[HN Gopher] Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of res...
___________________________________________________________________
Meta announces hiring freeze, warns employees of restructuring
Author : minimaxir
Score : 304 points
Date : 2022-09-29 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| beckingz wrote:
| Layoffs time: move quickly and break people.
| scarmig wrote:
| If it's likely you'll need layoffs, it's probably best to move
| as quickly as possible. Otherwise gossip, speculation, and fear
| have the chance to dominate.
| switch007 wrote:
| At my company...
|
| 1. We're aware of the economic situation and what others
| companies are doing and are just monitoring
|
| 2. We decided to just to ever-so-slightly ease off the gas on
| hiring. It's definitely not a hiring freeze. Do not use those
| words.
|
| 3. Things are delayed just until the budget is discussed
|
| 4. No new hires (still don't call it a freeze) <-- We are here
|
| 5. Small amount of layoffs ?
|
| 6. Large amount of layoffs ?
|
| (1-4 was about 3 weeks.)
| parkingrift wrote:
| Facebook (Meta) cannot innovate. Their growth since inception is
| almost exclusively through acquisitions. Instagram, WhatsApp, and
| Oculus. The core Facebook product is arguably worse today than it
| was 15 years ago. Meta's response to new market entrants is to
| just copy their features, and when they do attempt to innovate
| it's just comically off-base (Metaverse). This entire "Metaverse"
| play is so ridiculous it's deep into meme territory.
|
| Meta should have plainly seen the writing on the wall with regard
| to their data collection and privacy practices but either
| wouldn't, or more likely couldn't, pivot to new areas.
|
| And now Zuck is here saying this hiring freeze is due to the
| economic situation. Peak comedy. The reality is Meta has no
| answer for TikTok, BeReal, Apple/Google privacy changes, or
| whatever else is coming to the market next.
|
| I wish Meta nothing but the worst, but I'm sorry for any
| unfortunate souls who chose to work their and will be out of a
| job.
| armitron wrote:
| Of all FAANGs I expect FB to be the first to sink. I see the
| writing on the wall..
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Why?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Their main product sucks and their Boomer user base is
| literally dying. The acquisitions are keeping them in the
| game, but Insta has intense competition from TikTok and Snap
| and YouTube. They don't have an unsinkable critical product
| that everyone uses and will continue to use through good and
| bad times, like search or mail.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Shit maybe they should buy Harley Davidson.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Snapchat is walking dead fwiw.
|
| TikTok is strong, but realistically will be banned across
| the west next couple years b/c of security problems.
|
| You might hate Instagram, and that's very understandable,
| but it's going to be fine.
| mrkramer wrote:
| Snapchat is still doing fine considering how much
| competition they have all over the place e.g. Instagram,
| TikTok, YouTube etc.
|
| TikTok won't be banned because US will force it to
| relocate all their relevant servers to US and hand in US
| citizens' data to US agencies. And realistically speaking
| TikTok is no different than Microsoft, Google and
| Facebook; instead all data going to one superpower it
| flows to another and majority of this data is garbage
| that's inefficiently used to target you with personalized
| ads. Personal data is mostly garbage like I said but data
| about specific groups and overall population might be
| more valuable and important taking in consideration
| economic competition and arms race between US and China.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I used to think this about Snap but then
| https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-
| social...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Problem with snapchat is that no one older than 25 uses
| it. They've already saturated their user base and stuffed
| as many ads as they can into the app. There's not really
| anywhere for them to go and they're still losing money.
| mrkramer wrote:
| They refused Facebook's acquisition offer but I think
| their endgame is getting acquired by Google. Facebook
| offered $3bn but Google will have to offer much more, at
| least x5 more.
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| TikTok being banned would cause immense backlash with the
| public. Odds are higher it will get replaced before a ban
| takes place, and Insta isn't exactly stepping up.
| vaiso wrote:
| Not the OP, and this is just speculation on my part so take
| it with a grain of salt.
|
| Meta gets the overwhelming majority (97.7%) of their revenue
| from advertising[1]. Their business model is completely
| reliant on using user data to sell highly targeted ads to
| sellers. While most consumers don't actually care what
| corporations do with their data, governments have been
| starting to crack down on the types of data that can be
| collected, and what it can be used for, especially with GDPR
| in the EU. The less data Meta can collect, the worse their
| targeted advertising will be, and fewer sellers will be
| willing to pay - or pay as much - for ads on their platforms.
| As it is, many companies are moving more towards influencer
| sponsorship for advertising, cutting platforms like Instagram
| out of the cost entirely.
|
| The problem is that all of Meta's eggs are in one basket, and
| that basket's bound to drop. Most other big tech companies
| have more diverse revenue sources, and so are more robust.
|
| That being said, I disagree with the premise - Netflix is
| probably going to the first FAANG company to fold.
|
| [1] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-
| details/...
| treis wrote:
| They're still a dominant player in a 2 sided market. They
| still have traffic (within their site + ad network) and
| buyers (people wanting to place ads). Even if we remove all
| user tracking and nuke all attribution they're still going
| to make a lot of money. It will shift to more national type
| ad campaigns and/or targeting based on page content.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Netflix is probably going to the first FAANG company to
| fold
|
| Why would Netflix go out of business? Are they overly
| burdened by debt?
| lordnacho wrote:
| Much stronger competition in the streaming space. Disney
| has better content for every family with kids, so they're
| first choice. Amazon already has people via Prime. How
| many more are you going to buy? Possibly one, small
| chance of two? You've got Netflix and all the others
| scrambling for that last space in the house.
|
| Plus they don't seem to be able to make a hit show of the
| kind that gets subscriptions, just a lot of not too
| terrible content.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sure, but I do not see why that would cause bankruptcy.
| Their market cap would shrink, but unless they are over
| leveraged, they should be able to continue operating
| without "folding".
| keepquestioning wrote:
| Instagram and Whatsapp are keeping them alive.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| If they play their cards right they could turn WhatsApp into
| the premier business to consumer contact platform. Not just
| messaging but also phone calls etc... That could massively
| reduce the spam calls.
|
| Maybe you could opt in for political calls if they pay you..
| pier25 wrote:
| Does Meta make serious money from Whatsapp?
| anm89 wrote:
| Absolutely. FB is a house of cards at this point.
| seydor wrote:
| It will metastasize
| raverbashing wrote:
| They will throw the book right at your face
| hinkley wrote:
| Problem: We will have hired all of the people we could ever hire
| within 10 years.
|
| Solution: layoffs
| brentmitchell25 wrote:
| They should only keep the engineers that remember how to solve
| leetcode hard problems /s
| loeg wrote:
| They haven't asked leetcode hard problems for years, at least.
| dominotw wrote:
| I got 3 hards only 6 months ago. How do you know what they
| are asking 'for years' do you have access to their questions
| or something.
| loeg wrote:
| I am familiar with Meta's interviewing policy, which
| proscribes LC "hard" type problems. I don't know the
| contents of every single interview, obviously. Your
| interviewer(s) violated explicit policy if you were given
| LC hards.
| google234123 wrote:
| In a way does it matter? The interviewers aren't making
| the final decisions and the actual hiring committee
| aren't stupid and should be able do some basic
| normalization.
| nobleach wrote:
| Have you ever interviewed with Facebook/Meta? They don't do
| leetcode problems. Say what you want about them as a company,
| but I've done quite a few interviews in my career and their
| process was one of my favorites.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Good to hear that it's changed if they're not. When I
| interviewed with Facebook, they asked a leetcode problem, had
| me come back into the office for a second one because I got
| strong feedback from all the other sessions, then rejected me
| with a suggestion that I should come back in 6 months when
| I'm better at tree traversals.
| ilickpoolalgae wrote:
| thereare5lights wrote:
| This is so false. They absolutely do leetcode problems
| dekhn wrote:
| Um, when I interviewed, there were two leetcode problems
| administered by junior engineers to me. A recruiter contacted
| me recently about a role and I asked if they still ask
| leetcode questions... got crickets in response.
| tristor wrote:
| I had a radically different experience. The worst interview
| I've ever had was with FB about 9 years ago. I got an offer
| and it was significantly (like more than 2x) what I was being
| paid at the time and I turned it down because the interview
| experience was so awful I couldn't imagine working with the
| people who had conducted my interview. Even setting aside
| other ethical concerns, I've added FB to my permanent
| blacklist of companies I will never work for sheerly because
| of how shit their interview process is.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I interviewed with them 12 years ago, it was a long time
| ago but I remember all the interviewers felt like they had
| come from a funeral, everyone was absolutely miserable. I
| knew right then and there I could never work at a company
| with such negativity, also they wanted me to skip my
| honeymoon to start with them which I was not about to do so
| overall a terrible company and experience. And after I
| started learning about their shady business dealings I put
| them on a permanent blacklist to this day.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > also they wanted me to skip my honeymoon to start with
| them
|
| They must be really strange folks. I can't imagine 1) a
| company who would propose such a thing to a (potential)
| employee, 2) a person who would agree to that. Seriously,
| WTF.
| iepathos wrote:
| Ask them for a million dollar bonus to do so and a
| contract saying they'll pay any losses due to divorce
| later on :P /s
| xvector wrote:
| I interviewed with Meta a few months ago and all my
| interviewers were upbeat, enthusiastic, and excited.
| Meanwhile my Google and Amazon interviewers looked
| miserable and bored as fuck.
