| will pay you low six figures and some questionable equity
| package.
| throwaway22r wrote:
| > some questionable equity package
|
| one might argue it's a good time to gamble on a startup.
|
| I'm recently spared from a massive layoff, but it wouldn't
| have been bad if I was part of that. The severance was 4
| month pay plus accelerated vesting (for that 4 months)
|
| I paid off my house thanks to the hot stock market in past
| 2 years (no one's saying it out loud, but pendamic has been
| a boom for IT workers), and have some cash cushion to
| maintain the lifestyle anywhere between 2 yrs to 5 yrs
| (depending on how frugal I choose to be)
|
| So a 200 base and questionable (but high reward) equity in
| a startup working on things I'm interested in after a 4
| month paid vacation? Doesnt sound too bad.
| jejeyyy77 wrote:
| True, prob won't be comparable to a really good equity
| package from Meta/Google. But seeing a lot of $200K+ cash
| comp for full remote companies.
| moonshinefe wrote:
| Any recommendations for sites/services to look at job
| openings that aren't obvious? Or are you seeing these
| through your network or something?
| assttoasstmgr wrote:
| pb7 wrote:
| So you agree it's a downgrade in quality of life? Not
| sure what the point of this comment is other than being
| rude to people earning more than you.
| mmmpop wrote:
| rjh29 wrote:
| Adjusting to drinking your own coffee rather than
| ordering Starbucks via uber 3 times a day is an easier
| adjustment from going to affording food to not affording
| it all. Didn't think it needed to be spelled out but
| there you go.
| pb7 wrote:
| No one said otherwise, this is just a strawman. You don't
| have to be a dick just because something bad happens to
| someone doing better than you. Didn't think it needed to
| be spelled out but there you go.
| karmasimida wrote:
| > hot job market
|
| You'd be surprised :). Even Amazon isn't eating up engineers
| like it was a year ago.
|
| No, there is no hot job market, unless you want to take
| 30-40% pay cut.
| retinaros wrote:
| amazon is still massively hiring because they already pip
| people and they have a 4year cliff where people leave
| willingly cauz they make less.
|
| also frugality is already looped in amazon values so they
| wont overhire like google or meta
| karmasimida wrote:
| At least retail/Alexa is on some sort of hiring freeze as
| I heard.
|
| Problem is the same, lot of businesses get cut or
| deprioritized
| subsubzero wrote:
| Job market is on ice now, I used to get dozens of emails from
| recruiters every week, its trickled down to 1-2 now, which is
| nice as I am not looking to leave my company but its a stark
| contrast from 3+ months ago. And its a clear sign that
| companies are not hiring like they used to.
| xracy wrote:
| > Very clear the market has now negatively reacted to high
| operating expenses that largely stem from excessive headcount.
|
| Are you saying that because stock prices are dropping that the
| market has reacted to excessive headcount?
|
| Cause I think a better explanation for that, is that in the
| past 2 years we've had inflation, and that was reflected in the
| profits of the companies for 2020-21, and now that the fed is
| lowering interest rates, we're expecting that inflation to
| stop, and so that's affecting the stock market.
|
| This seems to have _very_ little to do with these companies
| business models, and everything to do with them failing to
| recognize that their profit changes are readily explained by
| inflation /deflation. Which seems to be a better explanation of
| what the markets are reacting to.
| lumost wrote:
| In fairness, at a mega-corp there is very little data on
| whether an employee would be successful in a different group.
| Some groups have bad charters/bad team dynamics/bad skills
| match. An internal transfer has a huge amount of visibility
| into these aspects when they transfer, much more than an
| external hire would.
|
| Its a pretty good deal to suggest to employees that they find a
| new team rather than performing a layoff, I wouldn't be
| surprised if the profitable/successful teams can still add head
| count for people they like.
| zerkten wrote:
| Other teams may be able to add headcount, but my experience
| with big companies is that the organization wants to manage
| the number of tenured people, and people who are now sitting
| in non-terminal levels. Given how many people externally are
| competing for spots there is less of an incentive to
| prioritize internal people. I don't necessarily agree with
| this, but you have to be aware of all the stakeholders
| perspectives.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Based on my experience at FB, they way prefer to get
| internal transfers as they require less ramping up time.
| It's often not worth changing orgs though, as your equity
| doesn't get reset so you may end up with much less than a
| new hire
| tempsy wrote:
| >Among some Meta employees, the process of reapplying for
| jobs within a limited window internally is known as a sort of
| human-resources purgatory they call the "30 Day List."
|
| I mean from the article it's pretty clear giving employees a
| month to find a new job internally is more like Hunger Games
| than some guarantee you will be successful. It sounds like a
| way for companies to not have to admit they are doing
| layoffs.
| ras3022 wrote:
| Especially as it's not obvious how much headcount the other
| teams have.
