[HN Gopher] Meta lays off 11,000 people
___________________________________________________________________
Meta lays off 11,000 people
Author : technics256
Score : 1856 points
Date : 2022-11-09 11:11 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (about.fb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.fb.com)
| posedge wrote:
| I'm surprised by this direct and candid tone.
| jacooper wrote:
| I'm still surprised they are using the fb.com domain. Why haven't
| they move to meta.com?
| jacooper wrote:
| Moved*
| yashg wrote:
| 16 weeks of base pay + 6 months of health insurance and
| everything else, looks like a decent severance package at least.
| This seems better handled than Twitter's layoffs.
| nsenifty wrote:
| +2 weeks base pay for every year of service with no cap.
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| Yup. One person I know is getting around 10 months of
| severance(!). Actually seems like a sweet deal.
| kadomony wrote:
| Musk only authorized 3 months' severance to substantiate the 90
| days needed to prevent being sued into oblivion. The man is
| going to do the bare minimum for his employees to recoup his
| loss in making the acquisition.
| FraaJad wrote:
| The bare minimum would be 60 days severance to stave off
| California's WARN act, isn't it?
| consumer451 wrote:
| That is really generous. But man, I'm sitting here really
| hoping my sibling who works at Meta is not getting axed.
|
| He took the job because of the money, after our parents had to
| declare a medical bankruptcy. The increase in salary allowed
| him to pay for their housing which they cannot afford on SS
| benefits.
|
| Even under those circumstances he still would not take the job
| until he got my super-anti-Zuck butt on-board with the idea.
|
| I hope people realize that reasons for working at Meta may be
| more complicated than it might seem on the surface.
|
| </rant>
|
| UPDATE: he still has a job, whew
| yashg wrote:
| Of course layoffs are never pleasant and I hope and wish no
| one ever has to face them. But in the capitalist world we
| live in, they are inevitable. I am glad your brother has his
| job. Another sad thing about the uber capitalist society that
| US is, are the medical bankruptcies. In a developed country
| like the US, people shouldn't go bankrupt trying to avail
| healthcare. But that's a completely different discussion and
| let's not go there.
| ggregoire wrote:
| I've read several times in those comments that this is a
| "decent" severance package.
|
| I'm not that familiar with the US legalities and practices,
| what's considered a "good" and "very good" severance package
| over there, if 16 weeks of base pay + 6 months of health
| insurance (for the employees and their families btw) is only
| "decent"? Is it common to get way better? From abroad we think
| that the severance packages in the US are at the will of the
| employers and so are usually very bad.
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| Honest question - what does 'take accountability' and 'take
| responsibility' actually look like for Zuckerberg here?
| theCrowing wrote:
| It means nothing especially with 50% voting shares. The funny
| thing about these layoffs is how they just go by the C-Suites
| without even denting their value.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Honest question - what do you expect it to look like beside
| making the statement and giving employees a more than gracious
| severance package to back up the words?
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| I guess in an ideal world, the board removes him as CEO?
| atemerev wrote:
| Why? He is making a correct decision from the business
| point of view, it is unclear who will be the replacement
| CEO, and there are similar layoffs across other tech
| companies. The board has zero incentive of changing the CEO
| now.
| periphrasis wrote:
| This decision is correct, given all the incorrect
| strategic decisions he made leading up to it. The markets
| have clearly lost a lot of confidence in his leadership,
| and I would have to imagine the remaining employees have
| too. Stepping down would be a drastic step, but merely
| stating "I take responsibility" is unlikely on its own to
| restore confidence in his ability to right the ship
| either.
| pmontra wrote:
| This decision might be correct but the previous one was
| wrong. In his own words:
|
| "I made the decision to significantly increase our
| investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way
| I expected."
|
| So, keep him to downsize the company and replace him when
| it's time to start growing again?
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| It's evidently clear now, his "correct decision from a
| business point of view" to increase investments during
| Covid was wrong as they resulted in these 11,000 people
| being let go. I think the same could be said for the
| increased investment in metaverse, which I imagine is
| predicated on the prior large growth of people moving
| online during Covid, which is now returning to the mean.
|
| I think their share price has taken strong corrections
| due to these decisions. I think that's an incentive for a
| board to take action?
|
| (I'm purposefully ignoring the ouroborus that is Zuck's
| control of voting shares that protects him here.)
| yreg wrote:
| He has the majority of the voting shares so it's rightfully
| his decision.
| lordnacho wrote:
| He goes and asks an executive recruitment firm to find a
| successor and spends more time on the board.
|
| Yeah it sounds tough but if he'd hired a guy who oversaw
| what's just happened, he would have fired him.
| greenthrow wrote:
| When you _actually_ take responsibklity and accountsbility in
| the real world and not the bs world of C-suite executives, it
| means there are consequences for you. Might mean he steps
| down from his position, it might mean he gets a his
| compensation package cut, it might mean something else. But
| it means more than empty words.
| [deleted]
| bawolff wrote:
| I mean, if you get into a minor car accident, taking
| responsibility basically means paying for damage to the
| car. To me it seems like taking responsibility for hiring
| too many people by ensuring a nice severance package and
| paying for access to external hiring consultants for people
| who want it, is pretty analogous to how ordinary people
| take responsibility when they accidentally do something
| that wrongs someone else i.e. They try and fix the effects
| of the wrong.
|
| Taking responsibility means trying to make it right. It
| doesn't mean taking a hit personally, unless that hit helps
| make the situation right.
| greenthrow wrote:
| He's not personally paying for those severance packages.
| Is this really that hard to understand?
| bawolff wrote:
| Does it matter as long as he is the cause of them getting
| compensated?
|
| Vengence isn't the same as justice. If you care more
| about zuck personally hurting than laid off employees
| being compensated, you are after the former not the
| latter.
|
| To use the car accideny analogy - do you also think its a
| cop out for people to have insurance?
| namdnay wrote:
| he's taken a major hit to his personal wealth as a
| consequence of this bad decision, so I'd say the
| consequences are pretty real for him
| severino wrote:
| I would expect that he doesn't say he would take
| responsibility if that doesn't mean anything at all.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Only he can punish himself, effectively. He has control of the
| company.
| jstx1 wrote:
| This question comes up in every layoff thread.
|
| It doesn't mean "this will have negative consequences on me
| personally".
|
| It means "I don't blame anyone else for this".
| fsloth wrote:
| My english is non-native but I would expect when someone says
| "I take accountability and responsibility" to means exactly
| that and I have a hard time figuring out what else it could
| mean.
|
| The OP sounds like they would expect the person to perform
| some sort of public penance or resign. Which IMO is the wrong
| thing to do when making a mistake. The correct thing is to
| own up to your mistakes and hopefully learn from them.
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| Accountability to me, means that your actions have
| consequences. Saying "I'm accountable" but it not having
| any material affect based on the outcome of your actions
| feels unfair to most people. Especially when it's really
| 11,000 people who are the ones to actually feel the
| consequences.
|
| Zuck's net worth dropping from one unfathomable level of
| wealth, to another unfathomable level of wealth, isn't
| really a consequence here.
| namdnay wrote:
| as i said in another comment, for 90% of the world's
| population, the level of wealth fo the average facebook
| employee is unfathomable too. so it's hard to play the
| "oh he's wealthy so there are no real consequences" card
| just for zuckerberg
| fsloth wrote:
| So each time someone makes a mistake there should be a
| material consequence to the person?
|
| Would this not create an atmosphere of fear and drive
| society towards a fixed mindset where everyone would in
| case of mistake try to _hide_ their mistake?
|
| AFAIK the biggest upgrade to global aviation safety
| happened when mistakes were de-penalized, and all
| stakeholders could honestly discuss what went wrong and
| how to improve things in the future.
|
| IMO, the biggest issues is not punishment, but
| understanding that a mistake was made, and an honest
| attempt to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
|
| If a perpetrator fails to honestly see the harm in their
| actions, and perpetuate the same mistake repeatedly, then
| yes, they should probably face secondary consequences to
| make it understandable to every stakeholder that such
| behaviour is not acceptable. The reasoning here, however,
| is not some sense of global justice, but to simply de-
| normalize the pathological behaviour (if you repeat
| something without consequences it becomes 'accepted way
| of working').
| jstx1 wrote:
| Even "perpetrator" is harsh - overhiring is a business
| mistake, not some ethical or legal violation. It's part
| of the deal - you get hired, and you can get laid off
| later. It sucks for the employees to go through but they
| aren't victims.
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| I think you're dishonestly trying to equate a CEO having
| to fire 11,000 people due to his decisions, to something
| like an engineer wiping out a DB and having to restore
| from backups.
|
| If suddenly, 11,000 people died today in airplane crashes
| in a single company's air fleet, you're be sure that
| their CEO would be under question. I'm not saying this is
| a fair analogy - but just as similar, your one wasn't
| either.
| fsloth wrote:
| I suppose it boils down to how serious is the mistake of
| the CEO from the point of view of society, Facebook
| owners and other stakeholders.
|
| I could imagine Facebook doing things that would indeed
| merit the sacking of CEO. For instance, doing something
| that leads to the death of 11k people would warrant
| severe consequences. I have no idea how Facebook could do
| that, but on the same par. They have all the data to do
| tons of nasty things.
|
| I would view accidentally hiring 11k people from the
| point of view of the above interested parties indeed on
| the level of an engineer wiping db via accident (not
| negligence).
|
| I imagine the mistake would be something like, you look
| at the market, you see it skyrocketing, you feed the
| numbers to your trusty excel sheet that has served you
| years and say, hey, we need more people. Only when market
| conditions normalize you realize the mistake.
|
| Honestly, I really can't see the harm done here. People
| lose their jobs all the time. Corporation hire and fire.
| Why would this be any worse than standard practice in
| corporate america? (Of course it sucks to be laid off)
| matt_s wrote:
| If you look at his net worth, which is likely to be mostly on
| paper, it has suffered a lot. I know its a "cry me a river",
| "worlds smallest violin" type of thing but for someone at his
| level that is the material impact. I would imagine someone
| with empathy will feel horrible about having to do this to
| 11,000 people's livelihoods. I'm not implying Zuck has or
| doesn't have empathy, I don't know him. I'm just saying this
| likely has an impact. It might also have a business impact on
| future hiring, forecasting, etc. for the company as well.
| Maybe the pace of funding in the VR BigBet gets pulled back
| some? We'll know in a couple quarters.
| [deleted]
| system2 wrote:
| Those people knowingly didn't escape the sinking boat and
| decided to work at Meta. We can say this for every social
| media platform company and their employees. I'd work at
| microsoft but not at snapchat or facebook. These apps are
| just trends and they go away in 10-15 years. They past
| maturity phase and in decline for the last 5 years already.
| tyingq wrote:
| He's not my favorite person, but he did use language that said
| he, personally, predicted the business conditions wrong,
| overhired, etc. You don't have to look far to find layoff
| messages that blame covid or other outside forces and don't
| take any blame.
| j-krieger wrote:
| Guy has lost dozens of billions of dollars. As far as
| accountability goes he's pretty up there.
| bawolff wrote:
| Its just business speak for "I'm sorry, its my fault".
|
| I don't think that's a bad thing. Its always worthwhile to
| apologize even if there is nothing else to be done.
| namdnay wrote:
| Losing three quarters of his net worth?
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| Meh, it's inconsequential given he's never going to want for
| money.
| namdnay wrote:
| if we're going down that road, being fired is pretty
| inconsequential for a silicon valley software engineer.
| whoever your next employer is, relative to 90% of the
| world's population you'll still have a richer and more
| comfortable life than they could ever dream of
| jerpint wrote:
| Have all departments been equally impacted? I am curious if
| machine learning engineers have also been laid off
| nabaraz wrote:
| > Severance: We will pay 16 weeks of base pay plus two additional
| weeks for every year of service, with no cap.
|
| This is really good. If you have worked for 5 years, you are
| getting almost 2 years of pay.
|
| I was wrong here. I read it as 16 weeks per each year of service.
| refrigerator wrote:
| 5 years => 26 weeks = 0.5 years of pay, right?
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Possibly dumb question, but how did you get to two years?
| Brigand wrote:
| Why is 26 weeks two years of pay?
| steve_gh wrote:
| 16 + (2 * 5) = 26
|
| In my book that is 6 month's pay
| KvanteKat wrote:
| I suspect OP may have been going for a variation on the old
| "Programmer returns with zero eggs and 12 gallons of milk
| after having been asked to get one gallon of milk and if they
| have eggs to buy a dozen"-joke, but it falls flat in this
| instance since it relies on an interpretation bordering on
| deliberate misconstrual (i.e. applying the modifier "for each
| year of service" to the whole phrase "16 weeks plus two
| additional weeks" rather than just to the latter fragment
| "two additional weeks").
| Macha wrote:
| You're getting 16 + (5x2) = 26 weeks of pay, not (16+2) x 5 =
| 90 weeks.
| gmac wrote:
| 16 + 2 * 5 = 26, implying six months' pay, not two years?
| t0tal wrote:
| isn't it just 26 weeks extra? 16 weeks + (2 weeks * 5 years)
| rfoo wrote:
| Wait, how is 26 weeks 2 years?
| iamben wrote:
| 5 years service would be 26 weeks / half a year, no? Am I
| reading this differently to you?
| [deleted]
| bujak300 wrote:
| I think it would be 5 years times 2 extra weeks - 10 extra
| weeks on top of the 16 weeks severance
| maest wrote:
| You may have misread "weeks" as "months".
| [deleted]
| tjbiddle wrote:
| 16 + (5*2) = 26 / 4.33 = 6 months? Unsure where you're getting
| 2 years.
|
| Edit: Lol - OP posted less than 3 minutes ago & there were no
| replies. Before I finished my comment there are now a dozen
| others with the same.
| jleyank wrote:
| ? No coffee yet this morning, but isn't 5 years 26 weeks of pay
| for severance? And depending on how the severance contract is
| written, you might not be able to work elsewhere during part or
| all of this. Perhaps just 60 days due to WARN (in the us) where
| you are "working" for meta before the money is unencumbered.
| Read closely. If you have a lawyer friend, ask their opinion.
| matt_s wrote:
| If you want a math problem corrected, or have math homework
| kids, post it as a comment here on HN.
| patagonia wrote:
| Getting tired of "I take responsibility" without taking
| responsibility.
| zmxz wrote:
| Could you highlight in detail how responsibility wasn't taken
| in your opinion and which parts of the text we've all read
| highlights that?
| patagonia wrote:
| Nope.
| zmxz wrote:
| Would you say then that it's safe to assume you didn't read
| the text and you merely reacted to what you thought was
| written?
| patagonia wrote:
| Nope. I just don't have the time. Would you say you are
| being patronizing and are making assumptions?
| Hackbraten wrote:
| I'm feeling sorry for everyone affected.
|
| Let's hope that this isn't going to impact Buck [0] too much.
| It's one of the best things Facebook has ever made.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/facebook/buck/tree/dev
| yalogin wrote:
| All these companies and guys just began feeling very rich and
| wanted to corner the market by hiring more. This is the reason
| every company hired more and more people. Mark was probably very
| bullish on VR given covid and remote work taking off. Musk felt
| similarly rich and bought Twitter.
| technics256 wrote:
| Severance summary: Severance. We will pay 16
| weeks of base pay plus two additional weeks for every year
| of service, with no cap. PTO. We'll pay for all
| remaining PTO time. RSU vesting. Everyone impacted
| will receive their November 15, 2022 vesting.
| Health insurance. We'll cover the cost of healthcare for
| people and their families for six months. Career
| services. We'll provide three months of career support
| with an external vendor, including early access to
| unpublished job leads. Immigration support. I know
| this is especially difficult if you're here on a visa.
| There's a notice period before termination and some visa
| grace periods, which means everyone will have time to make
| plans and work through their immigration status. We have
| dedicated immigration specialists to help guide you based
| on what you and your family need.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| 4 month's paid holiday? This is the kind of severance that
| would make me wish I'd been laid off.
| nvarsj wrote:
| No RSUs though, which make up 30-50% of compensation
| depending on level.
| scarface74 wrote:
| With the stock being down 70% from its all time high, the
| ratio has changed drastically.
| agilob wrote:
| Or have something similar guaranteed by EU Worker Protection.
| I was made redundant a few years ago and was paid 4.5 month
| salary on my last day.
| namdnay wrote:
| yes but having both the sky-high US salaries AND
| termination conditions similar to Europe is kind of a win-
| win
| agilob wrote:
| Only for sky-high earners. Are low paid keyworkers
| getting same benefits or becoming homeless?
| yreg wrote:
| This is quite good even by European standards. If you were
| paid 4.5 months because the law said so then it isn't
| harmonized, because in my EU country it is only 3 months
| notice afaik.
|
| Also not sure if the Meta severance applies to contractors
| as well, but many engineers work as contractors by which
| they of course opt out of worker protections.
| agilob wrote:
| It's not the same as workers protection law is an EU
| directive so each country implemented it on its own.
| ciupicri wrote:
| What are you talking about and in what country?
| 10241024 wrote:
| 4 months of severance + 2 extra weeks for every year of
| service i.e. 20 weeks (~5 months) if you've been there for
| the last 10 years. So ~9 months paid holiday in total. Not
| bad at all.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| That sounds pretty good. Even better than good.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Is it if you are not a home owner still? The problem with not
| being a home owner is that you have very high burn rate
| because the market was able to optimize for housing profit
| extraction - that is, significant portion of the compensation
| of high earners ended up in the pocket of property owners.
|
| Suddenly, these high earners are no longer high earners but
| they can't instantly transfer their situation to property
| owners which means they have only 16 weeks or a bit more to
| start receiving at least equal paycheque. It often takes more
| than that to start working somewhere white collar and since
| Meta is not the only one doing lay offs, it probably means
| that they will not be able to start receiving similar
| paycheque when they continue having the same burn rate(or
| maybe higher, because inflation).
|
| I don't say that Meta is necessarily wronging these people
| but I can't keep but thinking about what it means being
| compensated for the work you are doing and the security of
| your life. If you take home 10K every month and distribute 9K
| of it just to sustain life then your compensation is actually
| 1K/month.
|
| Tech layoffs are happening this year and its probably well
| justified but I have a feeling that other parts of the
| economy is also not functioning right and people will get
| screwed because their business relationship(compensation and
| cost of doing business structure) isn't fair.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| fleddr wrote:
| Surely this is a vast exaggeration.
|
| Rent should not take more than 25% of your income, 33%
| worst case. In some countries/jurisdictions that's even
| part of legibility requirements.
|
| If rent/utilities are in the range of 75% or more as you
| seem to imply, there would be literally no point at all to
| work in Big Tech.
| mrtksn wrote:
| There are a lot of people doing room share to take the
| cost of rent down or commute long distance. You can
| definitely balance between price, commute, comfort,
| privacy, grownupship and self respect. No surprise that
| many people really, really want to fully work from home
| so that they can better optimize.
|
| 9K is exaggeration of course, that would be quite
| irresponsible but it would be also the only way to put
| you in a lifestyle of a person who makes 5K a month.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| That seems pretty standard to me.
|
| Here the law mandates a three months notice. Then severance
| depends of how long you have worked for the company. It is a
| quarter of a month per year you have been employed for the
| first ten years and a third of a month per year after that.
|
| But this lay off would most likely be illegal here anyway.
| You have to face a downturn or unforeseen events impacting
| your ability to compete to do mass layoff here and Meta is
| still hugely profitable. This is putting your shareholders
| before your employees.
|
| Generally when you want to downside here, you compensate
| people who agree to leave and the sums involved are more
| generous than what Meta is giving.
| tudorizer wrote:
| I doubt that's the most important part. Maybe for yourself.
|
| The overall tone and high-level business decisions are much
| more interesting.
| [deleted]
| game_the0ry wrote:
| When these big tech layoffs happen, I always wonder what
| proportion of those laid off are software engineers. I would not
| be surprised if that figure is small.
| whatever1 wrote:
| TikTok is on a hiring spree in the US. They will get a ton of
| talent in great discount
| skee8383 wrote:
| Meanwhile all you hear on the mainstream news is "Labor shortage"
| "No one wants to work" "Companies are having trouble finding
| talent". This smells like 2008 all over again. Housing market is
| tanking, MSM is lying about employment numbers. Companies are
| lying about how many people they are actually hiring. I went
| through all this back in 08. you'd put in applications and never
| hear anything back, then the next day you'd see the exact
| position you applied for listed on the job board again.
| mertd wrote:
| Labor participation is still below pre-pandemic levels.
|
| Most labor numbers are dominated by blue collar or service
| jobs. They are not fungible with tech labor.
| m1117 wrote:
| Facebook employees are so much luckier than the poor twitter
| employees that no one cared about.
| alberth wrote:
| I'm surprised they announced this on a prime news day, as oppose
| to Friday afternoon where less attention might have been given to
| it.
|
| (My heart goes out to all who lost their job. I'm wishing
| everyone well during these tough times.)
| tech_tuna wrote:
| The news is consumed with the US midterms, it's actually a
| great time to make this announcement.
| bombcar wrote:
| And it's perfectly timed because now no ex employees can
| change their vote "out of anger".
| alberth wrote:
| > no ex employees can change their vote
|
| Change their vote from what to what? Just curious.
|
| As an aside, it result appear largely unchanged on seats.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=midterm%20results
| bombcar wrote:
| It's possible that some percentage of people would change
| their vote in retaliation to being fired just before an
| election, and probably from "status quo" to "burn it all
| down with fire".
|
| Even if it statistically would have no effect, it avoids
| being blamed for it.
| itsyaboi wrote:
| I'm still having trouble following your train of thought.
| I work at Meta and vote for red team, after being laid
| off I vote for blue team because... that'll show 'em?
| bombcar wrote:
| Basically, if you reverse the teams it might make more
| sense, especially if you feel the company "leans towards
| one team".
|
| It's a tantrum, it doesn't really make much sense, but
| people do it.
|
| Or step back and a "shit I got laid off today, fuck
| waiting in the rain to cast a useless vote".
| Sirened wrote:
| Assuming most of these people are in the bay and even if
| everyone was in one county, none of the elections would
| have even flipped (except for districts which are already
| tiny such that 13k would dwarf the entire voting
| population). Trying to flip any of the bay is like
| pissing into the wind.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I think 11000 people are going to find a brighter future at a
| nicer company.
|
| Does anyone under 40 still use Facebook/Meta anymore?
|
| =)
| jfdbcv wrote:
| Ya, Instagram is quite popular among the younger generation,
| actually!
| itsjustround wrote:
| All the people who failed META's shitty interview's are quietly
| laughing now. The world is round folks.
| dm03514 wrote:
| Can the market absorb all these layoffs? Will it significantly
| drive salaries down from peak Covid?
| raxits wrote:
| Best is to know finance/unit economy/burn etc of your employer in
| good as well as bad times!
| obert wrote:
| The timing of the layoff, right before the holiday season, is
| especially harsh...
| sumitgt wrote:
| On the day after the US election as well. Great way to avoid
| making the headlines.
| Tepix wrote:
| Quite a difference between this message and the one Twitter (i.e.
| Elon Musk) sent to its employees.
| kensai wrote:
| As much as people hate Mark Zuckerberg and accuse him of being
| a robot, he showed much more humanity in his message in respect
| to Ironman Elon.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Totally agree, Phony Stark behaves abysmally towards his
| staff - not just at Twitter, but also at Tesla.
|
| When Elon Musk Tried to Destroy a Tesla Whistleblower
|
| https://archive.ph/G3HpY
|
| This is quite viscous and what does that say about what kind
| of person he is? Or when he hired a PI to dig up some dirt on
| the rescue diver saving those kids from the cave - just
| because the diver didn't think Elon's mini submarine idea
| wouldn't work. And he called the diver a Pedo as well.
|
| Someone with that kind of mindset and in power.... is
| dangerous.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Let's start talk about all Zuckerberg, Mcafee, Steve Jobs,
| and any other unfair acts committed by any tech
| millionaire? Let's talk how Jack Dorsey influenced the
| whole political engagement for the democrats (including the
| moderation process) at Twitter? Or maybe we can simply
| agree that people do questionable things when they have
| money, power and influence?
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Yes agree. What's the solution?
|
| But not sure about your comments about Dorsey. See
| https://davetroy.medium.com/no-elon-and-jack-are-not-
| competi...
| pelasaco wrote:
| I think Dorsey, based on his politics view influenced how
| twitter (and who worked on twitter doing that) does
| moderation and per consequence lead to this discussion
| about how good the "censorship for good" is. I think
| highly controversy somebody that donated a lot of money
| to the Democrats to control the public discourse. In that
| matters, I think Musk - foreigner and genius - much less
| connected and skeptical with any side (red or blue)[1]
| than Dorsey or any other twitter leader before Musk.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Views_of_Elon_Musk
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| I don't know enough about Dorsey's endorsements.
|
| All I know is we now have a guy in control of Twitter
| who:
|
| - is calling his 100m or so followers to vote for GOP
|
| - is repeating Putin's talking points
|
| - Seems to be quite the vindictive narcissist, who
| doesn't really care about people or the environment quite
| frankly (e.g. trying to cancel a high speed rail project
|
| Someone with that kind of power and ideology is not good
| for democracy - esp now that we have more people in the
| GOP that are actively trying to limit people's freedom.
| fleddr wrote:
| What exactly is the added humanity that you see?
|
| "I take responsibility"?
|
| Which means...nothing? For the rest the layoffs are near
| identical. You hear that you're no longer needed, access is
| revoked, and severance in both cases is relatively generous.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| I agree. He doesn't win me over because of this, but he
| deserves credit. I think many executives need to learn this
| from him.
|
| Regarding Zuck being a robot. I don't think he's less human
| or less humane than regular people, but him and most (if not
| all) rich people are ditatched from reality, and have lost
| touch (if they ever had any) with the understanding of
| struggle and what people have to go though in their day to
| day lives. And the sad thing is they surround themselves with
| individuals that sheild them from criticism, and most likely
| even praise their mistakes and shortcomings.
|
| I remember reading about a Muslim king or Sultan that had
| hired a guy to stand by his side and whenever a guest praises
| him, he would remind him of God, that he's nothing but a
| human, that he will be judged just like everyone else, and
| that he's not superior in anyway... Etc.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| You treat recently conquered people differently from the
| people you have governed for many years.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| You really think he penned this? This is a PR release made by
| a team of people that he put his name to.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I don't think it's a ridiculous idea that he penned it.
| Zuck is known for being very hands on at Facebook/Meta. No
| doubt a PR team and legal council etc... Looked it over
| before release but I have no problem believing Mark wrote
| this.
| universenz wrote:
| While he may not of penned it himself, he is certainly
| funding 50% of the rather generous severance and that
| should count for something by comparison.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| If you are thinking this is him and not the corporate
| strategy team, then you are a mistaken.
| darkwater wrote:
| The corporate strategy team leads the implementation, but
| the final go/nogo is on the CEO for sure. Or at least,
| that I would expect.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| The CEO is told they need to layoff by the CFO. The CEO
| agrees, then the corporate strategy team devise a
| strategy with the PR team. After the strategy is devised,
| the severance and headcount numbers are sent to the CFO
| for approval. The CFO should be the final go/nogo. Off
| course, the CEO can come in and change his mind, but that
| wouldn't be wise since the CFO has the best understanding
| of the economic situation and company's financial health.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| I'm sure it was looked over, but yeah I'd say there's
| greater than 50/50 odds he wrote it himself.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| There's nothing impressive or inspiring about this message. You
| have twelve hours to send emails ...
| usrusr wrote:
| It would be truly horrible if someone in the "life's
| achievement" position of Zuckerberg would layoff with
| communication similar to what as a hostile takeover daredevil
| would do, and it would be truly pretentious if a hostile
| takeover daredevil like Musk would layoff with communication
| mimicking that of a "life's achievement" builder. Both are
| avoiding the worst options.
| zffr wrote:
| > I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other
| sources of cost before letting teammates go.
|
| So spending a few billion less on the metaverse was not an
| option?
| system2 wrote:
| Not a fan of Zucc but he is trying something. What else would
| you do to Facebook to save it from TikTok's takeover?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| meta hiring bar was ridiculous compared to the quality of their
| code. i passed the bullshit interview, standards was higher than
| Google, and then joined and saw some of the worst code/designs
| i've ever seen. at least Google code quality was fantastic.
|
| fuck mark and his 1000 acres he stole on Kauai. karma is a bitch.
| agumonkey wrote:
| They should join fresh ex-twitter employees and incorporate.
| AnonC wrote:
| Seriously, what exactly does "I take responsibility for this"
| mean? Is Mark Zuckerberg going to resign as CEO or step down from
| the board or go with no pay for a year or two (including
| bonuses)? He says he's accountable, but how exactly does this
| move hit him hard (except for a punch to his ego)?
|
| If there are no consequences of significance for him, what's the
| meaning of those words? What do the people who aren't laid off to
| trust anymore?
| alasdair_ wrote:
| It's amazing how similar this whole thing is to Stripe's layoff
| letter, down to the exact ordering of severance, PTO, RSU, career
| services, immigration details and the thing about everyone losing
| access immediately due to sensitive information but also keeping
| email access for 24 hours and the bit about recruiting being most
| affected. It's almost a verbatim copy.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I was thinking the exact same thing. It's quite striking.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Considering the greatly inflated tech wages in top companies,
| aren't those layoffs alone likely to impact the US economy?
| maccard wrote:
| FTA:
|
| > While we're making reductions in every organization across
| both Family of Apps and Reality Labs, some teams will be
| affected more than others. Recruiting will be
| disproportionately affected since we're planning to hire fewer
| people next year. We're also restructuring our business teams
| more substantially.
|
| It's not all engineers let go.
| dopamean wrote:
| Are engineers the only people in tech with high salaries?
| PubliusMI wrote:
| curiousllama wrote:
| Volume scale is too different. US workers might churn at
| .5%/month - that's maybe 500k job losses. Even if Facebook pays
| 10x average, that'd be equivalent $ to ~3 days of normal churn.
| habinero wrote:
| No. The US GDP is 23 trillion USD.
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yes. Hopefully starting with housing prices & rents in certain
| areas.
|
| Though the US is ~3.3e8 people. Don't expect layoffs of ~1.1e4
| to have a substantial national effect.
|
| [Edit - 's/1e3/1e4/' correction.]
| aetherson wrote:
| 11,000 people is around 0.003% of the US population. These
| layoffs alone will not meaningfully impact the US economy. Of
| course, these layoffs are not in isolation, and the economy is
| obviously cooling. But, alone, no, it is not a mechanically
| meaningful factor.
| em500 wrote:
| FB alone certainly not. Even if these 11k people would be
| earning on average 300k/year, their combined income would be
| only around 3B/year. The US national income is around
| 25.000B/year.
| usrusr wrote:
| The good news is that there will be so much bigger profits to
| trickle down. (sorry for posting sarcasm on hn)
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| Might affect the housing prices in CA, which in turn might
| affect housing prices in other states as there will probably be
| a domino affect.
|
| (Assuming there's a few thousand laid off in CA)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Corporations are like schools of fishes. They all swim in one
| direction until suddenly they swim in a different direction.
|
| So rationally - no. Practically, in terms of social signalling
| - very probably.
|
| Many c-suites will use this as an excuse to offer lower
| salaries. Even though the numbers are tiny in absolute terms,
| there will be chilling effect across tech in general,
| especially in the usual hot-spots - Bay Area, Seattle, maybe
| London, etc.
|
| I'm not sure I'd expect a Tech Recession yet, but there are
| omens of a much wider recession which may well include tech.
| pm90 wrote:
| My opinion here is that tech companies are generally a lot
| more data driven and quicker to move. So I see these layoffs
| as them taking the possibility of a recession seriously and
| being well prepared for it when it does happen.
|
| This kind of graceful termination is preferable to sudden,
| forced changes caused by external events, such as a stock
| market crash or a company going under (e.g. Lehman going
| under in 2008).
| obert wrote:
| The fact that the company is still investing in the development
| of the metaverse, while letting go of thousands of employees, may
| not sit well with some... this could be just "I was wrong, part
| 1"
| stillametamate wrote:
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| I am wondering when will Amazon start the layoff process or that
| their practices are more economical and that they wont go this
| direction.
| derwiki wrote:
| Don't they have high natural attrition?
| lrvick wrote:
| While I am no fan of Amazon, they at least produce useful
| services and users pay money for them.
|
| I would be surprised to see layoffs there.
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| With the holidays and re:invent coming, it would be pretty
| insane for them to cut jobs right now
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > > I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.
|
| He's not taking responsibility.
|
| Taking responsibility would look like him saying "And I'm going
| to personally give 1% of my shares to those who are leaving
| spread equally". Responsibility means being willing to sacrifice
| something personal to make it right (or less wrong).
|
| Zuck owns 13.6% of 2.687B shares, at a $104 a piece that 1% share
| would be about $30k per exiting employee. And basically no skin
| off his back.
|
| That's true responsibility and ownership.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Isn't it included in the severance packages?
|
| Just curious. Or you want the severance package to be 30k more?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Severance is a distributed load that all shareholders +
| employees bear. Taking personal responsibility means personal
| action to resolve. Not making a decision to use the resources
| of others for one's own guilt. (at least this is my own
| ethical framework)
| nell wrote:
| He was worth $130B. Now, $34B. Hasn't sold any significant
| piece of it while he knew there are risks with changing the
| direction of the company. That should count for something.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Isn't the plummeting stock price him taking responsibility and
| ownership? He has lost way more from that than 1% of his stock
| ownership.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Anyone have a quick estimate as to the number of layoffs across
| the tech sector in the last 3 months? Absolutely wild.
| Sirened wrote:
| https://layoffs.fyi puts it at ~40k
| saos wrote:
| Ohh that's a lot.
|
| How can I view timeline of my companies headcount growth? Does
| LinkedIn have this info?
|
| Edit: LinkedIn premium is required for this info
| krembanan wrote:
| Does anyone know how many of these are in engineering?
| nicolashahn wrote:
| Some data from the inside:
|
| Reality Labs (AR/VR) hit less hard than the rest of the company.
| No one on my team or adjacent teams let go.
|
| Most bootcampers (unallocated new hires) are gone, even ones that
| were performing well.
|
| Low performer from my past team outside RL was let go, so it
| appears performance was a factor for a lot of roles, rather than
| just axing entire teams based on business need.
|
| edit: updated to clear up some confusion about the meaning of RL
| and bootcampers
| ml_basics wrote:
| > Most bootcampers are gone, even ones that were performing
| well.
|
| What are bootcampers, does this just mean recent hires? Or
| people who came in with no specialist skills who rotate until
| they find a team?
| nicolashahn wrote:
| Recent hires who haven't yet been allocated to a team, though
| they do work with teams on real tasks and produce code.
| Usually non-specialists, though some like ML engineers do go
| through bootcamp.
| [deleted]
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| People without any formal higher education, but only coding
| bootcamp experience.
| loeg wrote:
| Not in this context.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| to be fair, the non-facebook definition is way more
| commonly used in tech.
| azemetre wrote:
| Facebook has a program where a majority of new hires go
| through to learn about their tech stack and contribute to a
| variety of teams. It's also where you find a team to join.
|
| Basically a high powered onboarding program that is really
| good.
| blamazon wrote:
| (RL == Reinforcement Learning)
|
| Edit: I was wrong but this is why acronyms without explanation
| are annoying.
| rwiggum wrote:
| incorrect. RL = reality labs. the VR and metaverse stuff.
| magicseth wrote:
| Reality Labs?
| nicolashahn wrote:
| Nope, other comments are correct, Reality Labs, aka AR/VR and
| other hardware
| rcdexta wrote:
| I think he is talking about Reality Labs division
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| Not true that "most" bootcampers are gone. Please don't spread
| misinformation.
| nicolashahn wrote:
| I don't have hard data (do you?) but all bootcampers we were
| working with were laid off and threads on Blind seem to
| indicate bootcamper layoffs were heavy
| maccard wrote:
| > I've decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and
| let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go
|
| _How_ does Meta have 85,000 employees? That's an _incredible_
| size of an organisation.
| fumblebee wrote:
| If you think 85,000 if a lot (it is), Amazon employs a whopping
| 1.6m.
|
| > In 2021, the American multinational e-commerce company,
| headquartered in Seattle, Washington, employed 1,608,000 full-
| and part-time employees.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-
| amazon-...
| scarface74 wrote:
| Really? Amazon also has fulfillment centers, drivers,
| customer service representative and plenty of other "non blue
| badge" employees as does Apple (retail and customer support).
| The comparison is nowhere near being valid.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah Walmart employs more people than some major militaries
| but nobody blinks an eye because you can see what those
| people are doing.
| fumblebee wrote:
| It's clearly not an apples for apples comparison. Op said
| "for an organisation", not for a company without fulfilment
| centers, drivers, etc.
| JCharante wrote:
| What they really meant was for an online-only app
| steve1977 wrote:
| Amazon handles physical products, that's a completely
| different game
| whitepaint wrote:
| They literally serve billions of people.
| bombcar wrote:
| So does McDonalds and they only have 200k.
| mrweasel wrote:
| McDonalds is a franchise business. Very little of the staff
| works directly for McDonalds.... or are they included in
| the 200.000?
| ggregoire wrote:
| McDonalds doesn't serve billions of customers. Not even
| close.
|
| https://www.zippia.com/answers/how-many-customers-does-
| mcdon...
| poulpy123 wrote:
| It's huge but meta is one of the 50 biggest companies in the
| world so having so many people isn't very surprising.
| sytelus wrote:
| Meta tripled its headcount in past 4 years. The functionality
| and features haven't been tripled in past 4 years by any
| accounts. So, there is obvious internal empire building that
| was in full swing. Zuck had magically contained these
| tendencies and insisted on keeping team small but I think he
| gave up about 4 years ago.
| steve1977 wrote:
| And what are they doing all day long?
| vegai_ wrote:
| Yeah, I was just thinking few days ago how absurdly large
| Twitter's workforce seemed to be.
| habinero wrote:
| People fixate on what looks like a simple frontend and don't
| see all the tech behind it, plus the even larger support
| structure behind it: sales, analytics, moderation, etc etc.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Obligatory link: https://danluu.com/sounds-easy/
| blagie wrote:
| I disagree with this link.
|
| Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5 years,
| and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a better
| Google, almost guaranteed. Including Arabic, a11y, spam
| filtering, and all the other messy stuff.
|
| You know the problem with that statement? No one will give
| me 10 motivated people, 5 years, and room to focus.
|
| First, any ten people you find will care about having fun,
| making money, preparing for their next career step. Beyond
| a pizza box team, finding people motivated by a common good
| is impossible.
|
| Second, if you give me room to focus, you won't know that
| I'm not playing video games all day. You don't want that.
| You'll want to monitor what I'm doing. My ability to keep
| collecting my paycheck will be based on keeping you happy
| (perhaps with false reports of progress, if you don't set
| things up right).
|
| And so on.
|
| Once you factor in the human constraints, I have no idea
| how to beat Google. If I did, I'd have a second unicorn on
| my belt.
|
| I'll mention: I've had that magical scenario -- money and
| room to focus -- exactly once in my career. I did built a
| unicorn in a few months. Once those dynamics kicked in,
| there was near-zero further progress, but the organization
| eventually sold for around $1B (and that was after losing a
| lot of further value). That was based on me having a few
| months with a 100% carve-out to focus completely, as well
| as to spend money as I saw fit.
|
| As organizations get bigger, these problems get harder.
| Right now, in a typical day, in my current job, I can code
| for at most 3 hours. Just as often, this is zero hours. I
| couldn't build the same unicorn with that level of split
| focus in any amount of time. I'm amazed at the difference
| in how much I get done.
|
| The technical problems to beating Google aren't impossible
| to solve, but the hard problems aren't technical.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| Yep seen the same thing. In terms of 10 people I'd go
| further give me 1-2 fantastic "unicorn" devs and enough
| time, I could build you just about anything.
|
| It just so happens no one in any org gets that time and
| keeping those unicorn devs focused is very hard. Very
| small annoyances can cause them to leave and that's what
| they do.
|
| I have seen people single handily build amazing stuff but
| it never lasts. Eventually someone gets left with the
| half built system and then a team needs to take over and
| bloat and ...
| ctvo wrote:
| > Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5
| years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a
| better Google, almost guaranteed. Including Arabic, a11y,
| spam filtering, and all the other messy stuff.
|
| This is 60 million USD paying those 10 handsomely to keep
| them happy.
|
| Having built your unicorn that sold for a billion+ you'd
| think funding would be straight forward for you. You
| don't know a single VC? Self-funding isn't an option?
| blagie wrote:
| 1) Raising funding is easy for me.
|
| 2) Self-funding is hard for me, because I didn't take
| into account human, political, and organizational issues.
| I proposed and built an awesome technology, but that
| doesn't mean I was compensated for it.
|
| A few fallacies:
|
| - Keeping people happy isn't the same as keeping people
| aligned and productive.
|
| - Keeping funders happy means I can't give technical work
| 100% focus.
|
| - Keeping funders happy also constrains technical work;
| for example, showing progress is often in friction with
| not taking on technical debt.
|
| ... and many more.
| ctvo wrote:
| I see.
|
| If only you could be left alone to unleash your
| brilliance with your friends, you could make a trillion
| dollar company. Unfortunately it looks like no one
| believes you / believes in you enough to help you with
| this.
| blagie wrote:
| While your comment is sarcastic, it is correct. It's also
| not specific to me -- there are trainloads of people who
| could build trillion-dollar companies if magically freed
| from human issues, such as trust.
|
| When I was young, I thought technical problems were hard,
| and made comments just like yours when more experienced
| people told me technical problems were easy and human
| problems were hard. I ignored them too.
|
| Unfortunately, there isn't any magic. We all compete on
| equal ground, having to solve both technical and human
| issues.
| ctvo wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding my point here so I'll be
| clear:
|
| I think you and those truckloads of people you're
| referencing may be overestimating your technical prowess.
| If you were truly capable of the feats you claimed,
| someone would find an operator and CEO to handle all the
| messy parts for you and wait for their 10000x returns in
| 5 years.
|
| > It's also not specific to me -- there are trainloads of
| people who could build trillion-dollar companies if
| magically freed from human issues, such as trust.
|
| ... ah yes, if only they trust everyone who claimed this
| and gave them the money. Truckloads of trillion dollar
| companies.
|
| Edit:
|
| > When I was young, I thought technical problems were
| hard, and made comments just like yours when more
| experienced people told me technical problems were easy
| and human problems were hard. I ignored them too.
|
| There are _hard_ technical problems. Autonomous self-
| driving cars, for example. Waymo would love to hire you
| to deliver this in 5 years with a handful of friends.
|
| VR headsets that are lightweight, wireless, and can drive
| high fidelity experiences is another example. Meta would
| love to get in touch.
|
| Drones that can safely deliver packages at scale while
| following US regulations is interesting. Amazon would
| love to hire you or buy your startup.
|
| I don't discount how hard operating is. I know though the
| long leash you have if you're truly exceptional.
| blagie wrote:
| I understand your point. As I said, I would have made the
| same point when I was half my age. I understand it all
| too well. Younger me would not have believed older me
| either.
|
| I'm not overestimating my own prowess. I've done it
| before, moved into management, executive, and now back
| into primarily technical / tech leadership. I've had
| multiple perspectives on this. I've also had plenty of
| technically exceptional employees who could, in abstract,
| do the technical part of this as well.
|
| What you're clear underestimating is the organizational
| and human part of this. You can't just hire a CEO, and
| hope they'll magically solve it for you, anymore than you
| can't just hire a random engineering grad and hope
| they'll build you a self-driving car. And as I said,
| simply handing someone money, no matter how good they are
| and how much money you hand them will rarely result in
| any important technical problems solved without the right
| organizational structures.
|
| And while there are some technically hard problems, like
| self-driving cars, that's not the majority of unicorns.
| I've also worked at a company that solved a problem of
| similar complexity as several of the ones you listed
| (with about 20 employees, and about a decade of funding).
| That one had *both* hard technical and human problems.
| Without solving the human problems, it wouldn't have had
| the right 20 employees, nor the decade of sustained
| funding. And those employees would not have solved the
| right set of hard problems to make an economically-viable
| entity.
|
| You're completely missing where the hard parts of making
| a successful organization lie, or why they're hard.
| hnfong wrote:
| I think you're saying "if somebody gives me <something
| that is essentially non-existent>, I can do something
| really cool."
|
| There's a lot of wriggle room with the goalposts here, as
| they say it's basically impossible to falsify your
| statement, since you can shift the burden on the
| proclaimed "hard" bits (i.e. "human problems"). I'll just
| re-iterate the point made by others that what people
| _normally mean_ by "10 motivated, aligned high-quality
| people" is probably not what you purported to mean.
| Normally "10 motivated, aligned high-quality people"
| exists. You claim it doesn't even exist in practice.
|
| The rest of the discussion is just people talking past
| each other.
| SideQuark wrote:
| >Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5
| years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a
| better Google, almost guaranteed.
|
| Is this unique to you, or can others do the same with the
| same 10 people?
|
| If not unique to you, how come 7 billion people on the
| planet have not been able to do this over the past 25
| years? Certainly this many people of that caliber get
| together often enough to do this, right?
|
| If unique to you, then you really need to just find one
| person in that 7 billion to fund you so we can see
| another trillion dollar company get built in 5 years by
| 10 people.
|
| Or, third option, this isn't reality, and you're missing
| some understanding of the issues involved.
| weatherlite wrote:
| > Give me 10 motivated, aligned high-quality people, 5
| years, and all of us room to focus, and I'll build you a
| better Google, almost guaranteed
|
| Rrrriiight...sure you will...they've only thrown the best
| talent money can buy at the problem for 2 decades should
| be easy to beat...
| blagie wrote:
| Been there, done that. It turns out throwing money at
| problems doesn't generally solve them. People will be
| motivated to keep getting paid obscene salaries. Keep
| their boss happy isn't the same as being aligned and
| focused on a common vision.
|
| Indeed, in most cases, when people are aligned around a
| common vision, you don't need to pay them very much.
| People seem to do best when they're paid enough in order
| to not have financial stress so they can focus on work
| (with the caveat that the pay ought to be stable), but
| where the financial motivation doesn't replace intrinsic
| motivation. That's a rare scenario you only see in a few
| settings (e.g. sixties-era academia).
|
| If throwing money at people worked to keep them aligned,
| FAANG would have hyper-aligned work forces. You can look
| at any of them.
|
| Saying that Google has "thrown the best talent money can
| buy at the problem for 2 decades" visualizes this very
| nicely. Throwing people at problems and having people
| solve problems working together productively are two very
| different things. If I (or anyone else) could solve the
| latter problem -- making large numbers of people work
| together, aligned, and productively, I'd be richer than
| any tech mogul.
|
| Throwing people at problems results in a lot of very fun
| play, though!
| occamrazor wrote:
| Ad sales and content moderation don't scale as well as
| engineering, I suppose.
| Havoc wrote:
| Pretty sure content moderation is excluded due to outsourcing
| atemerev wrote:
| The moderators and reviewers alone probably make the bulk of
| it.
| tyingq wrote:
| I suspect those are not employees and not counted in this at
| all.
| tiagod wrote:
| A lot of content reviewing, if not all, is outsourced to
| consultancy companies as far as I know. I used to work next
| to a building full of content reviewers in such an
| arrangement.
| tigeroil wrote:
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Hilariously enough, most of the front-line moderators are
| outsourced, so it's even worse than you think.
| pavlov wrote:
| When I joined FB in August 2018, the company had about 30k
| employees. It felt large but individual teams didn't seem to
| have a lot of excess fat. The hiring growth in recent years has
| certainly been massive.
|
| Content moderators are mostly external contractors (AFAIK this
| is still true), so presumably not included in this number.
| blagie wrote:
| My experience -- having been near the top of organizations with
| standard politics -- is that one of the goals of every
| executive is to maximize headcount. For example, if I am
| managing 100 people, I am far better off than if I am managing
| 10 people, doing the exact same thing. I will be able to step
| into better, higher-paying roles if I have experience managing
| large headcount. My salary will be higher, and I'll have more
| status in my current organization too.
|
| Most problems are better-solved by small teams, but that's
| usually not how incentives align.
|
| Above some level in the corporate ladder, executives understand
| these games and play them completely cynically. It's easy to
| become a manager without this. You don't get to be in the
| C-suite at 10,000 person firm without playing these games near-
| optimally.
|
| Note that this is not the only part of the corporate ladder
| game. Other parts may keep this (somewhat) in check, so you
| usually don't have completely pointless 5,000 person divisions
| your local supermarket branch.
|
| They do less well for keeping this in check at monopoly-profit
| firms like Meta. In monopoly-driven firms, it's really easy to
| start politically-popular pointless units (I suspect, in this
| case, a skunkswork, forward-thinking division engaged in
| something with no real corporate value, so long as it aligns
| well with a buzzwordy-topic like AI/DEI/VR/etc.).
| maccard wrote:
| Yeah this is what I would expect is the correct answer - it
| looks good to have a big reporting structure under you.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > is that one of the goals of every executive is to maximize
| headcount
|
| should/do they consider other metrics: revenue, active users,
| etc under management?
| blagie wrote:
| Kinda. Here's the problem. Let's say I'm managing a
| business with $1B in revenues and $1.1B in expenses. Am I
| doing well?
|
| On one hand, those are astronomically high revenues. Great!
| On the other hand, I'm losing $100M per year. Suck! But I
| was brought in to fix things up after some idiot who ran
| things into the ground. I'm doing great! But it's a growth
| market; maybe it's because of that? Suck! But in fact, I'm
| bleeding money for growth. Great!
|
| ... and so on.
|
| So all those other things can be spun. It's nearly
| impossible to objectively evaluate executive performance.
|
| They definitely show up on OKRs and similar, which can be
| managed by setting low objectives.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Yes, but revenue will be better proxy than head-count.
| Once you are not satisfied by revenue, you can start
| calculating operational profit next.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| Yeah this tracks with what I've seen too.
|
| As a note people with 100+ direct reports are not really
| managing them. Often it'll be indirect as in there are 100+
| people in a hierarchy below you. You might only mange 10
| people but they manage 10 people and so on.
|
| In terms of reporting your "team" is all 100 people even
| though you may have never interacted with half of them other
| than an introduction.
| blagie wrote:
| "Managing" wasn't meant to imply "direct reports." I don't
| think I've ever met anyone with 100 direct reports
| (although I can see completely routine roles where that
| might happen -- Uber/Turk/etc. can exist with zero human
| management).
