Meta plans to lay off 10k employees(about.fb.com)
about.fb.com
Meta plans to lay off 10k employees
https://about.fb.com/news/2023/03/mark-zuckerberg-meta-year-of-efficiency/
880 comments
There's a huge number of Product people on TikTok who seem to spend their whole day bragging about their cushy, low impact, high pay jobs. They're still around, too - I wonder how much longer.
But you also can’t trust people on TikTok.
I absolutely agree, but this comment [0] lays it out well. In a non-TikTok news article:
"During her senior year at UCLA, Riley Rojas decided to pursue a career in Big Tech — and she wanted to work for the best ... This week in #KeepingtheBalance, Rojas shares how she landed her job at Meta with a political science background. Spoiler: It took a whole lot of studying and manifestation."
I worked my ass off in Engineering school, and as an engineer, to get into FAANG. She manifested with a background in Poli Sci. There's going to be anger about those optics. It's not surprising to see PMs decimated right now, based on the poor growth numbers, declining user engagement, and said optics.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33361622
"During her senior year at UCLA, Riley Rojas decided to pursue a career in Big Tech — and she wanted to work for the best ... This week in #KeepingtheBalance, Rojas shares how she landed her job at Meta with a political science background. Spoiler: It took a whole lot of studying and manifestation."
I worked my ass off in Engineering school, and as an engineer, to get into FAANG. She manifested with a background in Poli Sci. There's going to be anger about those optics. It's not surprising to see PMs decimated right now, based on the poor growth numbers, declining user engagement, and said optics.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33361622
That post you link seems skeptical about her three start ups due to her being a political science major. But if you look at her LinkedIn account they appear to be actual start ups, just not tech focused. But it seems like the type of skill set that I would look for in a product manager.
People who go out and make things happen are rare. Regardless of major.
People who go out and make things happen are rare. Regardless of major.
This interpretation rings hollow - if you've worked at any tech company, you've seen the hoards of people who manage to create meetings about meetings, grow their empire, and amass massive salaries with no relevant skills. A lot of it is about showing a record of "getting things done" - but things that don't matter.
If people are getting things done, but these things don't matter -- that's the fault of leadership. Leadership should have clear goals/OKRs/outcomes that they've agreed to. These people should be getting these things done. If they do these things and they don't matter -- it's likely not their fault.
And this applies doubly so for a junior product manager. I was not long ago VP of Engineering and if my team built stuff, using best practices and on time, but what we built didn't matter -- I couldn't blame them. It's my fault. It's my job to make sure what we build matters.
But if I can give a set of OKRs and you can drive to make those happen -- those people are gold. Now you can argue with me that the OKRs were bad. That's fine. Fire me. But the person that delivered it -- those people are worth their weight...
And this applies doubly so for a junior product manager. I was not long ago VP of Engineering and if my team built stuff, using best practices and on time, but what we built didn't matter -- I couldn't blame them. It's my fault. It's my job to make sure what we build matters.
But if I can give a set of OKRs and you can drive to make those happen -- those people are gold. Now you can argue with me that the OKRs were bad. That's fine. Fire me. But the person that delivered it -- those people are worth their weight...
Yeah, when the PM's have no coherent vision for products and their suggestions are only harming engagement/metrics then its not surprising the next line is: "What would you say you do here?"
This goes w/o saying.
I think the better question is what if the PM has a coherent vision and is helping engagement/metrics. Is delivering on the outcomes that leadership wants. And can do it all by 2pm?
Our culture has become so obsessed with working for the sake of working. We talk about being outcome focused, rather than just doing busy work. But when someone is actually outcome focused then we want them to stay busy.
I agree that if the person isn't delivering results then they shouldn't do the job. But if they are delivering results then why do I care what they do with their afternoons?
I think the better question is what if the PM has a coherent vision and is helping engagement/metrics. Is delivering on the outcomes that leadership wants. And can do it all by 2pm?
Our culture has become so obsessed with working for the sake of working. We talk about being outcome focused, rather than just doing busy work. But when someone is actually outcome focused then we want them to stay busy.
I agree that if the person isn't delivering results then they shouldn't do the job. But if they are delivering results then why do I care what they do with their afternoons?
Dear Metamates,
I've had to make some hard decisions, to fire ten thousand of you. But don't worry I take full responsibility for this failure.
I've had to make some hard decisions, to fire ten thousand of you. But don't worry I take full responsibility for this failure.
I take solace that you say you take responsibility otherwise no one would have known.
Though you bear the full consequences of my decision, fret not, my feelings are hurt a little bit.
<insert Shrek/Farquad meme>
Life imitates art: https://youtu.be/u48vYSLvKNQ
> Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.
Wait so does that mean they'll end up with 10K less after hiring 5K folks? Which might imply that they'll be firing 15K people.
Wait so does that mean they'll end up with 10K less after hiring 5K folks? Which might imply that they'll be firing 15K people.
No, it means that they won't hire these 5K in the first place.
I'm reading it as 10,000 people being fired and 5,000 job openings, some of which may have offers out, being cancelled.
They are firing 10k people they have already hired, and not hiring for 5k roles where they haven't yet hired. So 10k are leaving, and the planned 5k they were going to add will not add. This means they are losing 10k.
No, it means they will not hire 5 k people they had planned to hire, and they'll let 10 k people go within their current workforce.
"Year of Efficiency". Oh wow.
With Facebook having lost much of its prominence, it's easy to forget that this guy still considers himself a king and a visionary in his little fiefdom.
Yes. That is one of the worst euphemisms of the year.
Definitely has some Maoist undertones
They need to scale up and make a 5-year plan.
Metaverse was only mentioned 2 times.
I noticed that too, very interesting how it's not mentioned at all. Maybe Mark is getting a clue his little bet is a failure and a joke.
Yeah, I noticed this. I wonder if it's next on the chopping block.
Thing is, I don't think that people trust FB/"meta" with the concept. Most of the feedback I've heard from people IRL has been to the effect of, "it could be cool, but not if Facebook is behind it."
Thing is, I don't think that people trust FB/"meta" with the concept. Most of the feedback I've heard from people IRL has been to the effect of, "it could be cool, but not if Facebook is behind it."
The message is loud and clear "As I’ve talked about efficiency this year, I’ve said that part of our work will involve removing jobs". & no surprise, "future" has only mentioned 4 times
Mr Zuckerberg, what is the future of social connection?
Mr Zuckerberg, what is the future of social connection?
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How many billion per mention did that cost?
And it was mentioned only as one item among others: “We do this with AI to help you creatively express yourself and discover new content, with the metaverse to deliver a realistic sense of presence, with new media formats to …” and “Our leading work building the metaverse and shaping the next generation of computing platforms ….”
Coincidentally that's also the number of times it was used today, and the number of people with any interest in it !
Reminds me of when Bill Gates wrote a book on the "Information Superhighway" (envisioned to be a MS-controlled walled garden like AOL) and then put out a revised edition a year later that replaced the term with "Internet". They still had their walled garden with Windows + IE for several years though.
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you mean like github?
Last week: Post surfaces saying that on 3/14 there'd be a mass layoff of managers & directors. Many people react that no way is this true
3/14: Zuck posts that they're making their orgs "flatter", in other words laying off a bunch of managers & directors
3/14: Zuck posts that they're making their orgs "flatter", in other words laying off a bunch of managers & directors
Not sure what thread you're referring to. I suppose maybe some people did think this wouldn't happen? But Zuckerberg publicly announced he was doing this flattening over a month ago. (Though we didn't the numbers until now.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35100251
Or, if you prefer:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/meta-is-s...
Or, if you prefer:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/meta-is-s...
Seems like people were only skeptical of the specific dates given by an anonymous Blind user, just on the basis that it's an anonymous user. That's likely a good thing, even if it happened to be accurate!
They weren't skeptical that layoffs were coming aimed at a flattening, which makes sense since this was already announced by Zuckerberg over a month ago.
They weren't skeptical that layoffs were coming aimed at a flattening, which makes sense since this was already announced by Zuckerberg over a month ago.
There were threads here, Reddit, and elsewhere. IIRC all pointing back to Blind. What I mention wasn't a universal opinion and apologies if I made it sound that way. But there was a much stronger segment than I would have expected thinking it was all a bunch of made up FUD
I don't think this is line managers and their managers. I'm reading this as the people in the 5 levels above THEM, but below Zuck.
Those are called managers and directors.
I thought those are SVPs, EVPs, etc? "Manager" tends to be line managers, and Directors _their_ managers.
In many places you have 1-2 levels of regular managers, 1-2 levels of senior managers, then directors, maaaybe the first level of VP.
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Anyone work at meta? How are the departments listed in the article defined?
> We are a technology company, and our ultimate output is what we build for people. Everything else we do is in service of that. As we’ve grown, we’ve hired many leading experts in areas outside engineering. This helps us build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists. As we add different groups, our product teams naturally hire more roles to handle all the interactions with those other groups. If we only rebalanced the product teams towards engineering, those leaner product teams would be overwhelmed by the volume of interactions from other groups. As part of the Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles. It’s important for all groups to get leaner and more efficient to enable our technology groups to get as lean and efficient as possible. We will make sure we continue to meet all our critical and legal obligations as we find ways to operate more efficiently.
How should this be interpreted? They're getting rid of all the Agile Coaches?
How should this be interpreted? They're getting rid of all the Agile Coaches?
Interactions with other groups = PMs I'm thinking
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For context:
"In 2020, Meta added over 13,000 employees, a 30% increase, and the biggest year of hiring in the company’s history. In 2021, it added another 13,000 workers. By total worker numbers, it was the two biggest years of expansion in Facebook’s short history."
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-g...
"In 2020, Meta added over 13,000 employees, a 30% increase, and the biggest year of hiring in the company’s history. In 2021, it added another 13,000 workers. By total worker numbers, it was the two biggest years of expansion in Facebook’s short history."
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/apple-had-slower-headcount-g...
And 2019 was the year when they announced the cryptocurrency and the "metaverse" projects...
as an aside, Instagram just announced that it's shutting down its NFT features.
Safe to say that the web3 hypetrain is over.
Safe to say that the web3 hypetrain is over.
How is that "safe to say"? Purely a guess, like anyone's guess.
Looking at numbers, BTC went up 15.8% in the last 24h, up 16% in the last 7 days. Global marketcap of cryptocurrencies went from 804B USD in November 2022 to 1,121B USD today (~32% increase). If anything, it seems to slowly recover.
Although I agree that NFTs are trash and should be forgotten about. But the cryptocurrency market as a whole seems to be more resilient than many think.
Looking at numbers, BTC went up 15.8% in the last 24h, up 16% in the last 7 days. Global marketcap of cryptocurrencies went from 804B USD in November 2022 to 1,121B USD today (~32% increase). If anything, it seems to slowly recover.
Although I agree that NFTs are trash and should be forgotten about. But the cryptocurrency market as a whole seems to be more resilient than many think.
Crypto might stay popular, but I also don't see any indication that web3 will live up to the hype. They still haven't found real use cases that need web3.
Crypto, however, will remain popular as long as governments don't ban it.
Crypto, however, will remain popular as long as governments don't ban it.
BTC !== Web3!
Neither are most other coins.
Neither are most other coins.
Perception is reality though. The average person doesn't care about the difference between BTC and ETH and ERC-20 tokens, it all looks like the same get-rich-quick scheme. People aren't reading whitepapers, every coin has one. They're evaluating Youtube thumbnails as their source of information.
Reasoning about the usefulness of crypto currencies based on their quoted price on various fraudulent exchanges should not be a signal of anything. We should normalize on quoting non-spoofable adoption metrics to indicate if they’re going anywhere.
Long term probably 2 things will happen. Though obviously no one can predict the future.
1. Public cryptocurrencies will remain there as a sort of niche investment (betting?) vehicle. Something like "VWOB - Emerging Markets Government Bond ETF". Did you know about that one? Neither did I.
2. Private permissioned blockchains will be used in specific niches. Think Corda and some finance applications, whatever the commodities thing is called, I forgot its name.
But the long tail of Bladogelitecoin and the likes will go poof once line stops going up.
1. Public cryptocurrencies will remain there as a sort of niche investment (betting?) vehicle. Something like "VWOB - Emerging Markets Government Bond ETF". Did you know about that one? Neither did I.
2. Private permissioned blockchains will be used in specific niches. Think Corda and some finance applications, whatever the commodities thing is called, I forgot its name.
But the long tail of Bladogelitecoin and the likes will go poof once line stops going up.
Replaced neatly by the AI one...
At least the AI one isn't foiled by basic tenants of software devised in the 70s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_oracle
Also for context.
FB stock in 2020: 234 Today: 190
FB revenue in 2020: $86 billion 2022: $117 billion
FB stock in 2020: 234 Today: 190
FB revenue in 2020: $86 billion 2022: $117 billion
Revenue is nice but revenue-per-full-time-employee is a more meaningful metric.
Inflation adjusted revenue per employee even more so
meaningful for profitability, but surely having more employees can be of benefit to society.
Society should get rid of computers and construction equipment then. Everyone can have a lot more employees.
No need to get rid of computers and backhoes. You don’t have to have work in order to have employees. At least that’s what the parent seems to be implying
Construction is actually one of the few sectors that hasn't become more productive per employee over past decades. Buildings have become vastly more complicated but there's comparably little automation.
You might be interested in these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdIvnIUw0tE
Not sure whether this is more common in the US these days. I know for a fact that a lot of buildings in China are constructed this way.
Not sure whether this is more common in the US these days. I know for a fact that a lot of buildings in China are constructed this way.
But did you notice how many construction workers are shown there? You can certainly build faster with prefab, but it's still a very manual process, both at the factory and on the construction site. And anything afterwards (wiring, HVAC, painting) is also nearly 100% manual labor.
It seems we've made amazing progress on the "software" side of AI, but are still very far behind on the "hardware" side, ie robots.
It seems we've made amazing progress on the "software" side of AI, but are still very far behind on the "hardware" side, ie robots.
I'm aware it's still a very labor intensive process. But there seems to be great potential for improvement with Tesla-esque automation processes if the capital investments are worth it.
The main disadvantage about physical objects vs software is that physical objects are not as easily scalable and matter is generally more expensive than bits... so the economy of scale is harder to exploit. But give it some years once the marginal utility of software decreases to a point, I think people will divert more focus (and more importantly capital) on automating hardware stuff.
The main disadvantage about physical objects vs software is that physical objects are not as easily scalable and matter is generally more expensive than bits... so the economy of scale is harder to exploit. But give it some years once the marginal utility of software decreases to a point, I think people will divert more focus (and more importantly capital) on automating hardware stuff.
I mean that employing people for good wages and good conditions has a holistic benefit to society in that it enables more people to fulfil their needs and have space for children.
As opposed to some dystopia where an exceptionally efficient and low employee organisation makes all the money and there is no/limited distribution of that wealth.
As opposed to some dystopia where an exceptionally efficient and low employee organisation makes all the money and there is no/limited distribution of that wealth.
The tech companies such as Meta that pay good wages and have good working conditions are able to do so because they are exceptionally efficient and require a relatively low number of employees to generate the outsize profits they do.
So that “dystopia” can already be considered to be here.
So that “dystopia” can already be considered to be here.
sure, but I merely wish to mention it within the context of "having high profit to employee ratio is good".
Everything has trade-offs.
Everything has trade-offs.
> but surely having more employees can be of benefit to society.
that is how the Soviet Union worked...they just cut to the chase and had the state employ everyone directly
strange how an economy can fail with full employment...
that is how the Soviet Union worked...they just cut to the chase and had the state employ everyone directly
strange how an economy can fail with full employment...
I used to live in the Soviet Union so I am well aware of its failings. Rather I mean that if a one-man shop makes all the money in the world then that can be also problematic. Employing people for good wages and good conditions has a holistic benefit to society in that it enables more people to fulfil their needs and have space for children.
Maybe employment isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe the goal is to build automation to the point that the moral imperative to labor isn’t as imperative.
Oh, you optimist, I like you!
In real life the goal will be to build automation so that the few owners of the robots can buy more 200m long yachts.
In real life the goal will be to build automation so that the few owners of the robots can buy more 200m long yachts.
No, they get the 200m yachts for building the capability first. There will come a time on our trajectory that artificial scarcity is such an obvious canard that we will move past it into a post scarcity world. I don’t know how it’ll be constructed, but the need to work being a moral imperative will necessarily fall away as it becomes obvious it’s not necessary nor imperative nor moral. I think this is unavoidable, sans some sort of plateau or limiting factor or regression, and the rate of change I see makes it look like we aren’t far away - although the realization of that the wizard is just a man behind the curtain may be.
You do realize that they managed to build artificial scarcity in virtual worlds through licenses, DMCA, NFTs? And morality or progress are not given under any circumstances.
And that’s why Zuck is wrong. The reality we exist in is not constrained by human constructs.
Yeah I realize progress or morality isn’t a given - I think I mentioned the offroads. But if things keep going in this direction we are heading now, I suspect we might actually get there.
Yeah I realize progress or morality isn’t a given - I think I mentioned the offroads. But if things keep going in this direction we are heading now, I suspect we might actually get there.
If people are not working, they will have significantly more time to observe, evaluate and perish forbid, succeed in changing the state of their communities, fellow citizens and elected leadership.
Feel free to add that value, this is a public forum
Revenue in 2021: 33,671 M USD
Revenue in 2022: 32,165 M USD
FTEs in 2021: 71,970
FTEs in 2022: 86,482
Revenue-per-FTE in 2021: $467,847
Revenue-per-FTE in 2022: $371,927
That's 21% less revenue per FTE.
[1] 2022 results https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
[2] 2021 results https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
Revenue in 2022: 32,165 M USD
FTEs in 2021: 71,970
FTEs in 2022: 86,482
Revenue-per-FTE in 2021: $467,847
Revenue-per-FTE in 2022: $371,927
That's 21% less revenue per FTE.
[1] 2022 results https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
[2] 2021 results https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
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Isn't that still missing a massive piece of context? What about costs?
The irony is that FB would probably be doing pretty well if not for spending $10B per year on the Metaverse.
According to Gizmodo, Meta put $13.6 billion dollars into “Reality Labs” (VR) in 2022. Simply eye-watering. It’s almost half of Iceland’s GDP.
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As impressive as that sounds, Iceland has less than 400k people, it's about the same size as Cluj, a city in Romania probably 0.1% of HN ever heard about :-)
Couple of years ago I happened to work with a dev from Cluj. Awesome guy and very talented.
The reason I took the example is because Iceland is a developed western country that most people have heard about that happened to match the number.
Sure, Iceland has a small population but their GDP per capita is almost 5x that of Romania.
Sure, Iceland has a small population but their GDP per capita is almost 5x that of Romania.
and how much of that will "trickle down" to the workers?
What an incredible amount of wasted effort in hiring that many people to then firing them 2-3 years later.
It is quite possible that the people they are firing aren't the ones they recently hired, but instead people who have been there for a long time but aren't meaningfully contributing anymore.
That is true, but I imagine that growing the company significantly must have had costs in itself.
Many managers get promotions for how much the people under them accomplish. There is some adjustment to headcount, but the more you can get hired under you, the higher you can get promoted.
This is the outcome of that.
This is the outcome of that.
I personally think this "we hired too many people" excuse doesn't hold water. This reminds me of the dot-com bubble where they jacked up interest rates and it caused companies to do layoffs.
Back then interest rates were low and money was cheap. It was growth over profit and when money is cheap you can afford to run in the red as long as you're getting bigger. The minute interest rates went up companies had to rethink how they're going to spend money. We haven't seen the type of corp consolidation yet that we saw back then but it's still early days.
Back then interest rates were low and money was cheap. It was growth over profit and when money is cheap you can afford to run in the red as long as you're getting bigger. The minute interest rates went up companies had to rethink how they're going to spend money. We haven't seen the type of corp consolidation yet that we saw back then but it's still early days.
"We are Metastasizing."
All the talk to a flatter structure, being lean, focusing on the tech actually makes me want to work at Meta. If only they would change their leetcode interview process!
> All the talk to a flatter structure, being lean, focusing on the tech actually makes me want to work at Meta.
Do you take those claims as seriously as you do "Meta is building the future of human connection", "Year of Efficiency", and "Meta builds new ways for people to feel closer"?
This is a PR fluff message about layoffs. I wouldn't take any claims in it at raw face value.
Do you take those claims as seriously as you do "Meta is building the future of human connection", "Year of Efficiency", and "Meta builds new ways for people to feel closer"?
This is a PR fluff message about layoffs. I wouldn't take any claims in it at raw face value.
Its not fluff entirely. My friends who are in managment are now coding and some middle management people have quit.
This announcement says the layoffs and reorg will occur "over the next couple of months". They haven't happened yet.
Not sure what you are implying. They have asked many managers to start coding or leave a while ago, their title is still EM maybe will change to IC now.
I'm implying companies tend to come up with all sorts of great sounding PR fluff to explain layoffs, and that I'm generally skeptical of claims to be making orgs "flatter". If this statement specifically makes someone want to work at Facebook, I think their bullshit meter needs adjusting.
i believe they're already happening. i have one friend at meta who's manager was swapped to an IC role already, and one friend who's an EM that's in the process of swapping to an IC role
I’ve always found Meta’s self deception about where they innovate really funny. I can’t think of any social technology they brought to market which helps me feel close to those around me, besides maybe Facebook Events and Groups.
Same. Sounds like a place where actual work is respected.
And you can feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing you're helping to make teenage girls suicidally depressed.
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Meta isn't just Instagram, and Instagram isn't just suicidal tendencies. You could just as well do the argument with any big company.
I get depressed readying about mind-blowing tech on HN every day and feeling old and inadequate. YC, what are you doing?
That's all of social media. I don't like what's happening there but I also don't see how Facebook engineers can change that. Closing Instagram just drives more people to TikTok which is arguably worse.
Please don't post like this to HN. We've had to warn you about this many times before*. The slack here is finite and if you keep it up we're going to have to ban you. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please fix this, that would be good.
I'm not denying at all that the psychological well-being of young people is intertwined with social media and corporate interests in complex ways that deserve critique. But it's not ok to post snarky drive-by attacks on HN. Those are two separate things and it's the commenter's job to distinguish them.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33340849 (Oct 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630713 (March 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27401192 (June 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19534285 (March 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17734563 (Aug 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16059003 (Jan 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm not denying at all that the psychological well-being of young people is intertwined with social media and corporate interests in complex ways that deserve critique. But it's not ok to post snarky drive-by attacks on HN. Those are two separate things and it's the commenter's job to distinguish them.
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33340849 (Oct 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630713 (March 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27401192 (June 2021)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19534285 (March 2019)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17734563 (Aug 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16059003 (Jan 2018)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yeah they're gonna be real flat and lean with the 60k employees left after this 10k get laid off. I'm no operations expert but I'm pretty sure all this is going to do is free up some payroll funds
Me too. I wish I could work at a company where I dont have a "project manager" making more than I do for sending a few emails and holding a weekly project meeting. I've decided to practice leetcode if that's what it takes.
It makes me think I’d get efficiently laid off within a year or so.
I’ve worked at a few places that thought they were lean and flat as well, but they aren’t. Someone in leadership likes the idea and goes on and on about it, but the actual structure and legacy of past structures creates a complete mess. The only thing that gets done is talking about how great the team is and how much awesome stuff is getting done. Then everyone gets laid off again.
I’ve worked at a few places that thought they were lean and flat as well, but they aren’t. Someone in leadership likes the idea and goes on and on about it, but the actual structure and legacy of past structures creates a complete mess. The only thing that gets done is talking about how great the team is and how much awesome stuff is getting done. Then everyone gets laid off again.
1. Work at Meta
2. Be top performer
3. Get promoted to manager
4. Manage <5 people as a newbie manager
5. Get fired because you don't manage enough people
1. Work at Meta
2. Be top performer
3. Never get promoted
I don't work at Meta, but if its anything like where I currently work, the ones who become "managers" have no correlation to coding performance, or perfomance at all for that matter.
For most FAANG companies, it's IC -> TL -> TLM -> EM, unless you explicitly insist on remaining IC/TL (and then you're on the chopping block, because promotion trajectory for ICs becomes very, very slow beyond a certain point).
> and then you're on the chopping block, because promotion trajectory for ICs becomes very, very slow beyond a certain point
The former does not follow from the latter.
The former does not follow from the latter.
This isn’t true in my experience across a few FAANGs. And promotion is very slow on both tracks once you get to terminal level + 1.
This isn’t true. I personally know gray hairs that retired as ICs in at least three of those letters in your outdated acronym.
It should be MAAAM by now- Microsoft is famous for the IC rest-and-vest to ‘55 lifestyle.
It should be MAAAM by now- Microsoft is famous for the IC rest-and-vest to ‘55 lifestyle.
Which is a good thing. You should be become a manager because you think you would enjoy being a manager more than being a coder, and are passionate about being really good at managing. Being good at coding doesn't mean you'll automatically be good at (or enjoy) dealing with admin, budgeting, resource planning and personnel issues.
I've been managed by truly brilliant coders who just wished they could go back to sitting in their office and code. No one was happy with that situation.
I've been managed by truly brilliant coders who just wished they could go back to sitting in their office and code. No one was happy with that situation.
I didn't write it out, but our managers have no idea of the code at all. They have never been programmers. Hence the programmers sit around all day, like posting on HN, and not much gets done at all. But hey they are surely really passionate about managing.
Forgive me for asking, but why would you work at a place like that? Aren't you bored doing nothing?
It's my first gig, so my options are limited. Things might still shake up when people start asking where all the money is going. But I've also come to realize that my situation is not unique, there's a lot of non-work going on in modern tech.
Do you use scrum? How are people's capacities not being filled?
We do, they named the least productive yet most experienced gentleman to "teach lead" to lead the scrums because they started getting a notion that not much was getting done. This is the guy who love writing documentation (One A4 per week of 40h hour, about). The end result was nothing changed: "I am working on X", "OK, good good" and nothing really gets done. Then the customer started changing the demands 9 months into the project which justified the inproductivity even more. It's all around just a shit show.
But if the managers were programmers, suddenly everyone would magically want to work instead of fucking around on HN.
It's not about will, but the managers capability to oversee what is going on. Since they dont know anything about programming, they cant even really know if someone is slacking, or working really hard.
That is, their capability to manage.
That is, their capability to manage.
Huh? Of course they can. Is the person shipping what they're supposed to be shipping?
Which is a discussion of what they are supposed to be shipping. Usually a description of a program, in text. A discussion that very often ends in court over disagreements. Have you ever worked on a commercial software?
At Meta and pretty much all other tech companies Engineering Managers have to have been decent programmers first, so I'm not sure what you're describing applies there.
Cases where managers are appointed to oversee dev teams without having any engineering experience at all are more common in non-tech companies. Those situations can still work, but rarely work well.
Cases where managers are appointed to oversee dev teams without having any engineering experience at all are more common in non-tech companies. Those situations can still work, but rarely work well.
Depends on the location. I'm an Engineering Manager at $FAANG (MANGA?) and I moved into management after senior engineering roles. At the same time, I'm still programming a lot in my "free time". Your experience doesn't apply everywhere.
As for motivation (I know no one asked): I genuinely enjoy the human aspect of the job and thinking further out into the future with product and engineering leaders. Plus I learned that I really enjoy programming when it's a hobby without the corporate overhead, and that it's less fun (to me) in a company.
Not to discredit your experience - but it's not a universal truth.
As for motivation (I know no one asked): I genuinely enjoy the human aspect of the job and thinking further out into the future with product and engineering leaders. Plus I learned that I really enjoy programming when it's a hobby without the corporate overhead, and that it's less fun (to me) in a company.
Not to discredit your experience - but it's not a universal truth.
Sure. Same reason the State Department doesn't typically source its diplomats from the Navy SEALs. Different skills, different types of people.
Personally, if I enjoy my work and my pay stays at or above market rate, I don't need title promotions.
1. Work at Meta
2. Be top performer
3. Remain in your role for too many years
4. Get fired because you're expensive with no growth trajectoryYou got me there :)
I'm not in the demographic anymore to be hired by Meta, but I'd definitely choose the second scenario over the first one 10 times out of 10. Managing people is a chore.
The best people I've worked with stayed in the same role for 20+ years without any promotion. They did great work, knew exactly what to do and didn't have to play the politics game to get some favorable review for promotion. I wish more companies would encourage that. Even in tech, the world doesn't change as quickly as we sometimes think.
If you're a top performer, then you can make seven figures at $meta as an IC
>We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May. In a small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes.
Wow, that's a pretty long timeline from announcement to execution. Being told you might be laid off some time in the next 10 months. I guess they're hoping people quit?
Wow, that's a pretty long timeline from announcement to execution. Being told you might be laid off some time in the next 10 months. I guess they're hoping people quit?
Well, you get no severance if you quit, but if you sit at your desk and watch youtube all day you get a "pip" and 3 or more months paid time off if they let you go.
You also burn bridges with many people if you do this though, which may not be a good long-term strategy if you're planning to stay in the software business. It is a small world in many ways.
Never fun for those impacted, but given Meta’s poor performance this is expected. The history book is being written now on if Meta was a brilliant business for the ages or always destined to decline into a has-been tech play. Ironically now Zuckerberg is the old guard with stale ideas that he railed against so hard when Facebook was founded. My grandparents and their friends are currently the most active users on my Facebook feed. Most under 40 in my circle have left and most under 25 I know don’t even have an account.