|
| i.e. giving not-cut (the profitable/successful) teams a 1%
| headcount increase and cutting 10% of total staff is
| roughly equivalent to a 9% layoff.
| treis wrote:
| >Very clear the market has now negatively reacted to high
| operating expenses that largely stem from excessive headcount.
|
| Reducing staff by ~10% or whatever after doubling it in the
| last couple years isn't exactly a strong signal of anything.
| tempsy wrote:
| I'm speaking more to the stock price than Meta's actions.
| Shares trading lower than they were 5 years ago. And many of
| the unprofitable growth companies down 80-90% in less than a
| year.
|
| Point is tech companies are highly sensitive to interest
| rates and now have to course correct in a world where the
| market is punishing excessive spending.
| dafty4 wrote:
| The stock price dive at Meta is pretty clearly due to the
| $10B hit from Apple's Do Not Track Feature.
|
| Meta should make a free Android phone that allows tracking.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| Oh but they did! Meta leadership has always anticipated
| this risk. The problem is that they have not been able to
| fully mitigate it.
|
| Facebook Phone (rebranded HTC) was released in 2013
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_First but had poor
| sales.
|
| The metaverse is their next play to build a world where
| they are a bit more shielded from
| Apple/Google/Microsoft's hardware influence. Pivoting a
| large business is really hard.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I appreciate when people inside FB/Meta speak directly
| like this (as someone who loathes the Metaverse project)
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| To clarify, I'm not affiliated with Meta. Just an
| internet nerd who likes following how organizations think
| and evolve
| stocknoob wrote:
| Do not track is an easy scapegoat, but I think the rise
| of TikTok is a larger factor. Meta lost users.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It's definitely the ATT changes, literally cratered all
| their direct response ads on iOS (i.e. rich people).
|
| TikTok is definitely a concern but turning off the money
| pump is a much, much bigger one.
| badwolf wrote:
| I think this, along with a slew of other factors as well.
|
| Meta pivoting to burn money on a VR universe that nobody
| actually seems to want. Meta burning FB users by
| constantly altering their FB news feed, making it less
| and less a place for friends, and more a place to see
| endless reposted memes and ads for drop-ship products and
| stolen IP tshirts. Meta burning Instagram users by trying
| to force everyone's favorite photo-sharing app to be a
| shittier version of TikTok, as well as the above constant
| feed refactors...
| retinaros wrote:
| if this is tiktok they shouldnt worry for long i bet it
| will be banned before end of year
| tempsy wrote:
| Nasdaq is down 30%. Clearly macro factors like rates and
| inflation and recessionary pressures are putting pressure
| on rate sensitive companies generally speaking. You can't
| just say it's ad tracking when dozens of mid and large
| cap tech stocks are down 30-80% ytd
| paganel wrote:
| > Clearly macro factors like rates and inflation
|
| To quote from the latest Economist [1]:
|
| > This logic has broader implications than most investors
| realise. Now imagine you will receive $100 a year, for
| ever. By the reasoning above, this has a finite present
| value, since compound interest means payments in the
| distant future are almost worthless. With interest rates
| at 1%, the payment stream is worth $10,000; at 5%, it is
| worth $2,000. But as well as reducing the value, the
| higher rate also changes the distribution of that value.
| With rates at 1%, less than a tenth of the stream's value
| comes from payments made in the first ten years. At 5%,
| around two-fifths does.
|
| and
|
| > In other words, higher interest rates dramatically
| alter firms' incentives when choosing which timeline to
| invest over. Sacrificing short-term profits for longer-
| term gains is one thing when you are trying to persuade
| investors that your superapp, machine-learning algorithm
| or gene-sequencing widget has the potential to up-end an
| industry. It is another when even the best-case scenario
| has its value so heavily skewed towards what can be done
| in the next decade. Startup founders are used to shaking
| off derision over implausible, Utopian dreams. It is more
| of a kick in the teeth to realise that even Utopia is not
| worth much unless it can be achieved in short order.
|
| Sorry for the long quotes, it was the best I could do, I
| highly recommend that article in its entirety.
|
| [1] https://archive.ph/9GbfH
| subsubzero wrote:
| Thanks for this, its confusing for many as to why growth
| companies(low/no-profit) are getting hit so hard due to
| rising interest rates and these quotes and the article
| linked explain the reasoning very well.
| nappy-doo wrote:
| Not really. Meta raised 10B (really their first debt ever)
| in April 2022, and GOOG has like 14B in debt. Google could
| pay that with less than a quarter's worth of earnings, and
| I think Meta's not far behind.
|
| IMO, the market is overreacting. Both companies look pretty
| cheap to me.