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| Yes that's what my comment was. Often it's 100 people
| below them. The % of time managing any of these people is
| low.
|
| FYI twitter seems to be moving to a low manager high
| employee count. Musk himself said that a ratio of 1
| manager per 10 coders is way too high. I suspect he wants
| it at 10x that amounts.
|
| My current manager has 31 direct reports.
|
| Sorry if this is confusing it's a hard subject to
| describe over text and I think there is a lot of nuisance
| lost over text here.
| curiousllama wrote:
| They do a lot!
|
| Most employees aren't technical. Lots of HR, Accountants,
| sales, recruiters, etc.
|
| Maybe 1/2 of people are in tech-ish roles, across 5 major orgs,
| that's maybe 8k per major org.
|
| Maybe half of those are coding (not management, PMs, etc). Half
| of those are non-support/infra. Maybe half of those are doing
| development work just to deal with tech debt.
|
| Take FB itself, that's maybe 10 major products - so something
| like "News Feed" might have 100 eng headcount (10-20 teams)
| doing anything at all new on that product.
|
| That feels like a reasonable number to me, but idk.
| revskill wrote:
| HR is annoying in most of cases. Their job should be (and could
| be) automated via bots.
|
| My thought is, the reason is most of them lack of logical
| thinking skills, that's why they're HR in first place ?
| esalman wrote:
| Do bots have better thinking skills than humans?
| glassjawjon wrote:
| Is anyone else thinking this is very similar to Stripe CEO layoff
| letter(1)? Sure all lay-off letters have some similarity but I'm
| pretty sure any automated plagiarism detection system would flag
| this.
|
| 1: https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons-
| email...
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| Meanwhile, the stock is up 8% today. Because maybe this shows
| Mark isn't as crazy as investors thought.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Well he apparently kept all the ones working on second life VR.
| It's a gamble.
| fredgrott wrote:
| I have a question...
|
| If we assume that during the last 20 to 30 years that there has
| been no gain in actual real production efficiency increases(real
| reason for inequality is non-investments in actual production
| efficiencies by VCs and hedge funds); where is the call to re-
| align in VCs and hedge funds to investing in production
| efficiencies directly (I say directly as investing in climate
| green energy is an indirect production efficiency play)?
| [deleted]
| Exuma wrote:
| Sweet baby rays
| lrvick wrote:
| While I truly feel the best outcome for humanity is Facebook/Meta
| shutting down, I will give due credit to the PR and HR teams for
| managing to make Zuck look human in this moment.
| troyvit wrote:
| When somebody in Zuckerberg's type of role says, "I take
| responsibility for that," how exactly do they see that
| responsibility play out?
|
| Unrelated but that's some nice severance.
| nokeya wrote:
| So, after Twitter and Meta layoffs there will be around 15,000
| people looking for the job. In one moment. With other layoffs it
| can be counted over 20,000 people IMHO. Will this over flood the
| market and bring expectations and salaries down?
| passion__desire wrote:
| A link if you need to keep track of. https://layoffs.fyi/
| three_seagrass wrote:
| This is a pretty slick use of AirTable, ngl.
| romanovcode wrote:
| I doubt that even 5% are software developers.
| alexfoo wrote:
| https://layoffs.fyi/
| AHOHA wrote:
| It tracks the layoff, any tracker on who got hired after?
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Ha, this is brilliant!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Depends on the balance of what sort of roles are laid off.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| >Will this over flood the market and bring expectations and
| salaries down?
|
| Well I predict two things:
|
| One, the days of $200-500k TC being common and widespread are
| going to end. If you're in this bracket, or about to break into
| it, yeah be worried, it's probably going to evaporate.
|
| Two, the CV value of Meta, Snap, Stripe, etc. is also going to
| end. I don't think they will command the same premium in the
| jobs market from now(ish) onward.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Non-developers in the Bay Area dream of this happening.
| gretch wrote:
| Why? The top end comp creates a competitive pressure where
| the middle and low end benefit and get skewed upward
|
| If bay-area comp drops, what do you think will happen to
| developer comp in the midwest? (refer to programmer
| compensation before 90s+ SV was a thing)
| spacemadness wrote:
| I don't think you understand what group I'm referring to.
| I'm referring to people not in tech.
| volkk wrote:
| i would imagine other industries are going to suffer as
| well. my partner worked in fashion for a decade and
| realized it was horrendous and nothing was changing so
| she went to a bootcamp for UX design and got a job not
| too long ago. the pressure of the success of another
| industry would force bad industries to change certain
| ways of working for the better. when there is 0
| competition, there is nothing stopping outdated and
| overworked industries from becoming any better. like it
| or not, the tech industry has helped elevate the broader
| market to a certain degree
| Vibgyor5 wrote:
| I think the folks who rode the ride a couple years back got
| it good: somewhere around 2012-2019 was great time for
| someone who had worked at marquee tech companies, had massive
| stock options, and commanded premium on the job market when
| they moved on from their orgs.
| draw_down wrote:
| ripper1138 wrote:
| It was obvious that those days were going to end eventually,
| it was never going to be sustainable. A few people I knew
| were deciding between job offers at beginning of this year
| and I straight up said take the most comp, this shit isn't
| gonna last forever...
| type-r wrote:
| on the face, it should be pretty easily sustainable based
| on the profit per employee these companies make. i guess we
| just really hate anyone but shareholders actually getting a
| piece of the pie.
| trgn wrote:
| The total revenue of some of these companies is
| absolutely just mindblowing, normalized by number of
| employees even more so.
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=AAPL+GOOG+META
| | Apple | Google | Meta market
| cap | $2.245 trillion | $1.163 trillion | $261.8
| billion revenue | $387.5 billion |
| $278.1 billion | $117.9 billion employees
| | 154000 | 174014 | 71970
| revenue / employee | $2.517 million | $1.598 million |
| $1.639 million
| steviesands wrote:
| I checked a few days ago and the revenue per employee at
| big tech is eerily similar to "Biglaw" and non retail
| banking (Jones day, >200k entry level, goldman is
| similar) at 1-2mil per employee. One could argue the
| market for IB/trading has been saturated by applicants
| for years but they pay is still well above norms ~>150k
| entry level. Pretty interesting.
| ar_lan wrote:
| I just can't really believe this at all, unless these
| companies entirely crumble. It's just not feasible for the
| majority of folks to live comfortably in the Bay Area with a
| family at less than $200k TC.
|
| I make ~$300k/yr and could probably swing $200k/yr _if I didn
| 't save anything_ (I save ~$100k/yr currently). I just can't
| imagine it being reasonable with housing + other costs.
|
| 1. Housing costs are elevated here more than anywhere else in
| the world. 2. Cost of goods is drastically higher here than
| other parts. The (roughly) same amount of groceries from a
| local Sprouts _here_ (we spend ~$100 /wk), is almost always
| $30 less everytime we go back home for some durations of time
| to be with family. 3. Cost of services like daycare or
| anything else necesary to let the work happen take note and
| charge enormously.
|
| As it stands, between housing + utilities, our spend is about
| $8000/mo (factoring in the odd things as well like car
| repairs over time). To accomodate that, I'd need $100k/yr
| after-tax, and that assumes that nothing drastic ever
| happens, and factors in no savings at all.
|
| We could downsize and save $10k/yr, but that's not really
| making a substantial dent long-term.
|
| $200k realistically feels like a minimum to keep any kind of
| young families in the area. I could definitely do with less
| salary if I could move, but companies are very wishy-washy
| about remote work.
|
| Until that is solved, or the Bay Area calms down, these
| salaries aren't going anywhere. But if remote work is
| embraced even more, than returning to say $150k is completely
| reasonable.
| hnfong wrote:
| The housing costs in the Bay Area are primarily caused by
| 300k salaries from companies in the area. It's not going to
| crumble immediately, but I can imagine that if the (to-
| be-)recession drags on, there's be a downward pressure on
| both salary and housing prices (and other costs of living).
| Nobody is going to cut your pay in half, but those 8k/month
| rents are just a function of the demand (of housing) and
| supply (of money) in the area, not really a law of nature..
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| Not really. If anything junior engineers are not going to see
| comp like this going forward. But it's still incredibly hard
| to hire more senior folks even with big comp packages and
| they do command a premium.
|
| Expect the median to go down, doubtful the top 25% will
| change much.
| 015a wrote:
| Its also worth noting: Its easy to get scared by a number
| like "11,000", but just pulling estimates out of my ass;
| engineering likely represented less than 20%, and the bias
| toward those let go in engineering is likely junior. Not
| asserting no one senior was let go; just proportionality.
|
| Here's what I'd add: Its extremely difficult to hire really
| talented senior engineers. Its easy to look at layoffs as
| "great, we should be able to find senior talent now"; but
| the opposite may actually be true. Layoffs, at least in
| otherwise "fine" companies, will predominately not impact
| senior engineers, and they'll also be less likely to leave.
| Moreover, the industry is effectively building a wall to
| breach into seniority; the pathway from junior to senior is
| harder and harder, even going back a year or two, and many
| of these junior/normal devs were massively compensated at
| these roles.
|
| My heart goes out to the junior devs right now; there
| really are two industries and job markets.
| rajman187 wrote:
| if reports are to be believed, large swaths of these layoffs
| were in business and recruiting units, much less so
| engineering, so not exactly 15k+ new applications coming in
| sytelus wrote:
| Per last job report in US, there were two positions for every
| person finding _normal_ jobs. For IT, I would think that ratio
| is twice. However, the biggest issue that people have to deal
| with: (1) Meta paid 2X to 4X higher than regular employers so
| that's massive pay cuts for the folks, (2) they lost the
| unvested stock aka their hold out compensation of past 4 years
| they worked for.
|
| So, this would be huge financial setback for impacted people
| akin to losing half of their wealth and cutting down their
| future income as well in half.
| matt-attack wrote:
| I googled but I see zero references to "hold out"
| compensation. Is that actually a term?
| pmmertens wrote:
| Outside of the 2:1 job postings to job seekers ratio, none of
| what you're saying here is correct.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Meta does pay higher (maybe not 2x higher) and the message
| in OP says employees will get their November 2022 vesting,
| which implies they won't get any future vested stock.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Well no because they no longer work for FB. But they
| still have all their vested stock.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > they lost the unvested stock aka their hold out
| compensation of past 4 years they worked for
|
| Are you assuming a 4 year cliff or why would one lose 4 years
| worth of stock?
|
| Interesting point you're bringing up. Personally I wouldn't
| count unvested stock as part of my wealth.
| klodolph wrote:
| I think the parent comment is talking about your general
| 5-year vesting schedule. In other words, for each of the
| past 4 years you worked, you will have some unvested stock
| today.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| In the small central EU country where I live, that wouldn't
| even saturate the open programmer positions - just about 1/10
| of it. I'd be very surprised if it saturated the US market in
| any measurable way.
|
| If anything this just means these people will be working on
| more different products, and that means more opportunities for
| even more programmers in the future.
| smcl wrote:
| I reckon 11k would pretty well fill all the available tech
| roles in Czech Republic (which fits the "small Central
| European" description). God knows where they'd live though,
| rents + prices would explode
| zero_ wrote:
| Does the small EU country you are living in pay FAANG level
| salaries (200k and more) for their developers? Because in the
| small central EU country where I live, they always say
| skilled workers are in demand until you tell them your
| desired salary ;-)
| swalsh wrote:
| I don't see it, I used to get a few emails from recruiters
| every day. The other day I got 1, and it made me realize it's
| been literally weeks since I had one. Lots of companies froze
| their hiring. The music is stopping, and there's a lot less
| chairs. Not everyone is going to find a new seat.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| True, but these aren't ordinary engineers who'll settle for
| ordinary salaries. These are the top paid engineers in the
| industry - there are practically no places that can hire all
| 20,000 of them at their current salaries.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Did I misread or you live in a small central EU country with
| 200.000 open tech positions?
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| Well to be honest 1/10 was a little bit of overstatement,
| but yeah every year there's a governmental report about how
| this country is missing 150k programmers so it's about 1/8
| or so.
| koliber wrote:
| Keep in mind that government reports have a time lag.
| It's based on someone doing research some time ago. The
| time lag could easily be months. If it was 100% true at
| the time of research, the current situation may be very
| different.
|
| Meta was hiring aggressively at the beginning of the
| year, as were many other companies.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| We have this too in Germany, but it's usually not based
| on open positions but some "we would need this to grow
| the GDP further industry is saying they miss these number
| of people" from some lobbying group like Bitkom. But
| Chapeau! for your country.
| SteveSmith16384 wrote:
| Which translates to: We can't find 150k programmers
| willing to work for the salary we are offering.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| That salary is still 2x-5x the average.
| netheril96 wrote:
| > there's a governmental report about how this country is
| missing 150k programmers
|
| You shouldn't take these governmental reports at face
| value. In my country, we see a lot of these reports too,
| and for all kinds of professions. Most of the time it
| just means that the corporate want more people willing to
| work for less.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Well, yes. But if _all_ the corporates only want to hire
| people at that price it's still a shortage. It's just a
| shortage of shrubs.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| That's quite explicitly _not_ a shortage in the economic
| sense.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The problem is this statistics contains jobs ads that are
| not viable:
|
| If i put out a job ad: Need a software develioer with
| skills in COBOL, latest react and assembly, to lead a
| team of 10 for $30k
|
| And I cant hire anyone
|
| It will still end up in government statistics for
| shortage.
|
| This is lile if we all put out ads on Gumtree/craiglist
| 'will buy a Toyota, brand new, for $1000", and someone
| counts thise ad and concludes there is a shortage of
| Toyotas.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I saw a lot of this in 2009 and 2010. Hilariously low
| offers. CEOs complaining they cannot find enough
| employees.
| shagie wrote:
| The offer may be appropriate for what the value that the
| developer is expected to bring to the organization.
|
| Not all organizations get lots of value from developers.
|
| It also means they're not _losing_ a lot by not having a
| developer, so they 're perfectly ok with having the
| position open until someone takes it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If they are offering so little money that noone even
| applies for a position in a year, then clearly it is not
| a real job offer.
|
| If I want to hire a top proffeshional for minimum wage,
| its not a job offer, its just wishfull thinking.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| In that example, you still want a Toyota though, right?
| Just because you don't want one all that badly doesn't
| mean your life wouldn't be better with one.
| RandomBK wrote:
| Tough to say. Do I _need_ a Toyota? no, but I 'd happily
| buy one for $1K.
|
| Demand elasticity makes any report on the volume of
| demand irrelevant unless it also covers the pricing of
| that demand.
| mythhouse wrote:
| > I'd be very surprised if it saturated the US market in any
| measurable way.
|
| Most of meta enigneers won't be working for 120k midwest
| coding job if they can avoid it. So spread will be focused on
| similar pay positions vs distributed unifromly.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Going off the article it sounds like most of the layoffs
| are in business and recruiting so I suspect a small-ish
| fraction of the layoffs will be programmers
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It does mean that a lot of folks will be looking for work,
| expecting really big salaries. Because they have become used
| to a very high standard of living, these salaries will
| actually be _required_.
|
| MANGA companies pay ridiculously well.
|
| I suspect a lot of "Reality sh*t sandwiches" will be in
| people's lunchboxes.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "these salaries will actually be required." I wonder if
| foreclosures spike. Bay area.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup. I suspect a lot of these folks are living in
| overpriced rental apartments in SF (and Brooklyn).
| tifadg1 wrote:
| I'm quite interested in learning which small central EU
| country has 150k outstanding programming jobs.
| theCrowing wrote:
| If you come from FANG and you are good you can basically
| walk into a german tech place or even car manufacturers and
| get hired on the spot.
| Aeolun wrote:
| If you want to earn <EUR70k, interviews in the EU seem to
| be much, much simpler.
| itissid wrote:
| I have seen a previous manager at a company cannot
| compensate for FANG levels say for interview candidates
| "Don't put a high bar, besides we won't get that kind of
| talent because... you know... FANG".
|
| But i don't see that being necessarily true and largely
| depends on type of software you build and the culture of
| the company. A lot of people are decent engineers and are
| not interviewing for FANG for a variety of reasons are
| for no reason in companies that may or may not deserve
| them. I think its hard to build street cred to get people
| to work for less, but interviews should always have a
| good bar.
| j-krieger wrote:
| You can currently do this as well. Turns out FAANG is
| popular because german tech pay is pretty garbage.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Low pay, old tech, stiff management, strict hierarchy.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| German tech pay is fine. The EU does not strive for the
| wealth inequality of the US, and tech wages are more than
| enough.
| Kinrany wrote:
| Do tech salaries really affect the overall wealth
| inequality? Programmers are both few and still salaried.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| It's best for the wealth to remain on companies owners.
| That's what Germany thinks.
| redelvis wrote:
| I thought about moving to Berlin and did some research.
| Median salary for a Senior Software Engineer is 86k EUR
| in Berlin according to Glassdoor. You will pay ~48% in
| taxes (depending on your Tax class), so it will be around
| 3700 net per month with an avg rent ~1500 EUR. So it's
| like 2200 EUR left, and you are supposed to have a life
| (and even make some savings) with that money. I don't
| know how this is fine to be honest. The only reasonable
| way to do it is to have this salary when you live in a
| more cheaper place with a better tax regime.
| lmarcos wrote:
| Nah. With 86K gross/year in Germany you get: around 4K
| for tax group 1 (single) and 4.7K for tax group 3
| (married and your partner earns less than you). Also,
| average rent in Berlin is among the cheapest (compared to
| other big cities like Hamburg, Dusseldorf and Munich).
| So, more like 1K/month for a decent apartment.
|
| This salary calculator is extremely accurate
| https://www.brutto-netto-
| rechner.info/gehalt/gross_net_calcu...
|
| In any case, I agree with your overall statement: even if
| 86K/year puts you in the top 10% of earners in Germany,
| in reality it's hard to afford a decent house (not flat)
| with that salary (unless you wanna work until you're
| 67...)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Wealth/income inequality is addressed by wealth/income
| taxes, or marginal consumption taxes. Controlling prices
| (limiting wages) would be a terrible way to go about it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The damaging wealth inequality is the hundred millionaire
| + class and the rest.
|
| If prosperity distribution had kept track during the last
| 50 years (wealth has increased dramatically due to tech),
| the average salary would be 6 figures, so it's actually
| better for wealth distribution to have tech folks making
| higher 6 figures to put pressure on the 8+ figure class.
| [deleted]
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Absolutely not even if you consider it pre-tax. Post-tax
| it's just horrible
| kensai wrote:
| Yes, but you get a social security which is without par.
| Including one year Arbeitslosgeld (in most situations),
| health insurance, the works. I always find it funny that
| we compare these things. In the USA the salaries are
| superhigh, but lo and behold if something happens to your
| crystal perfect life. And in life shit happens. A
| disease, an accident, an unwanted pregnancy. There is so
| much that might go off, you can literally drown in debts
| before you even know it.
| slaw wrote:
| In the USA in Meta like companies you have good
| healthcare insurance, one year paid maternity leave and a
| lot of other benefits. 4 months salary at layoff. And you
| make 2 to 3 times more than in Germany.
| bialpio wrote:
| Agreed, this is actually pretty scary for me (living in
| the US for a decade now) - bankruptcy is potentially one
| accident away (especially if it takes away the ability to
| continue doing the high-paying job).
| jdminhbg wrote:
| If you have a high-paying job that you're worried about
| losing due to some kind of health incident, you should
| get disability insurance.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Lol blaming workers for income inequality.
|
| Use profit margins to determine what wages should be. I
| wouldn't be surprised if the wages _are_ fine on that
| basis, actually. But let 's draw the right conclusions
| for the right reasons.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Say how much do the executives make at German companies?
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| At German car manufacturers? Absolutely not. The maximum
| compensation that an IC can commend at BMW is just above
| 100kEUR -- and that would require more than ten years of
| experience.
|
| Compare that to a new grad at Google Germany making
| 130kEUR. Somebody with ten years of experience there
| would be making closer to 300kEUR.
| esel2k wrote:
| But that typically old-school setup where there is only
| one way to make more money is move up the career ladder
| into management or in German "Fuhrugskarriere". I have no
| pity for these types of companies who don't understand
| that a senior engineer is worth more than a young group
| leader. A few companies have started to change but
| Germany has along way to go to adapt from this mindset,
| but in reality there would be enough money just another
| distribution is necessary.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The GINI coefficient for Germany is about 32 vs 41 in the
| US with the global average being 38. That's not so far
| apart, and the US is skewed by have a chunk of the
| world's wealthiest people.
| Fripplebubby wrote:
| > the US is skewed by have a chunk of the world's
| wealthiest people
|
| It's a little bit funny to say that a metric is skewed by
| measuring the thing it is designed to measure...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Not really. The US attracts wealthy people from around
| the world, has a gigantic internal market, and is
| friendly to financial business. If you don't consider the
| top 0.1% then the picture looks totally different. The
| VAST majority of wealth in the US is help by people in
| 50th to 99th percentile range. The Gini coefficient makes
| the US look superficially more like Qatar, which is
| obviously nonsense.
| smcl wrote:
| It's hard to take two numbers in isolation that we don't
| really use day to day and make any kind of sense of them.
| It's only when you graph a few countries together[0] that
| you see:
|
| 1. the US is somewhat of an outlier, while Germany is
| grouped together with other wealthy countries
|
| 2. the US' Gini has been steadily growing last few
| decades - implying inequality is getting worse
|
| 3. Germany's Gini is very slightly declining in the last
| few decades - implying it's staying roughly stable
|
| I don't think higher-than-average is particularly good at
| all - you're in the neighbourhood of places like Qatar,
| Iran, DRC and Argentina. In fact the _only_ way you 'd
| use Gini to suggest the US has a ok level of wealth
| inequality is if you presented two countries Gini
| coefficients side-by-side to someone who doesn't normally
| think about Gini, presented them without any other
| context and said "look, they're kinda close"
|
| [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#/med
| ia/File:G...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| What I'm getting at is that Germany isn't some paragon of
| equality, it's average. The US as I pointed out is skewed
| by the high number of staggeringly wealthy people and a
| trend of people moving from the lower to upper levels of
| what you might call middle class. In the US wealth held
| by people form 50% of the distribution up to 99%
| represents about $91T vs $18.2T for the top 0.1% and
| $4.4T for the bottom 50%. The coefficient really hides
| the vast middle and upper middle distribution in the US.
|
| Also this obscures the fact that it is far better to be
| poor or working class in the US than somewhere with a
| similar Gini coefficient.
| smcl wrote:
| > The US as I pointed out is skewed by the high number of
| staggeringly wealthy people
|
| I think you might want to lookup what Gini tries to
| measure. You used Gini as a way to suggest the USA isn't
| so bad, and now you're having to backpedal and say that
| actually Gini kinda sucks but the USA isn't so bad.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > You used Gini as a way to suggest the USA isn't so bad
|
| No, I'm pointing out that at lot was being made of a
| small difference in a ratio that's really sensitive to
| marginal differences. I'm noting a marginal difference
| that makes the US look more different than other OCED
| nations than it is in fact and more like autocratic
| developing nations than it is in fact.
|
| I'm also pointing out that it isn't a good measure at
| all. It's as coarse as GDP and more misleading.
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| A graph showing _income_ inequality seems impractical
| when discussing wealth inequality.
| smcl wrote:
| Slip of the tongue (fingers?) when I was typing - the
| original figures ch4se gave were for income inequality so
| I stuck with that.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Well income is what gini measures and what the comment I
| was replying to[1] was referencing.
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33530819
| mmmmmbop wrote:
| Sure, that makes sense. It's just worth noting that the
| U.S. are not an outlier amongst developed nations when
| looking at wealth inequality -- which, IMO, is the much
| more important metric.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Yes, that's part of my criticism for gini.
| idontpost wrote:
| bialpio wrote:
| Some metrics aren't linear so w/o knowing more about Gini
| coefficient, my first thought is "I have no idea if the
| difference is significant or not". Can someone ELI5 this
| so that I can build an intuition for what "1 unit of
| Gini" means?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| It's a curve reflecting income (not wealth) share of a
| population against a line of perfect equality, which is a
| 45 degree angle. A low disparity hugs the line and a high
| disparity hugs the X and Y axis. Gini = A/(A + B) where A
| is area over the curve and B is the area under the curve.
| So an increase of 0.1 in the gini number reflects a
| larger A.
|
| It's not a very good way to measure what it is trying to
| measure[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Limita
| tions
| bialpio wrote:
| I think the main problem is the lack of intuition of what
| "1 Gini means", except the "lower is better". Is
| difference between coefficient of 10 & 11 the same as
| difference between 30 and 31? The poster to which I
| responded said that "32 vs 41 is not far apart" - is it?
| Is difference between 10 and 19 the same as difference
| between 32 and 41 (delta is the same)? How about between
| 0 and 9?
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| High tech-sector salaries are the result of extreme
| wealth inequality, not the cause of it. The 0.1% are not
| Meta engineers hammering a check and fretting about RSUs.
| They are the ones investing in every half-baked TechCo
| and startup because they already own a few small
| countries and a Blackwater detail the size of the 82nd
| Airborne, and they can't think of anything else to do
| with their money. It's this desperation for anything
| approaching positive real returns that has inflated US
| tech salaries.
| Vibgyor5 wrote:
| Strong disagree with that one and this is a fairly
| unambitious take. Most companies and employees themselves
| in the EU buy their own kool-aid of "yeah we are ok with
| getting paid $40k because we got health insurance" (which
| does not work as efficiently in practice as one would
| like).
|
| EU - esp. Germany and some other European countries -
| have abysmal salary compared to rest of the developed
| world and a poor wage growth over the last 10 years or
| so.
|
| Heck, even countries like India have experienced faster
| growth: netto, a senior tech professional in India can
| earn more than what what they'd get in Germany. And
| that's not even accounting for 3-5x difference in cost of
| living.
| delecti wrote:
| Those German car manufacturers are also taking advantage
| of ex-FAANG in the US.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Yes, but your salary will be 1/2 of what you're used to.
|
| My brother moved from FAANG to Atlanta to work for Home
| Depot. His comp went down from 400k to 140k. Which is
| still great for Atlanta, but there is no situation where
| a move from FAANG to _any_ other company comes without
| wage deflation
| philjohn wrote:
| No, but if it keeps a roof over your head, that's all
| that matters in the immediate aftermath.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| More like 1/5th in central europe.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Yeah, $140k is like VP money in Europe...
| bbu wrote:
| Europe is big. That statement is only valid for some
| European countries.
| flakiness wrote:
| and in Japan.
| nprateem wrote:
| Wow. You want sympathy for people who've been earning
| $400k for years and now have to come back to Earth? My
| heart bleeds for him.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| I don't think these people need either sympathy or pity.
| They will do fine. They're all smart. Most are also hard
| workers. People like that don't struggle for long.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > You want sympathy for people who've been earning $400k
| for years and now have to come back to Earth?
|
| I don't notice any request for sympathy in the GP
| comment.
| arroz wrote:
| Oh, so he is fine, I don't see the issue
| jollyllama wrote:
| Yeah, but that's still in the USA. The poster is talking
| about a totally different type of switch.
|
| As an aside, you're talking about switching from a
| company that supposedly makes revenue selling ads but
| really is inflated with free money to one that makes
| revenue from selling hammers. People who made this switch
| _before_ the free money are going to be fine. Now that
| 11,000+ people are going to try to make this switch, they
| 're going to wish they had.
|
| The other thing that happens with this is your job
| becomes much more practical and less oriented to whatever
| fads are sweeping SV and HN. Some like it, some don't.
| jupp0r wrote:
| High frequency trading pays better than FAANG if you got
| the right skills and can cope with the work environment
| (which is not as bad as it used to be from what I hear).
| whymauri wrote:
| >where a move from FAANG to any other company
|
| Is this ignoring finance, promotions, or (until recent
| layoffs) private/public big tech/unicorn-like companies?
|
| Like, even within FAANG the pay bands are huge for the
| same level.
| ajuc wrote:
| According to EU Commission's estimates whole EU needs ~600
| 000 more programmers, with Poland (where I'm from) needing
| 50 000. This seems conservative to me, everybody's hiring
| and salaries grow pretty quickly.
|
| You'd be earning about 50 000 USD per year as a senior
| developer, but that's plenty enough to live a very good
| life here. Outside IT people earn about 10 000 USD per
| year, food and services are very cheap, and there's a
| comprehensive welfare state.
| ausudhz wrote:
| With the fact that you got the demand/offer law not in
| your favor, these salaries will definitely go down.
|
| Impressed to hear that Poland pays well for developers
| compared to other jobs. 50k for a senior role would
| definitely be a good salary even in other EU countries
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| When you take into consideration taxes and social
| security; you will be taxed at an effective taxrate of
| around 40% for a salary of 40k euro. To get around taxes,
| you need to work as a contractor, and use some copyright
| law on the time you spend coding (you create something)
| which cuts the taxrate for that time in half.
|
| Low Cost of living is true if you find a cheap enough
| place to live, but due to Russia's invasion, housing just
| isn't that cheap unless you know where to look for and
| are from Poland. I called 20 people just to be able to
| check a single apartment out.
|
| 50k isn't good for a senior role either; new grad salary
| in Germany in 2020 was around 60k gross.
| ajuc wrote:
| > With the fact that you got the demand/offer law not in
| your favor, these salaries will definitely go down.
|
| Doubt it. Everybody in my current team has several offers
| to change jobs with 5-15% increase in salary. Some from
| the same (American) company for which we work right now
| (but they don't know that cause we're hired through 2
| subcontracting companies ;) ).
| ausudhz wrote:
| What is relevant now is not relevant tomorrow
| soared wrote:
| Poland has had economic growth comparable to countries
| like South Korea, since 1980!
| ausudhz wrote:
| Nobody denies it. Again is the offer and demand law.
| Probably high delocalization brought new jobs which ended
| up and saturating the market and growing salaries to
| fight for the very same talent pool.
|
| Something similar happened in Ukraine. I had friends in
| Europe that were running companies in there till when the
| wages became comparable to the original country. They
| still kept the Ukrainian office but eventually reduced
| the growth in favour of other locations
| ajuc wrote:
| Well in early 80s the whole country went on a strike and
| there was a martial law for 2 years. Low base effect.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| I have colleagues from Prague making around $100k after
| taxes. They're contractors, though.
| Lionga wrote:
| Best thing is 100K in Prague is about the same as making
| 300 to 500K after taxes in Bay Area in COL/PPP
| adjustments
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Not quite; an iPhone costs more in Prague, a Tesla much
| more, a laptop can be double the price. You don't
| purchase lots of iPhones, but the global goods generally
| have higher prices in Europe than EU, partly due to VAT,
| partly due to market conditions. Energy and gas are much
| more expensive in Prague.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Sounds like system is working then as most engineers at
| meta make 300-500k
| vasco wrote:
| Not exactly, only the "living expenses" part of the
| salary can get this "equivalence multiple" applied. The
| rest of the salary should be counted 1:1 with the US
| because other purchases cost the same regardless of where
| you are (branded clothes, travelling, buying a laptop,
| buying a car, investing for retirement, stocks cost the
| same everywhere). So it's more like the first 20k are
| like getting paid 100k and the rest of the 80k will just
| be 80k, so more or less 200k equivalent.
|
| It's very hard purely on cost of living to match a salary
| of 500k anywhere in the world, because at some point the
| extra items / investments all cost the same regardless of
| geography.
| Lionga wrote:
| But you will probably stay there for life so you have the
| benefit for life. "investing for retirement, stocks" are
| cheaper as you also need 3 to 5 times less.
|
| With 100K in Prague you can retire/never needing to work
| for money after 3 to 10 years Depending on your habits.
| Not sure how many Bay Area employees can do that staying
| there.
|
| I am somewhere close and earn 300K which is about 30
| times of what you need per year. One year of works covers
| all my expenses living like a local for the rest of my
| life in capital returns even at a modest 3.5% SWR.
|
| I take that over 500K Job (of which over 30% goes to US
| Gov, while i pay max 10%) any time, heck I take it over a
| 1000K Job in SF/NY etc.
| acchow wrote:
| > But you will probably stay there for life so you have
| the benefit for life.
|
| Hard to know this 30 years ahead of time. Maybe after 30
| years in the Bay Area you retire to Hawaii? Or lower COL
| like Portland? Or even a town in Japan? You have tons of
| choice if you've been saving at 500k. If you've been
| saving at Eastern Europe salaries, your options narrow
| jupp0r wrote:
| There are also benefits in not earning 5x as much as all
| your friends.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| It's good to look at the whole picture like that. A lot
| of "cost of living calculators" tend to implicitly assume
| you're spending every take-home dollar on eggs or
| gasoline, which isn't true for highly-paid software
| engineers.
|
| I'd propose that you should also calculate how many years
| of 300k in the Bay Area it'd take to retire in Prague vs
| years making 100k in Prague.
|
| I ran these numbers a couple years ago, and it was
| costing me about ~$8000/month to live in the Bay Area. I
| estimated we could live in Tokyo or much of the USA at a
| similar quality of life for $4000/month. With $310k/year
| (taking home $190k) that meant I was able to save about
| $90k a year. In Tokyo, I could only get companies to
| offer about $140k at the time, and it was about the same
| for remote work in the USA. That meant I could save about
| $50k/year.
|
| You can make a strong argument that saving $50k and
| living in one location is better than saving $90k in
| another, but it's good to have all the data at hand to
| make the best decision for yourself.
| ausudhz wrote:
| Working as a contractor yes could bring as much but
| highly specialized one get 1k Euro a day. You're
| basically on the top 1 or less %
| Cwizard wrote:
| Not really most contractors I know are just regular
| programmers, average in skill. Their rate is around
| 800eu/day, they all work in big bureaucratic enterprises.
| Hiring contractors is basically the only way a lot of
| those companies can get access to somewhat decent talent.
|
| And it is not as expensive as it seems. If you live in a
| country with strong social safety nets hiring someone is
| crazy expensive.
|
| The few contractors I know that work normal software jobs
| have lower rates, but they still make good money.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| These are React guys. What kind of specialization are you
| thinking of?
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That logic would apply to any job that anyone can study
| or train to do. For example a doctor.
| chrisBob wrote:
| When people talk about EU salaries do they typically mean
| pre-tax or post-tax.
| EricLeer wrote:
| pre-tax most of the time, but of course varies per
| country
| distances wrote:
| Almost always pre-tax, only exception I know is Italy.
| They seem to talk post-tax
| przefur wrote:
| Romania? Poland?
| Symbiote wrote:
| 5th and 6th largest EU countries.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_Union_memb
| er_...
| fastball wrote:
| Which are smaller than various US States, so I think
| categorizing them as small is reasonable.
| bialpio wrote:
| I would probably not classify Poland as small, especially
| noting how big of a population drop between Poland and
| Romania is. And if Poland were a US state, it would rank
| 2nd in terms of population, sightly over 1 million people
| less than California...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Romania and Poland aren't exactly small by European
| standards, in fact they're some of the biggest by
| population and area. And Romania is not Central but
| Eastern European [1], so that's out.
|
| Small and Central European would be Hungary, Slovakia,
| Czechia, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland based on the most
| widely used definition of Central Europe [1]
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe#/media/Fi
| le:Cen...
| leto_ii wrote:
| These distinctions are pretty arbitrary, maybe just wait
| for GP to clarify.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| They're not going to clarify because there is no country
| that matches this description.
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Small would be Luxembourg.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Luxembourg is not Central European.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Europe
| kgwgk wrote:
| Have you followed that link?
|
| Have you seen the second map in the introduction?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Have you followed that link? Have you seen the first map?
| kgwgk wrote:
| The one that says "There are numerous other definitions
| and viewpoints."?
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| No the one that quota encyclopedia Britannica.
| kgwgk wrote:
| I think we are both talking now about the first chart in
| the section "Different views of Central Europe". The one
| with the caption "Central Europe according to The World
| Factbook (2009),[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica, and
| Brockhaus Enzyklopadie (1998). There are numerous other
| definitions and viewpoints."
| yrgulation wrote:
| Depends, Romania is either central, southern, or east
| european. Culturally is most definitely not eastern.
| Germany is by some considered central european. Austria
| and Switzerland see themselves as west european. Oh the
| delusion.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| See the map of the most widely used definition of the
| region of Central Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ce
| ntral_Europe#/media/File:Cen...
|
| Every country changes their belonging to a region based
| on the perceived value bias of what is being discussed.
|
| A user here humorously put it that Slovenians see
| themselves as Western European when it comes to how
| honest and hard they work, Southern European when it
| comes to weather and food, and Eastern European when it
| comes to drinking, partying and having fun.
|
| But geographical location however is immutable, so let's
| stick to that instead of the other more biased
| definitions.
| yrgulation wrote:
| > But geographical location however is immutable, so
| let's stick to that instead of the other more biased
| definitions.
|
| Proceeds to using precisely biased, political,
| definitions.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Romania is Eastern Europe, not Central.
| brink wrote:
| It sounds like HN satire.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Same
| rouxz wrote:
| Nobody said a word about programming jobs being outstanding
| lol
| forbiddenlake wrote:
| "outstanding" meaning "open", which is what GP referred
| to
| bombcar wrote:
| Obviously it's the Vatican City State.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Latin is required and the use of BSD systems is forbidden
| though.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| and please, don't install kernel 6.6.6
| neonnoodle wrote:
| Monte carlo skills finally going to pay off in Monaco
| alvis wrote:
| Surely they're not all engineers, many are sales and admin
| positions. But the number is still large tho
| tobase wrote:
| Isn't that forecasted by the same people who now says that
| they didn't see this coming? :)
| weatherlite wrote:
| You're right but its not as if only Meta are firing or we're
| anywhere close to this recession ending. There's gonna be a
| bunch of pain to come still unfortunately.
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| most of the people being laid off are not programmers
| vaxman wrote:
| They used to say "assets have legs in silicon valley" but
| not in Horizon World!
| vaxman wrote:
| Yeah, fly 'em all to a "small central EU country" which shall
| henceforth be known as LuxemValley. As a bonus, 'errbody
| working in LuxemValley shall be known as the SiliconBourg and
| be issued a mug, backpack and Chemin de Fer paddle. :D
|
| Seriously, under current law, H1B workers will be even more
| locked-out of US jobs until these newly RIFed US workers land
| somewhere, but India doesn't really depend on H1B contractor
| revenue like it did during the mass RIFs of the "Dot Com
| Bust." No, now Indian citizens can work comfortably,
| efficiently and economically from India, like many of the far
| more expensive (and now RIFed) US workers had been doing from
| their US homes. For those RIFed US workers to compete with
| more economical India-based workers, they're going to need to
| either get very small and crawl under the door to struggling
| US employers (by lower their salaries while abandoning remote
| work) or maybe they'll need to cut expenses by moving to a
| "small central EU country" and get paid in Euros.
| fy20 wrote:
| Similar here. Over the summer my country of 3m people,
| reached its yearly immigration quota in tech jobs of 16,000.
| And that doesn't include people moving inside the EU or
| refugees from Ukraine.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| I think the pay will go down its the meta and google etc that
| have been pushing up the salaries without the demand from
| them the pressure on salaries will bring them down.
| dagw wrote:
| While it might not saturate the US job market as a whole, it
| will saturate the parts of the local programmer market that
| can come even close to matching the sorts of salaries these
| people where probably paid.
|
| If they're willing to move to anywhere in the US and/or take
| a 50+% pay cut then they'll have no problem getting a job. If
| they all want to stay where they are and get paid within 20%
| of their current salary then lots of people will end up
| without a job.
| habinero wrote:
| Or they'll start their own companies. Not a bad time to do
| it.
| oska wrote:
| Only if you can start a company that's cashflow positive
| from essentially day one. Burn rate provided by
| suppressed interest rates and cashed up venture
| capitalists is quickly becoming a disappearing concept.
| acdha wrote:
| The first dotcom crash was good that way: people make
| worse decisions when they have piles of VC funny money
| and anyone with a real business has trouble standing out
| when the field is full of competitors burning bright but
| fast.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| If they're doing that then it means Meta, Twitter,
| Stripe, etc process got rid of the wrong people.
| stephencanon wrote:
| That's right---any time you're laying off thousands
| people at once, some of them will the "the wrong people".
| There is no mechanism for mass layoffs that can
| accurately target only "low performers". Even if these
| layoffs reflect good decisions, good decisions at
| corporate scale are not necessarily good decisions at the
| individual level.
| seydor wrote:
| Let's hope so
| HgW33WiY6m3W4H9 wrote:
| I work at Stripe. I can't throw a proverbial paper clip
| at this company without hitting someone who could be
| founding a company right now. There's no way to lay off
| 14% of Stripe without setting free scores of future
| founders.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| hubris of tech workers. as if starting successful
| companies is just that easy
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I feel exactly the same. I would love to run my own tiny
| company, but it looks very tough to bootstrap. Everytime
| I hear someone say it is easy, I cringe.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Uber for cats will rise again!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It's helpful to remember that we're collectively doing
| about 1% of what we theoretically could be accomplishing.
|
| If you somehow forced someone to sit and practice drawing
| a hand for eight hours a day, they would get surprisingly
| far as an artist.
|
| Being a founder isn't too dissimilar. Determination tends
| to be decisive.
|
| If you spent eight hours a day trying to make a small
| group of users love you, you'd get surprisingly far.
|
| I think that's what they mean about potential founders at
| Stripe. There's a lot of potential energy that a layoff
| might release.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is the "live laugh love" of the Bay Area.
|
| > It's helpful to remember that we're collectively doing
| about 1% of what we theoretically could be accomplishing.
|
| Is this supposed to mean anything at all?
| andsoitis wrote:
| my guess is that most, if not nearly all, successful
| founders were pulled into that position (i.e. self-
| directed) vs pushed out of desperation.
| d6rd7rxuxutx wrote:
| I'm not sure about that.
|
| Starting a company is a risk vs reward calculation. If
| they were getting high salaries it wouldn't be
| unreasonable to want to minimize your risk by working on
| a project on the side while getting a bigger saving bank
| until a certain point. If you get fired the calculation
| is now whether you want to invest in job search or take
| the plunge and start the company
| andsoitis wrote:
| If you were that risk averse (that you didn't act on your
| entrepreneurial instincts) when times were good, my money
| is that you're more likely to double down in searching
| for safety.
|
| I don't know that there are any stats on this so in the
| end it is juts your and my opposing instincts :-)
| mywittyname wrote:
| OP isn't saying it's "easy". They are pointing out that
| forming a startup is _achievable_ by a small (scores =
| several 20s ~= 60-100) number of people impacted.
| Sakos wrote:
| Imagine thinking that starting a new company is a bad
| idea. It might not be easy, but the engine of progress is
| the birth of new firms, not the monopolization of markets
| through a handful of them. The vast majority of jobs are
| provided by small to medium-sized businesses, not
| companies like Twitter or Stripe. This is particularly
| true in Europe, but it's quite universal. We need new
| companies, even if some fail (or even most).
| mbreese wrote:
| Not necessarily... a potential good startup founder is
| not necessarily a skill set that a FB needs right now.
| And many business ideas that aren't "FB-scale ideas" can
| still be quite successful for a small founding crew.
| underdeserver wrote:
| Not necessarily. There may be business opportunities that
| Meta, Twitter and Stripe are not interested in.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Isn't this about the worst time to start a company?
| Uncertain economic outlook, high inflation, high
| borrowing costs.
| shagie wrote:
| Less competition, more available labor, the books _start_
| with a "this is hard" and get better when things get
| better (compare with starting when things are easy and
| then having it rough when times get hard)...
| scarface74 wrote:
| Except for that whole funding environment being dead
| thing. Not to mention that nine out of ten startups fail
| even in good times.
| indymike wrote:
| I used a 1yr severance as a seed fund for my current
| company.
| scarface74 wrote:
| That doesn't dispute the fact that only 1 out of 10
| startups "succeed" and that definition of "success" is
| overly generous.
| indymike wrote:
| No, it doesn't dispute that startups are risky, even if
| you know what you are doing. By the way, water is wet,
| too.
| [deleted]
| netheril96 wrote:
| Fed raising the interest rate is hardly a good time to
| start a startup.
| slaw wrote:
| Only for startups that depends on free money from Fed
| like Movie Pass, Juicero. Startups with sound ideas
| should be fine.
| headsoup wrote:
| Wouldn't layoffs starting at larger tech companies imply
| demand is waning and there would be a much smaller market
| for all of these new startups?
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Yeah, ads revenues are down which means a whole load of
| ad-supported business models are no longer economically
| viable.
|
| I don't think a recession with low demand and high
| interest rates is a good time to start a company at all.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Wouldn 't layoffs starting at larger tech companies
| imply demand is waning and there would be a much smaller
| market for all of these new startups?_
|
| It depends on how you define "startup." They don't
| necessarily have to keep staring at screens for their
| living.
|
| It was mass layoffs of real estate and banking workers in
| 2008 that kick started the food truck industry.
| nradov wrote:
| Demand is always growing in some markets. I predict major
| growth in the defense and agriculture technology markets
| over the next decade.
| acdha wrote:
| Clean tech also seems big - even if the Republicans did
| manage to gut federal support for renewables (I'm
| doubtful given e.g. how much money Texas wind farms are
| making) consumer trends are looking solid and a lot of
| state policies represent locked-in market.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Demand for what, though? Startups can cover ... well
| anything, really?
|
| There's certainly less demand for Facebook's style of
| social media, for sure.
| acdha wrote:
| This is a valid concern in a recession but there are
| different niches and business models. Facebook has been
| very profitable selling ads but that's not the only
| option, and there are opportunities which might be a good
| fit for a small company which a big one is structurally
| incapable of finding. After the dotcom crash, I knew
| several people who found solid niches selling services to
| other businesses - it didn't have the hypergrowth
| potential of something like an ad-supported social
| network but most of those fail, and there's a lot of
| money in less sexy industries.
| Archelaos wrote:
| It should also be noted that a person recalled from the
| home office already has a hidden 20% pay cut if she or he
| has to commute for about an hour in each direction.
|
| EDIT: I mistakenly first wrote "each day" instead of "in
| each direction".
| brookst wrote:
| True, if you assume time is perfectly fungible into
| money. For most of us it's not.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| You can also consider this in terms of work. Being forced
| into the office increases work by 20% without a
| commensurate raise.
| brookst wrote:
| Sure, but "pay cut" has a specific meaning, and that's
| not it.
|
| When I roll on to a new project and it is more/less work
| than my previous one, I don't think of it as a pay
| increase or decrease.
| acdha wrote:
| Definitely true normally but we're in this weird world
| where a ton of people got to try a previously unavailable
| or unemphasized option. Full-time remote work used to be
| a bit unusual but a couple of years was enough for a lot
| of people to get used to the idea and now it feels like a
| cut to go back, even if they were used to being in the
| office in February 2020.
| namdnay wrote:
| unless you spend a less time in the office than you would
| at home
| acdha wrote:
| No, but commuting has other expenses: beyond the obvious
| cost of cars that often includes eating out more (often
| at pricier locations), extended childcare, wardrobe
| expenses, etc.
|
| No, a FAANG employee probably isn't suffering (although
| consider the pay outside of the prestige jobs) but
| everyone just got a multi-year reminder of those indirect
| costs.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| It does not cost 20% of a FANG salary to commute even if
| you are doing in in a Hummer you bought off military
| overstock .com.
| jupp0r wrote:
| On top of that, lots of companies hiring remotely.
| namdnay wrote:
| i think they're talking about the dilution of your hourly
| wage, if you consider the travel time to be work
| nobleach wrote:
| https://www.overstockgovernment.com/
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| I've been here long enough to have seen the countless
| comments lamenting the current state of qualifications and
| ability in the industry. Here's to hoping that meta and
| stripe laid off under achievers that would be wise to get
| into a different industry where they'll perform better.
| Musks layoffs ignored since it seems clear that his were
| indiscriminate and hasty to the point of negligence.
| samstave wrote:
| The real problem to worry about is hiring practices, shitty
| HR people, algo-based auto rejecting and shitty fucking
| interviewers... THIS will have impact on these people
| suffering to find a new position....
|
| So really what needs to happen is companies need to be
| reaching out URGENTLY to those have been kicked to the curb.
|
| There is thousands of years of experience this population
| carries.
| TheOsiris wrote:
| the effect this kind of thing has on the broader market is
| that it makes everyone else reconsider their hiring plans. I
| doubt there will be as many open positions after this
| announcement and it won't all be from hiring
| dcchambers wrote:
| Will this saturate the market for all open programming/software
| engineering positions? No.
|
| Will it disturb the market for engineers expecting to make
| $500k/yr 2 years out of school? Absolutely. But most tech
| stocks being down 50%+ YTD had already done that.
|
| I think there's going to be a lot more layoffs announced from
| far more companies over the next 6-12 months. I think all of
| those people will be able to find jobs, but I think many of
| them will have to settle for significant pay cuts. The insane
| TCs driven by an inflated stock market that were seen in
| certain markets/from certain companies are certainly going away
| for a long while.
|
| Personally, I wish that people in our industry would push for a
| larger base salary-based comp and less stock-based.
| kilolima wrote:
| Yes, because they will be replaced with offshore labor or visa
| workers.
| _alex_ wrote:
| more than that. Here's a tracker: https://layoffs.fyi
| googlryas wrote:
| It's not a given that everyone will be looking for a job
| immediately. They're getting a multi-month severance package.
| Some will look immediately - some will take a breather and
| start looking in a few months - some will take the time to
| switch careers or go back to school. Also, it is 15,000 people
| presumably located around the globe - not just 15,000 people in
| Menlo Park.
| grumple wrote:
| There are hundreds of thousands of new software jobs in the US
| every year. Way more globally. This is a drop in the bucket.
|
| Shit, I get messaged about a thousand software jobs per year
| and I'm just one guy.
| ActionHank wrote:
| The difference here is that it is all at once, and those same
| companies are slowing hiring. Net effect is that there are
| loads more people with prominent names on their resumes
| competing for those jobs that the recruiters are canvasing en
| masse with. Right now if you replied to one of those
| positions they'd likely turn you down after a screening call
| because the calibre of candidates on the market is really
| high.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Very different roles. Also, corporate America employs millions
| of people, so this is not a significant percent.
| mrits wrote:
| Also a lot of those people are going to take time off. A
| large number of high earners that have worked at a place for
| a decade and now have ~9 months paid vacation.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| August US added 315K jobs including 68K professional services
| and 7K information (idk what those categories actually mean).
|
| There's jobs for everyone who was laid off, but unclear if
| they're as good/lucrative.
|
| source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/02/heres-where-the-jobs-
| are-for...
| mymyairduster wrote:
| Yeah, it's a great time for these people to finally learn to
| code
| tigeroil wrote:
| jannes wrote:
| Shouldn't salaries just go down to pre-pandemic levels like the
| headcounts? (not even sure if they increased during the
| pandemic)
|
| According to the companies that's all that's happening here.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Lots of these peoples compensation package is largely equity
| based. Their pay has already taken a major hit.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| They are actually going down because of inflation and the
| lack of a full compensation for that. You get the same money
| but it's worth less.
|
| As for unemployment figures; apparently they are very low
| right now. Which suggests companies actually need to offer
| more to be able to fill open vacancies. A few tens of
| thousands highly employable people leaving the fang companies
| is not going to change that.
| pimbrah wrote:
| salaries rarely and hardly ever go down. however inflation
| does exactly that in real terms. This is an interesting
| article about it: https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9566.html
| oblio wrote:
| Obviously, if this continues at this rate. We'll be able to
| judge in 3-6 months the full impact.
|
| Anyone who tells you otherwise is living in Lalaland.
|
| The main thing is figuring out what's the full impact. If it's
| 10%+ of tech workers, the golden days are over for the vast
| majority of tech workers.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Honestly, tech companies that were formed in the last decade
| have very little to show in terms of value creation. Majority
| are unprofitable. Most will never make profits in a recession
| AND tighter monetary environments.
|
| At the end of the day, businesses have to generate profits.
| You can only defer that so long. And most tech companies have
| been deferring it for a decade now.
| [deleted]
| SideQuark wrote:
| The US alone has over 12 million people in tech. This few
| workers, for a field that has incredibly low unemployment and
| lots of open positions, is not going to have a problem
| absorbing newly unemployed.
| flatiron wrote:
| I would also believe these lay offs are mainly in
| recruitment and other HR roles and light on the hard core
| tech roles.
| weatherlite wrote:
| Well Meta severely downsizing their HR department shows
| you they're not gonna recruit much if at all. It's not a
| great sign for someone looking for a job...
| relativ575 wrote:
| Were you around the dot com crash? It was much worse than
| what is going on, layoffs happened left and right. But the
| future would have never been better for tech jobs. So no,
| incorrect to say anything for sure.
| dsq wrote:
| It was a bloodbath. Entire companies vanished like smoke.
| johnvanommen wrote:
| I've long argued that it was the "creative destruction" of
| the dot com crash that made so many of the FAANGs possible.
|
| For instance, Amazon in Seattle benefited as thousands of
| engineers found themselves out of work in 2000 and 2001.
|
| In addition, AWS was largely inspired by the fact that Sun
| Microsystems refused to cut their pricing. Amazon was using
| a lot of Oracle databases and Sun hardware, and when Sun
| wouldn't negotiate their prices down, Bezos began to figure
| out A Better Way.
|
| Bezos was particularly irked because there was a flood of
| practically new Sun hardware available (due to the crash)
| but Sun wouldn't negotiate on price, despite the market
| being awash in high quality used hardware.
|
| Basically Bezos didn't want to spend $80,000 on a new Sun
| server, but he also didn't want to run hardware that was
| used.
| mathverse wrote:
| I wonder if comments like yours are said in good faith or in
| fear or out of pure ignorance. Or all of the above combined.
|
| Proportionally these numbers would not make a difference in a
| small European country.
| oblio wrote:
| These numbers are just the start of the avalanche... There
| have been a lot of pie-in-the-sky initiatives, especially
| as the result of the massive cash infusions during Covid.
|
| Now all that easy money is going away.
|
| The current numbers don't mean much, but they're just the
| start.
| dsq wrote:
| It will probably spill over into the rest of the economy.
| No matter how generous the severance, a fired worker
| isn't going to be buying new cars, buying houses, or
| taking expensive vacations.
| nkozyra wrote:
| That's cyclical, though. The question is always how long
| the cycle lasts.
| oblio wrote:
| True. If recovery is faster than 6-12 months, life is
| comparatively good.
|
| If recovery starts taking a few years, quality of life
| drops a lot.
| habinero wrote:
| Y'all. It's not eng being laid off. Or, at least, only
| marginally.
|
| This letter says mainly recruiting and biz depts.
| paulgb wrote:
| It says those will be "disproportionately affected", but
| that could just mean that they represent (say) 10% of the
| layoffs even though they make up 5% of the team. It doesn't
| mean that the layoffs are mostly those folks.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| Programmers don't make up more 10% of fb's employee base
| anyway (a guess) so if you assume that fraction at both
| fb and twitter you're looking at about 1500 additional
| people looking for jobs not 15000. Suspect this has
| little to no impact
| TchoBeer wrote:
| >Programmers don't make up more 10% of fb's employee base
| anyway (a guess) if you check LinkedIn
| (https://www.linkedin.com/company/facebook/people/),
| about 33% are engineers.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| It says about 12k are software engineers. Now it does say
| 40k total employees instead of the real number but I
| suspect software engineers are much more likely to be on
| linkedin. Still fairly confident that its closer to 10%
| than 33%.
| mrep wrote:
| No, standard is about half of full time employees are
| programmers. This website has them at about 42%:
| https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/facebook
| paulgb wrote:
| If that's the company-wide number, I imagine it's even
| higher in the Family of Apps and Reality Labs groups (the
| ones affected by layoffs), because it doesn't include
| cross-org functions like facilities or accounting.
| maltelandwehr wrote:
| If you include Stripe, Klarna, Netflix, Uber, Robinhood, Snap,
| Lyft, etc. tech layoffs in recent months have topped 100,000
| now.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Try ~50,000. https://layoffs.fyi/
| flakeoil wrote:
| Add to that thousands of smaller companies laying of 10
| people here, 100 people there. We will not hear about it, but
| it quickly adds up.
|
| In addition, we go from a phase where people new in the job
| market (students etc) were being hired quickly to no one
| hiring them. So there are both laid off people and new
| entrants added to the pool.
| CamelRocketFish wrote:
| > In addition, we go from a phase where people new in the
| job market (students etc) were being hired quickly to no
| one hiring them. So there are both laid off people and new
| entrants added to the pool.
|
| I don't think that's necessarily true. Hiring students is
| much cheaper so companies may still hire them whilst
| letting go of other expensive employees at a cost of
| quality.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Which is about how many people Google itself hired over the
| course of the Pandemic, for context.
|
| So it's not the end of the world. It really is a pretty minor
| set back so far.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| [deleted]
| lxrbst wrote:
| These are mostly recruiters and biz people being laid
| off, from all of those companies. Maybe stop spewing
| panic infused ignorance.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| [deleted]
| lxrbst wrote:
| The submission itself is such a link. Did you even read
| it, or just dive straight into the comments?
|
| > Recruiting will be disproportionately affected since
| we're planning to hire fewer people next year. We're also
| restructuring our business teams more substantially.
| stonewhite wrote:
| I believe you are talking about amazon hiring 100000
| warehouse workers, not google
| [deleted]
| j-krieger wrote:
| I can't believe google hired 100k people during the
| pandemic. Can you source this claim?
| pyrrhotech wrote:
| Of course not, because it was pulled from his ass. Google
| had 120k employees in 2019, and 150k in 2021. Even with
| churn, the OP is way off
| bombcar wrote:
| It could still be true if Google fired 70k people. But
| we'd have heard of that.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Half of Googlers are temps:
|
| https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=56878
|
| so double the numbers for a sense of how many people G
| actually employs.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| TVCs are temps, vendors, and contractors - they aren't
| typically considered hires. It's covering things like
| mat/pat leave backfill to kitchen staff.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It will have a big effect on salaries, however, it'd be a
| momentous opportunity for upcoming startups to pick up some
| bargain basement talent.
| hardtke wrote:
| Even if not true (and it very well could be be true), most
| hiring managers will assume that the people let go were the
| low performers in their roles.