If Facebook can turn things around then that would be truly impressive. Right now it’s on a slow march to the sidelines of has-been tech. I don’t think anyone is buying the whole metaverse thing, which just smells like someone missed the memo on Second Life. Facebook bet the farm there and the crops and livestock are looking rather ill.
If Facebook can turn things around then that would be truly impressive. Right now it’s on a slow march to the sidelines of has-been tech. I don’t think anyone is buying the whole metaverse thing, which just smells like someone missed the memo on Second Life. Facebook bet the farm there and the crops and livestock are looking rather ill.
Poor performance? Meta is doing great and just had one year of not insane growth. My take on why they have to fire people is that they hired way too many in 2020 and 2021.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-...
Poor performance is relative to what their peers (Alphabet/Apple/Amazon/Microsoft) were accomplishing for many years in the 2010s.
The market has separated these 5 pretty clearly now, with Meta trailing by quite a bit, Alphabet and Amazon in the middle, and Microsoft and Apple with a decent lead.
The market has separated these 5 pretty clearly now, with Meta trailing by quite a bit, Alphabet and Amazon in the middle, and Microsoft and Apple with a decent lead.
Meta is in the advertising business - why would we say they are they trailing Apple, Amazon and Microsoft?
I don't really understand why we are comparing a company who develops social media applications and generates advertising revenue against Apple who generates most of it's revenue from selling Hardware, or Microsoft who generates most of it's revenue from licencing software.
If we are saying that Meta are trailing Apple, we might as well say that Microsoft are trailing Saudi Aramco.
I don't really understand why we are comparing a company who develops social media applications and generates advertising revenue against Apple who generates most of it's revenue from selling Hardware, or Microsoft who generates most of it's revenue from licencing software.
If we are saying that Meta are trailing Apple, we might as well say that Microsoft are trailing Saudi Aramco.
The market is not comparing their potentials now, but the market used to feel their potentials were similar in 2010s. Sorry for the terrible graph, it’s the quickest market cap with all of them except Microsoft on it that I found.
http://www.innovationkm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/image...
http://www.innovationkm.com/the-market-cap-of-faang-changes-...
Another way to think of it is in the 2010s, a potential employee may have ranked a job at any of those companies as having similar security, but there is probably a different feeling about that now.
http://www.innovationkm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/image...
http://www.innovationkm.com/the-market-cap-of-faang-changes-...
Another way to think of it is in the 2010s, a potential employee may have ranked a job at any of those companies as having similar security, but there is probably a different feeling about that now.
They aren't really in the same market though - so it's comparing apples and oranges.
I get comparing Meta against Google, but why would we compare Meta against Apple? They are fundamentally different businesses.
I get comparing Meta against Google, but why would we compare Meta against Apple? They are fundamentally different businesses.
The market compared their potential during the 2010s, because everyone was growing by leaps and bounds and the sky was the limit. There is clearly no reason to do that now.
Plot the graph again but instead of comparing them to Apple and Netflix try comparing them to Johnson & Johnson and Porche.
As a follow on point to my other reply comment on review, the comparable stock on that list is Google - and the graph probably shows that the market actually underestimated Meta's 'potential' compared to Google.
2010 Meta 'Potential' vs 2010 Google 'Potential' - c$50bn vs c$200bn
2022 Meta 'Potential' vs 2022 Google 'Potential' - c580bn vs c$800bn
Meta grew >10x across the period, while Google grew c4x
I don't personally buy that Market Cap = Potential, but you would be twice as rich if you invested in Meta according to that graph than if you invested in Google, and you would have also done better investing in Meta across that period than Apple according to the graph you sent across.
2010 Meta 'Potential' vs 2010 Google 'Potential' - c$50bn vs c$200bn
2022 Meta 'Potential' vs 2022 Google 'Potential' - c580bn vs c$800bn
Meta grew >10x across the period, while Google grew c4x
I don't personally buy that Market Cap = Potential, but you would be twice as rich if you invested in Meta according to that graph than if you invested in Google, and you would have also done better investing in Meta across that period than Apple according to the graph you sent across.
You would have to take into account stock splits and dividends. According to DQDYJ total return calculator:
https://watch.dqydj.com/timeseries/stock-calculator/
From May 21, 2012 (when META went public) to now, here are the annual returns:
MSFT - 24.53%
AAPL - 22.99%
AMZN - 22.07%
GOOGL - 18.09%
META - 14.36%
https://watch.dqydj.com/timeseries/stock-calculator/
From May 21, 2012 (when META went public) to now, here are the annual returns:
MSFT - 24.53%
AAPL - 22.99%
AMZN - 22.07%
GOOGL - 18.09%
META - 14.36%
Tech companies are valued by how they dominate particular sectors/niches and the potential growth of that sector/niche.
Facebook doesn't dominate social any more like it once did. It did so with Facebook itself then with instagram but TikTok is grabbing the current generation of new users.
It can't grow like it once did and usage of its existing services will gradually decline.
It's betting that the metaverse is the next social medium after TikTok's short form video. Personally I doubt that but that's the bet they're making.
Facebook doesn't dominate social any more like it once did. It did so with Facebook itself then with instagram but TikTok is grabbing the current generation of new users.
It can't grow like it once did and usage of its existing services will gradually decline.
It's betting that the metaverse is the next social medium after TikTok's short form video. Personally I doubt that but that's the bet they're making.
Meta dominates the display ad market though, that is all they care about. Once TikTok is banned in America, they can grow it further.
TikTok isn't getting banned, don't be silly.
Is it silly? It's already being banned from US and European government devices. It is just one more sentence away from being banned for general population in those huge regions.
There is big chasm between banning an app from fleet devices and banning both an app and a website in an entire country. Especially one that is so enormously popular.
I cannot recall the last time I've seen such a bipartisan push for something so monumental. Just within the past week, Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Mark Warner (D-VA) have been saying virtually the same thing: TikTok is an unprecedented national security threat.
they're literally just forcing them to build datacenters to keep the data for Americans in America (and Indians in India, etc).
TikTok is already publicly hiring a ton of people for this
Once the data doesn't leave America this is going to go away.
This is not that much different than just complying with the type of regulations the EU has. The American version is just involving a lot more chest pounding and fluff because there's no existing laws to enforce to make them do this. So they just have to do it through threats and relatively minor policy changes (like banning on government phones).
Once the data doesn't leave America this is going to go away.
This is not that much different than just complying with the type of regulations the EU has. The American version is just involving a lot more chest pounding and fluff because there's no existing laws to enforce to make them do this. So they just have to do it through threats and relatively minor policy changes (like banning on government phones).
I'm honestly more surprised that any social media apps were ever allowed on government devices.
Yes it is. The government is just trying to get the data to stay within the US. TikTok only needs facilities here (and maybe some sort of air gap) to comply.
Were US and European government officials/workers really big TikTok'ers to begin with?
TikTok got banned in India. I don't see why it can't get banned in US given CCP's complete control over Chinese companies
India regularly bans sites.
just last month https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156726845/indian-tax-authori...
USA is different
just last month https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156726845/indian-tax-authori...
USA is different
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TikTok's highly unlikely to get banned, and if it was then 10 new replacements would pop up overnight. Facebook isn't anything like TikTok and likely never could be. Instagram might get close but even then its not the same thing.
Also the display ad market is only useful if you've got people to advertise to. The more Facebook continues to turn into 'social networking for boomers' the less and less they'll make.
Also the display ad market is only useful if you've got people to advertise to. The more Facebook continues to turn into 'social networking for boomers' the less and less they'll make.
They have 2.9bn monthly active users.
Like, I left FB five years ago (after staying there for 5 years), and literally HN has been telling me that FB were doomed for all of that time.
I totally agree that TikTok is a very strong competitor, unlike what they've seen before, but writing FB off right now is probably not the wisest long-term decision.
Like, I left FB five years ago (after staying there for 5 years), and literally HN has been telling me that FB were doomed for all of that time.
I totally agree that TikTok is a very strong competitor, unlike what they've seen before, but writing FB off right now is probably not the wisest long-term decision.
How many in the US, and how many with desirable advertiser demographics. Selling reverse mortgage and pharmaceutical ads to boomer audiences turns you into television, where--at some point--the audience is going to pass on and leave it behind.
A bit hyperbolic to say HN groupthink => "FB doomed". More like FB is over valued and their product has stagnated and alienated their user base.
Facebook acquires IG (over ten years ago now), HN comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840
>and if it was then 10 new replacements would pop up overnight
https://www.youtube.com/shorts
already here
and not a chinese company
if Im gonna brainrot Ill use youtube
https://www.youtube.com/shorts
already here
and not a chinese company
if Im gonna brainrot Ill use youtube
> Tech companies...
Is Meta really a tech company? It takes a lot of technology to do what they do, just like Netflix. But their core business isn't technology pre se, it's social media and advertising. I don't think they're the same class of businesses as Microsoft or Apple. Google is closer to Meta in terms of their revenue sources, but they have a much more diverse technology offering.
They are trying to become a hardware company with their VR line, but it feels more like a hobby in the Apple sense of the term. I.e., a division with small revenues and without a clear growth path.
Is Meta really a tech company? It takes a lot of technology to do what they do, just like Netflix. But their core business isn't technology pre se, it's social media and advertising. I don't think they're the same class of businesses as Microsoft or Apple. Google is closer to Meta in terms of their revenue sources, but they have a much more diverse technology offering.
They are trying to become a hardware company with their VR line, but it feels more like a hobby in the Apple sense of the term. I.e., a division with small revenues and without a clear growth path.
So Google also isn't tech company. Their core business isn't tech but also advertising after all.
Using your logic there are almost 0 pure tech companies.
You could indeed argue that. I think there's a difference between the product and the revenue. Google still feels like they produce a number of technical products, even if their revenue is mostly driven by ads. GCP, Android, and Chrome would be examples.
You are right. We never called movie studios or TV Channels "tech companies" even though all their work is distributed and created by technology.
Did movie studios and tv channels employ large departments of researchers and engineers that developed and deployed the technology?
I don't know.
Yes? It’s not common anymore due to the technology maturing, but on its heyday the TV channels were on the forefront of technology. See the development of color television and much more recently (and I’m most familiar with it), the digital TV standards.
Personally I'd say that if your company primarily builds its product(s) via programming then it's a tech company?
Attention just in itself has zero value. If companies are paying Facebook to advertise there, that is where the value is. Personally I think social media advertising is a pure scam industry, but so many small companies want to play that casino, and Facebook makes that easy for them.
> It can't grow like it once did
1 in 4 people on earth is using FB every day. They simply can't grow more too much.
1 in 4 people on earth is using FB every day. They simply can't grow more too much.
This is the most fundamental problem. In order to justify a "tech" P/E multiple, it has to be the case that exponential growth in the future is justified. For any MAMA (Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet) company, this is almost certainly impossible. This means it is time to transition to being a boring, reliable stock, probably with a substantial dividend. I'm not sure Zuckerberg is ready to do that.
PE ratios for big tech.
Google: 20:1 Amazon: 100:1 Netflix: 30:1 Apple: 22:1 Meta: 18:1
(For the financially illiterate like me who wanted to see what various ratios looked like. Meta (Facebook at the time) used to have a 7:1 ratio when they printed money before they doubled headcount while revenue flagged. If it weren’t for that hiring spree, they would be under 10:1 and not in the same class of “tech” multiples.
Google: 20:1 Amazon: 100:1 Netflix: 30:1 Apple: 22:1 Meta: 18:1
(For the financially illiterate like me who wanted to see what various ratios looked like. Meta (Facebook at the time) used to have a 7:1 ratio when they printed money before they doubled headcount while revenue flagged. If it weren’t for that hiring spree, they would be under 10:1 and not in the same class of “tech” multiples.
They go full Musk and colonize Mars so that they can achieve the exponential growth that investors expect.
[deleted]
> It's betting that the metaverse is the next social medium
Apparently that's no longer the case: "Mark Zuckerberg Quietly Buries the Metaverse"[1]. Company name looks just silly at this point.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35023493
Apparently that's no longer the case: "Mark Zuckerberg Quietly Buries the Metaverse"[1]. Company name looks just silly at this point.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35023493
It’s a public company that makes money. Why would it be valued differently than any other public company that makes money? Do people expect 10x growth?
Facebook’s ads business has been destroyed by Apple with the introduction of ATT. It’s pretty clear this is a permanent shift downward in revenue for them, unless advertisers like them are able to improve ads attribution.
Don't you think Bing's search revamp will also eat into the FB ad business? IMO, there is enough contextual info supplied by users during queries to better target users with injected ads than competitors.
IMHO these hirings and firings are not about the present but about the future. Sure, Meta did great but Nokia also did great for a while after iPhone was introduced.
What is the latest cool Meta product which promises a bright future for the company? Well, llama is cool but it's not product and today's greatest social media sensation is TikTok.
I'm sure meta does have some great tech, in fact some of the work they did on VR with all these tens of billions of dollars is groundbreaking but that also failed as a product.
Why would they keep the workforce configuration the same if their current state is probably not what they want to be tomorrow?
What is the latest cool Meta product which promises a bright future for the company? Well, llama is cool but it's not product and today's greatest social media sensation is TikTok.
I'm sure meta does have some great tech, in fact some of the work they did on VR with all these tens of billions of dollars is groundbreaking but that also failed as a product.
Why would they keep the workforce configuration the same if their current state is probably not what they want to be tomorrow?
I get the feeling TikTok has played themselves. Their format is super addictive, and it works, but the problem is that with something super addictive people lose interest sooner.
It's not an actual drug so you can't just keep upping the dosage. I don't have the internal metrics and I'm sure they are still making gains, but I think their wave is going to be much smaller than Facebooks.
It's still very popular of course but just judging by the number of times phones have been shoved in my face to watch a tiktok at social events recently vs a year ago I have to feel their is some level of decline. I also notice that even the younger crowd isn't using it as much.
It seems to me that right now the most popular thing is sharing videos, both 3rd party and original within various group chats.
I think there is social media platform overload, and the best way to keep in touch with people that actually matter to you and be sure they see your content is having group chats where you share things and then talk about it. Just my anecdotal observation, I'm probably wrong.
It seems similar to the resurgence of piracy now that there are 50+ different streaming apps.
It's not an actual drug so you can't just keep upping the dosage. I don't have the internal metrics and I'm sure they are still making gains, but I think their wave is going to be much smaller than Facebooks.
It's still very popular of course but just judging by the number of times phones have been shoved in my face to watch a tiktok at social events recently vs a year ago I have to feel their is some level of decline. I also notice that even the younger crowd isn't using it as much.
It seems to me that right now the most popular thing is sharing videos, both 3rd party and original within various group chats.
I think there is social media platform overload, and the best way to keep in touch with people that actually matter to you and be sure they see your content is having group chats where you share things and then talk about it. Just my anecdotal observation, I'm probably wrong.
It seems similar to the resurgence of piracy now that there are 50+ different streaming apps.
I don’t think TikTok is any more addictive than the rest. If anything, TikTok doesn’t make me feel missing out if I don’t constantly check the App.
I’m aware of the Chinese thing and how it makes some people feel but IMHO TikTok is healthy in in comparison with the Instagram or Reddit for example. You still can spend hours once in though.
After years of stagnation with Meta, TikTok is a step forward.
I’m aware of the Chinese thing and how it makes some people feel but IMHO TikTok is healthy in in comparison with the Instagram or Reddit for example. You still can spend hours once in though.
After years of stagnation with Meta, TikTok is a step forward.
It's not about missing out but you get sucked in and there's no end. I don't use TikTok myself but I've gotten stuck with YouTube Shorts where 45 min easily fly by despite me disliking it. On all other social media platforms you reach the end and see content you read yesterday. On these video platforms it just goes on and on. Short videos are also a very digestable format.
I think this is good, it’s time we’ll spent. What I struggle with is the need to constantly check what’s new and never feel satisfied enough to move on.
I love taunting people by saying: "It's all just Vines"
> with something super addictive people lose interest sooner
Well, "addictive" literally means "cannot easily stop doing it"
Well, "addictive" literally means "cannot easily stop doing it"
Sure, but you can't really just do more. It's addictive nature plateaus rapidly. I guess you could get multiple phones, but not really. It's micro-addicting, but I'm a macro level it's less so. It's extremely hard to stop, but life necessitates you must at times and then it fades instead of compounding like a true addiction.
> What is the latest cool Meta product which promises a bright future for the company?
Hum... Did the executives of all those large companies just happen to discover they aren't innovative at the same time? Or are they trying to prop-up their stock so they have time to exit on the prices created by the low-interest market?
One of those is way more likely than the other.
(But yeah, those companies have stopped innovating long ago.)
Hum... Did the executives of all those large companies just happen to discover they aren't innovative at the same time? Or are they trying to prop-up their stock so they have time to exit on the prices created by the low-interest market?
One of those is way more likely than the other.
(But yeah, those companies have stopped innovating long ago.)
The metric you choose matters. If you would have chosen EPS it tells a very different story, especially for investors.
Investors will tend to tolerate other faltering metrics for high revenue growth in startups, but that’s not Meta.
Investors will tend to tolerate other faltering metrics for high revenue growth in startups, but that’s not Meta.
But EPS is doing great for Meta so I have no idea what you are talking about. Their only issue I can see for EPS is that they hired to many in 2020 and 2021, just as I said.
Tech is still valued as growth stocks compared to other sectors. If you look at the EPS, its trending down and growth is negative.[1] That's not "doing great" for what most investors expect out of a relatively mature tech stock that doesn’t pay a dividend. In other words, why would I pay growth-stock valuation for something that isn't growing its earnings?
(obviously, the analysis is more complicated than this, but you can see why investors may not think things are going gang-busters over at Meta)
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...
(obviously, the analysis is more complicated than this, but you can see why investors may not think things are going gang-busters over at Meta)
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/META/meta-platform...
>Poor performance? Meta is doing great and just had one year of not insane growth.
Public sentiment is terrible and if that's a reliable leading indicator, the company will be in trouble if it doesnt continually diversify into products that distance themselves from the core brand.
Public sentiment is terrible and if that's a reliable leading indicator, the company will be in trouble if it doesnt continually diversify into products that distance themselves from the core brand.
I mean instagram and whatsapp are wildly popular
They are popular but anecdotally, if the general public is anything like me, they would be more likely to use those products if they werent owned by FB.
The general public does not really care one way or another about facebook the company
The conversations that I've been hearing point to the simplest way to kill TikTok: force them to sell to Facebook. As much as people dislike the spyware present in TikTok, they dislike FB's spying even more.
> Meta is doing great and just had one year of not insane growth.
This completely overlooks the changes that happened in that one year of not insane growth.
Apple cut Meta's legs off and Meta has no indication on how they're going to regrow them. The Metaverse is flopping, FB is seen as a place for hate, youths don't have accounts, etc, etc, etc.
Facebook is not the future of social media and Meta has not come up with a viable alternative.
This completely overlooks the changes that happened in that one year of not insane growth.
Apple cut Meta's legs off and Meta has no indication on how they're going to regrow them. The Metaverse is flopping, FB is seen as a place for hate, youths don't have accounts, etc, etc, etc.
Facebook is not the future of social media and Meta has not come up with a viable alternative.
It probably doesn't bode well that Cramer says Meta is ‘rapidly becoming my favorite stock’ :
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/14/club-meeting-recap-cramer-sa...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/14/club-meeting-recap-cramer-sa...
And the stock is up 120% since three months, of the low of $88. Obviously no-one bought it back then when they were expecting the stock to go to zero.
Once again, Meta's death has been greatly exaggerated on this site.
Once again, Meta's death has been greatly exaggerated on this site.
No one was expecting a business earning $20B profits per year to go to zero.
What changed were the expectations of what their profit will be in 5, 10, 20 years.
What changed were the expectations of what their profit will be in 5, 10, 20 years.
> What changed were the expectations of what their profit will be in 5, 10, 20 years.
The funny thing is, that's a bad bet. Large tech company profits can last for years and decades. The archetypal example is IBM. They've had some years or record losses, but overall, look at their yearly profits:
https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/earnings/
We're talking about probably more than $250bn of profits over 20 years.
The funny thing is, that's a bad bet. Large tech company profits can last for years and decades. The archetypal example is IBM. They've had some years or record losses, but overall, look at their yearly profits:
https://companiesmarketcap.com/ibm/earnings/
We're talking about probably more than $250bn of profits over 20 years.
Just having a profit is not enough to say something was or was not a bad bet. I doubt anyone is happy with their bet on IBM in the past couple decades. A riskless bet on SP500 would have delivered far greater returns.
It also depends on dividends. If IBM consistently gave dividends to its shareholders, that could add up to a lot of money.
But it did not add up to a lot of money, compared to alternative, much less risky investments. In fact, it added up to a loss.
https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/
IBM has objectively been a terrible investment for many, many years.
https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/
IBM has objectively been a terrible investment for many, many years.
IBM is a good dividend stock. That said, there are certainly stocks you could have bought and held over the past couple of decades (as well as many index funds) that would have had better returns overall.
So... As valuation for those companies usually go, if the profit stays constant on real terms, the reasonable price to pay for the stock is often some 90% down from the peak.
Don't they have an enormous cash pile? How does that translate to poor performance?
I'm no financial expert, but wouldn't hoarding an "enormous cash pile" be a indicator of not using capital efficiently?
It depends, but investing wisely is very difficult and slow once you get into the billions of dollars.
I'm no financial expert, but wouldn't hoarding an "enormous cash pile" be a indicator of not using capital efficiently?
Having an enormous cash pile is what allowed Apple to keep paying its employees when COVID shut everything down.
Every good company has a cash reserve. The one I work for has a policy of maintaining enough cash reserves to operate for 18 months with zero income. It saved our bacon when the virus came around.
Having an enormous cash pile is what allowed Apple to keep paying its employees when COVID shut everything down.
Every good company has a cash reserve. The one I work for has a policy of maintaining enough cash reserves to operate for 18 months with zero income. It saved our bacon when the virus came around.
COVID did not shut down Apple's revenue generation. Revenue growth was staggering during COVID. Remember everybody buying electronics because of lockdowns? They may have felt less inclined to pay people while they weren't standing around in genius bars, but they didn't need cash reserves to keep them going.
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Well they have some money in the bank, but culturally nobody thinks meta is the future (within USA at least). There is massive mistrust of their brand and any product they could ever make (be it lack of privacy or giving a terrible experience by over-monitizing).
There is massive mistrust of banks, comcast and a whole lot of other companies and even industries, among the general public. And yet, the same public continues to use their services, even when there are alternatives (at least in some cases, there aren't alternatives to many).
Convenience and familiarity trumps other issues, even massive issues like privacy etc. You might be over estimating public's interest in giving their money only to honest, decent businesses - public gives their money to whoever entertains them cheaply and caters to their laziness.
Nothing is going to change, unless we all vote with our wallets. But we have already voted, we knowingly support monster companies like Amazon.
Convenience and familiarity trumps other issues, even massive issues like privacy etc. You might be over estimating public's interest in giving their money only to honest, decent businesses - public gives their money to whoever entertains them cheaply and caters to their laziness.
Nothing is going to change, unless we all vote with our wallets. But we have already voted, we knowingly support monster companies like Amazon.
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You're right, but I don't see Facebook (or other Meta properties) approaching that level. Arguably, Whatsapp is the most successful in that area, but largely because they haven't done anything to further ruin their reputation. If/when Meta decides that Whatsapp is going to be their new focus and potential cash cow, they'll try and shove more monetization into that platform and the cycle of user migration will repeat.
> Don't they have an enormous cash pile? How does that translate to poor performance?
When you run a business, you look towards the future and what profit you're forecasting. You don't want to see decline in profits, you don't want to use your cash reserves to compensate for less profit.
Facebook reported $23.1 billion net profit in 2022, a decline on the $39.3 billion made in 2021.
When you run a business, you look towards the future and what profit you're forecasting. You don't want to see decline in profits, you don't want to use your cash reserves to compensate for less profit.
Facebook reported $23.1 billion net profit in 2022, a decline on the $39.3 billion made in 2021.
Zuckerberg never had fresh ideas. He stole someone else's idea and that has been the only product he has ever made.
Ideas are meaningless, execution is everything.
Most successful businesses aren’t based on new ideas. All the big tech companies copied existing businesses, they just did it better.
> All the big tech companies copied existing businesses, they just did it better.
I agree with this regarding their first product. Google wasn't the first ad network, Slack wasn't the first team chat, etc.
Very few of them seem to have ever had a follow-up hit product (whether original or copied). Apple and Microsoft are the only ones I can think of that did it.
Meta and Alphabet have only ever created profitable businesses by acquiring other companies. I'm not even sure anything is profitable at Alphabet other than their ad business (which I would now include with YouTube) and G-Suite.
I agree with this regarding their first product. Google wasn't the first ad network, Slack wasn't the first team chat, etc.
Very few of them seem to have ever had a follow-up hit product (whether original or copied). Apple and Microsoft are the only ones I can think of that did it.
Meta and Alphabet have only ever created profitable businesses by acquiring other companies. I'm not even sure anything is profitable at Alphabet other than their ad business (which I would now include with YouTube) and G-Suite.
There are very very few fresh ideas and even those require the vast majority of the project built on someone else's work. Taking something existing and doing it better is what business is all about.
This is true of every tech billionaire. They improved something that already existed.
Rarely if ever do they true novel inventors dominate the market because when the market doesn’t exist they have to create it, and also they’re inventors not necessarily business men.
Rarely if ever do they true novel inventors dominate the market because when the market doesn’t exist they have to create it, and also they’re inventors not necessarily business men.
Having fresh ideas isn't necessary of having a successful business.
His acquisition of instagram and whatsapp were good moves.
His acquisition of instagram and whatsapp were good moves.
> His acquisition of instagram and whatsapp were good moves.
Acquiring your competitors to kill competition isn't a "good move," it's an obvious strategy that has existed for hundreds of years and is (rightly) illegal.
We unfortunately forgot the lessons of the Gilded Age in this country, and incredibly anti-competitive acquisitions like that have been tolerated on too many occasions.
It's easy to make "good moves" if regulators are ignoring you and you're comfortable with being immoral, as Zuckerberg always has been.
Acquiring your competitors to kill competition isn't a "good move," it's an obvious strategy that has existed for hundreds of years and is (rightly) illegal.
We unfortunately forgot the lessons of the Gilded Age in this country, and incredibly anti-competitive acquisitions like that have been tolerated on too many occasions.
It's easy to make "good moves" if regulators are ignoring you and you're comfortable with being immoral, as Zuckerberg always has been.
I should clarify that I meant a good move for Facebook/Meta. I'm not commenting on the meaning of those moves outside of that context.
this is cope
Same can be said about Apple.
> now Zuckerberg is the old guard with stale ideas that he railed against so hard when Facebook was founded
how is that any different than most of Silicon Valley?
Silicon Valley is what people thought the future looked like in 1994
It has taken Silicon Valley a long time to realize there is a limit to what you can do with websites and computers
how is that any different than most of Silicon Valley?
Silicon Valley is what people thought the future looked like in 1994
It has taken Silicon Valley a long time to realize there is a limit to what you can do with websites and computers
>It has taken Silicon Valley a long time to realize there is a limit to what you can do with websites and computers
Through robots in there and I'm not convinced there really is a limit, it just becomes difficult
Through robots in there and I'm not convinced there really is a limit, it just becomes difficult
These companies arent really robotics companies though. They have tried, but no successes yet
Soon you'll all be fighting for your jobs. Many of you will be dying for your jobs. A few of you will be forced through a fine mesh screen for your jobs. They will be the luckiest of all.
-- Zuck probably.
I feel like 10K people are taking a hit because Zuck ruined VR for another decade with his very boomer like imagination and monetization strategy.
Anyway, it's rough out there.
-- Zuck probably.
I feel like 10K people are taking a hit because Zuck ruined VR for another decade with his very boomer like imagination and monetization strategy.
Anyway, it's rough out there.
> Zuck ruined VR for another decade with his very boomer like imagination and monetization strategy
What do you mean?
What do you mean?
Go watch the launch of the metaverse and consider who would actually want to spend time and money there.
Meta is trying to own vr like apple owns it's app store. But apple make a great set of products, that I don't like personally, but they are objectively good. Facebook is hanging on because it's got early market share from a long time ago, and it bought all it's competitors rather than out flank them. So it's lazy in mind and spirit and this is showing up in it's offerings in vr.
Firing 10k people on the back of other layoffs just obscures that for a while.
Firing 10k people on the back of other layoffs just obscures that for a while.
Boomers were responsible for the late 90s VR hype train.
This latest round is a re-run.
VR was talked up like crazy then and fizzled.
Zuckerberg is old enough to have been an impressionable kid when that was going on. I remember being very excited about it all.
This latest round is a re-run.
VR was talked up like crazy then and fizzled.
Zuckerberg is old enough to have been an impressionable kid when that was going on. I remember being very excited about it all.
I honestly don't remember a lot of VR hype but I've never been much of gamer so maybe I wasn't paying much attention. Various organizations, including the MIT Media Lab, have been playing around with VR for a long time but I don't recall VR being particularly notable in the dot-com runup.