|
| With Google it's actually been a pattern. Interviewed for
| them and passed HC three times, but each time I couldn't
| bring myself to work for them given how bored everyone
| looked.
| bckr wrote:
| A strategy my friend used was to get the "soft offer" and
| then shop around for a team for as long as it takes to
| find one that excited him.
| garmanarnar wrote:
| That's literally just Google's hiring practices. There is
| a team matching phase for all engineers.
| bitL wrote:
| Their interview process improved significantly and they had
| it arguably better than any other FAANG in recent years.
| ProAm wrote:
| I'm interested in any evidence about this. I'm not
| agreeing or disagreeing its just a extremely general
| statement about 5 companies with no facts behind it and
| would be interested to see whats different between all 5
| companies in 2022 in the talent acquisition department.
| tomrod wrote:
| Eh, must have failed to push it organization-wide.
| bitL wrote:
| Well, a friend of mine was invited to an on-site
| interview at Google once, flew a few hours there, then
| arrived at the reception, waited for 7 hours, then they
| told him they forgot about him and he can go back home.
| Some people have bad experiences for many different
| reasons (shrug)... Pity it happened to you.
| [deleted]
| cloverich wrote:
| Huh, I had an interview at Meta a few months back (which I
| backed out of) and the (very nice) interviewing prep
| instructions they provide very clearly stated you should be
| able to do leet code style questions, preferably two mediums,
| in an hour. Their interview process felt very organized and
| prepared overall, although I backed out before actually
| interviewing with folks.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I just joined Meta this year and had to solve leetcode-style
| problems, not sure what you mean? Maybe that they aren't
| literally taken from leetcode or taken on leetcode.com?
| dessant wrote:
| What made you want to work at Meta?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| A friend that joined Meta's AI team:
|
| Blue pill: I am passionate about connecting people
|
| Red pill: Money is nice, good people and low stress job
| colinmhayes wrote:
| money...
| filoleg wrote:
| I legitimately cannot see this question in the current
| context as anything but being made in bad faith.
|
| Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons
| for why someone would want to work for Meta? Something
| like "high pay, interesting/difficult challenges and
| problems to work on, large scale rarely found elsewhere,
| and lots of learning opportunities (including loads of
| great engineers to learn from)" never crossed your mind?
|
| Not saying that those were the reasons OP used to make
| their choice, could have been plenty others. But given
| there are so many obvious possible reasons, the question
| in the context of the original comment feels just off.
|
| P.S. I am neither current nor a former Meta employee. It
| is just jarring to see reddit-tier flamebait discourse in
| HN threads.
| stonogo wrote:
| I always think of the same question when I talk to
| someone who goes to work for Meta. High pay, sure, but
| that's available elsewhere.
|
| Scale, by now, is surely an operations matter. If they're
| still having to innovate to perform at their current
| scale, what the hell have they been doing? In other
| words, aside from the VR distraction, what interesting
| challenges remain at Meta?
|
| I know they have to rebuild their ad platform since Apple
| devastated it. But is "convincing people to look at
| advertisements" really still an interesting challenge?
| That's the point of view I don't understand, and would
| like to!
| dessant wrote:
| > Do you seriously struggle to think of possible reasons
| for why someone would want to work for Meta?
|
| Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for
| such a harmful company as Meta. People usually don't land
| there because of a desperate need for money, which would
| probably be one of the very few acceptable reasons for
| joining that company.
|
| And why should my question be in good faith? Why should
| we not call out people who cheerfully join organizations
| that pose a threat to our future, and show no civic
| responsibility?
| filoleg wrote:
| > I struggle to think of a good reason to work for such a
| harmful company as Meta
|
| WhatsApp is an extremely useful product in my life.
| Instagram is nice for keeping up to date with some
| friends I don't get a chance to hangout in-person with
| often, as well as following some small local artist and
| museum pages. I dont care for FB as a product anymore,
| but pre-pandemic it was great for helping organize events
| with my friends. Oculus Quest 2 is a product I use daily
| and enjoy.
|
| Most people outside of a subset of HN boiling in their
| own echochamber consider a lot of those products as
| useful in their lives, and will just give you the look of
| "huh, sounds interesting, i will look into it later. Oh,
| just remembered I had an appointment in an hour, welp
| gotta go, see ya later" if you try to give them that
| "harmful" spiel.
|
| > And why should my question be in good faith?
|
| Because that's what people come to HN for. If I wanted
| bad faith takes galore, I would need to go no further
| than reddit.
|
| > Why should we not call out people who cheerfully join
| organizations that pose a threat to our future, and show
| no civic responsibility?
|
| Because that's just your opinion. And it is sliding into
| QAnon-level justifications for using arguments like "why
| should we wear masks, when they pose a threat to our
| freedoms and the way of life!" and "why should we not
| storm the capitol, it is a civic responsibility to free
| ourselves from the shadow cabal's tyrrany and threat to
| our future!".
|
| I don't agree with those QAnon takes, so I hope you
| realize that not everyone universally agrees with your
| takes either. And not because they are being paid by Meta
| or were "brainwashed".
| int_19h wrote:
| I see a lot more negativity towards Facebook IRL than I
| do here on HN. If anything, the correlation seems to be
| that those closest to the tech industry are the ones most
| positive about it, while casual users are extremely
| negative.
| dessant wrote:
| You should empathize more with the victims of those
| platforms to understand why Meta is being called out,
| both the people who got radicalized and also those who
| are being murdered. A service can provide you a great
| experience, while also being used as a tool to facilitate
| ethnic cleansing.
|
| People have been protesting the latter, including dozens
| of human rights organizations around the world, not just
| HN users.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for
| such a harmful company as Meta.
|
| It seems you also struggle to understand that the
| majority of the world does not consider them to be a
| harmful company, and do not agree with your assessment of
| it.
|
| Anti-disclaimer: I do not work for FAANG, nor have I. I
| also never had a FB/Instagram account. I'm not fond of
| Facebook, but I can see other people's perspectives.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Yes, I struggle to think of a good reason to work for
| such a harmful company as Meta.
|
| Then you aren't actually asking to learn. Instead you are
| judging the poster. That's a thing you can do, but
| couching it in a question is terrible forum etiquette.
| bagels wrote:
| I have. They definitely ask leetcode type of problems.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I spoke to a Meta recruiter a few months ago who offered to
| send me helpful algo resources for the interview.
| pyler wrote:
| Willing to share them?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They ghosted me, but it was in the initial call.
| burai wrote:
| I interviewed for them. Questions were Front End related. One
| of the questions were "how could you find a node in an hmtl
| by id", to which I answered "using the DOM api, a
| querySelector would do a good job". The interviewer started
| hypothesising that the querySelector is not available, so we
| had to start discussing a whole binary traversal algorithm.
| If that's not leetcode I don't know what qualifies as it
| morelisp wrote:
| Basic tree traversal is considered "leetcode" these days?
| No wonder software is shit.
| throwawayhtml wrote:
| document.getElementById??
| int_19h wrote:
| That's the DOM API.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| They are notorious for wanting their engineers to spit out
| memorized solutions of leetcode hards
| loeg wrote:
| Leetcode-style problems yes; "hards" specifically, no.
| nice_byte wrote:
| I have interviewed with them more than a single time, and
| this is simply not true.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| This thread leaves me wondering if, perhaps, interviewing
| differs within the organization. Lots of confident "nuh-
| uh"s on both sides.
| nice_byte wrote:
| nsenifty wrote:
| They don't ask leetcode questions for Front-end engineers
| AFAIK. It's mostly practical Javascript/DOM/browser
| questions.
|
| Funnily enough though, I heard once you join as a Front-
| end engineer, you are pretty much a regular SWE and can
| join any team and work on any tech, even backend/systems.
| tempsy wrote:
| it probably depends on the role and team. to say they
| don't have leetcode style interviews at any stage for any
| candidate is "simply not true"
| nice_byte wrote:
| I mean, they do ask algorithmic problems, but first,
| they're not "leetcode hard" (leetcode hards can get just
| insane, it's impractical to ask those in an interview
| setting), more like mediums, and second - out of 6 or 7
| interviews maybe 2-3 will be those. Domain-specific /
| system design ones are more important. Though that
| depends on the level they're hiring for, I imagine fresh
| grads get more "write code on whiteboard" types of
| questions.
| tempsy wrote:
| the claim was that they don't do leetcode questions, not
| that they do easy and medium ones but not hard ones.
| loeg wrote:
| Both upthread claims specifically say "hards," which is
| not true in the last few years. (In fact, LC "hards" are
| explicitly proscribed.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025666
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025573
| athorax wrote:
| Facebook is notorious for using leetcode problems
| verbatim. Your singular experience does not invalidate
| that fact.
| nice_byte wrote:
| you're forgetting that it's leetcode pulling their
| problems from the companies' question pool, not the other
| way around.
| sh4rks wrote:
| It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, all leetcode
| "style" questions fall into a particular bucket. Two
| pointers, graphs, etc. It's not like the company is
| innovating new types of problems. It's just the same
| problem reworded.
| m00x wrote:
| This has been my experience as well, same for Amazon.
|
| I didn't practice that much since I hate wasting time on
| useless tasks, and the interviewer literally told me to
| just leetcode and read the interview book. I asked him a
| bunch of web questions and he had no fucking clue, all he
| did was leetcode and interview every year.