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| AFAICT from people I know it's a mix
| oblio wrote:
| "Can someone think of the shareholder value?"
|
| Keep in mind it's always about people, not about soulless
| entities.
| relativ575 wrote:
| Without those soulless entities who over hired by a large
| numbers those people may not have their job in the first
| place. So sympathize, but with perspective.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| Let me shed a tear for these massively overpaid engineers
| who will now have to make only measly 2-3x of the average
| wage
| oblio wrote:
| They're still workers, don't be silly.
| afpx wrote:
| primates get a rush when they see peers beaten down
| Gigablah wrote:
| More like a crab bucket
| gonzo41 wrote:
| They'll have lots of options, and importantly, if they do
| cycle back into startup land, they may just pick a
| winner.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The next generation of startups that will become giants
| are being started now. Right now is a great time to start
| something new.
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| And yet the company still makes 2-3x their salary in
| profit
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| Hmm, so what?
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| cost of living in those areas means these guys live at
| best above middle class unless you want engineers to
| essentially never have children and live in an apartment
| all their life, then even 200-300k in these areas isn't
| much.
| oblio wrote:
| I'm not going to address the other aspects in your
| comment but:
|
| 1. Apartments can be perfectly fine for a happy life,
| everywhere across the world.
|
| 2. Conception and child upbringing do not mandate having
| a house.
| scarface74 wrote:
| This is not true in any city in the US by any
| statistically valid definition of "middle class".
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| > engineers to essentially never have children and live
| in an apartment all their life
|
| Welcome to most of Europe.
| paganel wrote:
| As an engineer living in Europe and inside an apartment I
| can confirm.
|
| Also wanted to add that when we want to feel less trapped
| we can very easily escape to many other nice places that
| surround us in the near vicinity, I usually go for
| bookstores and coffee-shops (from where I'm writing this
| comment), other people also choose parks, bike-rides,
| stuff like that. We manage.
| whatwherewhy wrote:
| They could simply move. It's what normal people had to do
| because these overpaid engineers outpriced them.
| jressey wrote:
| My 2 cents is that it's going to be mostly recruiters, sales,
| customer success, and other misc operations folks. That's the
| pattern I've been observing since the post-covid layoffs have
| begun.
| Vibgyor5 wrote:
| plenty of PMs and PMMs being let go fwiw as per my feed
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| The Meta layoff has many engineers affected. Probably at
| least ~2000
| btbuildem wrote:
| Right.. so that's barely 1/5th of the layoffs
| scarface74 wrote:
| The US has 2.7 million developers. Who knows? They may have to
| sully themselves and become "enterprise developers" like most
| of the other 2.7 million developers...
| patothon wrote:
| Not all these people have the same jobs though so I'm not sure
| what you are getting at.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I remember the dot-com (and Y2K) bust, when all the people who
| got into tech for the money (and not the love of it) suddenly
| decided to switch career. I hope the same happens now.
| Ocerge wrote:
| So you're implying only people who are passionate about tech
| should be allowed to work in tech? This does not hold water
| for almost any profession. Tech pays extremely well, and if
| you can do the work, who cares how you feel about it?
| lanstin wrote:
| It is more fun to work with people that love the work they
| are doing, who get jazzed up on covering all the corner
| cases and really good test suites and efficient use of a
| computer. People who will listen to tech talk for ten
| minutes and then act like they are thinking, "how will this
| get me director or VP by thirty" are less engaged and less
| fun.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| During the dot-com days, you could get a job if you can fog
| a mirror and turn on a PC. Now you typically need to get a
| degree to get your foot in the door so at least there is a
| vested interest. (Not to say there aren't talented people
| without degrees.) I think the OP is talking about getting
| rid of some of the dead weight. We've all worked with
| someone who coasts along and wonder how the hell they have
| a job in the first place.
| dbish wrote:
| Excitement about what you're doing brings excitement to
| others too and many great ideas come from people tinkering
| with side projects and the like. We shouldn't stop anyone
| from going into tech on anything but competency but yes,
| given the choice to hire someone passionate about it or
| someone who sees it as a droll 9-5 with roughly equivalent
| skill sets, I'd pick the passionate one.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > So you're implying only people who are passionate about
| tech should be allowed to work in tech?
|
| He said he hopes people voluntarily decide not to work in
| tech. Why suggest he wants to disallow?
| zmxz wrote:
| You're reading it _wrong_.
|
| If you can do the work, awesome, no one cares how you feel
| about it. But that's the keyword: *IF* you can.
|
| People who went into IT for the love of it are diligent by
| default (from my personal experience) and CAN do the work.
| Then you get people who enter IT for the money (nothing
| wrong with that) and not all of them can do the work.
|
| Those are the show-stoppers usually which incur various
| debts (from tech-debt to actual financial debt) because you
| end up having to carry them.
|
| Let's not pretend as if they don't exist, there's so many
| of them.
| strix_varius wrote:
| Absolutely, and it's hugely demoralizing to work with
| them.
|
| A person like that was moved off of my team recently, and
| the general lift on the team from just _having them gone_
| has been astounding. Everything is up: velocity,
| stability, even just the vibe of technical planning
| sessions.
| shagie wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20160305234708/http://pyxisin
| c.c...
|
| > We've known since the early sixties, but have never
| come to grips with the implications that there are net
| negative producing programmers (NNPPs) on almost all
| projects, who insert enough spoilage to exceed the value
| of their production. So, it is important to make the bold
| statement: _Taking a poor performer off the team can
| often be more productive than adding a good one_. [6, p.
| 208] Although important, it is difficult to deal with the
| NNPP. Most development managers do not handle negative
| aspects of their programming staff well. This paper
| discusses how to recognize NNPPs, and remedial actions
| necessary for project success.
| zmxz wrote:
| This is awesome, thank you for that!
| hnfong wrote:
| Bit of a tangent, but it's kind of harder to hire as
| well.
|
| Years ago when interviewing people I didn't have to
| wonder as often how passionate the candidate actually is
| towards the field, or whether they're just looking for a
| high pay job.
|
| These days I get those doubts a bit more. I think most
| people are still at least somewhat passionate though
| (bad/awkward programmer tooling which we've gotten used
| to are somehow great filters....)
| chasd00 wrote:
| I once had to fire that person. I hated it, it was very
| hard to do because they guy was a personal friend of mine
| and he never talked to me again afterwards. However, it
| fixed the team and we went on to do a lot of very good
| work that we couldn't have done otherwise.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I dont really care why you got into it so long as you remain
| excellent while you're here. the Problem is the (seeming)
| correlation between money driven motivation and apathetic
| (sub)mediocrity.
| paganel wrote:
| For me it's about how CV-obsessed our industry has become,
| which you could say that is also caused by the money
| factor.
|
| Basic things like the KISS principle have been thrown in
| the garbage can, almost all that matters is how the tech
| we're now using can further increase our career prospects.
| samuraijack wrote:
| Bluecobra wrote:
| Makes me wonder if there's enough layoffs coupled with a
| recession, corps would use this to get people back in the
| office and eliminate WFH.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| They can try. But it would be a better time to build a team
| without the overhead of renting office space. I guess it
| depends on whether companies see an opportunity to wind back
| leverage from employees or to embrace new possibilities.
| [deleted]
| tootie wrote:
| Comps will come down from the stratosphere but good devs will
| not be unemployed long. They may fall to less exciting roles at
| banks or other traditional tech, but there's still tons of
| demand.
| patkai wrote:
| Where would you advertise for ex-Meta or ex-Twitter developers?
| optymizer wrote:
| lots of us read HN, so maybe in one of the usual hiring threads
| here
| postexitus wrote:
| teamblind.com
| obert wrote:
| Like with all lay offs, the move to cut discretionary spending
| and perks may also impact employee morale and motivation, and the
| decision to extend the hiring freeze may also limit potential
| growth within the company... it's going to get worse before
| getting better
| stillametamate wrote:
| andreysolsty wrote:
| Im really curious how severance in non-US jurisdictions works in
| these cases. Both stripe and Facebook are offering WAY more than
| required by UK law for example. Do they offer similar packages to
| any UK staff laid off? Or do they assume that with a better
| social safety net they can get away with just following their
| legal requirements?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > do they assume that with a better social safety net they can
| get away with just following their legal requirements?
|
| If they are offering above and beyond severance for the US, why
| would they be looking to 'get away' with anything like that?
| They could 'get away' with offering the US workers the minimum
| possible package yet they didn't. Maybe they don't want to burn
| bridges, or maybe they want the good (or non-bad) PR, or maybe
| the management are decent humans, but they are doing it for
| some reason and there is no indication to think that the reason
| wouldn't also apply in other national jurisdictions.
| glintik wrote:
| That's ok, they hired too much people too fast. Ad revenues go
| down, they need to save money.
| sagebird wrote:
| While many are commenting that these layoffs are sensible given
| the situation, I am fearful that laying off approximately 13% of
| Meta employees will lead to a less connected world. I don't think
| people fully understand the magnitude of step-backwards it will
| be in terms of people connecting in this world. Does Zuckerberg
| take responsibility for what this will mean to people who simply
| need to connect more through great products developed by Facebook
| and future technologies being developed by Meta?
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| If this was sarcasm, well done :)
| sagebird wrote:
| I wouldn't dare ;)
| osuairt wrote:
| Facebook is cancer.
| sagebird wrote:
| To the people downvoting my post- would you care to explain
| what possible alternatives could exist that would fulfill
| Facebook's mission - "to give people the power to share and
| make the world more open and connected"?
|
| I sense a deeply cynical and dismissive tone from many
| commenters and I sincerely wonder how many of you have given
| any honest thought to Facebook's mission- or the many great
| products and features that support that mission. Given the
| importance of the mission, I find it hard to believe that
| cutting the workforce by 13% will have anything but dire
| consequences . Akin to the Middle Ages, or AI winter, humans
| will almost certainly suffer from being less connected. But
| what I haven't heard is calls governments or ngos stepping in
| to provide funding to lighten the shockwaves of this disruption
| to connectivity. Surely, this must be considered. When
| comparing Meta's mission to that of- say- automakers, or
| financial lending institutions- isn't it clear that creating a
| more connected world should take priority?
| britch wrote:
| What is your concern here? What does "a more connected world"
| actually mean?
| sagebird wrote:
| Do you think that Meta could be worth 273 billion, and yet
| promulgate a false, inaccurate or misleading mission
| statement? Perhaps, but it would not seem like it would
| instill much confidence in the company leadership.
| hnfong wrote:
| Twitter was allegedly worth 44 billion and Elon Musk would
| be willing to change its mission statement to a turd if
| that got him lols.
|
| So, yes.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Zuck Zorg fires 1 million:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mO6UY6uTg
| DarkGroku wrote:
| FB still making 4Billion in profit, all the comments here dont
| seem to talk about that Twitter wasnt profitable, FB is and laid
| off 4x the amount of employees, Zuck just saw Musk do it and
| thought itd be a perfect time while the attention is on Musk and
| Twitter, that letter Zuck wrote is sick and sounds like its
| written by a sad emotionless robot he brags about how profitable
| Meta is in that letter its pathetic, reminds me of the 70s and
| Reagan and neoliberalism making changes to laws to allow capital
| flight from New York to the south and firing all the well paid
| factory workers in the Bronx 10,000 families now without a
| breadwinner over night Zuck blew through billions on his VR
| research that no ones buying and just saw the perfect opening to
| sharpen his technocrat knives and surgically remove 11,000
| employees even though they all contributed to making Meta be 4B
| in profit and it was Zuck who blew billions he needs his stock to
| bounce back so he can continue buying the rest of Hawaii
| hbn wrote:
| All these layoffs seem to follow the same format of "we're sad
| to have to let you all go even though business is booming and
| we're pulling in more money than ever!"
|
| I assume it's for the shareholders. A plain "we're laying
| people off" letter without the asterisk of how good they're
| doing is just asking for people to cash out.
| ericd wrote:
| Sorry for all the people who've lost their jobs, but I'm excited
| to see the awesome world-changing stuff they'll make now that
| they're not spending their time building FB/Instagram.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Do you think that great, world-changing, folks go to Facebook
| to sit on a big salary? if they were going to do something
| awesome they probably wouldn't have been working there.
|
| now, if google lay off a lot of people... that would be
| different
| seydor wrote:
| facebook making a lot of money doesnt imply that they are
| making something great
|
| > if they were going to do something awesome they probably
| wouldn't have been working there.
|
| For the past 10+ years, in this forum, the advice is to stop
| trying to build something, go work at Faang
| voisin wrote:
| > For the past 10+ years, in this forum, the advice is to
| stop trying to build something, go work at Faang
|
| I think the advice given, when requested, has much more
| nuance that takes into account the context provided in the
| request. Do you honestly think HN is just a bunch of FAANG
| fanboys?
| seydor wrote:
| > Do you honestly think HN is just a bunch of FAANG
| fanboys?
|
| Based on what is being upvoted, and what is not being
| downvoted, yes
| twelve40 wrote:
| I think that many great, world-changing, folks have a non-
| linear life path and may end up doing all kinds of things
| including working for evil corporations for money, or bussing
| tables at Denny's before they get to the actual great, world-
| changing stuff.
| kilovoltaire wrote:
| Google and Facebook are both advertising companies, doesn't
| seem that different to me.
| ausudhz wrote:
| "world changing"
| randomsearch wrote:
| To call Google an "advertising company" is disingenuous and
| I suspect you know that. Whilst Facebook has been obsessed
| with chasing eyeballs and advertising, Google has built
| Google maps, Gmail, Android, Translate, all kinds of
| search, GCP, the leading web browser, Chromebooks, self
| driving cars, the most advanced quantum computer, world
| leading AI research and a ton more.
|
| There's no comparison to Facebook.
| achenet wrote:
| their money comes from ads. Of all the things you
| mentioned -
|
| Maps I'm pretty sure is a loss leader or used for data
| for ads
|
| Gmail as well
|
| Android is platform to hit you with ads
|
| Chrome/Chromeboooks also
|
| GCP is actually a viable business, albeit in a very
| competitive market
|
| self driving cars, research, quantum computers, none of
| those make money.
|
| There is a perfect comparison to Facebook, and for that
| matter, MTV and the New York Times. They all make money
| by selling ads.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > To call Google an "advertising company" is disingenuous
|
| It probably depends on one's perspective. Their Q3'22
| financials show that $54b of their $69b revenue for the
| quarter is advertising income. It is also listed first in
| their financials.
|
| https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2022Q3_alphabet_earni
| ngs...
| stewx wrote:
| What is Google doing to change the world right now?
| randomsearch wrote:
| One example: advancing quantum computing.
| throwaw20221107 wrote:
| Another example: AI research
| thrown_22 wrote:
| From what I hear on the grapevine the people getting laid off
| today are the people who would have gone on wall street 20
| years ago.
|
| >now, if google lay off a lot of people... that would be
| different
|
| The culture in google isn't any better. Smart people who want
| to do things haven't gone there since 2012.
| monktastic1 wrote:
| You may be thinking of the Google from 10+ years ago. I left
| all the way back in 2016 and the Alphabet transition had
| already turned it soulless. I've heard it certainly hasn't
| gotten better since.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > Do you think that great, world-changing, folks go to
| Facebook to sit on a big salary?
|
| Yes, have you seen the salaries recently? an E6 can make
| nearly half a million a year in total compensation.
| whymauri wrote:
| Also, I can think of many people who would be building
| amazing things outside FAANG but choose to go to FAANG to
| pay off college debts or to build wealth i.e. they come
| from poverty. Let's not even get into biases in how capital
| is distributed. Like, there's a hierarchy of basic needs
| for a person and their family before they can turn down
| life changing compensation to 'build something cool!'.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I spent the first 10 years of my career paying off
| student debt. The last 5 have been catching up on the
| retirement savings I missed out on over the first 10
| years. As long as I don't have a major medical event
| maybe I can turn down a job and "build something cool"
| when I'm 50.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| FWIW I'm currently working on a startup side project with
| someone at Meta. I don't know that we're going to "change the
| world" but I think we're both awesome and I can see us
| building something awesome.
|
| We both have jobs because we need to pay our bills.
| randomsearch wrote:
| I think there are better places to work that allow you (or
| cofounder) to pay your bills - even if your bills have to
| shrink a bit to fit.
|
| Best of luck with the side project, hope it entices
| you/your cofounder to leave Facebook.
| swalsh wrote:
| Getting laid off during a tech crash often leads to smart
| people deciding to finally follow the dreams they couldn't
| justify during the tech bull market. There's probably no
| shortage of people working at Facebook who have dreams of
| quitting to build some idea they have. But quitting a job
| paying 350k or whatever is just not in the cards.
| snapcaster wrote:
| I don't work at either, but aren't they both advertising
| companies with roughly same kinds of people working at them?
| Why do you think it would be different?
| adamsb6 wrote:
| If you want to work on interesting massive-scale infra
| problems there are few better places than Meta.
| DarkGroku wrote:
| FB still making 4Billion in profit, all the comments here dont
| seem to talk about that Twitter wasnt profitable, FB is and
| laid off 4x the amount of employees, Zuck just saw Musk do it
| and thought itd be a perfect time while the attention is on
| Musk and Twitter, that letter Zuck wrote is sick and sounds
| like its written by a sad emotionless robot he brags about how
| profitable Meta is in that letter its pathetic, reminds me of
| the 70s and Reagan and neoliberalism making changes to laws to
| allow capital flight from New York to the south and firing all
| the well paid factory workers in the Bronx 10,000 families now
| without a breadwinner over night Zuck blew through billions on
| his VR research that no ones buying and just saw the perfect
| opening to sharpen his technocrat knives and surgically remove
| 11,000 employees even though they all contributed to making
| Meta be 4B in profit and it was Zuck who blew billions he needs
| his stock to bounce back so he can continue buying the rest of
| Hawaii
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I mean meta is a business, not a charity. They're not going
| to employee people who aren't furthering the mission.
| madengr wrote:
| optymizer wrote:
| The one thing I want is the ability to work on my own startup
| in my spare time, without fearing legal repercussions. It
| wouldn't require me to risk my house on an idea.
| kadomony wrote:
| I mean, the "world-changing" stuff they're investing in is what
| directly led to this layoff. The metaverse was the most heavily
| impacted by these layoffs.
| swalsh wrote:
| Smart people can also change the world by working on climate
| change, improving healthcare costs, addressing the energy
| crisis, coming up with new ways to mass manufacturer consumer
| goods at reasonable prices without shipping things halfway
| around the world and back, help an increasingly aging
| population do basic stuff.... the metaverse (maybe crypto?)
| were just natural evolutions of existing business models, but
| these weren't the world changing things people need, so
| capitalism (the brutal nature is why it works) didn't reward
| it.
|
| If these smart people spend their brain energy to address
| these needs, which the world actually needs, they'll find
| success again, and the world will be changed in the way it
| needs to be... and frankly that's the way capitalism is
| supposed to work. Changing the world is only rewarded when
| people want it.
| throwaw20221107 wrote:
| Lol way too hard given all the politics and gatekeepers in
| those fields. Doing software is so much easier than that
| right now.
|
| And I disagree that solving climate change etc. is a "need"
| for most people. I think we all pretty much accept that
| climate change is going to happen unless some major coups
| or revolutions take place, and there's nothing we can do
| about it. Seems like the plan for the individual is just to
| ride it out for our 80 years, or until there's some food
| shortage or water crisis that kills us.
| ct0 wrote:
| Meta didnt just lay off metaverse related employees according
| to my source.
| kadomony wrote:
| Didn't say that it was solely them. But they absolutely got
| carved up.
| beeboop wrote:
| There are other people commenting saying it was much
| lighter than expected and light compared to other cuts
| loeg wrote:
| > The metaverse was the most heavily impacted by these
| layoffs.
|
| Where are you hearing that?
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| Yeah, someone posting above literally said that their AR/VR
| teams were left pretty much unscathed. In fairness these
| teams might also be a lot smaller and more "optimised" in
| desired structure as they're younger than the rest of the
| company.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Recruiting/TA is the most heavily impacted and the post
| says as much... People just love to have the Metaverse.
| bergenty wrote:
| Not true. The AR/VR group is mostly unaffected.
| amusedcyclist wrote:
| There were some contradictory signals about this in the
| article. In one bit Mark says they are continuing to focus on
| the metaverse but he also says some people at Reality labs
| will be affected. But it sounds like the apps teams are going
| to be affected too
| nottorp wrote:
| What's that metaverse? Never been able to figure it out.
| rkuykendall-com wrote:
| Metaverse is like NFTs. You can have it explained to you a
| dozen times but it will never make sense because it doesn't
| make sense.
| dqpb wrote:
| "Ready Player One" is a pretty concrete illustration of
| what a Metaverse is.
|
| It may not be realistic or desirable, but I don't get how
| someone couldn't possibly wrap their head around what it
| is.
| nottorp wrote:
| So I have to watch a 2 hour movie? Can't they explain it
| in like 1 paragraph?
| the_doctah wrote:
| VR with a multidirection treadmill
| ar_lan wrote:
| Well, actually, the movie is based on a book, which is
| much more than a single paragraph.
| ericd wrote:
| Multipurpose VR-based persistent alternate reality.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I own an Oculus 2, I really love Half Life Alyx, I had a
| PC that works well for VR...
|
| I have no idea if Metaverse is a game you download and
| run or it's supposed to be some tokens you take from game
| to game. I just have no idea. I've seen the creepy/shitty
| Zuck avatars, so I assume there is some chat-game
| involved somewhere.
|
| Notice there are no questions in this post. I don't care
| to learn. Just re-stating how poor the messaging of what
| it is they apparently want me to care about is.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| A new place to sell ads.
| hashtag-til wrote:
| I'm sure there are lots of competent people putting a lot
| of effort in "Metaverse", but to me it looks really just
| yet another VR world. Does anyone know what is the concrete
| new thing it would make successful?
| nottorp wrote:
| They could buy Second Life i guess :)
| system2 wrote:
| Just a name change for FB's parent company. Also zucc
| wanted to excite people with VR stuff but it is not even
| close to 5 years ago Recroom experience yet.
| clavalle wrote:
| Considering the severance, Meta might have just realeased the
| biggest pre-seed funded class ever.
| vthallam wrote:
| I work here and wasn't affected. But that's how I saw the
| severance. Anyone who doesn't have visa issues could literally
| pursue their ideas for the next 6 months.
| throwaw20221107 wrote:
| >6 months
|
| more like 6 years, unless you're a new grad with no savings,
| or unless you somehow managed to burn through your 200K/yr
| salary every year. Probably decades if you migrate to an
| LCOL.
|
| Edit: oh, you meant 6 months on the severance alone. Yep
| jcpst wrote:
| "Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration
| that would continue even after the pandemic ended."
|
| It's not over yet.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| What is the composition of roles that are getting fired? I
| naturally tend to think about programmers but Meta (and the other
| big tech companies that have had big firings) have roles all over
| the place
|
| Are they mostly getting rid of programmers?
| pm90 wrote:
| Anecdotally from Blind its mostly recruiters and business ops,
| but engineers as well (but not exclusively). Distribution is
| not yet known.
| system2 wrote:
| So from the looks of it, the investors see this as a good move.
| In 5 days Meta stock went up nearly 20% from $82 to $105.
|
| Dramatic news but company holds stronger than last week.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| Alright people the talent pool just got more fish. Go get 'em!
| SCAQTony wrote:
| Perhaps a strong, independent board of directors could have
| mitigated this fiasco. The meta-verse never looked like a good
| idea especially after previous failures like "Second Life." YMMV
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/10/faceb...
| daniel_iversen wrote:
| You can't really predict the future like that.. there were lots
| of mp3 players, tablets, smart phones, smart watches etc.
| before the ones that "hit it off" and made a lot of money. I'd
| think the theory is Meta has the money to invest for the long
| term as the market is building and become a leader.
| jimcavel888 wrote:
| Animats wrote:
| How much of the "metaverse" group is being laid off? Anyone know?
| ummonk wrote:
| We're probably going to see a decline in market comp / offer
| competitiveness as the flood of big tech layoffs hits the job
| market and startups feed on the offerings from big companies.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| But can they hire at least 1 person who can fix all the glaring
| user interface bugs on their core web app? The trade would be
| worth it.
| pmontra wrote:
| > At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the
| surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people
| predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would
| continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the
| decision to significantly increase our investments.
| Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.
|
| This is very similar to the Stripe layoff memo at
| https://stripe.com/en-it/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons...
|
| The structure of the two documents is very similar too. Is that a
| standard pattern of did Meta took Stripe's memo and adapted it to
| suit their needs?
| refurb wrote:
| Not surprising. I've been a part of a team that developed these
| memos.
|
| When it's bad news, it's never about the truth (well, rather
| it's not about accuracy), but about the simplest explanation
| you can give that people might somewhat believe.
| shafyy wrote:
| I just don't buy that they naively thought that everything
| would keep growing like it did during the pandemic once the
| pandemic was over. It seems like a welcome excuse.
| grey-area wrote:
| They were willing for their new employees to take that risk.
| bombcar wrote:
| They thought it would be a paradigm shift and didn't want to
| be caught out and dinosaured.
|
| For them that risk was much greater.
| shafyy wrote:
| In other words, they took the very real risk of needing to
| fire almost all people they hired during the pandemic again
| knowingly, because God forbid they missed that percent of
| growth of they didn't.
| bombcar wrote:
| The survival risk isn't the percent of growth, it's
| missing something entirely (which could still happen, of
| course).
|
| They all sound silly in retrospect but FB has to worry
| about things like "everyone starts using Zoom because of
| the pandemic and Zoom adds Chat and Ads and Facebook
| dies".
| vanilla-almond wrote:
| Shopify announced staff layoffs in July 2022. The Shopify CEO
| expressed the same sentiment repeated later by Stripe and
| Facebook:
|
| " _...given what we saw, we placed another bet: We bet that the
| channel mix - the share of dollars that travel through
| ecommerce rather than physical retail - would permanently leap
| ahead by 5 or even 10 years._ "
|
| " _It's now clear that bet didn't pay off. What we see now is
| the mix reverting to roughly where pre-Covid data would have
| suggested it should be at this point._ "
|
| https://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-team
| mabbo wrote:
| Yeah seriously, I read the meta announcement and thought "Did
| you just steal Tobi's letter and do some find/replace on it?"
| [deleted]
| geniium wrote:
| OpenAI rephrase
| lafreb wrote:
| Not only the structure, the wording is also identical:
|
| "Today I'm sharing some of the most difficult changes we've
| made in Meta's history."
|
| "Today we're announcing the hardest change we have had to make
| at Stripe to date."
|
| "At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the
| surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth."
|
| "At the outset of the pandemic in 2020, the world rotated
| overnight towards e-commerce."
|
| "There is no good way to do a layoff, but we hope to [...] do
| whatever we can to support you through this."
|
| "There's no good way to do a layoff, but we're going to [...]
| do whatever we can to help."
|
| etc.
| bjourne wrote:
| That just can't be a coincidence. American tech giants are
| again colluding to control the job market for software
| developers.
| z3c0 wrote:
| We must have massively different world views, or at least
| different definitions to colluding. This doesn't survive
| Hanlon's Razor. At worst, this is corporate corner-cutting,
| not collusion.
| dontwatchthis wrote:
| well they saw the postive feedback that the Stripe comments
| got and plagiarised it
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Corporate robots are the same everywhere.
| la64710 wrote:
| The overlords saw they were losing control with people
| opting to WFH and great resignation ... so they said "What
| audacity ... inflict pain and suffering on the mortals".
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Well, we'll see who wins.
|
| My prediction: after a rough period, the situation
| stabilizes and a pattern emerges: most white-collar
| workers will try to land a job with companies offering
| remote and hybrid work whereas the rest will have to have
| a stationary job and work their way up to upgrade to
| remote/hybrid.
| whymauri wrote:
| it took the collective brain power of an army of Big Three
| management consultant alumni to draft this soulless
| document.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| The two companies probably hired the same consulting firm
| to plan their respective layoffs.
| SilasX wrote:
| Or, the dynamics behind the two events are very similar and
| there's only so many different ways to describe it, so you
| shouldn't expect significant variation in how they're
| described.
|
| Not everything has to be 100% brand-new and unique.
| threeseed wrote:
| Also known as best practice.
|
| The whole point of HR/PR in these situations is to make the
| situation as forgettable as possible.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > best practice.
|
| Which is actually average practice... and in most
| distributions that's definitionally not the best.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Your say best practice, I see apologies for doublespeak
| and the attempt to normalize unaccountable dehumanizing
| statements from corporate lackeys.
| swader999 wrote:
| Telling the truth is always better.
|
| "I bet the company on metaverse and I was wrong." Or,
| "now looks like a really good time to lay everyone off
| because all the other companies are doing it too"
| travisporter wrote:
| zuck did say "I want to take accountability for these
| decisions and for how we got here."
| bart_spoon wrote:
| Is he laying off himself too? Because simply saying "I
| take accountability" without any actual consequences
| isn't taking accountability.
| [deleted]
| namdnay wrote:
| he lost 75% of his personal wealth, so there have been
| pretty real consequences for him already
| solardev wrote:
| What does that even mean? He won't have to work for a few
| centuries instead of a millennium? Lol.
|
| Compared to his employees' livelihoods, a billionaire
| losing some bit of their immeasurable wealth is
| irrelevant. He made a stupid bet and doesn't suffer any
| real consequences for it because Meta has no real
| accountability.
| kortilla wrote:
| That wealth is not "immeasurable". It's just hard for
| someone to understand when their point of comparison is
| personal finances.
|
| It directly impacts his ability to start new companies,
| new charities, etc. This is on the scale of wiping out
| the abilities to create fabs, do infrastructure projects,
| etc.
| solardev wrote:
| Sounds like a good thing. Last thing we need is
| billionaires owning more things.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| If we want to treat the numbers as meaningful and make
| low effort quips about wealth inequality being bad for
| society when they go up then we must also concede that it
| is meaningfully bad for him when the numbers go down if
| we are to be logically consistent.
|
| Personally I think beyond a couple billion it serves no
| purpose for quality of life for anyone and we only care
| in order to crudely "keep score" of who's in charge of
| more "stuff" since it can't really be liquidated or
| repurposed other endeavors efficiently and these people
| are de-factor world leaders in some capacity (a private
| industry analogue to GDP if you will).
| solardev wrote:
| It's not a logical inconsistency to point out that
| dollars matter a lot less once you have enough.
|
| The difference between having a dollar and ten dollars a
| day is huge. The difference between a hundred and a
| thousand a day is still big, sure, but you're probably
| not going to die of starvation either way. And once
| you're in dev salary land and higher, you're counting
| bedrooms, acres, cars, vacations, yachts...
|
| The wealth inequality thing matters not because Bezos has
| spaceships and Zuckerberg only has 3d glasses. It's that
| we still have millions of people with food and shelter
| insecurity, regardless of how much the richest have.
|
| It's not a linear thing. Zuckerberg losing a few million
| is utterly meaningless vs a regular family losing a few
| thousand.
| achenet wrote:
| > If we want to treat the numbers as meaningful and make
| low effort quips about wealth inequality being bad for
| society when they go up then we must also concede that it
| is meaningfully bad for him when the numbers go down if
| we are to be logically consistent.
|
| No. If wealth inequality is bad, that does not imply
| wealth is good.
|
| If we simply assume inequality is the bad thing, then we
| could deduce that the best society would be hunter
| gatherers with zero wealth, and Zuck losing wealth is a
| good thing, because it makes society more equal.
|
| It is therefore logically consistent to say "wealth
| inequality is bad and Zuck losing wealth is good".
| vocram wrote:
| Losing 75% of wealth is the consequence of holding meta
| stocks, but it does not make him immune to
| accountability.
| semiquaver wrote:
| For better or worse (obviously for worse) his
| relationship with the company is fundamentally different
| than that of every other employee. He's a founder and
| holds a majority of voting equity. That makes him
| inherently _unaccountable_ in a way that is nearly
| without precedent in the modern corporate era.
| kortilla wrote:
| Losing 70% of his net worth makes him directly
| accountable to the success of the company (lack thereof).
| vinay_ys wrote:
| What does taking accountability mean for a permanent CEO
| who cannot be fired by anyone?
| solardev wrote:
| It means writing a really heartfelt form letter.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Even if he did, would anyone believe it? This is
| Zuckerberg we're talking about.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| As much as "thoughts and prayers". It mainly makes the
| CEO feel better.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| And who else is accountable? He's the top dog. And
| apparently well paid to state the obvious.
| sireat wrote:
| Typical Gavin Belson move:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ
|
| Of course it has been done for millennia.
|
| How does a CEO with enough class B shares to control
| shareholder voting take accountability?
|
| Self flagellation perhaps?
| snapcaster wrote:
| Are you trolling? that would be worse for literally
| everyone involved. Have you held yourself to this
| standard in your professional life? it seems so absurd
| swader999 wrote:
| Yeah, in 2008 I saw the writing on the wall. Told my team
| we'd all be laid off soon. I finished the project I was
| on first and was the first laid off due to no more work.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| The tech industry labor market has been cooling rapidly
| this year, it's not only ad-tech companies, and certainly
| not only in companies who might have over-hired due to
| betting everything on metaverse.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I don't think it's that simple -- yes maybe in private
| you could say that, but this would set them up for an
| investor revolt or make them come across as huge assholes
| if they say things like that.
|
| They may be true, but telling it to everyone is
| definitely not always better.
| deltasevennine wrote:
| Of course. It's not about the best move or what looks
| better. Nobody cares for that.
|
| It's about the truth. That's what people care about in
| the end. And if none of it was said here, parent is
| pointing out that Mark is truly an ass. Something like
| "laying off people because other companies are doing it"
| is pretty fucked up.
| cmmeur01 wrote:
| Making shit up to obscure the truth is a way bigger
| asshole move than just telling the truth.
| themitigating wrote:
| What did they lie about?
| themihai wrote:
| Many people can't handle the truth. That's why see weird
| situations that don't make sense(i.e religion, populist
| leaders, snakeoil etc)
| joshspankit wrote:
| Would telling the truth be better if the real truth was
| "We've been waiting for a good excuse to drop a bunch of
| people and boost the bottom line short-term so we can get
| some loans"?
|
| _p.s. I'm making up a scenario based on other
| businesses, I have no idea what meta is doing these days_
| rinze wrote:
| > I have no idea what meta is doing these days
|
| What you said, but in a Second Life clone.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > the truth is always better
|
| A favourite Mr. Robot scenes has everybody at the AllSafe
| office wearing a giant badge with their most fundamental
| truth written on it. It mocks a "post-privacy" some fools
| advocate, via the cynical eyes of Esmail's hacker
| character Elliot.
|
| Point being; human relations don't work on "truths" but
| on carefully managed mutually secured fictions and
| personas to protect us and preserve power relations.
| Traditionally we call those "manners" (tactical lying so
| others can save face etc). But for the comedy of
| unexpectedly volunteered truths, who wouldn't enjoy a
| Mufti Day, where everyone at work gets to speak the
| unvarnished truth with absolute impunity for a day?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Or the fed increased interest rates and the economy is
| forced into recession too stop inflation.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Yes, perhaps for legal reasons, but what does using a
| template that feesl like GPT-3 tell the people about
| management that are still with the company?
| alvis wrote:
| Honestly I think GTP-3 can generate a much better human-
| touched message than the template
| osigurdson wrote:
| Typo: GPT-3
| mromanuk wrote:
| That would make it very simple for real AI bots to take its
| place.
| shswkna wrote:
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Exactly! My #TF2 nick is "Sheep with a gun"!
| shswkna wrote:
| I replied by editing my original comment. I got flagged,
| so I thought it appropriate to edit my comment to
| motivate what I posted.
|
| My comment 'Sheep commentors everywhere' was a reply to
| your post 'Corporate robots everywhere', intending to
| mirror the original comment.
|
| I tried to elaborate this in my edited update of my
| comment above. I can see why it got flagged, but my
| intention was different to how it was understood, IMO.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Probably from a "How to make people redundant" template
| paulcole wrote:
| The wording is quite similar but I don't think _identical_ is
| the word you're looking for.
| treffer wrote:
| At least the last sentence reminds me of "The hard thing
| about hard things".
| stulentsev wrote:
| - hey, can I copy your homework? - sure, but change it so it
| doesn't look like a copy
| papito wrote:
| Seriously. The sweetest words to me would be: "Here is your
| six months severance and full medical, now get your shit and
| get out!"
| bhouston wrote:
| Someone did crib the Stripe layoff notice at Meta. Strange,
| but yeah, obviously someone at Meta did base it on this
| Stripe one.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Don't they share either Kleiner or Anderson horowitz as
| common investors and board members?
| bombcar wrote:
| I dare say that once some are out the others look to them
| and copy what they can if it worked.
|
| I bet they may even adjust severance etc to be slightly
| better than previous ones to make the company look better.
| Facebook can afford to spend money on PR.
| chank wrote:
| Layoffs have become so normalized these days, I'm sure they
| have templates.
| hiyer wrote:
| Startup idea - layoff mail generator using GPT-3.
| klyrs wrote:
| Why stop at HR, the whole c-suite is a massive cost center
| and ripe for disruption.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Exactly. GPT3 for conversations, some humain actor giving
| enough materials so the C suite can appears in all hands
| and the likes thought realistic model ( not the meta crap
| )
|
| The rest is implementation details.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Recently there was an ask hn that was "What SaaS do you
| wish existed". My response was "c-suite replacment".
|
| I've been priveledged enough to see the insides of
| hundreds of companies. The problem is _ALWAYS_ the
| leadership! (or lack thereof)
| klyrs wrote:
| I haven't seen inside very many, but when I was at
| university I participated in bargaining with the execs
| there; I've also interacted with execs of the small- and
| medium-sized companies I've worked at. Regardless of the
| purpose and scale of the organization, they all seemed to
| be emitting the same blandishments, always loosely
| correlated to context...
| deltasevennine wrote:
| Why stop at the c-suite? We may not be close to being
| ready to disrupt software engineering but the trend is
| heading in that direction. We already passed a milestone
| for code generation.
|
| Realistically, C-suite probably will probably target
| engineers first before letting themselves get replaced by
| AI. It may be fractionally partially responsible for the
| current layoff.
| klyrs wrote:
| Hey now, that's my job ;)
| ddalex wrote:
| No need to go fancy when copy paste will suffice
| macNchz wrote:
| I experimented with making a GPT-3 excuse generator for
| getting out of work/school a while ago^. We can look
| forward to a future of incredible synergy, as employees
| dodge work with AI generated notes and are summarily fired
| by an AI!
|
| ^I didn't get very far because realistic excuses were
| boring and I had more fun trying to get it to come up with
| increasingly bizarre ones:
|
| "I can't come in today because..."
|
| - I'm made of glass, so I'm stuck in the mirror dimension
|
| - I am now a living manifestation of numbers, so I can't
| leave my house
|
| - I've become a sentient, living version of the internet,
| so I am now the human race's collective conscience
|
| - I am now an extra dimensional being made of fire, so I am
| now on fire
|
| - I am now a living, malevolent, super intelligent, hyper
| dimensional cloud, so I am now an intangible, invisible,
| shapeless, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinitely
| powerful, god like entity, I am now everything and nothing
| selimthegrim wrote:
| > - I am now a living manifestation of numbers, so I
| can't leave my house
|
| I guess GPT-3 has never played Numberwang
| metadat wrote:
| Please create a writeup on this, utterly hilarious.
| peteradio wrote:
| I could do it in 50 lines or less of python, including
| sending the mail to the loosers.
| loeg wrote:
| Same layoff consultants?
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Don't companies usually use consultants to plan layoffs?
| alvis wrote:
| Corporate robots are the same, that's why corporate mistakes
| are also the same :/
| system2 wrote:
| This is scary.
| mysterydip wrote:
| When has there ever been a "permanent acceleration" in revenue
| growth for any company? Or do I misunderstand what they're
| saying?
| Retric wrote:
| It's not unheard of for some outside force to result in
| surges in profits that last much longer than 2 years.
| Unfortunately, it can be really hard to tell if say the Among
| Us surge in popularity from streamers was going to stick
| around or not. Someone in the company was trying to figure
| out if it would be an enduring hit like Minecraft or just
| another fad, and as frequently happens they chose poorly.
| [deleted]
| 0xmohit wrote:
| Everybody used the same AI to write the memo.
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's just corporate speak.
| Abecid wrote:
| Holy shit you're right
| pachico wrote:
| Someone used https://quillbot.com/ with that memo and replaced
| the company name. Job done!
| 0xmohit wrote:
| It seems to do an awful job.
|
| Input:
|
| "At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and
| the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth."
|
| Results in:
|
| "When Covid first launched, the world was moving quickly
| online, and the e-commerce boom caused an astronomical
| increase in revenue."
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| This reads like a grade schooler trying to plagiarize
| something with his first thesaurus. I am disappointed by AI
| every day.
| sodality2 wrote:
| It's deterministic based off the same input, so it
| doesn't look like AI.
| meijer wrote:
| Is this even true? I thought the monetary policy of the Fed (as
| a reaction to Covid) simply made investments cheaper.
| octodog wrote:
| Both can be true. But maybe one sounds more sincere than the
| other.
| gbil wrote:
| a few days ago I heard a new for me term and immediately I
| thought of gartner etc. And guess what, a quick google search
| and for sure gartner created that term
|
| I wouldn't be surprised therefore if the structure/content is
| part of a consulting company's latest material
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| > Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration
| that would continue even after the pandemic ended
|
| Who predicted this?
|
| The general consensus among folks I know was that the economy
| was in for an ass blasting once the pandemic supports were
| removed.
| sbarre wrote:
| I think the whole "many predicted" statement that several
| large tech companies have used to thin out all the pandemic
| hires is cover for the fact that they boom-hired during the
| pandemic knowing full well they would very likely have to
| shed those hires when things went back to pre-pandemic levels
| and the opportunity for short-term profit was over.
|
| Shopify called it a "bet", which was a surprisingly honest
| way of framing it, by at least admitting to the risk and
| uncertainty that existed around all their growth.
|
| Also saying "many predicted" is less culpable than saying "we
| kinda knew we'd have to eventually do this, but hey short-
| term profits, right?"
| wbl wrote:
| Tech projects aren't tightly tied to revenue increases.
| edouard-harris wrote:
| That seems a bit unfair. Every successful founder is
| irrationally optimistic about their own business -- that's
| partly how they became successful in the first place. It
| doesn't seem at all unlikely that Zuck, Lutke, the
| Collisons, and many, many others all made the same wrong
| directional bet and ended up over their skis for perfectly
| sincere reasons.
|
| In case one has trouble recalling, way back in the dark
| ages of 2.5 years ago, when these investments were first
| being made, neither the duration nor the outcome of the
| pandemic were at all clear to anyone.
| sbarre wrote:
| Who said anything about fair? When has fairness ever
| factored into business?
|
| If a company sees an opportunity to make money, short or
| long term, they take it. That's just good business,
| right?
|
| There is a cold calculation that happens.. If we do this,
| will we come out ahead at some point in the future? Yes?
| Then do it.
|
| If "this" means hiring a ton of people that you _might_
| have to let go in the future, then so be it. That 's how
| all companies operate, all the time.
|
| The difference here is that the time between hiring and
| layoffs has compressed, and the bets that companies make
| are shorter term.. Hire thousands of people, drive
| massive quarterly profits for a while, then let a bunch
| of them go. Thank you for your service.
|
| This is how a lot of existing industries work already..
| Warehouse/factory work, seasonal work like construction
| and farming/fishing.. That's why those industries have
| unions too, because if this becomes a repeating pattern,
| the average worker suffers from poor job security and
| constant upheaval for the sake of corporate profits.
|
| I said this in the discussion around Shopify's layoffs as
| well: as a worker in tech looking for a job, you need to
| start thinking about how much your role contributes to
| the bottom line, and also about the timing of your
| hiring.
|
| If you are hired during rapid growth, then assume your
| job security is much lower, because your employer is
| making a bet, as opposed to planning for a calculated and
| safe long term expansion.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Who predicted this?_
|
| Every investor who continued to buy stock in these companies
| as they doubled in price, along with companies like Peloton,
| Zoom, Carvana.
|
| The laptop class genuinely believed we'd never do anything
| in-person again.
| [deleted]
| philod wrote:
| Most large fast going tech companies "predicited" this but
| that doesn't mean they really believed it. The alternative at
| the time was to say..."we grew 100% in the last two years but
| with covid restrictions limiting etc wr think that growth
| will be more like 80% and revenue down x%" that would have
| sent massive shocks to investors and stocks would have
| dropped overnight as companies like Meta had been setting a
| long precedent of "beat and raise" with their earnings calls.
| Essentially everyone was hoping it would continue as they
| didn't want to see equity and comp and valuations down.
| What's funny is that it all happened anyway over the course
| of the year. Believe me from first hand experience there were
| many people in these companies raising flags late last year
| that it can't continue but were essentially ignored. Hope is
| not a strategy!
| [deleted]
| Aeolun wrote:
| All the big tech companies that are now laying people off?
|
| I mean, they probably believed what they wanted to believe,
| but that's a very human failing.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| That wasn't my memory from early 2022. It seemed like much of
| the economy today was impacted by the Ukraine war. But maybe
| that's just coincidence. Lots of people also felt that tech
| companies were overvalued.
|
| But my memory may be playing tricks on me.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| The two will be forever conflated (and there's an excellent
| argument that Putin made his move on new territory while
| the rest of the world had weakened itself with years of
| self-imposed Covid restrictions). However, literally
| shutting down globe-sized sectors of the economy for months
| or years at a time, with no notice, to me is obviously the
| biggest cause of what we see now (and what is to come).
|
| Exactly how does the war in Ukraine economically affect,
| for example, the US?
| acdha wrote:
| > the rest of the world had weakened itself with years of
| self-imposed Covid restrictions
|
| This is a pretty bold political statement: it's saying
| that people weren't worried about getting sick and that
| the millions of people who died, had long-term illness,
| or were caring for their relatives weren't contributing
| to the economy. Things like the business owners
| complaining that retail sales were down even after they
| got exactly what they asked for suggests that's not the
| case.
|
| > literally shutting down globe-sized sectors of the
| economy for months or years at a time, with no notice
|
| Can you give details on where you believe this happened?