I remember installing the VRML plugin for Netscape and how it slowed my dual-CPU SPARCStation 20 to a crawl, but it was OMG The Future! and then one day nobody ever mentioned it again.
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> Boomers were responsible for the late 90s VR hype train.
Sure. I'm just not sure I understand how the current focus/hype by Mark Zuckerberg/Meta can be THE cause for VR to fail (which is what was asserted by the person I was responding to).
I mean, are there literally nobody younger who is hyped about VR? Maybe not!
Sure. I'm just not sure I understand how the current focus/hype by Mark Zuckerberg/Meta can be THE cause for VR to fail (which is what was asserted by the person I was responding to).
I mean, are there literally nobody younger who is hyped about VR? Maybe not!
Meta owns Instagram and WA both of which have terrific and growing user base. How well are they able to monetise is a different question though.
It's a little frustrating that they don't seem to break down earnings for Instagram and WhatsApp. My impression is that their monetization of Instagram is probably ok but not great compared to Facebook and their monetization of WhatsApp is probably awful.
Growing user base because they copy and steal all their good ideas
They don't ask how, they ask how many.
Facebook is an intel front:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog
> The LifeLog program was canceled on February 3, 2004
> On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.
If true, that’s a pretty crazy coincidence.
> On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched "TheFacebook", originally located at thefacebook.com.
If true, that’s a pretty crazy coincidence.
I worked there 7 years. This is tinfoil nonsense.
> stale ideas
> whole metaverse thing
pick one
> whole metaverse thing
pick one
Meta's take on it is literally stale. It's VR Chat with more funding. The service itself is nothing more than a poor tech demo.
The “metaverse” so far has just been a shitty video game. What, in your opinion, isn’t stale about the metaverse?
that's why they have IG and the headsets which are younger
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Discord is the the Facebook killer
I know people like to shit on the blue app, but Instagram has done a very good job at attracting younger users and feels like fb’s main focus anyway.
Ironically apple entering AR/VR may be the best thing to happen to Meta if it helps bolster the ecosystem. Meta may not be #1 in the space for a long time, if ever, but they may be able to ride the wave to a strong #2
Ironically apple entering AR/VR may be the best thing to happen to Meta if it helps bolster the ecosystem. Meta may not be #1 in the space for a long time, if ever, but they may be able to ride the wave to a strong #2
Maybe they should take a page from Blizzard and roll out Facebook Classic?
We didn't have good notion of global social network at the time - facebook was first, kinda, so they took it all. Facebook still gonna prevail, but over time it festered a lot of specialized competition from twitter, reddit, linkedin, discord.
I think it is fair to say that none of the large tech. companies except Apple managed to hire correctly. Should we also assume that they won’t be able to fire correctly?
I do believe problems about their talent pipeline or how they utilise it lays deeper than these hiring/firing sprees can solve.
I do believe problems about their talent pipeline or how they utilise it lays deeper than these hiring/firing sprees can solve.
"Apple hired correctly" was a meme going around recently, but doesn't seem to be true:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34826369
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34826369
A lot of companies are laying off large numbers of FTEs.
Linked story indicates that Apple is laying off contractors.
These are not the same.
Linked story indicates that Apple is laying off contractors.
These are not the same.
Not sure I buy that.
If they'd "hired correctly", then even contractors wouldn't be getting laid off in large numbers.
If they'd "hired correctly", then even contractors wouldn't be getting laid off in large numbers.
The whole point of using contractors is you can drop them at a moment’s notice.
Why would you bother predicting labor demand in the future? That is the contracted entity’s problem.
Why would you bother predicting labor demand in the future? That is the contracted entity’s problem.
That's an interesting point. It's one of the differences between US hiring practises, and other countries.
Here in Australia, when you're a contractor you have a fixed employment term. That can be extended, depending upon the contract.
If an employer decides to cut short the contract (without real cause), that can be an actual problem for the employer.
Here in Australia, when you're a contractor you have a fixed employment term. That can be extended, depending upon the contract.
If an employer decides to cut short the contract (without real cause), that can be an actual problem for the employer.
Apple has a lot of contractors working in roles that companies like Google and Meta opt for FTEs instead so it's similar.
Is anyone laid off with this message, or have they just set up the entire company to worry that they’re being laid off.
From the text it appears at least some of these people are quite literally warned of their potential firing with this message.
>Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.
Looks like the age of pure remote work is done for big corporates!
Looks like the age of pure remote work is done for big corporates!
Also,
> I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person
...I wonder if these layoffs will be an opportunity for managers to get rid of some of those pesky employees who insist on working remotely - with the welcome side effect of "encouraging" the remaining ones to "embrace" the return to old ways of working with more enthusiasm?
> I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person
...I wonder if these layoffs will be an opportunity for managers to get rid of some of those pesky employees who insist on working remotely - with the welcome side effect of "encouraging" the remaining ones to "embrace" the return to old ways of working with more enthusiasm?
> ...I wonder if these layoffs will be an opportunity for managers to get rid of some of those pesky employees who insist on working remotely - with the welcome side effect of "encouraging" the remaining ones to "embrace" the return to old ways of working with more enthusiasm?
Yeah, to me that also looks like a thinly veiled threat "get back to the office or prepare to be laid off".
Yeah, to me that also looks like a thinly veiled threat "get back to the office or prepare to be laid off".
Interesting hypothesis. If it is true, what does it say about social networks like FB if in-person networks provide better trust building than online ones.
It was always going to happen. It was for a season to protect people from covid and lessen the spread of it.
Not so sure... remote working was a thing already before Covid (just think of the millions of hours wasted commuting daily, not to mention the tons of CO2 emitted), Covid simply accelerated what seemed to be an inevitable evolution to a revolution. Now we have arrived at the "counter-revolution" stage, where the powers that be (managers) try to turn back the clock to the "good old times". Let's see if they will succeed...
They won’t. Cat’s out of the bag and anyone who has market power demands remote work now.
This is just a move to justify massive commercial real estate portfolios because by all accounts they’re plummeting in value.
This is just a move to justify massive commercial real estate portfolios because by all accounts they’re plummeting in value.
Free advice to future managers:
You don't need to write a novel with these. Also, writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting.
Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
You don't need to write a novel with these. Also, writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting.
Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
The novel isn't for employees, it's for investors
Correct. The stock is up 5% this morning.
Stock always goes up after layoffs. Hell, the stock goes up after _rumors_ about layoffs.
So, if you approach 0 employees asymptotically, the stock will approach ∞.
I sincerely hope this new thesis you've unleashed on the world is called the DeathArrow in business schools across the world.
give man a Nobel
Let me guess. You work in crypto.
Limitless growth
Revenue (or profit) per employee is always the metric to use, where employee >= 1, since there is no use making 0.01 cents if there are 0 employees.
WhatsApp famously had ~50 employees for ~$16 billion in acquisition price.
WhatsApp famously had ~50 employees for ~$16 billion in acquisition price.
What was their revenue though?
Who knows / cares? Their product is the stock itself that was then sold to the acquirer.
The show Silicon Valley has a great parody of this fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM
The show Silicon Valley has a great parody of this fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZFTaEenaHM
And the press. You can assume that internal emails like this are leaked.
It's publicly posted on fb.com
After sharing it internally. Probably posted on fb.com as they know it would just leak otherwise, and the memo is written with the mindset of it being public regardless.
> who are probably still very much in demand
Honest question, but are they? And, just as important, is anyone other than a FAANG company willing to pay them the same high comps right at this moment?
I can see a high-need-for-people/high-comp scenario still possible in some parts of finance, but with these recent events I'm not so sure anymore. I'm also sure that right now there's a high demand for people in anything related to MIC/the war industry, but I don't think they can provide the same high comps as FAANGs do, unless one choose to go the contractor route (which also comes with its pluses and minuses).
Honest question, but are they? And, just as important, is anyone other than a FAANG company willing to pay them the same high comps right at this moment?
I can see a high-need-for-people/high-comp scenario still possible in some parts of finance, but with these recent events I'm not so sure anymore. I'm also sure that right now there's a high demand for people in anything related to MIC/the war industry, but I don't think they can provide the same high comps as FAANGs do, unless one choose to go the contractor route (which also comes with its pluses and minuses).
Yes. At the moment, there very much is a shortage of qualified tech workers still. The market for them is now more "really hot" than "white hot".
No. Only niche skills. Python and basic web dev is becoming common place. Supply given boot camps and lack of credentialism and the ease of learning software dev has increased by a lot.
These layoffs don't happen in a really hot market.
These layoffs don't happen in a really hot market.
Boot camps don’t qualify as supply, they qualify as noise. People who can actually engineer using Python are rare enough that they remain well-paid.
They do qualify. Boot camps generate a lot of noise but there is no doubt that out of that noise there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase supply by a non trivial margin. Not seeing this is denying reality.
People who can actually engineer in python is becoming more and more common place.
People who can actually engineer in python is becoming more and more common place.
>there are a lot of good candidates that significantly increase supply by a non trivial margin
There's still a deficit of talent, even in Python. I don't see anyone denying this reality.
But to your point, there is a flood of bad candidates.
There's still a deficit of talent, even in Python. I don't see anyone denying this reality.
But to your point, there is a flood of bad candidates.
>But to your point, there is a flood of bad candidates.
How would you know did you hire these candidates to find out? Or did you dismiss them as bad because they didn't pass some brain teaser algorithm interview?
Those candidates go on to get hired at companies with a lower bar for lower salaries and those lower salaries do influence the market.
How would you know did you hire these candidates to find out? Or did you dismiss them as bad because they didn't pass some brain teaser algorithm interview?
Those candidates go on to get hired at companies with a lower bar for lower salaries and those lower salaries do influence the market.
>How would you know did you hire these candidates to find out?
Yes.
We'll still interview them, but they're usually pretty bad. I'm struggling to remember one who wasn't. The one's we've hired have been disasters.
Yes.
We'll still interview them, but they're usually pretty bad. I'm struggling to remember one who wasn't. The one's we've hired have been disasters.
Hold on. Of course you want to avoid terrible candidates. But brain teaser questions and asking gotcha questions about obscure python syntax or something like that isn't a good correlative indicator. You get a bunch of false negatives this way... people who are good but not good at interviews.
You have to give them some take home exercise. That's the best way to determine if they're not a false negative. Unfortunately many good devs just don't have the time to do a takehome.
Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project?
What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
You have to give them some take home exercise. That's the best way to determine if they're not a false negative. Unfortunately many good devs just don't have the time to do a takehome.
Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project?
What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
>But brain teaser questions and asking gotcha questions about obscure python syntax or something like that isn't a good correlative indicator.
Agreed, but that's not how we interview.
>Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project?
Do you have me confused with the other guy?
>What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
Understood. The market is also flooded with incompetent devs, capable of talking at length about Python syntax (and sometimes even the computational model, e.g. MRO, etc.), but who aren't actually able to put that knowledge to use in engineering systems. These are systematically catastrophic hires, by which I mean, the engineering team is significantly better off hiring no-one, than hiring them.
May I ask, why does this seem to matter so much to you? If you are a bootcamp graduate yourself, that doesn't preclude you from being a good engineer. I am more than happy to believe you are the one-in-a-thousand counter-example.
Agreed, but that's not how we interview.
>Did you hire a candidate who say... didn't know what MRO was, but created a stellar result for a take home project?
Do you have me confused with the other guy?
>What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
Understood. The market is also flooded with incompetent devs, capable of talking at length about Python syntax (and sometimes even the computational model, e.g. MRO, etc.), but who aren't actually able to put that knowledge to use in engineering systems. These are systematically catastrophic hires, by which I mean, the engineering team is significantly better off hiring no-one, than hiring them.
May I ask, why does this seem to matter so much to you? If you are a bootcamp graduate yourself, that doesn't preclude you from being a good engineer. I am more than happy to believe you are the one-in-a-thousand counter-example.
>May I ask, why does this seem to matter so much to you? If you are a bootcamp graduate yourself, that doesn't preclude you from being a good engineer. I am more than happy to believe you are the one-in-a-thousand counter-example.
I'm not a bootcamp graduate engineer. I'm actually quite good at what I do, interviewing (from both sides) and engineering. This topic matters to me because I like to argue online and I have strong opinions.
It's common for people to manipulate their perception of reality to justify their own situation, I assure you I am not doing that here, however I think you are doing this.
>>What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
>Understood.
A false negative is someone who is GOOD, but appears bad. He is a negative but that assignment is false. I am saying the market is flooded with capable engineers that are good but appear bad due to interview processes and biases. Hence the term false negative.
>Do you have me confused with the other guy?
Nope you guys touched on similar points. You never mentioned syntax, but you're likely testing on algorithms so it's the same result. You get a ton of false negatives. You pay a premium for the guy who does better at the interview when you can get someone who's just as capable at a much lower cost.
The point is someone will hire those false negatives at a cheaper price and that effects the whole market. Companies hire the best they can get.
>Agreed, but that's not how we interview.
That's why a certain segment of the market looks like there's a dearth of people. It's because the interview clouds your perception. You interview the wrong way, you agree. The contradiction here is that although most people like you agree, you still reject people based off the SAME results as the WRONG interview AND you think the rejection is accurate.
That's how the psychology works. Everyone I talk to agrees interviewing is wrong overall but when they use it to judge on individual candidates they think it's accurate.
The contradiction exists even in your own reply. You agree the interview process you use is screwed yet you're really confident about your judgement of the market even though your measurement methodology is SELF admitted to be wrong. It renders your entire argument into question.
I'm not a bootcamp graduate engineer. I'm actually quite good at what I do, interviewing (from both sides) and engineering. This topic matters to me because I like to argue online and I have strong opinions.
It's common for people to manipulate their perception of reality to justify their own situation, I assure you I am not doing that here, however I think you are doing this.
>>What I'm saying is that the market is flooded with these false negatives.
>Understood.
A false negative is someone who is GOOD, but appears bad. He is a negative but that assignment is false. I am saying the market is flooded with capable engineers that are good but appear bad due to interview processes and biases. Hence the term false negative.
>Do you have me confused with the other guy?
Nope you guys touched on similar points. You never mentioned syntax, but you're likely testing on algorithms so it's the same result. You get a ton of false negatives. You pay a premium for the guy who does better at the interview when you can get someone who's just as capable at a much lower cost.
The point is someone will hire those false negatives at a cheaper price and that effects the whole market. Companies hire the best they can get.
>Agreed, but that's not how we interview.
That's why a certain segment of the market looks like there's a dearth of people. It's because the interview clouds your perception. You interview the wrong way, you agree. The contradiction here is that although most people like you agree, you still reject people based off the SAME results as the WRONG interview AND you think the rejection is accurate.
That's how the psychology works. Everyone I talk to agrees interviewing is wrong overall but when they use it to judge on individual candidates they think it's accurate.
The contradiction exists even in your own reply. You agree the interview process you use is screwed yet you're really confident about your judgement of the market even though your measurement methodology is SELF admitted to be wrong. It renders your entire argument into question.
I hire 10+ Python developers per year. You're wrong.
If you yourself are a bad engineer or terrible at hiring, you might mistake the chaff for the wheat, but then you're doomed anyway.
I think you're not talking from experience.
The same thing happened with JS when that was peaky, and it'll happen in other languages too.
What is old is new again.
If you yourself are a bad engineer or terrible at hiring, you might mistake the chaff for the wheat, but then you're doomed anyway.
I think you're not talking from experience.
The same thing happened with JS when that was peaky, and it'll happen in other languages too.
What is old is new again.
> I hire 10+ Python developers per year. You're wrong.
I've been hiring roughly the same amount for 10 years. I'm actually really extremely good at modern python. My skills with python syntax are so good that I can do in 1 line exclusively with generators what a junior programmer probably needs 10 lines and twice as much mutating state to pull off. My code is also likely more modular and neater then a junior but you have to realize none of this matters that much. My skill level with python is beyond the curve of what is necessary and so is any other developer that goes beyond 2 years with python.
In the end every programmer I ever hired exclusively for python will hit this tier within 1 or 2 years, very few exceptions. Roughly half of the junior programmers I hire are actually already within this tier upon getting hired. Literally before hitting there first job. After two years the only thing left to pick up are some more unique patterns and tricks but that's it.
I am 100% talking from experience.
I've been hiring roughly the same amount for 10 years. I'm actually really extremely good at modern python. My skills with python syntax are so good that I can do in 1 line exclusively with generators what a junior programmer probably needs 10 lines and twice as much mutating state to pull off. My code is also likely more modular and neater then a junior but you have to realize none of this matters that much. My skill level with python is beyond the curve of what is necessary and so is any other developer that goes beyond 2 years with python.
In the end every programmer I ever hired exclusively for python will hit this tier within 1 or 2 years, very few exceptions. Roughly half of the junior programmers I hire are actually already within this tier upon getting hired. Literally before hitting there first job. After two years the only thing left to pick up are some more unique patterns and tricks but that's it.
I am 100% talking from experience.
Yes but the same timeline can be done for C, C#, Java or anything else.
It isn't unique to Python.
"Of what is necessary" is subjective. Regardless of the language or framework I'm hiring within they must have the same level of engineering skill. I've hired people for Python projects who were outstanding Go or Java programmers who never touched Python commercially.
My point is the language isn't relevant to your arguments.
That's why you're wrong.
There's also plenty of Python developers two years in (that I've interviewed and rejected) who couldn't write me a decorator or explain MRO.
There's plenty of 2-year Go programmers who can't deal with goroutines well.
It isn't unique to Python.
"Of what is necessary" is subjective. Regardless of the language or framework I'm hiring within they must have the same level of engineering skill. I've hired people for Python projects who were outstanding Go or Java programmers who never touched Python commercially.
My point is the language isn't relevant to your arguments.
That's why you're wrong.
There's also plenty of Python developers two years in (that I've interviewed and rejected) who couldn't write me a decorator or explain MRO.
There's plenty of 2-year Go programmers who can't deal with goroutines well.
>There's also plenty of Python developers two years in (that I've interviewed and rejected) who couldn't write me a decorator or explain MRO.
First off both MRO and decorators can be learned in 1 week max by anyone. And one week is REALLY forgiving. Literally. You have to be mentally deficient not to be able to learn it. They simply didn't encounter the python feature in their experience. You would just reject them for not knowing about those features?
Second off decorators are syntactical tricks. You can get around python without ever using them. If you encounter them in libraries you just need to know what they do at a high level, you don't need to know how to implement them. If you ever do need to implement one just look it up. I don't judge people for not knowing syntactic tricks.
Third, MRO is something that should be not heavily used at all. You should avoid inheritance as much as possible. Additionally you should avoid double inheritance all together. The MRO/inheritance concept is a left over thing from an outdated programming style. At most you should know inheritance, and at most have one level of it if you must and try to use interfaces instead. Nowadays I expect only to see inheritance in existing libraries/tech debt and not newly written code from senior programmers. If someone encounters MRO issues, again, I just expect them to look it up.
I'll actually judge someone who expects others to know MRO given how outdated it is. I won't think they're stupid, or I won't not hire them or anything like that. I just know they aren't up to date with the current methodology but they can easily learn it if needed.
Overall, you're just setting a high bar artificially. It's like hiring janitors who only have phds in chemistry to know what's in the cleaning chemicals.
> Yes but the same timeline can be done for C, C#, Java or anything else.
No Java and C# languages are complex enough that it can be done in a 2 year timeline but these languages are hard enough that they are in a different class then python. C with memory management is harder then both java and C#. Memory management simply isn't intuitive.
First off both MRO and decorators can be learned in 1 week max by anyone. And one week is REALLY forgiving. Literally. You have to be mentally deficient not to be able to learn it. They simply didn't encounter the python feature in their experience. You would just reject them for not knowing about those features?
Second off decorators are syntactical tricks. You can get around python without ever using them. If you encounter them in libraries you just need to know what they do at a high level, you don't need to know how to implement them. If you ever do need to implement one just look it up. I don't judge people for not knowing syntactic tricks.
Third, MRO is something that should be not heavily used at all. You should avoid inheritance as much as possible. Additionally you should avoid double inheritance all together. The MRO/inheritance concept is a left over thing from an outdated programming style. At most you should know inheritance, and at most have one level of it if you must and try to use interfaces instead. Nowadays I expect only to see inheritance in existing libraries/tech debt and not newly written code from senior programmers. If someone encounters MRO issues, again, I just expect them to look it up.
I'll actually judge someone who expects others to know MRO given how outdated it is. I won't think they're stupid, or I won't not hire them or anything like that. I just know they aren't up to date with the current methodology but they can easily learn it if needed.
Overall, you're just setting a high bar artificially. It's like hiring janitors who only have phds in chemistry to know what's in the cleaning chemicals.
> Yes but the same timeline can be done for C, C#, Java or anything else.
No Java and C# languages are complex enough that it can be done in a 2 year timeline but these languages are hard enough that they are in a different class then python. C with memory management is harder then both java and C#. Memory management simply isn't intuitive.
They were just examples.
Isn't all programming just syntactical tricks?
We have a fundamentally different view of these things. Mine is serving me well. Yours isn't challenging mine.
Let's agree to disagree.
Isn't all programming just syntactical tricks?
We have a fundamentally different view of these things. Mine is serving me well. Yours isn't challenging mine.
Let's agree to disagree.
>Isn't all programming just syntactical tricks?
No. The decorator is really just a syntactic shortcut. There are other facilities in python to do the same thing. The decorator is just a convenient way of doing it. The concept at hand is a function that takes a function and returns a new function. Nothing crazy here.
>We have a fundamentally different view of these things. Mine is serving me well. Yours isn't challenging mine.
Exactly see. Just because my view is "better" or more "modern" you still function fine within your role which is my point. Someone could have knowledge far superior to a person with 2 years of experience, functionally speaking, it doesn't matter too much. You still do "fine" at your role. Your view serves you well in the capacity of a "senior" engineer" even though your view points are ultimately wrong and inferior they still work well enough.
Also it isn't a viewpoint. Two of the newest languages to hit the mainstream have eschewed inheritance completely from their syntax. Neither Golang or Rust have the concept. Both use interfaces exclusively to promote the concept of similar types. No inheritance anywhere. I have tons of evidence on this even papers, quotations from prominent people. It's a well known fact inheritance is outdated.
We can agree to disagree, but it's like agreeing to disagree with a child who doesn't know any better. Sure.
No. The decorator is really just a syntactic shortcut. There are other facilities in python to do the same thing. The decorator is just a convenient way of doing it. The concept at hand is a function that takes a function and returns a new function. Nothing crazy here.
decorator: Callable[[Callable[[Any]. Any]], Callable[[Any], Any]] = lambda x: (lambda y: x(y)) #does nothing
g: Callable[[Any], Any] = lambda x: x #identity func
decorated_g: Callable[[Any], Any] = decorator(g) #decorator that does nothing to identity returns identity func
>We have a fundamentally different view of these things. Mine is serving me well. Yours isn't challenging mine.
Exactly see. Just because my view is "better" or more "modern" you still function fine within your role which is my point. Someone could have knowledge far superior to a person with 2 years of experience, functionally speaking, it doesn't matter too much. You still do "fine" at your role. Your view serves you well in the capacity of a "senior" engineer" even though your view points are ultimately wrong and inferior they still work well enough.
Also it isn't a viewpoint. Two of the newest languages to hit the mainstream have eschewed inheritance completely from their syntax. Neither Golang or Rust have the concept. Both use interfaces exclusively to promote the concept of similar types. No inheritance anywhere. I have tons of evidence on this even papers, quotations from prominent people. It's a well known fact inheritance is outdated.
We can agree to disagree, but it's like agreeing to disagree with a child who doesn't know any better. Sure.
The grandparent is clearly not talking about people fresh out of boot camp or doing basic web dev. The job market for junior devs has been cold for ages, with thousands people applying even for low-paying positions.
As much as people like to think that developers are just cogs on wheels, companies still want experienced devs (experienced senior and above), and they are still difficult to hire.
As much as people like to think that developers are just cogs on wheels, companies still want experienced devs (experienced senior and above), and they are still difficult to hire.
Many senior devs over the last decade have been created by boot camps. With the recent lay offs the over supply is becoming more apparent. It is now really easy to hire senior python devs.
Arguably python is so easy that junior devs aren't that far off from senior devs.
Arguably python is so easy that junior devs aren't that far off from senior devs.
Purely Python devs, maybe.
Start asking questions about Linux, or networking, or security, you won’t find many that can answer.
Start asking questions about Linux, or networking, or security, you won’t find many that can answer.
This^ is true. Arguably though the majority of web development doesn't involve the stuff you mention. Developers simply work within a framework. This Linux stuff is relegated to specialists... devops or security engineers.
sirsinsalot(1)
Sorry but this is nonsense. Juniors can absolutely make a huge mess in python if let to their own devices. You seem to confuse the knowledge of syntax and language features with actual experience in designing software.
Let me spell it out. A junior dev is 1 or 2 years of experience away from a senior dev for python.
For C++ it takes probably 4 or 5 years.
This is not nonsense. This is real.
For C++ it takes probably 4 or 5 years.
This is not nonsense. This is real.
Being a "senior dev" is a lot more than just language familiarity.
If we're just talking about the python stack arguably there's not much else on top of it. You get the extra stuff through osmosis in the same 1 - 2 years. The applications for python aren't wide ranging enough to include much else unless you're thinking about data science and ML stuff.
I guess it depends on your definition of "senior", but I don't see why language choice should affect it this much, given that much of what makes seniors senior is not knowledge of specific tech, but experience with software engineering as a process.
I'll believe that when salaries start falling.
Nobody gets salary cuts. What happens is that devs get laid off then companies hire at lower salaries.
This is indeed what is happening right now.
This is indeed what is happening right now.
That points to a short term behavior. When things get dire, unemployment among devs goes up and salaries start dropping in general.
I really don't worry about this stuff until it starts looking like the dot-com bomb again. I survived that, I'll survive this.
I really don't worry about this stuff until it starts looking like the dot-com bomb again. I survived that, I'll survive this.
Inflation is another way that salaries get cut without officially getting cut.
Makes sense.
That’s the thing; the A players are still in demand (even Z players like me are still getting contacted for roles), and I wonder if sending this message out like this is a huge gamble on Meta’s part.
If I were there I’d be seriously considering a less volatile environment. If I were an A player, I’d be able to do so even easier and potentially find more meaningful work. This seems like a bad move for Meta, just leaving the axe up in the air ready to strike like this.
With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are.
If I were there I’d be seriously considering a less volatile environment. If I were an A player, I’d be able to do so even easier and potentially find more meaningful work. This seems like a bad move for Meta, just leaving the axe up in the air ready to strike like this.
With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are.
> This seems like a bad move for Meta, just leaving the axe up in the air ready to strike like this.
That may be intentional. I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff. Meta is still huge and pays good money. They can handle a huge level of attrition and still have enough "A players" left over to work on the thing that truly require that level of operation.
> With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are.
Fully agree on this. At that scope, it's broad cuts with a lot of meat going with the fat.
That may be intentional. I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff. Meta is still huge and pays good money. They can handle a huge level of attrition and still have enough "A players" left over to work on the thing that truly require that level of operation.
> With numbers in the thousands, it gives me the sense that it might not always matter what you do or how good you are.
Fully agree on this. At that scope, it's broad cuts with a lot of meat going with the fat.
I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff
This is a terrible idea, though. It's always the desirable employees that have options that leave an environment like this, and it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay.
I've seen this so many times in my career. The A players will stay because they're attached to the things they've created, but the B players will leave and you're left with lots of C players.
In the long run its cheaper to lay off people.
This is a terrible idea, though. It's always the desirable employees that have options that leave an environment like this, and it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay.
I've seen this so many times in my career. The A players will stay because they're attached to the things they've created, but the B players will leave and you're left with lots of C players.
In the long run its cheaper to lay off people.
People who want to leave and have options, will consider those options either way. There is no way for meta to force them to stay. Even if meta announced layoffs with all the list of names, following months many who want will leave. Pretty much every layoff is followed by people leaving voluntary. Some over bad feelings of what happened, some because their friends are away so why not and some dont like new position. But they will be leaving.
> it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay.
Meh. People stay for many reasons. It is not always "not having options". It is fairly often "I actually want to stay despite layoff". And again, there is no way to force people to stay. Confident people will be leaving either way.
> it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay.
Meh. People stay for many reasons. It is not always "not having options". It is fairly often "I actually want to stay despite layoff". And again, there is no way to force people to stay. Confident people will be leaving either way.
Does the management, or the quantitative performance of the company, agree with you here? I'm somewhat dubious given how frequently this occurs, but ideally I think you'd want some really long-term study that looks at both the layoff(s), attrition, and later progress (or growth if it occurs).
I'd bet that this is the difference between having good middle managers and not. If you have confidence in your directors and middle managers, you can target the C players. If not, then you can't and you'll wind up shedding B players anyways.
You want to know if companies stop growing for a decade or so after a mass-layoff?
If so, yes, they do. But it's incredibly hard to decide on causality there, because companies are only expected to do mass-layoffs when the management believes it can't grow anymore.
If so, yes, they do. But it's incredibly hard to decide on causality there, because companies are only expected to do mass-layoffs when the management believes it can't grow anymore.