| lifeisgood99 wrote:
| They definitely did when I did a loop a few years ago. Maybe
| things changed or you got lucky?
| matai_kolila wrote:
| IDK why this is so contentious for folks, it probably
| varies by team, role, or something else.
| nobleach wrote:
| Maybe? 2020 for me. The first wave had me write code to
| solve a problem.... pretty far from Amazon's rebranded
| HackerRank/Leetcode nonsense. I was talking to a human
| being the entire time. They were great about making me feel
| like they WANTED me to succeed. Next round was more
| conversational/System Design stuff.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| I think you're confused, when people say "they ask
| leetcode questions" they don't mean they do automated
| tests
|
| The questions the human is asking you come from a big
| question bank and a lot of it is listed on LeetCode under
| the meta company tag because people leak them.
|
| People use Leetcode to practice for those interviews,
| they don't use the leetcode site in the interview
| nobleach wrote:
| I guess I am just saying I didn't feel like herded cattle
| like I did with Amazon's automated leetcode/hackerrank
| rebranded system.
|
| I mean, now I'm just here to watch the downvotes pile
| on....
| oblio wrote:
| Leetcode problems doesn't mean leetcode.com problems in a
| narrow sense (aka copy paste).
|
| It means reasonably complex algorithmic and data structure
| problems you're supposed to solve by coding under pressure,
| quickly, in interview conditions.
|
| And if you think that's not happening, I have a bridge in
| Brooklyn to sell you.
| nobleach wrote:
| I suppose I AM confused then. I don't mind someone asking
| me complex algorithmic problems as long as we're WORKING
| toward a solution together. To me, leetcode means, "you
| have 45 minutes to solve these 2 or 3 problems... I'll
| watch".
|
| Algorithmic thinking is kinda what I do. So solving those
| problems doesn't feel like a bad proxy for how I might
| perform on the job.
| oblio wrote:
| Yeah, we all solve problems using algorithms.
|
| However, how often do you come up with high performance,
| close to optimal algorithms, on your own, within 45
| minutes?
|
| How often do you implement heaps and such as part of your
| day job, versus using standard libraries or common ones?
| twelve40 wrote:
| I have, and it was straight up leetcode. But that was a few
| years ago.
| suresk wrote:
| I had a recruiter reach out to me about some ML positions
| there earlier this year, and I was sort of interested in it
| for a bit. They have an applicant portal where they literally
| have you practice leetcode problems, and are pretty open that
| you're going to be asked those kinds of questions in the
| interview.
| htrp wrote:
| Are they at least ML leetcode problems?
| suresk wrote:
| No. This was for more of a machine learning engineering
| role than a pure ML scientist role though.
| axg11 wrote:
| Have you ever interviewed with Meta? They are _the_ FAANG
| company that places the highest weighting on leetcode
| problems.
| bitL wrote:
| From my experience they place most weight on system design.
| They allow you to get 1-2 neutral flags from leetcoding and
| still get an offer.
| tw20212021 wrote:
| When I did the system design interview the guy told me
| that zuckeberg created memcached. Not sure if he meant
| used or invented, could have just been a language thing.
| Anyway, I'm glad I didn't pass.
| bitL wrote:
| A guy from Google told me that a quantum computer can
| solve all NP-hard problems... They aren't always the best
| and brightest.
| dominotw wrote:
| leetcode is a standin for all thing you can memorize and
| vomit out in in interview.
|
| Designing url-shortner is no different than edit
| distance.
| matai_kolila wrote:
| Meh, I can do a URL shortener in my sleep, but I'd have
| to study to beat a leetcode test.
| dominotw wrote:
| its the opposite for me :D
| typon wrote:
| Completely not my experience. All the questions I got were
| word-for-word Leetcode problems. At least Amazon goes through
| the trouble of disguising them as "Amazon Deliver Trucks
| going from house to house" instead of "an array of numbers"
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| I had to navigate a dynamic maze involving teleports and
| boulders to show my leet graphing abilities to join as a test
| engineer :) Suffice to say I failed. I build test frameworks,
| manage test network infrastructure, and deploy CI/CD
| pipelines (and think I'm pretty good at it). I just really
| suck at leetcode.
|
| Edit: In fact thinking back, they even sent me tips on how to
| improve my leetcode skills in preparation for the interview!
| The whole process was completely guided by it.
| jfrbfbreudh wrote:
| lol. meta literally has their own leetcode style training
| platform for you to practice questions on when you apply for
| SWE positions.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I got rejected on an obscure leetcode hard last year in the
| telephone screen, which was ridiculous considering I had
| enough practice to destroy leetcode hards.
|
| Though it worked out for me in the end, but I was definitely
| annoyed for a day or two.
| uncletaco wrote:
| I got rejected and then when they inevitably called me up
| the next year the recruiter pulled up the feedback from my
| interview and I wasn't recommended because I rewrote a
| function to be easier to unit test, after being asked "how
| would you test this?". By rewrote I mean I added a
| parameter to take in a fictional db client, rather than
| instantiate directly.
|
| I told her no thank you and hung up.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I was wondering if there is a correlation between hiring
| engineers who spend their lives memorizing leetcode hard
| problems and a company's ability to innovate and execute?
|
| Did they really optimize for hiring the top 0.001% of engineers
| or it's just that the fish is rotten from the top.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| It seems to me that the selection process favors Indian and
| Chinese engineers who are used to cramming for rigorous
| entrance exams to top universities.
| garmanarnar wrote:
| Nah, it's the whites who the hiring market favors.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| I think it just heavily favors new grads, who just spent a
| year+ studying algorithms. Those with full time jobs have
| to spend precious hours of free time remembering how to do
| these.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Well, this just sucks about these jobs interviews. I
| learned quite a bit during my last job and I'd be happy
| to show some of these to the interviewer, but instead I'm
| forced to answer questions that I know have nothing to do
| with what I'll be dealing with. It's always the same
| story, it's just exhausting.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Yeah, it's kinda ridiculous actually. It's like they
| don't even believe you were employed when they interview
| you.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I think it just heavily favors new grads, who just
| spent a year+ studying algorithms.
|
| Year+ is a fair assessment. A proper Computer Science
| course(4 years!) is mostly about algorithms. Most of
| leetcode hard would qualify as warmup exercises for my
| class.
|
| That was a while ago. Right now? My brain is chock full
| of architectural stuff, k8s, several programming
| languages, multiple cloud provider idiosyncrasies, etc
| etc. Can I do leetcode? Yeah sure. Can I do it during an
| interview? I've tried recently, bombed spectacularly.
|
| I'll probably have to invest the time prepping properly
| because there's little choice these days. Like you said,
| it's using up our precious free time. I'd rather be, I
| don't know, writing some stuff in Rust so I can add that
| language to my toolbox.
| dominotw wrote:
| so indian and chinese new grads ?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| And also Eastern European or ex-USSR countries where
| highschool STEM curriculum is more difficult than in the
| west and participation in STEM competitions and olympiads
| is encouraged for kids.
|
| We had to solve binary and hex division and multiplication
| on paper for exams and study Dijkstra's algoritm and binary
| tree traversal in highschool CS. Ugly stuff for a bunch of
| 16 year olds who just wanted to make Flash games. Really
| made me hate CS.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > We had to solve binary and hex division and
| multiplication on paper for exams
|
| This is not ... hard. It's the same logic as decimal
| multiplication/division on paper.
|
| > study Dijkstra's algoritm and binary tree traversal in
| highschool CS
|
| That's more like it!
| foobarian wrote:
| This was poked fun at in ex-YU:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmrJQaj8sIo&t=240s
| (sorry, no translation; tl;dr: CS without computers)
| Tade0 wrote:
| Eastern European here. From the mentioned I had binary
| division, but that was it.
|
| I was solving leetcode-adjacent problems for the entire
| last year of high school in preparation for the final
| exam though.
| dom96 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/2h3t7
| throwaway34237 wrote:
| I wonder what freeze means in this context (paywalled so couldn't
| see if there was additional context) because I just received a
| third followup email from a recruiter at Meta..
| disabled wrote:
| Perhaps Zuckerberg should be paid significantly less? Perhaps
| Facebook employees should fight back? Like protest or leak
| controversial information, especially since Facebook is in the
| data hoarding business?
|
| But, stuff like this should make Facebook employees angry.
| Zuckerberg is not a person to envy.
|
| Read this: https://www.velvetropes.com/backstage/mark-zuckerberg-
| house
|
| Also, a few years ago Zuckerberg spent like $27 million for his
| own personal security in a 365 day period, which is obviously
| obscene.
|
| Clearly he is a paranoid dude and certainly he keeps to himself.
|
| But, he is a hardcore oligarch, that's for sure.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Also spent $20m+ for security during the pandemic/lockdown,
| which the company pays for, while all us plebs sat at home.
| m_ke wrote:
| If that grinds your gears check these out:
|
| - https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/snapchat-evan-
| spieg...
|
| - https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/finance/brian-
| armstrong-...
| [deleted]
| yuan43 wrote:
| > "I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by
| now, but from what we're seeing it doesn't yet seem like it has,
| so we want to plan somewhat conservatively," Zuckerberg said. A
| Meta spokesperson declined to comment.
|
| The economy _is_ stabilizing. It 's being weaned off of ultra-
| loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is
| starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company
| whose earnings potential is sinking and which offers no dividend
| be valued accordingly.