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| >the millions of people who died, had long-term illness,
| or were caring for their relatives weren't contributing
| to the economy.
|
| They were dominated (at least by the publicly-available
| figures here in the UK) by retired folks. No, in a purely
| pragmatic sense, they don't contribute much to the
| economy, especially as any wealth they do have gets
| immediately re-distributed on death anyway.
|
| If we were talking about some terrible disease (like
| Smallpox, for example), where the young and old alike
| died in huge numbers, then the argument would be
| different.
|
| >Can you give details on where you believe this happened?
|
| Are you kidding me? Maritime shipping and aviation are
| two obvious examples.
| acdha wrote:
| First, while the death rates were highest among the
| oldest people there are still a ton of people who were
| not close to death anyway. It's also not true that losing
| older people is necessarily neutral - economies do better
| when money circulates, not when it's tied up in a lump
| sum going into someone's retirement account.
|
| Note also that I mentioned people who were impacted but
| not killed. Again, there are millions of people in prime
| economic years who became substantially less productive -
| and someone in their 20s or 30s might be missing key
| career steps which will lock in much of that permanently.
| Similarly, there are millions of people who stopped
| working or started working less to care for the previous
| groups. All of those have a significant economic impact.
|
| Finally, maritime shipping wasn't shut down, certainly
| not for "years". It was significantly disrupted by the
| disease but that wasn't a policy choice.
|
| Air travel (notably not cargo) was restricted for months,
| not years at the global scale, but it also bounced back
| quickly thanks to heavy government support in most
| countries. I don't think it would be enough to explain
| the economy on its own as a lot of business went virtual
| and people found domestic outlets for the money they'd
| have spent on international travel.
|
| Finally, I'm not saying that there was absolutely no
| impact from policy but rather that some people have had a
| tendency to blame policy more than the actual disease, or
| ignore the benefits from those choices. We saw this a lot
| with groups like restaurant owners where lifting safety
| measures didn't improve business as much as they'd hoped
| because many of their customers didn't want to engage in
| high-risk activities, or especially when their outspoken
| political positions drove people to competitors. In many
| ways this is natural: people want to believe things could
| have been better by choice because then they can imagine
| it being better if they were in charge.
| umanwizard wrote:
| > Maritime shipping and aviation are two obvious
| examples.
|
| Also, most forms of non-screen entertainment (bars,
| restaurants, sports, theaters, etc.)
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Cruise ships as well.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Agreed. It was blatantly obvious that the cure was worse
| than the disease, and that at best the restrictions could
| just kick the can down the road a while. It was also
| covered up by printing cash at enormous scale.
|
| Now when the economy starts bleeding, supply chains
| struggle and inflation moons, people try and pin it on
| Putin and deny they ever supported it.
|
| It's cognitive dissonance at best? incredible dishonesty
| at worst.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| It'll be like the wars in Iraq and Libya. Vitally
| important at the time, but you can't find anyone now who
| will say they supported them.
|
| Then again, how can you blame people? Most people do what
| they are told, and the person who glared at you last year
| for breaking some Covid rule or the other could equally
| likely have a conversation with you today about some
| horrible outcome they've had thanks to Covid
| restrictions, and never link the two.
| implements wrote:
| > It was blatantly obvious that the cure was worse than
| the disease,
|
| That's not how I remember it - governments locked down to
| prevent health systems collapse while a vaccine was
| created, tested and scaled for mass production. After
| successful vaccine deployment restrictions were lifted.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| Three huge assumptions here -
|
| "health system collapse" was the inevitable outcome of
| any other approach to dealing with Covid.
|
| "health system collapse" is worse than all of the other
| present and future side-effects, including the effects of
| denying healthcare to huge numbers of people over the
| past 2.5 years.
|
| "health system collapse" didn't happen anyway. At least
| where I am (UK), it's increasingly clear that our
| response to Covid has blown open all of the existing
| cracks, and it's hard to say that we "saved" the NHS.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| 3 weeks for me to get a remote GP appointment right now.
| This will be killing more people than Covid ever did, so
| we are in the red before we even get onto anything else.
| okaram wrote:
| It wasn't blatantly obvious that the cure was worse than
| the disease, especially because it wasn't.
|
| There is room to disagree on how much and for how long we
| should have distanced, and which government interventions
| were more useful, but I (and most people?) think doing
| nothing would have been much worse.
| 22SAS wrote:
| They should blame Xi. All these economic decisions
| wouldn't have happened had there been no COVID. The
| Chinese government deliberately released this lab-made
| bioweapon/virus, to see how it would negatively impact
| most of the world. From economies struggling, to people
| getting polarized and more divided, and supply chains
| getting affected, their move has been a massive
| intelligence success for them.
|
| If anything, the western world needs to take a lot of
| strict action against the Chinese and also the tons of
| CCP sympathizers in their countries.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| About the only upside is that China seems to have taken a
| big dose of their own poison.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Gas prices. I'm perplexed that you somehow missed the
| connection.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| How did the US screw up being the world's biggest
| producer of natural gas, and being energy independent?
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| Gas as in fuel. Are you being deliberately dense?
|
| Anyways you're changing the topic now. Glad I could help
| you understand how the ukraine war affected the US
| economy. Good day.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| >Are you being deliberately dense?
|
| No, I'm not from the US, so the colloquial usage of "gas"
| as "fuel for cars" slipped my mind.
|
| The US is also a net exporter of crude oil, so all I've
| said so far still applies.
|
| How has the Ukraine war affected gasoline prices? Are you
| just talking about the state you live in, or US-wide?
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The US has given over $8B in aid. Also natural gas prices
| are going to hurt this winter. Gasoline prices hurt this
| summer, both directly and in transport costs.
| nradov wrote:
| Only a fraction of that $8B in aid was direct cash
| payments to Ukraine. Much of it went to US defense
| contractors and was recycled into the domestic economy.
| Higher fossil fuel prices hurt US consumers, but most of
| that value is flowing to US energy companies and
| ultimately to US investors. The vast majority of fossil
| fuels burned here are also extracted and refined here; we
| only import a little.
| bombcar wrote:
| $8 billion comes out to $25 per person in the US. It's
| nothing compared to anything.
|
| Heck, it's only four powerballs from last weekend.
| varjag wrote:
| The US have been spending $20B1 per year on air
| conditioning for troops in Afghanistan.
|
| 12011 figure
| ksala_ wrote:
| Completely unrelated to the thread, but I had to google
| this. This seems to be the source
| https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-
| of-...
|
| Reading the notes at the bottom, it seems like the number
| might be somewhat realistic, but should really be called
| the cost of shipping fuel and securing it to Afghanistan,
| some of which was probably used for aircon.
| varjag wrote:
| My point is $8B in 2022 money for defeating Russia in
| field is deal of the century.
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| Bargain basement prices!
| ksala_ wrote:
| Yes, I agree, I don't think that $8B is a lot of money
| for the US, especially in the military context. I was
| just surprised at the number and shared some back story.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| >The US has given over $8B in aid
|
| That's throwaway change, compared to the amount spent on
| Covid.
|
| >Also natural gas prices are going to hurt this winter.
|
| The US is the world's biggest producer of natural gas, at
| least while fracking is still largely permitted.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I was surprised when I read this part: <<The US is the
| world's biggest producer of natural gas>>
|
| Then, I checked Google. Yep, you are right:
| https://www.worldometers.info/gas/gas-production-by-
| country/
|
| In my mind, I was mixed up with world's largest
| _exporters_. Last I knew, it was a race between Qatar and
| Australia. But wrong again! It is Russia: https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...
| seydor wrote:
| the % of workers fired is also the same everywhere. As if a
| single nefarious overlord is running the Valley
| twawaaay wrote:
| I do not believe the statement.
|
| Whatever the reasons were (and we can probably guess some of
| those), they probably spent significant effort to picture it in
| the most palatable way possible.
|
| My take would be:
|
| * They hired a lot of people in a short time and with this
| probably their productivity fell a lot. They want to remove
| ballast and hopefully improve average productivity.
|
| * They are scared about falling share price. A lot of Meta
| employees get significant part of their comp in form of shares
| and so falling share price will mean their best people are
| going to start to leave or they will have to increase their
| comp considerably. So they are looking to appease investors by
| cutting costs.
|
| * They are loosing users and expect to start loosing ad
| revenue. Having on idea how to improve their revenue the only
| way out to stay in the game for longer is to start cutting
| costs more aggresively.
|
| * They have no idea what to do with all those people they have
| hired because their CEO is doing something else at the moment.
| And (in my experience, not based on facts) the culture at Meta
| is very likely that everybody is looking up to CEO or nothing
| happens.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _expect to start loosing ad revenue_
|
| They are already bleeding ad revenue, badly.
|
| But yeah, agree with you overall. In summary, they were flush
| with money for a while, invested and hired like crazy,
| couldn't grow revenue and productivity and are now shedding
| costs.
|
| We have to remember that these companies weren't affected by
| layoffs at the start of the pandemic; in fact, the opposite.
| They boomed.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Share value is down everywhere. Where would people move to
| for better compensation?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Smaller / newer companies with investment money to burn who
| expect results. Although I can imagine investors are
| slowing down a bit as well - actually they have done so I
| believe for the past half decade or so.
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| A place with more TC in cash.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| More than Facebook?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Does Netflix have 11,000 open positions?
| twawaaay wrote:
| I am talking _best_ employees. People who will find good
| job no matter what. People you need to keep because they
| are actually the ones who make the show going.
|
| You got hired thinking you will get some amount of money
| (salary + shares) now those shares are worth little even
| before they got vested.
|
| So you cut your loss and get hired at some other place that
| will give you more of your comp in form of salary than
| shares because you feel burned.
| sokoloff wrote:
| If share value is down everywhere, it's in many employees'
| best interests to reset their grants at another company (at
| a lower grant price).
| glenngillen wrote:
| Many large companies have pretty rigid comp review
| processes and cycles. If you're a high performing employee
| who got a stock refresh earlier this year there's a good
| chance you're down 50% or more at many companies. Switch
| companies and there's a chance you'll get a new grant for
| the original gross value but at the new lower share price.
|
| If your belief that it's macro trends rather than
| individual company performance that's depressing share
| value it could be a very profitable time to change roles
| (assuming you can, obviously there's also an influx of
| people looking for work in the past few weeks).
| dontwatchthis wrote:
| well it could be all of the above....what i find odd is that
| the Facebook CEO already knew that demand for ad revenue
| would already drop in 2023 and they were still hiring up
| untill now....they should have started cutting costs earlier
| bombcar wrote:
| You don't want to be the first to pull back in these
| situations as it makes you look weak.
|
| Stripe and Twitter took a lot of heat off of Meta; if they
| had done this in March it'd be a whole different story.
| confidantlake wrote:
| I interviewed with Meta in the summer and they cancelled my
| onsite interview. So even back then they had already slowed
| their hiring.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| They claimed their monthly, daily, and total engagement are
| all up in this quarters earnings. Ads shown up 17% price per
| ad down 18%. Doesn't seem like losing users.
| arbitrary_name wrote:
| The same HR/layoff consultants were used by both leadership
| teams, i believe.
| gz5 wrote:
| Corporate-speak aside, Meta and Stripe couldn't be more
| different:
|
| + Meta is funding a new business. Stripe is funding expansion
| of current business.
|
| + On existing revenue, Meta has new threats which had little to
| do with C19 (Apple's changes, Tiktok etc competition, ad
| budgets moving to influencers). Although Stripe is not public
| (so less numbers to analyze), it doesn't seem like they have
| similar pressures on revenue.
|
| + The main similarity is they are both subject to the impacts
| of inflation and rising interest rates. However, that is true
| for almost every large company right now.
| pyb wrote:
| This layoff almost sounds like an opportunistic decision,
| rather than something that was planned long in advance.
| rtanks wrote:
| Agree
| thomasmarcelis wrote:
| Probably same PR company or law firm
| pera wrote:
| I wonder why the two biggest recent layoffs were by the two
| largest (US-based) social networks, is this the end of an era?
| And where is all that advertisement money going now?
|
| As a side note, it's crazy to think that Meta stocks are
| currently -75% from its peak last year.
| Ragnarokk wrote:
| I think it was mostly a bubble and it finally has popped. The
| big social networks were funded blindly because they were
| growing on the market. But of course it wouldn't be eternal
| nemo44x wrote:
| Probably not. Some companies grew too fast and are now
| correcting. Nothing goes straight up or down. It will be tight
| for awhile though.
| weatherlite wrote:
| The ios privacy change hurt Meta but honestly most financial
| reports I've seen from tech (Alphabet, Amazon etc) don't look
| great. It has to do with the macro environment we're in. Which
| tech stocks had a stellar year? Not that many.
| nelsonic wrote:
| Facebook ("Meta") made $46.7 Billion in Profit in 2021. They have
| $42 Billion in cash. If the average engineer is paid $150k then
| these 11k people would cost the company 150,000 x 11,000 =
| 1,650,000,000 ($1.6 Billion/year) Mark Zuckerberg could _easily_
| afford to keep these people employed and focus their efforts
| towards improving the safety of the platform e.g: stopping Human
| Trafficking, Drug Dealing and Child Abuse all documented
| extensively in the Facebook Papers. They are failing to protect
| the most vulnerable people in society while sitting on a
| _mountain_ of cash. Shame on you Mark.
| Sakos wrote:
| I'm not really sure what the point of the layoffs here are. Are
| they realizing that they had no idea how to effectively put
| 11.000 people to work? What are they trying to achieve?
| pm90 wrote:
| Its been mentioned in other places but to summarize:
|
| * this is a cost cutting measure and not primarily driven by
| the need to cull "low performing" employees.
|
| * point of the company is not to guarantee employment or even
| keep the lights on; its to maximize the stock price (at least
| according to the prevailing worldview, which I disagree
| with). Investors use the stock price as a proxy for their
| belief in a company's future. If the stock price is high,
| company invests and expands, if its low, it contracts until
| the investors/markets believe it can generate value.
|
| * layoffs scare the employees that remain into working
| harder. The sad truth is that unless you're really
| exceptional, this doesn't really matter. But they will likely
| see a productivity boost for a little while. Again, this is
| pretty short term.
| Sakos wrote:
| Which seems bizarre to me. Cutting costs just leads to
| hollowing out your expertise and institutional knowledge
| (see Intel) to the point where it eventually becomes far
| more difficult or even impossible to grow. This is the time
| to reorganize, restrategize, reprioritize and solve long-
| standing cultural/organisational issues, not fire people
| who could potentially help the company through tough times.
|
| Oh well. It's FB, I'm okay with it if they sink the ship.
| [deleted]
| AnonC wrote:
| If Mark Zuckerberg had any shame at all, he wouldn't be around
| with Meta and all the companies it owns/runs. But he has good
| company among many other CEOs who'd rather cut the workforce
| and earn more bonuses for themselves.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| When doing "how much staff costs" calculations, you typically
| have to add on ~30-50% on top of salary for employer's share of
| taxes, and benefits (health insurance in USA is very non-
| trivial), and other assorted overhead.
|
| But your point stands.
| pb7 wrote:
| >If the average engineer is paid $150k
|
| Haha.
|
| It's more like twice this, with another ~50% in overhead costs
| like healthcare, payroll taxes, real estate, etc.
| rbanffy wrote:
| They have employees outside Silicon Valley
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Those engineers still make much more than this.
| pb7 wrote:
| They don't have enough and the compensation isn't low
| enough to bring down the average anywhere near this. Within
| the US, only base salary is adjusted up to 10-15% which is
| less than 10% of total comp. Internationally they pay
| significantly higher than local labor market, in all
| looking similar to US numbers.
| rejor121 wrote:
| A lot of people are spouting doom and gloom for the entire
| industry, but I feel like Facebook had this coming. Especially
| since they lost billions in Meta.
|
| It seems to me that there are a lot of software jobs out there,
| and companies can't seem to find enough people. But that said,
| I'm sure the story is probably different in Silicon Valley
| [deleted]
| d1algo wrote:
| Recruiters and hiring companies :
|
| In this trying times as founder of https://sunnyjobs.d1algo.com/
| I am happy to offer 5 free job postings. Just send me a mail at
| contact.d1algo@gmail.com mentioning your username & job posting
| links. You can use all the ATS features including setting up
| tests , track applicants and jobs etc.
| nixcraft wrote:
| All social media companies hire too many folks and now cutting
| expenses to meet their target for shareholders. Yet, only Twitter
| seems to get lots of backslashes compared to other FANGS. Why? I
| wonder if this relates to Elon Musks' ongoing outbursts on
| Twitter regarding his political and other conservative views. I
| believe I answered my own questions. Ha!
| Bilal_io wrote:
| I don't think you're looking at this objectively. The way Musk
| handled the layoffs was reckless and without much thought other
| than "reduce cost immediately", the proof is they backtracked
| and tried to hire people back after realizing what a poopy mess
| they've created. That alone is ridiculous and warrants the
| backlash Musk/Twitter received.
|
| From the looks of it, Zuckerberg handled this better than what
| anyone was expecting. Talk about under promising and over
| delivering
| nikau wrote:
| Musks was the "press conference outside 4 seasons
| landscaping" equivalent
| habinero wrote:
| I don't think you understand how many people it takes to run a
| large company.
|
| Turns out Elon doesn't either lol. Also, he's not a
| conservative.
| nikau wrote:
| > Also, he's not a conservative
|
| Yeah he's a regular old leftie
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_and_unions
| wooger wrote:
| You think twitter is in FAANG?
| nathan_gold wrote:
| Why is this identical to Stripe's layoff letter
| https://stripe.com/en-ca/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons...?
| bizzodes wrote:
| Imagine complying with the covid vaccine mandates against what
| you otherwise would have done, and then you get laid off anyway.
| What a gut punch.
| achow wrote:
| > _We've shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of
| high priority growth areas -- like our AI discovery engine, our
| ads and business platforms, and our long-term vision for the
| metaverse._
|
| Conviction for Metaverse is unwavering. Hope some good comes out
| of it in future.
| transfire wrote:
| Honestly I don't have any idea where this metaverse thing is or
| how to get to it.
| keewee7 wrote:
| Facebook has become the _local_ town square on the Internet.
| Thousands of active local groups is something that other social
| networks will have a hard time replicating. Marketplace is
| another feature that takes advantage of Facebook having a strong
| local presence, everywhere.
|
| Why did they pivot towards VR and metaverse when Facebook's
| strength is being the "Localverse"?
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| The Localverse isn't defendable in anyway. People don't use
| Facebook pages/groups because it's "Facebook". They use it
| because it's adjacent to something else they do.
| polio wrote:
| They are indeed investing into groups, but ultimately the
| marginal gain there is marginal. The metaverse stuff also
| complements (i.e. it isn't a complete pivoting away from
| traditional social networking) all of the other connectivity
| (e.g. imagine a unique and persistent VRChat instance per
| group; you can have a meta-localverse) but also gives Meta its
| own platform. Mark is obviously incredibly pissed at the amount
| of leverage Apple has over him.
| fullshark wrote:
| Because FB missed owning the smartphone platform with their FB
| phone (apple + google), and so they want to own the next one in
| their opinion (VR-Oculus).
| system2 wrote:
| They do own WhatsApp though.
| optymizer wrote:
| They filled the town square, and growth is the primary metric,
| so they decided to announce a new and exciting area to grow in.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| So was Yahoo Groups at one time.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| No they aren't. Because of [censored] algorithmic timeline you
| only see posts Facebook decided are relevant for you, and
| usually they aren't the ones you are most interested to see.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.
|
| As always with these things, I wonder what taking responsibility
| actually means in practice.
|
| Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major failures
| in decision making. In the case of Zuck, given his ownership,
| does anything actually happen or change? I'm sure his net worth
| has been reduced by changes to Meta's share price, but he was a
| multi-billionaire before and he still is now. Is that it?
| gustavorg wrote:
| > I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in
| practice.
|
| "Some of you May Die, But it's a Sacrifice I am Willing to
| Make" - Lord Farquaad
| dolmen wrote:
| Best quote.
| lazide wrote:
| He lost untold billions of dollars (admittedly off his giant
| pile of even more untold billions of dollars).
|
| He's the primary controlling shareholder and defacto owner.
| What other kind of accountability would make any sense at all?
| Even if he fired himself, he'd either have to shut the company
| down, or find someone to replace him and manage them, which
| makes him their boss.
|
| Edit: to correct dumb statement around share ownership. But you
| know what I meant.
| [deleted]
| spacemadness wrote:
| Apparently taking responsibility means lessening the impact by
| releasing this news alongside election results so it is
| somewhat buried.
| varsketiz wrote:
| He is paying a pretty decent severance package for the US as
| far as I understand.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It just means he accepts the blame, and holds no one else
| responsible.
|
| Do people want him to fire himself to show he means it, or
| what?
| khyryk wrote:
| People have a problem with it because it's a string of words
| without meaning. Better to leave it out than to sully modern
| language further with meaningless gibberish that looks like
| language.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Pretending not to understand doesn't mean the speaker was
| unclear.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Businesses usually try to find ways to correct for major
| failures in decision making.
|
| Which eventually leads to complete stagnation and nobody being
| willing and/or able to make a decision.
| Yhippa wrote:
| Think about it this way. If I, for example, did a series of
| activities that led to 13% of my division's business being
| impacted adversely, I'm almost assuredly getting fired.
|
| When you go higher up the food chain, the same thing happens.
| When the people at the very top do something like that, does
| the same happen? Sometimes. Depends on who's on the BoD I
| guess.
| paulcole wrote:
| What _would_ him taking responsibility in practice look like to
| you?
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Has he actually admitted how he failed in his
| responsibilities? I have not followed the FB fall closely but
| from the outside there appears to be some dubious strategic
| decisions at work. It would be interesting to hear him
| elaborate on the situation with something like "I failed to
| see how precarious it was to be at the mercy of Google and
| Apple for our core ad business". Or, "looking back, it was a
| mistake to not get into cloud computing for a more
| diversified revenue stream".
| ausudhz wrote:
| You believe that a company with plenty of privacy concerns
| and/or user data handling would've been successful on
| cloud?
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| sacrificing some personal wealth for the good of the people
| that were affected
| patentatt wrote:
| Yeah, he could easily bankroll a 36 month severance package
| or something similar. Like "sorry I fucked you right at the
| onset of a recession, here's a pile of cash to help you
| weather the storm." That would be actually taking
| responsibility
| mbesto wrote:
| He lost $90B. I'm not sympathizing with Zuck, but what
| you're suggesting literally happened.
| bombcar wrote:
| But he wasn't _punished_ - people demand _blood_ and
| blood can only be given non-voluntarily.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| He was punished by the market. People want more blood
| than that and some people will literally never be
| satisfied
| nonameiguess wrote:
| If the issue is his moonshot bets on AI research and
| metaverse that are not expected to immediately payout hurt
| the company by having too much headcount not contributing to
| short-term revenue, and core products can't support that,
| then he made a bad strategic decision, and the appropriate
| way to take responsibility for that is to remove the unique
| voting structure so that Mark is no longer the sole person
| capable of deciding the company's future strategy.
|
| But either way, it's still inevitable that a change in
| strategy would entail elimination of some of that headcount.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Facing repercussions on the level of those he's laying off.
| If he's responsible he should be the first one out the door.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That's impossible because he is already profoundly rich.
| There is no way to simulate the hardship without stealing
| what is in the bank.
| davidcbc wrote:
| Now we're talkin'
| Fordec wrote:
| Or rather the person who is responsible should go before
| those who are not and have been doing their job.
|
| If a middle manager was responsible for a bad decision,
| their head would be on a spike. But it's the chief
| executive officer, so he gets a pass, if only because he's
| in the position of power.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Good question. I don't know the answer. And that points to
| the problem, really. In rhe world as ut is, there isnt really
| a way to realistically imagine a CEO doing anything
| meaningful to take responsibility for a self-admitted error
| lile this.
|
| If, just for the sake of argument, I said he should resign or
| compensate the affected people out of his own pocket, I'm
| fairly sure that people here would think I was being naive.
| People here are already saying that corporate leaders wouldnt
| take decisions if they had to be held responsible for the
| outcomes.
|
| So we end-up with a bunch of people who everyone knows (a)
| are not responsible for mistakes, and (b) are tacitly
| understood to be able to make statements that habe no
| meaning. In other words, lies.
|
| And thus the domain of trust becomes smaller and more
| fractured.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think people who say it's meaningless are wrong.
|
| Saying you take responsibility is about clearing the
| workers of fault, it's not about thing you will reform or
| somehow suffer more than they will.
|
| He could go out there and say it's not my responsibility,
| it is the workers fault. They underperformed. Most CEOs
| don't want to do that
| Yhippa wrote:
| If I hired someone and they made the value of the company
| go down 73% in one year, I would probably fire them.
| falcolas wrote:
| Taking a salary cut. Loosing unvested options. Fewer grants
| going forward.
|
| Financial penalties that incentivize him to not fuck up
| again.
| roflyear wrote:
| Homie this isn't a fuck up. It's what shareholders want and
| it is awful.
|
| These 11k employees are not a threat to facebooks
| existence. Not even close. If that was the case FB stock
| would be tanking.
|
| FB is pulling in record profits. They just are getting a
| little nervous and they are laying people off. It is
| ridiculous.
| falcolas wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree with you, and we will see
| FB's stock bumping back up again now that Zuck's make the
| "hard decision" to lay off employees.
| roflyear wrote:
| Yeah. Up 7%! when the SPY is down 1%. Wild.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| To be fair, up till this point, Metas PE ratio was half
| that of Google.
| [deleted]
| francisofascii wrote:
| To be fair, his net worth fell by $70+ billion. So that
| sounds like a financial penalty to me.
| [deleted]
| falcolas wrote:
| A reduction in net worth (i.e. stock price dropping) is a
| pretty terrible penalty, because a) it doesn't actually
| reflect upon the CEO's successes or failures, and b)
| because any bump in Meta's stock price will bring that
| net worth right back. And, usually, doing a mass layoff
| will do exactly that.
|
| EDIT: Sure enough, Meta's stock is up ~17% since a week
| ago.
| eru wrote:
| > And, usually, doing a mass layoff will do exactly that.
|
| That tells you that companies have far too few mass
| layoffs.
| falcolas wrote:
| Only if your goal is short-term profits, and not long
| term sustainability.
| jfdbcv wrote:
| Zuckerberg takes a $1 salary and no equity compensation.
| lovich wrote:
| Neat how all his property was just donated to him by
| adoring fans then. Obviously there's no way he's
| discovered to wield his vast wealth
| akavi wrote:
| ...he starts the company. Afaik, he's never taken _any_
| additional compensation beyond his ownership share, that
| came about because... he started the company.
| lovich wrote:
| So the multiple houses? The land in Hawaii where he tried
| to just take from the current owners? All that was part
| of the company? Pretending like he just owns the company
| and hasn't taken compensation anywhere cause he has a 1
| dollar a year salary is a a child like understanding of
| how billionaires leverage their wealth
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm certain there are people smarter than I who could
| come up with an appropriate penalty. Quite a few on
| Meta's board, no doubt.
|
| Put him on a PIP with a mentor? :D
| triceratops wrote:
| Resigning.
| [deleted]
| smsm42 wrote:
| I'd say yeah, that's pretty much it. In any case, what'd you
| expect? He's not giving up the control of the company. He made
| a mistake, yes - but there's no obligation for anybody who
| makes a mistake to give up everything and never have any
| responsibility again. So what else is there?
| adamzerner wrote:
| I think a Bayesian perspective is helpful here. 1) How likely
| is it that Zuck makes that statement if he feels like he is
| responsible? 2) How likely is it if he doesn't feel
| responsible? I think the answers to those questions are quite
| similar, in which case hearing the statement doesn't actually
| tell us much.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Just to elaborate on this since I had to think about it and I
| might save someone else the effort:
|
| Let M = Makes the statement Let R = Feels Responsible
| Notation: ~R = Not R
|
| Answering OP's questions 1 & 2: I think it's safe to assume
| P(M|R) = P(M|~R) = 1 So P(M) = 1
|
| So Bayes' theorem simplifies as follows: P(R|M) =
| P(M|R)P(R)/PM) = P(R)
|
| Thus, OP's point is that the statement tells us essentially
| nothing about the probability he actually feels responsible
| or empathetic, and I agree.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| To use Bayes to update here, you must determine the
| conditional probabilities as they were before you knew that
| M occurred, and could thus update to P(M)=1. If one did not
| already know that M happened then one certainly could not
| say `P(M|R) = P(M|~R) = 1`. One might be able to claim
| `P(M|R) = P(M|~R) = P(M)`, which is just saying the events
| are independent.
|
| Certainly with a prior that the events are independent,
| then you won't be able to update your probability of R by
| knowing that M did happen, any more than knowing last
| nights lotto numbers would probability of R.
|
| In reality, things are even worse, as assuming independence
| is not fully reasonable, so you will end up with
| uncertainly about how or if the variables relate. One could
| assume some form of meta probability distribution of
| various ways the variables could relate, but then direct
| application of Bayes formula not feasible. You would still
| in that scenario not be learning much if anything useful
| about P(R).
| abstractmath wrote:
| But both of your assumptions imply the conclusion, so the
| math doesn't actually seem helpful at all.
| adamzerner wrote:
| I disagree. The question at hand is how we should update
| our beliefs in response to the evidence of Zuck making
| the statement. Given the priors of P(M|R) and P(M|~R), it
| tells us that we shouldn't really update. Different
| priors would lead to a different update.
|
| Sometimes this sort of thing happens where our priors
| don't allow for a belief update in response to evidence.
| For example, does me writing this comment change your
| best guess as to whether my favorite color is blue? That
| depends on what you think of P(favorite color blue |
| comment) and P(favorite color blue | ~comment). Both of
| those are probably the same right? If so, my comment
| doesn't allow you to update.
|
| This excerpt from http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/20 is
| relevant: Professor Quirrell looked at
| Harry. "Mr. Potter," he said solemnly, with only a slight
| grin, "a word of advice. There is such a thing as a
| performance which is too perfect. Real people who have
| just been beaten and humiliated for fifteen minutes do
| not stand up and graciously forgive their enemies. It is
| the sort of thing you do when you're trying to convince
| everyone you're not Dark, not -" "I can't
| believe this! You can't have every possible observation
| confirm your theory! " "And that was a trifle
| too much indignation." "What on Earth do I
| have to do to convince you? " "To convince me
| that you harbor no ambitions of becoming a Dark Lord?"
| said Professor Quirrell, now looking outright amused. "I
| suppose you could just raise your right hand."
| "What?" Harry said blankly. "But I can raise my right
| hand whether or not I -" Harry stopped, feeling rather
| stupid. "Indeed," said Professor Quirrell.
| "You can just as easily do it either way. There is
| nothing you can do to convince me because I would know
| that was exactly what you were trying to do. And if we
| are to be even more precise, then while I suppose it is
| barely possible that perfectly good people exist even
| though I have never met one, it is nonetheless improbable
| that someone would be beaten for fifteen minutes and then
| stand up and feel a great surge of kindly forgiveness for
| his attackers. On the other hand it is less improbable
| that a young child would imagine this as the role to play
| in order to convince his teacher and classmates that he
| is not the next Dark Lord. The import of an act lies not
| in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Potter,
| but in the states of mind which make that act more or
| less probable." Harry blinked. He'd just had
| the dichotomy between the representativeness heuristic
| and the Bayesian definition of evidence explained to him
| by a wizard.
| abstractmath wrote:
| The interesting and important question is what are the
| priors.
|
| Since all of the priors here are speculative, there's no
| use in pulling out Bayes.
|
| The outcome given Bayes is the same as the outcome
| without Bayes, just a bit noisier ;)
| svnt wrote:
| You've identified the problem with many Bayesian
| approaches, not just this one. Without sufficient data to
| make the probabilities accurate, it just shifts the
| uncertainty to the process of choosing probabilities.
| adamzerner wrote:
| Yes, thank you! I appreciate that. I should have elaborated
| in my OP.
|
| https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule/ has some great follow up
| info.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Is there a better way to say this?
|
| I think the meaning is pretty clearly "Many of you are being
| let go not because of poor performance on your part, but bad
| decisions on my part."
|
| It's acknowledging fault.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| I thought this
| https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1590304422735015936 was
| a good explanation:
|
| > What this means is they don't blame outside factors. Compare
| this w layoffs where the CEO says this is due to "the economy"
| "the macro climate", suggesting they did everything right. When
| someone says they take accountability, it means it was their
| poor decisions - that could have/should have been better - that
| led to this. You know who to blame.
| sausagefeet wrote:
| This is a pretty poor take, IMO. I have not seen any
| difference in results of a CEO who "takes responsibility" vs
| "blames outside factors". Taking responsibility seems to be a
| cheap way to come off as a better person without actually
| doing anything differently.
| beambot wrote:
| Are "results" the only thing that matter to you?
|
| Let's say you have two leaders in this situation. #1 says
| "The macro economic climate is bad, so we're laying people
| off." #2 says "I made a mistake; this was my fault." All
| other things equal, I know which one I'd prefer to work
| with... How a leader comports themselves is just as
| important as their results -- especially in bad times.
| Yhippa wrote:
| I want to hear both. "The macro environment is bad, and
| we never baked that into any of our forecasts, which we
| should have. I take full responsibility for not doing
| that."
| sausagefeet wrote:
| I don't really understand your counter. It costs an
| executive nothing to write those words down. What do you
| think should matter to me?
| pb7 wrote:
| Does it get tiring being this cynical all the time? Admit
| it, nothing he could have said would have satisfied folks
| like you.
|
| This was a tactful announcement and a generous severance
| after providing a job with pay and benefits in the top 0.1%
| for potentially many years.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| True, nothing he could have _said_ would satisfy. But he
| is in a unique position to render stunning aid to those
| displaced. The severance is fine, not totally unusual for
| a company that isn 't going under.
| sausagefeet wrote:
| I am making a much more narrow point than you're
| interpreting it. The Twitter thread is claiming people
| who "take responsibility" are somehow superior to those
| who don't. I am saying I see no evidence to believe that.
| Talk is cheap.
|
| My personal belief is that I would like to see discussion
| of the system that gets us to the point of mass layoffs.
| As rich as Zuck or Musk or whoever is, they are still
| close to gears in the system than orchestrators, so we
| should probably have a discussion about if this situation
| is something we could modify the system to prevent, and
| if we want to modify the system in that way.
| Aperocky wrote:
| > somehow superior to those who don't.
|
| Yes. Accepting responsibility is more preferable to not
| accepting it and blaming it on other people/things,
| period.
| apineda wrote:
| I understand this take but it seems to assume that people
| and systems aren't flawed.
| sausagefeet wrote:
| My take assumes that? I don't think it does. My point is
| simply that I don't see any evidence to say that someone
| who makes that claim is somehow better than someone that
| blames the environment. It's very easy to wrote those
| words down.
| jbaczuk wrote:
| Wow, people can find a way to complain about anything. The
| severance benefits are insanely generous. Nobody takes a job
| thinking that it will be permanent, or is that a thing now?
| Would it have been better if he blamed the layoffs on the
| market? Maybe it's just a glass half empty kind of thing.
| arbitrage wrote:
| > Nobody takes a job thinking that it will be permanent, or
| is that a thing now?
|
| Does everybody take a job expecting to leave it? I don't
| think that is the case.
| drc500free wrote:
| Everyone in tech whose job is a bet on the future success
| of a product should expect to leave it. Expecting 100% of
| products to have 100% success in 100% of economic
| environments is a bit naive.
| epolanski wrote:
| Just to point out Facebook is a success and is still
| making insane profits every single day.
|
| They aren't losing money or posting losses.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| > As always with these things, I wonder what taking
| responsibility actually means in practice.
|
| Remember a few years ago when people were asking "Why can't
| people just say they made a mistake and own up to it instead of
| shifting blame?" Now that people are taking responsibility for
| mistakes publicly the response is "Yes, but what does that
| mean?"
|
| Taking responsibility means just that. It means saying you
| fucked up and not blaming others for your failures. It doesn't
| mean that self immolation follows soon after.
|
| I move on from bad breaks pretty quickly but there are few
| things that I've held on to. Things that still burn years later
| and all of them involve refusals to accept responsibility.
| Hearing someone say: "Yep, it was me. I fucked you and I'm
| sorry. Here's what I can offer." isn't nothing.
|
| Layoffs suck but the rate of hiring in big companies wasn't
| sustainable. A correction is here. It's temporary, but, it's
| real.
|
| If you've tried to hire outside of FAANG over the past decade
| you'd know one thing: FAANG is hoarding talent. Every developer
| I've really wanted to hold on to has gone to a big tech
| company.. I can't blame them. But, here's the thing, so have
| many of the contractors that I didn't end up hiring for very
| good reasons.
|
| These layoff messages, down to the structure and content, all
| sound the same because PR people follow best practices just
| like everyone else. You wouldn't ask why all Redux or Angular
| apps use similar patterns.. They're using patterns, that's what
| patterns are for.
| hardolaf wrote:
| It sounds like you should pay more for developers because we
| don't have an issue retaining top talent over in the
| financial space.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| > Financial space
|
| Real numbers here: $250k for a mid-level UX designer and
| $575k (base comp) for an Angular dev. That's expensive.
| And, depending on the candidate, not worth it.
|
| There's a lot of reality outside of FAANG and finance.
| warcher wrote:
| Nothing short of seppuku streamed live via Oculus will redeem
| the honor of a business guy putting his honest level best
| effort behind some business things that didn't make as much
| money as he hoped.
| mongol wrote:
| Taking responsibility is more than just admitting
| reponsibility. It is also about bearing the consequences.
| Such as, if you broke something, you fix it. If you lost
| something, you pay up to replace it. Or similar. A manager
| usually can't fix a problem themselves though. But unless
| they pay a cost for their mistakes, they are not really
| taking responsibility. Then they just pay lip service to the
| word.
| musictubes wrote:
| I dunno, think Zuck losing however may billions of dollars
| of net worth is a pretty stiff consequence. He didn't have
| to take responsibility but did. He also literally paid for
| the consequences.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Is it, though? On paper, I've lost about 35% of my net
| worth in the recent market downturn, and it hasn't
| affected my life even the slightest. Maybe it's different
| if it's your own company and your ego is tied up in the
| stock price, but some numbers in a brokerage account
| going down doesn't feel like a "stiff consequence" to me.
| runarberg wrote:
| A billionaire that looses half their net-worth is still a
| billionaire. They still hold more money than you can
| dream of, they still hold more power then you can
| imagine.
|
| It is not the same for a billionaire to loose money as it
| is for you or me. To take a concrete example. Elon Musk
| could just close down Twitter right now, and waste away
| his 44 bn USD he spent on it. After that squander, he
| would still be the richest man on the planet.
| smabie wrote:
| I mean if you have one billion and you lose half you are
| not a billionaire any more?
| runarberg wrote:
| You are correct on technicality, but you know I was
| speaking generally. Even so, a millionaire that still has
| 500 millions after they seriously screw up, still has a
| ton of money and power. The consequence is still
| minuscule next to me loosing half my money.
|
| A real consequence would be them loosing everything
| except 5000 USD
| smsm42 wrote:
| True, but what should happen instead? If losing lots of
| billions won't be enough, what would be?
| runarberg wrote:
| idk. If this many people were to loose their jobs under
| my authority, I think I would at the very least loose my
| job. But perhaps there also ought to be a class action
| law suite, workers should be able to sue a negligent
| business leaders that costs them their jobs, similar how
| a shareholder can sue for lost profits.
|
| But honestly a business leader that screws up so bad,
| should probably loose all their wealth, like 100%.
| jlawson wrote:
| Such a policy would mean that the consequences of a risk
| going wrong vastly outweigh the benefits of success.
|
| That would incentivize extremely risk-averse decisions by
| business leaders and lead to society-wide stagnation. The
| result would be far more suffering overall.
| jahewson wrote:
| Right but that's got nothing to with consequences. You're
| annoyed that the consequence is... the consequence.
| Instead of what? Some abstract punitive ideal?
| ff317 wrote:
| Responsibility actually is just admitting fault, IMHO. It's
| _accountability_ that 's all about paying the cost for the
| fault.
| JohnAaronNelson wrote:
| Thank you. Saying "my bad" is the first step. Fixing it
| afterwards is what good people do.
|
| When someone is accused of a crime, they can plead innocent
| or guilty. That is step one.
|
| There are more steps after that...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| For a CEO, the next step is trying to get the business
| back on track and restore stock price. I think that his
| crazy to think Zuckerberg will not try to do that.
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| What specific consequence would you expect him to bear?
| It's not like there's any meaningful financial consequence
| that he would actually feel. He ain't gonna know what food
| insecurity or the specter of medical bankruptcy feels like.
| Should he impose some consequence on himself, like he only
| gets to spend $1 million on leisure over the next year?
| [deleted]
| danaris wrote:
| Maybe he could see that these people all receive the same
| salary they did at Facebook until they can find another
| job? No idea how the math would work out on that, but
| that seems to be the kind of "taking responsibility" that
| would actually be meaningful.
|
| In a case like this, I don't think the point should be
| whether Zuckerberg "would actually feel" a consequence:
| it should be whether the _people getting laid off_ --as
| in, the ones who were wronged--can feel it.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I'm not really sure what you mean. If Facebook keeps
| paying them indefinitely that's just...not doing a
| layoff.
| yunwal wrote:
| > Maybe he could see that these people all receive the
| same salary they did at Facebook until they can find
| another job?
|
| If you mean unlimited, this seems like an unreasonable
| expectation. FB employees receive a 4 month severance
| package, 4 months _should_ be plenty of time to find a
| job for a developer /office worker.
| KIFulgore wrote:
| I read 4 months of severance, plus 2 weeks per year of
| service (likely up to a maximum?), 6 months of health
| insurance paid, plus job placement services from a 3rd-
| party vendor.
|
| That's more than fair.
| jjulius wrote:
| >What specific consequence would you expect him to bear?
|
| If your decisions lead to 11,000 people losing their
| jobs, and you "take responsibility for that", then you
| should be 11,001.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| What do you suggest?
| jjulius wrote:
| Admit that you either no longer know how to steer the
| ship, or you don't know which direction to go, and then
| let someone else do it.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| There was a time when investors/the board could fire a
| CEO making terrible decisions (like sinking billions into
| white whale VR projects), but no longer.
| smsm42 wrote:
| AFAIK Facebook ownership has been setup in a way that
| nobody can fire Zuck, and investors were fully aware of
| it when investing.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| > There was a time when investors/the board could fire a
| CEO making terrible decisions
|
| This is still by far the most common case, and in fact it
| is probably becoming more common because large index
| funds have recently increased requirements related to
| ownership share structuring
| (https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2017/08/05/sp-and-ftse-
| russe...).
|
| In this specific case though, the investors knew that
| Zuck had complete control and they decided to invest
| regardless, so I do not have any sympathy for their
| complaints.
| codeisawesome wrote:
| Does this mean Facebook wouldn't be allowed to list in
| this index if it tried today?
| kachnuv_ocasek wrote:
| Cutting bonuses, for example?
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| Zuck already doesn't get any salary or bonus.
| bink wrote:
| He gets $1 in salary but his total comp is in the tens of
| millions.
| miiiiiike wrote:
| Agreed. If I fuck up and fire people, I'm not taking home
| a bonus.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Wouldn't that mostly impact just the executives and not
| Mark Zuckerberg himself? He did seem to get a 23 million
| dollar bonus last year, but that's peanuts compared to
| his net worth.
| hnfong wrote:
| Compared with his net worth, or compared with the
| reduction in his net worth?
| Kaytaro wrote:
| Taking responsibility would be putting himself on the
| chopping block. I don't blame him for not doing so, but
| that's what that word means to me.
| Animatronio wrote:
| Have you ever quit your job over a mistake you made - say
| a bug you introduced in your code? That would also be
| taking responsibility.
| jjulius wrote:
| Life is a lot more nuanced than, "If bug in code, then
| lose job". Your hypothetical depends on the severity of
| the bug in the code.
|
| Edit: In this instance, the "bug" led to 11,000 people
| losing their jobs.
| Kaytaro wrote:
| If a mistake I made resulted in thousands of people
| losing their jobs who wouldn't consider it? At the very
| least I wouldn't lie about "taking responsibility" if I
| had no intention.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Apologizing means you won't do it again. What steps are being
| taken so that the situation being apologized for doesn't
| happen again?
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I've called this the public apology ritual. In the minds of
| the angry mob, the person is irredeemable and should suffer
| the worst fate (in our society that might entail being
| "canceled"... shunned).
|
| They don't WANT to forgive them, or provide them with any
| redemption. Regardless of the apology, you will use it to
| push back further. Look for any hole in the apology to point
| to. If that fails, criticize the apology for being too late,
| or only to save face... in any case, make sure to proclaim
| that you're even more angry after the apology.
|
| I'm not saying people should never apologize, but I get sick
| of this whole routine and all the acting. People will always
| just do what they want and it will just be based on a knee
| jerk sense of how much they like you.
| conductr wrote:
| I live in a oil rich area and there's a large economy of well
| paid folks attached to it. They all understand it's boom and
| bust. They get paid really well when it's booming. Then they
| take the L when it's busting. All to say, I think people need
| to come to terms with the fact they weren't being paid well due
| to their sheer brilliance but due to the risk they assumed by
| joining a boom and bust industry. Nobody was lured into a job
| at FB under unfair circumstances and I'm sure they're not
| exiting on unfair circumstances. Does it suck to be in a
| cyclical bust period, does it hurt worse that it's in large
| part self inflicted by Zuck. Of course, of course.
| pishpash wrote:
| On some level it's not even Zuck's fault. It's Jerome
| Powell's. It's however up to each individual to plan for what
| comes after knowing 2020-2021 was an epic bubble.
| lapcat wrote:
| Taking responsibility would mean resigning as CEO, for example.
| Or altering the voting situation where he has absolute power,
| can't be voted out by the board of directors, and thus has no
| accountability for his actions and mistakes.
|
| But just _saying_ that you 're taking responsibility is not
| actually taking responsibility. It's empty words.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I don't agree with that take at all. No leader would be able
| to learn from mistakes or grow if they had to metaphorically
| commit Seppuku every time they made a mistake by resigning or
| abdicating their authority.
|
| Taking responsibility would mean owning the situation as
| being caused by you, and critically evaluating your actions
| to see if there were different paths you could have taken
| given the same information, or if there was other information
| that you should have added to your decision-making.
|
| There are some mistakes so grave and unjustifiable that
| resignation would be the appropriate way to take
| responsibility for them, but I don't think a round of layoffs
| pending an expected economic downturn after excessive growth
| qualifies.
| mempko wrote:
| We got rid of kings in politics for a reason. Businesses
| will eventually learn these lessons, even if it's a hundred
| years later.
| lapcat wrote:
| > if they had to metaphorically commit Seppuku every time
| they made a mistake
|
| This is very far from Zuck's first mistake. In any case,
| though, I offered an alternative: making himself
| accountable to the board of directors. He is not
| accountable. He can't be fired, he can only resign. The
| fundamental problem is that Zuck gets to define the terms
| of his own accountability, which is almost an oxymoron.
| r00fus wrote:
| And this is one downside to the unitary CEO/COB.
|
| He, like Vladimir Putin, is only accountable to himself.
|
| Ideally, society should not allow this type of business
| structure if a company is public or a reasonably large
| size (say 5k employees).
| eru wrote:
| Employees can resign, users and customers can go
| elsewhere.
| lapcat wrote:
| How does this relate to the mistake of vastly overhiring?
| lovich wrote:
| How does it relate to him being accountable? As the user
| up thread stated he is literally not accountable because
| he answers to no one
| lapcat wrote:
| > As the user up thread stated
|
| That was me.
|
| > he is literally not accountable because he answers to
| no one
|
| Zuck said he wanted to take accountability for overhiring
| and then having to do layoffs. So the question is, what
| does the theoretical possibility of employees resigning
| or users leaving have to do with accountability for
| overhiring and layoffs?
| lovich wrote:
| It has nothing to do with accountability. The reason that
| everyone has a visceral response to him saying he
| accountable is because we know it is not true
| lapcat wrote:
| Sorry, I was confused by your reply. I thought you were
| arguing with me? Maybe not. But I'm still confused by it.
| lovich wrote:
| Ah, no. I'm in agreement that he is not being
| accountable. I am perhaps taking it farther in arguing
| that he is incapable of being accountable given how meta
| is structured
| lob_it wrote:
| "Where's the vaporware? Under the pickle...." is best
| portrayed by the younger types.
|
| https://youtu.be/Ug75diEyiA0
|
| You know why the food sucks so bad when you know who they are
| catering to :p
| abeppu wrote:
| > Or altering the voting situation where he has absolute
| power
|
| Absolutely this. Others in this thread are saying that the
| fact of having lost a lot of money is enough for him to be
| "accountable". But IMU the specific arrangement with Meta
| class B vs class A shares is that the group of other
| institutional investors lost _more_ but didn't have any
| ability to influence decisions, replace the CEO, etc.
| Zuckerberg's large on-paper loss isn't accountability for
| decisions he made, but is just the risk of being a wealthy
| person with a lopsided portfolio.
|
| Both because of his role in deciding to hire so much, and
| because he's dead set on pursuing a metaverse vision which is
| controversial, I think "accountability" would require him to
| at least make it possible for other shareholders to vote on
| proposals on an equal footing.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Yeah that's about it. He's lost about $90b in net worth. I
| suppose you can debate whether that's punishment enough or not
| when you've got another $38b left or whatever.
|
| But I'll tell you this from experience: lasting people off
| because you chose to grow too fast is really, really hard. I've
| done it, though in my case it was a lot fewer people and I
| actually knew and loved them all. If I had to lay off 11,000
| people I'd lose a lot of sleep over it.
|
| I can't imagine life is fun for him at the moment. But, just
| like every affected employee, he will get through it.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| This isn't hard for Zuck - he just directs his subordinates
| to layoff a bunch of people, and then goes back to swimming
| in his vault of cash. Losing x billion of essentially
| infinity money is the same as losing no money. Once you reach
| Zuck's level of wealth you can't really even conceive of non-
| billionairs as the being same species as you, much less
| empathize with them.
| abstractmath wrote:
| Have you ever managed or led people?
|
| Did you find it easier or harder than when you didn't
| manage people?
|
| Have you ever laid someone off or fired them? Was it so
| easy?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| To be sure, laying off employees would be not be easy.
| Imagine if these were people you had lunch with, chatted
| with in the office every day, knew their husbands,
| wives....