> It's always the desirable employees that have options that leave an environment like this, and it's always the less competent employees that hold on for dear life and stay
Meta's hiring bar is pretty high, though. Plenty of desirable people will stay because there's nowhere else to go that pays as well, and the "less competent" ones are likely still more competent than the industry average.
These elite companies have now laid off hundreds of thousands of people. The idea that there's enough "low performers" to throw in the garbage should be obsolete now, and reveals a sort of wishful thinking "all those other people who lost their jobs deserve it, but not me, it will never happen to me"
Meta's hiring bar is pretty high, though. Plenty of desirable people will stay because there's nowhere else to go that pays as well, and the "less competent" ones are likely still more competent than the industry average.
These elite companies have now laid off hundreds of thousands of people. The idea that there's enough "low performers" to throw in the garbage should be obsolete now, and reveals a sort of wishful thinking "all those other people who lost their jobs deserve it, but not me, it will never happen to me"
> Meta's hiring bar is pretty high, though.
I'm not making any comments or judgements whatsoever on employees there, but doesn't Meta use the same terrible hiring practices that values so-called "leet" code style interviews? Such interviewing practices are bound to produce poor results, especially at the scale that Meta, Amazon, etc. do them at. (This is also not a comment in support of the layoffs. I think layoffs are a failure of management and executives.)
I'm not making any comments or judgements whatsoever on employees there, but doesn't Meta use the same terrible hiring practices that values so-called "leet" code style interviews? Such interviewing practices are bound to produce poor results, especially at the scale that Meta, Amazon, etc. do them at. (This is also not a comment in support of the layoffs. I think layoffs are a failure of management and executives.)
> but doesn't Meta use the same terrible hiring practices that values so-called "leet" code style interviews? Such interviewing practices are bound to produce poor results, especially at the scale that Meta, Amazon, etc. do them at.
These two statements do not follow, why would "such interviewing practices [be] bound to produce poor results, especially at the scale that Meta, Amazon, etc. do them at?"
These two statements do not follow, why would "such interviewing practices [be] bound to produce poor results, especially at the scale that Meta, Amazon, etc. do them at?"
By poor results I really meant a wide variance in hiring fits. If you are hiring based upon these "leet" style trivia interviews and for somewhat arbitrary team placement, then you are greatly constraining your hiring process to only filter on effectively a single vector of background and experience. So the high bar commented above only applies to that particular vector in that many may be great at a particular niche of coding but effectively randomized in other vectors of software development or other employee skills.
Thus, it is only natural that you may have many people in the organization and on teams who are poor fits, either technically, culturally, etc., because almost all of the "leet" code stuff is irrelevant to most real-world work. If it is relevant, then it is usually only a small portion of the job. This isn't a judgement on anything other than the hiring practice.
But like I said, I don't really know much about Meta's hiring process. It's possible that I'm misapplying this style of interview to them and misunderstood about if they actually use it. Amazon does, and I can confirm it was a miserable interview experience.
Thus, it is only natural that you may have many people in the organization and on teams who are poor fits, either technically, culturally, etc., because almost all of the "leet" code stuff is irrelevant to most real-world work. If it is relevant, then it is usually only a small portion of the job. This isn't a judgement on anything other than the hiring practice.
But like I said, I don't really know much about Meta's hiring process. It's possible that I'm misapplying this style of interview to them and misunderstood about if they actually use it. Amazon does, and I can confirm it was a miserable interview experience.
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>>I've seen this so many times in my career. The A players will stay because they're attached to the things they've created, but the B players will leave and you're left with lots of C players.
The problem is A, B, and C are not at birth positions. People in these buckets rotate across the buckets at various phases in their careers. And the participants in the A buckets are basically people with good leadership- who can train, motivate and get them good products/projects to work on. That given anybody can leave the company and if you have good managers it wouldn't matter.
The real problem happens when you go meta to this. How do you get A level managers. That's a very hard problem to solve and often it also depends of the boss at the very top. The CEO. Many times the revolving door, golden parachute CEOs don't even care. The founder CEO's are tired in most cases. Performing at unicorn level can be brutal on your body and mind on the longer run. And they'd rather semi retire after a few years than continue with that lifestyle. This is where the real problems begin.
In cases where the top most boss gives a damn about the company, the company tends to be A player generation factory. Look at Ford under Henry Ford, Apple under Jobs. Microsoft under Bill G. The boss at the top just needs to get this right else its over.
The problem is A, B, and C are not at birth positions. People in these buckets rotate across the buckets at various phases in their careers. And the participants in the A buckets are basically people with good leadership- who can train, motivate and get them good products/projects to work on. That given anybody can leave the company and if you have good managers it wouldn't matter.
The real problem happens when you go meta to this. How do you get A level managers. That's a very hard problem to solve and often it also depends of the boss at the very top. The CEO. Many times the revolving door, golden parachute CEOs don't even care. The founder CEO's are tired in most cases. Performing at unicorn level can be brutal on your body and mind on the longer run. And they'd rather semi retire after a few years than continue with that lifestyle. This is where the real problems begin.
In cases where the top most boss gives a damn about the company, the company tends to be A player generation factory. Look at Ford under Henry Ford, Apple under Jobs. Microsoft under Bill G. The boss at the top just needs to get this right else its over.
> the thing that truly require that level of operation.
After giving legs to avatars, is there really much work left?
After giving legs to avatars, is there really much work left?
> I could see a scenario where voluntary attrition helps them get reduce size more organically and with lower cost than a layoff
This is exceptionally hard on immigrants on a visa, who have limited options to leave voluntarily.
This is exceptionally hard on immigrants on a visa, who have limited options to leave voluntarily.
Yes, 1000%. Especially when it comes to AI. Meta has an excellent team of ML engineers, many of whom are in exceptionally high demand right now. If I were a ML engineer at Facebook, _especially_ if I was working remotely, I'd be sending out a ton of applications right now. I bet they end up getting an easier, more meaningful, higher paying job.
I'm an AI research engineer who was recently laid off and this was my experience.
I'm an AI research engineer who was recently laid off and this was my experience.
What's the difference between an ML engineer and an AI research engineer ?
ML engineers work on products, AI research engineers work for AI research labs.
Skillset is almost identical, biggest difference is having research experience.
Skillset is almost identical, biggest difference is having research experience.
The first ships products.
The second is the code monkey to the statistician.
> I bet they end up getting an easier, more meaningful, higher paying job.
They won't.
> I'm an AI research engineer who was recently laid off and this was my experience.
But not from Facebook? They are very well compensated right now; they aren't just going to drop into a better paying role.
They won't.
> I'm an AI research engineer who was recently laid off and this was my experience.
But not from Facebook? They are very well compensated right now; they aren't just going to drop into a better paying role.
It's hard to see how anyone has thought FB/Meta would be a great place to work for a long time.
They have been involved in so many shady things and have had such a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach it sounds maddening.
I think a lot of people working there just made the calculated decision that Meta being at the very high end of the compensation scale made it worth it.
Even if you are in the ML/AI stuff. You have to balance out that they were funding at a very high rate versus that they were funding the work for less than stellar reasons.
They have been involved in so many shady things and have had such a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach it sounds maddening.
I think a lot of people working there just made the calculated decision that Meta being at the very high end of the compensation scale made it worth it.
Even if you are in the ML/AI stuff. You have to balance out that they were funding at a very high rate versus that they were funding the work for less than stellar reasons.
It’s been the money.
Literally said in the comment you are replying to if you bother to read until the 3rd para!
I think you’re missing the point of my deliberately terse reply.
All of the replies you are getting are trying to tell you that there’s no deep thinking involved. There’s no “hey I considered it and the comp overcame my concerns” etc. Most of the leetcode-into-fang people are not doing a moral calculus or even spending thirty seconds thinking about the ethical aspects.
There are no concerns. There are no ethics for most of the people in our industry. It is an employer who pays well so they work there.
Your comment implies that, yes, it came down to comp, but also implies that for Facebook employees, on average, there is any thought process beyond economic maximization. There isn’t.
I know a ton of facebook and ex-facebook engineers. They also worked for famously ethical companies like Zynga and Uber. Now and then they’ll do the pretend performative handwringing or whatever but their decisions are consistent.
There is just money.
All of the replies you are getting are trying to tell you that there’s no deep thinking involved. There’s no “hey I considered it and the comp overcame my concerns” etc. Most of the leetcode-into-fang people are not doing a moral calculus or even spending thirty seconds thinking about the ethical aspects.
There are no concerns. There are no ethics for most of the people in our industry. It is an employer who pays well so they work there.
Your comment implies that, yes, it came down to comp, but also implies that for Facebook employees, on average, there is any thought process beyond economic maximization. There isn’t.
I know a ton of facebook and ex-facebook engineers. They also worked for famously ethical companies like Zynga and Uber. Now and then they’ll do the pretend performative handwringing or whatever but their decisions are consistent.
There is just money.
> It's hard to see how anyone has thought FB/Meta would be a great place to work for a long time.
Maybe because, I don’t know, Meta pays well? I don’t go to work for self fulfillment. I work to exchange labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter.
No I don’t work for Meta nor have I ever.
Maybe because, I don’t know, Meta pays well? I don’t go to work for self fulfillment. I work to exchange labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter.
No I don’t work for Meta nor have I ever.
It’s almost as if that was already said if you had kept reading past the first sentence.
> I think a lot of people working there just made the calculated decision that Meta being at the very high end of the compensation scale made it worth it.
Is this our level of laziness now? To read the first sentence and base our snarky replies entirely off it, ignoring the fact that it’s a rhetorical question that was answered immediately after?
> I think a lot of people working there just made the calculated decision that Meta being at the very high end of the compensation scale made it worth it.
Is this our level of laziness now? To read the first sentence and base our snarky replies entirely off it, ignoring the fact that it’s a rhetorical question that was answered immediately after?
Its a post-communication world. While before only a title was read and comments made based on assuming what the content is, now we assume what the comment is and reply based on that.
> I think a lot of people working there just made the calculated decision that Meta being at the very high end of the compensation scale made it worth it.
That didn’t help. It’s like saying “I don’t know why the guy died. Maybe it’s because he got shot in the head at point blank range”?
Of course people work at Meta because of the money. No one works for Meta to make the world a better place
That didn’t help. It’s like saying “I don’t know why the guy died. Maybe it’s because he got shot in the head at point blank range”?
Of course people work at Meta because of the money. No one works for Meta to make the world a better place
Do you understand the concept of rhetorical questions?
Because your comment indicates that you clearly don’t understand that people sometimes ask questions not because they want an answer but for emphasis or dramatic effect.
This was, clearly, such a case.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
Digging down on your snark when you’re called out is a bold play that doesn’t generally work. Most people have this thing called humbleness but I guess you left it with the rhetorical questions.
Because your comment indicates that you clearly don’t understand that people sometimes ask questions not because they want an answer but for emphasis or dramatic effect.
This was, clearly, such a case.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
Digging down on your snark when you’re called out is a bold play that doesn’t generally work. Most people have this thing called humbleness but I guess you left it with the rhetorical questions.
In other words, there is nothing insightful about wondering why people work for the best paying company in tech is because they like making money.
The original post was no more insightful than “I wonder why he got wet when he jumped into the wster”
The original post was no more insightful than “I wonder why he got wet when he jumped into the wster”
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It is a very tricky philosophical question you’re asking: should you consider the broadest impact of what you’re doing OR should you ensure you’re doing good work and leave the ramifications to higher up decision makers?
The former approach means you can’t do anything with clear conscience: do you take that vacation or donate the money? Do you punish yourself if your work on databases eventually was used for a scam?
I find it paralyzing to operate in the former way: so I take the traditional stem person approach. I just ensure what I do is good (obviously for the highest bidder). I won’t work for an explicitly criminal organization - but as long as the government approves, am in. I am going to let them do the policy making and governing because frankly I am tired and probably incompetent at that since I don’t sink much time thinking about it.
The former approach means you can’t do anything with clear conscience: do you take that vacation or donate the money? Do you punish yourself if your work on databases eventually was used for a scam?
I find it paralyzing to operate in the former way: so I take the traditional stem person approach. I just ensure what I do is good (obviously for the highest bidder). I won’t work for an explicitly criminal organization - but as long as the government approves, am in. I am going to let them do the policy making and governing because frankly I am tired and probably incompetent at that since I don’t sink much time thinking about it.
> It is a very tricky philosophical question you’re asking:
There is nothing tricky about it. No one works at Meta thinking they are feeding starving children.
It’s also “difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”
I’m not making any moral stand either way.
There is nothing tricky about it. No one works at Meta thinking they are feeding starving children.
It’s also “difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”
I’m not making any moral stand either way.
It’s a very narrow viewpoint to take.
Engineers in Meta have advanced technology in so many ways (buck / react / so many contributions to distributed software / leveldb …). I think it is very reductionist to discount all that work.
There’s nothing about salary depending on it here: there’s a ton about your work contributing to the global good irrespective of who’s funding it (and whatever ways they end up utilizing it).
Engineers in Meta have advanced technology in so many ways (buck / react / so many contributions to distributed software / leveldb …). I think it is very reductionist to discount all that work.
There’s nothing about salary depending on it here: there’s a ton about your work contributing to the global good irrespective of who’s funding it (and whatever ways they end up utilizing it).
And that software was also written to further the concerns and profits of an adTech company. Facebook may have allowed open sourcing non critical parts of its software - every major tech company does.
You work at Amazon where advertising brings in more profit than AWS... https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/3/6/ways-to-thi...
Yes, and if you check my posting history, I never tried to justify my doing so was for any other reason than “trading labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter”.
I’m not judging anyone for making an outsized salary for working at Facebook. Just be honest that you’re there for the money and not some high minded ideals.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35035560
I’m not judging anyone for making an outsized salary for working at Facebook. Just be honest that you’re there for the money and not some high minded ideals.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35035560
Exactly right. I mean unless long term means 6 months or such, no one looking for job would really care in an year that Meta had layoffs in 2023.
I worked there, the compensation was best in the industry, I worked on infrastructure that billions of people depended on, and in a very small way increased security and privacy. I'm proud of that work, and the people I worked with were awesome.
Let’s call it what is, any adTech company is diametrically opposed to increasing user privacy.
You have no idea what I worked on, yet you're quite confident that it didn't increase security or privacy.
Ok.
Ok.
Your ultimate goal was to help an adTech company. Everything anyone does is ultimately in service of that.
Once I had a manager justify his employment at Palantir by saying he helped troops detect and avoid landmines. Well cool, they still murdered people after getting past the minefield though.
So your take is...soldiers should die to landmines?
My take is to think about what your work accomplishes beyond the surface level.
So do you believe soldiers in Ukraine are “murdering” Russians?
Yeah they are. The Russian soldiers most likely didn't ask to be there either. Obviously a rock and a hard place for Ukrainians.
That being said, Palantir's business with the US government dwarfs any they might have with the Ukrainian army. And last I checked the US is in the business of murdering brown people.
That being said, Palantir's business with the US government dwarfs any they might have with the Ukrainian army. And last I checked the US is in the business of murdering brown people.
> It's hard to see how anyone has thought FB/Meta would be a great place to work for a long time.
Largely because much of the company is a great place to work. Actually working there, I don't find this hard to see at all.
Largely because much of the company is a great place to work. Actually working there, I don't find this hard to see at all.
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A players always in demand, no matter whatever the economic situation. They have the freedom to choose wherever they want to work.
I'm not sure how many A players have left meta, but I'm sure A players never want to work in a low morale company. The damage is much higher than layoff number.
I'm not sure how many A players have left meta, but I'm sure A players never want to work in a low morale company. The damage is much higher than layoff number.
So exactly where are you going to find this “less volatile environment”? Other BigTech companies that are also doing layoffs? Unprofitable startups or other money losing recently public companies?
Are they going to sully themselves and work as “enterprise developers” (note sarcasm)?
Are they going to sully themselves and work as “enterprise developers” (note sarcasm)?
>... I wonder if sending this message out like this is a huge gamble on Meta’s part.
I don't know how to break this to HN, but the Zuck isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He may be gambling, but Hanlon's Razor says otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
I don't know how to break this to HN, but the Zuck isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. He may be gambling, but Hanlon's Razor says otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
The guy lucked into a money making machine that was nigh impossible to screw up. Hasn’t done much since except do the obvious when you have a mountain of cash — buy competitors.
It's odd when people think that Zuckerberg is some sort of genius for creating a cleaner looking clone of MySpace.
How did that work out for MySpace, Google+, Friendster, etc?
Lol.. such a foolish comment. He didn't luck into anything. He stole it and made it into what it is today. Remember the login to your email and we'll send invites to everyone? Facebook invented that. Keep it restricted to .edu and rolling out school by school was a strategy. Identify companies who are a threat and buy them.. facebook was very successful at that.
Luck had very little to do with facebook's success.
Luck had very little to do with facebook's success.
Luck had everything to do with it. FB was no different than Six Degrees, or Friendster, or Orkut, let alone MySpace.
Identifying threats? Please. EVERYONE knows who the threats to FB were and are. It’s just that not all of us has the money to buy them.
Mark Zuckerberg is average.
His one big “innovation” is taking legs out of Second Life.
Identifying threats? Please. EVERYONE knows who the threats to FB were and are. It’s just that not all of us has the money to buy them.
Mark Zuckerberg is average.
His one big “innovation” is taking legs out of Second Life.
Why did none of those succeed then? You are basically defeating your own argument.
> I wonder if sending this message out like this is a huge gamble on Meta’s part.
I'm Danish, but we have laws and regulations about mass-layoffs which means companies have to give employees an advance notice of 30-60-90 days, depending on company and layoff size.
I imagine California might have something similar.
I'm Danish, but we have laws and regulations about mass-layoffs which means companies have to give employees an advance notice of 30-60-90 days, depending on company and layoff size.
I imagine California might have something similar.
CA is 60 days, NYC is 90, federal is 60 by default (WARN act).
Most companies choose to lay you off, then give you 'severance' package/pay that is equal or more to those days.
Most companies choose to lay you off, then give you 'severance' package/pay that is equal or more to those days.
This was posted the week after all management should have communicated AE to A players. I know for senior directors last day of performance review comms was Friday.
What is AE? Meta has a program for their top ~1% or so (who knows really) where they dump a pile of RSUs on your head, "additional equity", to retain you and bet on your future at the company. For most it's 2-4x your annual stock refresher, though I don't know exactly how it varies.
If you're E7+, this is another 1M+ stock grant on a 4 year vest on top of your 600k+ refresher grant. Stock is up from their internal refresher pricing. Their "A players" all just got ~5% bump on their 1.5M+ RSU grant.
G and other FAANG struggle to compete with Meta on comp for the actual A players. We'll see if they budgeted enough for AE to keep the people that matter.
What is AE? Meta has a program for their top ~1% or so (who knows really) where they dump a pile of RSUs on your head, "additional equity", to retain you and bet on your future at the company. For most it's 2-4x your annual stock refresher, though I don't know exactly how it varies.
If you're E7+, this is another 1M+ stock grant on a 4 year vest on top of your 600k+ refresher grant. Stock is up from their internal refresher pricing. Their "A players" all just got ~5% bump on their 1.5M+ RSU grant.
G and other FAANG struggle to compete with Meta on comp for the actual A players. We'll see if they budgeted enough for AE to keep the people that matter.
While some people do get 1M/yr, it's hardly every E7+. I don't know the exact % obviously, but anecdotally it's <30% (though more get the smaller grants--around 250k or 500k).
There has to be plenty of demand at the lower tiers. There is a ton of work to do everywhere. It's just that they don't pay the same as top tier. FANGs are holding a lot of talent to keep them from competitors, as has been pointed out.
> will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
As other have said: is there such a high demand right now ? And if you know and feel that you are an "A" player; and so far you have seen "C" players getting laid off, you might actually feel that the average level of the people you interact with increases which makes you want to stay more.
As other have said: is there such a high demand right now ? And if you know and feel that you are an "A" player; and so far you have seen "C" players getting laid off, you might actually feel that the average level of the people you interact with increases which makes you want to stay more.
It's not white hot like it was 1-3 years ago, but if you're qualified and experienced, yes there very much is still demand from non-FAANG companies.
While that might be true:
a) the technical challenges at these large tech companies are probably way more interesting
b) compensation is very likely better
c) you are working with many many more peers who are super talented
a) the technical challenges at these large tech companies are probably way more interesting
b) compensation is very likely better
c) you are working with many many more peers who are super talented
Aren't technical challenges at smaller companies usually much more interesting? Pay is worse, but smaller companies usually offer much more freedom to implement your ideas and shape the company.
It depends on what you mean by "smaller." At the majority of smaller companies, it's just CRUD app stuff, probably in C#, with significantly less freedom (often beholden to very non technical middle management).
>At the majority of smaller companies, it's just CRUD app stuff, probably in C#, with significantly less freedom
This is a very strange point-of-view.
I've worked in "small" (~100 employees or fewer) business my entire career, and not once was it strictly CRUD stuff in C#.
The freedom is debatable, I guess, since I have no experience at larger companies, but I certainly never found that my freedom is confined. Most often there is opportunity to contribute anywhere and everywhere, and management is happy to have the help.
This is a very strange point-of-view.
I've worked in "small" (~100 employees or fewer) business my entire career, and not once was it strictly CRUD stuff in C#.
The freedom is debatable, I guess, since I have no experience at larger companies, but I certainly never found that my freedom is confined. Most often there is opportunity to contribute anywhere and everywhere, and management is happy to have the help.
I'm not a dev but still highly technical, and devs turning their noses up at "CRUD stuff" always makes me laugh. It reminds me of the musicians I know who won't play in certain styles because it's not "meaningful" or "true to their artistic vision". Bud I was at your last gig, you don't sound that great even when you're playing "meaningful" music.
Similarly, most of the devs I've worked with that are obsessed with "exciting" work still turn out pretty questionable stuff, and their careers would probably be better served if the built out a "simple" CRUD app, took it really seriously, and then examined the effects of their design on other teams.
Similarly, most of the devs I've worked with that are obsessed with "exciting" work still turn out pretty questionable stuff, and their careers would probably be better served if the built out a "simple" CRUD app, took it really seriously, and then examined the effects of their design on other teams.
Is that bad? You can solve interesting challenges in C# with CRUD stuff. Nothing that scales to millions of users, but there are challenges other than scaling.
I'm the sole developer at a non-tech company, and I have near-complete freedom because management is non-technical (and humble enough to admit that). I really, really enjoy my current job. Not saying that's the norm, of course -- just adding a data point to the convo.
> smaller companies usually offer much more freedom to implement your ideas
Not really, if I come up with a novel algorithm or a different architecture to do a task better at Google then they will give me the chance to implement it even if it takes months or years. Small companies doesn't care about your ideas, they just want a cog that can give them a basic website because that is all they need, novel things doesn't help them.
If you mean "novel product ideas" then sure, but we aren't product managers we are programmers so our ideas would mostly be related to architecture or algorithms.
Not really, if I come up with a novel algorithm or a different architecture to do a task better at Google then they will give me the chance to implement it even if it takes months or years. Small companies doesn't care about your ideas, they just want a cog that can give them a basic website because that is all they need, novel things doesn't help them.
If you mean "novel product ideas" then sure, but we aren't product managers we are programmers so our ideas would mostly be related to architecture or algorithms.
Then you've been at different small companies than I have. Obviously if you're the only person in tech at that company it's hard to do groundbreaking stuff. But small tech companies solve challenges everyday. And being able to directly convince the CEO (who is often technical at these companies) can make decisions much quicker than at large companies.
> small tech companies solve challenges everyday
Yes, just not challenges that requires ideas to solve. They are mostly just following the same path every other tech company went, re implementing the same systems. To them it doesn't matter if the system is better or worse, they just want a system since going from 0 to 1 is huge, meaning that they wont give you time or resources to implement your idea, they just want a cheap idea.
Yes, just not challenges that requires ideas to solve. They are mostly just following the same path every other tech company went, re implementing the same systems. To them it doesn't matter if the system is better or worse, they just want a system since going from 0 to 1 is huge, meaning that they wont give you time or resources to implement your idea, they just want a cheap idea.
The technical challenges may be interesting, but are the strategic ones? I.e., do you think most people would choose to work on problems that optimize ad spend vs. something like, say, healthcare if all else was equal?
Why work on ad optimization when you can work on insurance billing optimization?
haha point taken. I would argue "insurance" isn't "healthcare". But this somewhat underscores my larger point. The SV mindset is almost solely focused on maximizing revenue, whether that's ads or insurance billing. My point is that there are other, possibly more interesting, problems to work on if you relax that constrained viewpoint.
None of these are really factual points. Big Shops are place where you just get stuck being a YAML jockey and bantering in RFCs.
Very good point. There is a big difference between random layoffs and laying off the bottom 20%.
In most big companies I've worked at, I thought I could identify the people who made everyone slower and were a net negative to productivity. However, they never seemed to be the ones threatened to be fired. Often they were really good at playing corporate games so that it was really hard to justify firing them, while the ones fired were junior employees who had great potential but weren't as good at politics yet.
So while FB certainly intended to fire underperformers and increase average performance, I doubt they were able to identify the right people for that.
So while FB certainly intended to fire underperformers and increase average performance, I doubt they were able to identify the right people for that.
Indeed. While one should always look to check on other biases in play, in my experience "F" players survive layoffs almost as often as "A" players, and it's those in the middle that get hit. (Sometimes this may be because the "F" players aren't getting paid as much, and are therefore cheap.)
Not to mention that the remaining "A" players may each be saddled with the work of ten laid-off "C" players because, as far as management is concerned, programmers are fungible. Why not have their 10x programmer take care of it?
Not to mention that the remaining "A" players may each be saddled with the work of ten laid-off "C" players because, as far as management is concerned, programmers are fungible. Why not have their 10x programmer take care of it?
>I thought I could identify the people who made everyone slower and were a net negative to productivity. However, they never seemed to be the ones threatened to be fired.
Or maybe you're not as good of a judge of these things as you think?
Or maybe you're not as good of a judge of these things as you think?
Could very well be. Especially in large companies, it's very hard to judge the importance of some roles and people. That's why there are always complains about how promotions work, no one has figured out how to value the work of an employee.
Don't know much about Meta's HR department, maybe they're really good at that. But in the end we're all humans and never unbiased when we make those decisions.
Don't know much about Meta's HR department, maybe they're really good at that. But in the end we're all humans and never unbiased when we make those decisions.
Yeah, but you now have to pick up all the work they were doing.
> cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
Vast majority won't find jobs that are as well paying as facebook. FB is a leader in tech salaries which gives them the leverage to announce such a thing without losing people. People don't want to take paycuts and go somewhere thats also doing layoffs.
Vast majority won't find jobs that are as well paying as facebook. FB is a leader in tech salaries which gives them the leverage to announce such a thing without losing people. People don't want to take paycuts and go somewhere thats also doing layoffs.
FB pay at this point is highly dependent on when your RSU basis was set, no?
If you joined from 9/2020 to 1/2022, you’ve taken a serious pay cut versus your nominal offer.
Unless there have been adjustments that I haven’t read about?
If you joined from 9/2020 to 1/2022, you’ve taken a serious pay cut versus your nominal offer.
Unless there have been adjustments that I haven’t read about?
Refreshers and bonuses weren't paused during this period.
For someone who joined at the peak of September 2021, let's assume an L6 offer of $240k + 20% bonus + $1.1M in joining stock over four years. With no stock movement and meeting expectations, they'd make $298k cash + $275k stock, for a total of $563k. Now, with that stock down by 50% (ish) as of today, they're total compensation would be $436k. That's still a serious chunk of change, and while a $138k drop in compensation is nothing to sneeze at, they'll also be getting a new grant of $220k/4 years this month(ish), and every year hereafter, bringing their 2023 compensation almost back to $500k if the stock market doesn't move.
So yes, it's a serious pay cut, but it's still amazing pay. Now, if they were bullish on the market, then it might make sense to try to move to another company that can come up with a 7-figure joining bonus and ride that appreciation to new stock heights.
So yes, it's a serious pay cut, but it's still amazing pay. Now, if they were bullish on the market, then it might make sense to try to move to another company that can come up with a 7-figure joining bonus and ride that appreciation to new stock heights.
Yes, I agree with the GP’s main point that FB is still near or at top of market and that matters quite a bit more than HN sometimes gives it credit for.
Just wanted to clarify that it’s not quite what it was. Thanks for adding numbers.
Just wanted to clarify that it’s not quite what it was. Thanks for adding numbers.
It is a good point. But people still can be "looking elsewhere" as in searching if they can find another job. It is exactly the thing I would do if I had any chance that I would loose my job. I know my manager would never do it but with layoffs there are greater forces that he may not be able to save me from.
And changing your availability and answering a call or chat from time to time does not cost much. It is not like there is any downside to it.
And if an A player starts looking around great things sometimes happen. He may get hired at much higher position that would justify the salary. Or he may have already earned a lot at FB and may decide this is the time to invest in building a startup, etc.
At my previous company I got in an argument with my boss and just changed my availability on LI. Just out of spite. This led me to an offer that changed my life. And there is a lot of people so much better at their job than I am.
And changing your availability and answering a call or chat from time to time does not cost much. It is not like there is any downside to it.