|
| > ... Meta had more than 83,500 employees as of June 30, and
| added 5,700 new hires in the second quarter. ...
|
| FWIW, 28 % annualized hiring growth for a company the size and
| age of Meta is not normal. It's a sign of mismanagement and
| especially loss of focus.
| motbus3 wrote:
| I agree with you. But I also think this companies have
| potential for earning money. Real money. FB has incredible ai
| models and platforms as well as interesting hw products. But
| they keep pushing publicity for creepy projects such as their
| second life version.
|
| So what happens is that they have tons of fantastic things they
| do not properly use.
|
| I also think that media has chosen Zuckerberg to hit. Yeah.
| Lots of contradictions etc, but if anything, he is not stupid.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-
| loose money for the first time in years. The stock market is
| starting to behave more rationally, demanding that a company
| whose earnings potential is sinking and which offers no
| dividend be valued accordingly.
|
| Agree with the latter part of your statement, but no way have
| we hit "stability". Yes, taking away the ultra-loose money
| policy had to happen, but doing so has perturbed the system and
| it's going to take a while to stabilize.
| beambot wrote:
| A little dated [2018], but still rings true: The average tenure
| for engineers at many major tech companies is ~3 years. Thus,
| you'd expect new hires at a rate of 30% annually just to
| maintain staffing levels. To determine headcount growth you,
| should look at year-over-year changes in total employee count,
| not just the number of new hires. TLDR: Meta's new-hire rate is
| not atypical.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/average-employee-tenure-rete...
| dougmwne wrote:
| In fact, the overall head count has been rising rapidly.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/273563/number-of-
| faceboo...
| tclancy wrote:
| Based on my limited observations having been in a similar
| situation for a year, I would guess the average tenure is
| Equity Award Years less percentage of people who get fired in
| less than the value of Equity Award Years.
|
| It's a good way to keep reinventing wheels.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > The economy is stabilizing. It's being weaned off of ultra-
| loose money for the first time in years.
|
| You might enjoy reading "Principles for Dealing with the
| Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail",
| https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed-...
| (The author is Ray Dalio, one of the US's best institutional
| investors.)
|
| The big question is, when are we going to hit bottom? We need
| to make it through the Ukraine and Taiwan situations before
| things really bounce back.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > and Taiwan situations
|
| Let's hope we don't get a Taiwan situation on top of all of
| the other stuff that's going on. That way lies WWIII.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I expect that's the real reason for the US and Europe's
| "all-in" hardline over Ukraine: signalling to China about
| Taiwan.
|
| Because pursuing a similar strategy with China would be
| substantially more expensive, in terms of treasure and
| blood, for both sides.
|
| But the critical date there seems to be 2030-2035 based on
| military preparations.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Absolutely. The entire thing is absolutely about China.
| Russia is a broken country that would have no
| significance beyond its hydrocarbons and nukes. China is
| an economic superpower and growing world power. Very soon
| it could replace the US as the primary driver of
| globalism. If the west had shown itself as disunited, it
| would have been time for China to take center stage in
| world affairs for the next hundred years. Instead it will
| wait for another generation.
| eloff wrote:
| China doesn't have another generation. They'll be going
| into a very stark population collapse that's worse than
| what Japan is experiencing now, where adult diapers
| outsell baby diapers. I expect that China's economy and
| influence will take the shape of an upside-down U, with
| the peak in the next decade. If they're going to move on
| Taiwan, they cannot wait forever. They came close to
| catching up the US, but I don't think they will achieve
| it.
| mvuksano wrote:
| Is there any other country that ever showed anything
| other then upside-down U in terms of economy strength and
| influence. To best of my knowledge every country, empire
| or society rises and eventually falls. Probably the best
| known example is Roman empire but every other society I
| can think of exhibits same pattern.
| dirtyid wrote:
| China has multiple generations. Even "stark" demographic
| collapse at PRC scale is generating millions of new
| births per year (several times greater than US even with
| immigration), there will never be shortage of bodies to
| fill the military, especially increasingly small force
| structure of modern militaries that's shifting towards
| autonomous platforms. As for economy, expect PRC to
| continue growing, more importantly, move up tech/value
| chain and build comprehensive national power, just like
| Japan did while her demographic was absolutely in the
| shits because JP managed to massively improve human
| capita via education to create the skilled workers for
| high value economy (also SKR, TW). For reference PRC is
| now outputting as much STEM talent as all OECD combined.
|
| Like other the Asian Tigers with death spiral
| demographics still grew significantly simply because
| cohort of skilled workers increased massively even though
| demographics broadly declined. There's a reason PRC is
| rapidly moving up science and innovation indexes
| (controlled for quality, not just citations). The reality
| is, PRC demographics has never been MORE competitive, and
| will increasingly be, because advanced economic
| development phase is just getting started. Now add in PRC
| is adopting as much industrial robots / automation than
| the next 15 countries combined and that overall
| demographic decline (as in net population decline) only
| improves PRC strategic position by reducing import
| dependence. And that the massive regional income
| disparity + huge home ownership + enviable house hold
| savings rate = PRC elderly simply don't have significant
| expection (or need) for old age social support. In many
| ways, PRC is almost optimized for weathering demographic
| bomb with less social cost relative to properly developed
| countries that are seeing comparable demographic decline.
| dirtyid wrote:
| That may very well be the intent, but it seems to be
| backfiring. Go look at this very recent German Marshal
| Fund survey polling atlanticist countries with section on
| PRC invasion of TW.
|
| https://www.gmfus.org/news/transatlantic-trends-2022
|
| TLDR: negligible (average 4%) consider sending arms and
| even less (average 2%) consider sending troops. As if
| delivering either is possible to an island within
| overwhelming PRC military advantage. US highest at 8%,
| which is hilariously low given White House deterrence
| efforts. 32% considers joint sanctions. 35% only
| diplomatic efforts to end conflict. 12% do nothing. PRC
| is looking at these numbers and rubbing hands with glee.
|
| Also consider UKR/RU conflict is already putting EU
| competitiveness into the shits with trend likely to
| continue. Pre-war PRC was worried about EU acting as
| potential spoiler via US coordination, but now EU is so
| weak that they're even more geopolitically irrelevant.
| Meanwhile PRC gets dependable energy partner in RU and
| increased influence in central Asia / MENA / global south
| who sees the hypocrisy in western response when a western
| country is attacked. India is even more reticent about
| militarizing QUAD. JP economy is going to shits, even if
| they wanted to increase military spending, they likely
| can not afford to.
|
| Also notice youth are substantially less PRC. In 2030+
| time frame, we're like to going to see extremely war
| wearing societies with polity shifting less anti-PRC at
| all cost, digging out of economic cesspit who will have
| even less appetite to sanction a much larger trading
| partner like PRC. These signalling are having less and
| less impact coming as EU weakens. As for US, PRC factored
| in US intervention in TW scenario anyway. It's not
| deterred but building up massive nuclear arsenal to
| follow RU's nuclear coercion strategy.
| thecoppinger wrote:
| Seconding this, I'm reading the book at the moment and it's
| an exceptional insight into the near and long term future.
| It's also terrifying.
| foobarian wrote:
| And they don't even create (and then quickly retire) random new
| product. Do they? What would be Meta's equivalent of Stadia?
| typeofhuman wrote:
| Oculus
| polyomino wrote:
| Oculus is a much bigger investment than Stadia
| wlesieutre wrote:
| And Facebook didn't create it either
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| Nor did they retire it, they rebranded it.
| cl0ckt0wer wrote:
| IGTV
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/5/22710638/instagram-tv-
| igt...
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > It's a sign of mismanagement and especially loss of focus.
|
| I think it's a natural symptom of running a company built on
| exploiting people's desire to craft and control their own
| image. It's corporate narcissism. Zuckerberg has been
| invincible for so long, how could he not be consumed by the
| reality distortion field himself?
| defterGoose wrote:
| Ooh, careful saying anything negative about social media or
| tech companies here. /s
| int_19h wrote:
| That's one of the easiest way to get upvoted here,
| especially wrt Meta.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| >*The economy is stabilizing.*
|
| The economy is never "stable". It is constantly in a cycle of
| ups and downs, over-investment and under-investment, easy money
| and tight money...
|
| The current state is no more "normal" than any other period.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Zero is a special value you know, since zero times anything
| is zero.
|
| Edit: Except infinity ...
| bjornsing wrote:
| In the limit 0*x tends to zero as x tends to infinity.
| lavp wrote:
| An infinite amount of nothing is still nothing.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| See also: https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2022/09/28/meta-
| ordered-t...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _The economy is stabilizing._
|
| The economy is in the early phases of the biggest Fed
| tightening since at least the 1980s.
|
| If you know where that will end up, congrats. For the rest of
| us, it's very much uncharted waters.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > which offers no dividend be valued accordingly.
|
| FWIW Meta has apparently done $15 billion in buybacks this year
| which gives them a 4% yield at current cap. Investors generally
| prefer buybacks to dividends because of tax advantages, so this
| should actually have helped their stock more than a 4% div
| yield would.
| bin_bash wrote:
| Haven't they already been in a freeze since this spring? Or did
| they come out of it for a bit?
| saos wrote:
| > In prior moves to reduce spending, a dual-camera watch the
| company was building to compete with the Apple Watch was
| shuttered.
|
| loool
|
| > Meta is not the only advertising company to be hit by broader
| economic challenges.
|
| interesting they are referenced as advertising company..
| lm28469 wrote:
| Is it ?