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| Do you think Zuck was that close with any of the 11,000
| people who were laid off?
|
| If it was a small startup (been there done that) then
| yeah, when you see people day-to-day, and get to know
| them and their lives outside of work? Really hard to fire
| people, knowing how it will affect the other people in
| their lives.
|
| A multi-national, multi-billion dollar company with
| 80,000+ employees? I'm not so sure.
| pc86 wrote:
| > _Have you ever laid someone off or fired them? Was it
| so easy?_
|
| I've heard this sentiment from people who have laid those
| off and it always falls flat to me.
|
| Laying off 1 or 100 people compared to _being laid off_ -
| especially when the person doing the firing, usually a
| Director or above, is making 3-4x at least what the line
| employees are - is like comparing pricking your finger
| with a needle to cutting it off with a dull knife.
|
| It should be difficult if you're not a sociopath, but
| they're so incomparable it's not even a statement worth
| making or considering.
| abstractmath wrote:
| I'm not arguing that laying people off is nearly as hard
| as getting laid off.
|
| I'm arguing against the idea that if you're a manager or
| have money, that moments like this are easy or that
| there's no empathy. i'm not saying that anyone should
| feel bad for directors, CEOs, or whoever, but they
| shouldn't paint a ridiculous straw man either.
|
| You could even argue that in Zuck's position, money is a
| non-factor. He has more than enough money. What he
| doesn't have is a beloved and future-proof company, and
| these layoffs only push him further from that.
| bombcar wrote:
| Laying off one or five or ten good people is a tragedy.
|
| Laying off 13,000 is a statistic.
|
| (Based on a badly misquoted Stalin.)
| staticman2 wrote:
| Zuckerberg has complete voting control of Facebook.
| Nobody can remove him as CEO.
|
| If this sort of thing bothered Zuck, he would not lay
| people off.
| Yhippa wrote:
| Is he doing this to prop up his stock price for himself?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| recuter wrote:
| I can't imagine these sort of layoffs, which are baked into
| the lifecycle and business plans of the company, were not
| something he wasn't anticipating years and years ago when
| hiring was being ramped up. In fact some notable fraction of
| these 11,000 were hired in the first place only to be fired,
| by design.
|
| Sweet dreams.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| And unlike any of his employees, he is a billionaire. I'm
| sure he'll find a way to sleep.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that there's some multi millionaires left
| at FB. Chris Cox is still there, he's likely a billionaire.
| There's potentially one or two others left...
| chasd00 wrote:
| He's lost a lot but it's not like he's having to ask his wife
| to stop going out to lunch with her friends. There's a level
| of wealth where the numbers just stop having any real
| meaning. $1B is still multiple lifetimes of the most decadent
| luxury currently possible.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > the most decadent luxury currently possible.
|
| Hey now, if he only has $38B that means he can't afford to
| buy Twitter until Elon finishes destroying it.
| Vibgyor5 wrote:
| > He's lost a lot but it's not like he's having to ask his
| wife to stop going out to lunch with her friends
|
| Fairly sure that none of the FB employees are paid so low
| where they have to stop asking their spouses to go on a $20
| lunch with friends.
| Yhippa wrote:
| They do have to be concerned about where the money is
| going to come from to pay their mortgages when severance
| runs out. They got laid off into an environment where
| layoffs at companies they might have worked at before are
| reducing headcount.
|
| Not saying they shouldn't have saved for a rainy day.
| This is a scary time to be laid off.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| $20 lunch. Must be nice. I don't spend that on myself ---
| ever. My target for lunch (if I don't pack it myself) is
| $5. That used to be pretty easy but getting harder these
| days.
| underwater wrote:
| His wife is a pediatrician. She can pay her own way.
| bmm6o wrote:
| _Yeah that's about it. He's lost about $90b in net worth. I
| suppose you can debate whether that's punishment enough_
|
| He didn't pay a fine, it isn't any sort of punishment. He
| tanked the value of the asset that is the primary component
| of his wealth. That money is gone whether he "takes
| responsibility" or not.
| code_duck wrote:
| Also, like Musk's Tesla holdings, he couldn't sell a
| significant portion of those without reducing the value of
| what he retained.
| jjav wrote:
| > I suppose you can debate whether that's punishment enough
| or not when you've got another $38b left or whatever.
|
| But that's not taking responsibility.
|
| As an analogy, if you crash into another car with your car,
| you can't just say "It's my fault, I take the blame" and then
| walk away without paying for the repairs. Accepting blame is
| a nice first step, but taking responsibility means restoring
| the victim to how they were before the action happened.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| It means as much as was said. Nothing at all.
| orangepurple wrote:
| > I wonder what taking responsibility actually means in
| practice
|
| Increasing value of company stock
| alecbz wrote:
| I think just leaving it at "I got this wrong" would land way
| better.
|
| Adding "and I take responsibility" without actually
| substantiating that makes it sound way more hollow.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _> I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.
|
| As always with these things, I wonder what taking
| responsibility actually means in practice._
|
| Perhaps he will give up his sixth boat, or his fourth house, or
| his 13th car? Maybe he's going to wait on buying that private
| island until next quarter.
|
| Everyone has to make sacrifices.
| robbintt wrote:
| It might slow the pace at which he tries to take over the
| private resources of the island of Kauai, Hawaii from the
| billionaires before him but I doubt it.
|
| I think it's interesting how pedestrian Oprah, Zuck, and
| Larry Ellison are, obsessing over a place Elvis visited for
| pork barbecue parties while demonstrating 0 understanding of
| local people and their needs.
|
| It's incredibly embarrassing for humanity.
| texasbigdata wrote:
| That's super pessimistic. What do you want him to say: "sucks
| all y'all lost your jobs but wasn't my fault. Haha you're
| unemployed now". Like sure it's not much, but without owning
| your mistakes how do you get better and improve to prevent them
| from repeating?
| fullshark wrote:
| I'd like him to say words that have actual meaning, and not
| words that resemble meaning after being filtered by a PR
| consultant.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| I think your confusng pessimism with scepticism.
|
| Either his claim to take responsibility means something, in
| terms of it actually leading to consequnces and/or actions,
| or it doesn't. If it's the former, then what are they? If
| it's the latter, then why?
|
| For example: do shareholders hold him to his responsibility?
| And if so, how? If they don't, who improves Meta's corporate
| governance to ensure that this self-admitted mistake doesnt
| reoccur and sexure their investment?
|
| I've never worked at a BigCorp. How does this stuff work?
| triceratops wrote:
| He can resign. As CEO he's ultimately responsible for the
| share price. By that measure, he just might be the worst-
| performing employee at the company.
| sicp-enjoyer wrote:
| Do you have someone in mind?
| javajosh wrote:
| If it was poker, then Mark just lost a big hand because he
| made a bad call. But he's still got a big stack, so he's
| not going to walk away from the table.
| eru wrote:
| In poker you might even make the right move, but still
| lose. It's all probabilities.
|
| Business shares something with that.
| bombcar wrote:
| He's also got full control of the company and arguably the
| shareholders not named Zucc want him, so he'd in some way
| be betraying them.
|
| IIRC, the owner/CEO has fired himself some times, Ford had
| something like it, and I think LEGO too, years ago.
| lovich wrote:
| The shareholders not named zucc have zero influence on
| him being ceo whether they want him or not. He pioneered
| the tactic of having multiple classes of stock that let
| him retain all the voting power while still selling off
| "stock" that let him get investment money. Imo that sort
| of setup should be illegal because it leads to the sort
| of societally damaging behavior we see from meta
| bombcar wrote:
| The other shareholders could sell at anytime if they
| don't like it; if they haven't sold, then they like him
| being CEO as far as we can tell.
| lovich wrote:
| They did sell. They literally had the largest losses in a
| single day in history by a single firm, but it doesn't
| matter, he still controls the company
| triceratops wrote:
| They have sold, in droves. The stock has fallen 73% this
| year.
|
| It's slightly absurd to say that "sell" is the only lever
| shareholders should have over public companies. It may be
| true in practical terms, but it's still a sad state of
| affairs.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Businesses can be successful while simultaneously
| operating in ways that you don't personally approve of.
| You're free to avoid doing business with those
| organizations.
| lovich wrote:
| That has nothing to do with the idea that shareholders
| have a say on how meta operates
| infamouscow wrote:
| Meta shareholders don't have much say on how Zuck runs
| things, that's what you signed up for when you buy Meta
| shares.
|
| How many people upset about Meta layoffs were equally
| fierce in condemning Zuck for Meta's stock performance
| over the last decade? Seems like yet another case of
| people wanting their cake and eating it too -- the only
| novelty is the people affected are some of the most
| privileged people in human history.
| [deleted]
| discordance wrote:
| "Today, effective immediately, I, Gavin Belson, founder and CEO
| of Hooli, am forced to officially say goodbye to the entire
| Nucleus division. All Nucleus personnel will be given proper
| notice and terminated. But make no mistake. Though they're the
| ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden
| of their failure."
| cdolan wrote:
| SV from HBO I'd really something else
| papito wrote:
| Rewatched all of it recently. It actually got better and
| more on the nose with time. Incredible.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| For how long it is, it's incredible how high the hit rate
| for jokes were.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It was disturbingly accurate for parody.
| lazide wrote:
| I couldn't watch it - I lived through far crazier stuff
| than what they showed, and it was just too painful.
|
| One of those cases where they had to tone down reality so
| people would believe it, but _still_ came across as
| unrealistic!
| samstave wrote:
| did you work at Uber during their crazy days?
| lazide wrote:
| That startup experience was all pre-Uber existing, for
| better or worse!
| rbanffy wrote:
| If you feel like triggering your PTSDs,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup.com is a good one.
| Not intended to be a comedy, however.
|
| Quite the opposite.
| rbanffy wrote:
| While watching with my wife I kept mentioning who I knew
| that were perfectly characterized in the series.
|
| The Three Comma Guy, Gavin Belson, the Conjoined
| Triangles of Success... Been through all that.
| samstave wrote:
| Whats your dick to floor ratio?
| sytelus wrote:
| SV should start new season. Writers will have no shortage of
| material.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| 11000 people lose their jobs -- "let's make more shows
| about it!"
|
| to quote an old guy: "first as tragedy, then as farce"
| sytelus wrote:
| I am imagining a scene were Gavin Belson takes over Pied
| Piper and installs his VC friends who immediately fire
| half of the people. Then website crashes in next hour and
| they are frantically calling back people to re-hire them.
| r00fus wrote:
| Sometimes times are so bleak you need humor to really
| process it all.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| I wonder how many of the people who say "musk is just an
| investor and Tesla and spacex exist because of the engineers"
| now say
|
| Zuckerberg is clearly the responsible for the failures of
| Facebook.
|
| You can't have both.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > you can't have both.
|
| Why not? Nothing you wrote suggests that we cannot have
| both. In fact, Musk _bought_ Tesla, is not an engineer, has
| no engineering training or education or engineering
| accomplishments (the code he was writing for the company
| that became PayPal was notoriously terrible and had to be
| scrapped). Say what you want about Zuck, but if you plopped
| him down at a terminal and made him do the job of one of
| his own senior Devs I bet he would be able to do it. Musk
| couldn 't do the same for any one of his companies in any
| of the technical positions.
|
| I find it interesting that someone states something like
| 'you can't it both ways' without thinking it through and
| while presenting no reasoning for it, and then just leave
| it there like it is now a rule we must accept.
| tifadg1 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeYaQGbD6Xc
|
| Hilarious, yet the way corporate PR is heading it could be
| real and none would be the wiser.
| cableshaft wrote:
| For someone who barely ever worked an office job, Mike Judge
| is an expert at portraying office space.
| tyingq wrote:
| There's an interview here that covers some of how it
| happened: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/2/19/182286
| 73/office-s...
|
| It does mention he worked for a military contractor, which
| probably provided an accelerated environment for learning
| corporate bs.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| A number of us were convinced Judge just hung out in a
| booth at Applebees and local bars in Austin and wrote down
| everything we were saying.
|
| Living in Richardson explains Beavis and KotH.
| tuyiown wrote:
| I suspect he mainly had to figure out that it's the same as
| everywhere else, but the displayed politeness of office
| managers make it especially delectable satire.
|
| In Office Space there is the <<pieces of flair>> argument
| with the waitress (Aniston), it's much more bitter, and I
| suspect much harder to keep it funny, because in truth
| those worker endured much more violent management, there is
| little space to spin it in a funny way.
| samstave wrote:
| Yeah.... I'm going to have to ask you to come in on
| Sunday... thanks....
|
| --
|
| When I was an early IT manager my team would make fun of
| me and compare me to the manager from office space...
| because I would always say "thanks" when I would ask them
| for something...
|
| But I learned to say "thanks" because at Intel - in the
| 90's it was company culture to always close an email with
| "thanks"
|
| When I worked at FB though it was a hostile environment.
| so no Thanks.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| > because in truth those worker endured much more violent
| management, there is little space to spin it in a funny
| way.
|
| what? no one got beat over flair, and having worked in a
| lot of serving jobs, the level of violence serving drinks
| was roughly on par with the number of fights I've seen in
| the data center.
| ilaksh wrote:
| All of them bloated up. It's just like, polite to take the
| blame.
| stillametamate wrote:
| jghn wrote:
| At sone point "I take responsibility" came to mean nothing more
| than "My bad". It's as if the act of saying it was your fault
| is all that's necessary.
|
| Ive noticed it used this way more and more, presumably as
| people realize it's utility as a get of jail free card
| twblalock wrote:
| When did it mean anything other than "my bad"? It never did.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| Just months ago, "The Crying CEO" guy became a viral meme for
| expressing too much empathy in a layoff.
|
| It's fucking job terminations. You're GOING to be criticized
| no matter how you do them. The best approach is to just be
| robotic about it, and maybe throw in a platitude that amounts
| to, _" It's not you, it's me"_.
| greenthrow wrote:
| He was not criticized for showing too much empathy. He was
| criticized for not _actually_ showing empathy. He made it
| all about himself. You might want to look into how you
| misunderstood that so badly.
| Aeolun wrote:
| No, he was criticized for using it as publicity on
| LinkedIn.
| SilasX wrote:
| What? It wasn't for "expressing too much empathy", it's for
| being obviously staged. Like, who gets their hot-take
| emotional reaction on video and then uploads it?
| /r/whyweretheyfilming vibes.
| lovich wrote:
| He wasn't criticized for having empathy, he was criticized
| for the narcissistic attempt to make the layoffs all about
| how his emotions.
| idontpost wrote:
| jherskovic wrote:
| The Stripe people did it right, or at least as right as you
| can under these circumstances. https://stripe.com/en-
| au/newsroom/news/ceo-patrick-collisons...
|
| Relevant discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33450753
| sigstoat wrote:
| they got grief for exactly the same line zuckerberg is
| getting grief for in this thread.
| jghn wrote:
| Sure. But it's only "taking responsibility" if you
| demonstrate you're actually intending to either a) actually
| be accountable in some fashion and/or b) actually lay out
| how you'll change to make the bad thing not happen in the
| future.
|
| "We need to layoff half of the company. I'm sorry and take
| responsibility. I have failed our employees and
| shareholders. Because of this, I am stepping down". That's
| taking responsibility.
|
| "We had a major F-up. It was my responsibility. And here
| are the concrete steps I am taking to ensure it never
| happens again, along with the mechanisms you all have to
| hold me accountable. If these fail, the following bad thing
| will happen to me." That's taking responsibility
| wickedsickeune wrote:
| I know that this is a low quality comment, but thank you,
| you have restored my faith in humanity.
| vasco wrote:
| A company is bound to fire people in a well functioning
| economy or the alternative is every single employee will
| lose their job when the company goes bankrupt. Some
| people would rather bring every company down to the
| ground before firing a single person. In a well
| functioning economy what you then want is a short worker
| reallocation time.
|
| Also if one of your options for "taking responsibility"
| is quitting, I guess your view of the world is that you
| would also fire any of your employees when they mess up,
| when whole industries have recognized the need for
| blameless cultures where making mistakes is part of the
| learning process.
| jghn wrote:
| You can fire people and/or let them go without claiming
| you "take full responsibility". That's ok, and exactly my
| point.
|
| The phrase "I take responsibility" is never accompanied
| with any sign that the person does in fact take
| responsibility. It means more than just "Ooops, I did a
| bad"
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| It means he's not trying to scapegoat a VP or the board or say
| "It's not my fault nobody foresaw this economy."
|
| It doesn't mean anything in terms of action or "self-
| punishment" but nor should it. The dude has already lost many
| more billions of dollars than you or I will ever see.
|
| I'm no fan of the guy, but some people won't even take
| responsibility verbally. So at least he's not descending _that_
| low.
|
| And the severance seems decent so it all seems to be handled
| fine. Not sure what more you're looking for.
| [deleted]
| 2rsf wrote:
| > The dude has already lost many more billions of dollars
| than you or I will ever see
|
| Those are mostly virtual dollars and he has a lot more real
| ones in his account, while I agree that whatever he does to
| "punish himself" will be practically meaningless it might
| have some symbolic meaning. Lowering his and senior
| management salaries and incentives won't save jobs but will
| give a better image of the crisis
| crazygringo wrote:
| His salary is already only $1/yr, and has been since 2013.
| So there's nothing to do there.
|
| And lowering the salaries of senior management doesn't make
| any sense. They're paid market rates. If you punitively cut
| their compensation in half or something, they'll just leave
| for another company that does pay market rate. You can't
| force them to stick around and be "punished", that's not
| how salaried employment in a market economy works.
|
| Also, punishing management goes _against_ the idea that he
| 's taking all the responsibility here. Wouldn't that just
| be scapegoating?
| paledot wrote:
| > His salary is already only $1/yr, and has been since
| 2013. So there's nothing to do there.
|
| That's a joke, a tax dodge, a PR gag, a farce. There's
| nothing fiscally responsible about it. Taking financial
| responsibility, if such a thing exists, would involve
| giving up his equity comp or even some of his holdings.
| Give it to the employees whose careers you've disrupted
| through your bad business decisions. That's
| responsibility.
|
| "Market rates" is likewise a joke.
|
| A: "Market rates for corporate executives are obscene."
|
| B: "They're paid market rates, what's the problem?"
| eru wrote:
| Corporate executive are also employees.
|
| And their careers have been more disrupted than some
| random software engineer's career.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It seems fair. If executives were making the decisions
| that landed the company in a difficult situation, it's
| only fair they bear the consequences of their failure.
| Besides, it's difficult to empathize when their
| compensation packages are, while market rate,
| significantly higher than the engineers who do their
| bidding. I wouldn't be surprised if the fraction of
| executives that would be able to retire at this point was
| much higher than the one for engineers, which is likely
| much higher than the one for non-engineering individual
| contributors.
|
| Also remember that since it's executives who set
| executive compensation, there is some incentive to
| inflate it.
| lovich wrote:
| Executives are not employees, they have agency to decide
| the companies direction. More agency brings more
| responsibility
| klyrs wrote:
| > And their careers have been more disrupted than some
| random software engineer's career.
|
| Were they really? Did they just lose their jobs and are
| they now underwater on mortgages that their families can
| no longer afford without that income? How many executives
| lives were "disrupted" worse than that? Because I'm
| talking about a significant fraction of 11k people that
| you're dismissing as "some random software engineer."
| not2b wrote:
| Not to mention "here on a H1-B visa with a short time to
| find a new tech job or be deported".
| jfdbcv wrote:
| Does Zuckerberg take equity compensation? I thought he
| just owned ~14% of FB.
| airstrike wrote:
| You're right, he has given up equity comp. I was curious
| so went looking...
|
| Based on the latest proxy, he does not take any equity
| compensation. He only gets his $1 salary, a corporate
| private jet for business travel and $10M / year "to cover
| additional costs related to his and his family's personal
| security. This allowance is paid to Mr. Zuckerberg net of
| required tax withholdings, and Mr. Zuckerberg must apply
| the net amount towards additional personnel, equipment,
| services, residential improvements, or other security-
| related costs."
|
| https://www.bamsec.com/filing/132680122000043/1?cik=13268
| 01&...
| lovich wrote:
| That says requested and doesn't specify what he actually
| receives which is weasely enough to make me question the
| word choice
| airstrike wrote:
| That's not how proxies work
| lovich wrote:
| Does the wording here not allow for a different result
| than what is implied? I'm not familiar with the specific
| legalities around this document
| lovich wrote:
| Need to point out that this "there's nothing you can do,
| all the incentives align to him keeping the wealth while
| others suffer" is the sort of dunking on capitalism that
| leads people towards socialism
| crazygringo wrote:
| Him _keeping_ the wealth?
|
| He's lost literally 73% of his wealth over the past year
| and change (assuming it's all META ownership). That is a
| _spectacular_ drop.
|
| And the people getting laid off are getting very generous
| severance packages.
|
| So I don't know what you're talking about. The market has
| punished him, and quite severely, for his missteps.
|
| But it's not like he was being evil or malicious or
| something. He overhired thinking growth would continue.
| It didn't. Now he has to lay off. A million managers have
| found themselves in the same situation before.
| stolsvik wrote:
| You should try it. We (mostly) love it.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model
| bradleyjg wrote:
| We've tried it, it was far worse. There are still people
| alive who were there, maybe all the younger people
| advocating socialism should chat with them?
| lovich wrote:
| Europe is far worse? The New Deal was far worse? We've
| decided to go down the cyberpunk corporate hellscape path
| since the 80s and post 2001 it's just been consistently
| degrading workers lives. I think most millennials and gen
| z would trade their financial outlook for their parents
| so I really can't accept this "far worse" description
| bradleyjg wrote:
| None of that was socialism. It's welfare capitalism which
| the entire west today has in one variant or another.
| Saying we should tune up regulations and/or the safety
| net is an entirely reasonable thing we could have a
| discussion about. Talking about socialism is ignorant or
| foolish.
| lovich wrote:
| They're all socialist policies, no country is purely
| capitalistic or purely socialistic. To be clear when I
| said "leads people towards socialism" I meant pushes them
| in a direction that advocates for more socialist policies
| like increasing the safety net
| snovv_crash wrote:
| DDR was 'real' socialist.
| arbitrage wrote:
| In no way. The DDR was a communist cesspit of a proxy
| state for the USSR from day one.
|
| It was not socialist. It just called itself that.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Communism is a subset of socialism. Welfare capitalism
| isn't.
| lovich wrote:
| Communism isn't a subset of socialism unless you're using
| the American conservative definition where they all just
| equate to evil
| bradleyjg wrote:
| On the contrary that's what actual communists believed.
|
| There's a Baptists and bootleggers coalition to pervert
| the meaning of socialism. Right wingers want to call
| everything to the left of Ronald Reagan socialism so they
| can paint it all as evil and a subset of people that are
| fairly bog standard welfare capitalists want to call
| themselves socialists because they think it sounds edgy
| and cool.
|
| They are both wrong. Socialism involves collectivizing
| the means of production. Not a wealth tax. Not a
| greenhouse emissions rule. Not forcing companies to put
| women on their board. Not repealing at will employment.
| Collectivizing the means of production.
|
| If you want to call for nationalizing Facebook then you
| are a socialist (and a fool.)
| kilna wrote:
| When polled, about 60% of folks who lived and worked as
| adults in the soviet bloc regret its fall into
| capitalism.
| yonaguska wrote:
| Notably missing from the polls, the millions that died in
| prisons, labor camps, or just starved.
| random314 wrote:
| And by how much would that have affected the poll
| numbers?
|
| Or is this just a glib low effort put down?
| yonaguska wrote:
| glib low effort put down to a glib low effort statistic.
|
| When there are an estimated 7 to 9 million excess deaths
| recorded for the duration of the USSR, there's certainly
| going to be some survivorship bias with any polling.
|
| The fall of the soviet system to capitalism was a mess,
| but it doesn't actually tell us anything about how people
| felt about communism vs capitalism. The statistic
| presented was in defense of socialism/communism. But, the
| transition from the soviet union to capitalist Russia was
| messy in its own right. Russia was looted by oligarchs
| taking advantage of the disarray.
|
| All that being said, it looks like the poster was
| referencing this article, which is based on a survey
| conducted in 2009, long after the collapse of the soviet
| union...but one year into a worldwide recession. So I'm
| still not sure what conclusions one can really draw from
| that survey.
|
| https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2009/1223/Why-
| nearly-...
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Notably missing from understanding is that advocating for
| collective ownership of things for the benefit of the
| masses instead of the 1% is not the same as advocating
| for gulags and mass graves. It's as ridiculous as
| advocating for space exploration and people like you
| retorting "you want Challenger 10, you do, you want
| schoolteachers dying in agonising explosions".
|
| Salvador Allende became President of Chile in 1970, he
| presided for 3 years before being taken down by a coup
| supported by the US government. In the time he was in
| power, he pushed a socialist program for Chile. Let's see
| some highlights of his "prisons, labor camps and
| starving", eh?
|
| - nationalization of large-scale industries (notably
| copper mining and banking)
|
| - a programme of free milk for children in the schools
| and in the shanty towns
|
| - payment of pensions and grants was resumed
|
| - increased construction of residential buildings,
| averaging 55,000/year
|
| - all part-time workers granted rights to social
| security, and increased payments
|
| - proposed electricity price-increase withdrawn
|
| - bread prices fixed
|
| - 55,000 volunteers sent to the south to teach literacy,
| and provide medical care
|
| - obligatory minimum wage for workers of all ages was
| established
|
| - free milk introduced for expectant and nursing mothers
| and [young] children
|
| - free school-meals established
|
| - rent reductions
|
| - construction of Santiago subway rescheduled to serve
| working-class neighbourhoods first.
|
| - state-sponsored distribution of free food to neediest
| citizens.
|
| - minimum taxable income-level was raised
|
| - middle-class Chileans benefited from elimination of
| taxes on modest incomes and property.
|
| - Exemptions from capital taxes were extended, benefitted
| 330,000 small proprietors.
|
| - According to one estimate, purchasing power went up by
| 28% between October 1970 and July 1971.[53]
|
| - The rate of inflation fell from 36.1% in 1970 to 22.1%
| in 1971
|
| - Average real wages rose by 22.3% during 1971.
|
| - Minimum real wages for blue-collar workers were
| increased by 56% during the first quarter of 1971 - real
| minimum wages for white-collar workers were increased by
| 23% - Although the acceleration of inflation in 1972 and
| 1973 eroded part of the initial increase in wages, they
| still rose (on average) in real terms during the 1971-73
| period.
|
| and, much more;
|
| -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende#Presidency
|
| By contrast, the UK today has 27% of children living in
| poverty[1], and the UK government has voted against free
| school meals for children, and just tried to push through
| a tax cut for the rich, and electricity prices have gone
| up while energy companies are posting record profits,
| housing construction is down and prices are up so normal
| citizens are being priced out of the housing market.
|
| [1] https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/child-poverty-
| facts-and-fi...
| kilna wrote:
| Oh thanks, good point. Bringing up the people killed by
| the ideology puts Capitalism on even shakier footing. In
| one country, India, capitalism killed more than the
| overinflated imperialist "estimates" for all soviet bloc
| countries over its entire lifetime. If we're including
| dead people in our hypotheticals, then there's the near-
| entire population of the Americas and Australia before
| colonialism, and a good chunk of Africa, Asia and
| elsewhere.
| tiagod wrote:
| > The dude has already lost many more billions of dollars
| than you or I will ever see.
|
| Is it worse to lose a billion dollars when you have two b, or
| a thousand dollars when all you have is 2k?
| sithlord wrote:
| To be fair, to "lose" billions of dollars. Really means
| putting that money into the economy without any immediate
| return. Which kinda sounds like a good thing?
| Yhippa wrote:
| Inefficient allocation of capital doesn't sound like a
| good thing to me.
| abdabab wrote:
| When the valuation drops those money just evaporates.
| They don't go into economy.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| I'd say the latter because what you end up with is much
| more relatively closer to zero. Of course you weren't
| losing much in the first place so there's plenty of
| argument for the former as well.
| lovich wrote:
| That latter argument ignores the marginal utility of
| dollars. It is a mental illness to think going from 2 to
| 1 billion is worse than going from 2k to 1k
| danans wrote:
| The marginal utility of money is a real thing, but it
| applies to purchase of life basics, like goods, services,
| and security.
|
| The marginal utility of money for power and influence in
| our societies seems to start a few orders of magnitude
| above the upper middle class, and so far doesn't seem to
| bend down very much as money increases.
| baxtr wrote:
| Taking responsibility means first of all admitting that you
| were wrong. Most people never even get to this first step.
| obert wrote:
| laying off 11k employees while still claiming to be "historically
| important" and "profitable"... Poor attempt to stay positive IMO
| rvz wrote:
| Good. About time. $180K per employee for years is not
| sustainable.
|
| This is the general 'Tech Crash' I was talking about before all
| of this happened in advance. [0] [1]
|
| We'll see what happens after the news. No company is safe. Not
| even FAAMNG companies that HN has been screaming about for years
| was ever untouchable.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22663119
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29508238
| matwood wrote:
| > $180K per employee for years is not sustainable.
|
| By what metric? Metas profits the first 3Qs of the year totaled
| ~$17B. They would have been higher if not for Zuck's insane
| spending on the metaverse.
|
| As the letter says, Meta clearly over hired around covid to the
| tune of 30k+ people. It's normal to pull back some.
|
| Engineers at these companies generate so much economic value, I
| would argue they are still underpaid at 180k.
| muro wrote:
| Wrong CEO :)
| matwood wrote:
| Hah, thanks!
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| Crab bucket mentality. Those salaries are fine, what went wrong
| is Meta overhired. FAANG companies don't have enough work to go
| around as it is.
| habinero wrote:
| Okay, but it's not eng being hit, it looks like. He mentions
| recruiting and biz depts.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| Congratulations on your prediction?
| tiagod wrote:
| Where's your source for $180K/year average for these 11k
| employees?
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Since you insist on tooting your own horn, I think you should
| put a timeline on your predictions, as well as specifics on how
| this "crash" differs from periodic layoffs that happen every
| decade or even more often than that.
|
| Anyone can predict that things will be bad at some point in the
| future.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| > $180K per employee for years is not sustainable. > - House
| prices will skyrocket
|
| Who will pay these house prices?
| wickedsickeune wrote:
| For those wondering what "accountability" and "responsibility"
| should look like:
|
| They do not need to mean punishment, they can just mean "clear,
| concrete intent for remediation and improvement".
|
| The remediation part is implemented by the severance package. The
| intent for improvement, is nowhere to be seen.
|
| When somebody makes a mistake, punishing on its own is
| meaningless. The point is to remedy the mistake (eg pay money if
| the mistake incurred a financial loss) and prevent further future
| mistakes. No, the CEO should not resign, they should just
| identify why things went SO wrong and show a clear plan on how to
| prevent such mistakes from the future.
|
| If someone deletes a database, I don't expect them to resign, I
| expect them to restore it from a backup, and find a way to
| prevent such mistakes from the future (eg run migrations in a
| reversible transaction)
| ergocoder wrote:
| They did. It is the over hiring, and they rectify it by laying
| off people and going into hiring freeze.
| [deleted]
| CarbonCycles wrote:
| I agree. Two very different business responses between Musk and
| Zuck. I almost feel sorry for Zuck as we are witnessing meltdowns
| of two large companies in real-time. Musk just continues to dig
| his own grave...
|
| I feel bad for the ppl losing their jobs but that is a very
| generous severance package.
| roflyear wrote:
| FB is making like $30bn year in profit. I am not sure if they
| are melting down?
| matwood wrote:
| > meltdowns
|
| Huh?. Meta's growth has slowed, but they are a money printing
| machine. Earnings have gone down because of the enormous bet
| Zuck has made on the metaverse.
|
| Twitter has been barely scraping by for years. The two
| companies are not really even comparable.
| p0pcult wrote:
| No, earnings have been going down because Apple fucked Meta
| with Apple's policy change on asking for consent to be
| tracked. Meta has even stated as much in various earnings
| calls since this happened.
|
| This has severely hurt Meta's ad revenue, i.e., earnings.
|
| The metaverse stuff is a bad bet, you are correct, but is not
| likely impacting earnings in any significant way.
| matwood wrote:
| Revenue has slowed from the Apple change, but the drop in
| Q3 profits can almost entirely be pinned on RL as staff and
| other investments has accelerated.
|
| > company's rising costs and expenses, which jumped 19%
| year over year to $22.1 billion during the quarter.
|
| > Meta's Reality Labs unit, which is responsible for
| developing the virtual reality and related augmented
| reality technology that underpins the yet-to-be built
| metaverse, has lost $9.4 billion so far in 2022.
|
| The effects from the Apple changes are mostly in the rear
| view mirror at this point. You could attributed a 4%
| revenue hit to them, but those can also be attributed to a
| general slowing economy.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/26/meta-plans-to-lose-even-
| more...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Earnings down 4% in bad macro conditions for advertising
| and compared to a pandemic when people spent more time on
| the internet. I don't think facebook revenue is going
| anywhere soon, a decade from now though who knows.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| Their income and operating margin has almost halved, compared
| to 2021. Their free cash flow is _1 /50th_ of the previous
| few quarters. Those are truly horrible results.
|
| FB was a money printing machine, but they trashed it.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Apple trashed it, not FB itself.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| FB started sinking money into the Metaverse long before
| that.
| matwood wrote:
| Not at the same scale. It's been accelerating and
| continues to accelerate. From another announcement today:
|
| > "We continue to anticipate that Reality Labs operating
| losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year,"
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/meta-lowers-expense-
| foreca...
|
| Everyone wants to dance on Meta's grave, but it's way too
| soon. Yes, the Apple change gave them a top line haircut,
| but if the RL spend is excluded, they are making a ton of
| money. I'd also argue that the real headwinds are the
| general economy and TikTok.
| jryhjythtr wrote:
| >the real headwinds are the general economy and TikTok
|
| Right, and not Apple's actions.
| roflyear wrote:
| They are still making insane profits.
| loeg wrote:
| High revenue but the stock is down 74% this year for a
| reason.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Because it's run by an unaccountable megalomaniac who has
| signalled that he doesn't give a shit about his investors,
| not because of any fundamentals.
| loeg wrote:
| Bad governance is fundamental!
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I don't think Mark saying "we're going to focus on the
| metaverse instead of making money for a few years" is a
| meltdown. They're still making money, their earnings are
| still sky high, they're just spending more than they need
| to.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Zuck did it himself too. No one told him to go all-in on VR. No
| one. All he had to do was tackle payment and maybe cloud. He
| first went for crypto and then is in the process of failing
| with VR.
|
| Meta really needs to be in the cloud business.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| I thought this problem is less related to vr and more related
| to ads revenue that dropped because of apple. vr was just a
| way to create a platform from the ground where ads will
| continue to be their business model
| cdiddy2 wrote:
| Their payment attempt was stifled by regulators though. I
| wonder where they would be at if they had launched Diem
| instead of shutting that down
| bergenty wrote:
| Screw that, I think the meta verse will pan out. Zucc will
| rise from the ashes.
| rippercushions wrote:
| AWS has the first mover advantage, Microsoft knows
| enterprise, Google has some awesome tech. I'm not sure what
| Meta could bring to the table?
| randomsearch wrote:
| 100%. I do think there is room for another company
| though... but definitely not Facebook.
| eitally wrote:
| But there are other companies, who are already doing
| pretty well: Oracle, Alibaba/AliCloud, Hetzer, Digital
| Ocean, even Rackspace.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Agree on VR, payments, disagree on Cloud. It's a saturated
| market, there are half a dozen operators who each have unique
| selling points. I don't know what Meta's would be.
|
| Doubling down on becoming one of these "everything" apps
| could have been a good strategy. Become the app frontend for
| one of the less big food delivery companies in the FB app,
| tie in to payments. Perhaps even buy Square for Cash App and
| all the POS integrations to build a network of sellers, all
| tightly integrated from the consumer perspective into the
| Facebook app. I'd have hated it, but I suspect it could have
| worked.
| tuyguntn wrote:
| Very good lesson here for both Twitter, FB and any other
| upcoming startup. Never treat your 3rd party developers as
| shit. Look what WeChat achieved with their superapp and
| developer ecosystem. Twitter and FB tightened their rules a
| lot over the years, when they had a potential to become
| super app for West
| Siira wrote:
| The rules were tightened by pressure from politicians
| though?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It would have cratered their gross margins though, which
| would have meant a (potentially permanent) hit to the share
| price.
|
| I agree that it would have been a good strategy, but that's
| (presumably) why they never did it.
| lvl102 wrote:
| Payment has much higher multiple especially compared to
| FB. It's quite literally the closest thing to printing
| money.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| It doesn't have the same margins as advertising.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Interesting. Is that because payments are much lower
| margin than ads? Surely investors would be smart enough
| to see the additional revenue, and likely additional
| benefit to the ads business, as being worth it?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Investors like standardized numbers apparently
| JCharante wrote:
| A lot of apps want to become a social network but Facebook
| was in a good position to do so. Imagine someone posting a
| picture of their Brunch. They tagged the location. Some AI
| matches the picture of the food with the pictures from the
| menu (google reviews already does this to some degree).
|
| That food looks good, imagine if they partnered with Uber
| or Grab so you can add to cart right below the picture.
|
| Peer to Peer payments could have also been great,
| especially if you could check-out at a store by scanning a
| QR code to pay (think WeChat Pay, FairPrice in Singapore,
| or even Paypal's version of that).
|
| Or even buying event tickets. They already have events on
| the platform, and they let you put targeted ads, but what
| about an integrated experience to purchase tickets right on
| the platform instead of there being an external link?
|
| They could have done so much but the only major
| change/addition in recent years was Dating (a huge hit in
| countries that perceive Tinder as only for hookups) and
| those avatars that people use everywhere instead of text
| posts.
| tech_tuna wrote:
| I'm not looking to praise Zuck but he did at least try
| something new. That's how companies stay alive and vital and
| relevant. Innovation. He gambled big on VR and it didn't pay
| off. At least not yet. I don't think it will pay off but I
| have to respect that he went big on a new direction for the
| company.
|
| I still think Facebook is evil and I feel like they should
| have tried to buy Tik Tok although I don't know how feasible
| that ever was.
|
| >Meta really needs to be in the cloud business.
|
| That's an interesting idea.
| optymizer wrote:
| TikTok is a Chinese company bringing in mountains of data
| on US citizens, including the ability to influence what
| people in the US see on a daily basis. The Chinese
| government would never sell that kind of leverage to
| anyone, let alone to Facebook, which is banned in China.
| system2 wrote:
| It is baffling why the U.S. government didn't ban TikTok.
| I'd rather zucc steal people's info than chinese ppl.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Because some and certain high ranking US officials are
| working with China
| randomsearch wrote:
| > That's an interesting idea.
|
| That's a crazy idea, if original. What do Facebook know
| about building and selling general cloud services?
| slaw wrote:
| Google didn't innovate in the last 10 years and it's very
| alive and vital. Maybe doing good one thing is enough. Like
| Google doing ads.
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| Aren't people constantly complaining about Googles
| failing products and slowly worsening core products like
| search?
| slaw wrote:
| That is exactly lack of innovation. 15th version of
| Hangouts and worse search every year.
| mayankkaizen wrote:
| Google's portfolio is a bit more diversified than FB.
| Besides, Google services have some value, they offer some
| essential services. FB not so much.
|
| Besides, Google is trying 50 different things but it
| didn't go full throttle on any idea like FB did for
| Metaverse. Huge difference.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| If I put on my rose colored glasses, I still wish Facebook
| had just stuck to identity.
|
| They could've been "the login for the social internet"...
| they even built that platform! They just were so paranoid
| about losing control of the graph they shut it all down.
| Twitter also failed on the developer/platform front for the
| same reason.
|
| They could've been the identity platform for every hot
| startup in the last 10 years. They could've courted
| developers such that every platform add-on they did got
| immediate head start... like ads! They could've out-AdSensed
| Adsense.
|
| Anyway, I'm sure that's all terrible business strategy, but
| it's what I wish they had done. Even though I'd probably be
| cursing their name now if they owned all of our logins.
| personjerry wrote:
| You have to make big bets to continue winning. It's easy for
| us to sit in our armchairs and criticize their failures, but
| for example their plays with going mobile-first in 2008 and
| the acquisition of Instagram in 2012 worked out very well.
| boxed wrote:
| It's better to make many small bets and when they start to
| take off, THEN put the foot on the pedal. Zuck has been
| notoriously bad at creating new products, so betting the
| company on that he'll manage it _this_ time seems like a
| very bad idea.
| sicp-enjoyer wrote:
| How do you start a Tesla with small bets?
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Buying Instagram was a real jaw dropping moment if I
| remember. $1 billion sounded like a lot of money back in
| the day!
| randomsearch wrote:
| hmm, maybe, but it seems like a golden age for tech where
| it was hard to fail from a strong starting position. MS,
| Google, Amazon, Apple, have all done much better than
| Facebook.
| zulban wrote:
| > No one told him to go all-in on VR. No one.
|
| You can't possibly know that. Try not to get caught up in
| your own speculation and speculation from pundits.
| pavlov wrote:
| FB briefly was in the cloud PaaS business when they acquired
| Parse.
|
| The problem is that the way Meta runs its data centers and
| software stack is tightly integrated with the products. It's
| not really amenable to running third party applications or
| storing third party data.
| lordnacho wrote:
| So, loosen the connection? Isn't that what thousands of
| engineers are for? Didn't Amazon do this originally?
|
| I'm not sure cloud is actually such a great thing for FB
| but if you're going to do it, that's an inevitable step,
| isn't it?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Amazon's infrastructure was also tightly integrated with
| its products. Despite the often repeated and very wrong
| myth that AWS was founded by Amazon selling its "excess
| capacity", AWS was always created with a separate
| infrastructure that was purpose built to sell to other
| companies:
|
| https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-
| about-...
| mbreese wrote:
| What about the concept of a data center inside a data
| center? Given their infrastructure size and necessary
| geographical layout, it should be possible to have a number
| of IaaS racks stored inside their existing data center
| footprint.
|
| If they have their own data centers (which I assume they
| do), this would make a lot of sense, kinda like a ghost
| kitchen -- a virtual data center. That is, assuming they
| have the physical space to support something like this. It
| would be a way to diversify income with largely existing
| resources and vendor contracts.
|
| Imagine even a slimmed down service like fly.io or
| Cloudflare workers running at FB data center scale.
| spydum wrote:
| not a ton of market for that. and it changes the risk
| nature of their own facilities. already plenty of
| hyperscale datacenters with space to lease. what
| advantage does meta offer? surely they wont beat on
| price.
| mbreese wrote:
| It's probably not worth the hassle to FB, but it is funny
| to think about how big of a business this could
| potentially be. But even a profitable business unit might
| not make enough profit to actually make it worthwhile.
|
| It could certainly work. But it would probably be too
| small a business for a company as large as Meta. The
| differences in scales is (I think) one of their problems.
| At Meta scale (somewhat a pun), many things are just
| harder/not worthwhile because of their size.
| oblio wrote:
| Nobody's infra business is really neatly separated. If the
| will is there, it can be done.
| whatyesaid wrote:
| How would Meta win in the cloud business though?
| XorNot wrote:
| They don't need to win, they just need to be there as
| another option. Every business I've worked at has been huge
| on wanting cloud diversity of some sort, and tons of
| startups act as middle men on this.
|
| Another of the big boys offering a cloud product would
| guarantee it would pick up customers and give them another
| avenue they can plausibly hunt for competitive advantage
| in.
| lvl102 wrote:
| My opinion is that Meta has the best AI/ML infra in the
| business.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Both TikTok and Google (Tensorflow etc) would beg to
| differ on that.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| SMB. They are effectively the webmaster for a vast amount
| of very small business, but also Meta's ad platform ends up
| being one of the larger expenses for many businesses. In
| fact, I doubt there is a single entity on earth that has
| more billable B2B relationships.
|
| I agree that spinning up a pure-play public cloud makes no
| sense for Meta. Its not in their ethos, moreover selling
| various abstractions over virtualized compute is a
| commodity. Why would they get in line, behind IBM and
| Oracle?
|
| Given that Office 365 is being counted as 'Cloud' imagine
| what Meta could do with some $100/yr SMB service. On the
| enterprise end, they have some of the very best big data
| and ML infra and could do well to bundle up extra capacity
| sell that on a metered basis. If they had started offering
| managed Presto in 2015 this conversation wouldn't be
| happening.
|
| Their network infra (IP space, undersea cables, edge pops
| etc) is also rather vast and I could see a lot of SMB to
| F500 customers lining up to leverage it if bundled right.
| If they wanted to they could write a check for CloudFlare,
| I checked their balance sheet. Meta Cloudflare would be a
| juggernaut; so powerful that I pray the FTC wouldn't allow
| it.
|
| Historically Facebook has been allergic to B2B outside of
| selling ads. Even within it they bought and killed Atlas,
| effectively handing a monopoly on ad serving to
| Doubleclick. Now they are warming up to it, offering
| Workplace, Kustomer, and Oculus for enterprise. I think
| that the Metaverse could be a novel B2B play and so do
| they, calling it "The Future of Work".
|
| tl;dr: Meta could win the cloud business because it has the
| people, cash, differentiated tech, and existing
| relationships. They could beat AWS/GCP/Azure in many
| segments of IT spend by packaging their assets together
| into a novel kind of cloud.
| htrp wrote:
| >If they wanted to they could write a check for
| CloudFlare, I checked their balance sheet. Meta
| Cloudflare would be a juggernaut; so powerful that I pray
| the FTC wouldn't allow it.
|
| Why would there be any issue from an FTC standpoint? As
| far as I can tell, they're in completely separate
| businesses. I do agree it is a brilliant idea to
| Microsoft-ize the SMB relationships they already have to
| sell software services.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| I support I feel uncomfortable about it, but maybe such a
| merger wouldn't raise antitrust flags. CloudFlare has an
| insane amount centralization. I love their services as a
| web user, developer, and operator, but WOW do they have a
| lot of power by nature of their business. I worry about a
| buyout by a less principled company that could do all
| manner of wrong with CloudFlare's assets. For example, a
| Meta Cloudflare could start to delay or block 1.1.1.1 DNS
| queries to their competition, and do so quietly and
| selectively. Any service that offers "Protection" ought
| not be part of a conglomerate.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Correct me if I am worng, but hasnt Twitter has seen more
| growth in the last week than it has in some time? 15 million
| new users isn't a meltdown, nor is thinning a bloated and
| wasteful enterprise. Also, if twitter goes completely belly up,
| Musk would still be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
| Grave? I'm game for some hyperbole, but not this early.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| "Twitter usage is at an all-time high lol"
|
| November 7th:
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1589784134691741696
|
| The questions are: can they monetize that, and will it
| continue? But as far as twitter dying, the opposite is
| currently true. It's never been more alive.
| fleddr wrote:
| You being downvoted just shows even this community prefers
| emotional projections over simple facts.
|
| There is no Twitter meltdown. Before Musk it was already in
| grave financial trouble and would have made 800m$ cuts
| anyway. Musk most certainly is clumsy in his actions and
| communications, but Twitter isn't going anywhere.
|
| Likewise, Facebook isn't having a meltdown either. There's a
| dent in ad spent against a backdrop of 2 years of dramatic
| overhiring (same as Google, Stripe).
|
| There's a 4% decline in revenue on a 27 billion quarterly
| revenue. Meltdown? There's a handful of companies on this
| planet being this profitable.
| roflyear wrote:
| Financially twitter is in a rough spot. They were not
| really making money. Now they have loans to pay too. It
| isn't in meltdown but certainly there are things to look at
| there. Sure, Elon can keep it going for as long as he'd
| like. But he's a fickle personality. I mean he went back
| and forth several times just with buying the company. Who
| knows if he'll lose interest.
| fleddr wrote:
| You're right, but Twitter basically has been in
| continuous financial trouble since eternity. In 2016 they
| almost went bankrupt. They tried to sell then but nobody
| wanted it. Just before Musk they were also in financial
| catastrophe mode. Under Musk, that will likely continue
| for at least a year. It's a fundamentally unhealthy
| businesses.
|
| I'd like to use a common Dutch expression to explain the
| Twitter situation: "the soup isn't eaten as hot as it is
| served".
|
| Musk wants absolute free speech but that's just a random
| interview quote, not the actual plan for Twitter. Users
| are abandoning the service in droves. No, they are not. A
| handful of advertisers stop spending (conveniently part
| of an economic downturn) but that doesn't mean the vast
| majority do, or do so indefinitely. Twitter is an awful
| place now, whilst he hasn't implemented a single change
| yet. Checkmarks will get decimated whilst his original
| unhinged idea is already dialed back.
|
| Everybody's jumping on all kinds of hysterical
| projections that are not supported by the facts. There is
| no meltdown.
| roflyear wrote:
| Yup, they are worse off in some ways, and better in
| others. There is a lot of upsides with having a single
| person like this calling all the shots, and love him or
| hate him Musk has been successful in the past.
| paxys wrote:
| Zuck is doing first ever mass layoffs for a company he started
| from his dorm room 18 years ago and grew to a ~trillion dollar
| valuation.
|
| Musk is following the standard playbook of private equity
| takeover + gutting the company to squeeze out remaining profits
| and then sell for parts. There is no question of even a bit of
| emotion involved from his side.
| synergy20 wrote:
| In 2000, some Hi Tech companies laid off 50%, e.g. Motorola, Meta
| now has 1 out of 8 laid off, seems a lot, might not be enough in
| the end though.
| pelasaco wrote:
| Bad Musk /s
| taylorius wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong, but if 11,000 employees is 13% of Meta's
| workforce, that implies they employ close to 100,000 people?
