[HN Gopher] Meta Is Preparing to Notify Employees of Large-Scale...
___________________________________________________________________
Meta Is Preparing to Notify Employees of Large-Scale Layoffs This
Week
Author : Vervious
Score : 172 points
Date : 2022-11-06 20:55 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| sys_64738 wrote:
| > It added more than 27,000 employees in 2020 and 2021, and added
| an additional 15,344 in the first nine months of this year--about
| a fourth of that in the most recent quarter.
|
| So it basically doubled employee count in the last three years.
| Insanity.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Only crazy as growth stalled. If it kept pace with prior years
| they'd of had doubled revenue in that time frame
| rossdavidh wrote:
| In some organizations, you want to hire big going into the
| hiring freeze, so that once the layoffs start (and you get told
| from higher up, "cut x%), you can keep the people you actually
| care about. Insanity from the point of view of the
| organization, but rational from the point of view of the mid-
| level manager.
|
| Don't know if this is what happened at FB, but it happens in
| some places.
| bhawks wrote:
| Amazon actually has an 'unregretted attrition rate' metric
| that it holds managers to. Essentially they are expected to
| shed a percentage of employees annually. This metric gets
| gamed as "hire to fire" to keep your core team intact.
|
| https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-
| to...
| paxys wrote:
| And when you consider the fact that pretty much every other
| tech company did the same wild overhiring in those same years,
| where did all this new talent suddenly show up from? The simple
| answer - it didn't. The companies just lowered their hiring bar
| wayyy down to fill quotas, and are now suffering because of it.
| JamisonM wrote:
| If the marginal return per employee is still good then
| "lowering the bar" makes sense, not lowering the bar would be
| throwing money away - right?
|
| And during the pandemic certainly some of the new talent
| showing up was good, things changed and people stuck in jobs
| they were actually "too good for" moved on.
|
| I wouldn't assume it was "filling quotas" - it was filling
| positions and the positions existed for some reason, they
| were making a lot of money and there was probably more work
| to do!
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| You have to keep in mind that in this type of organization,
| managers are highly incentivized to grow their teams, by
| all means.
|
| The number of people "under" you is the dick measuring
| tape.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| This is a good thing, overall, in the same way that the dotcom
| crash was a good thing to clear the field of all the frauds.
|
| I have the feeling that a few of those large companies are in
| need of a wake-up call.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Yup
|
| The delusional amount of overhiring at these companies was
| really something. Guess it was too ingrained in their DNA.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I was there during the dot-com bubble.
|
| Everything that looked like bullshit turned out to be
| bullshit.
|
| And I've seen a lot of delusional bullshit during the last
| few years, the wort of those coming from Mark Zuckerberg and
| Elon Musk.
| cplusplusfellow wrote:
| Elon Musk advertised as a feature that he would cut Twitter
| staff to bring the revenue per employee in line with
| industry standards.
|
| But I'm curious - What ideas of Elon do you find to be
| delusional bullshit?
| kyralis wrote:
| "Full Self Driving"
| claytonjy wrote:
| saying "self driving cars are 2 years away" for the last
| 5+ years sticks out to me
| clpm4j wrote:
| I would say that "living on Mars" could be classified as
| delusional.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It was, but once Starship becomes operational, the
| financial game changes by many orders of magnitude - to a
| point where a single billionaire with no fucks to give
| can actually book themselves a ride to Mars.
|
| One may hate on Musk for a number of very good reasons,
| but it cannot be denied him, Shotwell and the rest of the
| SpaceX team have thoroughly kicked the established space
| industry mooches into their asses.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Elon Musk has unfortunately a very long track record of
| over-promising and under-delivering.
|
| Anything he say should be taken with the proverbial grain
| of salt.
|
| I don't think he is a complete fraud, but I would not bet
| my shirt on his Mark colonization project.
| vic20forever wrote:
| "Shoot first, ask questions later"[0] when cutting staff
| seems like a delusional idea to me.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808
| viscanti wrote:
| I don't know enough about the science to have a strong
| opinion, but I've heard a lot of people who have been
| critical of hyper loop, a very expensive tunnel filled
| with Tesla cars in Vegas that has much less efficiency
| than a subway from 50+ years ago, and saying that full
| self driving would be easy and finished years ago (he's
| since said full self driving is actually much more
| difficult than he initially thought).
|
| Maybe no visionary is going to get everything right. But
| there do seem to be some pretty major areas that have
| received critical feedback from people who seem to
| understand those domains.
| paganel wrote:
| Not the OP but the hyperloop thing is, imho, total
| bullshit. Not such a big thing though because he hasn't
| poured billions and billions of dollars into it as
| Zuckerberg has done with the VR stuff.