| nluken wrote:
| Markets are forward looking. FB's growth numbers don't
| look great, and if you don't buy into their bet on the
| Metaverse you might be less inclined to see a bright
| future for that company.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Markets are forward looking, but people making the
| decisions are plagued by recency bias and fighting the
| last battle. No comment on the relative contribution of
| different incentives, but being "forward looking" doesn't
| mean "correct" and it can also include an overreaction
| based on recent data points.
| acchow wrote:
| If FB revenue stops growing, markets are going to keep
| punishing it. A PER of 11 won't feel cheap with 0% growth
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| The article says its 50 people at Google who are affected.
| And they have a chance to apply to other teams.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > or on a non-revenue generating team
|
| Apart from Search and AdSense, What team at Google isn't a non-
| revenue generating team?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| GCP, GSuite, Google Play Services/Android, Pixel, YouTube,
| Maps, off the top of my head.
| danellis wrote:
| Presumably also Nest and Fi.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Off the top of my head: Workspace, GCP, Android
|
| Maybe they are not strictly black in the P&L sense, but they
| are strategic revenue-generating business priorities.
| mandeepj wrote:
| https://archive.ph/d4QXo
| yuan43 wrote:
| > Among some Meta employees, the process of reapplying for jobs
| within a limited window internally is known as a sort of human-
| resources purgatory they call the "30 Day List."
|
| > Meta, as of last year the name of Facebook's parent company,
| has long had a practice that employees whose roles are eliminated
| are subject to termination if they can't find a new job
| internally within a month. Many other companies also make efforts
| to reassign employees whose groups are closed or restructured. At
| Meta historically, it was usually only employees deemed
| undesirable who failed to land new positions. Now, affected
| employees and managers say, workers with good reputations and
| strong performance reviews are being pushed out on a regular
| basis.
|
| This sounds like a recipe for achieving rock-bottom morale of the
| remaining employees at warp speed. If anything, it seems worse
| than just firing people. By shunting high performers into the
| traditional dead-end path, the company simultaneously calls the
| employee's reputation into question while placing their
| professional short-term future in limbo.
|
| Why not just fire?
| danellis wrote:
| It's odd to read about hiring freezes when they're both still
| actively recruiting.
| paulpauper wrote:
| if you are talented enough, they still want you
| [deleted]
| devwastaken wrote:
| No company is ever going to say "nope not hiring". That's
| suicide. It would be like saying "nope our competitors product
| is better".
| confidantlake wrote:
| Are they? I did an interview with one of them a few months ago,
| passed hiring committee, and have been told everything is
| frozen. The other one just cancelled my interview.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Google had things completely on hold for six weeks or so, but
| has restarted.
| retinaros wrote:
| gcp is still mostly frozen. google rescinded even verbal
| offers. some people trash aws for the culture but really it
| is all of them faang
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| They're still reaching out at least. I got contacted
| yesterday.
| confidantlake wrote:
| That is pretty lame unless it is for a very specialized
| role. But for whatever reason it seems like many companies
| go through the whole song and dance even if they have no
| intention of hiring.
| bluGill wrote:
| It looks good to investors to see a lot of openings, so
| some companies that are not growing (that is they are in
| a great market that is small and won't grow) will go
| through that act of looking for people without hiring
| anyone. That is they get the job description of existing
| people, and post ads for that job, collect resumes, (they
| might do an initial phone screen interview for practice)
| but never hire anyone.
| olliej wrote:
| The other one I've seen seems to be semi-regularly getting rid of
| like 50 people at a time - like essentially just keeping any big
| layoffs below the reporting level. I'd assume/hope that whatever
| regulations are involved count layoffs over a period rather than
| just how many in a given event - but it would not surprise me if
| it didn't.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| They are probably trying to avoid the WARN act and staying under
| the radar.
|
| A goal of 10% sounds like vitality curve/rank and yank/stacked
| ranking.
|
| If 10% of employees get promoted at the same you will know.
| baq wrote:
| It's just accounting at this scale. 10% equals however many
| billion dollars per year 'saved'.
| paulbjensen wrote:
| Public companies trying to keep investors happy and share prices
| good during a downturn.
|
| Let them treat employees like cannon fodder. Some of those
| employees might end up creating something new and innovative,
| rather than building another product that gets eventually dead-
| pooled by Google, or copy-pasted by Meta.
| xpe wrote:
| If you had to identify the top three things (in terms of
| impact) that could be changed (albeit with difficulty) to
| reduce the chances of employees being stuffed into cannons,
| what would they be?
|
| My three would be:
|
| 1. Relatively weak labor protections in the USA.
|
| 2. The fiduciary requirement to maximize shareholder value. Why
| not allow a company to define its own metric, such as a blend
| of profit along with employee treatment (or others, within some
| notion of reasonableness*), make this metric public, provide
| some sort of accounting and accountability for it, and let
| shareholders adjust accordingly.