| Excuse me while I involuntarily spit my coffee over my keyboard.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Yeesh. Was planning on returning to tech work after a couple year
| hiatus in a couple months. Between this and twitter there may be
| some competition (:
| clavalle wrote:
| Perhaps. And perhaps some will go and create their own
| companies and create more demand.
| rybosworld wrote:
| It's wild to me that a CEO can simultaneously take responsibility
| for the decision to over hire, and also suffer none of the
| financial consequences. In fact, META stock is up 7% on this
| news, so Zuck has made money on this decision.
|
| I think that's a major inefficiency in modern corporations.
| Executives are the last to face consequences when they make a bad
| decision.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Zucc's net worth is down more than $100B? Should he lose an arm
| too?
| bsaul wrote:
| if you think stock up means zuck made money for this (good)
| decision, then you've got to admit stock being down 50% during
| the last year was zuck loosing money based on his previous
| (bad) decisions..
| lbriner wrote:
| Sad but completely unsurprising. People should realise by now
| that when a company starts a massive hiring boom, it will
| inevitably bust. Why? Because as many have said already, if you
| have tonnes of cash, it is easier to hire loads of people rather
| than hire appropriate and effective people.
|
| The fact that we are talking about such an enormous number just
| shows how many people are part of the hive but probably not
| really contributing much to the company overall.
|
| The worst part is that some people who _are_ really effective
| will get caught up in the layoffs paying for the inefficiency of
| corporate structures.
| sidcool wrote:
| As much as I dislike Meta's practices, this was well handled.
| Decent severance and support.
| cmsonger wrote:
| I thought so too. They did not have to be so generous.
| housingisaright wrote:
| Depends how you look at it. I think they are well aware of
| their reputation and probably does not want to make it any
| worse.
| tumetab1 wrote:
| Allowing access to email until the end of day also seems an
| improvement over other US companies practices
|
| > We made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems
| for people leaving today given the amount of access to
| sensitive information. But we're keeping email addresses active
| throughout the day so everyone can say farewell.
| fleddr wrote:
| It's honestly pretty risky. I imagine quite a lot of
| confidential information is in email.
| bombcar wrote:
| Local caches etc make that risk already extant.
| optymizer wrote:
| There's some discussion and code in email, but most of it
| is on Workplace. We don't use email much. I have 32500
| unread emails.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| They may archive old emails and allow only new email be
| sent/read.
| phonebucket wrote:
| > We don't use email much. I have 32500 unread emails.
|
| That many unreads makes it sound like everyone is using
| emails except you!
| pcurve wrote:
| Companies have email content scanner that detect business
| sensitive information. They work pretty well.
| ct0 wrote:
| At my org I cant even send my own SSN that's embedded on
| a zipped PDF. I too was surprised how well they work.
| sebdufbeau wrote:
| Might be wrong, but isn't the workaround to this usually
| just putting a password on the .zip file?
| TecoAndJix wrote:
| My guess is all email activity for the remainder of the
| time will be closely monitored and audited by their
| security/compliance team
| brailsafe wrote:
| This is why you need real friends outside your workplace.
| When you get shoved out the door, at most your get the
| afternoon to be like "lets keep in touch!"
| buggythebug wrote:
| As a non-tech guy who follows the tech scene:
|
| 87000 people to run Facebook sounds a little ridiculous.
|
| These tech companies sounds like colleges these days where the
| number of administrators has grown 10X and the amount of teachers
| has stayed the same.
|
| Use your money to hire people that directly contribute to your
| product. Use profits to "do good" after.
| rjh29 wrote:
| They managed with 7,000 in 2013. But a lot of things changed.
|
| To continue to grow they needed to buy Facebook and Instagram.
| They scaled up their infrastructure - lots of system
| administrators. They needed more sales people and corporate
| campaign managers to get advertising in. More moderation,
| because governments started passing internet content laws. Spam
| detection. Customer support. Automated content blocking. More
| legal teams, because they are constantly under legal attack.
| Don't forget all these laws and what is acceptable or not
| changes by country - so they need a team in every country to
| handle that. Then there's VR, Meta AI, the 'Metaverse', and
| their whole R&D division.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I left Facebook in March after having worked there for seven
| years.
|
| It was always a struggle to hire enough engineers to accomplish
| my team's goals, and it only got worse as time went on. We
| didn't have a terrible on-call or terrible team morale, we just
| tended to lose out to teams working on more visible projects.
| We could have doubled our headcount and still had a backlog of
| impactful work we couldn't get to.
| sidcool wrote:
| Facebook I believe does a lot of things, including their own
| infrastructure.
| vxNsr wrote:
| it's not just facebook... they have oculus, insta, whatsapp,
| they were exploring mapping, and self driving cars at one
| point...
| krn wrote:
| When you realize that WhatsApp had 450 million monthly active
| users and only 55 employees at the time of its acquisition by
| Facebook in 2014, you start to think that those tens of
| thousands of employees might be more needed for Meta's ad
| business.
| whatever1 wrote:
| WhatsApp was bloated for what it was. Just a chatting app.
| People design and implement these things in a weekend.
|
| Many interviews casually ask you to implement a chatting
| app. By yourself.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Not true. WhatsApp performed exceptionally well for its
| scale. The team was very talented and experienced at
| writing optimised code.
|
| But I agree that Facebook is significantly larger in
| scope.
| ninth_ant wrote:
| It's not just that they wrote some very optimized code --
| though it's true they did. They also designed the app in
| a way that requires very little server infrastructure
| compared to other chat apps, especially in the per-
| acquisition days.
|
| For example, they didn't store contacts/images/messages
| server-side as you see in Telegram, Google
| ChatAppOfTheWeek, FB messenger, Twitter, IG, etc. All the
| infrastructure and the folks required to develop and
| maintain it, simply didn't exist. Similar with the
| limited amount of data collection they did at the time --
| if you don't log it you there is no reason to have a team
| of people to analyze it. If you don't have ads you don't
| need an ad sales team. Etc.
| phyrex wrote:
| Scale matters
| danielunited wrote:
| As far as I'm aware most of the people who've lost their jobs
| were headhunters. Makes sense to let them go now that FB
| stopped hiring.
| eschneider wrote:
| I'm old and this is the third time around for these sorts of
| layoffs in tech. (Was around for dot-com bust of 2000-ish and
| financial meltdown post-2008.) One thing you want to keep in mind
| is that decent severance packages are usually only a thing for
| the FIRST round of layoffs. There will be more, and the payouts
| will be a LOT worse. Just, FYI.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > There will be more, and the payouts will be a LOT worse
|
| Yep, was with a company that went out of business slowly - I
| was one of the last 10 employees to be let go (on the day the
| company officially went out of business). The first round of
| layoff severance was something like 6 months of salary. By the
| time they got down to the last of us, it was two weeks.
| H8crilA wrote:
| I'm close to deciding to go back to University to get some
| additional education that's likely to improve my work in the
| future. I can afford it without any salary. Based on your
| experience, do you think this is the right moment to do so? I'm
| employed at the moment.
| typeofhuman wrote:
| What are you going to pursue?
|
| If you're looking for income growth and are already in
| professional position making decent money it's almost never
| worth it to go back to school.
| [deleted]
| taude wrote:
| This was common on what a lot of people did when the dot-com
| era crashed to an end. Almost all my software engineering
| friends went to grad school, most for their MBAs and law
| degrees, a few stayed their course in software engineering
| and bit-twiddling.
| boringg wrote:
| If you look back at those people who went to switch into
| mba - did it pan out for them?
| greenhearth wrote:
| From personal experience school is much better (and more fun)
| later in life, especially if you're genuinely interested in
| what it is you are studying. If you can afford it, or even
| better - get your company to pay, it's definitely worthwhile.
| You may have to pace yourself, as taking on a lot of credits
| and full-time work at the same time is not easy.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I did that after I got laid off early 2009, although for me
| it was going back to finish my bachelors.
|
| Spent two years in school and got to sit out the worst of the
| recession. However, (in the US) tuition increased a ton from
| when I first went to school and has only gotten more
| ridiculous since I graduated.
|
| Personally I'm glad I did it, it just took a while to pay it
| all off.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| If you're going in order to get education that you personally
| want, now seems like the best time. The economy will recover
| and you'll be able to get back in later.
|
| If you're going because you think it'll give you better work
| opportunities later, I suggest thinking carefully about that.
| You're already in your field. Even if you're in an adjacent
| field but still in tech, you can usually transition -- I've
| been a gamedev, worked in finance, been a pentester, and now
| I do ML. The question of whether I had a degree came up
| exactly once, very early in my career.
|
| Academia can be a good fit if you're going for the right
| reasons. Make sure you research what life is like at that
| university, and plan out what you hope to get from it and
| where you want to be five years from now.
| yarky wrote:
| Great advice! Where do you see more opportunities in the
| near future, ML?
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| The really high paying jobs of the future (well, and
| really now to be honest) are going to be some sort of
| combination of Data Science + Speciality Science. Think
| biomedical engineering, material scientist, chemist, any
| engineering discipline because the thing we need the most
| right now are better medicines and antibiotics against
| the rising threat of resistant bacteria, COVID showed us
| we still don't have a shot against a really bad virus, we
| need better batteries, better power generation, better
| cars and modes of transportation, etc.
|
| What we don't need any more of is web cruft and CRUD
| apps, social networks, and people figuring out more ways
| to mine our data and shove ads in our face.
| logifail wrote:
| > What we don't need any more of is web cruft and CRUD
| apps, social networks, and people figuring out more ways
| to mine our data and shove ads in our face
|
| (No snark intended, my background is in science...)
|
| The fields that would benefit society the most are not
| typically the fields where the most money is to be made.
| computomatic wrote:
| Nothing interesting will be reliably funded over the next
| 5-ish years given the current macroeconomics.
|
| If we're talking about where the opportunities (jobs) are
| going to be, then you're probably looking at tech roles
| within non-tech companies. These companies have been
| dying to modernize but haven't been able to hire
| engineers due to the tech bubble.
|
| After that, tooling that enables non-technical companies
| to build software - whatever that looks like.
| refurb wrote:
| I've been through 3 lays offs years ago and after the 2nd one I
| got pretty good at predicting the 3rd. It's basically a cookie
| cutter approach.
|
| Watch out for emails that talk about "tough decisions" and
| "respect for our people". I actually took a company email,
| printed it and highlighted key statements and told everyone lay
| offs were coming. About 6 months later they were formally
| announced.
| agotterer wrote:
| Maybe less relevant now that a lot of companies are still
| remote. In the past when a company cuts back on office perks,
| such as snacks, it's often a leading indicator of financial
| issues and possible looming cuts.
| refurb wrote:
| Yup, or reducing janitorial staff, or talking about
| extending payment terms for suppliers. All canaries in the
| coal mine.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Or just read the 10-Q and 10-K reports and see the
| revenue (in your part of the org, if separated) go down.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| IronWolve wrote:
| Correct, Take the first round of payouts, always.
|
| Almost every 10+ years a mega company buys the company I'm
| working for and lays off everyone. The first time I stayed on
| and didnt take the layoff with my group, was going to merge
| into the new company. Then after a year, was let go and didnt
| get the big layoff package, then my manager left.
|
| Totally screwed out of a major layoff package as it was a year
| later, way past the laws for mass layoffs, was a mistake to
| stay on, they kept me long enough they only had to let me go
| under new terms, then promptly closed the group (me and my
| manager). I was the most senior and long term employee, they
| saved a bucket load to screw me over.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| I'm not saying there won't be more layoffs, but I don't think
| this advice makes sense for people at places like Meta. They
| are generating a ton of revenue and profit even with the
| current economic conditions.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| In the case of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg has set the controls
| for the heart of the Sun. It has no future because Zuck
| will lose everything in the quest for a product nobody
| wants.
| sicp-enjoyer wrote:
| You're just not the target of the product.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Have you heard anybody say anything positive about
| _Horizon Worlds_?
|
| If you believe that Superbowl commercial for _Horizon
| Worlds_ is representative of what they think the market
| is it for people who feel like they are over the hill,
| the best is behind them, and they can recapture what it
| was like to live back in the day? (Is that you Zuck?)
|
| I am very interested in getting a VR headset to help with
| some 3D GFX development I do, I like the Oculus hardware
| but I nuked my Facebook account a long time ago so it's
| not for me. I game plenty too but I try only to play
| games that are fun. (I am a little vulnerable to grindy
| RPGs, my son will smack me if he catches me...)
| supernova87a wrote:
| > _Zuck will lose everything in the quest for a product
| nobody wants_.
|
| Quest, no pun intended?
| emptysongglass wrote:
| There's actually a bunch of us who do want it. I work in
| VR 5 hours a day. It's the dream for me.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is VR and there is the Meta version of it. One can
| succeed despite the other, in fact, the Meta version of
| VR endangers the success of VR in general. Specifically,
| Zuck is working overtime and spending his shareholders
| money to convince people that VR is somewhere between
| Axie Infinity and watching paint dry.
|
| Most of the VR advocates I know are no fan of Meta:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/ThrillSeekerVR
|
| What is missing from Zuck's vision is any of the
| understanding that can be had from or had about fiction.
| If he was willing to listen he should take a sabbatical
| and go watch _Ready Player One_ and all of the _Sword Art
| Online_ anime and then he should buy a Switch or a PS5
| and get a serious gaming habit. At some point he might
| get some insight about virtual worlds that aren 't just a
| pale shadow of the real world but rather a place you
| might really want to work or play in.
| david927 wrote:
| Not to be contentious but some people may ask, "How much of
| that revenue is real?" and, "How much of it is inelastic?"
| vegetablepotpie wrote:
| Let's say you are an employee at a company that does mass
| layoffs. They do not lay you off like everyone else and keep
| you on. What is the best course of action to take at that
| point?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| When this happens I'm always expected to take on more work
| without a commensurate raise. That's why I always leave.
| ouid wrote:
| I dont know the law here, but it seems you can ask to
| review your contract, and insist that they include a
| minimum employment term or guarantee a severance package.
| They have two ways to say no. They can fire you then, in
| which case you get the severance, or you're free to look
| for another job in the period before they're no longer
| legally obligated to give you severance.
|
| It seems that you should take as much advantage as possible
| of your legal status.
| eschneider wrote:
| Well, if you're in a 'critical' position and you want to
| take a more 'wait and see' approach, retention bonuses are
| usually a thing for folks they don't want to lose in a
| first-round layoff. You approach that conversation like so,
| "I really love it here, but with the layoffs and
| uncertainty..."
| eschneider wrote:
| Ask for a retention bonus.
| eschneider wrote:
| If you have any doubts about the company, you probably want
| to get serious about your job search.
| kevstev wrote:
| To expand on why, what often happens after these is there
| now a round of "cost cutting" which on the surface may
| look like ok we just don't get as many, or any of the
| cool perks we used to- which will be true, and you will
| suddenly realize that work doesn't feel like it has a fun
| aspect to it anymore. But that's really nothing compared
| to the next step- when they start squeezing you- and
| everyone for more hours.
|
| And more hours may not be a direct request- anyone at the
| periphery of the dev process- in the past this was QA,
| now gets cut because devs can do it, SWE roles might have
| to start doing more ops work, etc...
|
| When I last left the financial industry, it was so bad,
| that VPs- and that was back when it least had some
| meaning- at least it did when I first got the title
| around 2010, started having to do mundane weekend work
| like checking out the system after network/firewall
| changes, etc.
|
| It can be death by a thousand cuts. Now the financial
| crisis was way worse because essentially everyone was
| hurting, and losing money- and interestingly I "got out"
| of that bad situation by going to tech. But that's just
| how these bad situations play out and deteriorate.
|
| That said, companies are still profitable. There was a
| LOT of overhiring in the past few years. I don't expect
| things to get so bad, at all.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I'd start looking for a new job.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| As a recruiter told me, "I can add your resume to the
| pile." There are too many resumes in circulation right
| now.
| smcl wrote:
| I wonder if this mean a dearth of positions (i.e. a tech
| downturn is fully underway) or simply loads of applicants
| and enough open positions, but the recruiters are a bit
| inundated by the sudden influx and it'll take time to
| sort things out.
|
| Either way I hope those laid off land on their feet.
| ptero wrote:
| Prep hard. My 2c below, not trying to tell you how to live
| life :)
|
| 1. Review your finances. How long can you skip work without
| feeling financially stressed? This should include full
| expenses (medical insurance, family, etc.) and will
| determine the level of risk you can comfortably take with
| your job.
|
| If you have 5+ years of cushion you can take a lot of risk.
| Even if the job market and your company both collapse you
| can downshift for a year or two and work on a new tech as a
| personal project. Droughts seldom last more than a couple
| of years. If you have less than 3 months of cushion, look
| for the lowest risk options (a strongest company you can
| work for) and try to build it up.
|
| 2. Decide whether you expect your current company to do
| well with the reduced headcount. If your company is
| publicly traded, read financial statements and analyst
| opinions try joining an investor call. Look at the outside
| information, not the HR infomercials.
|
| If the company is expected to do well you can stay. Layoffs
| in strong companies often mean shakeouts beyond actual
| layoffs (teams merging and forming, etc.) and you might
| even be able to move to a better spot. If the company is in
| trouble, start looking for other options ASAP.
|
| 3. Learn what is the job market for your skills and if any
| adjacent areas have significantly better prospects (if so,
| buff up your skills). This can change quickly. Talk to your
| tech friends, especially those in hiring manager spots, to
| figure out if they are hiring/frozen/RIFfing.
| robocat wrote:
| > If you have 5+ years of cushion you can take a lot of
| risk.
|
| In my own experience I think this is a dangerous
| attitude: anny other HNers out there that thought this
| and failed, maybe add a comment about your own
| experience?
|
| I thought I had cushion. However that attitude led to me
| reseting my equity to zero when I was about 30, and it
| took more than a decade of my life before I felt like I
| was starting to recover.
|
| Perhaps sometimes we had some luck, so we get some
| savings, and we then think "that was easy, I could do
| that again" and try something risky. But the environment
| or our circumstances have changed, and we can't always
| replicate our past.
|
| The other aspect is that I think we underestimate risk:
| for example when I was younger I would think creating a
| business worth a million dollars would be unbelievably
| great. Now I see that opportunity costs of a $X00,000
| loss of income require a 10x return ($X million) to
| _break even_ (to only just cover your risks). Also you
| need wayyyy more return than 10x to cover the fact that
| your time investment is not diversified: a 10x return on
| a game you can only play a few times is a massive gamble
| that you end up with nothing. You don't want to end up
| with nothing after say 40, because the world starts to
| randomly switch into extremely-hard-mode sometime after
| ~40 (and everybody is unaware they were playing on easy-
| mode until after the switch changes).
| ptero wrote:
| I wonder if we are talking about different risks. If I
| may ask, in your case did you go through your savings
| over several years by using it for regular living
| expenses or by pursuing a business/investment idea?
|
| I have seen people go from a good sized bank account to
| zero quickly by buying something expensive (a house, a
| boat, etc.) or by trying to start a business. One can
| always lose money on risky investments or outright
| gambling.
|
| But I have never seen someone deplete a 5-year savings by
| downshifting for a period of time. I was talking about
| the second case: I do not have to worry about losing a
| job if I have 5+ years of living expenses. If I lose my
| job and have to cool heels for a year, so be it; there
| are still have 4+ years of cushion. My 2c.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| Looking for a new job.
|
| The advice to "take the first layoff" is weird, you rarely
| have a choice, if ever.
| eschneider wrote:
| The advice isn't so much "take the first layoff", it's
| "next time will be worse."
| lumost wrote:
| If you say that you aren't plussed, then they will
| probably lay you off to.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It depends on where you work. But I've definitely been at
| a place where the first email was "we've decided to
| reduce staff in key functions, please read the attached
| offering and submit directly to your manager". This was a
| reasonably generous package, in one case health benefits
| would be maintained for nearly a year even if you had
| only worked there 3 years.
|
| The next round was a security guy waiting in your office
| with a box and a packet of information about how to apply
| for unemployment.
| stanmancan wrote:
| The last job I had they offered very generous buy out
| packages to a few thousand employees to lower the head
| count. We got to decide if we took it or not. id you
| accepted they would then figure out your exit date which
| could be anywhere from 2 weeks to 12 months out depending
| on company needs.
| gangstead wrote:
| I don't know if it's an industry specific thing but my
| parents worked for big defense contractors and they would
| often talk about layoffs in conjunction with offers that
| people could take to leave voluntarily. Always signed
| crazy to me. My mom took one in 99, worked private
| industry for a couple years then came back to defense
| after the dot com crash for way more money.
| jaredandrews wrote:
| True but there are exceptions. At a previous job of mine,
| layoffs were happening and my manager was tasked with
| laying off one member of my team. He sat us in a room and
| told us about it and the severance package and basically
| asked for a volunteer. A more senior engineer volunteered
| and went on his way with a good chunk of cash.
|
| Oh how I wish I had volunteered cuz a year later
| basically everyone including me had quit anyway.
| satysin wrote:
| Ask if there are VRIF (voluntary reduction in force)
| options open to you. Most of the time there are unless you
| have some kind of "special" status.
|
| I've never known a company that is in the process of
| layoffs not jumping at the chance to VRIF an employee
| because it is a far cleaner termination and honestly less
| stressful and upsetting for all involved IMHO.
| noobermin wrote:
| But isn't there an incentive not to do it given the
| payout they'd have to pay for someone so senior?
| satysin wrote:
| In my personal experience some random senior employee
| isn't even pennies on the dollar when it comes to the
| total amount factored into the layoffs that are in the
| hundreds of millions.
|
| The bigger factor is are you in a position that requires
| the company longer to replace you? If so you may just be
| in that shit position of being kept on another 6 months
| until the next round of layoffs and get a package half as
| good.
|
| As the first poster said always get out first if you can
| as the packages never get better the worse a company
| does.
|
| Never fool yourself into thinking you're too amazing to
| be let go and that is why you 'survived' this round of
| layoffs. The worst case is as I said, you are too good to
| be let go of _yet_.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Keeping them around is expensive too.
| alecbz wrote:
| But if the senior person is in a role that the company
| ultimately wants staffed, they're going to need to hire
| someone else to replace them, who will be new and less
| effective? (Though OTOH, given the current macro, maybe
| they can get away with paying the replacement less?)
| breischl wrote:
| In general you're probably right. Though once upon a time
| I tried to volunteer about three different times and
| never managed to get a package. At one point my manager
| literally said "Shut up, you're not getting laid off so
| quit asking!"
| alecbz wrote:
| I'd be nervous about asking this unless I'm 100%
| committed to leaving the company, even if they say "no".
| Otherwise, you ask, they say "no", but now you've
| signaled that you're not especially invested in staying
| at the company, which feels like a negative thing to
| signal if you're interested in staying.
|
| (edit: The idea being that you might get fired "normally"
| as a result, and not get generous severance.)
| joenot443 wrote:
| You don't need to ask your manager, why not go to HR and
| stress that this is a sensitive topic you don't want
| making back to your team? No guarantee they'll honor your
| privacy, but I'd say it's worth a shot.
| paledot wrote:
| HR. Is. Not. Your. Friend.
| satysin wrote:
| This 100%.
|
| HR is there to protect the company. Sometimes that aligns
| with protecting the employee but when shit hits the fan
| ask yourself does HR work for you or for the company?
|
| I know I sound a bit 'down' saying that but it is an
| unfortunate reality that companies are not very loyal to
| their employees when times get tough.
| kcplate wrote:
| This is sage advice here. Never fall into the trap that
| HR is your advocate, despite what they tell you.
| eschneider wrote:
| You do that and there will be an email describing the
| conversation in your boss' inbox before you get back to
| your desk.
| modriano wrote:
| In my experience, HR may act kind, but they are 100%
| aligned with the company and not you. Giving them a
| signal that you're open to leaving at a time when they're
| trying to reduce the cost of resources that are human is
| a terrible idea if you aren't looking to leave.
|
| Find a trusted friend in the company who is a survivor
| and ask them. Survivors have strong information networks
| for office politics and know such info.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| That would almost certainly make it back to the person's
| direct manager or 2nd-level manager (director, VP,
| whatever.)
| NickRandom wrote:
| This nervousness is what companies rely on to keep the
| ship steady during massive lay-offs.
|
| In other words that same company that in its heyday
| relied on the person pulling an all-nighter 'for the good
| of the company' yet failed to ever offer a reciprocal
| 'sure, take all the paid time off you need buddy' in
| return gets what it earned.
|
| Although you may hear the 'rats from a sinking ship' and
| 'you're deserting the company and leaving your colleagues
| to pick up the slack' shrieked from on down high by
| management - Fuck 'em. They didn't actually give a shit
| about you on the way up and they don't give a shit about
| you on the way down.
|
| Jump fast, jump early, beat the pack
| alecbz wrote:
| I don't at all mean that I feel guilty about abandoning
| the company or anything like that, I'm saying this 100%
| from a place of selfishness. Wherever I am, I want my
| manager to think I'm engaged, I want to seem like a team-
| player. I worry that otherwise, I won't do as well at
| perf, I won't get put on interesting/meaningful work,
| I'll be relegated to the side and not feel as integrated
| into the team.
|
| It's possible some of these are unfounded/exaggerated
| fears, though?
|
| If you're 100% set on leaving with or without severance,
| for sure ask. But if you think you might prefer to stay
| if severance isn't an option, asking feels risky.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I think what you are describing is both a reasonable
| worry and also exactly the kind of ambiguity the company
| encourages. You have no leverage if you're unwilling to
| leave, and it's foolish to initiate a discussion like
| that from a position of dependency.
|
| I'm not suggesting issuing ultimatums, of course, I'm
| just suggesting that you mentally prepare for needing to
| quit first, otherwise it takes a real pro to have that
| conversation. I know I'm not good enough to do it unless
| I talk about things like that with my manager regularly
| already.
|
| I do wonder if these are questions you can ask
| confidentially in a different way. Like I dunno how big
| your place is but you might find this information easily
| in a meeting with HR, but HR is there to help the company
| (not you) so it depends on their priorities a lot. It's a
| very reasonable thing to wonder about when tens of
| thousands of people just got laid off from similar
| positions... I'd think a reasonable manager or HR person
| would understand that. But I certainly can't argue that
| managers and HR people are all reasonable!
| User23 wrote:
| Don't volunteer to quit if you're not willing to lose
| your job is sound advice, even if it's a bit on the
| obvious side.
|
| Even in an economic downturn an engineer with Meta on
| their resume is going to be well positioned to find
| employment inside of the three months or more pay and six
| month insurance runway this deal provides.
| satysin wrote:
| So don't ask if you want to stay.
|
| Having said that, if you're going to be worried about
| possibly/probably losing your job 6 months down the road
| what does it really matter if you have signalled you're
| not very invested in staying? The company has signalled
| they're not very invested either is how I look at it.
|
| >(edit: The idea being that you might get fired
| "normally" as a result, and not get generous severance.)
|
| Of course I am saying this as someone in Europe where
| firing someone "normally" is a lot more complicated and
| time consuming and comes with a whole list of other
| issues a company needs to make sure they manage properly.
| They can't just turn round and fire you with no pay
| because you "showed you were not very invested in the
| company as you asked if you could be let go when we were
| letting go of several thousand people". That is a 100%
| guaranteed legal hell hole no company likes to be in by
| choice.
|
| In America perhaps that is something you genuinely need
| to worry about I don't know.
| alecbz wrote:
| You're definitely not going to get fired for that on its
| own. Maybe I'm over-estimating how much this ends up
| mattering. But I think it can matter in other small ways
| too that can negatively effect your career growth.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Once the redundancies have started, the clock is running:
| you no longer _have_ career growth at that company. You
| need to start planning your next career move elsewhere.
| alecbz wrote:
| I don't think this is categorically true... you think
| _all_ the companies that have recently announced layoffs
| are basically sinking ships?
| pjc50 wrote:
| But it does mean your options for promotion and salary
| increase are clearly limited. And in tech there's strong
| evidence that more career development happens when you
| move companies than within a company.
|
| You may find there's nowhere better to go, but switching
| to "looking externally" rather than "looking internally"
| for new jobs is definitely a good idea.
| alecbz wrote:
| > You may find there's nowhere better to go
|
| Yeah that's kinda the rub right now though. Everyone's
| frozen, tons are laying off. If the only information you
| have is "my company did a layoff", it's not clear you're
| better off looking externally vs. internally vs. staying
| on your current team.
|
| One bad case is you leave your company that just did a
| layoff for one that has yet to do one (but will need to
| soon).
| satysin wrote:
| I understand your concerns and certainly don't mean to
| minimise them, this is just my personal experience and
| opinion after all :)
|
| Do what you feel comfortable with at the end of the day.
| My original reply was meant as one possible answer that I
| have seen first hand to work well for both parties.
|
| I will add as another personal opinion though that I very
| rarely see people that choose to stay at a company going
| though layoffs hanging around very long.
|
| More often than not those people experience a
| 'depression' (for want of a better word that escapes me
| as I write this) seeing their friends leave, not having
| the freedom the had back in the "good old days", little
| if any progression, the constant "sorry not this quarter,
| we're still recovering from the layoffs", living in
| constant anxiety that they will be in the next round of
| layoffs, etc. So they often leave within a year or two
| anyway.
|
| Over the years I have played this game and now I am a bit
| more proactive about exiting before that 'depression'
| hits me. Of course what is right for me is not right for
| all, only you can truly decide what you feel is best
| given your situation.
| washywashy wrote:
| Are employees able to "take" a layoff even if they don't
| receive an email telling them they are among the affected
| group?
| WanderPanda wrote:
| I was wondering about this as well, would be nice if
| someone could clarify!
| [deleted]
| ciropantera wrote:
| The writing is usually on the wall for a while before the
| layoff actually happens, so there's time for you to let
| your manager know that you wouldn't mind getting the
| boot.
| crims0n wrote:
| It depends on the company and situation. Sometimes they
| ask for volunteers and you can request the package, most
| times you don't get a choice.
| [deleted]
| madengr wrote:
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Not usually in layoffs. In acquisitions or for old
| fashioned pension based companies sometimes there are
| voluntary "buyouts" which look like that.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Sometimes voluntary buyouts are offered before the layoffs.
| And they typically will make it seem like the buyout option
| will have better terms than the eventual severance package,
| to entice people to take it rather than risk getting fired
| down the road.
| washywashy wrote:
| Yeah this is what I've seen at previous companies.
| Basically, they need enough headcount for it to not
| eventually proceed to full layoffs. It actually seems
| beneficial if you meet the tenure requirements, are still
| relatively young, and have a good network. I saw several
| people make out like bandits from those types of
| offerings.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Yep. I knew several people at a previous employer who got
| 1 year full pay packages and had a new job lined up
| within a week. One guy took an early retirement package,
| worth probably $250k at the time, left for two years and
| worked at a startup for a while, then came back and
| within 18 months took ANOTHER early retirement package.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| In situations like this, it's usually too late.
|
| Sometimes voluntary layoffs are announced, but really you
| need to be able to read between the lines and smell that
| something is coming before the layoff is announced. (The
| reason is that layoffs are usually kept confidential
| because no one wants to incite panic.)
|
| What I did a few years ago was have a 1-1 with a VP and
| basically implied that I was ready to do something
| different. I ended up with a great severance package right
| as the pandemic was taking off.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I've never understood why people in middle management
| seem to be blindsided by layoffs. I've even listened to a
| manager tell the CEO this. Are they that oblivious they
| can't see the writing on the wall? Or is it all just a
| weird act?
| afterburner wrote:
| You don't get to be middle management by NOT doing a
| weird act all the time
| htrp wrote:
| If you're pretty close with your Director/VP, you can
| volunteer to be first on the list. Frame it as a sacrifice
| that you're willing to make to spare another member of your
| team.
| johnvanommen wrote:
| It was petty, but I worked with a dude who got fired for
| doing that.
|
| When he volunteered to get laid off (with the intention
| of getting a severance), the person he said that to fired
| him on the spot for "not being a team player."
|
| Eventually, every last one of us were laid off. But it
| took six months and I used the time to find a new role
| and I also received a four month severance.
| hnfong wrote:
| The "If you're pretty close with your Director/VP" part
| is probably important :)
| sigzero wrote:
| Good advice, I have done this and it has worked.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I have been through a couple of merges and layoffs, it taught
| me that what matters is loyaty to the team, employer not so
| much.
| paxys wrote:
| It depends. In a lot of layoffs your manager themselves will
| find out the same morning and will have no say in the
| decision.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Direct line managers are still part of the team.
| yarky wrote:
| Do you mind to elaborate a bit?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Others have pretty much covered the matter, you will always
| bump into former team mates, or it will be thanks to them
| that you will get some gig.
|
| Employers themselves usually look into spreadsheets with a
| bunch of KPIs deciding who to lay off, without any regards
| for the effort you have actually placed into the job.
| [deleted]
| boringg wrote:
| If your team lead can protect you they will but the
| employer at large is rather indifferent. Also further in
| your career those relationships to your team mean a fair
| bit while who you worked for as a company might not make
| that much difference.
| JackFr wrote:
| I've gone back to work for a manger who laid me off. There
| were literally no hard feelings.
|
| When he laid me off it was clear that he had to hit a hard
| headcount number, and I knew the project I was working on
| was "discretionary". The HR meeting was "this is a
| headcount reduction and not a reflection on your work. Have
| a lawyer look over your severance and please accept or
| decline it within a week." Really quite professional.
| [deleted]
| didip wrote:
| If you have decent skills and reputation, the manager or
| team lead may bring you over to the new company (if such
| opportunity is there).
|
| But the company itself couldn't care less about anyone
| working there.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I survived two rounds of layoffs in 2008/2009 and they went as
| you describe. The first round had significantly better
| benefits. Which, ironically, ended up going to the worst
| performers.
|
| That said, the company where I experienced the layoffs was
| losing money and the first layoff was 2-3% of the workforce.
| Meta is still quite profitable and they are axing well over 10%
| of their employees. I would think another big round of layoffs
| is unlikely unless Meta has a bunch of debt coming due or the
| macro conditions REALLY go in the crapper (and there sure are a
| lot of doomsayers out there).
| [deleted]
| curiousllama wrote:
| Are you referring to rounds at the same company, or rounds
| across the economy?
| eschneider wrote:
| Rounds at the same company.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| Not the OP, but what I've experienced is severance packages
| get worse across rounds at a single company. A previous
| employer started at 1 year pay / benefits, then six months,
| then six weeks + two weeks per year of service.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Then you have corporations like the previous one I worked
| at, which had a terrible 1 week pay per year you've worked
| there, capped at 4 weeks pay.
|
| I know someone who had worked there for 17 years that got
| laid off and only got 4 weeks because of it.
|
| They never got around to laying me off, I ended up quitting
| much later than I should have.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| That really puts loyalty towards your employer into
| perspective, doesn't it?
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I read it as same company.
| mrits wrote:
| I'm not sure comparing a company with $28 billion Q3 revenue to
| .com bubble makes much sense.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| During the dot com bubble even companies with massive (for
| the time) revenue did huge layoffs. Cisco was probably the
| poster child for that.
| johnvanommen wrote:
| I helped a friend move after she was laid off, a couple
| years after the dot com bubble popped. One of the eeriest
| things was seeing all those shiny new buildings in Silicon
| Valley, sitting empty.
|
| It was like 15% of the businesses just evaporated.
|
| It was a Cisco building in particular that I remember.
|
| I was over on that street recently and everything is
| occupied again, though many of the names have changed.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| When I left Cisco in 2014, some of those buildings were
| still practically empty.
| eyear wrote:
| Not necessarily: I know companies paid 2 weeks/year in the
| first round and 3 weeks/year in the second round a year later.
| bagels wrote:
| Sounds like everyone got a weak deal.
| dboreham wrote:
| Except the _very_ last round, where you 're the person left to
| handle sale of IP and so forth. Then they'll pay you well to
| stick around for a few months doing nothing.
| tootie wrote:
| This is going to be a repeat of 2000, not 2008. There's
| seemingly no contagion and no secular stagnation. This is just
| unwinding of the cheap money era that flowed overwhelmingly
| into SV. You'll see a cooling off of red hot compensation, a
| lot of failed startups that no one ever understood and the
| ongoing crypto crash. This may end up being enough to trigger a
| mild recession.
| trashtester wrote:
| It really depends on the Fed and the overall market. I would
| say the economy is at a much greater risk now than in 2000,
| for these reasons:
|
| We have several fundamental inflation factors - The
| population is aging. A huge number of boomers are exiting the
| workforce every year. - Unlike in Japan, this cohort of
| people are likely to keep spending into their retirement,
| including a huge spending on healthcare. - This time, we
| don't have China to absorb the inflation. China is in the
| same situation. Also, most jobs that could be easily exported
| already have been. With the tech sector being a bit of an
| exception. - The prices for all sorts of jobs being done by
| people in their 60's will go up. This goes for everything
| from hairdressers and plumbers to accountants and lawyers.
| This will cause pressure on the salaries for these jobs,
| raising costs. - Decades of low interest rates have created a
| massive amount of cash (and cash-equivalent "value") in the
| system. As investments go down, more will find its way to
| consumption, driving prices up. - During the Covid lockdowns,
| many countries discovered that plenty of goods were becoming
| scarce or unavailable. Local production facilities are being
| built for anything from face masks and respirators to
| integrated circuits both in the US and Europe. Trade barriers
| and subsidies are used to support this. Local production will
| be more expensive than 1-2 huge plants able to serve the
| globe. - Covid also led to a mentality change, where employee
| loyalty to employers took a big hit. Employees (especially
| blue collared ones that can't WFH) that got laid off during
| Covid will be more likely to switch jobs more often, driving
| salaries and costs up.
|
| On top of this, the war in Ukraine adds these factors: -
| Food, energy and fuel, as well as many minerals are scarce,
| driving up the prices of everything. - Such items are added
| to the list of goods western countries want to produce for
| themselves. And in the case of food, places that experience
| famine may switch back to food production over cash crops
| over a longer term, as well. - Western countries have started
| rebuilding their arms industries, sucking capital and labor
| from other sectors.
|
| All-in-all, these factors lay the foundations for an
| inflationary pressure that could exceed the 1970's.
|
| As central banks attempt to counter this by continuing to
| raise rates, we get the following problems. - Anyone with a
| variable or expiring interest rate will have their standard
| of living going down from interest payments AND inflation. -
| Huge swaths of people will demand that raises keep up with
| inflation. Groups with skills that see increased demand will
| get such raises, and possibly more. - In other sectors,
| employers will not have the income to raise compensation at
| the same rate. Employees in these sectors will become
| increasingly unhappy. - People will start unionizing at a
| greater rate than before. Especially in Europe, but also in
| the US. - Most likely, we will see large numbers of massive
| labor market conflicts, with strikes followed by lock-outs. -
| Tensions between countries is also likely to rise (though the
| war in Ukraine may mitigate that a bit, for as long as it
| lasts) - These conflicts will damage the supply side of the
| economy further, leading to even more inflation and a deeper
| stagflation, in a vicious circle.
|
| In all of this, this is bad for any business without a
| significant positive cash flow, including much of internet
| "tech". Military "tech", on the other hand, may see a huge
| boom, and the same may come for anyone able to contribute
| within manufacturing or construction (such as through
| robotics/AI).
| solumunus wrote:
| Mild recession? How are you not understanding the global
| macro set up right now? Europe will see a ~10 year recession,
| possibly the worst ever. America may fare better but there's
| no way you're getting away with a "mild" recession.
| alangibson wrote:
| We're definitely bracing for impact around here. Where do
| you get 10 years from though?
| jamespo wrote:
| Source: he made it up
| staticman2 wrote:
| How do you not understand that you have a contrarian take
| on the economy?
| hylaride wrote:
| Predicting the future is hard, but the labour market is
| still extremely tight, boomers are leaving the workforce
| due to retirement, and there will probably be (attempts at)
| on-shoring as the west tries to decouple from China.
|
| Europe will probably get its energy sorted in the medium
| term with LNG, and they're going to need to build a lot of
| damn nukes, but I don't think it'll be 10 years.
| fortran77 wrote:
| We didn't have inflation like this in 2000. I'm old enough to
| remember the 70s
| staticman2 wrote:
| The 5 year breakeven inflation rate today is 2.61% Since
| Treasury Inflation Protected Securities didn't exist in the
| 70s we can't compare, but the market thinks inflation is
| not going to continue like it did in the 70s.
| songeater wrote:
| There was a lot of commodity-inflation in the early 2000s,
| the second biggest rise in commodity prices after the
| 1970s[1]. Unlike the 70s (supply shock), this was primarily
| a demand-pull out of China/Asia, so the net impact to the
| economy was much more positive.
|
| [1] https://www.investing.com/indices/bloomberg-commodity
| tsunamifury wrote:
| CMBSs held by shadow banks with quarterly markdown accounting
| -- with valuations linked to commercial leases.
| swalsh wrote:
| " mild recession"
|
| If we're lucky
| mywittyname wrote:
| We're like 2.5 years into one at this point and some people
| still don't acknowledge it. A lot of people just keep
| saying "we're heading into one." It's likely this one will
| pass long before people come to a general consensus on
| whether or not one really happened.
| erehweb wrote:
| The U.S. unemployment rate was 3.7% in October, and GDP
| was up 2.6% annualized in 2022Q3. Why do you say we're in
| a recession?
| kevstev wrote:
| If this is a recession, its not one I am feeling. 2008,
| the .com bust, those were recessions that everyone felt
| acutely. Unemployment is still at record lows. If the GDP
| dial isn't where people would like it to be then fine,
| but overall jobs are plentiful and no one I know is
| scared like they have been during the previous
| recessions.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| You'd almost think cities and metropolitan areas are being
| thoughtful when avoiding the demands from those following the
| latest gold rush. But surely, that would be an unpopular
| opinion around here.
| Aunche wrote:
| Software engineering is far more saturated than it was in
| 2000 and 2008. In 2008, Amazon, Apple, and Google all had a
| seemingly endless room to grow. The iPhone, Android, AWS, and
| video steaming were still in their infancy. There's nothing
| like that right now. There are definitely a lot of exciting
| innovations in ML and VR, but I think it will be a while
| before these technologies find a mainstream consumer use
| case.
| matwood wrote:
| Outside of big tech, every single company has been
| struggling to hire. Companies hate to admit it, but every
| company is a software company now.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| In 2000 some people still worked with paper rolodex. We
| need to keep things in perspective. The world changed
| massively in the last 20 years, everything is software and
| software is almost everything. There are a lot of
| contributing factors to this economy which are unrelated to
| the actual demand and value of software. There will not be
| an oversaturation of software engineering for a while to
| come.
|
| If memory serves, Meta is cutting a lot of non tech jobs.
| Engineers might lose their jobs if entire projects are
| scrapped, but maybe a different position will be offered to
| them.
|
| I hope that everyone is looking at Twitter and learning
| what not do: no company wants to beg some engineers to come
| back after being too quick to pull the trigger.
| whydat_whodat wrote:
| "Software engineering is far more saturated"
|
| What country are you referring to? I'm in the US-- the
| market here seems quite strong according to the BLS:
|
| US Bureau of Labor Statistics-- Here are two examples,
| followed by the general IT occupation growth description:
|
| - Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and
| Testers
|
| --> Job Outlook, 2021-31 25% (Much faster than average)
|
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
| technology/...
|
| - Information Security Analysts
|
| --> Job Outlook, 2021-31 35% (Much faster than average)
|
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
| technology/...
|
| "Overall employment in computer and information technology
| occupations is
|
| --> projected to grow 15 percent from 2021 to 2031, much
| faster than the average for all occupations"
|
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
| technology/...
| hnfong wrote:
| Even Mark Zuckerberg admitted to making the wrong
| projections of tech growth per the article. What makes
| you think these statistics are doing better?
| renaudg wrote:
| I was around in 2000. It had the failed startups but it
| didn't have inflation, war, and a pandemic.
|
| Long Covid alone is going to hamper any economic recovery.
| It's a mass disabling event. The sooner we recognize this and
| start tackling it, the better :
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-workforce-absenteeism-
| pro...
| boringg wrote:
| Global macro is very different. This is going to be different
| from both.
| [deleted]
| jollyllama wrote:
| People act like there were no layoffs between 2010 and 2000
| but there were plenty, if you were in the wrong company
| and/or the wrong sector. IBM comes to mind. There were still
| CEOs out there trimming the fat while everyone else was
| getting high on the hype. If you had exposure to this, you're
| ready, at least emotionally, for what's going on now. If you
| didn't, you're probably shellshocked right now. Don't worry,
| you'll get used to it.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I'm interested to hear your opinion: Do you have any thoughts
| on the current way companies are valued/how they operate vs how
| they were leading up to the 2000 crash?
|
| Personally, I see it as a cycle which appears to be repeating
| itself, especially after re-reading The Intelligent Investors
| assessment in the years after the 2000 crash, and comparing it
| to some of the current offerings out there. I would be
| interested to hear your perspective on the matter.
| matwood wrote:
| This is literally nothing like 2000 unless in you're in
| something like crypto. Meta hired 30k+ people during covid
| and they are correcting that over hire mistake. They are fine
| financially.
|
| In 2000 entire companies were just disappearing. Companies
| had gone public that had no business plan. 100s of millions
| were thrown at companies who were gone in 12-18 months.
|
| Big tech, who are making dump trucks of money, laying some
| people off is just part of the normal business cycle.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Thanks for the response. :)
|
| Under what circumstance do you believe the current
| landscape would be comparable to the 2000's era? Certainly,
| I would hope that the same _kind_ of foolish behavior
| wouldn 't reoccur, outside of a very specific set of
| circumstances, but do you see any sort of _comparison_
| between the historical foolishness of the market, and the
| wastes of money that have been devoted to things like,
| Stadia, Zillow AI pricing, Quibi, WeWork, etc.?
|
| When I see the amount of money spent vs brought in by the
| various big names out there (social networks, in
| particular) I can't help but see a thing essentially worth
| little outside of name recognition. I naturally assume it
| to be a house of cards ready to collapse at some point, I
| just can't really determine when or why that might be.
| Perhaps not anytime soon, or to the extent that it would
| have were it 2000, but certainly companies that has such a
| noticeably poor ability to create profit, that it seems
| assured to fail.
|
| I've certainly been wrong about such things in the past.
| Twitter, for example, was a thing that I assumed around
| 2008 or 2009, would never catch on, and that whatever
| traction it had would fade within a few months. I had
| similar assumptions with Netflix being "doomed to failure"
| after they tried to split the steaming/DVD rental services.
| I've been laughably wrong on each of those things, so it's
| entirely possible that I'm just not appreciating that maybe
| the world itself works has changed in a way that I haven't
| grasped. I just don't see how tech companies which can't
| manage to turn a profit, let alone offer predictable
| income, are able to sustain longterm value investment. It
| just seems like a hopeful anemic.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Yeah, SV is never completely sane, but the Dot Com era was
| truly mental bonkers.
| gtsnexp wrote:
| Where are tech jobs heading in the United States and globally?
| Who (or what industry) is absorbing all these folks? I think the
| current landscape merits one of these prediction style threads on
| HN.
| Zanneth wrote:
| Still mostly staying in Silicon Valley. Plenty of companies are
| still hiring. Laid off Meta employees with good skills will not
| have problems finding another job in the same area.
| [deleted]
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I know a couple of my European friends were bitterly disappointed
| to be kept on, over there you get a nice little exit package
| mandated in law.
| nomilk wrote:
| > the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads
| signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I'd
| expected
|
| What's "ads signal loss"? Is that iPhone asking for permission to
| track activity across apps, causing less accurate ad placement?
| lovecg wrote:
| Attribution, not placement
| danpalmer wrote:
| Yes. That and other similar efforts such as phasing out third
| party cookies.
| akmarinov wrote:
| They've been milking that for almost 3 years now...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| yes. it's the changes Apple made to app tracking. IIRC Facebook
| earlier this year itself stated that it would cost them up to
| ten billion in sales.
| willis936 wrote:
| It could mean people left after the re-brand.
| beej71 wrote:
| "Desk sharing"... I wonder with the cost-cutting appeal of
| smaller real estate footprints and remote work if the huge campus
| era is actually drawing to a close.
| debug-desperado wrote:
| Maybe it is. They're definitely reducing footprint for
| satellite offices:
| https://www.statesman.com/story/business/real-estate/2022/11...
| bartread wrote:
| > At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the
| surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth. Many people
| predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would
| continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the
| decision to significantly increase our investments.
| Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.
|
| There was similar wording to this in the recent Shopify
| announcement. I must admit, I was frustrated by it then, and I'm
| frustrated by it now.
|
| "Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration?"
| Yeah, sure, many people _who don 't understand the concept of
| regression to the mean_ predicted a permanent acceleration. But
| here's the thing: if you thought that after months of being
| cooped up most people were just going to carry on sitting round
| their houses playing Runescape and jacking off, or never visit
| the shops again, you are an idiot. Now, I will grant you, there
| were some silver linings to the pandemic, and some people did
| kind of enjoy it, but there were also a _lot_ of people crawling
| the walls who couldn 't wait to be let off the leash again. Just
| look at what's happened with the travel industry and holiday
| chaos this past summer, at least here in the UK.
|
| I saw Mark Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan recently. I've got quite a lot
| of hostility for Meta, due to the societal damage, and personal
| cost to individuals, for which it's responsible, but Mark
| Zuckerberg is an intelligent and interesting guy. Definitely
| worth listening to, not least of which because he actually comes
| across as a human being in this podcast episode rather than some
| sort of odd robot.
|
| I'm incredibly disappointed that he got taken in by this idea of
| a permanent off trend shift to online and beyond him - and beyond
| Shopify - this kind of, "hurr durr, we got it wrong, wut you
| gunna do <<shrugs>>," justification for layoffs is going to get
| really old really quickly.
|
| There's something really wrong with corporate governance that can
| look at an unprecedented situation like COVID and then jump to
| the conclusion that it's going to permanently change human
| behaviour in the round, disregarding all previous trends: humans
| are, after all, still human.
| bonney_io wrote:
| > some people did kind of enjoy it, but there were also a lot
| of people crawling the walls who couldn't wait to be let off
| the leash again
|
| And what did people turn to? Social media.... VR...
|
| Sorry, Zuck, not buying it.
| djkivi wrote:
| Over 1000 points and 900 comments in 4 hours and not #1 on the
| front page?
| hinkley wrote:
| I totally would have been part of this layoff if I'd responded to
| any of the many, many FB recruiters who have contacted me in the
| last 18 months.
|
| Why didn't I reply? Several reasons, but importantly because if
| you can't say anything nice sometimes it's best not to say
| anything at all.
| simsla wrote:
| Same feeling.
|
| I initially passed on the offer because I couldn't work
| remotely from my country of choice. They later contacted me
| when that'd changed, but I'd found another job by then that I
| was happy with. (Plus, the whole "do I want to work for them?"
| thing.)
|
| Probably would've been let go, because less tenure +
| nonstandard working arrangement + mass firings is not a good
| combo.
| pm90 wrote:
| I explicitly asked them to put me on a blacklist because
| there's no way in hell I'm working for Facebook. They may not
| be directly culpable, but they allowed their platform to be
| used in ways to subvert democratic norms and institutions
| (West), promote and coordinate Genocide (Muslims in India and
| Myanmar) etc.
|
| I honestly consider it better to work for Raytheon; at least
| the weapons they make are regulated and subject to stronger
| scrutiny.
| andreiursan wrote:
| IMO the Zuck just gave Elon a lesson on how to be a grownup CEO.
| amelius wrote:
| Elon is a fake person created by VCs to fulfill their goals.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| i would never trust Elon's word and he has some big flaws as
| a person but his goals are so ambitious and risky, small
| thinking VC's would never invest in those , all VC's want are
| relatively safe software (SAAS) companies.
| oxplot wrote:
| > Elon is a fake person created by VCs to fulfill their
| goals.
|
| I'm gonna give you a bucket full of benefit of doubt and
| assume you mean nothing negative by this. I'm all for fake
| people fulfilling VCs goals if that means we can have better
| and more exciting future (which Musk has delivered to date).
|
| It's worth mentioning that many other "real" people with "no"
| hidden agendas have done ... jack shit over the past 20
| years. :)
| quest88 wrote:
| What did he deliver?
| arcturus17 wrote:
| It's undeniable, no matter what you think of the
| character, that he created huge momentum in the
| transition to EVs.
|
| Also, rockets.
| oxplot wrote:
| Assuming you're sincerely asking this to learn, I suggest
| you ask Google, and read some Wikipedia to boot.
| quest88 wrote:
| Ok, his rich family gave him some money to invest and got
| lucky with paypal. Then he became a hypeman for Tesla and
| routinely lied about full self driving in order to keep
| Tesla from bankruptcy and produced unsafe and poorly
| built cars. Then lied about trucks, roadsters, and solar
| roofs. He's speed running the history of tunnels and
| trains and will find out that, yes, putting independent
| cars in a tunnel is a dumb idea. Hyperloops? Seriously?
| Buying twitter blue checkmarks only to introduce another
| checkmark for verificaiton. Hm..Space-X is sorta
| futuristic? He hasn't proven reusable rockets have saved
| orders of magnitude of money.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| What are alternatives to Falcon Heavy?
| pm90 wrote:
| I laughed so hard at this comment, thank you for a little bit
| of humor in these ominous times.
|
| Its kinda true though. He's been the poster "white night
| entrepreneur", egged on by every other nerd who still
| believes in the exceptional founder myth. That myth motivates
| a ton of folks to give up their lives and time to try and
| build something on pretty bleak terms.
| serf wrote:
| and Zuckerberg is somehow real and authentic? First time i've
| ever heard that one.
|
| Realistically this cut was probably done in time to offer a
| decent severance without hurting things on the corporate side
| -- to compare this to Twitter's post-Elon crash-plan is
| disingenuous, and i'm not even a Musk fan.