|
| On the other hand Tesla has been a huge thing. I'm a big
| anti-EVs guy because I'm, at heart, a petrolhead, and at
| the beginning I was of course very skeptic of him
| managing to pull it off. But that opinion of mine changed
| completely the moment when I realised that a Tesla
| vehicle is basically a piece of software
| running/controlling a battery that happens to have 4
| wheels attached, and that the Tesla engineers have
| managed to make good on that.
|
| The rocket stuff is also quite cool.
| alliao wrote:
| i wish tesla would make hvac for houses to be honest, the
| amount of thought into managing heat in a tesla is
| something special; or maybe it's AI
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Most of his AI claims are, so far, backed by nothing. The
| demos are underwhelming, to say the least.
|
| The rockets and car factories are impressive.
|
| But the tunnels, the robotaxi, the hyperloop, the solar
| roofs... So far, a lot of over-hyped promises that are
| looking more and more like vaporware.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0PHv3E8jpY
| idrios wrote:
| The Metaverse doesn't seem delusional to me, it just seems
| like a massive gamble. I can easily envision a future where
| they've cornered the market on VR. Where to play the latest
| Call of Duty you need to do it through the Metaverse
| Portal, and you have access to NFT skins that you either
| bought or unlocked as achievement from other games.
|
| I hope that future doesn't happen, or that if it does its
| through a decentralized protocol and not owned by Meta. But
| if the Metaverse implodes I'd still consider it a failed
| gamble than delusional bullshit.
|
| I can't defend Musk the same way.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| What is looking delusional is the way Meta/Zuck is
| handling it.
|
| They do not have to raise money to build the tech, so
| they don't even have to advertise anything until they
| have something really worthy to show and sell.
|
| So why are they showing something that is clearly not
| ready?
|
| Either they think that discourse can translate into
| reality if enough people believe in it (magical
| thinking), or they think they already have a product. In
| both case this is delusional.
| noasaservice wrote:
| It's nice and all to say "yay yay market correction".
|
| It's a whole other thing to be cheering for people losing
| their jobs.
|
| Remember, we have one of the weakest social nets in the
| world. And our medical is nigh exclusively tied to our jobs.
|
| But people are losing their jobs en masse (and the C-levels
| get golden parachutes). Um, yay?
| glogla wrote:
| That would be normally a sensible sentiment, and a rare
| empathic one, on hyperindividualist hypercapitalist Hacker
| News.
|
| But here we're talking about people who made at least 300k
| a year, possibly up to a million. Those who stayed for few
| years likely never have to look for another job even again.
| The ones who didn't might still take few years sabbatical.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| I'm not cheering by any means. But the average individual
| salary at Twitter is ~39% higher than the average household
| income in the U.S.; the average salary of the folks HN
| relates to -- the tech team, the ally team, etc. -- is
| considerably higher.
|
| Totally agree our social safety nets aren't the strongest.
| But precisely because of that, people -- particularly
| higher earners -- have a responsibility to build their own
| padding for the inevitable short, sharp shocks to their
| livelihood.
|
| EDIT: I reflexively pulled Twitter numbers, but a quick
| glance shows the average FB salary is higher.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Unemployment rate is pretty much the lowest it's been in
| history.
|
| God forbid we take responsibility for the massive bubble
| we've created through fiscal and monetary excess and
| actually address inflation
|
| These people will be reabsorbed elsewhere, but it will
| certainly be a sad world when 21 year olds can't make 300k
| out of college with 0 experience.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Unemployment rate is currently close to the lowest it's
| been in history.
|
| Yes, it is. But declines follow peaks.
|
| > People who lose their jobs will be reabsorbed elsewhere
|
| ...or they won't, and very soon the unemployment rate
| will be farther than it is today from the lowest it has
| been in history.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Unemployment rate is a measure of slack in the labor
| market, nothing more. It says nothing about an
| individual's experience.
|
| 5% unemployment means there's a rotating set of job
| seekers that comprise 5% of the labor force.
|
| It absolutely does not mean that 5% of the labor force is
| perpetually jobless and unemployable.
|
| I hope those lamenting these layoffs were also against
| the extreme fiscal excess which made them necessary in
| the end. The road to hell is often paved with good
| intentions
| noasaservice wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization
|
| Just because the general country-wide unemployment is a
| low number, does not mean with any sort of guarantee that
| an individual will be able to transition in a decent
| amount of time as not to unduly impact their life.
|
| And given what the oligopoly of banks... err, the FED has
| been saying, 'they are hitting the brakes of inflation by
| raising interest rates significantly' - further
| exasperating the layoffs and slowing/reversing hiring at
| other firms.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Word tip: exacerbating not exasperating.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| There will always be those that suffer
|
| Targeting them more precisely with aid is the way to
| solve that, not helicopter money into massive bubble and
| inflation.
|
| In the end who got hurt the most by the very money handed
| to them?