And if an A player starts looking around great things sometimes happen. He may get hired at much higher position that would justify the salary. Or he may have already earned a lot at FB and may decide this is the time to invest in building a startup, etc.
At my previous company I got in an argument with my boss and just changed my availability on LI. Just out of spite. This led me to an offer that changed my life. And there is a lot of people so much better at their job than I am.
> It is exactly the thing I would do if I had any chance that I would loose my job
There is always a chance you can lose your job. There has never been a day since I started working over 25 years ago (well actually I spent my first year saving so it would have hurt then) that I haven’t been ready to change jobs at the drop of a dime.
> And changing your availability and answering a call or chat from time to time does not cost much. It is not like there is any downside to it
You should be doing that all the time regardless.
> And if an A player starts looking around great things sometimes happen. He may get hired at much higher position
That happens most of the time anyway because of salary compression and inversion even if you are just a journeyman “full stack developer”.
There is always a chance you can lose your job. There has never been a day since I started working over 25 years ago (well actually I spent my first year saving so it would have hurt then) that I haven’t been ready to change jobs at the drop of a dime.
> And changing your availability and answering a call or chat from time to time does not cost much. It is not like there is any downside to it
You should be doing that all the time regardless.
> And if an A player starts looking around great things sometimes happen. He may get hired at much higher position
That happens most of the time anyway because of salary compression and inversion even if you are just a journeyman “full stack developer”.
Good points. But there might be some start-ups tempting them with pre-IPO stock or they can start their own business.
The old joke is:
Letter 1: Blame previous management.
Letter 2: Announce a reorg/layoffs.
Letter 3: Tell your successor to write three letters...
Letter 1: Blame previous management.
Letter 2: Announce a reorg/layoffs.
Letter 3: Tell your successor to write three letters...
Top brass doesn't get fired anymore, no need for the 3rd letter these days.
Greg Becker would like a word
In this case, the top brass owns more than 50% of voting rights, so no one can fire them.
But since he's also a shareholder, it's in his own interest to self fire himself.
[deleted]
> writing an email about how you're going to can a bunch of people over the coming year and then droning on about how the results of that are going to be so much better (and insinuate that the current setup, which is 100% a management failure, was a poor setup) is insulting.
Employees ask for transparency. This is what transparency looks like...
Employees ask for transparency. This is what transparency looks like...
Its not transparency, it’s marketing and guessing the future.
I worked at a company where the VPs loved to write long company wide emails. One time HR wrote "Why working at <insert this company name> is great Part 1". (If you write part 1 and part 2 corporate emails you're already doing email wrong.) They did a layoff between the time Part 1 was sent and Part 2 was sent. The scale of absurdity was difficult to measure with that one.
I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around".
He was so right. Scored a lot of points there, never heard an executive of a large company say that so bluntly before.
I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around".
He was so right. Scored a lot of points there, never heard an executive of a large company say that so bluntly before.
>I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around".
Didn't the executives employ any anti-takeover measures?
Didn't the executives employ any anti-takeover measures?
A good skill execs have is to negotiate extremely lucrative severance terms and have it written in their employment agreements.
In the US a material perquisite of senior management roles are negotiable severance terms. Sad really.
So, if you are fired from enough workplaces for not working enough you get rich and don't have to work. :)
"If they are good at being ruthlessly selfish for themselves they might be good at being ruthlessly selfish for the company as well."
Makes me wonder if the opposite could become fashionable: "I trust myself to fly without the golden parachute, you might want to make that part of your consideration". At first glance that sounds quite compelling to me, but on the other hand, would I feel safer or would I feel less safe with a Taxi driver who does not bother putting on the seat belt? I think my answer would be less safe, event though a part of me wishes to be one who'd feel safer.
Makes me wonder if the opposite could become fashionable: "I trust myself to fly without the golden parachute, you might want to make that part of your consideration". At first glance that sounds quite compelling to me, but on the other hand, would I feel safer or would I feel less safe with a Taxi driver who does not bother putting on the seat belt? I think my answer would be less safe, event though a part of me wishes to be one who'd feel safer.
Speaking from personal experience, execs (most of them) are anything but risk takers. They are good wheeler-dealers, know how to navigate the land-mine filled org-chart to get things done. Not too different from civil servants. Those who develop risk appetite won't stay at such big orgs, they either go work at a startup or start on their own.
So over a period (FB has been around for like 15 years now) an org accumulates extremely risk averse execs.
So over a period (FB has been around for like 15 years now) an org accumulates extremely risk averse execs.
"No one ever gets fired for buying IBM"
Let's extend the metaphor:
if the execs are pilots, and the employees are passengers, then having parachutes for the pilots but not the employees constitutes a moral hazard.
if the execs are pilots, and the employees are passengers, then having parachutes for the pilots but not the employees constitutes a moral hazard.
It's only a moral hazard if the execs are working for, and are accountable to the employees.
They don't, and they aren't. They work for, and answer to the owners.
They don't, and they aren't. They work for, and answer to the owners.
footnote: for certain values of "moral"
(you are right though, the term "moral hazard" is surprisingly well defined and basically has nothing to do at all with the sum of its parts)
(you are right though, the term "moral hazard" is surprisingly well defined and basically has nothing to do at all with the sum of its parts)
In that case, having parachutes for the execs is a moral hazard.
Yeah, but that's a problem for the owners. Who are big boys, and can probably navigate this conflict of interest out without us.
Or if they want to keep pissing away their money, they can keep hiring clowns that ruin their companies, and then pull the ripcord. It's their money on the line, not mine.
Or if they want to keep pissing away their money, they can keep hiring clowns that ruin their companies, and then pull the ripcord. It's their money on the line, not mine.
I believe they all got paid good. I was a bit surprised at the animosity but the old CEO certainly seemed to burn bridges (I note how in another post) and I also suspect the old CEO took it really personal that he got beat by our main competitor.
I assumed something like that happened behind the scenes but I never knew any facts. It was a publicly traded company and it was a good offer based on the stock price so I doubt any efforts to resist the purchase would have succeeded.
I think more likely the new CEO's comment stemmed from that fact that 1. The old executive staff were in fact horrible at face value. 2. In between the time of the offer to buy the company and the closing the old CEO visited several locations presumably under the idea that he was there to keep everyone around / soothe the typical nerves about being acquired. But something else happened:
Instead he took snide shots at the acquiring CEO. He noted that he was surprised the new CEO hadn't visited our site yet.... when at that point the deal hadn't closed, they were still technically competitors. New CEO straight up couldn't visit.
I think old CEO was just a horrible person and salty he lost (mostly due to his own missteps) to his competitor.
But that was par for the course with old company executives. They seemed to operate thinking they were so smart and really were as transparent as could be, almost childish.
I generally feel disconnected / suspicious of executive staff... but these guys, they were human garbage as far as I was concerned, and I don't use that term lightly.
My Fav examples:
HR at one point sent out a series of long emails about a big change upcoming, but they didn't / would not say what the change was, it put a lot of people on edge. Then finally after the 5th or so email they announced that after HR spent thousands of hours in meetings and off site meetings ... they were renaming HR... that was it... it was like a joke, but they were serious. CEO and all the other executives of course had to reply all to congratulate them.
One of the last meetings with the OLD CEO had an open forum where people could ask questions about the acquisition. Old CEO seemed to give the impression he had some idea what he combined company would look like / could do. Someone asked where he saw the new company in six months/ what it might look like. He responded "I'll be in Banff sking." That was it, that was his response....
I think more likely the new CEO's comment stemmed from that fact that 1. The old executive staff were in fact horrible at face value. 2. In between the time of the offer to buy the company and the closing the old CEO visited several locations presumably under the idea that he was there to keep everyone around / soothe the typical nerves about being acquired. But something else happened:
Instead he took snide shots at the acquiring CEO. He noted that he was surprised the new CEO hadn't visited our site yet.... when at that point the deal hadn't closed, they were still technically competitors. New CEO straight up couldn't visit.
I think old CEO was just a horrible person and salty he lost (mostly due to his own missteps) to his competitor.
But that was par for the course with old company executives. They seemed to operate thinking they were so smart and really were as transparent as could be, almost childish.
I generally feel disconnected / suspicious of executive staff... but these guys, they were human garbage as far as I was concerned, and I don't use that term lightly.
My Fav examples:
HR at one point sent out a series of long emails about a big change upcoming, but they didn't / would not say what the change was, it put a lot of people on edge. Then finally after the 5th or so email they announced that after HR spent thousands of hours in meetings and off site meetings ... they were renaming HR... that was it... it was like a joke, but they were serious. CEO and all the other executives of course had to reply all to congratulate them.
One of the last meetings with the OLD CEO had an open forum where people could ask questions about the acquisition. Old CEO seemed to give the impression he had some idea what he combined company would look like / could do. Someone asked where he saw the new company in six months/ what it might look like. He responded "I'll be in Banff sking." That was it, that was his response....
Wow, you’ve got some stories from this company. This could make for a really entertaining blog!
> HR at one point sent out a series of long emails about a big change upcoming, but they didn't / would not say what the change was, it put a lot of people on edge. Then finally after the 5th or so email they announced that after HR spent thousands of hours in meetings and off site meetings ... they were renaming HR... that was it... it was like a joke, but they were serious. CEO and all the other executives of course had to reply all to congratulate them.
Sounds like something else was planned, and they pulled out last minute.
Or they were trying to spook 5% into leaving -- and did -- so they make some trivial change that means nothing and can be undone later.
Sounds like something else was planned, and they pulled out last minute.
Or they were trying to spook 5% into leaving -- and did -- so they make some trivial change that means nothing and can be undone later.
At a company I worked for I told the incoming manager that he would have to remove the entire management team he had inherited.
Needless to say that didn't go over well.
A year later they were all gone. And him as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Needless to say that didn't go over well.
A year later they were all gone. And him as well.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So were you the "last guy standing." or did you go elsewhere?
> "last guy standing".?
Ahh, no. As I mentioned it didn't go over well. They had been mobbing me before and it intensified after. They were also blissfully unaware of what is legal and what is not, so pushing me out proved to be rather expensive.
Ahh, no. As I mentioned it didn't go over well. They had been mobbing me before and it intensified after. They were also blissfully unaware of what is legal and what is not, so pushing me out proved to be rather expensive.
That sounds bad (mobbing). I hope you're ok. Can I ask were you a manager as well or an IC
> I saw no reason to keep those jokers around
New CEO was Australian?
New CEO was Australian?
Nope, US, based out of CA, but he was from the Midwest.
It was funny as when I met him a few times he responded the same way.
"You're from Minnesota? Can I talk to you about hunting? They told me I shouldn't do that in California ..."
I didn't hunt but I let the man tell his story ;)
I usually feel pretty disconnected from executive types and so on but I liked that guy. I liked him so much I was suspicious all over again as that's not how I feel about those guys usually. He was actually fun to be around.
It was funny as when I met him a few times he responded the same way.
"You're from Minnesota? Can I talk to you about hunting? They told me I shouldn't do that in California ..."
I didn't hunt but I let the man tell his story ;)
I usually feel pretty disconnected from executive types and so on but I liked that guy. I liked him so much I was suspicious all over again as that's not how I feel about those guys usually. He was actually fun to be around.
I had an exec at my last job that came in like that. He was so transparent and likable that I immediately became suspicious. He had tons of stories so I assumed he was a bullshitter, but nope, it seems he had just been there and done that. I basically owe my career to that dude, he took a chance on me (I was about as low on the org chart as it gets) and it was the break I needed to show what I could do.
Sometimes there are actually great leaders in the sea of self-serving assholes that populate the business world.
Sometimes there are actually great leaders in the sea of self-serving assholes that populate the business world.
As someone in tech from the rural Midwest who loves hunting, I can appreciate this little fact a lot. In my 10 year career I've worked for some well known larger tech companies and meeting people with this interest is somewhat rare.
> and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around".
Or you can do the opposite, like Boeing did: import all the managers of the firm you acquired (McDonnell-Douglas) into your own organization.
Or you can do the opposite, like Boeing did: import all the managers of the firm you acquired (McDonnell-Douglas) into your own organization.
In this case the acquiring company made the right call, the acquired company executives were trash.
To be fair, unless the execs are also forgoing salary or bonuses, like Nintendo execs a few years ago for example, you can't really win with these layoff emails.
If the emails are succinctly composed then people would complain that the announcements were too curt and don't try to assuage people enough.
So they might as well write what they want.
If the emails are succinctly composed then people would complain that the announcements were too curt and don't try to assuage people enough.
So they might as well write what they want.
> If the emails are succinctly composed then people would complain that the announcements were too curt and don't try to assuage people enough.
Ive never heard that and I’ve seen short emails and nothing at all.
Ive never heard that and I’ve seen short emails and nothing at all.
even this one hints to this "people wanted more visibility and notice". You'll never make everyone happy, so it's a mistake to seek the "perfect communique"
Shocker that management taking away the livelihood of tens of thousands of individuals due to management failures can not be reduced to a positive email.
You mean blathering on with an email that was obviously micromanaged by someone that noone is willing to break out a red pen for? Only yes-men remain.
> The scale of absurdity was difficult to measure with that one.
I have been told that one FANG which recently underwent a firing round barely took a break from their hiring rounds, and already started sending emails asking for volunteers for interviews even to teams which have just been decimated.
One more story for the absurdity bucket.
I have been told that one FANG which recently underwent a firing round barely took a break from their hiring rounds, and already started sending emails asking for volunteers for interviews even to teams which have just been decimated.
One more story for the absurdity bucket.
Not too surprising as the hiring people industrial complex that exists some places seem to exist / operate for it's own purposes sometimes.
It's not that way everywhere but man when you run into it, crazy.
It's not that way everywhere but man when you run into it, crazy.
They did that to me themselves. They have festered the "hiring industrial complex" to outcompete for talent. Now this whole thing has to stay alive. They have to fire. Maybe the news about it will be enough, cause we also plan on hiring back.
Can you just be on “fired leave”? Seems unnecessary to deprovision all the systems. I’m sure SAP can create a workflow for that and upsell it to the hiring industrial complex.
It makes sense when you view it not as a strict immediate cost cutting measure but just a way to scare & threaten workers.
It makes sense if you think of this as pruning dead weight while also getting in fresh inflow of talented people (some of whom will inevitably not work out later).
Why is management hiring people who turn out to be "dead weight"? Particularly with the ludicrous interview cycle employed by big tech companies these days?
It's a failure of management to hire correctly and/or manage and develop people. Management is broken and incompetent and relentlessly scapegoats those below them.
It's a failure of management to hire correctly and/or manage and develop people. Management is broken and incompetent and relentlessly scapegoats those below them.
Hiring is really hard. I try to be very selective, use work-like assessments and wait until it's painful to add headcount, but I also need to go fast enough to keep devs interested and not waste their time, and interviews at best are only a very rough proxy-indicator of what the future looks like. Firing is even harder.
If you have a method for hiring exactly the right people, that those people will put up with (ie a process that filters out "dead weight" but does not filter out high performers), then that is a startup right there. But overall, no one has magical hiring process that doesn't involve finding out actual performance after they start.
Yep, google published a bunch of research about their hiring processes and it basically said "we've tried everything and nothing works... anybody else have any ideas?"
Yet they continue their leetcode interview process...
If you have a method for hiring exactly the right people, that those people will put up with
Yeah, hire and then show actual managerial skill. If you still can't get the performance you need, then fire them. Tech hiring culture has become completely bananas and it wastes insane amounts of resources.
Tech management in the US 1) can't hire competently, 2) can't lead, 3) can't develop those under them and 4) can't man up and fire the employees they mistakenly hired and failed to lead.
Yeah, hire and then show actual managerial skill. If you still can't get the performance you need, then fire them. Tech hiring culture has become completely bananas and it wastes insane amounts of resources.
Tech management in the US 1) can't hire competently, 2) can't lead, 3) can't develop those under them and 4) can't man up and fire the employees they mistakenly hired and failed to lead.
That's not just tech. It's everywhere.
It's _really_ hard to hire good people consistently.
It's _really_ hard to hire good people consistently.
Griggs vs Duke Power might like a word.
Plenty of terrible employees interview well. Many potentially great employees don't interview well.
Terrible employees have lots of practice
So fire them. It's bizarre that companies appear to think that you should do cargo cult interviewing, sometimes multiple rounds with months of waiting around, then hire people, fail to lead or develop them, then just dump them en masse.
Hire them and if you can't get the performance you need, then you due them. Alternatively, hire them as contract-to-hire if your head of HR has conditioned you to be terrified of doing what you're allowed to do in the US.
Hire them and if you can't get the performance you need, then you due them. Alternatively, hire them as contract-to-hire if your head of HR has conditioned you to be terrified of doing what you're allowed to do in the US.
>>Why is management hiring people who turn out to be "dead weight"?
People are rarely ever dead weight. Products and services most certainly are. Products/Projects etc fail for a variety of reasons, and it can often be hard to anticipate if they will. When you are building them you need the top people to build it for you. If the product fails, you now have people you have to pay for running the product that doesn't earn you money. Now you make a loss.
While you did hire the top people, the product failed and now you don't need them. Keeping them around costs lots of money and, their work, even if high quality hasn't given much profits.
It is then you have to let go people.
People are rarely ever dead weight. Products and services most certainly are. Products/Projects etc fail for a variety of reasons, and it can often be hard to anticipate if they will. When you are building them you need the top people to build it for you. If the product fails, you now have people you have to pay for running the product that doesn't earn you money. Now you make a loss.
While you did hire the top people, the product failed and now you don't need them. Keeping them around costs lots of money and, their work, even if high quality hasn't given much profits.
It is then you have to let go people.
If the product fails, you now have people you have to pay for product that doesn't earn you money. Now you make a loss.
Sounds like capitalism to me. Better get to work developing new projects and products to stem that loss.
Sounds like capitalism to me. Better get to work developing new projects and products to stem that loss.
>>Better get to work developing new projects and products to stem that loss.
Yes.
The road to progress in any system involves being known as someone who initiates new order of things. And always remember this. Its the new projects, and initiatives that get most of the resources because people want to see them win.
Yes.
The road to progress in any system involves being known as someone who initiates new order of things. And always remember this. Its the new projects, and initiatives that get most of the resources because people want to see them win.
Hiring is not a perfectly solved problem, so you should cut whoever you're accusing some slack. Also, making the relationship work is a two-way responsibility, not just that of the management.
> pruning dead weight
That wasn't my experience with the current layoffs at big tech. There was no effort to find positions for the engineers who performed well in the previous year(s). They just cut some orgs by the hundreds (I was in a call with 350+ other devs, many of whom are far smarter and more experienced devs than myself).
They just started cutting "weight" at some point, the "dead" adjective was dropped during the previous rounds of layoffs.
That wasn't my experience with the current layoffs at big tech. There was no effort to find positions for the engineers who performed well in the previous year(s). They just cut some orgs by the hundreds (I was in a call with 350+ other devs, many of whom are far smarter and more experienced devs than myself).
They just started cutting "weight" at some point, the "dead" adjective was dropped during the previous rounds of layoffs.
Smart + experienced != productive and valuable. It's possible to be good at your job and also dead weight. Motivation matters.
Last week, I was contacted by recruiters from two separate high-profile companies that have recently fired people. Like I would even entertain joining them only to be first in line to the chopping block.
Maybe the thinking is "they just got rid of a bunch of people, so they are not going to do that again soon."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy
What makes you believe you’re not 1st on the chopping block at your existing company? There are no guarantees either way.
No guarantees, but the chances are different.
Say you’ve been working somewhere for 5 years and have the opportunity to move to a company - and you know both companies are laying people off at some point soon.
In your current company, maintaining your position requires no training and negligible HR resource. The question of your capability to perform the job you’re given would hopefully not be under question (otherwise good going for keeping that gig up for 5 years). Your team is not a blue sky project (otherwise shame on management for keeping that gig up for 5 years). Making you redundant will cost the company severance, and if it’s a structural issue you could be moved into another team. Dropping you would be a genuinely hard decision.
The new company barely know you and have to expend resources just to integrate you, and expend nothing to drop you.
I know which one I’d pick.
Granted, it’s a false premise: perhaps the new company is more resilient than your current company, for example. However, if the odds are unknown - and in most cases they aren’t known in any reliable way - then I may as well treat them as if the odds are balanced.
Say you’ve been working somewhere for 5 years and have the opportunity to move to a company - and you know both companies are laying people off at some point soon.
In your current company, maintaining your position requires no training and negligible HR resource. The question of your capability to perform the job you’re given would hopefully not be under question (otherwise good going for keeping that gig up for 5 years). Your team is not a blue sky project (otherwise shame on management for keeping that gig up for 5 years). Making you redundant will cost the company severance, and if it’s a structural issue you could be moved into another team. Dropping you would be a genuinely hard decision.
The new company barely know you and have to expend resources just to integrate you, and expend nothing to drop you.
I know which one I’d pick.
Granted, it’s a false premise: perhaps the new company is more resilient than your current company, for example. However, if the odds are unknown - and in most cases they aren’t known in any reliable way - then I may as well treat them as if the odds are balanced.
If the firing was on the basis of cutting out top paid employees, it absolutely makes sense to now fill those positions with newer ones whom you can pay less.
Nothing absurd here.
Nothing absurd here.
Does such things happen? Thinking about all knowledge that is lost
Maybe top paid management is simpler to replace?
I wonder if the managers who will become individual contributors again, will be paid the same or less
Maybe top paid management is simpler to replace?
I wonder if the managers who will become individual contributors again, will be paid the same or less
I was once contacted for an interview by the company I was leaving during my notice period :)
"I was so happy when that company got acquired and the new company CEO showed up and announced that first level managers and below were all safe from layoffs, everyone above that was on a case by case basis, and "all executive staff were let go this morning, I saw no reason to keep those jokers around"."
You are being manipulated. No. The previous executives are not "jokers" - they made massive profits selling shares. They are being let go because, after taking their massive profits, the new company will soon fire the rest of staff - and that is hard.
You are being manipulated. No. The previous executives are not "jokers" - they made massive profits selling shares. They are being let go because, after taking their massive profits, the new company will soon fire the rest of staff - and that is hard.
I'm sure they made money.
I didn't call them jokers, someone else did.
I called them human garbage.
I didn't call them jokers, someone else did.
I called them human garbage.
I had a CEO like that. He came in, hired media people to interview him in 4k things to send to the employees. He kept trying to host talks to talk about his great vision. Did a lot of shake ups, and tried to force product changes. Ultimately his vision lost a lot of money, the product he tried to will in to existance got canceled, and they had nothing but layoffs after layoffs.
Managers write novels because employees complain about lack of transparency and communication. I promise you no manager wants to write some novel about how layoffs are good for company, but they just or they get skewered for not communicating.
Saying more words isn’t communicating. In this situation, employees would like to be able to prepare for the layoffs ahead of time, know their jobs are safe (or not), and see what they can change. Saying a bunch of stuff about the future outlook of the company being bright feels like a lie when that’s the same email that got sent after the last round, three months ago
Where are they going to go?
The market isn't good right now. Not many places that are hiring can give an offer that matches a FAANG
The market isn't good right now. Not many places that are hiring can give an offer that matches a FAANG
right...but what FAANG is still offering megabucks? why would they?
HN seems to think it is the birthright of a good dev to get a $450k salary...just "because"
look at it from the other side of the table...you have 300 great resumes for a position...why do you have to offer a premium salary?
counterpoint: these salaries were a blip and will never return in nominal form (let alone inflation adjusted) for many devs ever again
HN seems to think it is the birthright of a good dev to get a $450k salary...just "because"
look at it from the other side of the table...you have 300 great resumes for a position...why do you have to offer a premium salary?
counterpoint: these salaries were a blip and will never return in nominal form (let alone inflation adjusted) for many devs ever again
Right. But the point is, if you're already at a FAANG earning a huge salary, and you don't know if you're going to get laid off, you can either a) wait and hope for the best, or b) leave and get a job at a lower salary.
I think most would choose a).
I think most would choose a).
> right...but what FAANG is still offering megabucks? why would they?
Everyone who still has a job with them is still getting 'megabucks'.
They, for the most part, aren't hiring, though.
Everyone who still has a job with them is still getting 'megabucks'.
They, for the most part, aren't hiring, though.
The lack of self-awareness in corporate communications is suffocating, when instead it should be suffocating the folks who wrote these emails
> This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
I imagine the vast majority of their ultra top-tier talent has left already unless Meta gave them gigantic bonuses.
The stock is down ~40% from where a lot of their RSUs were granted - more than 50% of their pay comes from those grants.
They've had a year of time to go somewhere else and make way more money - most of them probably took that unless Meta gave them a gigantic bonus to keep them whole.
I imagine the vast majority of their ultra top-tier talent has left already unless Meta gave them gigantic bonuses.
The stock is down ~40% from where a lot of their RSUs were granted - more than 50% of their pay comes from those grants.
They've had a year of time to go somewhere else and make way more money - most of them probably took that unless Meta gave them a gigantic bonus to keep them whole.
This is a huge factor! In my experience having a whole bunch of stock can be a really powerful anchor to keep you in place at your job even if you're not 100% happy.
If the stock tanks that vaporizes really quickly.
If the stock tanks that vaporizes really quickly.
>They've had a year of time to go somewhere else and make way more money - most of them probably took that unless Meta gave them a gigantic bonus to keep them whole.
But other FAANGS are not hiring. So where it's somewhere unless they planned to start their own businesses?
But other FAANGS are not hiring. So where it's somewhere unless they planned to start their own businesses?
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’m also curious where these people are going to earn massive comp.
> But other FAANGS are not hiring.
They are if you’re talented enough.
They are if you’re talented enough.
This is a toxic mentality; getting hired at FAANG has very little to do with your "talent"
Talent is obviously subjective.
If you define talent as the criteria by which FAANG selects from a pool of employees - then you're by definition correct.
If you don't - then you disagree.
If FAANG is paying top dollar and selecting for trash - you have to wonder why, though.
If you define talent as the criteria by which FAANG selects from a pool of employees - then you're by definition correct.
If you don't - then you disagree.
If FAANG is paying top dollar and selecting for trash - you have to wonder why, though.
I can't think of a more toxic mentality then thinking it doesn't. In what way do you think talent doesn't play a huge role?
The odd, perhaps not entirely coincidental, relationship between ivy league pedigree and job at FAANG. While there's a correlation between talent and ivy league the relationship is often tenuous. In my experience the difference between a new grad from MIT and a new grad from state school is almost zero in the professional world. Yet, one of these people have a fast pass to FAANG. This is not unusual. Look at Finance. However, to assert that "talent" plays a bigger role than pedigree is simply a falsehood refuted by the evidence.
I mean yes a lot of sub par metrics and proxies are used because people get really up in arms about using IQ tests; the best indicator Google ever found.
> Yet, one of these people have a fast pass to FAANG.
Citation? I haven't seen anything like that in the industry at all.
> Yet, one of these people have a fast pass to FAANG.
Citation? I haven't seen anything like that in the industry at all.
> ivy league pedigree and job at FAANG
I worked at FB and Amazon for six years total and the vast majority of my fellow engineers were from random mediocre schools (including myself, from the U. of Arizona).
I worked at FB and Amazon for six years total and the vast majority of my fellow engineers were from random mediocre schools (including myself, from the U. of Arizona).
I'm talented at sucking up and playing politics like a harp. Like a freaking genius at it, seriously. Is that what you meant?
Every time there is a layoff announcement, I feel like half the comments are nitpicking over the language. It was too long, it was too short, language was too conciliatory, not conciliatory enough, yada yada. We get it. Managers are people too, they're not perfect. At this point, as an employee, I'd just ignore everything that was said (I know it's probably been wordsmithed to death anyway trying to find the right balance for all the various stakeholders), and only focus on the actions: are people treated fairly and with respect, both for those leaving and those remaining.
“The medium is the message.” Yes, the nitpicking over language is silly. In some cases, actually sort of pathetic.
It is true that these messages can be overwrought and whatever else, but it literally doesn’t matter what the content is besides the fact that a layoff is happening. If you tell me I’m laid off with a smile or with a middle finger makes no difference, I’m still laid off.
It is true that these messages can be overwrought and whatever else, but it literally doesn’t matter what the content is besides the fact that a layoff is happening. If you tell me I’m laid off with a smile or with a middle finger makes no difference, I’m still laid off.
Yeah, but communication is a core function of their job. I write code - that's my core function. People should get on my case if there are bugs in it.
Layoffs are not something any employees can control. It's gonna happen or it's not. That's it. Without proper collective power, the only thing we can do is worry.
You're right in that language doesn't matter. Hell even the delivery of the message doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the severance or layoff package. That's the real meat. There should be a mandatory law that publishes all layoff packages so that everyone can see if they're getting a fair deal or not.
You're right in that language doesn't matter. Hell even the delivery of the message doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the severance or layoff package. That's the real meat. There should be a mandatory law that publishes all layoff packages so that everyone can see if they're getting a fair deal or not.
This "transparency" is a shrewd play to drive higher productivity through a Lord of the Flies work environment.
Every time a layoff is discussed, people talk about how the A players are going to leave. Seemingly, people do not understand that the A players could have easily left the whole time but are taken care of - already - so they haven’t.
It is not that rare for critical employees to get grants as part of the layoff execution in a pre-emotive action, and now that I’m older I will note that I’ve been on the planning side of layoffs and this is fairly commonplace.