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Mind elaborating on the "fake person" part?
| irsagent wrote:
| It sad to see the direction of the company go complete VR and AR.
| If it is the next product it would seem to catch on early with
| the demo.
| dbrgn wrote:
| If 11k employees are 13% of the workforce, then Meta employed
| roughly 85k people.
|
| Holy moly, what do all these people actually do all day long?
|
| Also, assuming an average annual wage of 80k USD, that would mean
| 6.8 billion USD of wage costs every year. That's quite something.
| propogandist wrote:
| Facebook folks usually make 6 figures, and most have a large
| portion of comp in stock based comp. The number is much larger.
| dbrgn wrote:
| I assumed that not every Facebook employee is a senior
| software engineer in California, but that they must have a
| lot of lower wage employees in non-tech jobs on other
| continents as well (e.g. for content moderation).
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| A lot of content moderators are probably contractors of
| some kind, not FTE's for Meta.
| sytelus wrote:
| Meta is burning $10B/yr to build Metaverse. They are also loading
| up on massive debt. This is the part I don't understand.
| Development is expensive but NOT this expensive! A back of the
| envelope calculation suggests that one can build an entire search
| engine infrastructure and product for the same price. Something
| like HoloLens from scratch would cost LESS than half of that
| price. A full competitive self driving E2E stack development will
| cost about half. Developing entire smartphone hardware and OS
| from scratch would cost about a third of that money. Moon worthy
| space rocket development will cost a tenth of this budget. One
| can do so much with $10B that it is absolutely mind blowing.
| skizm wrote:
| This is completely incorrect. They took on ~$10B in debt
| recently for stock buybacks when debt was cheap. They make
| around $28B in profit _after_ metaverse spending and have $40B
| cash on hand.
| sytelus wrote:
| Corrected. It still doesn't make any sense to take on debt
| (which no longer is cheap) to do stock buybacks.
| throwty345df wrote:
| I watched a presentation in which it was explained that they
| got Microsoft to create a version of Office for their metaverse
| and other companies to do similar things. I'm pretty sure that
| Microsoft is not doing this for free, so generally speaking I
| think their expenses include all the spending related to this
| kind of partnerships, which can add up to quite a lot when you
| have a whole ecosystem to build. This is not just software and
| hardware engineering. With this in mind, the $10bn figure looks
| much more reasonable and even disciplined for the goal pursued.
| Whether or not this goal is the right one is another question.
| I personally think Meta is misguided here and this aventure
| will fail miserably.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Meta/FB is an immoral company, so I have almost zero sympathy if
| you agreed to work there in the first place.
| xvector wrote:
| Looks like the terms of the layoff are very generous. 4 months of
| pay, accelerated vesting, etc.
| ppjim wrote:
| One thing that struck me is the similarity in the wording of the
| Stripe and Meta layoff memos. They appear to have been written by
| the same AI.
|
| https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/gadgets-news/stripe-lays...
| washywashy wrote:
| Genuinely curious why Meta (other big companies) hired so much
| during the pandemic? Did one companies make a strategic business
| decision to hire more based on project needs, and other companies
| followed on in a copy cat way? I guess maybe meta was thinking
| "VR will take off during pandemic and folks won't be able to put
| the goggles back down ever". I could see some companies copying
| it just to hedge against other companies over-recruiting and
| snatching some of their employees. Seems almost like a similar
| copy cat effort is happening now, unless they are all just
| admitting they over-hired.
| intrasight wrote:
| Lots of over-hiring. It was a competition for scarce talent
| with a thinking that talented head count is a prime metric. I
| think it is, but it only works if that talent is contributing
| to the bottom line.
|
| Poor HR management plays a big role too. I believe that
| capitalism requires ongoing "culling of the herd" - like 5%
| every year. This happens in many other businesses. Perhaps tech
| will now follow suit.
| clolege wrote:
| Google's grown its workforce by about 15% every year. Which
| adds up to a _lot_ of people nowadays.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOG/alphabet/numb...
| daniaal wrote:
| Google did the same sort of crazy hiring and i wonder if they
| will be next to layoff thousands
| pm90 wrote:
| Google's ad network is pretty ubiquitous since it spans almost
| all the known web. Facebook is pretty big too but relies mostly
| on its own platform (FB, Inst etc.). For sure Google is
| affected, but I imagine the impact is less.
|
| Also one thing that shouldn't be missed: Google controls
| Android, the most popular mobile OS in the world (except US
| maybe) so it wasn't affected as strongly by Apple's clampdown.
|
| The lesson to Zuck is clear: he absolutely needs to own the
| next digital platform, and in his mind its the metaverse so
| he's going all in. I question the decisions he makes but the
| reasoning seems pretty solid at least (unlike a certain
| Electric Car maker)
| ptman wrote:
| I read (an estimate?) somewhere that google has been doing this
| by not renewing contractors and cutting hiring
| saiya-jin wrote:
| That's a version of this which doesn't stress out employees
| so the best ones don't jump the ship at first occasion.
|
| Our org went through something similar some 6 year ago, and
| it was a stark contrast with previous frequent firing rounds
| when nobody would be secure, sometimes even best within given
| team were let go (ie due to current allocation issues).
|
| But this can replace small firing ie up to 10%, not when you
| are doing stuff musk-style.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's what Meta was doing 3-6 months ago, so
| it may still be coming.
| sagebird wrote:
| Even though laid-off employees will lose access to Meta internal
| systems today, they are welcome to utilize Facebook services to
| stay connected to former colleagues, friends, and family members
| around the world. After all, it is Facebook's mission to create a
| more connected world - and that will never change.
| sagebird wrote:
| I just want to reassure everyone that while some things are
| changing, Facebook's commitment to creating a more connected
| world is not going away. If anything, these changes will help
| Facebook reach that goal more effectively- and that's something
| we can all be proud of. After all, as we continue to develop
| new features and products to better connect people from around
| the world, there are always going to be challenges but if we
| can stay more connected we will be able to handle them in a
| very connected way, I believe.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| "I want to take responsibility" vs "I take responsibility".
| lovelearning wrote:
| > I've decided to...let more than 11,000 of our talented
| employees go.
|
| It's phrased as if those 11,000 were itching to go away all this
| time. Then Mark, in his infinite benevolence, "let" them finally
| "go." He hath freed the birds from their golden cages.
| cnees wrote:
| "We've shifted more of our resources onto a smaller number of
| high priority growth areas [like] our long-term vision for the
| metaverse"
|
| Imagine laying off eleven thousand people so you can keep
| clinging to the disintegrating corpse of the metaverse.
| klenwell wrote:
| I detest the Meta metaverse as much as the next Hacker News
| user. But there is one use case where I could see it luring me
| in. Virtual meetings. Really virtual social events or happy
| hours. Professional ones mainly with my remote distributed
| team. This would be the killer app in my view.
|
| The key to me it seems would be in the audio. Like if I turn to
| face someone, the audio adjusts so everything else in virtual
| room get quieter (but still audible). I can have a conversation
| with the person I'm facing. Multiple conversations can go on at
| once. Just like in a real room!
|
| Anybody know if this is something that current state of the
| metaverse supports? Is this something being actively researched
| and developed?
| romanovcode wrote:
| I wonder if no-one from higher-ups in Meta tell Zuckerberg that
| it is not going to happen and explain to him what sunk cost
| fallacy is.
| warinukraine wrote:
| Anyone who says that to him will get fired, and that makes
| sense: In his mind, if you don't believe the vision that he's
| going all in in, then you're just detracting.
| ausudhz wrote:
| Another delusional CEO practically
| fullshark wrote:
| Maybe Sandberg did, and he disagreed and now she's gone with
| a bunch of stuff leaked to try and embarrass her.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| I'd feel pretty embarrassed right now to be working in VR at
| meta while seeing coworkers getting laid off.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Why? If I were working there and on that tech, I'd stay. It's
| a cool project and I like working on cool projects while
| being able to live a comfortable life.
|
| What are you working on that's more fascinating than VR?
| jakeinspace wrote:
| VR is cool. I didn't mean to say that Meta VR engineers
| deserve to feel guilty, but I imagine it would be strange
| to be working in a massive cost center (which may
| eventually spell Meta's downfall), while seeing coworkers
| dismissed. Definitely don't think my job is any more
| fascinating to than VR (although I personally am more
| interested in my work).
| throwaway7346 wrote:
| > Aerospace software engineer, putting bits in space.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| That's pretty nifty. What do you like about it?
|
| Edit: why did you use a throwaway to reply to my comment?
| jakeinspace wrote:
| That wasn't me, they were just quoting my bio. I wasn't
| trying to compare my field to VR. I enjoying working on
| code knowing that it will (hopefully) be sitting in orbit
| soon, but there are more than enough negatives to turn
| one away (relatively low pay, ancient tooling, dated
| management practices and general industry inertia).
| datalopers wrote:
| archon810 wrote:
| "I'd"
|
| He doesn't work for Meta.
| [deleted]
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Please don't comment like this on HN. This is not reddit or
| Facebook.
| belval wrote:
| I have this (maybe wrong) opinion that Meta can't be the one to
| bring an actual VR/Metaverse project because they are too "on
| the radar" of medias. Adoption of new technologies is always
| done by more fringe members and then picked up by critical
| mass. You can't successfully build a metaverse without
| accepting the kind of weird deviant stuff that goes on in
| VRChat and Meta can't accept the weird deviant stuff because
| they will immediately get called out for it.
|
| So you get "Horizon" and its assortment of low-quality games
| that feel more like a tech demo than an actual world that you
| could lose yourself in.
| Kye wrote:
| I guarantee it's going to be some furry working on VRChat
| stuff who finds its policies or technology too limiting and
| sets off to do something better. It's already sort of
| happened. I don't know that Frooxius started NeosVR for that
| reason, but it came after VRChat and is one of the major
| competitors.
| shuckles wrote:
| iPhone was speculated about as an Apple product for years by
| the media before it came out. Newsweek even did a cover story
| about it.
|
| Also, the initial launch of iPhone didn't support apps or
| Flash (i.e. no porno videos on the web!), and the App Store
| has never supported deviant communities. Apple's policies
| probably precipitated Tumblr's no nudity moderation.
| bombcar wrote:
| Versus "windows phone" in its fifty billion iterations
| which was exactly what OP talked about.
|
| If Facebook had quietly (and they were for the longest
| time!) continued to work on Oculus and done some internal
| skunkworks projects, instead of a big PR push and a company
| rename, maybe they could pull an iPhone.
|
| Personally, I think they drank the meta verse koolaid to
| get everyone to stop talking about election interference
| and other things that were being blamed on them, and I
| think it mostly worked.
| [deleted]
| jfdbcv wrote:
| > Adoption of new technologies is always done by more fringe
| members and then picked up by critical mass.
|
| What examples are you thinking of? Did this happen with the
| PC or smartphone?
| belval wrote:
| I know there are countless counter-examples but:
|
| - The "public" Internet, although since I used the word
| "deviant" people might not like me giving it as an example.
|
| - Social media in general, which again not necessarily
| deviant, but before it reached critical mass a lot of
| people just found it weird and privacy invasive. I
| distinctly remember my family making fun of people posting
| their thoughts on early Twitter.
|
| - eCommerce, was considered strange as you would put your
| CC information on some random website.
|
| - Video games were for nerds and losers, now most people
| have an Xbox/Playstation.
|
| - Drone/RC plane community was much more weird before the
| likes of DJI which lowered the bar significantly.
|
| - More recently remote work was usually for a small portion
| of workers and people commonly said you had to be a certain
| type of person for it to work at all. Fast forward a
| pandemic and remote meetings are common and even requested
| by would-be employees.
|
| I feel like there a fallacy somewhere in my arguments for
| sure, but there definitely seems to be a trend where things
| are weird, dumb and strange until they just aren't by
| reaching critical mass. Strapping a screen to your face to
| play video games and chat with people is definitely one of
| those until it isn't and I'd bet that within 10 years it
| will be already much more common.
| Kye wrote:
| The foundations of the post-2007/2008 smartphone were
| forged on the keyboards and screens of the
| Blackberry/Palmpilot-obsessed professional manager type
| person. Fringe statistically if not culturally.
| Eupraxias wrote:
| Agreed - kind of like how Friendster and MySpace paved the
| path for the little startup called Facebook?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| It takes balls to do what The Zuck is doing. Facebook is
| stagnant and dying. It's being chipped away by Tiktok and
| neutered by Apple's monopoly.
|
| He could ride the facebook ship into the sunset and have it die
| 20 years from now.
|
| But no, he's betting big and going for broke. I hope he
| succeeds just for the sheer stones he's displaying. Really
| inspiring to see a man aim so high.
| stiltzkin wrote:
| HN and Reddit always get it wrong about the future, the
| Metaverse is still an on-going under development ecosystem and
| Facebook bad image gives it a negative perspective.
| Loughla wrote:
| Honestly, it is amusing to see him put so much effort into 2nd
| life II , but:
|
| How can you call it a disintegrating corpse when it's been in
| the public eye for what, a few months? I don't get it.
| _dan wrote:
| It is in fact the opposite of disintegrating - they only just
| got legs!
| Kye wrote:
| It's just for show. They don't have a leg to stand on.
| ouid wrote:
| third life
| Balgair wrote:
| Amusingly, there are a lot of Minecraft videos with that
| name as a title. I think it's a game type with a limit of 3
| respawns.
| marktangotango wrote:
| Watch the Joe Rogan interview with Zuckerburg. There's a
| moment in there where Rogan gives Zuckerberg a reality check
| on it, it's hilarious.
| Finnucane wrote:
| When Joe Rogan is more in touch with reality than you are,
| you need to reevaluate your choices.
| fullshark wrote:
| This? https://youtu.be/rgh3ELuDZGY
| marktangotango wrote:
| That's the one thanks! I was just searching for the link.
| SilasX wrote:
| So the one-off point about it being creepy while gushing
| about it through the rest? Not much of a reality check.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| The comments on that are telling. Does Zuckerberg always
| seem that forced when he's interacting with people?
| contravariant wrote:
| Why does it matter how long the casket's been open? If it's
| dead it's dead.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Their MAUs have been declining consistently.
| hashtag-til wrote:
| I'm sure there are lots of competent people putting a lot of
| effort in "Metaverse", but to me it looks really just yet
| another VR world. Does anyone know what is the concrete new
| thing it would make successful?
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| Well, they missed the boat being a platform on mobile or
| desktop. So, now they have Apple/Google dictating terms to
| them.
|
| They are really desperate to own the next big thing. Whether
| that'll be VR, who knows.
| jesuscript wrote:
| This was Zuck's biggest mistake. The money spent on Metaverse
| would have been better spent just making a Facebook phone.
| btlr wrote:
| They made a phone once, and it didn't pan out.
| [Source](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/heres-why-the-
| facebook-phon...)
| bombcar wrote:
| They've lost $10b on the metaverse so far; you'd think you
| could design a phone at least SOMEWHAT decent for that price,
| and at least get a TINY foothold back into the market.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Facebook making a phone would have had similar problems as
| VR: what would be the draw of a _Facebook_ phone? If it 's
| an Android phone it's just an Android phone with Facebook
| branding. They can't deliver exclusive features to only
| Facebook Fone owners as their money comes from ads so they
| need the broadest reach for features.
|
| If they rolled their own OS they'd have to spend a lot of
| effort building and maintaining that platform. If Microsoft
| and Amazon can't will a third phone platform into existence
| Facebook definitely can't.
|
| Their $10B metaverse spend is a waste but I think it would
| have been a waste on a phone as well.
| jibe wrote:
| They gave it at least a weak try, with terrible results.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/heres-why-the-facebook-
| phon...
| robotnikman wrote:
| Wow, can't believe it's almost been a decade since that
| was a thing. Back when HTC was still around making some
| of the best phones at the time too, I miss my HTC One.
|
| Also, same thing happened when Amazon tried releasing the
| Fire Phone. I think a combination of being carrier
| exclusive and using sub-optimal hardware was a big
| contributing factor to both their demise.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the amazing thing, they tried it once, badly, in
| _2013_ and never bothered trying again.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| meta_gone wrote:
| Got cannned today. At least the severance is good
| lambda_dn wrote:
| Is it immediate or you still working notice?
| fumblebee wrote:
| What did the process look like? Did you find out first from HR,
| from Zuck's memo, your manager, or was your laptop just
| remotely KO'd?
| meta_gone wrote:
| Email, then checked to see if I still had access. Still have
| workplace access weirdly.
| valleyer wrote:
| What did you lose access to? Source control? Other servers?
| Just curious.
| polio wrote:
| What org were you part of?
| s-a-u-s-a-g-e wrote:
| thrillgore wrote:
| "I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we
| got here."
|
| ...but I'm going to stay and keep all the cards on the Metaverse
| as my personal fortune sinks with it. For 11% of you, good luck.
| CamelRocketFish wrote:
| Could the title match the post tile to follow the hackernews
| guidelines?
| thatoneguytoo wrote:
| It felt as if I was reading the Stripe memo.
| darkwater wrote:
| I'd like to highlight this quote from the statement:
|
| > and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower
| than I'd expected
|
| Apple decisions + EU regulations?
| randomsearch wrote:
| Scapegoating. Replace "signal loss" with "TikTok" and "Most of
| our products suck" and you're a lot closer to the truth.
| temende wrote:
| Well, it's all of the above. Lots of factors working against
| Meta/FB these days.
| yreg wrote:
| I have a stupid question. Perhaps someone can explain.
|
| What is the link between Apple introducing new rules to nerf
| tracking and Meta making less money?
|
| I guess less tracking means less relevant ads. Are Meta's
| customers able to somehow evaluate this and are they now
| unwilling to spend as much money on advertising with them? Or
| is it that Meta now has lower click-through rates on iOS? Is
| there something else?
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Less attribution. Attribution is more valuable than targeted
| ads.
| yreg wrote:
| What do you mean by attribution?
| fingerlocks wrote:
| "Was this ad clicked on a Facebook page or a Google
| page?"
|
| "How many people that clicked the ad made a purchase?"
|
| It's how you determine the cost of advertising and
| measure its effectiveness.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| it means its harder to say that this advert lead to this
| click on the page.
|
| This means the quality of the analytics coming back are much
| poorer. so its harder to optimise for a market segment.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Many many moons ago when i pointed out that FAANG are modern day
| fords and chryslers everyone thought i was exaggerating. Actually
| if you think about it they are in an even more precarious
| position as no one really _needs_ them and their popularity are a
| thing of fashion, and are far from too big to fail.
|
| Edit: Linkedin shows 300k jobs available in the us for the term
| "software engineer". I like to think and hope that things will be
| fine for those laid off.
| bioemerl wrote:
| No way.
|
| Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, they all have very good businesses
| with very concrete productivity bonuses and real world
| advantages that they give to people, you can't make those
| things disappear.
|
| They also don't have good foreign competitors, like Chrysler
| and so on had in Japan.
|
| There are Chinese companies, but those companies largely exist
| thanks to their state barring competition from the outside, and
| I don't see it being super likely that that is a real threat,
| especially because if Chinese companies really start taking off
| the United States government will clamp down on them hard.
|
| I think these layoffs are more an example of just how crazy
| short-term we are thinking in the world. Everyone thought coal
| was going to go away, remote work was the future, tech jobs
| were the future!
|
| In reality we need more productivity, less labor demand, and
| for our smartest people to be out working on those problems,
| not on delivering people advertisements.
|
| All of these lay off people may end up out more distributed in
| the country working no boring jobs that ultimately free up
| butts and seats so that those butts can go take other seats for
| they are more necessary and important and productive.
| niij wrote:
| > There are Chinese companies, but those companies largely
| exist thanks to their state barring competition from the
| outside, and I don't see it being super likely that that is a
| real threat, especially because if Chinese companies really
| start taking off the United States government will clamp down
| on them hard.
|
| TikTok is a Chinese company and is major competition for
| Facebook
| bioemerl wrote:
| TikTok already teeters on the brink of regulation and isn't
| a Microsoft or a Amazon that has real weight.
| pm90 wrote:
| Sorry, what do you mean by "real weight"?
|
| They absolutely dominate among Gen-Z, and is catching on
| mainstream appeal pretty quickly as well.
| bioemerl wrote:
| TikTok is social media.
|
| Microsoft, apple, amazon, and so on are critical
| infrastructure. They go away, the lights go out.
| ok123456 wrote:
| No. TikTok just has a better product compared Facebook.
| niij wrote:
| Which of my points are you replying "no" to?
| swalsh wrote:
| TikTok is a contagion. It just happens to infect it's
| users more effectively than it's counterparts.
| grp wrote:
| And it also infected youtube and instagram.
| [deleted]
| grp wrote:
| > those (chinese) companies largely exist thanks to their
| state barring competition from the outside
|
| > (...)the United States government will clamp down on them
| hard.
|
| In the same sentence, nice one. :)
| bioemerl wrote:
| As they say - do onto others.
|
| American companies today don't need the protection. They
| are better companies.
|
| With China now using state imbalances to fund their tech
| sector, restrictions will be needed. You can't compete with
| free stuff backed by a foreign state.
| gmm1990 wrote:
| What makes you believe that the US companies are
| fundamentally better? Tictoc seems to outcompete US
| social media companies lately and Tesla said themselves
| their only competition comes from China. I don't think
| Bytedance has a huge burn rate or at least higher than
| could be funded on the public markets, no need for state
| backing.
| bioemerl wrote:
| Right now they just are.
|
| Larger world market share. More internal diversity and
| understanding of other cultures.
| swalsh wrote:
| " no one really _needs_ them"
|
| Facebook? Sure, people can live without that. But Microsoft,
| Google, i'd argue even Amazon are integral parts of the
| economy. Trying building a modern business without the business
| software Microsoft maintains. Try doing work without Google.
| Amazon is a part of our modern shopping habits.
|
| Do they need to be as big as they were? Probably some room to
| go down, but they're an essential part of the economy now.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Microsoft is not FAANG, at least not part of the acronym i
| was strictly referring to.
|
| The world needs a search engine, but the moment a new,
| competent, one pops up all you need to do is switch a URL and
| you are done with google. All other services google provides
| are replaceable.
|
| Amazon is a cool marketplace, infested by scams and low
| quality products, an alibaba of the west. It is an integral
| part of the economy by I manage to do just fine without it.
| AWS is a wake up call away from trending out of fashion.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Microsoft isn't FAANG because they generally pay a bit
| lower. But they're still a worldwide powerhouse. Windows is
| extremely popular, and so is their office suite. You just
| can't license osx on non-apple machines and linux options
| are just not as popular yet.
| yrgulation wrote:
| Microsoft, even if i don't much like their products, are
| a grown-up company. That's probably why they haven't gone
| crazy with pay, which is still decent.
| wollsmoth wrote:
| It's great for the area they're located in. If you keep
| getting step raises and stock refreshers every year you
| can actually end up doing quite well. Your initial comp
| isn't going going to be super impressive though.
| ct0 wrote:
| Google is integreated in nearly every university and large
| company across the US. They aren't going anywhere.
| nfRfqX5n wrote:
| Very hn take. Nobody really needs Gmail or AWS? just look at
| what happens when AWS has an partial outage in a single region
| jollyllama wrote:
| It would be very interesting to see a breakdown of what % of Meta
| employees are remote, what % are not, and what % of each are laid
| off.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| I worked at Facebook when covid first hit. Zuckerburg treated
| everyone in the company very, very well. There was a blanket
| "don't worry about performance, take care of your families"
| guarantee that honestly was an enormous help.
|
| The thing that particularly struck me though was the way he
| handled contract workers like (some of) the kitchen staff,
| cleaners, etc. These people don't work for Facebook and he had
| zero obligation to them, yet he paid all of their wages for the
| full length of the pandemic just so they could stay afloat.
|
| If it were just about the money, I doubt he'd have done this.
| racl101 wrote:
| That's good to hear about Mark as opposed to just the bad
| stuff.
| donretag wrote:
| I worked at Ticketmaster when covid first hit. Since the
| beginning, management has always been positive and re-iterating
| that the cash reserves are substantial and the company can
| endure the loss of revenue. Then the first layoff hit. Same re-
| iteration. We are good. Then came the second layoff.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Salesforce announced their largest profits ever the same week
| they announced their first layoffs ever, I believe. The
| company, as they said, was in great shape.
| lupire wrote:
| The company is fine. The employees are not.
|
| Anyway, you don't join Ticketmaster for anything approaching
| morality. Snakes eat snakes.
| j0ba wrote:
| I'm pretty sure he didn't lose a single one of his billions
| paying them, but good on him anyways. He definitely didn't have
| to do it.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Hold up. You know they got money from the government not to lay
| people off, right?
| syntaxing wrote:
| As in a PPP loan? I haven't found this in public record, any
| source I can reference?
| cletus wrote:
| Ex-Facebooker here too, also during that time.
|
| Zuck's response to Covid definitely had upsides, particularly
| (as you mention) the continued payment of contractors even
| though offices were closed. There were downsides too. The
| "Don't worry about perf" also meant you couldn't get promoted
| that half and there was no recognition for better performance,
| which sort of sucked for people whose projects had come to
| fruition (where they reap the rewards of impact).
| Hypothetically you could get recognized in H2 2020 but in
| reality it didn't really work like that most of the time.
|
| But look, the big problem with Facebook is twofold:
|
| 1. Apple's "do not track" feature really cut the ad business
| off at its knees. You can support that on privacy grounds but
| that shouldn't obscure the issue that a platform being able to
| do that while maintaining that benefit themselves is actually a
| huge problem (and it makes a big case for Apple acting
| anticompetitively);
|
| 2. (This is the big one) Zuck has no vision for the company.
| That's the core problem. Assuming pandemic growth would
| continue (as he claims) isn't the problem.
|
| This first took form in response to the spread of
| misinformation in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Facebook
| decided to try and determine objective truth in posts. That's
| never going to work and never going to make anyone happy.
| Controversial topics get amplified. But labelling
| misinformation treats this as a content problem when it's a
| user behaviour problem. It's your weird uncle posting articles
| about chips in vaccines. The content doesn't matter. The
| behaviour does.
|
| But here's the big one: Facebook has long viewed products on
| two axes: audience and medium. Twitter, for example, goes to a
| large audience. WhatsApp, small audiences. Medium is
| essentiaally this progression: text -> image -> video -> VR ->
| AR. It explains the purchase of Oculus and fits with the
| metaverse.
|
| But there's literally no business case for the metaverse.
| Nobody wants it. Phones are convenient. Wearing headsets isn't.
| If we can ever build AR glasses (and that's far from a
| certainty) then maybe that might work but there are significant
| technical problems (eg matching focus, true blacks).
|
| So 11,000 people got let go today because of bad decisions made
| at the very top that they had nothing to do with and no control
| over. Sure Zuck has lots a bunch of paper value but whether you
| have $100 billion or $30 billion, you're fine.
| ummonk wrote:
| I feel like if we do see VR going mainstream it'll be
| something like the background screens used in filming the
| Mandalorian. Big wall displays / projections that adjust what
| they're displaying based on viewer location. All the views
| would need to wear is 3d theater glasses.
| tomcam wrote:
| Not normally a fan of the man, so this is very nice to hear.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| It's easy to be generous when times are good and your equity is
| significantly overvalued relative to fundamentals
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| And yet, many are still not generous when times are good.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Many were. And now that their stocks are down 90%, they
| aren't
| phonebucket wrote:
| > equity is significantly overvalued relative to fundamentals
|
| Which fundamentals?
|
| The $117.9 billion in revenue and $39.4 billion of net profit
| in 2021 [1]?
|
| The price to earnings ratio of 9.22, which is far lower than
| the NASDAQ average of around 28.0 [2]?
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-
| annual-... [2] https://ycharts.com/companies/NDAQ/pe_ratio
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Those stats are for now, not then. Good try though
|
| And they are vaporizing all of their FCF by reinvesting
| into the metaverse. Or were until the stock continued to
| collapse.
|
| It's fair value here if you assume the metaverse is
| actually something they can monetize in a big way. Too far
| off for most investors
| paxys wrote:
| I agree with your overall point, that Facebook employees have
| been very well taken care of, but:
|
| > There was a blanket "don't worry about performance, take care
| of your families" guarantee that honestly was an enormous help.
|
| Yet now he is firing people based on those same performance
| reviews. Plenty of people I know at Facebook feel betrayed
| because of exactly this.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| When your CEO's most famous quote is "They 'trust me.' Dumb
| fucks," you shouldn't be surprised what happens when you
| trust him.
| jiscariot wrote:
| sytelus wrote:
| I am particularly sad about current state of Meta. Regardless
| of what people think of Facebook and Zuck, he was
| unapologetically a hacker. I visited FB campus few times and
| emphasis on hacker culture everywhere was just immensely
| delightful. He knew the value of good hacker and raised bar for
| the compensation across the entire industry. Ship your code
| today was absolutely refreshing. Number of open source projects
| that has came out of Meta is unparalleled for number of
| employees. MetaAI had been well protected and is one of the
| strongest engine for progress in AI. I always viewed it as a
| company run by a hacker for hackers.
| colordrops wrote:
| NSA is also probably a great place for hackers, but their
| mission is trash. Someone once drew a 2x2 grid for me. One
| dimension was competence, and the other was right mission. I
| was then asked what is the most dangerous square on the grid.
| The answer is competent with the wrong mission.
| lupire wrote:
| What's wrong with the NSA's _mission_?
|
| Analysts stealing nudes isn't the mission.
| mike_d wrote:
| You don't agree with the tiny sliver of the NSA mission
| that you know about.
|
| 90% of the work they do is purely defensive. The offensive
| work targets bad actors and foreign governments/militaries,
| compared to other countries intelligence services that also
| engage in economic espionage.
|
| In a perfect world they wouldn't need to exist at all. But
| we don't live in that world.
| artificial wrote:
| How do you square this with the constitution? Need to
| capture all the data on the internet and sift through it
| for the greater good?
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Given the natural opaqueness of the organization I would
| likely fundamentally disagree with a great deal more of
| what the NSA mission is if I had any knowledge of it.
|
| They also basically have zero real congressional
| oversight.
|
| And just because 90% of what they do is purely defensive
| doesn't make the 10% any more acceptable (x key score,
| data mining, hooking into Google, etc.)
| colordrops wrote:
| You contradict yourself. If you don't know what they are
| doing behind the curtain, how can you be so confident
| that 90% of what they do is defensive?
|
| They don't work within the bounds of the law and
| constitution, and thus their mission is bad by my simple
| definition. I don't need to know what they do in secret.
| the-anarchist wrote:
| That is how cabals work.
| dantyti wrote:
| I get your point, but is that really such a great thing when
| it comes to business ethics? e.g., spying on people and
| hacking their private communications just to get ahead:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mark-zuckerberg-
| hacked-i...
| monetus wrote:
| He was 19 there right? Thankfully I've seen people who were
| writing keyloggers at that age be very decent, good people,
| so that article isn't an indictment of who he is now -
| plenty of things to look at more recent than that. It would
| be really nice to hear him candidly express how he fucked
| up with the rohingya, and content promotion/moderation.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > he was unapologetically a hacker
|
| Huh? Like Gates and Musk, he's not even a highly skilled
| developer, even less a hacker.
| goodpoint wrote:
| HAH, downvoted to -4 for writing this on "hacker" news.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Musk was writing games at 12 years old and Zuck still does
| stuff like this.
|
| https://m.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-
| jarvis...
| goodpoint wrote:
| And that does not make someone a highly skilled developer
| and even less a world-class genius.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| The point being discussed is "he was unapologetically a
| hacker." Making your own home automation definitely makes
| you a hacker.
| antegamisou wrote:
| Seriously I was never aware how badly the word's meaning
| has been butchered by the SV techbros until I joined the
| site.
|
| I first heard it used to traditionally describe computer
| security whizzes like Kevin Mitnick, Diffie & Hellman,
| Robert Morris (Morris worm) etc. But apparently the last
| ~15 years it's just a compliment for the next random
| corporate grifter who has 0 technical experience and is
| just in for the $$$.
|
| However Gates definitely deserves the title, he had helped
| make some significant contributions a few years before or
| right after dropping out of Harvard by co-authoring a paper
| in complexity theory next to a very prominent name in the
| field.
|
| https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92236
| 7...
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| > computer security whizzes like Kevin Mitnick
|
| Strange because Mitnick puts most of his exploits down to
| social engineering, not technical prowess.
|
| But then taking anything a self-confessed social engineer
| says about themselves at face value is obviously
| problematic.
| antegamisou wrote:
| I know but it certainly was one of the most prominent
| names when I was googling for _best hackers_ ( :-) ) back
| in 2005.
|
| Still, I prefer having someone like Kevin in mind when
| saying the word instead of any other desperate "growth
| hacker" that is trying to mislead VCs with their trite
| ideas that will forever change tech the way we know it.
| lupire wrote:
| Your claim is that solving a hard math problem (which
| takes smarts for sure!) is more "hacker" than bulding a
| web app (Zck) or an operating system (Gates)?
| antegamisou wrote:
| I understand why you would think that's what I meant to
| say, but no.
|
| If we aren't talking about computer security, _hacker_
| imo would be someone with remarkable technical
| /scientific contributions. Indeed, there may be some
| personal bias for math hackers (cryptographers,
| theorists) but then their skillsets with the respective
| programmer ones converge.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > Seriously I was never aware how badly the word's
| meaning has been butchered by the SV techbros until I
| joined the site.
|
| Spot on.
|
| > However Gates definitely deserves the title, he had
| helped make some significant contributions a few years
| back by co-authoring a paper in complexity theory next to
| a very prominent name in the field.
|
| Wait, what?
| spoils19 wrote:
| > Wait, what?
|
| Gates definitely deserves the title, he had helped make
| some significant contributions a few years back by co-
| authoring a paper in complexity theory next to a very
| prominent name in the field.
| nequo wrote:
| It might be Gates and Papadimitriou (1979): Bounds for
| Sorting by Prefix Reversal.
|
| https://dodona.ugent.be/exercises/189028897/media/gates19
| 79....
| jdale27 wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012365
| X79...
| alarge wrote:
| I don't think this is a "SV techbro" thing. In the 80s
| (when I was in college), "hacker" had a connotation of
| someone who built cool things in software, usually
| outside the "normal" approach. It was sort of the
| opposite of what eventually became software engineering -
| quick and dirty "tricks" that explored the edges of
| operating system. We looked up to hackers as repositories
| of esoteric knowledge. Long hair and hiking boots were
| common.
|
| Certainly, some of what they hacked on might be related
| to security. Or maybe they wrote little games. Or threw
| together a curses-based interface to the Unix shell. Or
| some other cool utility.
|
| As I recall, there was a concerted attempt to distinguish
| between people who exploited security vulnerabilities
| (aka "crackers") from people who could quickly build
| these useful things ("hackers").
|
| I feel like the modern use of hacker (ala "hackathon") is
| actually pretty well in line with the usage I grew up
| with.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| We have Eric S Raymond to thank for corrupting the
| meaning of "Hacker" to include himself.
| cableshaft wrote:
| > ...he had helped make some significant contributions a
| few years back...
|
| Article says his paper on it was published in 1979, which
| was 43 years ago. I wouldn't call that 'a few years
| back'. I interpreted your comment as he took a break from
| his philanthropy to come up to an efficient solution to
| the problem like 3-5 years ago.
| antegamisou wrote:
| Holy shit that's a very misleading typo. Thanks for
| pointing it out.
| cableshaft wrote:
| No problem. It's still cool, still makes him a hacker,
| just slightly less impressive than if he had done it
| while juggling the needs of his Foundation.
| Leires wrote:
| I'm sorry, but honestly fuck Meta. Conducting psychological
| experiments on users without consent, and enabling psyops
| from organizations like Cambridge Analytica, is enough for me
| to never use their services. I hope they implode as a
| company. I happily said no when people from meta approached
| me on LinkedIn.
| carimura wrote:
| Billions of people use the service for "free". As long as
| everyone knows they are what's for sale, the rest makes
| sense. Any company of this size is going to sway discourse
| so it's time to accept that. I for one do not and thus
| deleted our family accounts long ago.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > I for one do not and thus deleted our family accounts
| long ago.
|
| I have seen many people brainwashed by highly targeted
| ads and conspiracies that found them on facebook. Those
| people vote, break into congress, etc.
|
| deleting your individual account doesn't change that
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "deleting your individual account doesn't change that "
|
| It shows, that a life without FB is possible. The more
| people do it, the easier it gets.
|
| Until the network effect is overcome.
| gfd wrote:
| Not saying it makes it okay, but every company in existence
| does this to some extent. Everyone does A/B testing with
| the intent to alter user behavior (aka psychology) to
| increase their profits.
| kube-system wrote:
| Maybe every company financed by adtech does this. But
| that's a far cry from "every company in existence".
| three_seagrass wrote:
| IIRC it wasn't a generic A/B test but an experiment
| intentionally designed to manipulate the emotion of users
| and measure their reactions.
|
| In research, these types of experiments typically require
| consent..
| webmobdev wrote:
| You have a good point. But let's not forget that the
| Nazi's and the Japanese used to do incredibly invasive
| medical tests on human beings in the name of "science".
| (Even the Americans have done political and medical
| experiments on their citizens, using the CIA, on African
| Americans and criminals). All these are condemned today
| by the scientific community because of it caused great
| harm (or even death) to the subjects _who never gave
| their consent_ to such experiments. The psychological
| experiments conducted by FB on its users was equally bad
| because it looked to trigger emotions in the users (a
| useful feature for an advertising platform), some of
| which could cause users to go into depression. I don 't
| know if the FB people conducting those experiments are
| aware that even mild depression causes great stress on an
| individual, and serious depression triggers suicidal
| impulses.
|
| (This is not an attack on you or your otherwise valid
| point. Just a reminder that people should be mindful of
| their ethical obligations to get _informed consent_ and
| not cause harm to others with their experiments).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| worik wrote:
| > but every company in existence does this to some extent
|
| That is untrue.
|
| A/B testing is not the same thing as seeing how bad your
| users' mental state becomes if you muck with what they
| read.
|
| A/B testing is a tool. It can be used for good or evil.
| That was Facebook's choice how to use it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That doesn't make any sense. You decide what they read.
| You would want to know if it's harming their mental
| state. Closing your eyes to the impact you have does not
| negate the impact
| danaris wrote:
| The problem is, Facebook didn't do it to make sure they
| wouldn't cause psychological damage.
|
| They did it to make sure they could keep people's
| attention, _despite_ the psychological damage.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Is that the stated goal or your projection?
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| Not every company consciously does unethical things, no.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| Let's not confuse or conflate A/B testing with making
| ethical decisions.
| kat_rebelo wrote:
| A/B testing is a completely different thing from hiring
| Behavioral Psychologists to design your platform to be as
| addictive as possible
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30962055-irresistible
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Nope, not every, really such an ignorant statement.
| lanstin wrote:
| It isn't just the one thing, it is a pattern where when
| given a choice between respected a sense of ethics and
| decency or taking more money, Facebook as an org has at
| every instance that is publically known, has taken the
| money. The high salaries seem to be justified not by
| their technical skill but their willingness to do what
| they are told for momey without regard to conscience.
|
| Read the whistle blower report, witness the evolution
| from seeing content from your friends posted in less
| addictive chronological feed to addictive content your
| friends like in the internet sorted by addictive news.
| Hell, the site started as a PHP hack to creep on pretty
| women. They sold a bunch of data to foreign adversaries.
| For years, they let people sell ads to Nazis. They don't
| give the people faced with the psychologically brutal
| jobs of moderation get benefits. They have been a
| platform for genocide and government surveillance.
|
| I might be missing some examples of them missing some
| money to do the right thing, but nothing comes to mind.
| cj wrote:
| A/B testing compared to creating algorithms that prey on
| human vulnerabilities to drive "engagement" are 2
| categorically different things.
|
| Absolutely, go bananas A/B testing different colors for a
| "Sign Up" button or testing different pricing models.
|
| But let's not go bananas optimizing algorithms that are
| damaging to users mental health at a massive scale.
| zeruch wrote:
| A/B testing (which is getting users to respond/react to a
| UX event, and choosing which outcome is more suited to
| the business) is considerably different from "can we
| manipulate users up front, to perceive or react to things
| assertively and programmatically, even if against their
| interests?"
| londons_explore wrote:
| And without A/B testing, every product you use would be
| worse. Not only would it be less profitable, but it would
| also be harder to use, less useful, and less productive.
|
| A/B testing isn't a new thing - I'm sure the inventor of
| the wheel experimented with different shapes, and the
| buyer of the hexagonal wheel probably didn't have the
| best user experience.
|
| Multiply that by the number of people in the world and
| the number of products people use, and A/B testing is
| really up there as possibly one of the most beneficial
| ideas ever.
|
| I really don't understand those who claim it should be
| banned - I see no way that testing two different versions
| of a website with people who desire to use that website
| can bring sufficient harm to outweigh those massive
| benefits.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| > _And without A /B testing, every product you use would
| be worse._
|
| Worse _for whom_? I feel like a lot of the A /B testing
| results in more revenue, a more addictive app, and less
| user satisfaction, because they're not testing for
| anything beneficial to the user, because at least with
| FB, you're not the customer, their advertisers are the
| customer.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > And without A/B testing, every product you use would be
| worse. Not only would it be less profitable, but it would
| also be harder to use, less useful, and less productive.
|
| Do we live in the same universe? As far as I can tell,
| software keeps trending _worse_. Usability is terrible,
| options and settings keep getting moved around and
| hidden, software is less responsive than it used to be...
| fragmede wrote:
| The specific test that did it for me, is that Facebook
| ran this experiment where they logged users out and then
| wouldn't let them log them back in despite the correct
| password, just to toy with them to see how long/hard they
| would keep trying to login, in order to see how addicted
| they were to Facebook.
|
| I was in the "B" group, and felt so humiliated at how
| many times I tried to reset my password to get into
| Facebook.
| techsplooge wrote:
| Oops! I think I may have been part of the team that ran
| that test. I get that you're annoyed but tests like that
| give us really valuable insights that help us make the
| product better :)
| ulchar wrote:
| Could you give an example of the insights you gained by
| running this experiment?
| techsplooge wrote:
| We can look at the different demographics of people who
| tried to log in less than others, and try determine _why_
| they aren 't as hooked as others, and work to rectify by
| improving their experience!
| kuramitropolis wrote:
| I _still_ get that sometimes - I think someone left it on
| for all the Tor nodes in Germany...
| rjbwork wrote:
| Wow. That is insanely user hostile and borderline
| gaslighting/psychological torture. That is truly one of
| the most insane experiments I've ever hard of someone
| running.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| i agree, Zuck should be put on trial for violating the
| Geneva convention because some people couldnt log into
| facebook.
| anonomousename wrote:
| Is there any evidence of this? Especially for people that
| use a password manager, this seems incredibly stupid on
| Facebooks side.
| strulovich wrote:
| Never heard of this one. Any articles about it?
| barrenko wrote:
| Others have done it after as well. Hell, it may not have
| originated at FB.
| fragmede wrote:
| It was a footnote in the wake of the main psychological
| experiments facebook ran on its users back in 2014*,
| which is overshadowing my searches for this particular
| detail.
|
| * https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/fac
| ebook...
| epolanski wrote:
| > And without A/B testing, every product you use would be
| worse
|
| Imagine thinking that seriously.
| dlkf wrote:
| It's a completely ubiquitous practice. So either it does
| generally help, or every software company ever doesn't
| know what they are doing.
|
| To me the latter view is the one that's hard to take
| seriously.
| r00fus wrote:
| > And without A/B testing, every product you use would be
| worse.
|
| The primary goal of A/B testing is to see what's more
| profitable.
|
| If that happens to result in better UI that's a side
| effect.
|
| In fact, it could result in less usability (relevant to
| this conversation, it probably resulted in the
| frustrating "algorithm-based" timeline at
| FB/Twitter/etc).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| At least in some cases.
|
| A/B testing lead to the development of effective "dark
| patterns" in UI that trick users into doing things they
| don't want or don't understand, and then making it
| difficult to undo.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The hexagonal wheel probably wasn't very profitable
| either.
| mzd348 wrote:
| But it comes in handy in the alternate universe where
| pi=3.
| eecc wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
| mzd348 wrote:
| My thinking is that in this alternate universe where
| pi=3, circles (with diameter 2 * pi * r) will look like
| hexagons (which have diameter 2 * 3 * r), so wheels would
| have to be hexagonal.
| tomrod wrote:
| Certainly, because it probably never existed as a
| function for wheel. Do you have any evidence that the
| "well duh" criteria wasn't used, and hex wheels show up
| in the archeological record?
| milosmns wrote:
| > > The primary goal of A/B testing is to see what's more
| profitable.
|
| Well, I think I'll provide a disagreeing opinion. :)
|
| I assume this opinion probably comes from your past
| experiences, and I believe it is true in many cases.
| Since I'm not American and have never worked in an
| American corporate environment, I can't say what is true
| over there... but my experience in EU and Canada with
| A/A/B, A/B/C and typical A/B testing (as well as building
| such testing tools for others) was not like that.
|
| For example, when building tutorials for users,
| profitability is far from being the primary objective.
| Same goes for building documentation, programming
| languages, open-source software, internal tooling and
| other such things.
|
| Of course, I get that in the end, profitability is the
| primary goal of the company (with some exceptions). But I
| maintain that not all A/B tests have profitability as
| their primary goal, which makes the previous statement an
| incorrect generalization IMO.
| sciclaw wrote:
| Agreed. A/B testing helps you meet a desired goal. The
| desired goal is where ethical questions come in.
|
| For example, I have used A/B testing to see find ways to
| help users get a task done with fewer clicks, saving them
| time.
| ouid wrote:
| This is so wrong in its conclusion, that its hard to know
| where to start. First, we should be clear that we are
| talking about involuntary, undisclosed A/B testing.
|
| I have not experienced a product become better for the
| user as a result of involuntary A/B testing in my entire
| adult life.
|
| Producers and consumer have both an _adversarial
| relationship_ and a mutually beneficial relationship, and
| the distinction between these two is essentially the
| split between voluntary A /B tests and involuntary ones.
| In the adversarial component, the producer is trying to
| figure out how to extract more money from the consumer,
| without improving the product. Alternatively, (and
| equivalently), how to make the product cheaper, but also
| worse, in a way that yhe customer doesnt notice (with
| their wallet). A proactive version of the "market for
| lemons".
|
| For instance, if you A/B test your cancellation process
| to minimize the number of people who cancel their
| subscriptions, you will almost certainly do something
| that makes you some additional money, and is also
| unambiguously evil.
|
| Any A/B testing that is mutual benefit to consumers and
| producers can be done with consent, by volunteers. And
| the miniscule amount of scientific rigor you would lose
| by doing so is not worth the tremendous sacrifice we have
| seen in quality of consumables in the past 2 decades
| (probably longer, but i do not have the personal
| experience to go longer)
|
| You might be compelled to describe involuntary A/B
| testing as a strategy for maximizing evil subject to the
| constraint that it be legal, but it often dips its toes
| into seeing what is illegal but still profitable, and is
| capable of fundamentally undermining our legal system and
| even our political system.
|
| The technology has grown more powerful. The addition of
| computers that can optimize essentially arbitrary
| objective functions has serious existential implications
| for humanity.
|
| A blanket ban on the practice, incurring the total
| dissolution of any corporate entity found guilty of the
| practice of involuntary A/B testing, would be a start.
| dlkf wrote:
| > I have not experienced a product become better for the
| user as a result of involuntary A/B testing in my entire
| adult life.
|
| If you did, how would you know?
| ouid wrote:
| well, for starters, there would have to have been a
| product that improved at all. Those are already rare
| enough that I can enumerate them, and in each of those
| instances involuntary A/B testing can be ruled out for
| other reasons.
|
| When craigslist added the map that shows you where all of
| the people are offering the thing you are interested in.
| That was a very good change, but thats pretty far from
| how craigslist operates.
|
| When dominos stopped serving hot glue on cardboard, its
| pretty easy to see how that didnt come about by furtive
| A/B testing. They were pretty confident people would like
| the new pizza more than the old pizza. So they told them
| about it. Boy did that work for dominos.
|
| That actually speaks more generally to my point. If
| you're making a change that you think people will like,
| you tell them about it, because even if it turns out that
| they dont like it more, the fact that they thought they
| would and you did it generates quite a lot of good will
| for them.
| SahAssar wrote:
| > A/B testing isn't a new thing - I'm sure the inventor
| of the wheel experimented with different shapes, and the
| buyer of the hexagonal wheel probably didn't have the
| best user experience.
|
| Consider yourself that inventor, would you A/B test
| hexagonal vs round?
| andsoitis wrote:
| I could have hypotheses around wheel dimensions (e.g.
| width, diameter), materials, etc. that are absolutely
| great targets for A/B testing.
| SahAssar wrote:
| That sounds like a clear no, you already know the answer
| to the hypothesized A/B test.
|
| As for the other aspects they sound like great targets
| for testing within different use-cases, but I'm not sure
| why that'd be an A/B test as we think of them now.
| brundolf wrote:
| I'm sorry, you could make this case about some kinds of
| telemetry, but specifically not A/B testing. Speaking
| from work experience: A/B testing doesn't look into the
| nuances of usability or productivity, it looks at easy-
| to-quantify metrics like conversion rates and money
| spent. These metrics rarely align with a better
| experience for the user (outside of like, prettier
| buttons and stuff), and instead tend to result in less-
| informative, less-agentic software (information and
| choice often distract from conversions!)
| andrewmutz wrote:
| That's not true. I've done A/B tests in business software
| on how long it takes the user to get their job done on a
| data-intensive form.
|
| It's a great tool, and its impact all depends on how you
| use it.
| g_p wrote:
| This is an interesting example, and perhaps pushes part
| of the blame and dislike for A/B testing onto tech
| companies' incentives.
|
| If you're building a tool to make life easier for the
| user, something that gives them a better experience is
| your optimal outcome. This seems like a scenario where
| A/B can produce a good outcome.
|
| The challenge is when you throw in an ad-based revenue
| model, and the A/B testing is then optimized for the
| opposite (eyeball-hours, linear metres scrolled per
| session, ad spots passed, ads clicked) - engagement-based
| business models end up (I'd argue) A/B optimizing for the
| opposite of what their users want, to get them to spend
| longer doing a task they could have done quicker.
| MikePlacid wrote:
| > The challenge is when you throw in an ad-based revenue
| model
|
| The funny thing is - the ad-based revenue model is not
| the only possible variant. Last time I've checked
| Facebook's profits per user were $7 per quarter, that is
| $28 a year. At the same time I am paying LiveJournal $25
| a year for the ad-free version. Just taking my money
| looks like a much better model in many respects:
|
| - less overhead: a lot of people doing these studies how
| to force me to look at something I do not want to look at
| will be free to do something more useful to the society;
|
| - streamlined relationship between me and my publisher:
| in this model there is no advertiser who can say "I do
| not like these texts, no revenue for you".
|
| That's why I prefer to pay for some Substack authors,
| like Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald, than to try to fish
| their texts for free amid some sea of "clever"
| advertising (hey AI testers, I bought this thing already,
| what's the point of forcing it on me again and again?).
|
| I kinda wish that Brave model (my money distributed
| between sites I visited) got more traction. It looks much
| more healthy.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The number of people willing to use Facebook today vastly
| exceeds the number willing to pay $25/yr to use Facebook.
|
| I bet by at least 4 orders of magnitude and likely 5 or
| 6.
| brundolf wrote:
| I'm having a difficult time imagining a situation where
| people's actual productivity using a piece of software
| can be so easily measured. I'm sure it happens, but I
| think it's safe to say this is the exception to the rule
| when it comes to A/B testing
| andrewmutz wrote:
| Data entry
| scott_w wrote:
| You can measure the time between two key actions that
| operate as a proxy for task completion.
| Retric wrote:
| There are much better methodologies for speeding up
| worker productivity than A/B testing. A/B testing is
| designed to extract information from people you can't do
| more complicated tests such as eye tracking or motion
| studies with.
|
| The major issue with A/B testing in the workplace is it
| causes confusion and slows people down when you change
| things. Which makes these tests really expensive even if
| they are seemingly easy to preform. So, I would call it
| useful but flawed.
| dado3212 wrote:
| As someone who's run literally hundreds of A/B tests,
| many of them on the backs of UX research with users in
| the field, people have no idea what they want. The
| anecdata is a place to investigate, but never the end of
| the journey.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The fear with direct user research is that, unless you
| have a team and budget for getting enough of a sample,
| one-on-ones might not only be unhelpful but actively
| harmful if you implement something that solves that
| customers' problem but otherwise gets in the way for
| other customers.
| costcofries wrote:
| This is complete BS. I run hundreds of a/b tests each
| quarter and I specifically refuse to run the types of
| experiments you allude to. My a/b testing is all about
| helping users achieve the things (the outcomes) that they
| want to achieve by using our product in the first place.
| If we can help them do that, with more ease, then we are
| creating a better experience.
|
| Perhaps you should just agree that, "not all a/b testing
| is the same".
| fragmede wrote:
| How is that BS? Other companies don't have you there to
| say no to them and are definitely running the kind of
| experiments you're too good for.
| costcofries wrote:
| Did you even read my whole comment? It's BS because
| he/she/they blanketed it without taking any nuance which
| i tried to do with my comment + an example!
|
| Quote - "Speaking from work experience: A/B testing
| doesn't look into the nuances of usability or
| productivity, it looks at easy-to-quantify metrics like
| conversion rates and money spent"
| blarghyblarg wrote:
| ah yes, the good old "Let's A/B test our capability to
| influence emotional states using the news feeds."
|
| Totally the same as A/B testing button placement.
| Totally.
| vippy wrote:
| 10000% this.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's a matter of degree and kind.
|
| There's also a neat sleight of hand here. Your inventor
| of the wheel surely tested multiple variants to optimize
| for the utility of his invention _to the user_. The A /B
| testing that's problematic is about optimizing _taking
| advantage of_ the user. That doesn 't lead to better
| experience, but the opposite. This is what's increasingly
| popular, and this is what people complain about or want
| to see banned.
|
| Related: attention economy is predicated on bad user
| experience, because it makes money from _friction_.
| bumby wrote:
| There's a reason Tristan Harris called upon SV to avoid
| "A/B testing ourselves into the 'gradient descent of
| mankind'".
|
| My qualms are not so much with the method as the morals
| that guide it. It's agnostic but when operationalized in
| a faulty moral framework can definitely lead to bad
| results.
| xzlzx wrote:
| A/B testing crosses a fundamental line when people are
| the product.
| Lutger wrote:
| I doubt that the mentioned 'psychological experiments'
| are just A/B testing. There is a very strong case to be
| made that Trump and Brexit would not have happened
| without Facebook, and those are just two examples.
| headhasthoughts wrote:
| What's wrong about conducting psychological experiments on
| users? Everyone who signed up for Facebook agreed to the
| ToS.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| I'll cede no ground to anyone on loathing the corporate
| world, to the extent that I've all but abandoned work and
| the cash economy (at the cost of considerable personal
| privation).
|
| But humans are complex beings, and it's just _realistic_ to
| view us all with some nuance rather than casually tossing
| everyone into good /evil baskets. The gp outlined an
| example of decent behaviour, and it remains just that
| regardless of our attitudes on other grounds towards
| Zuckersnuffles and/or Meta. Even murderers can be kind and
| decent people given in some contexts (witnessed at first
| hand).