| noasaservice wrote:
| > There will always be those that suffer
|
| With that attitude, there will be.
|
| But there doesn't have to be.
|
| > Targeting them more precisely with aid is the way to
| solve that, not helicopter money into massive bubble and
| inflation.
|
| Not aid. Money. Straight up cold hard cash. Any thing
| else instead, like SNAP, housing vouchers, etc treats
| them like they have no agency. Yet with corporate
| handouts, we do no such thing. Look no further than the
| PPP debacle.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| We did hand everybody money, which is why the economy is
| about to crash as a result of the inflation it
| propagated.
|
| Sorry, you advocate economic collapse, not anything
| realistic or sustainable.
|
| Wishful thinkers have inflicted a vast amount of deaths
| throughout history due to economic mismanagement. Famine,
| hyperinflation etc
| bjourne wrote:
| Do you think that the world will improve if 21-year-old
| college graduates make less money?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Yes, because compensation will more closely match
| contributions, and I prefer a just world
| bjourne wrote:
| Does this logic extend to company shareholders, board
| members, and CEOs too?
| adam_arthur wrote:
| What do you think's happened to shareholders who held all
| these tech stocks that are down 90%?
|
| They've lost 90% of their money, by definition
| bjourne wrote:
| I'm not sure this is an answer to my question.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Where is the disconnect?
|
| If an investor does poor due diligence and doesn't put
| the work in to determine a reasonable fair valuation for
| a company, and then loses their entire investment, that
| is just.
|
| If board members give bad advice and the stock falls,
| they incur losses.
|
| These are just outcomes.
|
| Most people would agree that attending a 6 week bootcamp
| shouldn't entitle somebody to a 200-300k job. And it
| won't in the near future.
|
| You'll have to put much more work in to achieve the same
| comp going forward, just like every other industry
| paxys wrote:
| It's a good thing in the same way that a wildfire is a good
| thing. Great for the long term health for the forest, terrible
| for all the animals, people, property that happened to be in
| the way.
|
| The tech industry is going to take a while to recover from the
| current economic shocks, and everyone - whether you work for
| the affected companies or not - will have to face some pain in
| the short term.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Interesting you use that analogy, because to continue it --
| if you don't occasionally have smaller wildfires, you end up
| having ones that end up terrible for the health of the forest
| too.
|
| Not sure what conclusion to draw from that.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| One can also, I don't know, institute proper
| forest/infrastructure management and avoid runaway fires
| like that
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| When I lived in Africa, they used to have controlled
| grassland fires, every year. I remember driving past one
| of these, and my mother explained the concept to me.
|
| On Long Island (where I live), we have the Pine Barrens.
| These are areas of scrub and pitch pine trees, in a sandy
| soil. They require occasional fires, in order to
| reproduce (opens the cones, and fertilizes the soil).
|
| Back in the early 1990s, we had a pretty major wildfire,
| because they had not been doing controlled burns. I think
| New Jersey suffered something similar, around the same
| time.
|
| Since then, I hear they do controlled burns.
|
| I have seen _no_ "controlled burns" of the bloat that
| infests the tech industry, so this is likely to be a
| fairly significant wildfire.
| ctvo wrote:
| > The tech industry is going to take a while to recover from
| the current economic shocks
|
| How did you come to this conclusion? The doubling of
| headcount in 2020 and 2021 in a year didn't signal that this
| can turn on a dime in either direction?
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| blinding-streak wrote:
| https://archive.ph/BuNHQ
| matt_s wrote:
| Is this a Tech/Social Media bust in the making with Twitter's
| latest woes as well? Or is the more a sign of many companies
| taking an opportunity to pull back on ad/marketing spending?
| Collectively that would impact social media and search platforms
| the most since that is their only real revenue source.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The stock market downturn has hit a lot of tech companies hard,
| and since that affects their ability to pay cheaply (in stock)
| and/or run at a loss made up by investors, they're cutting
| staff bills.
| subradios wrote:
| Adtech here, spending is increasing in all things. However
| premium content like Hulu etc are taking up more budget than
| "web apps" of late because the data shows its more effective
| caminante wrote:
| _> Adtech here, spending is increasing in all things._
|
| This is misleading.
|
| Increasing? Yes.
|
| Increasing relative to view a couple months ago? No. [0]
|
| META's valuation has gotten hammered recently due to reduced
| ad forecasts on top of AAPL locking down iPhone privacy.
|
| [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/less-growth-seen-
| for-2023-u-s-a...
| [deleted]
| dontbenebby wrote:
| briandear wrote:
| Imagine that. Literally to be announced the day after Election
| Day. Some coincidence.