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/267031/facebooks-annual-...
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093781/distribution-of-...
|
| Meta and Google are advertising companies, their "products" are
| just a way to:
|
| - gather data: whatsapp/messenger, maps, youtube,
| "like"/"share" buttons, reviews &c.
|
| - display ads: google search, youtube, instagram, fb feed
|
| - display a "buy" button: google search, youtube, instagram
|
| The only "new" products they don't shutdown after a year are
| products that allows them to gather more data / show more ads /
| get more "buy" clicks. Everything else get terminated no matter
| what
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Our startup spends a little bit on Facebook Ads (across FB,
| Instagram, etc). It's very clear over the past few months that
| there's trouble in the ads engine. Attribution is a mess, ad
| efficiency fluctuates randomly, the UI and API are flaky. I don't
| know whether this is a result of the ios privacy changes, the
| broader economy affecting ad spend, or internal issues... Maybe a
| mix. But it's clear that Meta's main revenue engine is a complete
| mess at the moment.
|
| PS it's not just us. We've seen industry-wide data showing that
| it's a broader issue.
| boringg wrote:
| iOS privacy has killed facebook advertisements. Meta is dealing
| with it currently - so are all small businesses who relied on
| good conversion from their ad targeting that has gone to isht
| since then.
|
| Apple will probably fill in that void at some point they've got
| a lock on all that intelligence. I'm curious how long it will
| take and how they will manage to do it without stepping on
| privacy toes.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The high price of Apple products in markets like India was
| such a great targeting filter for D2C products by itself.
| There was a time in 2020-21 when you could literally throw
| any random ad for a premium product, choose iPhone users as
| your target, and land wild conversions.
| r00fus wrote:
| > Apple will probably fill in that void at some point
|
| a) what if they don't? Why should they?
|
| b) I would lose a lot of trust in Apple if they did. I don't
| buy iOS devices because I trust Apple Ads better. I buy them
| because I can avoid ads better and my privacy doesn't get
| shredded in the process.
|
| c) Wouldn't that be a massive antitrust issue?
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| > what if they don't? Why should they?
|
| They will because they are a for-profit company and there's
| profit to be had. Apple will likely find a strong marketing
| angle for their Ad network (won't be the first time they've
| tried).
|
| Selling hardware is a great business but it gets saturated
| eventually. The next move for eternal growth is selling
| services on top of said hardware.
|
| > I would lose a lot of trust in Apple if they did. I don't
| buy iOS devices because I trust Apple Ads better. I buy
| them because I can avoid ads better and my privacy doesn't
| get shredded in the process.
|
| Apple already has a lot of data about you. Consider that
| they own both the hardware and software experience on an
| iPhone. I'm having a hard time seeing an alternative here
| unless you have the time to manage your own phone OS...
|
| > Wouldn't that be a massive antitrust issue?
|
| Only if someone does something about it. I assume G and
| Meta's lawyers are already working on arguments.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Apple already is filling that void. If you run your ads on
| third-party networks, you are beholden to Apple's privacy
| rules. But if you run Apple Search Ads through, Apple
| itself, a lot of the same rules don't apply and you get
| targeting and attribution back.
|
| A lot of advertisers are thus shifting their ad spend into
| Apple.
| r00fus wrote:
| But this is just in the App Store, right? Not on web or
| within iOS spotlight.
|
| Honestly I don't use FB, but my wife does, and I can tell
| you she spends about 1/100th the time in the Apple App
| Store as FB.
|
| I don't see Search Ads as having anywhere near the same
| context.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Yes, their inventory is smaller at the moment, but they
| also show ads in News and Stock apps (note that those ads
| are personalized and don't have an ATT prompt by
| default.. so Apple apps don't have to play by the same
| rules as others). My guess is they will continue to
| expand inventory to other Apple apps (eg Maps, etc), but
| whether they try to build a full-fledged ad platform
| (where you can use Apple to buy ads in 3rd party apps) is
| yet to be seen.. they'd definitely have to overcome a
| backlash if they did that.
| tomrod wrote:
| If Apple doesn't, it seems a bit insane to miss the
| opportunity.
|
| Note that I strongly dislike adtech as a business model, but
| my hat is off to their cunning marketing if Apple pulls it
| off.
| creato wrote:
| As much as I can't stand any company involved here, if
| apple does what you suggest it would be far more offensive
| than any other supposed antitrust violations alleged over
| the last few years.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They have an advertising platform already, right?
|
| Apple has been around for a while, they I wonder if the
| company has some institutional 'survival instinct' that's
| identified growing the ad platform become too much as long-
| term unhealthy. It is a corrupting influence that makes the
| consumer into the enemy, after all.
|
| They've also managed to become incredibly huge while
| somehow mostly dodging the eye of regulatory bodies.
| Privacy could mess with that track record and I'm sure they
| are aware of that fact.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > iOS privacy has killed facebook advertisements
|
| A problem I see with FB is that they don't control anything
| on which they run. They run on stuff from their competitors:
| it's either Google (Chrome / Android), Microsot (Windows /
| Edge) or Apple (OS X / Safari / iOS).
|
| Despite the downturn these three behemoths are still enjoying
| a market cap in the trillion+. Meta is actually down to $360
| bn. Meta controls neither the OS nor the browser.
|
| They want to change that by having people switching en masse
| to the Metaverse but I'm really not sure this is happening.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| > _They want to change that by having people switching en
| masse to the Metaverse but I 'm really not sure this is
| happening._
|
| The tech isn't even close to there yet.
|
| Current gen VR tech demos sparks the imagination, and it's
| definitely great for people that want to like it... But
| that's not even close to good enough for mass adoption.
|
| Their teased prototypes look like a solid upgrade, but it's
| still not going to be enough.
|
| Mobile procedures just don't have enough graphics power yet
| and the one's we do have consume too much power. We're
| missing several hardware breakthrough before mass adoption
| becomes likely from my perspective as a VR headset owner.
|
| It's probably gonna happen eventually, but not necessarily
| with current tech.
|
| Meta might succeed if it stays on the ball and keeps
| pushing for centuries, but i don't think it's management
| will do so.
| ergocoder wrote:
| I walked in oculus for like 10 minutes, and I puked. The
| technology isn't ready.
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| > centuries
|
| _Centuries_? I haven 't taken a close look at VR (though
| I'm flirting with buying a headset soon, just for
| kicks...) but I'd always assumed it was more like 10-25
| years away.
|
| What are the hardware breakthroughs that you think would
| do it?
| cbtacy wrote:
| True lightfield display would be a start....
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Brain implants. Or very light AR glasses.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Are you going to be willing to install a brain implant
| from Facebook? Dear God. It's like something out of a
| dystopian movie. No amount of money will convince me to
| do something like this, especially coming from Facebook,
| but any corporation really.
|
| Very light AR glasses can be an interesting proposition
| but they will not provide the VR immersive experience.
|
| I'm not sure what people expect from VR but it's not
| Ready Player One and will not be for a very long time.
| However, playing Half Life Alyx is quite phenomenal even
| today on current hardware.
| [deleted]
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I would bet money that Meta is going to fail
| spectacularly at their attempt to build the metaverse.
|
| And it will be fun to watch from the outside.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't expect this endeavor to give
| interesting fruits to humanity, but sometimes happy
| accidents happen.
| [deleted]
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| This reminds me of what Apple did just before Web came to
| the fore. They had something called HyperCard. Then they
| had something called "Agents" for automating your online
| activities. But neither of those platforms succeeded.
| jjulius wrote:
| You know, I've been wondering what could possibly possess
| Meta to be so, "FUCK YEAH, ALL IN MF'ERS!!!" about the
| metaverse for a while now. This actually makes a lot of
| sense; companies control the platforms we are on, which
| then determines how we must operate (read: which prevents
| us from invasively monitoring you as much as we'd like), so
| why not control the full stack as people close more doors
| on us?
|
| I still think they are going to fail spectacularly there,
| but I suppose I can't blame them for trying.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Perhaps they shouldn't have bailed on making phones.
| Android phone arena is still very messy and they could
| just...have good hardware and a slick skin on Android and
| probably make a go of it.
|
| I know I'm armchairing the devil so to speak but I think
| this would have been a good long term play for them, but
| I imagine their expertise at the time was antithetical to
| hardware.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Meta/Microsoft/Amazon all did not want to plow the
| billions of dollars and years it takes to develop
| hardware that can compete with iPhone and Android.
|
| They bet that they did not need to, but unfortunately for
| Meta, looks like they should have.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Not even compete with Android, just build a better
| Android phone, and sell it near cost (or at cost). Would
| have given them troves of data I'm sure.
|
| The muscle is around contract negotiation with the
| carriers and co-opting those partnerships, but they had
| the money to burn on this.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Who in their right mind would buy a Facebook phone,
| considering the neverending security issues, data leaks
| and total disregard for user privacy?
| graeme wrote:
| It would tell if it was like one plus. Premium phone at a
| discount. One plus has horrendous privacy issues
| vkou wrote:
| The same people that still use Facebook. Which is to say,
| we could probably find a couple of billion people who
| couldn't give two rats asses about all that, and just
| want to respond to Aunt Nancy's political rants[1] in a
| space where everyone can see.