It is not that rare for critical employees to get grants as part of the layoff execution in a pre-emotive action, and now that I’m older I will note that I’ve been on the planning side of layoffs and this is fairly commonplace.
Not sure if it's true in Meta's case (and almost certainly not Twitter's), but from what I've heard, they usually tell the key people that they are safe a day before.
+1, there are some quite juvenile sentiments about employment evident in this thread. If a company wants someone to stay they'll try very hard to make that happen. Not every employee is treated equally.
Exactly.
When I was younger I was shocked to learn that during an LR companies would “over” cut in order to fund retention for critical people. You’re laying off 7%? This is a good time to free up some additional opex, so just add a few heads above target in order to free opex to comp important people. You won’t get that 7% back but overage you do, usually.
When I was younger I was shocked to learn that during an LR companies would “over” cut in order to fund retention for critical people. You’re laying off 7%? This is a good time to free up some additional opex, so just add a few heads above target in order to free opex to comp important people. You won’t get that 7% back but overage you do, usually.
Plenty of A players might be assigned to pointless projects which could be axed wholesale.
So "A Player" is on a pointless project not providing value to the company gets axed. The value to the company is losing with that "A Player" is nothing because the project they're working on is pointless.
These companies could take a more twitter like "print out your code" or global stack ranking to lay people off but i don't think it dodge the problem people describe. The "A Player" could still be mad that all their coworkers got fired and/or the "pointless project" they enjoyed working on got axed and still leave. You just get the add cost, drama, and blow-back (see twitter) that a performance based firing would entail and probably open yourself up to lawsuits (IANAL) if you don't have an adequate paper trail for those performance based filings.
These companies could take a more twitter like "print out your code" or global stack ranking to lay people off but i don't think it dodge the problem people describe. The "A Player" could still be mad that all their coworkers got fired and/or the "pointless project" they enjoyed working on got axed and still leave. You just get the add cost, drama, and blow-back (see twitter) that a performance based firing would entail and probably open yourself up to lawsuits (IANAL) if you don't have an adequate paper trail for those performance based filings.
But it might be better to move those "A Players" to a critical project (ads? lol)
Exactly. My first thought was how dystopian it is to start an email about layoffs during the "year of efficiency" with how your company is "building the future of human connection".
Everything after the first section is definitely written by an LLM, and not one named Zuckerberg.
> Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
Part of the plan is that lots of people leave on their own along with the 10k. For me, the real question is, how many of the A players can afford to leave? Salaries have to be declining many of the top payers have hiring freezes. It seems like even though they're in high demand will they be able to demand the same pay? And if they can't how many are willing to take the jump and leave for less money? They're called golden handcuffs for a reason.
Part of the plan is that lots of people leave on their own along with the 10k. For me, the real question is, how many of the A players can afford to leave? Salaries have to be declining many of the top payers have hiring freezes. It seems like even though they're in high demand will they be able to demand the same pay? And if they can't how many are willing to take the jump and leave for less money? They're called golden handcuffs for a reason.
From what I've heard attrition is very low right now. Which makes sense... why leave when you might get paid four months of salary if you are laid off instead.
> and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere
I really don't believe that it's a given that Meta still needs them: the entire org was designed for "innovation", and that has certainly been the right call back in the day. E.g. back when they were still on the edge between buying and competing with whatsapp and instagramm on the product level.
But Meta products have been beyond "salvation by innovation" for almost a decade now, what they need to maximize shareholder value is the cheapest setup to keep value extraction up and running for as long as the brands still do their thing. The innovation game is over for them, because the same brand effect that saves the platforms from dying immediately also taints anything Meta buys or starts. Even if Meta had a "Toktik" that had feature equivalency with Tiktok without even a microsecond latency, it would still be stillborn because people just don't want yet another Meta product in their lives (even to the point where they'd rather have a CCP product in their lives, brand awareness isn't exactly a field where logic applies).
These days Meta is in the position comparable to that of a single-field oil extraction company that has no hope for getting claims on any other fields and that has its existing field already fully prospected and tapped. That field is far from empty yet, but they only need people to keep the pumps running, no prospectors, no drillers, no acquisition strategists. Those Meta employees that have been traditionally considered "A players" they wouldn't want to lose and that might actually have been paid absurd sums only to keep them from innovating for the competition are all in the "prospectors, drillers, strategists" group and those have exactly zero value for the janitorial task of keeping the pumps running (edit: more likely negative value, not zero).
(I know, this almost sounds as if I was saying that Musk's Twitter strategy of burning down the house and then trying to macguyver something useful from the rubble was smart, I'm a bit surprised myself. I guess I do think that the aggressive downsizing would have been the rational thing for Twitter to do, but certainly not as a "step 2" after "step 1: throw 44 billion at previous owners". In hindsight, waiting for 44 billion to show up has certainly been much better for previous Twitter owners than doing the downsizing themselves)
I really don't believe that it's a given that Meta still needs them: the entire org was designed for "innovation", and that has certainly been the right call back in the day. E.g. back when they were still on the edge between buying and competing with whatsapp and instagramm on the product level.
But Meta products have been beyond "salvation by innovation" for almost a decade now, what they need to maximize shareholder value is the cheapest setup to keep value extraction up and running for as long as the brands still do their thing. The innovation game is over for them, because the same brand effect that saves the platforms from dying immediately also taints anything Meta buys or starts. Even if Meta had a "Toktik" that had feature equivalency with Tiktok without even a microsecond latency, it would still be stillborn because people just don't want yet another Meta product in their lives (even to the point where they'd rather have a CCP product in their lives, brand awareness isn't exactly a field where logic applies).
These days Meta is in the position comparable to that of a single-field oil extraction company that has no hope for getting claims on any other fields and that has its existing field already fully prospected and tapped. That field is far from empty yet, but they only need people to keep the pumps running, no prospectors, no drillers, no acquisition strategists. Those Meta employees that have been traditionally considered "A players" they wouldn't want to lose and that might actually have been paid absurd sums only to keep them from innovating for the competition are all in the "prospectors, drillers, strategists" group and those have exactly zero value for the janitorial task of keeping the pumps running (edit: more likely negative value, not zero).
(I know, this almost sounds as if I was saying that Musk's Twitter strategy of burning down the house and then trying to macguyver something useful from the rubble was smart, I'm a bit surprised myself. I guess I do think that the aggressive downsizing would have been the rational thing for Twitter to do, but certainly not as a "step 2" after "step 1: throw 44 billion at previous owners". In hindsight, waiting for 44 billion to show up has certainly been much better for previous Twitter owners than doing the downsizing themselves)
What if your A players are tired of carrying the load for the B and C players and cherish this news?
For once, as someone with 0 stake in this whole affair, I quite like he's explicitly spelt out the details he has.
Specifically the sections "Leaner is better", and "Flatter is faster". Other sections are quite relevant and well written IMO.
Also, reading between the lines, Metaverse gets mentioned just twice. I guess they are going to go slow on that? And Oh, "In-person time helps build relationships and get more done" tells me WFH at Meta will be a thing of the past.
Edit: More content.
Specifically the sections "Leaner is better", and "Flatter is faster". Other sections are quite relevant and well written IMO.
Also, reading between the lines, Metaverse gets mentioned just twice. I guess they are going to go slow on that? And Oh, "In-person time helps build relationships and get more done" tells me WFH at Meta will be a thing of the past.
Edit: More content.
I agree that the press release is way too long. I'd add one more specific recommendation for anyone who ends up in a leadership role:
If you're ever in a situation where you need to lay off or otherwise end your relationship with employees, contractors, etc., avoid using terms like "garbage collect[ion]" in the press release, even if you think it's in a section that's not directly about the people you're letting go.
If you're ever in a situation where you need to lay off or otherwise end your relationship with employees, contractors, etc., avoid using terms like "garbage collect[ion]" in the press release, even if you think it's in a section that's not directly about the people you're letting go.
The fault of this lies in upper management. They're getting paid a lot of money to foresee these sorts of things and to plan for them. Hiring like crazy isn't planning, its just doing bare minimum to make it look like you're doing something. But this is also endemic to the Meta org: you can only rise up if you hire enough people below you. And the fault for that ridiculous requirement lies in Zuckerberg. Why are none of the upper management accepting that THEY failed? They should be laid off along with the workers. Including Zuckerberg.
There are two kinds of people
* People who have built companies from 0 to $Trillion (making a lot of employees incredibly wealthy)
* ^^ People who give free advice on the internet ^^
* People who have built companies from 0 to $Trillion (making a lot of employees incredibly wealthy)
* ^^ People who give free advice on the internet ^^
Why is the immediate response to criticize? Every single time I've seen layoffs discussed people always ask why it can't feel like more of a conversation and less like a bandaid getting ripped off (because it sucks to be part of the bandaid). Employees want to be included in the conversation. It seems that's exactly what is being done here. How is that insulting?!
I mean we also hear the traditional rationale for why you can't announce layoffs in advance but it doesn't seem absurd to try it since there seems to be remarkably little data on the subject. Further, if you're considering letting 10k people go, I don't see how it's bad to have the loose ones leave of their own volition. I actually liked the tone and detail of this post. It certainly seems Meta is preparing to fix more than "100% a management failure"...
I mean we also hear the traditional rationale for why you can't announce layoffs in advance but it doesn't seem absurd to try it since there seems to be remarkably little data on the subject. Further, if you're considering letting 10k people go, I don't see how it's bad to have the loose ones leave of their own volition. I actually liked the tone and detail of this post. It certainly seems Meta is preparing to fix more than "100% a management failure"...
This isn't just an internal email, it's a press release. Everyone knows that if it was just an internal email someone would leak it, so they are writing it knowing that the public will see it.
> Also, this is a 2nd round barely 6 months after the first and it's going to happen over months. This will be great for morale and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere.
That may be the plan. There are two benefits of this: more than 10000 people leave your company, but you don’t have to pay severance to them. And second, A players are compensated well and a layoff forces you to pay them hefty severances. If you think your A players do not contribute as much as they are getting paid, this is a way to push them out without paying that extra cash.
That may be the plan. There are two benefits of this: more than 10000 people leave your company, but you don’t have to pay severance to them. And second, A players are compensated well and a layoff forces you to pay them hefty severances. If you think your A players do not contribute as much as they are getting paid, this is a way to push them out without paying that extra cash.
Conversely, if you're an A player you may be ecstatic in believing the company is finally getting back on track, and therefore want to stay.
Something similar happened when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. He cancelled ~70% of the product roadmap and the engineers were thrilled that the company finally returned to a coherent vision.
Something similar happened when Steve Jobs returned to Apple. He cancelled ~70% of the product roadmap and the engineers were thrilled that the company finally returned to a coherent vision.
Is "a player" an internal rank?
I'm sure Zuck really appreciates the advice of a random HN commenter. It's not like he has experience running one of the world's largest companies or anything.
What is the value in announcing that layoffs will take place over a period of months instead of doing it all at once? That seems like the worst possible outcome for both the company and it's employees. Morale is going to be terrible and Meta is going to be left with everyone who hasn't (or wasn't able) to switch jobs.
It's to put pressure on people to perform and sacrifice themselves, their personal lives, their family etc. It's the same reason so many tech companies start to do quarterly reviews, so every 3 months your manager will hold over your head the threat of 'not meeting expectations' and putting you on a performance improvement plan.
Mark lays it out pretty simply in the letter. People don't want surprise layoffs. They'd rather know ahead of time what leadership's planning. It's a tough pill to swallow but this is what a lot of people asked for.
its quite depressing but it applies to much of corporate structure and incentives.
how much more performance can you squeeze from an individual that:
i) is not intrinsic to who they are (hence visible when you hire them - if its not the right profile just don't hire them)
ii) is not tied to your own bloated structure, toxic culture and messed up processes and hence none of their fault
is that 10%, 20% extra performance? is that sufficient to satisfy the "markets"? when its your vision and business model is what is really the problem.
how much more performance can you squeeze from an individual that:
i) is not intrinsic to who they are (hence visible when you hire them - if its not the right profile just don't hire them)
ii) is not tied to your own bloated structure, toxic culture and messed up processes and hence none of their fault
is that 10%, 20% extra performance? is that sufficient to satisfy the "markets"? when its your vision and business model is what is really the problem.
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If it encourages people to leave voluntarily, it could save the job of someone else, and save the company the costs of a layoff.
> What is the value in announcing that layoffs will take place over a period of months instead of doing it all at once?
It seems like that's what Facebook employees wanted, so that's what they get. I'm no fan of Facebook in general, but at least it seems like the guy is listening to the employees on something.
From the press release:
> I recognize that sharing plans for restructuring and layoffs months in advance creates a challenging period. But last fall, we heard feedback that you wanted more transparency sooner into any restructuring plans, so that’s what I’m trying to provide here.
It seems like that's what Facebook employees wanted, so that's what they get. I'm no fan of Facebook in general, but at least it seems like the guy is listening to the employees on something.
From the press release:
> I recognize that sharing plans for restructuring and layoffs months in advance creates a challenging period. But last fall, we heard feedback that you wanted more transparency sooner into any restructuring plans, so that’s what I’m trying to provide here.
Legal requirements in some countries?
> I recognize that sharing plans for restructuring and layoffs months in advance creates a challenging period. But last fall, we heard feedback that you wanted more transparency sooner into any restructuring plans, so that’s what I’m trying to provide here. I hope that giving you a timeline and principles for what to expect will help us get through the next couple of months and then move forward as we implement these changes that I believe will have a very positive impact on how we work.
Their employees wanted that
Their employees wanted that
> Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired.
So in total this means about 16% reduction from what Facebook was aiming to scale to in December 2022 (86k staff). I wish the investors had put Zuck in his place and killed the Metaverse concept early, but it looks like these cuts are across the board and not impacting any particular project.
So in total this means about 16% reduction from what Facebook was aiming to scale to in December 2022 (86k staff). I wish the investors had put Zuck in his place and killed the Metaverse concept early, but it looks like these cuts are across the board and not impacting any particular project.
> I wish the investors had put Zuck in his place
Mark Zuckerberg has 55% of the company's voting shares, giving him majority power.
Mark Zuckerberg has 55% of the company's voting shares, giving him majority power.
> garbage collect unnecessary processes,
I may be wrong and he may be actually referring to optimizing garbage collection on their servers, but this sounds like a callous and heartless way to refer to firing 10k people.
I may be wrong and he may be actually referring to optimizing garbage collection on their servers, but this sounds like a callous and heartless way to refer to firing 10k people.
"People" -> "Human resources" -> "Processes"
Hmmm, wonder what the next step of "threads" will look like? ;)
Hmmm, wonder what the next step of "threads" will look like? ;)
Heck, let's go all the way with the metaphors. Execute, reap.
No, that's the final form. The beginning of the Terminator movie takes place in 2029, when "terminate a process" has become an euphemism for killing humans
They already made a movie with that title.
No he's really referring to projects being shut down as "garbage collection", and I agree it is super heartless. It's interesting that Sheryl Sandberg left in the fall and now official comms from Mark like this are much less human--you can really see the absence of someone like Sheryl who could say to Mark, "hey this sounds terrible to real people, don't do this" and not get fired for it.
So you would be happier if he said "I'm very sad and I take full responsibility"? People who judge based on word usage is why they write that fake crap.
He just didn't even need to say it. It added nothing to the statement at all besides make him sound like a heartless android who sees people and hardware as the exact same thing.
I read it as just internal company processes holding the company down or back. Large companies collect these as more and more controls are put in place to guide correct behaviors.
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Could someone save me from reading through it - Did Zuck take full responsibility?
I really sleep better when CEOs state that they take full responsibility for massive layoffs.
I’d rather hear what Ja Rule has to say!
Joshua, is that you?
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.
I'm very curious as to what constitutes "performing better" in the context of this metric
Selling more ads
I wonder if the eventual result of all this work from home debate will be that it's something that's earned after a period of time. e.g. 1 day a week after 6 months of employment, 2 from 1 year, etc.
That actually makes perfect sense to me from a practical perspective.
That actually makes perfect sense to me from a practical perspective.
Gradual phase-in makes sense to me, too, but who's going to be in the office to mentor those folks?
More likely based on level than tenure
It doesn't make sense because the biggest advantage to WFH is that people can live in a lower cost of living city (and companies can hire the best talent globally). Forcing people into the office even once a month means you're tied to the real estate market next to the office.
Matches my experience.
Juniors and interns really strugle in a remote environment.
Since Meta was hiring mostly new grads or junior leetcoders it makes sense that remote work culture at Meta hit some bumps.
You cannot blame company policies for the poor performance or low motivation of individual junior developers. My team has hired multiple junior developers in the last 2 years, all of whom are 100% remote, and they've been doing excellent.
Right, and it's up to the team to go above and beyond to help them. Managers and senior devs need to step up and get involved more with mentoring and helping.In the office you can gage stress levels of someone who is stuck,lost and not asking for help. In remote they will just hunker down and work nights to try to push through, it happens more to junior than to senior (usually).
yep - it is the culture that determines this. Ive worked at full remote companies that took time to mentor juniors and it worked fine
+1 to this. Our small company hired our first full-time junior dev last year. They’ve been a fantastic addition to the team. We have also been doing 100% remote for over a decade, so our existing processes helped I imagine, too. But I’ve got another data point that a junior dev can certainly thrive doing 100% remote work.
I’m going to trust Meta’s sample size of probably thousands over your sample size of “multiple”.
I had six juniors join my team remotely and three are amazing, two are ok (do useful work but need handholding), but one is pretty bad. However I don’t know how that compares to non-remote hires so it could be that it’s worse.
I had six juniors join my team remotely and three are amazing, two are ok (do useful work but need handholding), but one is pretty bad. However I don’t know how that compares to non-remote hires so it could be that it’s worse.
I totally get that, but it’s important to look who’s providing the information. I highly doubt the analysis was independent of bias.
We know many companies want to push for back to office work and commercial landlords are bag-holding hard…
Some food for thought.
We know many companies want to push for back to office work and commercial landlords are bag-holding hard…
Some food for thought.
This is really not a matter of sample size.
If you want a real assessment of the problem, you will need to think about sampling, be careful about what you test, have a good amount of respect for the factors you don't know.
Nobody on this thread has done any of this, but one is a huge company messing with the lives of many people and claiming they know exactly what they are doing.
If you want a real assessment of the problem, you will need to think about sampling, be careful about what you test, have a good amount of respect for the factors you don't know.
Nobody on this thread has done any of this, but one is a huge company messing with the lives of many people and claiming they know exactly what they are doing.
It's easy to assume other companies are incompetent, and your company is amazing.
But it's harder to onboard at a company like Facebook than at a startup. Every company could have better processes - but when it takes months for even top-tier talent to be able to do basically anything - it can be extremely helpful to be in person during that time...
And, sure, everyone is different. I'm sure some special snowflake will reply - but it isn't for me!! I'm speaking in general - as Facebook is...
But it's harder to onboard at a company like Facebook than at a startup. Every company could have better processes - but when it takes months for even top-tier talent to be able to do basically anything - it can be extremely helpful to be in person during that time...
And, sure, everyone is different. I'm sure some special snowflake will reply - but it isn't for me!! I'm speaking in general - as Facebook is...
Can we assume that Facebook did a good job onboarding remotely? I guess maybe the argument is that given poor onboarding, in-person is better than remote, and going back to in-person saves having to invest in better onboarding. But that’s just an argument that the status quo is easier - of course it’s easier to keep doing what you’re used to, and of course traditional onboarding is geared towards in-person! And that’s quite unfortunate because you do have companies onboarding remotely quite successfully so there’s possibly nothing inherent to remote onboarding that makes it strictly worse.
I think they are not blaming individual junior devs, they are saying across their hires, they noticed a trend.
You said your team hired multiple junior devs, I am gonna assume its less than 10 hope that is fair assumption. Meta has hired almost 40,000 people since 2019. Even a conservative estimate of how many were engineers, and distribution of junior and senior roles. I think it is fair to say they probably had enough people to draw meaningful conclusions.
Perhaps individual teams, with careful hiring practices and team fit interviews can make sure juniors thrive even in a remote position. But on average, larger companies cannot be only staffed by super teams, and sometimes that means some people suffer to make sure the median employee has the best chance to succeed.
Its not too far from having junior limited to some staging environments instead of production. Some juniors might be ready for the big leagues, but giving the keys of prod to any junior will probably cause some headaches on companies with 80,000 employees like Meta.
You said your team hired multiple junior devs, I am gonna assume its less than 10 hope that is fair assumption. Meta has hired almost 40,000 people since 2019. Even a conservative estimate of how many were engineers, and distribution of junior and senior roles. I think it is fair to say they probably had enough people to draw meaningful conclusions.
Perhaps individual teams, with careful hiring practices and team fit interviews can make sure juniors thrive even in a remote position. But on average, larger companies cannot be only staffed by super teams, and sometimes that means some people suffer to make sure the median employee has the best chance to succeed.
Its not too far from having junior limited to some staging environments instead of production. Some juniors might be ready for the big leagues, but giving the keys of prod to any junior will probably cause some headaches on companies with 80,000 employees like Meta.
> Juniors and interns really strugle in a remote environment.
Blanket statements like this are trying to make a multifaceted problem into a single problem. I don't understand why we are always so quick to say underperforming remote junior engineers are underperforming because of remote work. Maybe the problem was Meta went half in on supporting remote as an onboarding ramp and teams did not put the work in to make sure Juniors thrived in a remote environment.
Speaking from experience, If you are truly trying to be a remote company, you adjust as needed to support new employees, junior or not.
Blanket statements like this are trying to make a multifaceted problem into a single problem. I don't understand why we are always so quick to say underperforming remote junior engineers are underperforming because of remote work. Maybe the problem was Meta went half in on supporting remote as an onboarding ramp and teams did not put the work in to make sure Juniors thrived in a remote environment.
Speaking from experience, If you are truly trying to be a remote company, you adjust as needed to support new employees, junior or not.
If that means only hiring at half the rate because of the longer onboarding ritual then that's a good a reason as any not to do remote onboarding for some companies.
But Meta is famous for its "Sink or Swim" cut-throat culture.
How many people out there randomly zoom with their former coworkers that they never met in real life, after leaving their job?
Your 20s are a critical time for your career to make connections and friendships - in person. You need to be around people, making friends over beers and community lunches, and learning social skills in a professional environment.
Are we that spoiled that the excuse is "I don't like public transportation"?
Do companies take a productivity hit when people are in the office? Probably. And many openly acknowledge that, but asking people to come to the office two times a week is not some sort of wage slavery.
Your 20s are a critical time for your career to make connections and friendships - in person. You need to be around people, making friends over beers and community lunches, and learning social skills in a professional environment.
Are we that spoiled that the excuse is "I don't like public transportation"?
Do companies take a productivity hit when people are in the office? Probably. And many openly acknowledge that, but asking people to come to the office two times a week is not some sort of wage slavery.
> Your 20s are a critical time for your career to make connections and friendships - in person. You need to be around people, making friends over beers and community lunches, and learning social skills in a professional environment.
No one is saying you don't need to be around people, but a job can be just a job. I don't need to make a ton of friends at work to do my job, and the idea that that should be a requirement/expectation needs to stop. It enables the chance for too many unhealthy boundaries to be created young workers that don't know any better. If you start in your early 20's and are made to see everyone as friends, family, etc. Then when someone tries to push you into a 12 hour day, it doesn't seem that bad. You can forge working/professional relationships virtually just as well, if you put the effort in.
Now sure it doesn't work for everyone, but again my argument isn't that one is worse than the other, it is just that we make too many blanket statements. What works for you might not work for me, and these organizations trying to force one or the other is harmful in the end. You can have co-existence, especially in a company the size of Meta, you can have a plenty successful office presence and remote presence.
> Are we that spoiled that the excuse is "I don't like public transportation"?
I don't think anyone said that in this thread... That being said, it shouldn't be a surprising fact that people in US cities dislike public transportation. In a previous job of mine, it was quicker to sit in 45 minutes of traffic outside of Washington DC then take the metro, and I was in an area with supposedly great access to public transit. Maybe if all these companies were serious about their workers' best interests they would do more to help invest in and lobby local governments to support public transportation.
> And many openly acknowledge that, but asking people to come to the office two times a week is not some sort of wage slavery.
If you were hired with the expectation to come into the office x number of days, that is fine. A lot of people were hired with the promise of being able to work remote, so changing that is where it tends to be a bit of a bad situation.
In general this animosity between office work and remote work advocates has gotten out of hand. These can co-exist.
No one is saying you don't need to be around people, but a job can be just a job. I don't need to make a ton of friends at work to do my job, and the idea that that should be a requirement/expectation needs to stop. It enables the chance for too many unhealthy boundaries to be created young workers that don't know any better. If you start in your early 20's and are made to see everyone as friends, family, etc. Then when someone tries to push you into a 12 hour day, it doesn't seem that bad. You can forge working/professional relationships virtually just as well, if you put the effort in.
Now sure it doesn't work for everyone, but again my argument isn't that one is worse than the other, it is just that we make too many blanket statements. What works for you might not work for me, and these organizations trying to force one or the other is harmful in the end. You can have co-existence, especially in a company the size of Meta, you can have a plenty successful office presence and remote presence.
> Are we that spoiled that the excuse is "I don't like public transportation"?
I don't think anyone said that in this thread... That being said, it shouldn't be a surprising fact that people in US cities dislike public transportation. In a previous job of mine, it was quicker to sit in 45 minutes of traffic outside of Washington DC then take the metro, and I was in an area with supposedly great access to public transit. Maybe if all these companies were serious about their workers' best interests they would do more to help invest in and lobby local governments to support public transportation.
> And many openly acknowledge that, but asking people to come to the office two times a week is not some sort of wage slavery.
If you were hired with the expectation to come into the office x number of days, that is fine. A lot of people were hired with the promise of being able to work remote, so changing that is where it tends to be a bit of a bad situation.
In general this animosity between office work and remote work advocates has gotten out of hand. These can co-exist.
> Your 20s are a critical time for your career to make connections and friendships - in person. You need to be around people, making friends over beers and community lunches, and learning social skills in a professional environment.
Okay, sure. But why does this need to happen in the workplace?
And more importantly, why are you advocating for employers to unilaterally declare that this needs to happen in the workplace?
Okay, sure. But why does this need to happen in the workplace?
And more importantly, why are you advocating for employers to unilaterally declare that this needs to happen in the workplace?
Connection doesn't need to happen in the workplace, but the reality is that most people spend a majority of their weekday waking hours working so would be great if building connections there were feasible.
I've worked with people (remotely) in the past that I'll still hop on Discord and play video games with.
Working remote lets me make connections and friendships where I live, and have more time to do so than when I was spending hours each day commuting.
Working remote lets me make connections and friendships where I live, and have more time to do so than when I was spending hours each day commuting.
I think you both are correct. Take normal graduate, split spacetime continuum into 2 parallel universes, and let 1 join same company remotely and onsite. Unless given company/team is very toxic, graduate who has gazillion questions every day and gets stuck even more will get them answered more easily if he just comes in person to seniors, rather than chasing calls/chats every time he is stuck or uncertain how to decide.
Quick brainstormings, pair programming. I mean its not up to discussion, real world on site is more efficient. Now from perspective of senior always bothered by those pesky juniors with their stupid questions, loud environment etc. its a different story. Company can set itself up to be much more open to fully remote, but its a conscious and continuous process that needs to be accepted by all seniors, people tend to revert to previous way of working.
Personally, I can see this also for seniors who are also onsite. In truly global teams, you are constantly chasing people and teams to do their work, approve processes, deliver stuff etc. Compared to person X who will respond to your email/chat in 4 hours it takes 1 minute including walking to get feedback, understand problem, manage expectations, push things further etc.
Quick brainstormings, pair programming. I mean its not up to discussion, real world on site is more efficient. Now from perspective of senior always bothered by those pesky juniors with their stupid questions, loud environment etc. its a different story. Company can set itself up to be much more open to fully remote, but its a conscious and continuous process that needs to be accepted by all seniors, people tend to revert to previous way of working.
Personally, I can see this also for seniors who are also onsite. In truly global teams, you are constantly chasing people and teams to do their work, approve processes, deliver stuff etc. Compared to person X who will respond to your email/chat in 4 hours it takes 1 minute including walking to get feedback, understand problem, manage expectations, push things further etc.
It really depends on a lot of factors. For somebody who's shy / socially awkward / introvert (lots of those in tech) it's _a lot_ easier asking questions in chat than in person, especially a shared chat with not too many people, it's also way faster than walking across the hallway to catch the person that you need.
In my experience coaching many young engineers in person and remote, the problem is not so much that it's easier for them to ask questions, is that they don't ask questions, like, at all. They are too worried to sound/appear dumb, even when all the senior/staff engineers are super nice. And in a way I understand that, they are unproven, they have to show their worth to everyone else.
My theory is that the idea that early career people don't do well remote is that it's easier for the senior people to forget about them and not check up on them regularly to make sure they're progressing. If a person is sitting close to you and not making progress it's a lot harder to miss. Also the casual "hey everything OK with your problem?" is a lot easier in person than online. That being said, with some adjustments it really doesn't take too much effort on the Tl/Manager side to make sure junior folks don't get stuck.