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| That is such a poor reason to not like Meta, among many,
| many reasons. All meta did was publish their results. The
| backlash ensured that no other companies shared results--
| but AB testing is bigger than ever across the industry.
|
| Now if you had said "fuck meta because my feed is filled
| with an unintelligible mix of baby photos and political
| screeds," I'd totally follow.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| There's always this, as well -
|
| "On 6 December 2021, approximately a hundred Rohingya
| refugees launched a $150 billion lawsuit against
| Facebook, alleging that it did not do enough to prevent
| the proliferation of anti-Rohingya hate speech because it
| was interested in prioritizing engagement."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_content_management
| _co...
| jrm4 wrote:
| I'm sorry, but the "A/B" responses to this sentiment are
| some of the worst euphemistic cope I've ever seen. You all
| really need to get out of your "tech" shells and take
| seriously this idea that "running nonconsensual psych
| experiments on humans" is a fundamentally _evil_ thing to
| do.
| jahsome wrote:
| I am interested in this line of logic, but I'm not sure I
| would go so far.
|
| I feel engaging in commerce in any way at all is
| impossible without being "evil" under this definition.
|
| Aren't advertisements at their core unconsented
| psychological manipulation? What about retail store
| design? Is providing customer service altogether just
| manipulation?
|
| I think I take issue with the word "evil." It seems to
| imply a certain malice or intent to harm, which just
| isn't logical, given the context.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Don't forget that the company profited from being a
| platform used to organize a genocide[1].
|
| [1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-
| faceb...
| leesec wrote:
| >Conducting psychological experiments on users without
| consent
|
| This is a really malicious way to describe showing two
| users the same button but in different locations
| vippy wrote:
| Yeah, because that's _definitely_ what folks are
| concerned with. A /B testing of button locations, and not
| feed algorithms designed to manipulate users.
| prezjordan wrote:
| This is not what happened https://www.theguardian.com/tec
| hnology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Oh come on, you know that's not what he is talking about.
| He is talking about algorithmic engagement-keeping.
| concordDance wrote:
| Do you just fundamentally hate the concept of an A/B test?
| Or do you just hate the idea of letting people outside the
| company know the results?
| camdat wrote:
| > Conducting psychological experiments on users without
| consent
|
| Link pls
| WoahNoun wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/30/facebo
| ok-...
|
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1416405111
| camdat wrote:
| Anything from newer than 10 years ago?
| worik wrote:
| That is when it happened.
| smsm42 wrote:
| So, Cambridge Analytica. Facebook has been used as a source
| of electioneering data for years before that. See for
| example Eitan Hersh's testimony. In fact, I've read
| articles bragging about how inventive the political
| technology using social networking profiles is, for a
| couple of electoral cycles before that - they may still be
| somewhere in HN archives even. And of course, selling the
| very same data to advertisers, maybe repackaged a bit
| differently but the same source and same data set, is the
| whole business model of Facebook. And it somehow never
| bothered anyone until Cambridge Analytica. Why is that?
| artificial wrote:
| Most don't have a problem uploading address books and
| contacts into these platforms. I think it depends which
| team it is. Companies? Cool! Political Party you agree
| with, sure! They mined the social graph and Zuck reached
| out to them and said they're on the same team and didn't
| restrict access while they mined 50 million people. Don't
| forget Zygna!
| treeman79 wrote:
| Bigger concern is Facebook actively blocking stories the
| government doesn't like.
| throwawaymeta4 wrote:
| Its much much worse than just psychological experiments.
| Meta currently stands accused as an enabler of a genocide
| in Myanmar [1], and provides a platform to spread massive
| hate against Muslims in India and elsewhere [2,3,4,5]. For
| folks trying to do bothsidesism here and bring out how
| great they've been, I am sorry but there is no excuse for
| enablers of Fascism.
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-
| facebo... 2. https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-
| hate-speech-india-... 3.
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-services-are-used-
| to-s... 4. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/08/985143101/stop-
| lying-muslim-r... 5.
| https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-
| zuckerberg...
| j0hnyl wrote:
| It's naive of you to think that this is a Meta problem.
| Just by surfing the internet you're subject to all the same
| psyops by organizations that are arguably even worse than
| CA.
| smodo wrote:
| It doesn't say that's what they think. About Meta though,
| we know. 'Others are worse' is not a convincing argument.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| But hating everything makes your ideology prima facie bad
| Siira wrote:
| Conducting "psychological" experiments without "consent" is
| the only way to do science. Perhaps in this instance the
| knowledge gained is used in the ad industry and not
| benefiting society, but the nature of the research is to be
| admired and replicated.
| PKop wrote:
| either they charge for social media or they attempt to grow
| by ad targeting, or social media is maybe banned through
| regulation to stop what you describe.
|
| I think maybe your beef is with the nature of technology
| today and/or our current culture that enables/glorifies
| it's mass use. What's the solution?
| cloutchaser wrote:
| WoahNoun wrote:
| Yes, however, Obama campaign was very different from CA.
|
| >The Obama campaign collected data with its own campaign
| app, complied with Facebook's terms of service and, most
| important in my view, received permission from users
| before using the data.
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/clarence-page/ct-
| pers...
|
| CA lied to users and violated FB's ToS.
|
| >And numerous other developers, including the makers of
| such games as FarmVille and the dating app Tinder, also
| used the same Facebook developer tool that Cambridge
| Analytica used.
|
| >Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained
| access to information from people after they chose to
| download his app. His app, "thisisyourdigitallife,"
| offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on
| Facebook as "a research app used by psychologists."
| Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app. In so
| doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access
| information such as the city they set on their profile,
| or content they had liked, as well as more limited
| information about friends who had their privacy settings
| set to allow it.
|
| >Although Kogan gained access to this information in a
| legitimate way and through the proper channels that
| governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did
| not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing
| information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge
| Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies,
| he violated our platform policies. When we learned of
| this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook
| and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he
| had given data to that the information had been
| destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all
| certified to us that they destroyed the data.
|
| https://about.fb.com/news/2018/03/suspending-cambridge-
| analy...
| Dangeranger wrote:
| This statement is a false equivalency.[0] The Obama 2012
| campaign did not violate the Facebook TOS, and received
| permission to acess the data from users.
|
| Please stop trying to use what-aboutism to fuel a
| partisan divide.
|
| [0] https://www.foxbusiness.com/features/obama-campaign-
| advisers...
| uluyol wrote:
| Link? This is upsetting if true.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| Starting around 2016 the New York Times decided that
| coverage had to be negative:
| https://twitter.com/KelseyTuoc/status/1588231892792328192
|
| Consider how this may have helped you to develop your
| opinion.
| richbell wrote:
| They gave specific examples of negative things that
| Facebook has done. This is a pretty shallow dismissal of
| their criticism, even if their comment is a bit heavy-
| handed.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| I won't rehash the A/B discussion, there's plenty of
| other people talking about it.
|
| The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a
| meaningful impact on the elections. Facebook was dumb to
| allow partner apps access to so much data and rely on
| those partners to follow Facebook's policies, but they
| recognized the mistake and probably overcorrected.
|
| All the other coverage probably serves to reinforce and
| amplify negative sentiments about Facebook, and a ton of
| it wasn't deserved. People cite the Rohingya, I remember
| also a news cycle about Facebook profiting from hate
| speech.
|
| Those things happened, but Facebook had also built
| probably the most expensive and effective hate speech
| filtering operation in the world. That it be 100%
| effective is not a reasonable goal. With billions of
| pieces of content even 99.999% effectiveness will result
| in examples that the press can point to reinforce a
| narrative about Facebook profiting from hate speech.
|
| I doubt there ever was any profit in serving hate speech.
| The ad revenue from filter misses would not have been big
| enough to pay for the filtering operation itself.
| richbell wrote:
| > The Cambridge Analytica thing probably didn't have a
| meaningful impact on the elections.
|
| That's a pretty big claim to make without evidence. At
| the very least I think we can agree that political
| parties wouldn't be investing so much money into social
| media campaigns (analytics, marketing, etc.) if they
| didn't think it was impactful.
| blobbers wrote:
| Take my downvote. "Psychological experiments" on users is
| what every company; user and market research. Enabling
| "psyops" is simply building a platform; this isn't the
| first platform that his been misused or scraped for other
| purposes. You get spam robo dialers? It wasn't from meta...
| etc. etc. etc.
| rossjudson wrote:
| You seem very sure of what you know, and very confident
| about how the people working at Meta think and act. Do you
| have any direct experience? Or know anyone who works there?
| jjav wrote:
| Not OP but the things OP is saying are well covered in
| the press, no need to know anyone there.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Those are just facts that have been reported credibly.
| There's worse they didn't mention. Why are you being so
| reactionary?
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| I think they were making a statement about the company
| not the staff.
| andirk wrote:
| Remember that Facebook "whistleblower" revealed that
| Facebook "put profits over people"? That will never not be
| funny.
| godelski wrote:
| We can condone the good behaviors and condemn the bad ones.
| It is important to do both because if all we do is condemn
| then there is no pressure to do the right thing. If all you
| can do is evil then you'll only ever be evil and criticism
| will fall upon deaf ears.
|
| A lot of people here agree with you about Meta's faults,
| even me. But that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the good
| they've done. Even if it isn't much and even if it is
| vastly outweighed by the bad. We should still use positive
| reinforcement to pressure companies to do the right thing.
| murat124 wrote:
| Hear hear.
| NoPicklez wrote:
| Hear hear.
| jahsome wrote:
| I understand the sentiment. I agree there should be
| accountability.
|
| With that in mind, I'd like to point out root merely
| expressed an anecdote about above and beyond humane
| treatment of employees from the CEO. Parent described the
| hacker-friendly culture. Those appear to be first hand
| accounts.
|
| How does your comment relate contribute to that discussion?
|
| Further, how does over the top and genericized outrage and
| harm wishing on a cohort of innocent people advance society
| in any meaningful ways?
| webmobdev wrote:
| _Work culture_ and _values_ both matter. I found @Leires
| comment insightful because it jarred me to the reality
| that while we are appreciating the good in someone, we
| shouldn 't forget their capability to be bad. Can a
| Gandhian be comfortable working at Hitler's gas chamber?
| Both had amazing leadership qualities. What attracts us
| to either of them are the values we think they represent.
| zaptheimpaler wrote:
| Your argument is essentially that the company treated its
| employees well, so who cares what it did to users. Who
| gave you the right to decide the discussion is framed
| around how Meta treats employees rather than what it does
| for the entire world?
| jahsome wrote:
| I made no such argument.
|
| I asked a question, no conclusions drawn. If I had a
| point, it's that the comment was off topic with regard to
| the comment it replied to, and warrants its own tree of
| discussion. It was a rant; There wasn't even an attempt
| at a segue or good faith effort to provide contrast.
|
| What "gives me the right to decide how the discussion is
| framed" are the hn guidelines (which you violated
| yourself by presenting a strawman).
| aussiesnack wrote:
| But is it compulsory to be so Manichaean? Have you really
| never seen someone (or group of people, or company)
| behave well in one context, and badly in another?
| kenhwang wrote:
| I never had much complaint about Facebook's engineering
| culture, it seems like they get more right than the other
| giant tech companies.
|
| Facebook's failures were always with business morals and
| product direction, and it's the latter that they really
| really screwed up on this time with the attempt to turn their
| cash cow into TikTok and the investment into the metaverse.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Maybe it got to his head, like child movie stars that never
| enjoyed a normal childhood? Being a hacker is no guarantee of
| being a well adapted adult, specially if your hobby
| transforms into an international behemoth in just 15 years.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Meta may sound like an unethical company frequently from a
| product standpoint, but Zuckerberg is a very good guy in
| general and he treats employees very well.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| Reminds me of Hank Scorpio
| kridsdale2 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Scorpio's lair of paradise was inspired by
| Microsoft in Redmond. In the 90s, it was legendarily posh
| with how well the people were treated. Nobody in corporate
| america had that quality of fitness centers, on-site cafes,
| etc.
|
| Google was the next to up the ante in mid-2000s with things
| like daycare, a ball pit, food, drycleaning. All equally
| mind-blowing to the populace who expected a workplace would
| have an elevator, and a coffee machine nobody refills.
| Exmoor wrote:
| I don't believe MS ever had onsite fitness centers.
| Employees got subsidized memberships to offsite gyms, but
| the only things onsite were/are playfields and showers
| for bike commuters, etc.
|
| Food might have been okay by 90s standards, but was
| pretty mediocre overall until ~2010 when they started
| redoing all the cafes to have a higher quality food.
| Still, it was slightly subsidized but not free and many,
| many employees went offsite or brought food from home.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Yes, there was a gym next to the playfields on main
| campus.
| callmeal wrote:
| Company over Country right?
| consumer451 wrote:
| Are there any examples of a CEO choosing country over
| company in the modern USA?
|
| Not defending Zuck here, would just like to read about that
| if possible.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| He is not perfect but the only person I can think of is
| Sal Khan of khanacademy. His content is completely free
| and provides free prep for SAT and other subjects.
| vincentkriek wrote:
| Would be against the law right? You are required to
| maximize stockholder value
| prottog wrote:
| > You are required to maximize stockholder value
|
| This is legal fiction that has no bearing in the kinds of
| subjects that it often gets brought up in. Simply put,
| those responsible for a company (e.g. officers of a
| corporation) have a fiduciary duty towards its owners
| (e.g. the shareholders), and it means that the owners
| would have legal recourse against the officers if they
| were provably pissing money away on things that don't
| benefit the company at all.
|
| That latter part is a high bar and critically does not
| mean that they are, for example, legally required to
| prioritize quarterly profits over the long-term success
| of the company or to pay employees as little as possible,
| as is often mentioned. It just means that officers must
| take action that furthers the interests of the company in
| the way that they prudently and reasonably see fit.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > legally required to prioritize quarterly profits over
| the long-term success of the company or to pay employees
| as little as possible, as is often mentioned.
|
| Obviously this isn't a legal requirement, but pretty much
| every CEO would be out of a job if they choose country
| over company. Shareholders are generally not interested
| in furthering national geopolitics.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > Shareholders are generally not interested in furthering
| national geopolitics.
|
| I don't think that's true. Look at all the corporate
| action about Ukraine for an example of interest in
| geopolitics - lots of donations, public statements, etc.
| And then there's companies actually in Ukraine, or next
| door - when politics gets unstable enough, contributing
| to the stability/security of the country over the short
| term of the company looks like the right move. Evaluating
| when that point is reached is probably about as
| contentious as any other decision in politics.
| danaris wrote:
| This is a popular deflection of responsibility that is,
| in fact, entirely false.
|
| You are required to abide by shareholder decisions at
| official meetings, and generally not act against
| shareholder interests, but there is absolutely no law
| stating that you must act to maximize shareholder value.
| (And it's a damn good thing that's the case; things are
| bad enough as it is.)
| gausswho wrote:
| How does this fictional canard stop being posted to HN?
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I think it's good if it gets posted and debunked as often
| as possible to maximize the knowledge that it is false
| colinmhayes wrote:
| You're required to put forth a good faith effort to act
| in the shareholders interests, but no court would say
| choosing country over company breaks that law. The CEO
| would certainly be fired though, so it still won't
| happen.
| artificial wrote:
| Quest CEO refused to spy on Americans.
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa-
| punished...
| yonaguska wrote:
| Mike Lindell, arguably. He lost a ton of business by
| injecting himself into politics and doing what he thought
| was putting his country first.
| dtjb wrote:
| I'd be interested in the stats, but my perception is that
| he (and his products) are much more well-known now than
| before. I always saw his foray into politics as a very
| aggressive niching strategy. He saw Trump's momentum and
| hitched his wagon.
|
| He might have lost Costco and their low margins, but he
| picked up an army of high-margin D2C sympathizers who
| have been shown to be generous with their money (if the
| cause is right).
| lupire wrote:
| Lindell just wanted to sell to gullible Trunp fans and
| make himself a celebrity and power broker for a fascist.
| The good of the country wasn't a factor.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Blame Sheryl Sandberg for many of the unethical decisions
| worik wrote:
| > Blame Sheryl Sandberg for many of the unethical decisions
|
| Yea. Helpful to have a token girl to take the blame for the
| boys. Helpful
| gausswho wrote:
| Suggesting she was a token girl is the greater misogyny
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| ipaddr wrote:
| Not a great look to introduce sexism into the
| conversation. Nor labeling grown adults as names we call
| little children.
|
| Sheryl was given credit for creating current facebook
| culture. Before Sheryl employees had unaudited to your
| private photos for example. Are you going to say she
| deserves no credit and we better credit the boys instead?
| If not then she must accept any failures that come from
| that culture.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| People are multifaceted. I'm sure he is good to his
| employees, like people are describing, but that ain't it.
|
| He's repeatedly betrayed user trust, and eventually what goes
| around comes around.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| People are multifaceted. I'm sure he is good to
| his employees, like people are describing, but that ain't
| it.
|
| This is refreshing to read. I would like to see more of
| this rather than "Zuck good" or "Zuck bad."
|
| Of course, for those immediately impacted and hurt/angered
| by his actions I certainly wouldn't blame anybody for
| venting.
|
| But it would be much more productive to talk about "thing
| Zuck did good" or "thing Zuck did bad."
| worik wrote:
| > He's repeatedly betrayed user trust, and eventually what
| goes around comes around.
|
| This. Yes.
|
| Facebook came within a whisker of establishing themselves
| as the central communications hub for the planet. They
| ruined their own business from greed. Grew it huge (instead
| of long steady growth) and it has collapsed.
|
| Greed
|
| It would not have been a good thing if they became "...
| He's repeatedly betrayed user trust, and eventually what
| goes around comes around. " so we are all better off,
| probably.
|
| I hope the story of Zuck and FB become business school
| lessons on "greed is bad and will destroy you". Not what
| they taught me at business school (I was there in 2008) but
| they should have
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Greed
|
| No, incompetence and naivety.
|
| They were young, dumb and all from the same
| college/upbringing.
| GCA10 wrote:
| There's a classic Tim O'Reilly line about the importance
| of "creating more value than you capture."
|
| Early Facebook was very good at this! I used their ads
| platform a lot in 2009-10 to raise engagement for a small
| non-profit that I was helping. The Facebook experience
| was simple, easy and great value for the money.
|
| And then the ads ecosystem gradually got "optimized." Our
| nonprofit still kept using it for a while, but it was
| clear that the focus no longer was in providing great
| experiences for us -- or our intended audience. Pricing
| went up; as did efforts to steer me into packages that
| worked better for FB than me. It was as if someone said:
| "Stop creating 2x the value you capture. Move toward
| 1.01x"
|
| FB made many billions over the next decade. But it
| drained the ecosystem's goodwill. Old-economy industrial
| giants usually took 80-100 years to paint themselves into
| this corner. Kind of amazing that FB has done it in less
| than 20.
| jjcon wrote:
| How exactly were they greedy in particular? To me it
| seems they are doing what every other company is, I'm
| unaware of Meta engaging in anything greedy that is out
| of the ordinary, is that not the case (genuinely asking)
| and why do you think that is tied to these layoffs?
| m0llusk wrote:
| They tried to connect people, but that didn't make money.
| So they pivoted to ads, but that didn't bring steady
| growth. So they fueled participation with tools like the
| Like button which stoked conflict from the start. Had
| they been cautious about their steps at any point then
| problems could have been avoided.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| There's the video metrics scandal:
| https://www.ccn.com/facebook-lied-about-video-metrics/
|
| They lied to content creators about how much money could
| be earned by switching to video on FB. This bankrupted
| multiple businesses, including Collegehumor and
| FunnyOrDie: https://twitter.com/adamconover/status/118320
| 9875859333120?l...
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Zuckerberg was hauled in to US Congress more than once
| and was chastised for all kinds of wrongdoing. E.g.
| spreading foreign propaganda in US elections, encouraging
| extremist violence. FB chase for user engagement has made
| it into the modern version of a gladiatorial freak show.
| If broadcasting two one legged gladiators fight to the
| death will draw eyeballs, Zuckbot will do it.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Greed and arrogance. Zuckerberg doesn't respect his users
| and everyone knows it. Eventually you break trust to a
| degree where it can't be repaired--no "investments" or
| "metrics" or "new offerings" will fix it.
|
| You can fool some of the people some of the time...
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is the key thing that people need to realize. Being a
| very nice person is simply not enough to be a good person.
| Hitler was famously kind to his dogs and domestic staff. He
| even personally intervened to save Ernst Hess, his Jewish
| CO from WWI. Big-time "but I have black friends" vibes.
| bergenty wrote:
| Honestly I'm on the Zucc train. I want him to succeed at VR and
| bring about the paradigm shift. I honestly don't get all the
| sheep like hate he gets on the internet.
| infecto wrote:
| Same boat as you. I understand the privacy concerns and the
| fear that Facebook is changing society for the worse, all of
| this is worth discussing but I don't see it as an evil
| company trying to actively ruin people.
|
| Truly excited to see how far they can push VR and AI.
| JohnAaronNelson wrote:
| Facebook (and social media in general) has made the world a
| more divided place full of sadder and angrier people. He runs
| a company that optimizes for that scenario while accruing
| unimaginable sums of capital, and he doubled down with Meta.
| Hmm I wonder why some people are not fans.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Social media is just a tool for political atomization.
|
| People were already angry on AM radio and cable "news"
| channels. Gerrymandering works on political maps and
| demographics - politicians have figured that by boxing
| voters into bins and away from the center, they can have
| their votes forever.
| xvector wrote:
| Meta has been amazing and enables me to talk to family
| members anywhere in the world easily.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > If it were just about the money
|
| Sadly, today's layoffs were probably related to it not being
| just about the money then... no matter how good your intentions
| are, when the money runs out, it's gone.
| dunkmaster wrote:
| Even Zuckerberg acknowledges that it is about money in the
| linked article:
|
| "Fundamentally, we're making all these changes for two
| reasons: our revenue outlook is lower than we expected at the
| beginning of this year, and we want to make sure we're
| operating efficiently across both Family of Apps and Reality
| Labs. "
| mathverse wrote:
| It is about trimming the fat mainly. Meta is still
| absolutely a money printing machine.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| In fact, this is one of those truisms about the "down"
| side of the classical business cycle - that recessions
| partly function as an excuse to cut inefficiencies. How
| accurate this truism is, I don't know.
| tibbon wrote:
| Proof is that Meta stock is up today. I don't like this
| system of value, but it's what we've got.
| trey-jones wrote:
| Today's price action is rarely a reflection of today's
| news.
| groos wrote:
| "trimming the fat" - this is such an unfortunate phrase.
| In evolutionary terms, fat is what let species survive
| lean periods.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| This _is_ a lean period, and the fat that meta had
| enabled them to cut fat rather than cut muscle or bone,
| making them now more lean, but still strong. The fat they
| had served its purpose similar to how fat serves its
| purpose during famine.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| and in modern terms it makes you a social pariah. Really
| though trimming the fat probably refers to a butcher
| removing the unwanted flesh from meat, not losing weight.
| artificial wrote:
| They hired 42,000 during COVID. Lots of companies did the
| same, Twitter added 3500, the largest since they started.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| You really think "he had zero obligation to them?" The term
| "obligation" has meanings well outside the concept of
| contractual relations.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Amazing what an iOS update did.
| lovecg wrote:
| And yet Apple is not the one getting anti-trust scrutiny...
| funny how that works.
| AnonHP wrote:
| Apart from that, I think the bigger ongoing folly here is this
| whole Metaverse thing.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I used to think that, but recently tried some AR glasses that
| filled my whole usable field of view with an editable
| PowerPoint slide with clear text... yeah, the tech seems like
| a big deal for this new digital world
| lambda_dn wrote:
| This is the slow demise of Facebook, if their pivot to
| AR/VR/Metaverse fails to catch on things will go sideways fast.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| The world runs on certain types of software. I doesn't run on
| social media, or video streaming, or "AI/ML", or search. So it
| doesn't actually run on FAANG companies. It is no surprise they
| are shedding workers when the free money runs out. But if you are
| willing to work on "boring software" that provides actual
| economic value - logistics, HR/Payroll, or really anything people
| actually pay to use because it boosts their productivity - I
| wouldn't worry too much.
|
| This was true during the .com bust, 2008 dip, and it will be true
| now.
| pavlov wrote:
| Nobody watches digital video or searches for stuff online, so
| you should focus on payroll software? Is this career advice
| from a 1992 time warp?
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| OP is sour-grapes, saying the world doesn't run on search is
| an unbelievable statement in 2022.
| yalogin wrote:
| I don't agree at all. These companies are all super important
| and provide valuable services. If they vanish suddenly tomorrow
| that hole will be felt by every single human one way or the
| other. You are going back to 1970s for your comparison but that
| is not where we are
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I'll grant you that for the AAG part of FAANG, but I can't
| think of a single useful product from FB. If FB itself
| vanished overnight people would just go back to sharing their
| cat pictures with family over sms (as they are doing anyway),
| and all the dusty unused Occulus headsets in drawers would
| stop receiving updates. Otherwise....
| kamarg wrote:
| Many small businesses use their FB page exclusively because
| they aren't big enough to bother with a real website. There
| will be a lot of pain for many small employers and their
| employees if FB software were to go away.
| yalogin wrote:
| I don't agree. As much as I don't like FB, I have to admit
| that they provided a lot of value. People found joy in
| their products. Facebook before it became this cesspool
| attracted tons of people. WhatsApp is still hugely popular
| and useful. Instagram made countless people lots of money
| and create new means of livelihood.
| MikusR wrote:
| I can't think of a single useful product from Amazon, Apple
| and currently Netflix. But I use stuff by Google and Meta
| daily.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| If your bar for "important company" is "no competitive
| alternative or reasonable substitute exists for this one
| companies product", I'd struggle to think of a single
| "important company" in the entire world.
| echelon wrote:
| > The world runs on certain types of software. I doesn't run on
| social media, or video streaming, or "AI/ML", or search. So it
| doesn't actually run on FAANG companies.
|
| To the extent that the world runs on energy and industrials,
| you're right.
|
| To the extent that tech soaks up human attention, directs
| spending and emotions, and now serves as the basis for
| communication and once manual mental tasks, I think you're
| wrong.
|
| We're seeing that this is cyclical and that access to cheap
| debt has perturbed the sentiment.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Plenty of businesses have Facebook or another Facebook property
| (i.e. IG) as one of or the only way to get in touch with them.
| Plenty of individuals use Whatsapp or Facebook as their primary
| contact database and messaging platform.
|
| The "post news articles on a feed" is probably not essential to
| too many people, but the messaging and communication features
| are in a lot of cases.
| [deleted]
| efficax wrote:
| tens of thousands if not millions of small, single proprietor
| or only slightly larger businesses are run entirely through
| facebook. it's the only way to learn about them, their hours,
| or contact them, and often the only way to buy things from them
| online.
| parthdesai wrote:
| > So it doesn't actually run on FAANG companies
|
| Disagree, a lot of businesses do use GSuite and also a lot of
| people in the world do definitely use youtube/gmail/gmaps.
| Samething with apple, people will still use iPhones and a lot
| of people in the first world at least will still use macs. Only
| companies your comments apply to are Facebook and Netflix, and
| even then Whatsapp is basically an essential app to have if
| you're not form North America
| samhuk wrote:
| I would say that any software that has 4 billion MAU quite
| reasonably can be classified as "the world runs on it"-tier
| software.
|
| If I had to guess, what I think you're doing is you're letting
| your opinion about the _morality_ of FAANG-like software (ads,
| tracking, mal-influencing, etc.) be a judge on it 's _utility_.
|
| FAANG-like software is like fossil fuels. Fossil fuels, like
| much of FAANG-software, have many immoral aspects, yet they
| have utility to the point of "the world runs on it".
|
| Google, DDG etc. connected the internet. Facebook, twitter etc.
| connected people _on_ the internet. I 'de say that's something
| of a big deal.
| Maro wrote:
| Facebook (and Google Search) are the most widely used software
| on Earth, ~3-4B MAUs each. I don't know what else something
| needs to do to qualify for "world runs on [it]".
| nsxwolf wrote:
| There's way, way more software that exists. All that boring
| enterprise Java and Spring stuff HN loves to ridicule
| represents the dark matter of the software engineering
| universe. There's tons of money in it and armies of
| developers working away without the praise or adulation of
| their Bay Area betters, but they're making good money and
| putting food on the table.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| What are those 3B people doing? Spreading conspiracy
| theories, looking at cat pics, and searching for porn.
| Whenever someone is on FB or google they are _less_
| productive, not more. Sure, a small fraction of those people
| are using FB or google for "work", but their work is usually
| just finding ways to get more people to waste more time on
| google or FB, or some other nonproductive activity people get
| paid for.
| newsclues wrote:
| There is a big difference between something that is highly
| used, and something that is highly valuable.
| achenet wrote:
| both are highly valuable - to every business that
| advertises on them, and to users who find information
| (Google) or connection (Facebook) via those platforms.
| newsclues wrote:
| I really don't see the unique value of Facebook on that
| level, other that keep certain people off other social
| media platforms.
| bombcar wrote:
| Facebook disappearing tomorrow would cause a bit of a
| kerfuffle but life would go on.
|
| Same for Google search.
|
| But if VISA disappeared, there'd be hell to pay.
|
| In reality none of these companies will disappear
| overnight, but they could get remaindered pretty quickly,
| because they're not that "important" per se.
|
| That's not to say the companies don't do things and
| people don't find value, but Facebook disappearing is an
| entire different class of thing from Exxon-Mobil
| shuttering.
| bradleyankrom wrote:
| To regular users, yeah, the impact would be tough but
| materially trivial (maybe?). But to the small businesses
| for which FB, Instagram, and Google advertising are their
| primary sources of customers? Devastating.
| bombcar wrote:
| If a small business's primary source of customers is
| advertising, they're already dead (or something very
| niche, like a funeral home).
|
| Primary source of _new_ customers, maybe, but a small
| business should be built around acquiring customers and
| keeping them for a longtime.
| alsodumb wrote:
| You are grossly underestimating how many business rely on
| Google and Facebook.
|
| A small example: a ton of delivery companies depend on
| Google maps API for localization and route planning -
| think Doordash, Uber, etc. Not just that, lots of transit
| agencies and freight companies use Google API for
| planning and optimization. Half of the work force
| probably can't reach their destination without Google
| maps.
|
| I'm pretty sure many critical components of Exxon-Mobil
| depend on some tools provided by Google.
| Lendal wrote:
| That's why he specified "Google search" and not "Google"
| istinetz wrote:
| >But if VISA disappeared, there'd be hell to pay.
|
| Would it, though?
|
| I'll just get a mastercard. 5$, a trip to the bank, ezpz.
| Or pay for stuff via Revolut. Or cash.
|
| There'd be a bit of chaos, for like 2 weeks. Invoices
| will still get paid, ATMs would still work.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| It'd probably be more straightforward than that. Your
| bank would switch over their cards to Mastercard, and
| send you a new one in the mail. I don't even think it's
| inconceivable that the Mastercard card # range is
| salvaged and you can retain the same card number.
| badpun wrote:
| > provides actual economic value
|
| > HR
| [deleted]
| Reason077 wrote:
| Sure, FAANG may make a lot of frivolous stuff (Metaverse,
| anyone?) but also a lot of boring software that the world
| really does run on now days. Google especially.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Sure - as does amazon and apple - I doubt you'll see layoffs
| in those specific departments at those companies. I suppose I
| shouldn't have said FAANG as most of them have some core
| business that makes sense, Meta being the exception.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Maybe not in the US, but WhatsApp is pretty important
| messaging infrastructure in big chunks of the world
| marcinzm wrote:
| >It is no surprise they are shedding workers when the free
| money runs out.
|
| Free money hasn't run out, it's simply stopped growing as
| quickly. Then again it grew massively during COVID so FAANG is
| still ahead of where they'd have been if not for COVID. Meta
| revenue is DOUBLE what it was 3 years ago.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| It absolutely has. 8 months ago the Fed Funds rate was
| effectively 0% and now it's 4% and headed higher. That may
| not mean anything to you, but it means everything to VCs,
| banks, investors, and the market overall.
| type-r wrote:
| I mean, almost all of software _does_ run on AWS / Google
| Cloud.
| triceratops wrote:
| The world doesn't run on "AI/ML" or search? You must inhabit a
| different world than me. Do you run to the library every time
| you can't find some information?
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| Of course not, but 99.999% of all searches are frivolous.
| datalopers wrote:
| An inverted index is not AI/ML.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| No, but do that partially 100,000 times with weights
| overfitted to a sample dataset and you are :^)
| dcchambers wrote:
| I would argue search is highly valuable.
|
| Also I expect video streaming (of some format, whether it's
| "traditional living room content" like Netflix/Disney or
| mobile-first like Youtube or TikTok) to maintain its
| entertainment dominance during a recession. People like their
| cheap escapes from the real world. It's been shown time and
| again that during recessions cheap entertainment like cinema
| (or these days, video streaming) doesn't die off.
| idk1 wrote:
| I would certainly make a case the the world runs on the two As
| and the G of FAANG. The world runs a fair amount on Amazon
| deliveries and aws. The world runs a fair amount on gmail and
| google searches. And the world runs on a fair amount of Apple
| products.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| > I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that.
|
| I wonder what this means in practice? Nothing? Ok, great.
| stillametamate wrote:
| amelius wrote:
| How many of them are severely disgruntled? Is my data safe?
| oars wrote:
| Is it better for Google and Amazon to try recruiting this
| available talent straightaway or keep waiting?
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| what makes you think those orgs aren't bloated as well ?
| LongShip87 wrote:
| I recently left my well paying job in a startup to pursue my
| hobbies for a few months. Now I am looking for a job again. I
| wonder how will I find a job with so many Meta and Twitter
| engineers flooding the market :/
|
| PS: I have only worked with startups including a YC startup.
| om42 wrote:
| We're hiring! Reach out to me via email, it's in my profile.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Did they hire 11k people during the pandemic? If not then the
| given reason for the layoffs are clearly not the full story.
| justapassenger wrote:
| They hired way more than that.
| somedude895 wrote:
| They give two reasons:
|
| - Hiring spree during Covid
|
| - Economic slowdown, eg lower ad spends
| habibur wrote:
| Head count had been around 40k in 2019.
| dustedcodes wrote:
| Wow so they increased their head count by more than double?
| How do you even onboard 44.6k people in 3 years? No wonder
| that they weren't very productive.
| nappy-doo wrote:
| Pedantically, it's more than that as there's replacement
| too.
| hbn wrote:
| > Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration
| that would continue even after the pandemic ended.
|
| I mean people who had financial gain on the line (like
| yourselves) pretended this was the case so you could cash in at
| the time and then pull the rug once it wasn't working any more
| (as you're doing now), but everyone with half a brain knew it
| wasn't sustainable.
|
| Literally how could that acceleration be permanent? With the
| insane exponential growth inflated by covid in 2020/2021, you'd
| have a few years before these big tech companies would have to be
| gaining more users than exist on earth.
| sabellito wrote:
| > but everyone with half a brain knew it wasn't sustainable.
|
| Did you short all these companies and are currently a
| billionaire? Since it took only half a brain to know.
| enumjorge wrote:
| Isn't part of shorting also predicting when the drop will
| happen?
| three_seagrass wrote:
| Yeah, I shorted during the pandemic but missed the drop
| several times. Everyone knew to short, it's the when that
| nobody could fathom.
| mattnewton wrote:
| He's also probably not an accredited investor, selling a
| stock short in any significant volume is not like making a
| retail purchase. It can be quite hard to make money off
| knowing a stock will crash, and that's not even accounting
| for needing to know _when_ precisely since most of the ways
| involve short dated options. I gave up after investigating
| ways to bet on interest rate hikes and market corrections,
| and just went cash heavy at the end of 2021. That doesn't
| make you a billionaire it makes you just not lose principle.
| [deleted]
| stillametamate wrote:
| RandomBK wrote:
| Buying some puts also works.
| throwaw20221107 wrote:
| lol exactly (https://xkcd.com/451)
|
| "i need to short a stock"
|
| "have you tried options?"
| twoWhlsGud wrote:
| the economist John Maynard Keynes notably said, "the markets
| can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
|
| A good thing to remember when you're tempted to sell short.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Qub3d wrote:
| It's a good counterpoint to the equally throw away
| argument that "if you disagreed with x you should have
| shorted it".
|
| The problem with shorting is you can't just be right
| about the eventual direction... You have to be pretty
| bang on with the _timing_ as well.
|
| Therefore it's absolutely possible for people to suspect
| or have strong belief that something is unsustainable
| without having the liquidity or confidence on timing to
| take action on it.
|
| No it's not to say there aren't Perma bears and other I
| told you so people crawling out of the woodwork, but that
| doesn't mean that every person who didn't capitalize on
| this is Monday-morning quarterbacking.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| I don't know how you think investing works, but you can't
| become a billionaire unless you are already a 900 millionaire
| roflyear wrote:
| FB is making $30+bn a year profit, and is laying off people to
| reduce costs by $2b. They could continue to pay these people.
|
| Large corporations are insane. Every small and medium company
| would wait to do layoffs until it threatened the business. Some
| even until after that point. Layoffs are awful.
|
| Large corps, nah. Just lay people off if we get a little
| nervous!
|
| Note, I don't think these corps are entitled to employ you.
| Absolutely not. I just think the corporate situation we got
| ourselves in is really nasty.
| 8b16380d wrote:
| Completely agree.
| gregshap wrote:
| In the last four quarters FB's reported profit went from $10B
| to $7.5B to $6B to $4B. The business is threatened.
| abstractmath wrote:
| > Large corporations are insane. Every small and medium
| company would wait to do layoffs until it threatened the
| business. Some even until after that point
|
| This is super idealized. How many layoffs have been going on
| in startup land recently?
| skrebbel wrote:
| You mean teeny tiny cutesy startups like Stripe and Twilio?
| abstractmath wrote:
| Look at the companies on http://layoffs.fyi
|
| Lots of small and medium sized companies, and I know for
| some that it was not their last move before going under.
|
| We had a hiring boom driven by cheap money, which is now
| ending. Now we get the inverse.
|
| Has nothing to do with insane large corps and saintly
| SMBs.
| tomtheelder wrote:
| While I agree it's very idealized, a lot of those startups
| probably are legitimately financially threatened in the
| immediate term in a way that Meta most certainly isn't.
| roflyear wrote:
| It is absolutely idealized.
| martindbp wrote:
| They are laying off people because the value of the company
| just tanked 70% in a few months. The value of a company
| contains all the future estimated discounted earnings, the
| trend of earnings matters more than current earnings. The
| actions of a company is determined by what its shareholders
| want, which is to maximize stock price, not be satisfied with
| X billions in profits when the stock is down 70%. The actions
| of companies will remain a mystery to people who do not
| understand this.
| oblio wrote:
| The value of a company contains Lalaland logic, as Tesla,
| Toyota and GameStop prove.
|
| The link between actual business logic and company
| valuation broke down around 2010.
| roflyear wrote:
| Well, yeah. But I think that mechanism is pretty awful.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| They lay people off, because companies _always_ want to lay
| _some_ people off, and doing so in normal times is even less
| palatable. Employees are not fungible, and _some_ employees
| are worth to companies less than the company wants.
|
| This is not to say that every single person being laid off is
| of low value, that's not true. It's just it is hard to lay
| off _only_ low performers, some average or even good
| performer will always be collateral damage. But, overall, if
| you want well-performing companies to not do mass layoffs on
| recession, the only way is to make it more palatable to
| people to see mass firings in good times.
| rajman187 wrote:
| > FB is making $30+bn a year profit, and is laying off people
| to reduce costs by $2b. They could continue to pay these
| people.
|
| The quarterly revenue was about $27bn but net profit $4bn, so
| you're off by a factor of 7 or more on the estimate. R&D
| expenses alone are $9bn, and the largest operational expense
| is employee comp, by a LOT, distant second being data
| centers. For added measure, they also reduced real estate
| footprint along with the 11k employees.
|
| The company has also essentially doubled in size every year
| since ~2013, and that was certainly encouraged by false
| positives in terms of future projections when the pandemic
| hit. So this is really not surprising, and a major cost-
| saving function for them.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > R&D expenses alone are $9bn
|
| Are RSUs included into this number?
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| why would RSU (a comp element) be included in R&D
| spending?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Because r&d spending at tech companies means engineers
| and product.
| roflyear wrote:
| Mmm, I was looking at 2021 profit. Anyway, 16b a year is
| not a factor of 7 off from 30b.
| RandomBK wrote:
| 7.4% of profit (2/27) versus 50% of profit (2/4) was the
| factor of ~7 parent was referring to.
|
| Granted these are comparing annual cost versus quarterly
| figures, but the overall narrative still stands.
| rajman187 wrote:
| Yeah 2020-21 was wild. Revenue is not profit, though.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Small companies don't pay over 200k + perks for someone who
| just graduated
| 22SAS wrote:
| Trading firms are small companies, and most of us
| definitely pay that (sometimes a lot more) to new
| graduates.
| pm90 wrote:
| SFBA companies do, actually.
| martius wrote:
| I read this as "we expected to stay at the levels we were at at
| the beginning of 2022, but instead things went back (down) to
| the levels of 2019".
| hbn wrote:
| They specifically said "acceleration" though, not velocity
|
| Meaning they expected to continue picking up speed, not
| maintain their speed
| dolmen wrote:
| Many thought that commerce was switching to online.
|
| But in fact stores reopened and people went back to massively
| buy at stores instead of offline. Parenthesis is closed.
| fullshark wrote:
| That is the premise behind the metaverse, more and more
| activity going online.
| tombert wrote:
| Fantastic. I just got laid off from my (non-Meta) job, and now I
| have to compete with thousands of other software engineers.
|
| I suppose I knew that the cushy absurd-salary-days of software
| engineering had to come to a close at some point, but I guess I
| was just hoping it would happening after I retired.
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Just said you worked for Meta in your resume and you just being
| laid off. Bang! Instant hire.
| MasterYoda wrote:
| 87000 people is working at meta just now. What are all those
| people doing? Why is so many needed? How many are developer,
| manager, marketers, seller, anti spam/desinformation stuff etc
| etc?
| sh4rks wrote:
| 87,000 people and they still can't fix the bugs in the
| Instagram android app
| dolmen wrote:
| > We made the decision to remove access to most Meta systems for
| people leaving today given the amount of access to sensitive
| information. But we're keeping email addresses active throughout
| the day so everyone can say farewell.
|
| E-mail address still working for the day? Is this the standard
| way to layoff employees in the US?
| dpkirchner wrote:
| I wonder if they've limited outgoing emails so they may only be
| sent to internal users.
| kodisha wrote:
| Will the remaining staff use "Mark as safe" feature? /s
| derwiki wrote:
| I've been joking that LinkedIn should build this.
| didibus wrote:
| > But these measures alone won't bring our expenses in line with
| our revenue growth
|
| Interesting, so the cust cuttings aren't about being sustainable
| or avoiding loss, but to meet future growth expectations?
|
| Couldn't they just have like sustained a break even point until
| economy recovers?
| SeriousM wrote:
| Mark's statement has a fineprint at the end about future
| uncertainty and "forward-looking" statements. I guess that's the
| new way to state your point and at the same time change the
| meaning of it in the fineprint.
| ericpauley wrote:
| This is very standard (and legally necessary) boilerplate in
| any public statement.
| itissid wrote:
| From the immigration H1b PoV looks of it a few months of
| severance and then there is 60 days when the clock starts ticking
| to find a job. Not bad.
|
| From what I understand the people where the WARN act is active
| they have to give atleast 60 day notice in case of mass
| layoffs(this is different from the 60 day grace period for H1bs
| to transfer status).
| ScriptCrash wrote:
| Wonder if "day in the life as a 23 year old product manager at
| Meta" still works there...
| [deleted]
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