|
| [1] Or watch Feel Good Videos ABOUT People Spontaneously
| HELPING Poor ANIMALS Trapped In A PREDICAMENT [2].
|
| [2] That the people in question may or may not have put
| them into.
| r00fus wrote:
| 7-10 years ago it would have sold. Especially if they
| marketed is as "use FB as your address book".
| losvedir wrote:
| But Facebook is a platform unto itself. If it was still an
| enjoyable product that everyone used, and connected to
| their local interests and groups on, they could still have
| great, targeted advertising I think. But people don't
| really seem to use it much anymore in earnest, and their
| targeting probably relied more on 3rd party scripts across
| the Internet which are being restricted.
| unity1001 wrote:
| It defies description why they aren't bringing context-
| sensitive ads back. They didn't follow you all around the
| Internet, they were relevant in any given context, and you
| felt less need to block them out mentally.
| jjulius wrote:
| I was more likely to click on context-sensitive ads. Most
| targeted ads I see these days are for products that I've
| already bought in the past few weeks, which just boggles my
| mind.
|
| Edit: Even today, I'm still seeing ads for a subwoofer that
| I bought back in early August. Good going, Meta.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| I bet that showing ads based on context is somehow limited
| to people being in that context (i.e. in a specific website
| for instance), while being able to draw an audience from
| the entirety of Facebook users (in the billions) is more
| profitable.
| s1k3 wrote:
| Our CPIs have been absurd ever since the privacy changes. Meta
| is fucked and I don't think people realize how much of an
| effect this is going to have on the entire internet.
|
| There are large downstream effects the iOS privacy changes are
| having on mobile advertising and the viability of companies
| that rely on mobile programmatic to bring people in the door.
| rr888 wrote:
| To me it looks like they tried to copy TikTok, with loads of
| ads and turned a decent product into something no one wants to
| use.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| They still dominate the Indian market simply because TikTok
| is banned here.
|
| While I don't undermine the spying potential of TikTok, the
| ban was strangely timed - soon after a huge investment from
| Facebook in India's biggest company (and one with tremendous
| lobbying power). Only a handful of Chinese apps were banned,
| even though majority of devices running them were Chinese as
| well (and went unbanned).
|
| Facebook very well would have lost the massive Indian market
| as well without the TikTok ban.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Do you think the Digital Markets Act in the E.U. had anything
| to do with this?
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/technology/eu-regulation-...
| TylerE wrote:
| They've gotten so damn greedy.
|
| On the mobile app literally over half my feed is ads.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I use it on the browser to check one or two groups and on my
| phone for events, it's a mess. On the groups I always want to
| check for the most recent posts because it doesn't have a lot
| of activity and besides countless things I've tried it always
| wants to show the posts ordered with its algorithm. It's also
| like:
|
| post AD post AD post AD
|
| I'm used to ads, I grew up watching cartoons and shows on
| prime time old airwaves TV and listening to music on Top 50
| radio shows. This is worse. No other media is as bad as
| Facebook ad-wise and no other media is worse than what prime
| TV and radio where in the 90s. They devolved.
| bee_rider wrote:
| My feed is mostly not posts from people I know (for some
| reason it has started sending me tiktok length clips of
| standup comedians). Actually it is not so bad, some of the
| clips are pretty funny, but I could get that sort of content
| from tiktok or youtube I guess, I just happen to use the
| facebook app because it is already installed.
|
| Their fundamental advantage was network effect, I guess that
| is dead now that like 1/5 posts I see is from a friend.
| sjm-lbm wrote:
| My understanding is that this is the strategy: the network
| effect method for choosing what content you want (FB/Insta)
| is getting beat by the "algorithm determines what you are
| interested in" method for choosing what content you want,
| so Facebook is pivoting to the latter.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe Myspace should make a concerted push back into the
| space Facebook has I guess decided to vacate.
|
| It seems crazy to try and compete with Tiktok on their
| home turf, they sound to have a pretty competent
| implementation and Facebook has got to be about as nimble
| as a barge at this point.
| passion__desire wrote:
| People have stopped posting on facebook. That's the reason
| for increasing content from other sources.
| Liuser wrote:
| I suspect the reason why people have stopped posting is
| because of increasing content from other sources. It's
| definitely my reason.
|
| It's a negative feedback loop.
| spike021 wrote:
| Meanwhile I constantly get ads for restaurants and other
| businesses almost everywhere but the state I live in
| (California).
|
| I routinely get ads for Boston, NY, Japan, Taiwan, Germany.
|
| I've been to NY and Japan but none of the other places. So I
| don't think it's using my previous locations.
| beckingz wrote:
| It's really hard to configure FB to target actual locations
| as opposed to people interested in those locations.
|
| You've been to NY, so you're interested in NY, so FB will
| make money fleecing restaurants in NY wasting their ad
| money on you.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| If you work somewhere like Facebook, this is totally
| unsurprising. There are probably thousands of engineers
| writing yet-another-framework and working on the 100th re-
| invention of the wheel for some random internal product
| that users will never see. The engineers actually solving
| business problems are almost always understaffed and under-
| appreciated, hence why the product sucks.
| dangus wrote:
| I don't know if there's any merit to this idea, but it seems
| to me that saturation can become a real problem.
|
| At this point skipping a story or feed ad in Instagram is
| like a nearly instant reflex for me.
|
| Plus, the programming on the recommendations is laughably
| amateur for company as resourceful as Meta. If I interact
| with an ad one time I'll see the same ad over and over for
| days or weeks.
|
| Sure, I was curious for a second, but it seems strange that
| Meta can't tell that I'm not interested anymore just by
| monitoring basic usage of the UI.
|
| At the end of the day the advertiser is the one left paying
| for these repeated ineffective ad impressions.
|
| Somewhat related, I am a little surprised Meta hasn't tried a
| Discord-like revenue model where paid annual memberships
| bestow quality of life and cosmetic social status types of
| benefits. Even if it wasn't their main source of revenue it
| could at least diversify the business and lend some stability
| to their revenue.
|
| Facebook's revenue per user is less than $10. Discord charges
| $99/year for Nitro. I feel like Meta has such a one-track
| mindset on advertising that it doesn't consider different
| revenue models for its businesses.
|
| Meta spends a lot of time talking about the metaverse but
| Discord is already the metaverse. Why isn't there a
| subscription Meta Quest game pass with Discord-like social
| features? It's a no-brainer.
|
| Where's the "pro" paid version of Instagram? Why doesn't
| Instagram sell subscription access to things like exclusive
| camera filters, stickers, and editing tools?
|
| I feel like the company is full of missed business
| opportunities.
| TylerE wrote:
| Actually, that's a real thing advertisers DO want.
|
| It's called retargeting.
| apendleton wrote:
| > that's a real thing advertisers DO want
|
| I think GP is talking about a more specific thing, and
| it's one I experience all the time too: that I'll visit a
| website briefly one time, by accident, or to satisfy some
| curiosity, or look up the specifications on something I
| already own, or to get a link to send to a friend, or
| whatever other non-purchase reason, and then get shown
| ads for their thing over and over and over again until
| the end of time despite the fact that there's a 0% chance
| that I will ever buy it.
|
| I'm sure it's true that, in the general case, advertisers
| want to show ads to customers multiple times, but in
| these particular cases, they shouldn't want to show them
| to _me_ -- I 'm definitely not going to buy the thing,
| and they're wasting their money, and it seems like
| Facebook ought to be able to better differentiate between
| users like me who will definitely not convert and users
| who might (like GP said: seems like there ought to be
| detectable patterns in the way I do or don't engage with
| the content that should signal my lack of interest).
| magic_hamster wrote:
| >At the end of the day the advertiser is the one left
| paying for these repeated ineffective ad impressions.
|
| If advertisers had a better option, Meta will have gone out
| of business by next week.
| dpkirchner wrote:
| 49% ads, 49% content, 2% "news feed isn't available right
| now" if I scroll too far (a couple dozen screens). Been like
| this for ages.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| What does it mean when attribution is a mess? Or efficiency
| fluctuating?
|
| Does this imply that Facebook is showing ads in places they
| should not be, because they have inventory they cannot sell?
| beckingz wrote:
| Hard to confirm that your ads are converting, and wild
| daily/weekly fluctuations in return on ad spend.
| ssharp wrote:
| I haven't done much with Facebook ads since 2019, but back then
| the UI was a flaky, buggy mess. It was pretty terrible to work
| with. At one point they had a "Power Editor" and then a simpler
| ads interface. They combined these into one unified tool and it
| was pretty rough.
| tonymet wrote:
| It should be both reassuring & unsettling to know that even
| experts can't forecast the future. FB / Meta made two large stock
| bybacks, one with cash and one with debt, at a very high premium.
|
| Just in case you may feel bad for your investments, just remember
| no one can forecast the future.
| kobalsky wrote:
| > FB / Meta made two large stock bybacks, one with cash and one
| with debt, at a very high premium.
|
| I don't know enough to understand if that is clearly a bad move
| or if maybe they had a different strategy.
|
| I mean if they wanted to buyback their own stock it seems that
| they are not in a position to time the market. Waiting to buy
| low feels like they are shorting themselves.