| haney wrote:
| It could be a total coincidence, could be designed to take
| advantage of a news cycle that's already full, could be that it
| has taken them this long to put a plan together since their
| stock started dropping. If your theory is that there's a
| political motivation there are a couple of simpler explanations
| before we jump to that conclusion.
| vandleyindust wrote:
| What are you implying?
| pepperonipizza wrote:
| Probably that it will be more unnoticed because of it
| datalopers wrote:
| Housing in SF/SV is in trouble. Last week alone we had Twitter
| (3700), Stripe (1000), Lyft (700), Opendoor (550), and now FB
| (probably 5000). Obviously not every employee resides in that
| region but it's a good ~40% of the workforce [edit: of these
| companies].
| FfejL wrote:
| 7.7 million people live in the Bay Area. Your 40% estimate is
| off by several orders of magnitude.
| [deleted]
| orpheansodality wrote:
| For twitter, here are the actual number for the bay area,
| according to state filings[0]
|
| * SF: 784
|
| * San Jose: 106
|
| Still high numbers IMO but SF for example has ~800k residents,
| so this only represents ~0.1% of the total population. Not
| super convinced yet that it's going to have any immediate
| impact on housing in the city unless this triggers a much
| larger avalanche of firings that don't have an associated swarm
| of smaller companies waiting in the wings to pick good
| employees up at a discount.
|
| [0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Here-s-how-
| many-...
| rco8786 wrote:
| > Not super convinced yet that it's going to have any
| immediate impact on housing in the city
|
| It's not "Twitter layoffs cause issues" - it's more that if
| you can identify 5, 10, 15+ well known companies doing
| layoffs concentrated in that area there is probably also a
| very long tail of smaller companies doing layoffs also.
| Cumulative effect of it all can be quite large.
|
| > ~40% of the workforce
|
| This is an enormous exaggeration. However, even a 4-5%
| reduction in jobs in the area can have an enormous effect on
| the economy and housing market.
| andrejc wrote:
| How does ~1000 represent 0.001% of 800k?
| orpheansodality wrote:
| whoops decimals mixup, will edit:
|
| 784 / 815,201 = 0.00096 = 0.1%
| whiplash451 wrote:
| It's not like the laid off people will run out of the area the
| next day en-masse. All have some kind of ties there.
| jacurtis wrote:
| And there's plenty of other companies ready to scoop up the
| talent. Most these laid off employees will have job offers
| within a month.
| datalopers wrote:
| > And there's plenty of other companies ready to scoop up
| the talent
|
| 1) Tech job openings have fallen by ~50% since a year ago
|
| 2) Total comp packages are materially lower, creating a
| strain on people's ability to pay for their housing
| paxys wrote:
| What does the 40% number have to do with anything? A company
| can lay off 100% of its workforce but it won't affect the local
| Bay Area market unless it makes up a significant number of its
| ~8 million population. A few hundred or even a few thousand
| people aren't going to move the needle.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| abeppu wrote:
| To the degree that housing in the area is in trouble, I still
| have to guess that the impact of the recent large layoffs must
| be dwarfed by the impact from interest rate changes. Of the
| people that still have jobs and feel secure in them, their
| cashflow will still get them much less house than a year ago.
| For those that had some form of equity compensation, the value
| of that has probably dropped sharply. I.e. people who would
| otherwise be potential home-buyers will be making significantly
| smaller offers, even if they still have jobs.
|
| I think there are a number of recently completed or near-
| completion condo buildings that are going to be in trouble,
| having been planned around sale-price expectations which now
| seem hard to reach. But in the broader and longer-term view,
| doesn't the fact still remain that we have too little housing
| in the region?
| datalopers wrote:
| > I still have to guess that the impact of the recent large
| layoffs must be dwarfed by the impact from interest rate
| changes
|
| Two sides of the same coin. It'll be brutal. Bay area home
| prices will fall by at least 40% from 2021 highs by end of
| 2024.
| paxys wrote:
| One can only hope, but Bay Area housing survived the 2008
| bubble and whatever is happening now is peanuts compared to
| that so far.
| [deleted]
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Tech wasn't hit very hard in 08, nor was it nearly as large a
| part of the economy.
|
| CA housing was hit hard though. Yes. LA was one of the worst
| hit
| sahila wrote:
| Yeah but prices have dramatically increased since 2008, I
| want to say 2-4x or more based on my anecdotal data.
| rr808 wrote:
| True, but balance that with people coming back to the office.
| I'd think AirBnBs in Tahoe are definitely in trouble!
| omnimus wrote:
| Are you saying about 10 000 are 40% of the workforce of SF/SV?
| So workforce in SF/SV is 25 000?
| dividefuel wrote:
| I think they are saying 40% of those laid off are in SF/SV.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Not of the total workforce, but "the workforce that earns
| enough to be able to afford thousands of dollars a month in
| rent alone". If enough "big tech" people get laid off and are
| forced to move away because they can't make rent, eventually
| rental markets should cool down first, and secondary the
| ownership markets.