|
| 3. The quarterly reporting of public companies. This makes
| long-term planning and investment much harder.
|
| * I haven't studied this very broadly. I'm familiar with the
| Triple Bottom Line and B-Corporations.
| nluken wrote:
| As far as I know, you can satisfy your fiduciary requirements
| by treating employees well simply by claiming that it
| attracts better employees and avoids costs associated with
| searching for new ones.
| lmm wrote:
| Keeping unproductive employees on in a punch-clock make-work
| position benefits no-one. If we're going to broadly
| restructure society to make this kind of thing better, we'd
| be better off strengthening the social safety net and getting
| rid of all the stuff that says you have to have a single
| full-time job or your life will suck. Nationalise healthcare,
| remove all the weird tax/benefit cliffs that happen when a
| job goes over/under x hours/week, legalise building more
| homes in places people want to live...
| sequoia wrote:
| Facebook and google have "required some employees to apply for
| new jobs if they wish to remain at the company."
|
| I have to say this is a sort of hilarious newspeak framing of
| layoffs. "We're not laying you off, you just need to apply and
| get accepted for a job or else you're terminated." OK, so I was a
| job-haver, now I'm a job-seeker... but at least I haven't been
| laid off!
| klabb3 wrote:
| Haha, even a cynic like myself couldn't see this coming. It's a
| fantastic way to shift focus away from leadership decision
| making towards competition between the very employees who are
| supposed to work together. I suspect there will be a _lot_ more
| politicking than the usual hiring process (which is quite
| objective, despite its other flaws).
| AyyWS wrote:
| I had the same deal at a big telecom 7 years ago. The offer
| lasted one month. I moved to a better position with better
| pay/responsibilities.
| astrange wrote:
| This can be very valuable because it means you don't lose your
| unvested RSUs. Plus internal teams are more likely to already
| know you, or at least it's easier to show them your work, so
| the interview isn't necessarily that hard.
| alliao wrote:
| false hope, chances are when such mechanisms are in place all
| teams already have the clamp on budget/resourcing to achieve
| the overall x% reduction in headcount. so it ends up a big
| game of musical chairs, some just gotta go.
| top_post wrote:
| This is still lapping up the bullshit of what it actually is.
| It's a redundancy plain and simple, your job is being
| terminated, it should be reported as such.
| RyJones wrote:
| Microsoft did this post-Sybase split. People who had seen the
| Sybase code were contaminated, and had a bad time.
| groby_b wrote:
| 1) Vesting continues 2) Salary continues 3) Benefits continue
| 4) For the duration of the search, you don't have other things
| to do.
|
| ==> It's at the very least a paid job search. (If you only look
| internally during that time, you're doing it wrong). Please do
| talk to people who've experienced actual layoffs how that's a
| comparatively very cushy alternative.
|
| And let's not forget that an internal transfer is usually
| significantly easier than actually finding a new job.
|
| But sure, it's "newspeak".
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Not really newspeak. The difference is that you're still
| getting paid in between and still have a job, pretty different
| from getting laid off where you often don't get paid and don't
| have a job.
| mc32 wrote:
| But it's still "prove you're still worth it". Instead of, we
| have the following teams with openings, please pick one you
| want to go to. No, it's, we have openings in the following
| teams, prove that one of them want you enough.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Yeah sure but it's definitely different from being laid
| off. You can just look at the numbers. The vast majority of
| people end up on a new team and do not leave the company.
| deelowe wrote:
| Assumption being, if you can't pass interviews with another
| team, you're not good enough to stay. That only works for large
| campuses and of course, getting another role is more indicative
| of your networking abilities than skillset and experience.
| strulovich wrote:
| Meta doesn't do interviews when passing between teams though
| (at least not in the common case).
| thatfunkymunki wrote:
| false, i had to interview again during a layoff in 2020
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/technology/facebook-
| secur...)
| ihaveajob wrote:
| I see it as a last chance to move to a position that's not
| being terminated, and also an opportunity for someone who needs
| headcount and has the budget for it to pick proven candidates
| without the hassle of an external hire. Large companies are
| worlds of their own. But still, I imagine if you receive that
| message, I'd be worried.
| johncessna wrote:
| This seems at odds with the great resignation. Was that actually
| a thing? If so, do folks think it was encouraged by companies who
| saw that the great freeze and now great rif were coming?
| lesuorac wrote:
| My understanding of the great resignation was it was mostly an
| older population who had put off retirement that decided they'd
| rather be retired [1]. Sure a lot of people not 55+ also quit
| but they came back while 55+ did not.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation#United_State...
| francisofascii wrote:
| It definitely was a thing, but it was more about people leaving
| for better wages. This is signaling the great resignation era
| is ending and the pendulum is swinging back to normalcy and
| perhaps could potentially go into great layoff territory.
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