| BbzzbB wrote:
| They did heavy handed repurchases during the quarter where
| they saw the first active user dip, before announcing it,
| then barely did any in the following quarter after the stock
| took a 40% dive. I'm still bullish Meta, but their capital
| allocation with regards to buybacks was horrendous to say the
| least.
| moolcool wrote:
| My heart goes out to anybody losing their job, but it's always
| fantastic to see bad things happening to Meta.
| kernel-dump wrote:
| I wonder what the effects of Meta failing would have on
| society? I can't think of competing social network for people
| to migrate to. Would topic forums see a rise in popularity
| again or would sites like Reddit draw in some of those users.
| pinko wrote:
| I wonder what this means for people I know with accepted offers
| who haven't yet started.
| bagels wrote:
| They should start looking for something else as a backup.
| gen220 wrote:
| Anecdotally (I have a friend in that situation), no impact as
| confirmed by their in-house recruiter.
|
| But it might depend on whether they were pre-allocated to a
| team (which I understand is very rare, but it does happen).
| moolcool wrote:
| If I were you I would tell them to break off contact because
| Meta is actively causing irreparable damage to society as we
| know it.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yeah, and the reply they would receive from their friend
| would be a polite request to touch grass.
|
| People in the real world use instagram and whatsapp all the
| time without any moral qualms. The main reason facebook as a
| product is on a decline is because it is simply not
| interesting to younger people anymore. And even then, FB
| still manages to occasionally produce features that capture a
| lot of the audience back. FB marketplace has been a great hit
| in terms of replacing craigslist.
|
| I am not a Meta employee, and have never been one. But the
| hate hard-on some people on HN have against Meta just gets
| really ridiculous at times. We decry echochambers on social
| media all the time, but are perfectably comfortable falling
| into ones of our own, without trying to understand how the
| world outside is really like.
| moolcool wrote:
| I don't think "touch grass" is an appropriate response to
| legitimate questions of professional ethics. Comments like
| this are why I think ethics courses should be mandatory for
| any CS or engineering degree.
| filoleg wrote:
| Stating "you should brake the contract because Meta is
| causing irreparable damage to society" is not a
| "legitimate question of professional ethics." It's like
| saying "you should be rushing the capitol, because
| democrats are causing irreparable damage to society by
| stealing the election", and then claiming it was a
| legitimate question of ethics of democracy. For both of
| which, the suggestion to touch grass feels pretty
| appropriate.
|
| I agree with your take on ethics courses being mandatory
| for CS or engineering college students though. It was
| mandatory at my college, and I found it to be pretty
| useful.
| moolcool wrote:
| Who is talking about breaking a contract? I said breaking
| contact (with recruiters). Your example provides an
| equivalency so false, I don't really know where to start
| with it. If I were to alter your analogy it'd be closer
| to: "Ghost your recruiter, don't work for the Biden
| Whitehouse" which, if they actually _were_ evil, would be
| a reasonable thing to say to a friend IMO.
| worik wrote:
| This is a well trodden path. They cannot grow forever, nor can
| the economy. But investors will expect/want monotonic growth. In
| profits if not in revenue
|
| I expect Meta will be closing labs in the USA and opening them in
| other, cheaper, English speaking companies.
| petilon wrote:
| > _"I had hoped the economy would have more clearly stabilized by
| now.." Zuckerberg said._
|
| Zuck is blaming the economy, but Meta's real problem is that
| Apple tightened iOS privacy. Meta had built a business on
| tracking people, and when iOS tightened privacy, Meta could not
| target ads as effectively as before.
| threatofrain wrote:
| The economy is an issue, but the "fault" is not in the economy
| or the CEO in that there is no fault. A business is not
| responsible for retaining employees even if the economy is
| strong. If we prescriptively believe that people _ought_ have
| money to maintain a basic standard of living then we should
| have the government provide this service using public money and
| not private ad-funded money.
|
| It is modern corporate style to have CEO's shed tears
| (sometimes literally) to show that their cold calculations
| actually have love behind them, but this is all just PR. We
| should recognize Mark's statement for what it is -- standard
| corporate PR. And we should offer such statements as much
| respect as standard corporate verbiage deserves and not get
| into the substance of the statements as there typically is
| none.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Stages of grief. First he blamed employees, now the economy..
| SantalBlush wrote:
| CEOs are collectively hammering these talking points about
| the economy, pretending that it's 2008 all over again. They
| want their workers scared.
|
| The thing is, this isn't 2008, not by a long shot. They can
| keep complaining, but the jobs numbers speak for themselves.
| andsoitis wrote:
| If you think the world's economy is in good shape, I have
| an investment to sell you.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Cancel culture is the only scapegoat left
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| What he meant was "I had hoped _our_stock_price_ would have
| more clearly stabilized by now..."
|
| They over-hired low[er] quality employees (by his own
| admission) when the stock exploded in 2020. Now they'll do
| anything to avoid official layoffs to save face.
| otikik wrote:
| And their feed is increasingly worse. We might be the product,
| but this product can walk away.
| rightbyte wrote:
| That was an interesting twist to the barn methaphor actually.
| ilamont wrote:
| Not the only problem. Zuck's betting the farm on VR, which is
| sucking up resources and attention. Even if it reaches critical
| adoption, how many years before it starts generating true
| profit?
| m00x wrote:
| It's definitely a problem, but the economic downturn is a lot
| more significant. Meta allegedly got around Apple's privacy
| rules.
|
| I used to work in user tracking, and it's very easy to track
| people down to near-unique from several metrics.
| nostromo wrote:
| Apple tightening privacy while TikTok is eating their lunch...
| Not to mention the Metaverse is/was a giant distraction.
| kweingar wrote:
| Not very relevant, but an observation:
|
| I've noticed that users on HN like to use the phrase "eating
| their lunch" to describe the dynamic between TikTok and
| Facebook.
|
| It would be interesting to search HN comments from the past
| 12 months for "eating their lunch" and analyze what
| proportion of them refer to TikTok.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Metaverse is an interesting idea, but they're too quick to
| hail it as the feature of the company imo. It just looks like
| an expensive, boring, video game right now.
| defterGoose wrote:
| | Metaverse is an interesting idea...
|
| It's really not though, nor is it an original one. There
| are real people with real problems in the world and we've
| seen over and over that increasingly virtualizing our
| interactions, with a few exceptions, is a great way of
| kicking those problems down the road.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| An idea can be interesting and still be a huge waste of
| time. I don't think it'll end well for Meta. It'll be
| super interesting to see how it plays out. I think we
| might end up with some sweet VR tech, I just don't think
| it's going to give FB the kind of business they think it
| will.
| drfuzzy89 wrote:
| Is it known whether this sort of hiring freeze affects all
| levels? I have a friend who's in-progress for a staff role at
| Meta and I had heard in the past that staff was often "immune to
| hiring freezes."
| loeg wrote:
| "Active interview loops will continue," but also "we will not
| make any offers until the freeze is lifted." So, go figure.
|
| Edit: IC7+ is explicitly not frozen.
|
| > The only roles that will remain open are SWE IC7+, Data
| Center roles, and 2023 Intern, Pathway and AI STE class hiring
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Imagine being of IC7+ caliber and voluntarily deciding to
| jump on this sinking ship. I doubt such a person exists.
| Might be an opportunity to upsell yourself into an IC7[+]
| offer, though.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Money is still a good motivator
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My uneducated opinion is this company had some downsizing and
| restructuring coming. But the leading edge of a big wave of
| downsizes might look like this, too.
| kansface wrote:
| Yeah, I'm with you, and then I read 83K employees doing
| Metaverse? Simply amazing! That must be at least 20 billion
| dollars a year! The correction in the tech sector has plenty
| more correcting to do it seems.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| That's the total Meta headcount, across Facebook, Instagram,
| Messenger, WhatsApp, Oculus, etc.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Inverse QQQ?
| selectodude wrote:
| SQQQ is up 10 percent today.
| gumby wrote:
| I doubt it.
|
| My guess is Google/Alphabet will do the same, as they have too
| high a proportion of people doing things that are neither basic
| research or contributing to revenue in any way. You can see how
| that can happen when you have an unconstrained gusher of money.
| There's effectively zero feedback. However given the weakness
| of their management (see: gusher of money + lack of focus) it's
| unlikely that the cuts will make any difference either way.
| Probably many good people will simply take a buy out and then
| go get another interesting job.
|
| Netfix? Given their culture and their market problems one could
| imagine it, but their culture seems to have steered them into
| trying to fight back. So probably not a big wave, just some
| trimming, as they have already done.
|
| As for the rest of maAMA-n? They appear to be doing fine;
| Amazon's retail challenges are more than made up by AWS. Apple
| and MS are trundling along as if nothing is happening in the
| macroenvironment (and they each have 40+ years to have worked
| out their systems).
| hinkley wrote:
| Please use "MANAMANA" instead.
|
| (doot doo do doo doot)
| gumby wrote:
| Netflix never deserved to be in FAANG anyway -- seems like
| it was just there to make the acronym work.
|
| Therefore your suggestion sounds great!
|
| How about: Microsoft Alphabet Netflix Apple Meta Amazon
| Nvidia Alibaba
| bagacrap wrote:
| amd?
| tempsy wrote:
| Apple is down like 6% today on reports of soft iPhone sales.
| In an economy where people are actually belt tightening
| luxury hardware sales are not exactly recession proof
| noir_lord wrote:
| They also have a cash mountain and I'd like to own a
| company that makes 94% of last years iphone sales.
|
| Over 200bn the last time I saw a figure (90bn in cash, the
| rest invested).
|
| https://www.investors.com/etfs-and-
| funds/sectors/sp500-compa...
| tempsy wrote:
| I'm not an Apple bear, I'm saying that it's a bit naive
| to say that any company will not be negatively affected
| by a recession that can result in downsizing or layoffs.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| DOesn't matter how much cash they have. Ownership will
| demand cuts if earnings fall.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Netflix looks shaky as hell. They need a huge bet, like Rings
| of Power or House of Dragons. The entire programming looks so
| completely awful cookie cutter at the moment.
| gumby wrote:
| They are trying to make a play for games. Seems like a
| market even more risky than films, but whatever.
| azemetre wrote:
| I'm shocked they don't do more merchandising, seems like
| easy money since they know what shows are popular.
| what_ever wrote:
| > As for the rest of maAMA-n? They appear to be doing fine;
| Amazon's retail challenges are more than made up by AWS.
| Apple and MS are trundling along as if nothing is happening
| in the macroenvironment (and they each have 40+ years to have
| worked out their systems).
|
| Apple -
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/18/23268953/apple-slow-
| hirin...