| daveevad wrote:
| Admittedly biased Bay area resident myself, but the
| _fundamentals_ of the housing markets remain from my
| perspective: this part of the country has the best climate and
| natural beauty. Over the longer term, I 'm not too worried
| about housing prices but these next couple of years could be
| brutal. I'd be curious to hear alternate contenders for the
| climate, landscape claims of mine if anyone's game.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Climate doesn't matter much when people can't afford a
| mortgage payment on a tiny house that costs several million
| dollars
| alliao wrote:
| just curious, are most buildings built for the big one? or is
| it more let the quake shake down the weak mentality
| rr808 wrote:
| The other thing has changed is interest rates. Fundamentals @
| 7% mortgages really aren't great either.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Overtly or not a lot of their staff were employed to "don't let
| Twitter overtake us", that dose start to look a bit redundant.
| zaphar wrote:
| I don't think FB/Meta was really too worried about Twitter. It
| was never anywhere close to catching up to FB's numbers.
| paxys wrote:
| That may have been true a decade ago, but Twitter hasn't been
| real competition for Facebook for a long time now.
| mysecretaccount wrote:
| Article is paywalled - is there an estimate of how many will be
| laid off?
| gundmc wrote:
| Nothing more specific than "many thousands".
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Reminder that earlier this year the Fed implored corporate
| leaders to initiate hiring freezes and layoffs in order to lower
| inflation that they blamed on "high wages", and big tech
| companies were some of the first to line up to gleefully fall on
| that sword.
| ispo wrote:
| As we say in Spanish "as I have limited time left in the Convent,
| I will shit inside". I am very surprised to see all these polite
| colleagues behaving like angels while being treated like office
| clips. Good luck to all of us.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I wonder if this is directly or indirectly related to what Elon
| Musk did at Twitter.
| mc32 wrote:
| Doubt it. Quite a few tech cos have been announcing freezes as
| well as RIFs.
|
| Most are trimming fat because of market conditions (economic
| slowdown) Twitter because they were management heavy and they
| were bought out and needed to trim some excess weight.
| duhast wrote:
| Is there any actual public evidence of Twitter being
| management heavy outside single statement made by Musk?
| bdavis__ wrote:
| There is only room for Elon in the management suite.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Possibly indirectly in the sense most people are going to be
| consumed with the Twitter debacle and won't really pay much
| attention to what is going on at Meduh.
| drpgq wrote:
| If Musk hadn't made a Twitter offer, where would their stock be
| today? Probably low enough that big layoffs were inevitable.
| hongtona wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33497290
| paganel wrote:
| Their share price is 73% down since the start of the year,
| certainly at some point their CEO and the person taking the
| actual decisions should take responsibility for it all, no?
| miohtama wrote:
| Because Zuckerberg has controlling shares, it is hard to force
| him out. I would expect bitter shareholders to sue him for
| breaching fiduciary duty or similar, but IANAL.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Responsibility for what?
|
| It's easy to say that in hindsight, hiring 40K people in 3
| years was not a good move. Maybe 3 years ago it was the best
| move. Maybe Facebook would have been down 90% if they didn't.
|
| And I say that as someone that thinks the shift to the
| metaverse is a complete idiocy.
| Macha wrote:
| Good luck taking action against the person with all the voting
| shares.
| sgu999 wrote:
| No, employees take responsibility when the stock is down.
| Decision makers only take responsibility when it's up. :D
| whiplash451 wrote:
| By the same logic, the CEOs of Shopify, Spotify and Netflix
| should take responsibility as well. Maybe there is something
| more systemic going on.
| colechristensen wrote:
| What does "taking responsibility" look like? A meaningless
| public post "I take responsibility"?
| paganel wrote:
| Stepping aside or closing/killing-off the project that is
| haemorrhaging money and is bringing down the share valuation.
| qeternity wrote:
| I've seen this posted a lot, and I'm not really sure I
| understand what the point is. Yes, Zuck has an unusual amount
| of power as CEO. In another company, the CEO might be fired and
| the new CEO would come in and do the mass layoffs and course
| correction. But the only difference is in that one person's job
| security. It makes no difference to the rank and file: the
| company over hired and there's only one remedy for that,
| irrespective of CEO accountability.
|
| When you say the CEO should take responsibility for it all,
| what exactly do you mean?
| paganel wrote:
| > When you say the CEO should take responsibility for it all,
| what exactly do you mean?
|
| Either stepping aside or killing the VR thing, which is
| haemorrhaging money and which is very negatively affecting
| the share price. The article itself has a quote by some Meta
| investors asking just that, i.e. for the VR project to be
| killed.
| qeternity wrote:
| Yeah fair and I think most other companies this would
| happen.
|
| But the layoffs would still happen in all scenarios.
| dividefuel wrote:
| How do large companies typically decide who gets laid off? Do
| they set a target, then pass it down proportionately throughout
| the org tree? Do they often chop specific areas entirely and
| leave others unaffected? A mix of both? Something else?
| chris_wot wrote:
| Man, if this is the end of social media, then it can't come too
| soon.
| paxys wrote:
| Social media will not "end", just continue to evolve from one
| form to another and one platform to another.
| cvwright wrote:
| If this is the end of FB and Twitter, it can't come too soon.
| Kiro wrote:
| Why are you posting here if you want HN gone?