I've lead a few teams remotely now and the most successful ones were the ones where I started checking up on the most junior ones often, as often as every day, just asking low-key questions like "hey do you have any questions for me? are you stuck anywhere?" for a bit, just to make sure they were feeling OK asking me when they had a problem, and re-routing them to the right person as needed. After a while they feel safe and start doing it on their own, but it might take a while depending on the person.
As an experienced person, I can chat with anybody at the company within minutes, it's so much more productive than chasing somebody in the office (which could be easily 10~20min walk away).
In person is way better for socializing, creating team bonds, etc. but you don't need that every day, a yearly/quarterly team/company offsite is sufficient.
This is my perspective working at companies that are big enough that they would be global anyway. For a smaller company I can see the argument of having everyone in the same office, but even then your giving up a lot to make up for that (commuting, walking around finding the right person) and I don't think that scales well beyond the 1000 people mark.
In my experience coaching many young engineers in person and remote, the problem is not so much that it's easier for them to ask questions, is that they don't ask questions, like, at all. They are too worried to sound/appear dumb, even when all the senior/staff engineers are super nice. And in a way I understand that, they are unproven, they have to show their worth to everyone else.
My theory is that the idea that early career people don't do well remote is that it's easier for the senior people to forget about them and not check up on them regularly to make sure they're progressing. If a person is sitting close to you and not making progress it's a lot harder to miss. Also the casual "hey everything OK with your problem?" is a lot easier in person than online. That being said, with some adjustments it really doesn't take too much effort on the Tl/Manager side to make sure junior folks don't get stuck.
I've lead a few teams remotely now and the most successful ones were the ones where I started checking up on the most junior ones often, as often as every day, just asking low-key questions like "hey do you have any questions for me? are you stuck anywhere?" for a bit, just to make sure they were feeling OK asking me when they had a problem, and re-routing them to the right person as needed. After a while they feel safe and start doing it on their own, but it might take a while depending on the person.
As an experienced person, I can chat with anybody at the company within minutes, it's so much more productive than chasing somebody in the office (which could be easily 10~20min walk away).
In person is way better for socializing, creating team bonds, etc. but you don't need that every day, a yearly/quarterly team/company offsite is sufficient.
This is my perspective working at companies that are big enough that they would be global anyway. For a smaller company I can see the argument of having everyone in the same office, but even then your giving up a lot to make up for that (commuting, walking around finding the right person) and I don't think that scales well beyond the 1000 people mark.
> you adjust as needed to support new employees
the adjustments may not be possible. People tend to build rapport easier when physically close by, and this rapport is how trust gets built up over time, and only by having this trust do knowledge and institutional culture gets transmitted.
I do believe that junior/new grads who come into a fully remote work place would have a harder time to build trust with existing employees, get less mentorship, and/or find it hard to "gel" properly.
the adjustments may not be possible. People tend to build rapport easier when physically close by, and this rapport is how trust gets built up over time, and only by having this trust do knowledge and institutional culture gets transmitted.
I do believe that junior/new grads who come into a fully remote work place would have a harder time to build trust with existing employees, get less mentorship, and/or find it hard to "gel" properly.
Or maybe they lowered their hiring bar over the last few years, when employees had no choice to be in-office...
I wonder how that analysis takes into account the general craziness and stressfulness of the pandemic, which was the cause of many employees joining Meta remotely? Not to mention, Meta did a crazy total amount of hiring during the pandemic, ramped up very quickly, which by itself can lead to inefficiency.
> our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person
Nothing builds trust like callously laying off tens of thousands of people over multiple rounds of layoffs! Want a trustworthy environment? Earn it. Really though when he says "build trust" what he means is that he (Zuck) does not trust his employees unless he can see them.
Nothing builds trust like callously laying off tens of thousands of people over multiple rounds of layoffs! Want a trustworthy environment? Earn it. Really though when he says "build trust" what he means is that he (Zuck) does not trust his employees unless he can see them.
> he (Zuck) does not trust his employees unless he can see them.
You know that's not true. Facebook has offices around the world. No single person can "see" 80,000 people in any meaningful way.
You know that's not true. Facebook has offices around the world. No single person can "see" 80,000 people in any meaningful way.
His ideology and distrust is propagated down the managerial ranks. It's an entire culture built on distrust and exploitation.
> This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person
I chuckled a bit. This is coming from a Social Media Company whose product is about connecting online. What does it say about the trust between users of its platforms?
I chuckled a bit. This is coming from a Social Media Company whose product is about connecting online. What does it say about the trust between users of its platforms?
Originally Facebook was all about only connecting with people you already know. So it’s not as ironic as you are suggesting.
Well I mean, the simple explanation is online is still far better than nothing. I'm not sure anyone is expecting you to read someone's wall if you could just talk to them every day.
But given the choice, why would a company invest in VR headsets as a way to collaborate remotely if the company selling them thinks in-person is better?
I don't think those ideas necessarily contradict. If you're using VR to collaborate with someone on the other side of the country (or world) but you only need to collaborate intermittently, then remote collaboration just has to be "good enough" to offset the cost of travel even if in person would be ideal. Meanwhile, for their own employees who may need to collaborate daily, from their point of view they might think in that case it makes more sense to enforce in-person. I doubt Meta's stated goal (at this point) with their VR stuff is that you should never ever leave your house because VR is just as good, seems like it's more "this thing enables remote to be better".
It can be that in-person is best, but isn't always possible. And then it can also be the case that VR is better than connecting over Web/Mobile, while also being far cheaper than a plane ticket.
Adding to what others have said, the headsets are actually MR devices. You can collaborate in person with shared virtual objects. I will admit that the software isn't there yet, but the vision is you could comfortably replace models and mock ups with richer virtual media.
Yeah "it is still easier to build trust in person, so they can work together on collaborating via floating Wiimote heads in VR"
About as good as musk Tweeting that phone calls are better than tweets for actually connecting with some.
To me this sounds more like – engineers who have been at Meta < 3 years (so were hired remote) are performing worse than those who have worked there longer. Which...doesn't sound that crazy and doesn't have to be related to remote vs in-person at all. Of course your tenured employees are better at their jobs.
This was the most obtuse portion of the entire diatribe, and further cements my rather low opinion of Meta leadership; they have all the data in the world, but have no idea how to make proper conclusions from it.
Anecdotally... GOOG/Meta haven't updated their interview process significantly and it now just screens for quantity of leetcode grinded. This is likely a poor signal for actual engineering competence.
The irony is they’re tip-toeing around this but it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry. There’s a reason CEO’s will often come in touting how they’re going to promote wfh and then back off once they see the performance metrics their policy creates
> it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry
I've worked in the industry for 10 years now, and I don't agree "it's been known". Any measurable source of such claims?
I've worked in the industry for 10 years now, and I don't agree "it's been known". Any measurable source of such claims?
> it’s been known remote workers don’t perform as well for as long as I’ve been in the industry.
It most certainly is not "known". I've managed remote teams, I've managed in-office teams and I've managed the same people in both scenarios. At no time was the office advantageous to innovation. Quite the opposite, it's a soul suck and once you free people to work how they are comfortable, their creativity will skyrocket.
It most certainly is not "known". I've managed remote teams, I've managed in-office teams and I've managed the same people in both scenarios. At no time was the office advantageous to innovation. Quite the opposite, it's a soul suck and once you free people to work how they are comfortable, their creativity will skyrocket.
I'm 2 decades into this career with the last 10 being remote, and I am as productive as I was in the office.
It certainly takes discipline but I treat working from home the same as if I was in an office.
I am at my desk during business hours. People can Slack me, email me, call me on Teams, whatever. Besides, everything is logged. Every line of code, pull request, login time, email sent, all of it. They know what I'm up to.
It certainly takes discipline but I treat working from home the same as if I was in an office.
I am at my desk during business hours. People can Slack me, email me, call me on Teams, whatever. Besides, everything is logged. Every line of code, pull request, login time, email sent, all of it. They know what I'm up to.
It does not surprise me at all that performance ratings are correlated with office presence, but not for the reasons they imply. The performance evaluation system at Meta is heavily biased towards political visibility and grandstanding and these are simply much easier to achieve in a physical workplace.
"[...] garbage collect unnecessary processes [...]" At least we know some parts of the post were actually written by Zuck himself, not the PR team.
In the "In-person time helps build relationships and get more done" section, looks like they're setting the groundwork to force a back-to-office plan.
Meta still has so much talent, especially in the AI space. I consider them probably just as talented as the deepmind folks, if not more so. They can still achieve world domination for sure.
Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency
Great title.
Great title.
"Let's just hire people and give them obnoxious compensation packages before another FAANG gets them" may not be a business strategy that works in the lean times.
“Year of Efficiency”? Hoo boy… is Zuck picking up his management strategies from a podcast/YouTube channel? I mean, I shouldn’t/wouldn’t be surprised by that but still, wow. Playing in the kiddie pool.
(Strongly reminiscent of the Cortex podcast’s “yearly themes”. Which I like! But… I’m not running one of the world’s largest companies, am I?)
(Strongly reminiscent of the Cortex podcast’s “yearly themes”. Which I like! But… I’m not running one of the world’s largest companies, am I?)
I don't understand your sentiment. Calling out a top priority for the year so that everyone at the company knows seems like a good approach to aligning people across a large organization.
>Our efficiency work has several parallel workstreams to improve organizational efficiency, dramatically increase developer productivity and tooling, optimize distributed work, garbage collect unnecessary processes, and more.
All the tools in the world but you can't have a quiet office
All the tools in the world but you can't have a quiet office
To be fair, i wouldn't be surprised if FB ended up with small team offices in a lot of locations.
I wonder how much of this is the optics from the Riley Rojas types. That caused a real shit storm, and may have finally exposed upper mgmt to just how little most Meta employees do.
She's still employed there though. I can't imagine she'll ever be fired, too much legal risk.
She's still employed there though. I can't imagine she'll ever be fired, too much legal risk.
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It's an insult to have to read that much text for so little content.
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Seems like its clear that it's AI before metaverse for FB now .. that has to sting for mr zuck.
I know that working in tech can warp your sense of reality, but it's really, really hard to imagine starting an email in which I announce that I'm laying off 10,000 people -- the entire population of my hometown and then some -- with "Meta is building the future of human connection."
I just can't tell a story in which I would end up being a person who does that. It's too alien.
I just can't tell a story in which I would end up being a person who does that. It's too alien.
You don't write that email by yourself. There are lots of cooks in the pot when it comes to writing this kind of message to a large corporation.
And yet thay all apparently lack basic human empathy?
Some of them probably do, and I'd also bet that when responsibility for writing the message is diffused throughout a group, people don't feel the need to make it as nice as they would otherwise.
Why would they have any more compared to any other industry?
You assume this email is for the people who will be affected by the layoffs. It is not - it's for the investors and leaders who stay around. Empathy isn't part of this decision or the way it's carried out, unfortunately.
You're on the money. Like literally, empathy here would convey some sadness, or just "negative feelings", which would affect how the money feels. We can't have the money feeling bad now can we? Plus who cares anyway, we all know software monkeys don't feel. They just want to sit around all day drinking coffees and mashing little plastic chiclets! And the money is perfectly happy with this arrangement. /s
Just in case you or another onlooker comes by and assumes I agree with the morality of what I said, I don't. I think it's awful letting 10K people go for money, like they don't have bills too. But I don't live in delusion or the dark about these things. Zuckerberg posts this letter to inspire those who stay, not mourn those who go. Empathy, in this case, negatively impacts the message, which is Facebook is important and is moving to be a more financially sound company. Again, I don't like it, but my likes don't matter here.
Damned if you do damned if you don't.
We've seen the entire gambit of layoff messages in the past year. No matter how empathic they're written, people complain.
We've seen the entire gambit of layoff messages in the past year. No matter how empathic they're written, people complain.
Good people remember though and hold a grudge if you insult them on the way out the door. People you want to hire in the future are watching as well. There's incentive to be classy (ex: Microsoft's https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/01/18/subject-focusing...) unless the whole ship is going down.
Edit:
That being said, after actually reading it, the Meta letter is relatively classy. The HN comments made it seem worse than it was.
Edit:
That being said, after actually reading it, the Meta letter is relatively classy. The HN comments made it seem worse than it was.
Perhaps their attorneys advised them not to use "making the world a better place".
Despite the claimed intended audience, that letter isn't written for employees. It is written for shareholders. And judging by the stock price, it had the intended effect.
GOOG is up 3%, MSFT, AMZN, APPL are up 2%. Snap is up 4%. FB is "only" up 4.5%.
If you need to fire 13% of staff to get a 1.5-2.5% bump in price - that doesn't look great to me.
Almost seems like the market is signaling that they don't see any growth potential for FB outside of canceling the Metaverse.
If you need to fire 13% of staff to get a 1.5-2.5% bump in price - that doesn't look great to me.
Almost seems like the market is signaling that they don't see any growth potential for FB outside of canceling the Metaverse.
up 6.5% now
Given all the leaks it seems reasonable that these layoffs have mostly been priced in already.
My one hope in all this is that some tech workers who drank a lot of corporate kool-aid over the years, i.e. the “we’re a family” managerial nonsense, will finally see the reality of the industry we work in and the real aim of quarterly capitalism which is profit and growth at all costs every single quarter. Your well being, since you likely attach it to work, is not part of that formula. You are expendable and will be sacrificed on the altar of profit at a moments notice.
Someone was probably coached to "start with something positive, say the bad thing, end with something positive."
I don’t understand the alienness can you elaborate. Maybe I’m alien.
Meta-verse => meta-worse
These people can be rehired in a year for 50% of what they are making now
And many will be happy for the opportunity
And many will be happy for the opportunity
People said twitter would fall over after all the influencers got fired but its still relatively functioning fine.
Confirms my theory that most companies are just bloat 80:20 rule.
Get rid of everyones whos not a nerd or directly sells product.
Confirms my theory that most companies are just bloat 80:20 rule.
Get rid of everyones whos not a nerd or directly sells product.
Twitter still working doesn't proof anything. There may be tech debt piling up and after some time they will need some combination of investments and surgery (dropping of non-critical features) to be able move forward without breaking everything.
I dont think so they probably fired people like her
https://twitter.com/TMFSunLion/status/1585257328533995520?la...
The company is fine.
The company is fine.
Tweets fail to send on the first try about a third of the time now
Works fine for me.
Maybe they need to rehire the button engineer to fix the button code! /s
Maybe they need to rehire the button engineer to fix the button code! /s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35100251
Flagged of course, "no way this is true" etc
Flagged of course, "no way this is true" etc
That was my first though when I say this instantly get to the top spot.
> We’ll also have individual contributors report into almost every level — not just the bottom — so information flow between people doing the work and management will be faster.
Internet Rule 289: Thou shalt complain about layoff announcements
> In our Year of Efficiency, we will make our organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management. As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors.
So basically more rounds of layoffs to come?
> This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.
Sounds like they pulling the plug on remote work
Has Meta been found out as a company?
So basically more rounds of layoffs to come?
> This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week.
Sounds like they pulling the plug on remote work
Has Meta been found out as a company?
> In our Year of Efficiency, we will make our organization flatter by removing multiple layers of management. As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors.
I am curious what people think about this.
I am curious what people think about this.
Quick Question: why do the layoffs take so long?
Like why is he saying for some groups it may take till the end of the year?
Internally, doesn't that mean nobody has any morale or gets any work done for a proper year, since everyone remains jaded and on edge?
"layoff" is a noun. I think you meant "lay off"
The word "efficiency" appears 20 times in this article. Yet not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency - the layers, the fat, and the lethargy - came from. Nor does he explain the logic of culling employees now.
These are not the words of someone who has learned lessons or who is interested in telling the truth.
So here's a hypothesis: Facebook is not a "technology company," it's an advertising company. And spending on advertising has cratered as businesses everywhere have pulled in their horns in response to their own falling revenues. Facebook lived large during the fake boom. It hired way too many people and a built a bloated, middle-heavy organization that is poorly-suited to the task ahead: taking back territory it's lost to smaller, nimbler competitors. Facebook management bought the economic lies being told hook, line, and sinker.
The party's now over and Facebook faces major headwinds, including savage competition, declining revenue, and the aftermath of a hiring orgy gone wrong.
These are not the words of someone who has learned lessons or who is interested in telling the truth.
So here's a hypothesis: Facebook is not a "technology company," it's an advertising company. And spending on advertising has cratered as businesses everywhere have pulled in their horns in response to their own falling revenues. Facebook lived large during the fake boom. It hired way too many people and a built a bloated, middle-heavy organization that is poorly-suited to the task ahead: taking back territory it's lost to smaller, nimbler competitors. Facebook management bought the economic lies being told hook, line, and sinker.
The party's now over and Facebook faces major headwinds, including savage competition, declining revenue, and the aftermath of a hiring orgy gone wrong.
Some part of it was highlighted with the mention of an org chart that is both deep and sparse. Many managers had only 2-4 reports with the expectation that the org chart would fill out with hiring. Now that hiring has slowed dramatically, those levels won't fill out, so consolidation makes sense.
There was also a lot of duplicative and overlapping work, which is mentioned as well.
There was also a lot of duplicative and overlapping work, which is mentioned as well.
> Yet not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency
"The author" is a bit of a strange way to refer to Mark Zuckerberg himself.
"The author" is a bit of a strange way to refer to Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Do you really believe Zuckerberg wrote this by himself? He probably just signed it off.
By himself? No. I don't think the precise authorship even matters. It is represented as coming from Zuckerberg, as an official company statement: "Mark Zuckerberg just shared the following with Meta employees". Zuck publicly endorsed it as his views on the matter, regardless of the pedantic details of who exactly wrote which sentences. I don't think it makes much sense to distinguish the author(s) from Mark.
When the President of the United States gives a speech, you don't analyze the speech as if it were the views of the speechwriter(s). Of course the POTUS is just reading from a teleprompter, but the writers are hired by the POTUS to write for him, as is the case with Zuckerberg too.
When the President of the United States gives a speech, you don't analyze the speech as if it were the views of the speechwriter(s). Of course the POTUS is just reading from a teleprompter, but the writers are hired by the POTUS to write for him, as is the case with Zuckerberg too.
> So here's a hypothesis: Facebook is not a "technology company," it's an advertising company.
Hypothesis? They've been an ad company for a long time.
Hypothesis? They've been an ad company for a long time.
> not once does the author explain where all of the inefficiency ... came from
I think you need to RTFA ... it covers all those areas in great detail ... it's is one of the most detailed such posts I've ever seen like this.
I think you need to RTFA ... it covers all those areas in great detail ... it's is one of the most detailed such posts I've ever seen like this.
Definitely agree. I’be never read a post from CEO level explaining very specific reasons and goals for their actions.
I’m betting on Zuck here, and wish I could get this same level of specificity at my company.
I’m betting on Zuck here, and wish I could get this same level of specificity at my company.
Look at the section on being lean. He talks about that a lot
To paraphrase Steve Ballmer: "investors, investors investors".
The 'efficiency' here is slashing operational expenses to boost earnings per share. That is a temporary boost, but one that can be repeated a few times.
The 'efficiency' here is slashing operational expenses to boost earnings per share. That is a temporary boost, but one that can be repeated a few times.
Companies should share these updates in a short and concise way rather than posting such and nonsense articles. Sharing like this sounds really absurd. I tried to read it, but when I saw that he was talking about speeding up build systems at one point, I couldn't take it seriously and continue.
Zuckerberg is obsessed with cornering the market for the Next Big Thing. First it was radio, then TV, computers, cellphones, what could the next big thing be? It's got to be VR... because Mark can't think of anything else it could be.
So even though people aren't willing to strap bricks to their faces now, once they understand there's no other Next Big Thing coming, they'll shrug and pick up a VR headset.
Then after a month of ChatGPT hype he wakes up and fires everybody. What a clown.
So even though people aren't willing to strap bricks to their faces now, once they understand there's no other Next Big Thing coming, they'll shrug and pick up a VR headset.
Then after a month of ChatGPT hype he wakes up and fires everybody. What a clown.
They did release Llama which is bound to become the linux of llms
Maybe the next big thing would be a big bunch of interconnected small things. Who knows.
> Then after a month of ChatGPT hype he wakes up and fires everybody. What a clown.
Changing course when you realize you were wrong has nothing to do with being a clown. Not defending Zuckerberg or the lay off, but for large companies it's always been one of the hardest tasks to predict trends. And many that go under do so because they hold on to old technologies and refuse to admit the world has changed.
If Zuckerberg really changed the whole strategy because he saw VR won't go anywhere and ChatGPT has such potential, changing course drastically would be much better than holding on to old projects due to sunk costs.
Changing course when you realize you were wrong has nothing to do with being a clown. Not defending Zuckerberg or the lay off, but for large companies it's always been one of the hardest tasks to predict trends. And many that go under do so because they hold on to old technologies and refuse to admit the world has changed.
If Zuckerberg really changed the whole strategy because he saw VR won't go anywhere and ChatGPT has such potential, changing course drastically would be much better than holding on to old projects due to sunk costs.
“Do you care to know why I sit in this chair? Why I earn the big bucks?
I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. I’m here to guess what the music is going to do a week, a month, a year from now. Nothing more. That’s it.”
I’m here for one reason and one reason alone. I’m here to guess what the music is going to do a week, a month, a year from now. Nothing more. That’s it.”
I don’t think he’s brilliant or anything (getting into social media at that time was pretty lucky), but if I had a billion dollars and a successful company, I’d be looking for the next big thing too. Keep the good times rolling, and also, exploring is fun.
he's still going after VR though, its not like this is a pivot.
> Then after a month of ChatGPT hype he wakes up and fires everybody. What a clown.
They've been developing LLaMA for some time now presumably. Seems odd to imply they somehow missed this.
They've been developing LLaMA for some time now presumably. Seems odd to imply they somehow missed this.
Zuck: VR head sets
Elon: Satellite phones
Samsung: The Moon
Apple: Sat + VR
Microsoft: GPT
Is how I see it.
Elon: Satellite phones
Samsung: The Moon
Apple: Sat + VR
Microsoft: GPT
Is how I see it.
I don't think Zuck particularly cares about the next big thing. As the debacle with Apple shows, there are existential risks here and now, not in some sort of FOMO
Despite appearances, if the metaverse gambit in the current episode made any sense it was mostly as a defensive move: To obtain control over a device so that you can datamine at will and perpetuate your business model irrespective of what other major actors might come up with.
Think about it. If stars (you have little control over) align, device owners can flip a privacy switch here, introduce a policy there and annihilate your business.
To paraphrase Ballmer: Devices, devices, devices
Despite appearances, if the metaverse gambit in the current episode made any sense it was mostly as a defensive move: To obtain control over a device so that you can datamine at will and perpetuate your business model irrespective of what other major actors might come up with.
Think about it. If stars (you have little control over) align, device owners can flip a privacy switch here, introduce a policy there and annihilate your business.
To paraphrase Ballmer: Devices, devices, devices
I mean even I disagree with a lot of what Meta is doing, but you have to admit that there is viability there especially if the tech in those "bricks" can be shrunk to the size of regular glass
I thought 'layoff' was the noun and 'lay off' was the verb?
The fact that you can fire 10,000 people in a day without noticing just proves that capitalist efficiency is a lie. You still get the same stupid waste of resources as with any other system.
What do any of these people even do? Facebook hasn't changed in the last 10 years. Instagram etc are all finished products. How can you have hundreds of thousands of people in a company when you don't make anything?
You have to give them something to do so you get them to make a new UI because everyone always needs a new UI. But then oh no we need new servers for development so we need a new server team. And then we need a testing team for testing the UI and then we need HR for managing the new teams and accountants for managing the expanded payroll... And yet none of them actually achieve anything because it's a made-up project.
What do any of these people even do? Facebook hasn't changed in the last 10 years. Instagram etc are all finished products. How can you have hundreds of thousands of people in a company when you don't make anything?
You have to give them something to do so you get them to make a new UI because everyone always needs a new UI. But then oh no we need new servers for development so we need a new server team. And then we need a testing team for testing the UI and then we need HR for managing the new teams and accountants for managing the expanded payroll... And yet none of them actually achieve anything because it's a made-up project.
> we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services
That's either a lie, or Mark has a serious misunderstanding of what "better" means.
That's either a lie, or Mark has a serious misunderstanding of what "better" means.
Ignore the fluff piece. The reality is you're being laid off because the company can make more money by taking your salary and buying government bonds.
When your team got spun up to work on this project, interest rates were low and it was a sound investment to try this project out. If it was successful, it might have made/saved a moderate amount of money. It made sense to invest in it, compared to all the other options available at the time.
But alas, inflation soared and interest rates rose faster than predicted, so now the bonds are a better bet than you and your team doing whatever it was you were doing. According to this spreadsheet, it wasn't nearly as profitable as the bonds.
When your team got spun up to work on this project, interest rates were low and it was a sound investment to try this project out. If it was successful, it might have made/saved a moderate amount of money. It made sense to invest in it, compared to all the other options available at the time.
But alas, inflation soared and interest rates rose faster than predicted, so now the bonds are a better bet than you and your team doing whatever it was you were doing. According to this spreadsheet, it wasn't nearly as profitable as the bonds.
Government bonds yield 3-4%. I don't think they ever calculated with a margin of just 4%. It's true that liquidity has dried up to some degree and companies have alternatives what to do with their money, but it's not like they though they'd yield only 3% by hiring more people.
Closer to 5% now
back down to 4.3 for short term t-bills
yields dropped almost 1 point after depositor bailouts for SVB. the running belief is that the fed will slow down in response to fixed-income positions held by banks.
yields dropped almost 1 point after depositor bailouts for SVB. the running belief is that the fed will slow down in response to fixed-income positions held by banks.
What maturity? I'm only seeing 3.XX% here: https://www.treasurydirect.gov/marketable-securities/treasur...
Hard to make money adjusted for inflation buying government bonds that are still negative in real terms...
Also, FB isn't buying treasuries...
Also, FB isn't buying treasuries...
If I am a Meta investor, and I see they use my capital to buy government bonds, why would I invest in them? I'd just buy the bonds myself.
Meta is supposed to be a Tech company and invest the capital they have in technology plays
Meta is supposed to be a Tech company and invest the capital they have in technology plays
I believe that is the point the OP was making. If you're ROI on employee X is 3% of the investors' dollar, the investor would simply buy a bond since the ROI on the bond is higher. Because of this discrepancy it no longer makes sense to keep employees or business units with a 3% ROI or an ROI lower than what the expected return on a bond is.
I think this is really good intuition on what the Fed effectively does. When it's really easy to teleport money from the future, all that money competes in the present for a limited supply of good. This causes inflation and reduces margins and can cause profitable endeavors to become non-profitable "hobbies."*
Increased interest rates suck up this money because now there is something better to do with that money. Why "Do Stuff" when the returns on doing stuff is less than the ultra high savings yield you are now being offered.
It's virtuous when the stuff being done actually is destructive due to easy access to capital (e.g. 100 Ramen shops driving each other into further and further debt) but it's also a ham-fisted solution. It disrupts long term planning, even relatively conservative ones like "buy government bonds", and also just punts the problem b/c it's reducing demand by... promising more money in the future.
Increased interest rates suck up this money because now there is something better to do with that money. Why "Do Stuff" when the returns on doing stuff is less than the ultra high savings yield you are now being offered.
It's virtuous when the stuff being done actually is destructive due to easy access to capital (e.g. 100 Ramen shops driving each other into further and further debt) but it's also a ham-fisted solution. It disrupts long term planning, even relatively conservative ones like "buy government bonds", and also just punts the problem b/c it's reducing demand by... promising more money in the future.
The obvious question here is why a social network considers itself to be primarily a technology company that should be led by technologists. It seems like Zuck is trying to pull a WeWork here.
Besides the main stuff:
Wow, I would not have guessed that Buck2 would be mentioned by name, and the only project done so.
Wow, I would not have guessed that Buck2 would be mentioned by name, and the only project done so.
Layoffs will continue until the metaverse strategy is a roaring success?
"It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues..."
What kind of sociopath one has to be not to realize there's something very wrong about writing a piece like this?
It's almost like Mark or whoever put it together enjoyed doing it.
What kind of sociopath one has to be not to realize there's something very wrong about writing a piece like this?
It's almost like Mark or whoever put it together enjoyed doing it.
It's weird that several large tech companies all need to fire around 10,000 people at the same time. It's almost like the number is completely arbitrary and they're all soullessly choosing profit over their people because they can.
It’s almost like the economic system which all these companies are based in demands profit over improving the lives of people…
Weird.
Weird.
How is choosing the profit of an average american 401k holder over the salary of $500k engineer “soulless”?
People tend to forget that through all the layers of different companies and funds, the average person who owns Facebook shares is less well off than an average Facebook employee.
People tend to forget that through all the layers of different companies and funds, the average person who owns Facebook shares is less well off than an average Facebook employee.
Did Zuck use ChatGTP to write the letter? It sounds so soulless...
The government should bailout FB. Think of the workers!
>and will likely only cause your A players (who are probably still very much in demand) to look elsewhere
Where? Just FAANGS are giving that level of salary and FAANGS are not hiring.
Where? Just FAANGS are giving that level of salary and FAANGS are not hiring.