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-16/apple-
| lay...
|
| Microsoft
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-20/microsoft.
| ..
|
| https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-scoop-22
|
| Amazon
|
| https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/sourcecode/amazon-
| slows...
| bilsbie wrote:
| I hope they don't restructure the fact checking team. Who would
| protect us?
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| The initially planned expenses for the year were about $95B.
|
| I know this is pretty common for those big corporations.
|
| But I think that should be put in perspective.
|
| At 500M over more than 10 years Star Citizen is considered a scam
| or a waste of money and at least a proof of mismanagement.
| drummer wrote:
| Every dumpster fire, no matter how intense it burns, eventually
| dies out.
| juice_bus wrote:
| What an awful way to announce that. Q&A is over folks, everyone
| go back to their desk and start working again - good luck!
| ccooffee wrote:
| Such a poor plan. Dropping this in a Q&A means that nothing
| else said will be remembered. It's also being implemented in a
| completely asinine way: "individual teams will sort out how to
| handle headcount changes". Take no culpability for anything,
| and ensure that the confusion and anger targets the bottom-most
| level of management. What a classy move!
| n0us wrote:
| I'm sure that senior leadership will also be held accountable
| for the over-hiring they mandated and their teams will be
| among the first to reduce headcount \s
| jollyllama wrote:
| I'm curious if there was a plant to say "hey are there going to
| be layoffs."
|
| "Well, Joe, it's funny you ask..."
| Eumenes wrote:
| they've been over zealous with their hiring for many years, this
| was bound to happen during economic uncertainty. tack on
| competition from tiktok, failing metaverse, privacy and political
| related scandals, and there you have it: a sinking ship
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Well, guess that means the multi-year bugs in their API aren't
| getting fixed any time soon.
| woeirua wrote:
| Zuck is absolutely going to call back all the remote engineers
| that he hired over the past two years to the office, and just
| like with Tesla, those who refuse will be involuntarily
| separated. Work from home, _is_ going to die at the megacorps.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is my fear at Google. I'm now remote for family reasons.
| If for some reason they decide to do layoffs the "cut the
| remote staff" approach might feel attractive for foolish execs.
| rosywoozlechan wrote:
| Lots of smaller companies that have comparable compensation
| will continue to offer work from home. If a non-FANG position
| isn't a dealbreaker for you, you can do just fine if Google
| does end up requiring everyone to go back to the office.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Meta already did this / have been doing this. But I think Meta
| will suffer more from this choice than the employees let go as
| a result.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| "The Metaverse Company" declaring that they need employees to
| be physically in the same office would be a damning admission
| of failure.
| blinded wrote:
| passed the code and debugging challenge a month ago. recruiting
| emails have gone cold, figured this was the case.
| arberx wrote:
| Tech is reflexive. Since most tech/saas companies sell/support
| other saas companies, they all go down.
|
| Think about all the startups who rely on AWS, Apple computers,
| and Facebook ads. What happens when they all die?
|
| The tech bull run is over, and we'll find out where the bodies
| lie soon.
| dimgl wrote:
| This is really hyperbolic. Facebook is not even closely
| comparable to those. Additionally, there's no market indication
| that won't be a need for services like AWS or hardware provided
| by Apple.
|
| It's really weird how many people seem to _want_ the tech
| industry to just wither and die. It's unlikely and unrealistic.
| There may be a sharp correction, but it's unrealistic to think
| that the behemoths with a moat are going anywhere.
| arberx wrote:
| No one said anything about tech dying (I said startups), but
| a repricing for sure.
|
| We don't even know the market demand for these products
| because cheap money has made everyone a startup founder, and
| every company pivoted to providing a "tech" solution when it
| might not have been economically viable or provided any
| profit.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > No one said anything about tech dying (I said startups)
|
| You wrote: "Since most tech/saas companies sell/support
| other saas companies, they all go down."
| lallysingh wrote:
| AWS is healthy. Apple is effectively immortal, but will
| slowly commoditize (10+ yrs) from lack of innovation.
|
| Meta/Goog are (eng staff wise) oversized for their output.
| Both of their leaderships aren't leading very well.
|
| Despite the hype and capabilities offered, none of the big
| players have find ways to use their AI assets. That's a poor
| indicator of their future. You can almost smell the
| disruption coming..
| bllguo wrote:
| good point, other than applications in adtech for google/fb
| the only big tech company that is actually doing something
| with their ML expertise is nvidia IMO
| flyinglizard wrote:
| Where exactly do you advertise your blue collar business if not
| on a Meta or Google property?
|
| They don't sell tech. They use tech. They sell ads.
|
| I do agree that the bull run for companies that sell tech will
| subside, maybe over correcting in the short term.
| troon-lover wrote:
| ianbutler wrote:
| Oh no the market has corrected to 2019 levels because the
| ridiculous amount of free cash has stopped! Clearly the era of
| tech is over and we should all wrap up and go home.
|
| I don't think there is anything substantial here to suggest
| this is anything other than a normal recession and even if this
| was like the dotcom bubble, these companies aren't like dotcom
| era startups. They're massive behemoths intertwined with the
| fabric of American society, not to mention their warchests make
| most other companies blush.
| hinkley wrote:
| 2005 was a pretty shitty time to be in software. I could do
| without another one of those. If we avoid that level of suck
| for another 10 years I can just take early retirement.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| > I don't think there is anything substantial here to suggest
| this is anything other than a normal recession
|
| Then I'm guessing you haven't been paying much attention to
| anything.
|
| Have you seen what's happening in the bond market these days?
| Looked at the insane actions the BoE is taking coupled with
| their insane tax policy? Have you seen the rising dollar are
| you aware the threat that makes to the entire global credit
| system?
|
| This is literally just getting started.
| ianbutler wrote:
| I don't know that I'm particularly concerned about the UK
| causing a global economic crisis. I am aware of what's
| happening with them, I'm currently vacationing in Ireland
| so it's been on the news but I just don't know that the UK
| will be anything to cause larger global consequence.
|
| I was not aware of the US bond market crumbling, and having
| a quick read it doesn't seem to be, it seems to be a
| consequence of the fed raising rates which will obviously
| not continue indefinitely.
|
| To be honest it still seems like a normal recession but
| with a bunch of hyperbolic news headlines attached.
| time_to_smile wrote:
| The downvote arrow as slowly become a "truths I don't want to
| hear" button on HN.
|
| Too much cheap money and a grow at any costs mentality has lead
| to exactly this is problem where every tech company is very
| tightly coupled with every other tech company.
|
| I'm in the B2B space for one of the many non-profitable,
| recently IPO'd companies. As far as companies goes, this one is
| pretty sane. Healthy growth, a product that makes sense,
| thoughtful leadership. However when I look at our customers the
| vast majority are small tech startups, many of which will
| obviously cease to exist in a down turn.
|
| When I look at our spending, it's mostly to other larger tech
| companies, those big tech companies everyone wants to work for.
|
| But those small startups, that have weird products that don't
| make sense, price sensitive customers, unsustainable growth and
| crazy leadership, they make up a huge amount of our revenue.
| When they start to collapse, we'll have to downsize, both in
| headcount and in services we pay for. And we won't be alone.
|
| On top of that, I look at my own spending. My other tech
| friends and I have no problem paying what would have been crazy
| amounts for services like Door Dash, or a constant stream of
| slightly over price but so convenient stuff from Amazon. Why
| not subscribe to another streaming services, it's only
| $10/month. So many of these direct to consumer companies mostly
| exist because of highly paid techworkers that have more cash
| than they need.
|
| I get laid off I'll just pick up my food myself, I'm not going
| to be ordering everything of Amazon, I'm cancelling all but my
| most active subscriptions.
|
| There are a lot of positive feedbacks in the current tech
| ecosystem what will continue to be triggered and continue to
| bring down the massive, massive tech bubble we're in.
| uladzislau wrote:
| It's not just Meta, many other companies are on the hiring
| freeze. Probably the reason is not fulfilled Covid period bets on
| growth and expansion.
| SwSwinger wrote:
| Somehow, Meta managed to overhire in low cost of living areas and
| will likely look at employee overhead when considering where to
| downsize.
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