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| TikTok next please!
| spike021 wrote:
| Social media isn't inherently bad, if you can learn how to
| self-curate.
|
| I've made pen pal friends on international trips who I stay in
| contact with on Instagram and Twitter because it doesn't make
| sense to exchange phone numbers. I use lists and muted
| words/phrases on Twitter to only see tweets from people I care
| about reading, on topics I mostly am fine with.
|
| I guess for people who still browse Facebook and Twitter like
| they did 15 years ago, then social media should get buried. But
| there are some pretty effective ways to curb its toxicity and
| reap benefit from it these days.
| cmsonger wrote:
| "Social media isn't inherently bad, if people across the
| world can learn how to self-curate." Is equivalent to "Social
| media is bad" IMO.
|
| There are always going to be "enough" people who can't self-
| curate that social media will be harmful.
| spike021 wrote:
| But you could say the same thing about nearly everything.
|
| Sure there are millions upon millions of books. Someone who
| enjoys reading won't elect to read books they know are a
| waste of time or something that will be offensive to them.
|
| Same can be said for consuming newspapers (anyone else just
| skip the front page and go right to a special section you
| actually care about, like sports or business instead of
| politics?), TV, movies, video games? Music?
|
| So are all things bad because some people are incapable of
| deciding for themselves how to consume said things?
| woodruffw wrote:
| "The dose makes the poison" is as true for social media as it
| is for everything else. I agree that self-curation (and
| restricting your time) are critical; the problem is that
| social media companies are incentivized to _de_ -curate and
| _addict_ you to their product.
| electrondood wrote:
| "Junk food isn't inherently bad, if you can learn to self-
| discipline." This ignores the fact that it's 100% engineered
| to be as addictive as possible, just like social media.
|
| You may have found a way to use social media that works for
| you, but the net effect on society is still negative.
| s1k3 wrote:
| Reddit and HN are also social media...
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| I don't know about that. Is any web site that has user
| comments social media now? That seems an overly broad
| definition.
|
| HN isn't particularly social as far as I can see. I don't
| have a network of friends. It doesn't facilitate personal
| connections or groups.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| +1
|
| Social media has been a net minus for society. That doesn't
| mean "no benefits" but rather "benefits far outweighed by
| costs."
|
| As for Google: some DC cynic once said "Never believe anything
| until it's been officially denied." So has their PR team denied
| it yet?
| daveevad wrote:
| Would you mind disambiguating DC, best I got is data-center,
| which doesn't make a bunch of sense. I do like that quote
| though.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| District of Columbia
| daveevad wrote:
| thank you and that should have been obvious. perhaps i
| need to get out of the industry more.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| No problem. I thought of adding periods, so it would be
| "D.C." and probably should have.
| telotortium wrote:
| Washington D.C.
| rchaud wrote:
| I wonder if we'll see the outpouring of barely disguised
| schadenfreude that accompanied the Twitter layoffs. Then again
| Zuckerberg seems like a boring drone of a person, whereas Musk
| has the sub-Trumpian "I alone can fix this" aura that seems to
| attract so many.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| These things tend to correlate. If A is laying off, I can do so
| as well without taking a too much PR flack and/or singling our
| firm out as one navigating firm-specific uncertain market
| conditions.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| I still, after all these years, hold the belief that facebook
| failed to innovate because the engineering interview is based on
| memorization. Having worked with those types of engineers, they
| can absolutely build exactly what is needed. But abstract and
| engaging product vision does not come easily with them.
| Outsourcing that capability to an attractive and charismatic
| product manager can never close that gap.
| camgunz wrote:
| Facebook is one of the most innovative software companies out
| there:
|
| - Cassandra
|
| - Hiphop VM
|
| - Flow
|
| - React
|
| - GraphQL
|
| - zstd
|
| - PyTorch
|
| - rocksdb
|
| I hate Facebook to my core, but this is pretty undeniable. You
| gotta re-examine your priors on this one.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Innovative software! Not product. React alone is a brilliant
| front end framework that changed the web. PyTorch as well.
|
| Amazon does not produce the same level of open source, or
| anywhere close, but the products are more varied and far
| better.