They will take lower salaries then.
That’s not true though. FAANGs (except Netflix) are not top of band anymore. Mid-large public unicorns have the best comp now and much better WLB
"As part of the Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles."
I found this interesting, I wonder what the optimal ratio is. If the ratio is too high then eng is going to be hit hard, if it is too low then other roles are going to be hit hard.
I found this interesting, I wonder what the optimal ratio is. If the ratio is too high then eng is going to be hit hard, if it is too low then other roles are going to be hit hard.
It's a good reminder that you a nothing for the corporation, a nuisance, a cost, a necessary evil.
The moment they find a way to replace you and cut costs they will.
This means, don't bother working more than you have to, after all you are not working towards your own private jet, but you are building wealth of people who don't have your best interest in mind.
The moment they find a way to replace you and cut costs they will.
This means, don't bother working more than you have to, after all you are not working towards your own private jet, but you are building wealth of people who don't have your best interest in mind.
Ouch...the pain just continues
Good, evil company yet hners love them for the salary $$$
I wonder if he reused the letter from the previous round.
"garbage collect some processes" is an incredibly poor choice of words to use in a post about laying off 10,000 people through no fault of their own...
I think ChatGPT will include the phrase "difficult decision" and the word "talented" on the task to write a layoff communique. The "flat structure" goes along the Elon "show me the code" rant when he acquired Twitter. IMHO managers are the spotters in the race and drivers are the coders and dev-ops the mechanics. To ask that the spotters have to take a few laps around the course during the race is idiotic right? You can replace the spotters with machines as long as you don't mind a few drivers going up in fiery crashes every now and then. I've seen that implemented. It requires a lot of work-visas.
Headline: Update on our year of efficiency"
Translation: We weren't efficient at all
Translation: We weren't efficient at all
Does anyone else find the irony in this statement from a company that is pushing for a Virtual Reality social world since almost the beginning?
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.
> As part of our Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on understanding this further and finding ways to make sure people build the necessary connections to work effectively. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.
> As part of our Year of Efficiency, we’re focusing on understanding this further and finding ways to make sure people build the necessary connections to work effectively. In the meantime, I encourage all of you to find more opportunities to work with your colleagues in person.
Starts off saying how they're building tools to help people connect digitally as if they're there in person and the proceeds to say it's really shit and people should meet in person.
The whole in office is better thing is a farce, but how can you buy into a 'vision' when they don't believe it themselves.
The whole in office is better thing is a farce, but how can you buy into a 'vision' when they don't believe it themselves.
half the people there dont believe in the metaverse. That's their long term strategy that they've sink billions of dollars into.
Sounds like a winning formula /s
I asked ChatGPT about taking responsibility for the layoff, here is the response:
> The blog post does not explicitly state that Mark Zuckerberg takes full responsibility for the layoffs.
> The blog post does not explicitly state that Mark Zuckerberg takes full responsibility for the layoffs.
I a lot of ways this feels to me like Zuckerberg taking back the company after the Sheryl Sandberg years. There is no adult supervision any more and Mark is now unrestrained in living out his geek ideology that says engineering led companies are better and layers of middle management are fundamentally wasted. I have some sympathy for this viewpoint but I think it is all too easy to under estimate how special the whole culture of an organisation needs to be to actually make fully engineering led leadership work. I am not sure you can impose it from top down. But it will be very interesting to see how he goes at it.
It still blows my mind how many engineers are at Meta. What are they all doing? Seems pretty comfortable to say that they could lay off thousands more and probably notice no difference in the user experience or revenue of their products.
It it unfortunate for those people, but it is great for society as a whole that Meta is no longer wasting 10k engineers on their stupid ad platform.
Wow, so much negativity towards this announcement. This reaction is genuinely surprising because I found this post both inspirational and insightful. I hope there are others who feel the same way!
Maybe we can start a discussion on the content rather than our emotions from the headline?
Some of the best parts here:
> Today many of our managers have only a few direct reports. That made sense to optimize for ramping up new managers and maintaining buffer capacity when we were growing our organization faster, but now that we don’t expect to grow headcount as quickly, it makes more sense to fully utilize each manager’s capacity and defragment layers as much as possible.
> A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster.
> we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles.
> I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years. Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation.
Maybe we can start a discussion on the content rather than our emotions from the headline?
Some of the best parts here:
> Today many of our managers have only a few direct reports. That made sense to optimize for ramping up new managers and maintaining buffer capacity when we were growing our organization faster, but now that we don’t expect to grow headcount as quickly, it makes more sense to fully utilize each manager’s capacity and defragment layers as much as possible.
> A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster.
> we’re focusing on returning to a more optimal ratio of engineers to other roles.
> I think we should prepare ourselves for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years. Higher interest rates lead to the economy running leaner, more geopolitical instability leads to more volatility, and increased regulation leads to slower growth and increased costs of innovation.
> I found this post both inspirational and insightful
Are you a venture capitalist? Most of us are rank and file employees.
Are you a venture capitalist? Most of us are rank and file employees.
> This reaction is genuinely surprising because I found this post both inspirational and insightful
I would love to understand how you see this as inspirational.
I would love to understand how you see this as inspirational.
Because they believe they are a 10x engineer and managers hurt their productivity by getting in their way most certainly, tale as old as time.
Arguments ad hominem are inappropriate for hackernews. Let’s leave this type of argument to Reddit or blind.
I understand your perspective though. layoff announcements trigger an emotional response esp. in an uncertain economic condition.
To answer the question, I think it’s worth explaining my perspective first. My company did “hidden layoffs” where an entire org was cut without any leadership announcement. Everyone freaked out, and we got no response from company. We found out about increased PIP quotas from blind. We have a mountain of technical debt hindering developer experience with no priority to address it.
Zuckerberg in this article, is the exact opposite of the horrible leadership that I have dealt with on my job. This is why I feel inspired to see specific reasons for restructuring, with multi month transparent plans, and pre-determined goals. When execs preach of transparency, point them to this article from Zuck which is entirely public. This content shows a proactive culture, and is so so refreshing when my experience has been as an employee of reactive leadership.
I understand your perspective though. layoff announcements trigger an emotional response esp. in an uncertain economic condition.
To answer the question, I think it’s worth explaining my perspective first. My company did “hidden layoffs” where an entire org was cut without any leadership announcement. Everyone freaked out, and we got no response from company. We found out about increased PIP quotas from blind. We have a mountain of technical debt hindering developer experience with no priority to address it.
Zuckerberg in this article, is the exact opposite of the horrible leadership that I have dealt with on my job. This is why I feel inspired to see specific reasons for restructuring, with multi month transparent plans, and pre-determined goals. When execs preach of transparency, point them to this article from Zuck which is entirely public. This content shows a proactive culture, and is so so refreshing when my experience has been as an employee of reactive leadership.
They are saying, "We are going to make our existing managers work harder, make the existing engineers deliver more because the $22 billion in profit we made in 2022 wasn't enough. We should consider how we can sacrifice more to make even more profit."
No I think Zuckerbergs words should be read at face value.
Managers with small amount of reports will be converted to ICs and strong managers will be given more reports. The org will be more lean and will have less overhead per manager of converting work between layers.
I’m summarizing above but in the article are specific goals to address this and I didn’t pick up on any signs that employees should overwork themselves.
Managers with small amount of reports will be converted to ICs and strong managers will be given more reports. The org will be more lean and will have less overhead per manager of converting work between layers.
I’m summarizing above but in the article are specific goals to address this and I didn’t pick up on any signs that employees should overwork themselves.
I think I've posted this before - but can't find it.
We always used to joke that layoffs always come in threes. The first one never cuts deep enough. People do the bare minimum.
The second one comes when everyone realises that the business actually is in trouble and does need saving.
The third one is needed as the business has been so badly damaged by the layoffs and is now bleeding cash.
We always used to joke that layoffs always come in threes. The first one never cuts deep enough. People do the bare minimum.
The second one comes when everyone realises that the business actually is in trouble and does need saving.
The third one is needed as the business has been so badly damaged by the layoffs and is now bleeding cash.
Why they heck does an American use the word “bespoke”? It’s freaking CUSTOM, Mark, we are Yankees, cut the shit.
I dunno about anybody else, but Zuckerberg and Pichai both have writing styles with very little substance or convincing argumebnts.
So many though, all at once. This is criminal lack of forseight and mismanagement
After 15 years of the talent acquisition arms race they all finally got what they wanted, and now they are happy to throw it all way.
Zuk should get rid of his foil board as a show of solidarity
Meta is undergoing a standard phase transition. It was innovation fuelled previously, but now it is value fuelled (milk the existing machine, take care of regulators, be part of the establishment). Intel and IBM are similar examples.
So Zuckerberg, to prevent this, has the right strategy - the pirates inside the organisation strategy. Jobs did this with the Mac project. The question mark really is whether the Metaverse can deliver to take over from the Social Media platforms it has. Even if you accept the promise of Metaverse, according to Carmack the execution has been poor. Normally you just buy your way out with promising startups when execution is poor but the regulators will be heavy with Meta nowadays.
Meta has star power with AI/ML. But on Metaverse there isn't much consumer data to process (yet). So its innovation vector can't be realised.
This effectively means the stars of AI/ML won't help Meta into the future. If they leave, it could be a good thing (if we are taking the value-fuelled hypothesis as their future).
Meta I think will switch to a MBA-led approach to maximise existing value, shed its research aspirations, and switch to hiring the best mechanical/devices/hardware talent it can to improve execution on Metaverse.
Under this appraisal of Meta, broad and wide layoffs, letting the superstars go is the right thing for the company. Unlocked from Meta, those engineers will forge the next great wave of tech companies. The future will be made over the next few months as those start-up fevered ideas will actually get a footing. So I am most hopeful despite the bitter pill of current economic realities. In the short term there is real pain, particularly those relying on visas or the generous healthcare provisions from the company.
So Zuckerberg, to prevent this, has the right strategy - the pirates inside the organisation strategy. Jobs did this with the Mac project. The question mark really is whether the Metaverse can deliver to take over from the Social Media platforms it has. Even if you accept the promise of Metaverse, according to Carmack the execution has been poor. Normally you just buy your way out with promising startups when execution is poor but the regulators will be heavy with Meta nowadays.
Meta has star power with AI/ML. But on Metaverse there isn't much consumer data to process (yet). So its innovation vector can't be realised.
This effectively means the stars of AI/ML won't help Meta into the future. If they leave, it could be a good thing (if we are taking the value-fuelled hypothesis as their future).
Meta I think will switch to a MBA-led approach to maximise existing value, shed its research aspirations, and switch to hiring the best mechanical/devices/hardware talent it can to improve execution on Metaverse.
Under this appraisal of Meta, broad and wide layoffs, letting the superstars go is the right thing for the company. Unlocked from Meta, those engineers will forge the next great wave of tech companies. The future will be made over the next few months as those start-up fevered ideas will actually get a footing. So I am most hopeful despite the bitter pill of current economic realities. In the short term there is real pain, particularly those relying on visas or the generous healthcare provisions from the company.
This is a great take on Meta -- in some ways there's an element of macro justice or a return to form in tech and innovation with this shift.
I don't disagree with anything you've said here, but I can't help but feel this reads like a monologue from a supervillain who feels righteous in burning the world down because they believe something greater will rise from the ashes.
Exactly. There is no nice or correct way to do this. Lots of companies seem to go through this and come out fine on the other end as well.
I worked at Nokia through their transition from being the largest smart phone manufacturer in the world to shortly before they sold off what remained of their phone unit to MS, who shut it down completely less than two years later. Basically, that probably affected many tens of thousands of people. I heard all the cliches and was on the receiving end of them. Two points here: 1) this is not personal even if it deeply effects you. 2) if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. The last point here doesn't mean you are the problem, or the cause of the problem. But simply that your presence is no longer part of any solution to whatever the problem is. Whether you agree with that or not is beside the point. The fact is that, once companies get to this stage, there is only one way forward: let go of a lot of people.
IMHO, Facebook is being to cautious here. They need to cut much more deeply than this and re-focus on their core products and modernize those. Facebook has been dead in the water for years. Whatsapp has an aging user group as well. Instagram seems past its glory. Messenger seems like a failed product at this point. Time to take it out the back and kill that. Revitalizing Facebook and Instagram will require some drastic changes. It's not going to magically start turning around without that. It's either continued gradual decline or finding some way to become relevant again.
I worked at Nokia through their transition from being the largest smart phone manufacturer in the world to shortly before they sold off what remained of their phone unit to MS, who shut it down completely less than two years later. Basically, that probably affected many tens of thousands of people. I heard all the cliches and was on the receiving end of them. Two points here: 1) this is not personal even if it deeply effects you. 2) if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. The last point here doesn't mean you are the problem, or the cause of the problem. But simply that your presence is no longer part of any solution to whatever the problem is. Whether you agree with that or not is beside the point. The fact is that, once companies get to this stage, there is only one way forward: let go of a lot of people.
IMHO, Facebook is being to cautious here. They need to cut much more deeply than this and re-focus on their core products and modernize those. Facebook has been dead in the water for years. Whatsapp has an aging user group as well. Instagram seems past its glory. Messenger seems like a failed product at this point. Time to take it out the back and kill that. Revitalizing Facebook and Instagram will require some drastic changes. It's not going to magically start turning around without that. It's either continued gradual decline or finding some way to become relevant again.
Does AI/ML not unlock value for the Metaverse? Also, the layoffs are set to prioritize recruiting, management, and business personnel. That seems to go against the idea that they are switching to an MBA-led approach.
>Normally you just buy your way out with promising startups when execution is poor
So here's the thing. Who is doing better at this than Meta? Who could they buy? Regulation is a secondary issue.
At this point, the Quests are pretty good gaming machines. Its the software that's lacking. MMAAAN has traditionally struggled with content creation. It took a long time for the streaming studios to get any decent shows. Apple, Google, Netflix and Amazon don't really have a good game portfolio to this day.
They could possibly buy or spin up a bunch of game studios to crank out content but on the hardware side I think they actually are best in class here.
So here's the thing. Who is doing better at this than Meta? Who could they buy? Regulation is a secondary issue.
At this point, the Quests are pretty good gaming machines. Its the software that's lacking. MMAAAN has traditionally struggled with content creation. It took a long time for the streaming studios to get any decent shows. Apple, Google, Netflix and Amazon don't really have a good game portfolio to this day.
They could possibly buy or spin up a bunch of game studios to crank out content but on the hardware side I think they actually are best in class here.
> The future will be made over the next few months as those start-up fevered ideas will actually get a footing.
The trouble here though, is very few VC's have an appetite to fund now, especially seed / series A. They are too busy dealing with the overpriced and soon to fail cohort from 2020/2021
I spoke with a VC just last week from one if the top five, they are yet to fund anyone new this year.
The trouble here though, is very few VC's have an appetite to fund now, especially seed / series A. They are too busy dealing with the overpriced and soon to fail cohort from 2020/2021
I spoke with a VC just last week from one if the top five, they are yet to fund anyone new this year.
This feels like they spent a lot of money on the metaverse, it didn't work out, so now they're raising money by doing layoffs
This is the 4th layoff announcement on which I've tried our Buzzword Bingo app:
https://1fish2.github.io/buzzword-bingo/corp-bingo.html
and still nothing! I think we need a new set of buzzwords.
https://1fish2.github.io/buzzword-bingo/corp-bingo.html
and still nothing! I think we need a new set of buzzwords.
Good luck getting anyone to do any work while they wait for the news on whether they're axed over the next 1-2 months (or up to the end of the year!). These trickling layoffs absolutely kill morale. Do it all at once, seriously.
This idea of doing layoffs and then using it to fund stock buybacks is really catching on. We should call this “double booster” for stock prices even when company is clearly failing.
[deleted]
"I don't know what I'm doing, but I will figure it out in a transitory future period" Does Jerome Powell run FB?
Their website looks like a poorly designed lifestyle blog
This whole schpeel has actually put me in a horrible mood.
I don't even have a FB account but every second line here is full of the type of gaslighting and bizspeak BS that absolutely nobody appreciates.
> We do this with AI to help you creatively express yourself and discover new content.
You mean destroy adolescent growing minds with more and more addictive short burst content from advertisers.
> but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.
So goodbye ethics councils, any semblance of internal discussion over our impact on the world.
> Profitability enables innovation.
Because investors LOVE taking risks on `innovation` during a downturn. /s
More like they will push harder the methods which make their bonus'.
Facebook/Meta has provided nothing beneficial long term, to the world. Let it burn.
I don't even have a FB account but every second line here is full of the type of gaslighting and bizspeak BS that absolutely nobody appreciates.
> We do this with AI to help you creatively express yourself and discover new content.
You mean destroy adolescent growing minds with more and more addictive short burst content from advertisers.
> but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.
So goodbye ethics councils, any semblance of internal discussion over our impact on the world.
> Profitability enables innovation.
Because investors LOVE taking risks on `innovation` during a downturn. /s
More like they will push harder the methods which make their bonus'.
Facebook/Meta has provided nothing beneficial long term, to the world. Let it burn.
Looks like Zuck has totally lost touch if he thinks the high priority projects are "metaverse" and "ai" related. At this point FB is just his passion project.
The most interesting bit of this letter to me is this one:
"Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week."
"Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week."
How many companies are going to copy meta?
Hard to wrap my head around 10k people. Just how big is Meta? The email talks a lot about eliminating layers of management, does that mean most of the layoffs will be managers?
Zuck should lay himself off, he's directly responsible for most of the problems the company is having right now. He endlessly makes the wrong choices for the company on privacy, UX, staffing and decides to do a botched pivot to VR instead of trying to improve any of that.
He has lost the trust of his users and someone new needs to focus on restoring that as a precondition for anything else they do being successful. Facebook isn't Civ 5 (one of his favorite games) but he operates it like it is, and if he keeps treating FB like a video game full of NPCs he'll have plenty of time for the next Civ game.
He has lost the trust of his users and someone new needs to focus on restoring that as a precondition for anything else they do being successful. Facebook isn't Civ 5 (one of his favorite games) but he operates it like it is, and if he keeps treating FB like a video game full of NPCs he'll have plenty of time for the next Civ game.
How do they have sooo many employees. They are running a few websites and a bunch of apps. I can understand how they would need a hundred people for that. They have a massive userbase. So I can understand how they would need a thousand people just to deal with tech at scale and support.
But how do you manage to have so many people that you can fire 10k ?! If I googled well, they appear to have 72k employees. Where did you find the management that thought having 72k employees is reasonable to operate a bunch of websites and apps ?!
But how do you manage to have so many people that you can fire 10k ?! If I googled well, they appear to have 72k employees. Where did you find the management that thought having 72k employees is reasonable to operate a bunch of websites and apps ?!
It would probably be considered uncouth to send Macroeconomic Changes Have Made It Impossible For Me To Want To Pay You, but in a way it's at least an honest, non-corporate ipsum explanation. It's also much more fun to read.
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-ha...
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/macroeconomic-changes-ha...
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely. This analysis also shows that engineers earlier in their career perform better on average when they work in-person with teammates at least three days a week. This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.
Realizing that this is an unpopular opinion, in person work is better for the business. Business decisions are being made around encouraging in person work, because relationships help at work.
Realizing that this is an unpopular opinion, in person work is better for the business. Business decisions are being made around encouraging in person work, because relationships help at work.
Therein lies the fundamental contradiction- Meta does not want it's own workers to work remotely, but they want to sell a product predicated on living remotely. They want their workers enthralled in real-life AND in the metaverse. IRL, they want their workers in their cubes and in the metaverse, in a different cage but a cage nonetheless.
I'm not sure if anyone at Meta understand that very few humans, outside of Meta stakeholders, want this company to continue to exist.
I'm not sure if anyone at Meta understand that very few humans, outside of Meta stakeholders, want this company to continue to exist.
Sorry for the ones losing their jobs. Meta has been mismanaged for the past few years.
Focusing on Metaverse while TikTok is continuing to increase user engagement is senseless. If I were Zuck, I would do three things:
0) Wind down Metaverse investment. Throw it back into research. Kill the product. Take the loss. He has controlling interest in the stock so he probably gets a few mulligans. So long as he presents a competent forward looking strategy, I think the investor base will still give him a few more chances.
1) Narcissism 2.0 or really, Instagram 2.0 - Merge Instagram with Reels. This is hard. The experience/monetization/product has to be just right to not cannibalize existing instagram advertising revenue or user traction. It would be easy to fall down the multiple message app mess at Google. The benefit of merging is to own the best global platform for every narcissistic creator on the planet - from movie stars to your dog. Advertisers want eyeballs. Narcissists want eyeballs, some want money. Truly understand why creators are on TikTok and entice them back to a better Facebook property.
2) Lobby to get TikTok banned. If Zuck can't defeat TikTok on product development then he can get it banned. Spend dollars lobbying politicians and demand results.
I think Zuck still has a number of winning plays available to him.
Focusing on Metaverse while TikTok is continuing to increase user engagement is senseless. If I were Zuck, I would do three things:
0) Wind down Metaverse investment. Throw it back into research. Kill the product. Take the loss. He has controlling interest in the stock so he probably gets a few mulligans. So long as he presents a competent forward looking strategy, I think the investor base will still give him a few more chances.
1) Narcissism 2.0 or really, Instagram 2.0 - Merge Instagram with Reels. This is hard. The experience/monetization/product has to be just right to not cannibalize existing instagram advertising revenue or user traction. It would be easy to fall down the multiple message app mess at Google. The benefit of merging is to own the best global platform for every narcissistic creator on the planet - from movie stars to your dog. Advertisers want eyeballs. Narcissists want eyeballs, some want money. Truly understand why creators are on TikTok and entice them back to a better Facebook property.
2) Lobby to get TikTok banned. If Zuck can't defeat TikTok on product development then he can get it banned. Spend dollars lobbying politicians and demand results.
I think Zuck still has a number of winning plays available to him.
> Merge Instagram with Reels
Are reels not already integrated into instagram?
Are reels not already integrated into instagram?
The experience is messy. It is neither fish nor fowl. The blending needs a deep rethink and redesign.
The real winning play is #2. Zuckerberg should more aggressively push for hate speech legislation to permanently shut down the Internet at large. Users should have to get a license from the DMV to post, for $35 renew in-person at DMV office or AAA. They can also opt for a RealInternetID for $50 that has more security features. Also unlimited privacy violation, logging and tracking with zero recourse for users.
Funny ideas. But seriously, large companies employ regulatory capture to limit competition all the time. One mechanism is to require a high compliance burden before a product or service can be brought to market. This increases capital requirements and risk for any competitor.
Correct. It's not enough to block access to the financial system and Internet hosting and routing services for competitors. The users themselves must be made to understand their place and not be tempted into any unlicensed activity. The current regime's not going anywhere so no rush, but no better time than now right.
I wonder if Mark is worried that #2 will give momentum for other countries to ban Facebook
> 2) Lobby to get TikTok banned
This happened in India, though it is not clear if it was Meta who lobbied or combination of other factors.
This happened in India, though it is not clear if it was Meta who lobbied or combination of other factors.
> 2) Lobby to get TikTok banned. If Zuck can't defeat TikTok on product development then he can get it banned. Spend dollars lobbying politicians and demand results.
That's their only realistic hope of seeing out the next five years. Get TikTok banned in the States, Europe and parts of Asia, then clone their app and launch in those markets to capture market share.
It's an underhand business tactic, but there's nothing too low for Zuck I guess.
That's their only realistic hope of seeing out the next five years. Get TikTok banned in the States, Europe and parts of Asia, then clone their app and launch in those markets to capture market share.
It's an underhand business tactic, but there's nothing too low for Zuck I guess.
Yep, metaverse was the stupidest idea ever. I said it at the time back in October/November 2021 when the stock was at its peak and then proceeded to interview realizing I was on a sinking ship. Sadly since I suck at interviews I could only get offers for much lower than what I had even after the collapsed share price.
"Year of Efficiency" immediately following "Year of Metaverse" succinctly captures how things went lol
"Year of Efficiency" immediately following "Year of Metaverse" succinctly captures how things went lol
So when are we going to finally recognize Meta as a failed/failing business? Laying off 10k employees for funies (after the prior layoffs) isn't exactly a great reflection on the business org in a long term view or that their financials are stable.
Makes sense, they haven’t had a CEO for a while now. When was the last time Zuck went into the office? 6 months?
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They're never going to be able to hire top talent again.
They're IBM now.
They're IBM now.
A lot of snippets in here that feel like Mark is stating some uncomfortable truths for many who have enjoyed the world of tech during the low interest rate environment.
"In person work is more effective"
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely
"To remain a company that values tech we must lower the influence of people who don't value it"
> As we’ve grown, we’ve hired many leading experts in areas outside engineering. This helps us build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.
"In person work is more effective"
> Our early analysis of performance data suggests that engineers who either joined Meta in-person and then transferred to remote or remained in-person performed better on average than people who joined remotely
"To remain a company that values tech we must lower the influence of people who don't value it"
> As we’ve grown, we’ve hired many leading experts in areas outside engineering. This helps us build better products, but with many new teams it takes intentional focus to make sure our company remains primarily technologists.
If you take the stance that in-person work is more effective (an "uncomfortable truth" as you call it), then it would seem to reason that engineers who transferred to remote work would see a decrease in performance, but that is not the case as you also mention.
It seems like the real issue may be the hiring process between remote and in-person engineers, or biases in evaluating in-person vs. remote engineers.
It seems like the real issue may be the hiring process between remote and in-person engineers, or biases in evaluating in-person vs. remote engineers.
The real issue may be one of the ones you mentioned. It could also be that employees who spend at least some significant time in person are more effective than those who are and always were fully remote.
I wonder if they considered the fact that most of the people they hired remote were hired during COVID.
That's the reason we should nationalize facebook. Indeed, all the problems are coming from managers. We should better elect them and establish communism. Also, meta should make a clip with people dancing and singing and how great it is to be fired from FB.
It is so ironic, that Facebook, the once sponsor of gems like Farmville to playfully interact with people and fostering discussions around lunch photos, totally lost sight of community building.
While today everybody wants to integrate GPT-4 into a customer facing app to increase community interaction and value to the customer, the company famous for its social graph has nothing to offer to foster integration or community building.
Even bing, the somewhat competitor now finally is the new shiny object and a direct thread to Google.
While Meta still wants to build its Metaverse, people immerse into everything that gets connected to GPT-4. GPT-4 is the real metaverse.
Ironic. Somewhat.
While today everybody wants to integrate GPT-4 into a customer facing app to increase community interaction and value to the customer, the company famous for its social graph has nothing to offer to foster integration or community building.
Even bing, the somewhat competitor now finally is the new shiny object and a direct thread to Google.
While Meta still wants to build its Metaverse, people immerse into everything that gets connected to GPT-4. GPT-4 is the real metaverse.
Ironic. Somewhat.
meta is building the future of human connection, and as every student of neuroscience and brain development knows, sometimes in order to connect you also have to dis connect. in this essay I
Re: "As part of this, we will ask many managers to become individual contributors."
Only the best managers will survive this.
Only the best managers will survive this.
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This seems focused on making meta a more efficient organization that can execute faster and react more quickly. So that's good for the company if it's done well. But even so, I see further problems for meta.
It's just not clear how the metaverse becomes something at the scale meta needs it to be to justify the R&D or to make an impact on its business.
To me it looks like a technology really takes off when it gives people a lighter-weight way to communicate and connect. The telephone takes off compared to writing letters because it is a much easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Messaging takes off relative to calling people on the telephone because it's an easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Social media, including Facebook take off relative to hanging out because it an easier more immediate way to tell people about things.
The new thing doesn't necessarily need to replace the old thing, it just needs to open up a new, easier, more immediate way for people to tell people about things.
The best I see is if meta can make itself the gatekeeper of the de facto standard platform for VR games/entertainment. That's potentially a pretty big business -- because maybe VR can take over AAA content and shows. But is it really big enough to sustain meta? (It seems far from certain they would end up in such an advantageous position, but Oculus is a good start.)
It's just not clear how the metaverse becomes something at the scale meta needs it to be to justify the R&D or to make an impact on its business.
To me it looks like a technology really takes off when it gives people a lighter-weight way to communicate and connect. The telephone takes off compared to writing letters because it is a much easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Messaging takes off relative to calling people on the telephone because it's an easier, more immediate way to tell people about things. Social media, including Facebook take off relative to hanging out because it an easier more immediate way to tell people about things.
The new thing doesn't necessarily need to replace the old thing, it just needs to open up a new, easier, more immediate way for people to tell people about things.
The best I see is if meta can make itself the gatekeeper of the de facto standard platform for VR games/entertainment. That's potentially a pretty big business -- because maybe VR can take over AAA content and shows. But is it really big enough to sustain meta? (It seems far from certain they would end up in such an advantageous position, but Oculus is a good start.)
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From a quick scan this looks great to me. Cut the middle managers, useless diversity teams, focus on tech and engineering. Hope they build something great again.
What is going on, is meta shutting down?
does anyone know the rates of re-hiring at startups and smaller tech companies of all these big tech firms that overhired? in particular for software engineers. wondering the impact of the recession based on the scale of the company
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I hope there's a good plan for deleting all of the dead code that will be left to rot. It has to be immense.
Is it total reduction now of 21K of 86K approximately? 24.4%