| daveevad wrote:
| At least a few of these are derivative of other projects.
|
| I don't deny the engineering innovation of Facebook but it
| must be moderated to some extent by the way ideas are flowing
| between engineers at mega-corps, probably from at least Bell
| Labs, if not earlier.
| notart666 wrote:
| Algorithm interviews never worked it was just a filtering
| mechanism so they could access cheaper labor. The reality is
| you have no idea if someone is qualified for their job until
| you hire them. Everything else are just signals. Fuzzy at best.
| s1k3 wrote:
| I don't think it's cheapening the labor... it's a way to
| filter the pool at the cost of missing some gems.
|
| Basically it will filter more bad than good but it will still
| filter good.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > failed to innovate because the engineering interview is based
| on memorization
|
| Disclaimer: I'm a software engineer myself.
|
| I think if a company considers product innovation as part of
| its software engineers duties, they have already failed.
|
| Software engineers innovate on technical solutions, they are
| the bridge between innovative products and their
| implementation, and it happens that they can bring out
| innovative product, but innovation is the job of product
| people, not software people.
|
| I know some on HN would like to believe that software engineers
| are the ultimate worker that can and should do everything and
| anything, but it's not the case.
| [deleted]
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Without that ability to share, shift, or generate a vision
| you'll be limited.
|
| The best engineers I've seen are doing far more than just
| solving coding and system design problems for existing
| issues.
|
| Also a software engineer, though I've moved to the management
| side (I miss the engineering focus).
| antiterra wrote:
| I assure you there are plenty of engineers with abstract and
| engaging product vision at Meta. There are some genuinely
| difficult problems to solve at their scale and they are
| incredibly creative at it.
| paxys wrote:
| Google, Apple, Microsoft, TikTok, Tesla, NVidia and the vast
| majority of tech companies of all sizes that have been using
| this exact same interview process for decades are managing to
| innovate just fine.
|
| Facebook's problem has never been engineering. Blame its
| leadership and the product decisions they made (like dumping
| $4B a quarter into a "metaverse" that nobody wants).
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Not quite. Facebook is the pinnacle of memorization. Google
| is similar and is absolutely not innovating, they just have a
| monopoly on search, and a bunch of side projects copying
| other companies (AWS, Microsoft Word) etc. Microsoft does not
| interview like that, and TikTok is a copy of FB funded by the
| CCP. Tesla does not ask leetcode hard interview questions.
| Neither does Amazon. I am intimately familiar with the
| interview process.
| pcbro141 wrote:
| TikTok is not a copy of Facebook. The fact
| Facebook/Meta/Instagram is trying desperately to copy them
| is proof of that.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| The algorithm is drastically better, but is also better
| because TikTok doesnt have as strong as a need for
| profit. Its a long story, and yes its a good product. But
| its an incremental algorithmic change, not a new product
| category
| [deleted]
| flyinglizard wrote:
| FB did technical innovation just fine. The problem is with
| the product, and this is not something that engineers
| solve.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| The problem is that it should be something that engineers
| solve. Non technical product managers from top schools
| are not equipped to drive innovation if they are not on
| the technical ground level.
| bsaul wrote:
| And yet i still think the facebook page sucks
| tremendously from an engineering pov. It hasn't evolved
| in years feature wise and yet it still slows to a crawl
| whenever i launch it.
|
| Totally unimpressed.
| jarsin wrote:
| Did amazon change recently? I got leetcoded there. I even
| applied to a web dev role using ruby on rails and was
| blindsided by the hard trick questions.
| dirac44 wrote:
| No, the person saying they don't do LC hard questions is
| not correct. Most are going to be LC medium but they do
| ask LC hard in some interviews. I can in fact point to
| two questions I was asked by Amazon in the last few
| months and I worked there for several years. In any event
| they are mostly LC medium, possibly LC hard--exactly what
| you should expect from a FB interview in the past couple
| of years.
| kjeetgill wrote:
| > TikTok is a copy of FB funded by the CCP.
|
| With all due respect -- Facebook (the product) is one of
| the social platforms furthest from TikTok. Even roughly
| equating them sounds like you might not use, know, or
| understand any of them. Vine, YouTube, or Snapchat maybe --
| they all differ in different ways -- or even Insta I get
| ... But Facebook?
| cletus wrote:
| I get that you dislike this format. There are legitimate
| critcisms. But to extrapolate this to a company-wide strategy
| failure is beyond ludicrous and simply belies just how much you
| detest whiteboard coding. Please, for your own sake, try and
| separate your personal dislikes from objective judgements.
|
| Meta is product-driven not engineering-driven. How engineers
| are hired doesn't really matter because it's generally not
| engineers at the helm.
|
| Meta is in the position they are because post-WhatsApp there
| has been no company strategy. First it was the post-2016
| election fallout of fighting misinformation, which was never
| going to work and isn't really the problem anyway, followed by
| a brief foray into crypto and finally the eye-watering
| boondoggle that is the metaverse, the answer to the question no
| one asked.
|
| None of that has anything to do with hiring engineering ICs
| with whiteboard coding interviews and it's crazy to suggest it
| is.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| I have worked at two FAANGs. It's obvious to me that there is
| no vision, just raw execution on strictly defined design
| documents. The product decisions come from a place that is
| commonly never even exposed to the engineer.
|
| "Meta is product-driven not engineering-driven."
|
| My point exactly. Divorcing product management from technical
| implementation is a fools errand in an extremely technical
| company.
|
| When every engineer is focussed on execution, it adds up.
| Interesting engineering led ideas cannot lead the company in
| new directions.
| kevinh wrote:
| Surely someone is writing the strictly-defined design
| documents.
| wittycardio wrote:
| "How can I make this about my inability to answer basic
| algorithms questions"
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| I have worked at two FAANGs. On a daily basis I see how the
| sausage is made. I currently work on an AI platform for a
| product 100M people use
| seibelj wrote:
| I have it from a trusted friend that a big Google layoff is
| coming soon as well. Stay safe out there
| brundolf wrote:
| Wondering how the displaced engineers will impact the rest of
| the job market
| seibelj wrote:
| Probably they will be absorbed at lower salaries / equity.
| But SF real estate, holy shit. Dump it now if you have any
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Yes, tech comp is about to come down greatly across the
| board.
|
| We've barely seen the start of layoffs yet, and the Fed is
| pedal to the metal on engineering a recession. Tech falls
| first due to highest discount rate sensitivity
| bluedino wrote:
| No more $150k DevOps engineers that don't know how disk
| partitions or Python actually work?
| paganel wrote:
| > tech comp is about to come down greatly across the board.
|
| To be honest the total comps for some FAANG companies had
| gone into the crazy territory, there was no way for a up
| and coming startup to compete against comps of 500-600k (or
| so I had read) that decent engineers were getting.
|
| I mean, there was a way, but in exchange those start-ups
| had to promise the world and then some, which was not
| ideal, to say the least. That's how we got lots of "fake"
| unicorns, which only now are beginning to get back to
| Earth.
| paxys wrote:
| Disagree with "across the board". Tech still has a lot of
| difficult problems and a crazy amount of money to be made,
| so premium talent will continue to command premium
| salaries. It's just that a "staff engineer" 4 years out of
| college won't be able to sleep their way into $500K in
| salary + stock.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Comp is dictated by labor market dynamics, not by
| profitability of the product.
|
| If you have 10 engineers of roughly equal skill competing
| for the same role, the company has more leverage to offer
| lower comp than if there's just 1, or less than one.
|
| Profitability just sets a cap on what can be paid.
|
| That being said, I do agree that the best of the best
| will likely be able to maintain mid 6 figure comps. But
| it won't be the norm as it has been.
|
| There's also theory vs practice. In practice very few
| companies have a high level of confidence about being
| able to quantify how much one engineer is worth vs
| another. Which is why 10x engineers can't capture
| significantly higher comp than the median, even in the
| current (recent) market
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| Just my 2c: I know friends who work at other companies paying
| similar wages who immediately try to get ahold of the lists
| of laid off staff from these layoffs hoping to hire top
| talent when they're otherwise not even going to hear they're
| looking.
|
| So I don't know how much this will really change comp levels?
| Especially with how frequently software people change jobs
| anyway.
| klohto wrote:
| I have it from a good friend that this is bullshit
| deeptote wrote:
| they were literally trying to recruit me last week
| kyawzazaw wrote:
| I think both can be true at the same time but it is
| unlikely for the first
| sushid wrote:
| Not saying that the grandparent comment is confirmed, but
| they always keep recruiters busy no matter what until they
| themselves are laid off. AFAIK Google has pretty much
| paused hiring across all divisions.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Recruiters from the big companies doing layoffs as we speak
| have hit me up, it means nothing.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| you may get an offer but not a job...
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Meta, Amazon, hell even Twitter have reached out to me and
| my neighbors recently (my friend has an interview at
| Twitter next week). I believe even during hiring freezes
| these companies carry on recruitment because they're slow
| and can wait for the ideal role to appear in the future
| even if there's nothing available right now. So basically
| you'll get an offer without a job.
| raydev wrote:
| And?
|
| Recruiters are usually operating on weeks old info. They
| never find out when the freezes/cuts are coming until the
| day of, because any changes would tip off employees and
| lead to rumors/lower morale and productivity.
| chihuahua wrote:
| If there's a severance payment, I wouldn't mind that, as I was
| planning on leaving the week after next.
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